What do they know that we don't?

What GCHQ destroyed on the Guardian's PC that held Snowden's leaks. [Link]

When Prime Minister David Cameron ordered two GCHQ spooks to go the the Guardian's offices and ritually exorcise two laptops that had held copies of the Snowden leaks, we assumed it was just spook-lunacy; but Privacy International thinks that if you look at which components the spies targeted for destruction, there are hints about ways that spies can control computer hardware.

We examined all the destroyed components, and while much was destroyed, our intial investigation will look to find out more about the following components targeted by GCHQ:

- keyboard controller chip

- trackpad controller chip

- inverting converter chip

Below, the left image shows a keyboard controller board intact while the right image is the destroyed component provided by the Guardian. From our analysis, we believe the targeted component of the keyboard is the keyboard encoder responsible for communicating over the USB and interpreting key presses on its various I/O pins. We believe this component, under the black covering in the image below, is similar in function to the chip described here.

Law enforcement entrapment getting a closer look

The FBI does it like clockwork to make sure everyone knows the FBI hunts terrorists, whether they are real or not. Now the BATF gets slapped down for trying the same thing. Go after actual criminals, don't try to make new ones. [Link]

For years now, we've been writing about the FBI's now popular practice of devising its own totally bogus "terrorist plots" and then convincing some hapless individual to join the "plot" only to later arrest them to great fanfare, despite the fact that everyone (other than the arrested person) involved was actually an FBI agent, and there was no actual danger or real plot (or real terrorists) involved. In fact, we just had yet another such story. We've written about similar occurancesover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover again -- and, depressingly, it seems that courts repeatedly uphold this practice as not being entrapment. Many have been questioning why the FBI is spending so much time and money creating fake terrorist plots that don't seem to protect anyone (but do give the FBI/DOJ lots of big headlines about "stopping terrorism!"), but the courts have basically let it go. 

However, it finally appears that one judge thinks these kinds of things go too far -- and it happens to be Judge Otis Wright, whose name you may recall from being the first judge to reallyslap down Prenda law for its obnoxious copyright trolling practices. Reader Frankz alerts us to the news Wright has dismissed a case involving the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for a similar "made up crime" and completely trashed the government for doing these kinds of things. As with his order in the Prenda case, I urge you to read his full dismissal which is granted for "outrageous government conduct." Judge Wright, it appears, is not one to hide his opinions about those who abuse the legal system. The ruling kicks off with a hint of where this is heading:

“‘Lead us not into temptation,’” Judge Noonan warned. United States v. Black, 733 F.3d 294, 313 (Noonan, J., dissenting). But into temptation the Government has gone, ensnaring chronically unemployed individuals from poverty-ridden areas in its fake drug stash-house robberies. While undoubtedly a valid law-enforcement tool when employed to target or prevent demonstrated criminal enterprises, reverse stings offend the United States Constitution when used solely to obtain convictions.

This case didn't involve "terrorism" like the FBI cases, but rather a similar "reverse sting" in which an ATF agent pretends to be a cocaine courier, tells some dupes about a "stash house" he knows about and then pushes them to rob the house. The ATF agent convinced a couple of guys, Cedrick Hudson and Joseph Whitfield, to take part, and they eventually brought along a third guy, Antuan Dunlap, after the ATF guy kept asking them to bring along associates. The group, lead by the ATF agent's detailed plan, agreed to rob this house and then were all arrested. It's the third guy, Dunlap, who argued that the government was engaged in outrageous conduct. The government claims that Dunlap bragging about being involved in past robberies means that it was perfectly reasonable to arrest him here, but Wright isn't having it:

the Court finds that the Government’s extensive involvement in dreaming up this fanciful scheme—including the arbitrary amount of drugs and illusory need for weapons and extra associates—transcends the bounds of due process and renders the Government’s actions outrageous.

Wright is not persuaded by the fact that Dunlap apparently bragged about his criminal past to the ATF agent, noting the reality of the situation:

It makes little sense to justify the Government’s capricious, stash-house scheme at its inception by what Thompson later learned about Dunlap. In a situation where an apparently experienced cocaine courier is boasting to some small-time crooks about the chance to hit the mother lode, it is only human nature that the individual is going to try to impress the courier with wild tales of past criminal conduct. In this case, there is no evidence that Dunlap actually robbed a Western Union or Nix. But even if he did, Thompson did not learn about Dunlap’s alleged past crimes until after Dunlap joined the doomed-to-fail crew. The Government cannot bootstrap this post hoc knowledge to justify the scheme from the beginning.

