What banks do in the states can impact banks in Europe. The opposite is also true, what banks do in Europe, can send important messages to banks in the states.
In our humble opinion, weakness of late in EUFN and banks in the states (XLF) have NOT broken the upside momentum.
What EUFN does at line (2), which is the 22.37 level, could send very important micro and macro messages to European and banks in the states, as momentum is lofty and could be turning lower.
Line (2) comes into play as support…this could become a very important support test! If this support would happen to give way, a domino impact could take place in the banking sector.
Why you see chart pattern analysis with brief commentary:
There is a ton of news and opinions about markets and stocks that make the decision-making process more difficult than it needs to be.
I believe the Power of the chart Pattern provides all you need to see what is taking place in an asset and determine the action to take.
This approach has worked well for me and our clients and I encourage you to test it for yourself.
Send an email if you would like to see sample research and take me up on a trial of our Premiumor Weekly Researchwhere I provide actionable alerts on breakouts and reversals in broad market indices, sectors, commodities, the miners and select individual stocks
A new email scam is making the rounds and this one appears to be targeting Netflix’s millions of subscribers. The email threatens to shut down the users account if they fail to update their billing information.
According to ABC News, the email asks its readers to click the link, leading them to a fake Netflix homepage and prompting them to enter their private information. According to MailGuard, an Australian cybersecurity firm, that includes billing information, so the scammers can access debit or credit card numbers.
The well-designed, individualized, and fake email convinces customers to update their account information to avoid suspension. This results in stolen personal and credit card information.
Action Fraud has enclosed an image of the scam email so it can be easily spotted.
“Unfortunately, scams are common on the internet and target popular brands such as Netflix and other companies with large customer bases to lure users into giving out personal information,” Netflix said in a statement to ABC News.Netflix says that the company will never ask for personal information in an email and advises its subscribers to be careful of any phishing emails that lead to false websites, according to its security page.
“Scammers can make their fake emails and bogus websites look pretty convincing, so it’s always a good idea to check carefully that the email comes from the actual company domain and not a scammer,” advised MailGuard on their company blog.
Never click on links in an email or text message. Go directly to the company’s website to check on your account. Scams such as this one are not new by any means, but a lot of people are falling victim to this one.
Two Democratic lawmakers are calling for Ivanka Trump’s security clearance to be revoked. The two are citing “credibility issues” based on series of recent reports.
According to The Hill, several reports have surfaced claiming Ivanka lacks credibility. “Recent press investigations highlight severe credibility issues with Ivanka Trump, a White House official, close advisor, and daughter to the President,” Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to White House counsel Don McGahn. In the letter, the lawmakers also renewed their call for Jared Kushner’s (Ivanka’s husband) security clearance to be revoked.
The letter cites reports that Trump “used at least two, and possibly three,” private email accounts for official White House business. Not many Democrats seemed concerned that Hillary Clinton did the same thing, but in an obviously divided government, you’ll have hypocrisy and finger pointing.
A Politico report earlier this week found Trump and [Ivanka’s] husband, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, reportedly sent hundreds of emails from a third private email account while serving in their White House roles. The lawmakers also referenced a McClatchy report that Trump and Kushner were each fined after they failed to submit financial reports required by the Office of Government Ethics on time. The financial disclosure forms submitted by Trump and Kushner also included different values for their personal assets. Some of those values had discrepancies of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to McClatchy. – The Hill
“These new revelations, along with the ongoing White House probe of Ms. Trump’s private email use, have compromised Ms. Trump’s integrity and credibility,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “We are requesting that the White House immediately revoke her security clearance pending an investigation into her actions.” The letter also said, “In light of the recent developments relating to both Mr. Kushner’s e-mail accounts and his financial disclosure statements, we would like to reiterate our request that you immediately revoke his security clearance.”
