Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts

Robert Zubrin: Give Snowden Immunity

The truth will set us free.     The United States should give former NSA contractor Edward Snowden immunity from prosecution in exchange for congressional testimony. The suggestion may strike many of my fellow national-security conservatives as outrageous. Snowden certainly violated the law and may have committed treason. But the     ... MORE

Using Terrorism Task Force To Make Small-Time Drug Busts

David Martosko on a secretive DEA program.      A secret U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is using terrorism task forces to help local police take down small-time drug dealers, sources have told MailOnline. In a move that is seen by critics as taking valuable resources away from the battle against terrorism, the DEA is using       ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The Tragedy Of Isolation

Inflicting a handicap on their own people.   In the 20th century, Western intellectuals' two most dominant explanations of disparities in economic, educational and other achievements were innate racial differences in ability (in the early decades) and racial discrimination (in the later decades). In neither era were the intelligentsia     ... MORE

J.D. Tuccille: Court Secretly Expands NSA Power

Surveillance rules loosened.    I have, oh-so-cynically, referred to the court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as a "phony baloney" court that grants rubber-stamp approval to virtually every snooping request that comes its way. Of course, I base that subjective assessment on the fact that, in 11 years, the court has denied    ... MORE

Jerry Brito: How Leaks Advance Liberty And Resist Tyranny

Using technology to keep the government in check.   We now know what we have long suspected: that the National Security Agency is collecting the phone call records of all Americans. And we are now justified in suspecting what we have long feared: that it is also keeping a permanent backup copy of everything that happens on the      ... MORE

John Fund: Who Is Watching The NSA Watchers?

Why the oversight can never be adequate.        It’s clear that congressional oversight of the government’s intelligence activities is either inadequate or flawed. Asked if he believes there has been enough oversight of the NSA, Senate majority leader Harry Reid was dismissive last week: “Enough is something that’s in the eye of the beholder.”  ... MORE

Philip Bump: How Big Is The NSA Police State, Really?

We don't know the half of it.      As you probably know, "the cloud" in Internet parlance isn't an actual cloud. The Internet's cloud refers to remote storage of information and the network that connects to it. What tech companies pitch as a nebulous intangibility is really just stacks and stacks of servers with direct connections to the rest of the world. Things   ... MORE

Pamela Geller: The Epic Failure Of Our Intel Agencies

Losing our liberties in trade for what security?       I find it very disconcerting that thirty-six hours (as of this writing) after the Boston terrorist bombing, law enforcement and counterterrorism officials are running hotlines and calls for "anyone seen with an unusually heavy, dark bag" in the Boston area.  A $50,000 reward has been offered for     ... MORE

Thomas Sowell - Intellectuals And Race

Racism is now a default explanation. There are so many fallacies about race that it would be hard to say which is the most ridiculous. However, one fallacy behind many other fallacies is the notion that there is something unusual about different races being unequally represented in various institutions, careers or at different income or     ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Jensen And Flynn

Trivializing politically incorrect findings.   Anyone who has followed the decades-long controversies over the role of genes in IQ scores will recognize the names of the two leading advocates of opposite conclusions on that subject— Professor Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley and Professor James R. Flynn, an American expatriate   ... MORE

Julian Sanchez: Our Dishonest Debate Over NSA Spying

Secret FISA court rules the Fourth Amendment be damned. The House of Representatives recently signed off on another five years of sweeping warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, voting by a wide margin to extend the controversial FISA Amendments Act of 2008. But the debate on the House floor showed that the law’s   ... MORE

Washington Times: Obama, The Leaker In Chief

When politics trump national security.    President Obama takes umbrage at the idea that a spate of leaks of highly classified national-security information is somehow purposefully intended to bolster his leadership credentials. His resistance to an independent investigation will only make things worse for him. The Obama White House is leaking   ... MORE

Doug Hornig: What If You Could Put On A Thinking Cap?

Could a nine-volt battery be better than coffee?  "Flow." Although it can be annoying difficult to define with any precision and virtually impossible to measure objectively, everyone intuitively knows what it is, and most people have experienced some form of it at one time or another. It's that state of effortless concentration that leads to superior performance, either  ... MORE

REUTERS: Secret Panel Can Put Americans On Death List

Death by government. American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and  ... MORE