Those commercial robberies also bear little upon the fictitious stash-house scheme or the home invasions the ATF sought to eliminate. In fact, when Dunlap was bragging about this past exploits, he disavowed any connection to drugs:

[Dunlap]: Keep my ass clean. I never touch dope. I’m just saying though.

[Whitfield]: He’s a jack boy, he don’t know nothing about no drugs.

So contrary to the Government’s contention, Dunlap’s “admissions” only served to demonstrate that he had no propensity to commit drug crimes—the entire subject of the reverse sting.

Judge Wright clearly sees how allowing this kind of activity is going to lead to serious problems, especially as law enforcement can prey on desperate individuals, coax them into various plots, and then arrest them:

Allowing after-the-fact knowledge to mitigate the Court’s concerns in a situation like this also creates a perverse incentive for the Government. It encourages the Government to cast a wide net, trawling for crooks in seedy, poverty-ridden areas—all without an iota of suspicion that any particular person has committed similar conduct in the past. And if the Government happens to get it right and catch someone who previously engaged in crime, the courts will place their imprimatur on the whole fishing expedition.

The Court declines the invitation to endorse this nab-first-ask-questions-later approach. While this situation is a win-win for the Government, it is really only lose-lose for the unwitting individuals unlucky enough to fall into the Government's net. If they have never committed criminal activity in the past but agree to participate in the fake robbery, they go to prison—unless they can surmount the Everest-like hurdle to establish an entrapment defense.

This is important, because many people try to fight back against these kinds of cases with claims of entrapment, but Judge Wright correctly notes that (unfortunately) the bar to meeting an entrapment claim is ridiculously high. However, it's pretty obvious that there is no crime hereabsent the government's own intervention:

But for the undercover agent’s imagination in this case there would be no crime. The undercover agent invented his drug-courier persona, the stash house, the 20 to 25 kilograms of cocaine supposedly inside the stash house, the two individuals supposedly guarding the stash, the need to use weapons, and the idea of robbing the stash house. He even provided the putative safe house and getaway van. Dunlap brought little to the table besides his sheer presence and perhaps the hope of being able to obtain some quick cash.

.... Despite the Supreme Court’s admonition, the ATF manufactured this entire crime. It did not infiltrate an ongoing criminal enterprise, as there is no indication that Hudson, Whitfield, and Dunlap had any previous criminal affiliation between them.

Furthermore, Judge Wright notes that the government encouraged the activity, even if it wasn't to the level of entrapment, it was still quite clearly the key driver of the entire "crime" and that's what makes it "outrageous."

Who watches the ... oh forget it

Nancy Pelosi admits that Congress is scared of the CIA. Or at least what the CIA can pin on them. [Link]

In response to Senator Dianne Feinstein's speech last week calling out the CIA for spying on her staffers, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was asked to comment and gave what might be the most revealing comments to date as to why Congress is so scared of the CIA:

“I salute Sen. Feinstein,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference of the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’ll tell you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth.”

Pelosi added that she has always fought for checks and balances on CIA activity and its interactions with Congress: “You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth.

A few months back, the ACLU had posted something questioning whether or not the intelligence community might be blackmailing Congress. And, quite frequently when we write about the intelligence community, we see suggestions in the comments that certain politicians probably cover for the NSA and CIA because they know what those agencies "have on them." I've always dismissed those kinds of claims as being a bit far-fetched, even if they have plenty of historical precedent. So far, there's certainly been no direct evidence of that happening. 

And yet... Pelosi's comments certainly seem to hint at even more nefarious activity by the intelligence community against politicians who dare to actually do the job of oversight. The point of that ACLU post linked above is that, even if it's not happening, the fact that we can't definitively rule it out is a serious problem for democracy. And just the fact that some of the most powerful members of Congress, who are theoretically in charge of oversight, are now publicly admitting that they're scared of how the CIA fights back when they take them on, suggests that the intelligence community really is rotten to the core. And Congressional oversight, as it stands today, is clearly not able to deal with the issue by itself.