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Author: Mac Slavo Views: Read by 1 people Date: October 5th, 2017 Website:www.SHTFplan.com
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As if the flow of news on this warm September weekend wasn’t hectic enough thanks to President Trump’s decision to pick a fight with professional sports, Politico is out with the latest bombshell report alleging some nefarious act was committed by one of Trump’s closest advisors, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Politico reports that, in an ironic twist, Kushner continued to use a private email account that had been set up during the transition to communicate with fellow administration officials during Trump’s first nine months in office, even as Trump continued to bash his former rival’s mishandling of classified information on a private server during her time at the State Department.
While Politico places the implication of wrongdoing front and center in its story, it waits until lower down to provide a key piece of context from the White House communications department: "Kushner sent less than 100 emails from this account, and those that were sent consisted mostly of quips about news items and minor commentary."
Liberals like to talk about the concept of false equivalence, especially in the context of how the media covered the Clinton email scandal vs. coverage of Trump’s more controversial pronouncements and business arrangements. That"s what this Kushner story appears to be. Judging by the description, it’s clear that Kushner didn’t rely on his private account to conduct public business, and only used it to send a handful of messages. More to the point, while he may have violated public-information guidelines, he did not improperly handle classified information.
“Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business,” Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner, said in a statement Sunday. “Fewer than 100 emails from January through August were either sent to or returned by Mr. Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal email account. These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an email to his personal rather than his White House address.”
Politico also noted that Kushner’s use of a private email account was part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business. Kushner allegedly used the private account to communicate with Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn and Josh Raffel.
Aides who have exchanged emails with Kushner on his private account since President Donald Trump took office in January include former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, and spokesman Josh Raffel, according to emails described to or shown to POLITICO. In some cases, those White House officials have emailed Kushner’s account first, said people familiar with the messages.
…and then there’s this, six paragraphs in.
There is no indication that Kushner has shared any sensitive or classified material on his private account, or that he relies on his private email account more than his official White House account to conduct government business. Aides say he prefers to call or text over using email.
And that"s not even the most glaring example of Politico"s tendency to leave key details that detract from the impression of wrongdoing until much later in the story.
Private email traffic among White House aides — some of it sent between personal email accounts rather than to or from government addresses — could skirt the requirements of the Presidential Records Act, which requires all documents related to the president’s personal and political activities to be archived. Trump himself is not known to use email but occasionally has email messages to his assistant printed and presented to him.
…And, furthermore, that it couldn’t verify whether Kushner forwarded all work-related emails to his work account, which would render his behavior 100% legitimate. The White House is insisting he remained in compliance, and Politico hasn’t uncovered any evidence to discredit this claim.
Lowell said Kushner has adhered to government record-keeping requirements by forwarding all the emails to his account, though POLITICO could not verify that.
Other White House officials have also sometimes used personal accounts to correspond with Kushner and with each other, according to emails seen by POLITICO and people familiar with Kushner’s correspondence. They have also used encrypted apps like Signal and Confide that automatically delete messages, prompting former press secretary Sean Spicer in February to issue a warning to communications staffers that using such apps could violate the Presidential Records Act.
Politico then adds that private-email use in the Trump administration has been “somewhat common” despite Trump’s attacks on Clinton.
The use of personal email accounts in the Trump White House has been somewhat common, even though the president has been a harsh critic of Clinton’s private email habits, frequently leading “lock her up” chants as he traveled across the country on the campaign trail.
Politico also says Kushner and Ivanka Trump set up their private family domain late last year before moving to Washington from New York, according to people with knowledge of events as well as publicly available internet registration records. At the time, Kushner, who served as a senior campaign adviser, was expected to be named to a White House role, while Ivanka Trump was publicly saying she didn’t plan to work in her father’s administration, though she ended up taking an unpaid role with an office in the West Wing. People familiar with the account say it was primarily set up for personal use, but that Kushner has used it to communicate with acquaintances outside the White House about matters relating to Trump and the administration, according to people who have received messages.
Ivanka has an email account on the same domain, but there’s no indication she used her account for work purposes.
