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What the Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

What the Kennedy Assassination Records Reveal: Uncontrollable Incompetence

Imagine Harvey Weinstein wielding a “top secret” stamp to block any exposure of the uncomfortable truth and you have the FBI, CIA and NSA.

One way to interpret the intelligence community’s reluctance to let all the Kennedy assassination archives become public is that the archives contain evidence of a “smoking gun”: that is, evidence that the intelligence agencies of the United States of America were complicit in the assassination of the President.

I think the agencies fear something larger: exposure of their gross incompetence, their “cowboy” recklessness and their disavowal of elected-civilian control. Their fear of this exposure is based on one simple fact: nothing’s changed since 1963. They were unaccountable and incompetent then, and they remain unaccountable and incompetent now. The only difference is their funding has greatly increased.

We rarely get an insider’s glimpse of the intelligence community’s pettiness, hubris and incompetence. The Ministry of Propaganda is tasked with showing the NSA, CIA, FBI, et al. as super-competent, super-dedicated, and focused on defeating evil (which is always presented as unambiguously evil, i.e. anti-American.)

Although it’s 30 years old, I still recommend this account of a top MI5 (U.K.) officer, SpyCatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer.

I’ve read many books on the intelligence community, but few (if any) reveal the inter-agency rivalries and bad blood that (as far as I can tell) still exist beneath a formal veneer of co-operation. The CIA and FBI were always envious of the NSA’s SigInt (signal intelligence, i.e. eavesdropping), and so they’ve attempted to create their own versions, with laughably incompetent results in the case of the FBI’s “Russians stole the election” inquiry.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Unhackable iPhone Has Been Compromised: ‘Intelligence Agencies Can Intercept Calls, Messages, and Access Data’

The Unhackable iPhone Has Been Compromised: ‘Intelligence Agencies Can Intercept Calls, Messages, and Access Data’

unhackable-iphone

Iphone maker Apple, Inc. claimed last month that their latest iteration of the wildly popular handheld device was unhackable. According to HackRead, the company is so convinced of its security successes that they issued a statement saying that data stored on a phone secured with a front screen passcode was impossible to access – even by highly talented intelligence agencies:

The CIA and the FBI are always looking for backdoors in Apple devices, in fact, the agency spent years trying to hack iPhone and iPads according to documents released by NSA’s Edward Snowden.

Now, with the new upgraded operating systems, Apple has termed it “impossible” to access any data from Apple devices. Though, the company can still access data from older phones.

According to the Apple’s response to the court, 90 percent of the devices has ios 8 installed and with the type of encryption already there in the phone, it’s nearly impossible to access the data without the passcode, which is only known to the original owner. Even Apple itself cannot find the code.

But as we already know from recent hacks of Department of Defense computers, essential domestic grid infrastructure computers, and even NASA’s in-orbit spacecraft, in the digital age nothing is ever really secure.

Within hours of Apple releasing their latest iOS 9 update a cyber security firm known as Zerodium issued a challenge to the hacker community and offered up a $1 million bounty for any team that could bypass Apple’s latest security features. For weeks it appeared that Apple was right. Scores of hackers around the world burned the midnight oil trying to hack the iphone before Zerodium’s bounty expired.

But just few hours before the challenge came to end, one team submitted their exploits and vulnerabilities and Zerodium has confirmed that the Apple’s iOS 9 has been compromised.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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