CIA Funding Companies that Specialize in Social Media Spying

By: Deirdre Fulton, CommonDreams.org
April 15, 2016

Reflecting the CIA’s “increasing focus on monitoring social media,” the spy agency’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, has made investments in four social media mining and surveillance firms, The Intercept revealed Thursday.
According to a document obtained by journalist Lee Fang, In-Q-Tel is funding companies that monitor, collect, and analyze social media traffic and activities on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The investments were previously undisclosed.

For instance, Fang points to PATHAR, a social media intelligence company whose product, Dunami, is already being used by the FBI to “mine Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media to determine networks of association, centers of influence and potential signs of radicalization,” as confirmed last month by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Another firm in In-Q-Tel’s portfolio is Dataminr, which “directly licenses a stream of data from Twitter to visualize and quickly spot trends on behalf of law enforcement agencies and hedge funds, among other clients,” Fang writes.
Geofeedia, also on In-Q-Tel’s list, “promotes its research into Greenpeace activists, student demonstrations, minimum wage advocates, and other political movements,” Fang reports. “Police departments in Oakland, Chicago, Detroit, and other major municipalities have contracted with Geofeedia, as well as private firms such as the Mall of America and McDonald’s.” FBI and CIA scraping of the internet for social media users’ “digital dust” is hardly a new phenomenon.

In 2009, Wired reported that In-Q-Tel was “putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media,” as part of “a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ‘open source intelligence’—information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos, and radio reports generated every day.”
And in 2011, the Associated Press wrote about the CIA’s “Open Source Center, [where] a team known affectionately as the ‘vengeful librarians’ also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms—anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.”
However, Fang argues, “[t]he recent wave of investments in social media-related companies suggests the CIA has accelerated the drive to make collection of user-generated online data a priority. Alongside its investments in start-ups, In-Q-Tel has also developed a special technology laboratory in Silicon Valley, called Lab41, to provide tools for the intelligence community to connect the dots in large sets of data.”

Such blanket data collection and analysis is worrisome to privacy advocates like Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who told The Intercept: “When you have private companies deciding which algorithms get you a so-called threat score, or make you a person of interest, there’s obviously room for targeting people based on viewpoints or even unlawfully targeting people based on race or religion.”

Fang reported just last week on In-Q-Tel’s investments in Skincential Sciences, a cosmetic company that has “developed a patented technology that removes a thin outer layer of the skin, revealing unique biomarkers that can be used for a variety of diagnostic tests, including DNA collection.”

This article (CIA Funding Companies that Specialize in Social Media Spying) originally appeared on CommonDreams.org and is licensed Creative Commons 3.0.

Panama Papers leave world leaders in suspense

By: Corey Savard

The biggest leak of sensitive data ever unfolded yesterday when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released telling documents of world leaders and influential figures stashing their cash in overseas tax havens through Panama City, Pan.-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Members of Russian PM Vladimir Putin’s inner circle as well as Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, whom’s revelation has sparked protests in his country’s capital are implicated in what Edward Snowden is calling the“biggest leak in the history of data journalism.” Other notable names in initial documents included are actor Jackie Chan, soccer star Lionel Messi, African dictators, and drug lords with many more soon to follow in the coming days and perhaps months as part of 11.5 million leaked documents that dwarf both Wikileaks and the Edward Snowden leaks combined.

It started a little over a year ago when a “John Doe” contacted German newspaper Süeddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and offered them a plethora of internal documents formerly held secret by Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in selling offshore property in Panama, a well-known tax haven, which world leaders have utillized to escape paying taxes in their own country that should have gone to schools, hospitals and public services. All while  wilfully deceiving their own citizens. The anonymous source who leaked the 2.2 terrabytes of emails, documents and pdfs said his motive was to “make these crimes public.”

However, offshore companies are not illegal as they work through loopholes created by trade deals, for Mossack Fonseca specifically, the free trade deal passed by the U.S. with Panama in 2011, which Democratic primary candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders warned of the country’s bank secrecy laws and unwillingness to work with foreign investigations that would lead to the international event we see developing.

 

Clinton Beware of the Ides of March

By: Corey Savard

Demoratic presidential candidate and the for Secretary of State in the Obama Administration (photo via CNN.com)

Last night’s Super Tuesday results were expected. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the support of Democrats in the the southern states (Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Arkansas), states in which she carried the African-American vote, but victories that have zero credibility in a general election because they will most certainly support a Trump Republican ticket, based on voter turnout.

While Clinton supporters and the establishment media revel in what they see as a clear path to the White House in November, was given a crushing ‘bern’ in Minnesota, Colorado, and Oklahoma, states that are much more indicative of voting trends across the country. Adding fuel to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ political revolution is the shockingly close primary in Massachusetts, a hotbed of establishment Democrats, where Clinton won by a mere 1.4% and reminiscent of her widely perceived failure in the Iowa Caucus by winning with .3%.

However, Sanders was unable to to establish a strong hold in New England, which makes the next “Super” Tuesday on Mar. 15, the day Clinton’s campaign might very well unravel. If Sanders’ Millennial supporters turnout in Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, and especially if he wins the Michigan primary on Mar. 8, he will dig a stronghold in the delegate rich Midwest.

The Midwest is the manufacturing heart of the nation’s economy and one of the hardest hit by the 2008 Recession. It’s also home to many blue-collar union members which have been the biggest financial contributors to Sanders’ campaign and leery of Wall Street money in politics, which epitomizes 21st century Clintons.

This is a battle for the soul of American liberalism. Republicans are dealing with their own fight against the highjacking of the GOO by the radical outsider Donald Trump touting totalitarianism, but he’s a monster of their own creation, a consequence of the conservative establishment’s pushing of a national agenda based in fear and racism.