Kafkaesque

Accidental checkmark leads to 10 years on the no-fly list. [Link]

We've been covering the case of Rahinah Ibrahim for a little while now. She's the Stanford PhD student who was wrongfully placed on the no fly list -- something that pretty much everyone admitted early on -- but because of that her student visa to the US was pulled, and every attempt she made to come back was rejected, leaving her unable to come back to this country for nearly 10 years. As we noted last month, it seemed clear that Judge William Alsup had ruled that the feds needed to remove her from the no fly list and any other terrorist watch lists, but it was a little unclear, since the full ruling remained under seal. That ruling has now been released in redacted form, and is well worth reading. Not only does it highlight massive bureaucratic bungling over a ten year period, it also shows how disingenuous and dishonest the DOJ has been in handling the entire case -- even to the point of promising not to argue "state secrets" to kill the case, and then (of course) claiming "state secrets" and trying to kill the case just a few weeks later. Judge Alsup appears somewhat limited in what he can do in response to all of this for procedural reasons, but he makes it clear that he's not pleased about all of this and orders the government to confirm that Ibrahim has been fully removed from the various terrorist databases and lists, as the government has flatly admitted that they don't believe she poses any threat to national security. 

In fact, the ruling highlights that this is all do to one FBI agent totally fucking things up back in 2004 -- and not even realizing he had done so until his deposition a few months ago. Alsup makes clear (and it seems everyone agrees) that the FBI agent, Kevin Michael Kelley didn't screw up maliciously, but he simply misunderstood the directions in filling out the form:

Agent Kelley misunderstood the directions on the form and erroneously nominated Dr. Ibrahim to the TSA's no-fly list [redacted]. He did not intend to do so. This was a mistake, he admitted at trial. He intended to nominate her to the [very long redaction]. He checked the wrong boxes, filling out the form exactly the opposite way from the instructions on the form. He made this mistake even though the form stated, "It is recommended the subject NOT be entered into the following selected terrorist screening databases."

And from that one screwup, basically a bureaucratic mess appears to have followed, and even if she was removed from that list (as is suggested elsewhere), once her name got into a series of connected databases, she effectively became toxic, and no one would allow her back into the US. So even though everyone now admits that she posed no threat to national security, when she applied for a visa to come back to the US, not only was it rejected, but the reason for the rejection was given as the code for "terrorist activities" (8 USC 1182 (a)(3)(B) -- and to make matters even more insane, someone at the State Department helpfully scribbled "terrorist" on the form that was sent to her denying her entry.

Why didn't anyone tell me?

According to Iranian news agency, US controlled by aliens. [Link]

Iran's semi-official news outlets have something of a reputation for taking conspiracy theorism to the next level. They've written on Israel's secret plans to annex Iraq, theconspiracy by Western media to fabricate quotes by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemning the Holocaust and the secret Jewishness of the British royal family. You may notice a certain theme here.

On Sunday, the hard-line semi-official Fars News dropped one of its biggest bombshells yet: The United States government has been secretly run by a "shadow government" of space aliens since 1945. Yes, space aliens. The alien government is based out of Nevada and had previously run Nazi Germany. It adds, for timeliness, that the controversial NSA programs are actually a tool for the aliens to hide their presence on Earth and their secret agenda for global domination. This is all asserted as incontrovertible fact with no caveats.

There are so many wonderful details here. As proof that aliens were secretly behind the Nazis, the report explains that Germany built hundreds of submarines toward the end of the war, far more than would have been possible with mere human technology. It does not explain why aliens with access to interstellar travel built subs that were so grossly incapable against the British navy, or why all-powerful extraterrestrials were unable to help the Nazis resist an invasion by Allied forces that are mere cavemen relative to their own technology. So far, these are pretty unimpressive aliens.

In any case, after losing the war, the aliens apparently installed themselves as the secret force behind the United States government. President Obama is said to be a tool of the aliens, though anti-alien factions within the U.S. government are fighting to topple him. Their present aim is to install a global surveillance system that will, somehow, allow them to finally impose a one-world government and enslave humanity.

The best part to all this, to me, is the sourcing. Fars News takes us through a veritable hall-of-mirrors of sources "confirming" their scoop. The progenitor of it all, of course, is ostensibly NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who has waited until now to reveal that the real reason for all those NSA programs is aliens. As best I can tell, Fars claims that Snowden gave this information to Russia's Federal Security Service  (FSB). They also say it was independently confirmed by former Canadian defense minister Paul Hellyer. (Hellyer, who is 90, does indeed argue that aliens have visited Earth many times, though I haven't seen him comment on this particular story.) The FSB, they say, put all this information down in a secret report, which was inexplicably obtained by the ultra-fringe conspiracy theory Web site, Whatdoesitmean.com.

