There are a number of elements in the recent release of an indictment of twelve named alleged Russian military intelligence GRU officers by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein looking into possible ties between Moscow and the Trump Administration that I find either implausible or even incoherent. But before considering that, it is necessary to consider the context…
Social media users are essentially left with three choices following the revelations that their Facebook data was being manipulated for political purposes, with each of them having their own pros and cons but none of them embodying the “perfect solution”. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has led to an outpouring of fury from most Facebook users…
It is one of the world’s most powerful alliances. And yet most people have probably never heard of it, because its existence is a closely guarded government secret. The “SIGINT Seniors” is a spy agency coalition that meets annually to collaborate on global security issues. It has two divisions, each focusing on different parts of…
George Orwell’s 1984 featured a dystopian England, and indeed, a world, of three superstates that all ran according to the same principles. Eternal war, eternal ignorance, and eternal subservience, whether realized or not. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU was this book’s addition to the American lexicon for many, many people. The means of surveillance were…
An interactive online fitness tracking map published in November of 2017 which compiles a running history of the location and routes of 27 million fitness-device users has unwittingly revealed the location, staffing, patrol routes and layout of U.S. and foreign military bases around the world. San Francisco based fitness company Strava posted their “global heatmap” to their website, containing…
I was sitting in the nearly empty restaurant of the Westin Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, getting ready for a showdown with the federal government that I had been trying to avoid for more than seven years. The Obama administration was demanding that I reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about…
