Month: December 2018

Keeping Sources Secure

Leave a comment


Birgit Püve for The New York Times

How do you keep communications with sources secure?

❝ Before moving to Europe this summer, I spent about a decade covering national security and intelligence in cities like Washington, so I’m pretty security conscious. Before I left, a friend who works in intelligence offered a gentle reminder that most countries would probably consider me fair game for intelligence collection.

So I use a cheap Chromebook when traveling to places where curious eyes might be tempted to sneak a peek. I set it up with a burner account, and I never connect it to any personal or business accounts.

And all those note-taking apps? If I’m working on something particularly sensitive or talking to someone who is sticking his neck out by meeting with me, those notes often don’t get saved digitally. When the story is done, the notebook gets tossed and that’s the end of it.

RTFA and check out what Matt uses/does when he’s not in Total Invasive Security Fear Mode.

Army unit cancels ban on “rubbing, humping, grinding” for sexual gratification

Leave a comment

❝ For nine harrowing days, one Grafenwöhr, Germany-based Army unit was barred from engaging in a laundry list of sexual acts and forms of physical contact, all in the name of vehicle and equipment upkeep…

❝ “Effective immediately, personnel are prohibited from engaging in sexual intercourse, acts that are sexual in nature, or acts that are done with the intent to sexually gratify any person in the Grafenwoehr Training Area,” according to the memo, which specified “agricultural cleaning and preparing our vehicles, equipment, and personnel to return to Fort Hood, Texas” as the reason for the coitus crackdown…

❝ It remains unclear whether this was a problem before. Could this battalion — the identity of which was redacted in the memo — have so severely neglected basic duties in favor of sexual escapades that a 17th century Quaker abstinence policy was warranted?

And why are other sex-having service members around the world perfectly capable of performing these bare essentials?

No doubt, having sex with anything from mules to motor vehicles would have been acceptable once they returned to Texas.

Undercover cops posing as drug buyers battle & arrest undercover cops posing as drug dealers

1 Comment

❝ In what is being referred to as “probably the most embarrassing things seen in the department” an undercover unit disguised as drug dealers in Detroit were mistaken by another group of officers to be actual drug dealers during a raid…

❝ Detroit chief of police James Craig made the comment about an incident that took place in which body cam footage has been recently released. Detroit’s 12th precinct on the east side sent in two undercover officers as drug dealers for some “buy and busts.” The buyers approached what they thought was a drug den, but was actually controlled by undercover police from Detroit’s 11th district.

What followed was a potentially deadly comedy of errors.

Think any medals will be handed out?

Nude selfie has turned up in probe of Trump and Russians

4 Comments


Is this the photo in question?

❝ A Russian company accused of bankrolling efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign says that a “nude selfie” is among the materials collected by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in his ongoing probe…

Concord is owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian businessman known as “Putin’s chef” because of his close relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin…

❝ Concord is the sole defendant to appear in court in the indictment of Russian entities under Mueller.

So far…

Fake President wants to turn this into an oilfield profit center

Leave a comment


Click to enlarge — Florian Schulz

Rated as one of National Geographic’s 100 best photos of the year 2018…With the Sadlerochit Mountains rising in the distance, two muskoxen mosey through a scene devoid of the human touch. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the largest protected areas in the U.S. and one of the wildest places left on Earth—at least for now.

Trump wants to open this up to exploitation for oil companies.

This is our reality — with Trump in the White House

4 Comments

❝ In just two years, President Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century. Mr. Trump enthusiastically promotes the changes as creating jobs, freeing business from the shackles of government and helping the economy grow…

❝ The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real — frighteningly so, for some people — imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us…

❝ …Trump is already on track to leave an indelible mark on the American landscape, even with a decline in some major pollutants from the ever-shrinking coal industry. While Washington has been consumed by scandals surrounding the president’s top officials on environmental policy — both the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior secretary have been driven from his cabinet — Mr. Trump’s vision is taking root in places as diverse as rural California, urban Texas, West Virginian coal country and North Dakota’s energy corridor.

Trump’s indelible mark is one leading to sickness and decline. The first centered on the mass of Americans employed in almost every industry. The second the predictable result of supply-side economics – a failure in every aspect of economic history excepting only the minds of a small number of perpetually greedy economists and politicians.