Court Rebukes White House Over “Secret Law”

Laws are for the little people. [Link]

DC District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle yesterday ordered the Obama Administration to release a copy of an unclassified presidential directive, and she said the attempt to withhold it represented an improper exercise of “secret law.”

The Obama White House has a “limitless” view of its authority to withhold presidential communications from the public, she wrote, but that view is wrong.

“The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight– to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law’,” Judge Huvelle wrote in her December 17 opinion.

“The Court finds equally troubling the government’s complementary suggestion that ‘effective’ governance requires that a President’s substantive and non-classified directives to Executive Branch agencies remain concealed from public scrutiny,” she wrote.

Judge Huvelle ordered the Administration to provide the directive to the non-profitCenter for Effective Government, which had filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act for its release.

The directive in question, Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 6, “is a widely-publicized, non-classified Presidential Policy Directive on issues of foreign aid and development that has been distributed broadly within the Executive Branch and used by recipient agencies to guide decision-making,” the Judge noted. “Even though issued as a directive, the PPD-6 carries the force of law as policy guidance to be implemented by recipient agencies, and it is the functional equivalent of an Executive Order.”

“Never before has a court had to consider whether the [presidential communications] privilege protects from disclosure under FOIA a final, non-classified, presidential directive.”

The Center for Effective Government had argued that “PPD-6 is not protected by the presidential communications privilege because it was not made in the course of making decisions, but instead is the final decision itself….”

In response, the government contended that PPD-6 “is protected by the privilege because, regardless of how widely the document has been distributed within the Executive Branch, it originated with the President….”

Significantly, Judge Huvelle insisted on examining the document herself in camera instead of simply relying on the Administration’s characterization of the document.  Having done so, she found that it “is not ‘revelatory of the President’s deliberations’ such that its public disclosure would undermine future decision-making.”

She criticized the government for “the unbounded nature” of its claim. “In the government’s view, it can shield from disclosure under FOIA any presidential communication, even those — like the PPD-6 — that carry the force of law, simply because the communication originated with the President…. The Court rejects the government’s limitless approach….”

Most transparent administration EVER. I do not think that means what you think it does.

Contempt

Contempt of Congress. [Link]

Bait-and-switch? Or breath-taking chutzpah? Either way, Eric Holder is in big trouble.

The embattled attorney general destroyed what little is left of his credibility yesterday afternoon when he failed to turn over 1,300 subpoenaed and unredacted documents in the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal to House investigators led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

How did the Justice Department come to OK an operation that handed massive firepower to Mexico’s drug lords, with no hope of tracing the guns and without a word to the Mexican government? Still no good answers, some 18 months after one of those guns was found at the site of the murder of a US Border Patrol agent, while countless others have been used to kill innocent Mexicans.

Instead, in a 20-minute meeting that Holder himself had requested to stave off today’s planned contempt citation vote in Issa’s committee, he merely offered to “brief” Issa on their contents.Nor has Justice handed over more than a token number of the duly subpoenaed documents that might help explain the disaster.

Holder’s insulting, 11th-hour offer came after he’d already missed a morning deadline to turn over the documents — a small percentage of the total number that Congress has demanded as it tries to get to the bottom of the scandal.

Issa surely feels like Charlie Brown charging the football, with Holder as Lucy. For over a year, he’s been trying to pin down the slippery AG, issuing one “last chance” after another, dragging Holder in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (on top of Senate appearances) and firing off angry letter after angry letter.

Each time, Holder has scampered off, meeting Issa’s legitimate demands with contempt — for the congressman, the Congress itself and the rule of law.

He tried it again yesterday after his offer was rebuffed, calling Issa’s demands “political gamesmanship” and cracking, “The ball’s in their court.”

Um . . . no, Mr. Attorney General. The ball’s in your court — and has been ever since Justice took the extraordinary step of formally “withdrawing” a Feb. 4, 2011 letter from assistant AG Ron Weich — who announced last week that he’s leaving Justice to become dean of the University of Baltimore law school.

Weich is just the latest F&F figure to jump ship, after ex-US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke and former acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Ken Melson.

Weich’s letter definitively denied allegations that the ATF, which supervised the F&F operation, “knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons” to straw buyers acting on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.

Oops. In December, Holder told Congress that Weich’s letter was now inoperable, then promptly clammed up again, making it clear he has something — something big — to hide from Congress and the American people.

