WASHINGTON — North Korea’s already tenuous links to the Internet went completely dark on Monday after days of instability, in what Internet monitors described as one of the worst North Korean network failures in years. The loss of service came just days after President Obama pledged that the United States would launch a “proportional response” […]
NSA
SNOWDEN'S WORK HISTORY
Fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden worked briefly at the US embassy in India almost three years before revealing the scale of his country’s surveillance programmes, according to a report Monday.
The former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor arrived in New Delhi in September 2010 “to assist as a technical expert” at the US embassy,…
DUDE, WHERE'S MY DRONE?
A $4 million military drone plopped out of the sky into Lake Ontario and now nobody can find it. The National Guard reported that one of its flying robots plummeted into the eastern part of the lake around 1 p.m. yesterday, but had to give up searching for it because of bad weather.
The MQ-9 Reaper was on a practice mission over the military-control…
SNOWDEN IN MOSCOW, WHAT MAY BE HAPPENING
In the summer of 1985, KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky was called back to Moscow from the Soviet embassy in London , where he was serving as a resident spy. As a pretext, his commanders told him that he was coming to receive an award for his service. But in fact the KGB suspected him of being a double agent—which he was—and they were looking to interrogate…
INTELLIGENCE SNAFU
The top U.S. intelligence official disclosed Thursday that a congressman inadvertently revealed classified information when he read aloud a passage from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that said North Korea had the knowhow to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee th…
TECHNOLOGY VS TERROR
In October, a foreign national named Mike Fikri purchased a one-way plane ticket from Cairo to Miami, where he rented a condo. Over the previous few weeks, he’d made a number of large withdrawals from a Russian bank account and placed repeated calls to a few people in Syria. More recently, he rented a truck, drove to Orlando, and visited Walt Disney World…
ISRAELI AND U.S. INTEL AGREE ON IRAN
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and U.S. defense and intelligence officials have said that they believe that Iran has not made a decision on whether to acquire nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported on Sunday the difficulties that intelligence officials encounter when coming to that conclusion but that officials are still confident tha…
Pentagon to cut spending by $78 billion, reduce troop strength
Under direction from the White House, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday announced that the Pentagon will cut projected spending by $78 billion over the next five years and shrink the size of the Army and Marine Corps. The changes mean that the military would see annual budget increases that barely exceed inflation in coming years and that…
DISABLED SATELLITE PROBLEM
WASHINGTON – A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and could hit the Earth in late February or early March, government officials said Saturday.The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because th…
NSA RUNNING OUT OF JUICE?
WASHINGTON // The National Security Agency is running out of juice.The demand for electricity to operate its expanding intelligence systems has left the high-tech eavesdropping agency on the verge of exceeding its power supply, the lifeblood of its sprawling 350-acre Fort Meade headquarters, according to current and former intelligence officials.Advertis…