The situation for the Democratic party is similar, an outsider looking to bring dramatic change that taps into the collective concerns of Americans with a platform advocating for Free tuition for post-secondary education, universal healthcare, and a $15 minimum wage that are polling favourably nationwide.  The Vermont senator is forcing Clinton to realign her pragmatic policies further to the left, but it will not be enough to overshadow the lifelong progressive Sanders. A candidate that has been completely transparent, while Clinton refuses to release the transcripts speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs.

The divide in the Democratic party is just as alarming as the one across the aisle because failure by the establishment and progressivism will lead to a Donald J. Trump presidency. Clinton is not capturing the imagination of working class Americans like Sanders and Trump are continuing to do, and the superdelegates backing Clinton must come to the realization that Sanders supporters will not sell out their conscience to turn out at the polls for her in the general election.

 

 

Martin Lisius: America’s greatest Tornado Chaser

By: Corey Savard

 

Martin Lisius, founder of Tempest Tours, the top storm chasing tour company in the Midwest based in Arlington, Tx. (photo via Tempest Tours)

Sitting in front of the family’s ground model television, a little boy assembles his grade eight science project while he and his parents watch weatherman Harold Taft on Dallas-Ft. Worth’s NBC Channel 5, the founder of modern television weather news, reporting live on whether or not to close their windows for the night. Taft has reported on hundreds of tornadoes because his station is located in the world’s most tornado-prone region: The Great Plains, commonly referred to as “Tornado Alley.”

The top story: a tornado has touched down not too far from the family’s Arlington, Tex. home.

They don’t run for the safety of the basement, they yawn and watch the rest of the local nightly news. Leaving his half-awake parents to watch the sports report, he bolts for the front door to get a look the homemade weather station he has perched on his family home’s roof. It’s an elaborate construction of milk cartons and coat hangers, but it’s spinning as violently as Taft’s most trusted weather detecting equipment.

This little boy is Martin Lisius. He would go on to win his middle school’s science fair in 1973 for his 3D model of a ‘super cell,’ a large rotating storm system that has the potential to become a tornado.

He is now the president and founder of Arlington, Tex.-based Tempest Tours. The company takes 6-20 people on a week-long road trip across The Great Plains on tornado chasing tours. He started as a storm spotter in 1987 when he was still in college, he then began to give tours, driving towards one of the deadliest forces of nature with only a van, a laptop, and a $5,000 investment. Tempest Tours made over $250,000 last tornado season and have expanded to Denver, Col. and Oklahoma City, Okla.

A reason for the company’s success is its crew, comprised of some the most knowledgeable severe storm analysts in the world, which include: a climatologist, a wind meteorologist, and a National Weather Service meteorologist. A chase begins days before when Lisius and his team track weather data leading up to “touchdown.” He then begins to track his target, a super cell, and plans the quickest, but also safest route for his guests to get one hell of a Kodak moment.

Lisius says Tempest Tours is “not for thrill seekers.” It’s for those who want to marvel at the complexity of our atmosphere.

“Forecast verification is more of a thrill for me than seeing a tornado. It’s really quite an ordinary, normal ‘everyday at the office’ thing for me,” Lisius said.

Easy to say when you’ve been chasing tornadoes for over 25 years and witnessed some of the largest and deadliest tornadoes in American history. Lisius can’t tell you the biggest tornado he’s ever witnessed because there are too many he never got the chance to measure, but the largest Tempest Tours has recorded was just under a mile wide.

There is one tornado Lisius will never forget, the Spencer, S.D. Tornado of 1998. It was the second deadliest in South Dakota history, killing 13 people and injuring 1/3 of the small town of just over 300. The tornado carved almost a half mile of damage through the town from 8:38 p.m. to 8:44 p.m., destroying most of the town’s 190 buildings.

Lisius takes risks seriously, this is why Tempest Tours is renowned for its safety measures and has been praised for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they offer by CNN, Group Tour Magazine, and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Guests are fully aware of the dangers in chasing a deadly natural force and are usually well-educated professionals.

Jenna Blum, author of the New York Times bestseller “The Stormchasers,” took part in her first storm chase in 2006 to do research for her novel and was satisfying a life-long fascination with severe weather. Her first chase was so memorable that she has gone back to Texas every year since to work as a guide for the company.

“The clients I’ve chased with over the years have become my close friends,” Blum said. “I call them my storm family.”

She says everything she knows about tornadoes, she learned from Lisius, which is the best teacher on the subject since Lisius is one of America’s most respected severe weather experts, having been a consultant for the 1996 box-office hit “Twister” and “Tree of Life” starring Brad Pitt, telling the story of a family during the 1950s tornado outbreak in Waco, Tex. Lisius was also the cinematographer for a 2010 Twister-inspired Chevy truck commercial he stars in as himself chasing a wicked storm through a hail of bricks and 4×4’s.

Lisius says having the opportunity to meet ‘90’s Hollywood star Bill Paxton, acclaimed director Jan Du Bont, and of all people, Oprah Winfrey, was an experience he will never forget, but in reference to the infamous ‘flying cow’ scene in Twister, “They didn’t care so much for accuracy because it’s Hollywood,” Lisius said. “The dust and debris would obscure the view of flying livestock.”

Lisius is living his dream of analyzing severe weather in his hometown just like his childhood hero Harold Taft on Channel 5 News, but gets much closer to the story than the north Texas meteorology legend. Tempest Tours aims to provide the most informative and safest tour, which Lisius believes truly gives his guests an appreciation of the rare and destructive phenomenon they are witnessing.

Despite his unconventional job title, he says a TV show of his work would be of little interest to Discovery Channel. “Nobody wants to see somebody relaxed and in control.”