Which is why — unless he produces the documents before 10 a.m. this morning — Holder is looking at a House committee vote on contempt of Congress charges; once the full House goes along, he’ll be only the 11th official to be so cited since 1975.

Rape victim framed for armed robberies by attacker

She went to jail for moths while he was free on bail. [Link]

He said he was a police detective, but never seemed to go to work. He seemed obsessed with “C.S.I.,” “Law & Order” and other television police dramas.

About a year after he moved into her house in Queens, their relationship soured. One day, he cornered her, taped her mouth and raped her, she said. Mr. Ramrattan was arrested.

But he soon took his revenge, the authorities said. Drawing on his knowledge of police procedure, gleaned from his time as an informer for law enforcement, he accomplished what prosecutors in New York called one of the most elaborate framing plots that they had ever seen.

One night, Ms. Sumasar was pulled over by the police. Before she could speak, detectives slapped handcuffs on her. “You know you did it,” she said one later shouted at her. “Just admit it.”

Ms. Sumasar, a former Morgan Stanley analyst who was running a restaurant, said she had no idea what that meant. Yet suddenly, she was being treated like a brazen criminal. She was charged with carrying out a series of armed robberies, based on what the police said was a wealth of evidence, including credible witness statements and proof that her car was the getaway vehicle.

In her first extensive interview about her ordeal, she recalled sitting in jail, consumed by one thought: “Jerry is behind this.”

But when she insisted to the authorities that he had set her up, they belittled her claims.

Now, though, they concede that Ms. Sumasar was right — an astonishing turn of events that has transformed her case into one of the most bizarre in the city’s recent history.

They released her from jail last December after seven months, acknowledging that the entire case against her had been concocted by Mr. Ramrattan, officials said.

Julian Assange, Information Anarchist

Wikileaks real agenda? [Link]

Mr. Assange is misunderstood in the media and among digirati as an advocate of transparency. Instead, this battening down of the information hatches by the U.S. is precisely his goal. The reason he launched WikiLeaks is not that he's a whistleblower—there's no wrongdoing inherent in diplomatic cables—but because he hopes to hobble the U.S., which according to his underreported philosophy can best be done if officials lose access to a free flow of information.

In 2006, Mr. Assange wrote a pair of essays, "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" and "Conspiracy as Governance." He sees the U.S. as an authoritarian conspiracy. "To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed," he writes. "Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate," he writes, and "pass it around the conspirators and then act on the result."

His central plan is that leaks will restrict the flow of information among officials—"conspirators" in his view—making government less effective. Or, as Mr. Assange puts it, "We can marginalize a conspiracy's ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to its environment. . . . An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself."

Berkeley blogger Aaron Bady last week posted a useful translation of these essays. He explains Mr. Assange's view this way: "While an organization structured by direct and open lines of communication will be much more vulnerable to outside penetration, the more opaque it becomes to itself (as a defense against the outside gaze), the less able it will be to 'think' as a system, to communicate with itself." Mr. Assange's idea is that with enough leaks, "the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller."

Cimategate

This may be big. Even assuming that there is AGW, the science and data either stands on it's own or it means nothing. [Link]

Now, I’ve purposefully not included much of the text from these emails, both for reasons of space and because I want people to read them for themselves. But, at least on this first look, it appears that the three scandals are:

• First, a real attempt by a small group of scientists to subvert the peer-review process and suppress dissenting voices. (For another look at this, by a respected climate scientist who was one of the targets, see these posts onRoger Pielke Sr.’s blog.)  This is at best massively unethical.
• Second, a willingness to manipulate the data to make a political case. This is certainly misconduct and possibly scientific fraud. This, if it proves true, should make these scientists subject to strong disciplinary action, even termination of their tenured positions.
• Third, what gives every appearance of an actual conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts in the US and UK. If this is proven true, that is a federal crime.

These emails and the data associated, taken together, raise really important questions about the whole scientific structure of AGW. Is the data really valid? Has the data been effectively peer reviewed and have attempts to falsify been fairly treated? Is CO₂-forced AGW really the best hypothesis?Until these questions are answered, the various attempts to “deal with the climate change crisis” have no acceptable scientific basis.

Moon made of wood, not cheese

At least if we go by what this 'moon rock' is made of. [Link]

It was given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969.
When Mr Drees died, the rock went on display at the Amsterdam museum.
At one point it was insured for around $500,000 (£308,000), but tests have proved it was not the genuine article.
The Rijksmuseum, which is perhaps better known for paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, says it will keep the piece as a curiosity.
"It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
"We can laugh about it."
The "rock" had originally been been vetted through a phone call to Nasa, she added.
The US agency gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries following lunar missions in the 1970s.
US officials said they had no explanation for the Dutch discovery.