So is Kushner"s sending of work-related notes from his private email account a major violation on par with Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information? Or just another mainstream attack on Kushner, meant to dilute the Hillary Clinton email narrative?
Oil & Gas Exploration stocks have been hit hard over the past few years, falling over 50%. Could an opportunity be at hand in this hard-hit sector? Possible!
Below looks at the chart of Oil & Gas Exploration ETF (XOP) over the past few years.
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE
XOP has struggled this year, inside of the falling channel highlighted above. It is testing dual resistance at (1), as momentum of late was low and is attempting to create a series of higher lows.
A breakout at (1), would be bullish for XOP and could attract buyers for this hard-hit sector.
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I can confirm that my local bullion dealer is selling through many 2010-2016 eagles and maple leafs at the moment. I asked why 2017s are so far and few between, was told he has 17s -- but no point in selling them until he sells what his customers in turn bring to him. Subsequently asked if he has lots of people liquidating their stacks -- answer was very clear yes -- running into cryptos with both hands.
His theory is the non-decentralized cryptos are there to act as a "Siren Song" to reflood the market with supply from stackers whom have given up hope and are chasing immediate gains.
He"s also shipping coins off to various distributors, who uses them (he assumes) to supplement junk and recycled ag and au to make full bars for timely delivery, but this was just speculation on his part.
Alas, Clevenger isn"t the type to give up so easily and managed to find a judge in Maryland who seemingly agrees that the willful destruction of evidence subject to a Congressional subpoena might not be just a "frivolous" issue that suffers from an overwhelming "lack of public interest." As the Washington Times points out today, Maryland judge Paul Harris Jr. has ordered the Maryland state bar to investigate former Hillary aides David Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson for their efforts in allegedly helping Hillary "destroy evidence."
A Maryland judge ordered the state bar to open an investigation Monday into the three lawyers who helped former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to delete her private emails.
Circuit Judge Paul F. Harris Jr. said the complaints lodged against David E. Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were “egregious” and said the state bar couldn’t brush them aside by calling them “frivolous.”
“There are allegations of destroying evidence,” Judge Harris said at a hearing Monday morning, where he said the state’s rules require the bar to conduct investigations no matter who raises the complaint, and can’t brush accusations aside.
“I just think this is a rather easy decision at this point,” he said. “The court is ordering bar counsel to investigate.”
As we"ve noted before, this latest success for Clevenger comes after failures with judges in both Arkansas and the District of Columbia.
Bars in Arkansas and the District of Columbia, as well as federal courts, had brushed aside requests from Mr. Clevenger, who is seeking to have the lawyers suspended or disbarred.
But Judge Harris said Mr. Clevenger’s request “appears to have merit,” and Maryland will now have to at least launch an investigation and demand a response from the lawyers, Mr. Clevenger said.
Meanwhile, who can forget the emailed response that Clevenger received from the FBI alleging that they couldn"t comply with his FOIA request because he had failed to demonstrate a "public interest in the disclosure" of Hillary"s emails.
“You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject,” FBI records management section chief David M. Hardy told Mr. Clevenger in a letter Monday.
“It is incumbent upon the requester to provide documentation regarding the public’s interest in the operations and activities of the government before records can be processed pursuant to the FOIA,” Mr. Hardy wrote.
Apparently the FBI never saw this map...
* * *
For those who may have missed it, we published a rather detailed report on how Hillary"s emails suddenly "disappeared", with the help of a few loyal aides of course, just over a year ago.
The story of how Hillary"s "personal" emails came to be deleted using, the now infamous, BleachBit is quite the tale. Below we attempt to piece together how the story unfolded per the recent FBI disclosures.
Here is a quick summary of the timeline of events:
February 2013 – Hillary resigns from State Department
Spring 2013 – Hillary aide Monica Hanley backs up Pagliano Server to Apple MacBook and a thumb drive
February 2014 – Monica Hanley attempts to upload Hillary email archives to new Platte River Networks (PRN) server but encounters technical issues
Early 2014 – Monica Hanley mails Apple MacBook to Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to upload Hillary email archives to new PRN server. Undisclosed PRN Staff Member then uploads Hillary’s emails to a gmail account and then transfers them over to the new PRN server. The Undisclosed PRN Staff Member deletes most of the emails from gmail but indvertently leaves 940.
