Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

The NSA can hijack your Wi-Fi from 8 miles away
dailydot.com | Sarah Weber | 12/30/13

Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum elaborated on what he's learned about NSA spying tactics and tools during a lecture at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg.

Appelbaum co-wrote a Der Spiegel report published Sunday that sheds light on what the NSA can access, including your iPhone, your newly purchased laptop computer, and most major security architecture. But in his lecture, Appelbaum dropped this nugget: The NSA can tap into your wireless signal from up to eight miles away. ... Read more

The CIA wants to spy on you through your TV: Agency director says it will 'transform' surveillance
dailymail.co.uk | Rob Waugh | 03/16/12 older, but good

When people download a film from Netflix to a flatscreen, or turn on web radio, they could be alerting unwanted watchers to exactly what they are doing and where they are. Spies will no longer have to plant bugs in your home - the rise of 'connected' gadgets controlled by apps will mean that people 'bug' their own homes, says CIA director David Petraeus.

Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled via apps - and chip company ARM recently unveiled low-powered, cheaper chips which will be used in everything from fridges and ovens to doorbells. The resultant chorus of 'connected' gadgets will be able to be read like a book - and even remote-controlled, according to CIA CIA Director David Petraeus, according to a recent report by Wired's 'Danger Room' blog. ...

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Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
spiegel.de | Staff | 12/30/14

he NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting.

It was thanks to the garage door opener episode that Texans learned just how far the NSA's work had encroached upon their daily lives. For quite some time now, the intelligence agency has maintained a branch with around 2,000 employees at Lackland Air Force Base, also in San Antonio. In 2005, the agency took over a former Sony computer chip plant in the western part of the city. A brisk pace of construction commenced inside this enormous compound. The acquisition of the former chip factory at Sony Place was part of a massive expansion the agency began after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

On-Call Digital Plumbers. One of the two main buildings at the former plant has since housed a sophisticated NSA unit, one that has benefited the most from this expansion and has grown the fastest in recent years -- the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. This is the NSA's top operative unit -- something like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked. Read more

Ever wonder how fast the computer is in the NSA Utah Data Center: it can do 27,000 trillion calculations a second.

Ever wonder what 42 trillion file cabinets stacked together would look like?

According to a report by NPR, the NSA data center in Utah will be capable of saving 5 Zettabytes (5 billion Terabyte). Assuming that a filing cabinet with 60 files (30,000 pages of paper) uses up 0.4 m², which would correspond to 120 MB of data, the printed out Utah data center would use up 17 million square kilometers.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Warnings From NAFTA
HP | Dean Baker | 01/20/14

With the New Year the corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration are stepping up their drive for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new trade deal being negotiated in secret by the United States and eleven countries in the Pacific region. The key at the moment is Congressional approval of fast-track authority. This would give any agreement a straight up or down vote on an accelerated timetable.

Fast-track authority would virtually guarantee passage since members would face intense pressure from corporate contributors and the media, in both the news and opinion sections, to support the deal. Failure to support a deal would mean that a member would be labeled a protectionist Neanderthal (name-calling is standard fare in Washington when pushing for trade deals) in addition to being badly under-funded in their re-election campaign. ... Read more