Maybe the rock was beeping? [Link]

This episode was filmed not long after astronaut Neil Armstrong's fabled "moon walk" in the summer of 1969. Gullible Lisa (Eva Gabor) is convinced when child inventor Dinky Watson (Johnny Whitaker) insists that he, too, has been to the moon. Purchasing a "moon rock" from Dinky, Lisa receives a stinging admonition from her less impressionable husband Oliver (Eddie Albert). But when a strange beeping sound begins to emanate from the rock, everyone in Hooterville becomes moon-struck!

Fringe Premier

I just watched the premier of JJ Abrams new series, Fringe. I thought it was enjoyable and promised more sci-fi conspiracy goodness. There were only one distraction for me. The music cues were a little too much like Lost. I keep expecting to see the smoke monster caged in a lab. Other than that, I plan to keep watching. I hope it doesn't fall into the trap the X-Files fell into, where there can be no real advancement of plot, but Abrams has managed to finish off at least one conspiracy driven show, Alias.

The Navy That Cried Wolf

This doesn't sound good. [Link]

In discussions with dozens of naval professionals over several months, few questioned the Navy's commitment to fielding an effective fighting force. But on a wide range of issues, the ability of Navy leaders to manage programs and explain service direction is being questioned, doubted and in some cases challenged outright.

"They need to take a hard look at themselves," one former senior officer said.

An element of denial is apparent in many service calculations, which are typically based on perfect-world scenarios to make everything come out right.

"They're constantly using optimistic cost and schedule assumptions," said Bob Work, a retired Marine Corps artillery colonel who is a top naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "This continual optimism, the continually rosy assumptions, the effort to go too fast" have so eroded the service's credibility in Congress, Work said, that House lawmakers have difficulty even listening to the Navy.

One congressional source said he can't, at times, rule out deliberate deception.

"It's more a feeling rather than specific things," the source said. "An accumulation of a lot of little things which in and of themselves are perfectly explainable, but when you add them up, it doesn't work."

To Protect and Serve?

I don't want these people doing it. [Link]

D.C. Police Chief Kathy Lanier rehires 17 police officers previously fired for misconduct.

Then she decides the city will arm them with semiautomatic weapons.

Sounds like a fantastic couple of ideas. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, a coda to the Kathryn Johnston botched drug raid case in Atlanta: Arthur Tesler was the only officer on the raid who didn't take a plea bargain. Despite admitting that he lied, helped cover up Johnston's murder, and stood watch outside while other officers handcuffed the bleeding 92-year-woman—allowing her to die while they planted marijuana in her basement—he was convicted today only on the charge of lying to investigators. He'll face a maximum of five years in prison.

Cable breaks put in perspective

The recent underseas internet cable breaks in the Middle East have conspiracy fans going nuts, but this is apparently fairly common, the Middle East just has few links, so any break is serious. [Link]

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

This kind of damage is rarely such a deep concern in the United States and Europe. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are crisscrossed so completely with fast fiber networks that a break in one area typically has no significant effect. Net traffic simply uses one of many possible alternate destinations to reach its goal.

Not so with the route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East. Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal, and from there to much of the Middle East. (A separate line connects Italy with Israel.) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling.

The two damaged cables, both cut about five miles north of Alexandria, Egypt, are the most modern of the trio. One, owned by the U.K.-based Flag Telecom, a subsidiary of the India-based Reliance Group, stretches nearly 17,000 miles from Europe to China. The second cable, known as Sea-Me-We 4 and owned by a consortium of 15 different telecommunications companies, stretches from Spain to Singapore. Together, they have a capacity of close to 620 gigabits per second, according to Telegeography Research.

The one remaining cable traversing roughly this route is the older Sea-Me-We 3 cable, which has a capacity of 70 gigabits per second--considerably less than its newer rivals.

A third regional cable, also owned by Flag Telecom, was cut the morning of February 1 off the coast of Dubai, in an apparently unrelated event. This break has caused less trouble, since it is part of a Middle East loop that offers alternative routes for data traffic.

Who is a Skrull?