Early 2014 – Monica Hanley advises Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to wipe the Apple MacBook clean after uploading Hillary’s emails to the new PRN server but he forgets to do it
Early 2014- Undisclosed PRN Staff Member mails Apple MacBook back to Clinton and it is promptly lost
December 2014 – Hillary delivers 55,000 emails to State Department
December 2014 / January 2015 – Heather Samuelson and Cheryl Mills request emails be deleted from their computer using BleachBit
December 2014 / January 2015 – “Unknown Clinton staff member” instructs PRN to remove archives of Clinton emails from PRN server
March 2, 2015 - NYT releases an article showing that Hillary used a personal email server in violation of State Department rules
March 4, 2015 – Hillary receives subpoena from House Select Committee on Benghazi instructing her to preserve and deliver all emails from her personal servers
March 25, 2015 – Undisclosed PRN Staff Member has a conference call with “President Clinton’s Staff”
March 25 – 31, 2015 – Undisclosed PRN Staff Member has “oh shit” moment and realizes he forgot to wipe Hillary’s email archive from the PRN server back in December…which he promptly does using BleachBit despite later admitting he "was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton"s e-mail data on the PRN server."
June 2016 – FBI discovers that Undisclosed PRN Staff Member forgot to erase 940 emails from the gmail account he created to help with the PRN server upload
And now the details...
Hillary resigned from the State Department in February 2013. Shortly thereafter, in "spring 2013", Hillary"s close aide, Monica Hanley, worked with Bill Clinton"s aide, Justin Cooper, to archive all of Hillary"s emails from the "Pagliano Server" that Clinton used to house her State Department emails while serving as Secretary of State. With Cooper"s assistance, Hanley was successful transferring all of Hillary"s emails from the "Pagliano Server" to an Apple MacBook with a duplicate copy saved to a "Thumb Drive".
At that point, Hanley "forgot" to provide the archived emails to Clinton"s staff. So apparently the Apple MacBook and Thumb Drive just stayed around Hanley"s house for a year.
Then in February 2014, Hanley decided it wasn"t the best idea to leave the email records of the former U.S. Secretary of State in her sock drawer forever. As such, she decided it was time to backup the archived emails to Clinton"s new server hosted by Platte River Networks (PRN) in Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately, she was not successful with the remote backup and mailed the computer to an Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to help with the task.
Apparently, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member also had difficulty uploading the emails to the new PRN server because the "Apple MacMail" format was incompatible with Microsoft Exchange. So, he/she came up with a workaround that involved transferring all of Clinton"s emails to a new gmail account and then exporting them to the PRN server.
Gmail is pretty safe, right?
Monica Hanley then advised the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to "wipe the Archive Laptop" after the emails had been transferred to the new PRN server. But apparently he forgot to "wipe" and laptop and instead just deleted the old emails. But wouldn"t you know it..."Neither Hanely nor [Undisclosed PRN Staff Member] could identify the current whereabouts of the Archive Laptop or thumb drive containing the archive, and the FBI does not have either item in its possession."
So the two pieces of physical hardware that could provide all the missing links in the Hillary email investigation have mysteriously gone missing. Anyone else find that odd?
Unfortunately, the "Undisclosed PRN Staff Member" was apparently not an "attention to detail" kind of guy as the FBI later discovered that he/she had left 940 of Clinton"s emails on gmail. Of the 940 emails, 56 were classified as confidential and 302 were not included in the 55,000 page data dump to the State Department in December 2014.
Now this brings us all the way up to December 2014 when Clinton sent the 55,000 pages to the State Department. Recall, as Politico previously reported, Hillary brought in a former campaign staffer, Heather Samuelson (34 years old), to help determine which emails were "work related" and which "yoga related."