An update on who is or supected to be a Skrull in preparation for Secret Invasion. [Link]

Waaaay back in July, the Best Shots crew took a look at possible Skrulls living in the Marvel Universe. 5 months have passed, and some major revelations have come along. Turns out, so far, we were completely wrong. Not reading every Marvel book? Want to catch up on the Skrulltastic Voyage? You’re in luck! Here’s a comprehensive list of the Skrull-velations, and where they made their first confirmed Skrull-pearance, along with some new Skrull-spicions. And no, we won’t ever stop adding Skrull to the front of words. Thought Clor was bad? Marvel really Skrulled up by giving us this Skrull-portunity.

Professional Athletes on Steroids! Shocking.

I'm not shocked. Because of the competitive nature of professional sports and that it all comes down to money, I'm not at all surprised that so many players try to get an edge. [Link]

Mr. Mitchell said “baseball’s steroids era” started roughly in 1988. It took 15 more years for baseball to start random testing, Mr. Mitchell said, noting that testing has reduced steroid usage, but players have switched to human-growth hormone, which cannot be detected in urine tests, which baseball’s program administers.

“Everybody in baseball — commissioners, club officials, the players’ association, players — shares responsibility,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The report revealed that baseball secretly suspended drug testing for part of the 2004 season, for fear of criminal prosecution after federal authorities seized the 2003 drug results as part of the Balco case. The suspension, of unclear length, was kept secret by agreement of the commissioner’s office and the players’ association.

Mr. McNamee spoke to Mr. Mitchell’s investigators under pressure from federal prosecutors investigating the use of steroids in baseball. Mr. McNamee, who was linked with Mr. Radomski, provided evidence against Mr. Clemens, Mr. Pettitte and first baseman David Segui. Mr. McNamee agreed to cooperate with the United States Attorney’s Office under the terms that he would not be charged with a crime if he told Mr. Mitchell and investigators the truth.

Mr. McNamee, who was employed as a trainer with the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays, described in detail how, in a number of instances, he injected Mr. Clemens with steroids. Mr. Clemens had previously been suspected of steroid usage, but denied it.

Mythbusters Polygraph

The polygraph expert has a fake Ph.D. [Link]

I can reveal that in August of this year, I was contacted by two of Mythbusters' producers. They had seen my appearance on a 2003 British television program, and after a lengthy and pleasant telephone conversation, they were interested in having me either come to San Francisco to appear on the show or be interviewed via webcam.

One of the topics I was asked about in the course of our phone conversation was a polygraph examiner who might be suitable to appear on the show. They were initially interested in Bruce Burgess, who appeared in the same British show as I previously had. In a follow-up e-mail sent on 31 August 2007, I specifically warned them, in the event they chose to seek a polygraph examiner closer to home, against three prominent polygraph operators whom AntiPolygraph.org has identified as phony Ph.D.s: Ed Gelb, James Allan Matte, and Michael Martin. And I included the same hyperlinks you see here. The producers did not reply to my e-mail and did not contact me again.

Mythbusters cannot say they were not warned about Michael Martin's credentials. I think they owe the public an explanation of why they knowingly chose a fraud to appear on the show and allowed him to be presented as "Dr." Martin.

That's not good news for the Mythbusters, if true.

Airbrushing History

Steve Jobs, not just a great businessman, also apparently invented the Apple computer, by himself. Steve Wozniak must be surprised. At least, according to Disney at the new Spaceship Earth. [Link]

Disney is renovating the Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot Center and will include Steve Jobs (but not Steve Wozniak) in its animatronic depiction of the history of communications -- but not Steve Wozniak, the pioneering hardware virtuoso who created the early Apple computers. Spaceship Earth -- the ride in the giant silvery geodesic golf-ball at the gates of Epcot in Florida's Walt Disney World -- is undergoing one of its periodic rebootings

UPDATE

Apparently this was wrong. The animatronic does appear to be Steve Wozniak. [Link]

Looks like the rumor had it exactly backwards. Look at these photos of the newly opened Spaceship Earth: the scene in question appears to contain a robotic Steve Wozniak, leaving Steve Jobs out entirely. Where's Jobs? All around you, I suppose -- he's the largest shareholder in Disney after all. Link

Idiots in Majority

People will believe anything. [Link]

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.

And that's not the only conspiracy theory with a huge number of true believers in the United States.

The poll found that more than one out of three Americans believe Washington is concealing the truth about UFOs and the Kennedy assassination - and most everyone is sure the rise in gas prices is one vast oil-industry conspiracy.