Shortly after providing that data dump to the State Department, in "December 2014 or January 2015," both Heather Samuelson and Cheryl Mills requested that all emails be removed from their computers using "a program called BleachBit to delete the e-mail-related files so they could not be recovered."
For her part, "Clinton stated she never deleted, nor did she instruct anyone to delete, her e-mails to avoid complying with FOIA, State or FBI requests for information."
Of course not. Hillary knew it would be a little too obvious to specifically instruct her staff to permanently delete the emails but she also knew it might be "inconvenient" to have them around. So, she simply "decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days."
See? She never specifically said to delete anything she just made a simple administrative decision on document retention policies.
Then, on March 4, 2015, Hillary received a subpoena from the House for all of her emails on her personal servers.
Which brings us to the "Oh Shit" moment.
On March 25, 2015, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member had a "conference call with President Clinton"s staff." Apparently, in the days following that call, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member had an ""oh shit" moment" when he realized he had forgotten to wipe the PRN server clean as he had been instructed to do back in December by Cheryl Mills.
Therefore, sometime within the 6 days after a call with "President Clinton"s Staff," that PRN server was wiped clean using BleachBit despite the subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi received weeks earlier on March 4, 2016.
And, of course, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member is the only person responsible for the deletion as Mills, Hillary, President Clinton"s Office were all blissfully unaware of the actions of their rogue IT guy of Platte River Networks in Denver, Colorado.
Ironically, the rogue IT guy from PRN even admits to deleting the emails even though he "was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton"s e-mail data on the PRN server."
Something tells us this "Undisclosed PRN Staff Member" is not going to make out as well as Hillary when all the dust settles, which of course she can "wipe" with a cloth:
If Judge James E. Boasberg has his way, details of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation by the FBI will see the light of day. The U.S. District Judge isn’t buying the FBI’s claim that a “lack of public interest” justifies withholding the documents.
A federal judge ordered the FBI on Thursday to disclose more details about how it handled its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret email account.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg said court papers describing the grand jury subpoenas the FBI obtained to compel information from Mrs. Clinton’s internet service providers can be made public.
In doing so, he overruled objections by the Trump administration that had insisted making the information public would violate grand jury secrecy rules.
“After reviewing the document in camera, the court concludes that it largely rehashes information already made public, thus obviating any need for secrecy,” the judge said.
Two groups, Judicial Watch and Cause of Action Institute, have been prodding the government for more information about the Clinton emails, and they cheered the judge’s ruling as a victory for transparency.
“After reviewing the document in camera, the court concludes that it largely rehashes information already made public, thus obviating any need for secrecy,” the judge said.
Two groups, Judicial Watch and Cause of Action Institute, have been prodding the government for more information about the Clinton emails, and they cheered the judge’s ruling as a victory for transparency.
“This order makes public details submitted by the government about the FBI’s efforts to recover then-Secretary Clinton’s unlawfully removed emails. Americans deserve to know the full scope of that investigation,” said COA President John J. Vecchione.
President of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton released a statement regarding this ruling:
We’re happy with the ruling but it is unbelievable we’re being opposed by Trump appointees in the State and Justice Department’s on the Clinton email issue. President Trump ought to be outraged his appointees are protecting Hillary Clinton. The State Department should initiate action with the Justice Department – and both agencies should finally take the necessary steps to recover all the government emails Hillary Clinton unlawfully removed.
As the TGP reported, the FBI has denied lawyer Ty Clevenger’s request to obtain documents related to Hillary Clinton’s email probe. The reason given? A “lack of public interest.”
IYT broke to new all-time highs seven weeks ago at (1). It stayed at new highs for one week, before selling pressure started taking place. The weakness has it breaking below 18-month rising support last week, which does send a caution signal to bulls.
The next critical support level for IYT comes into play at the $159 zone. With an “unfilled weekly gap” still in place at the $142 level, what it does at (2), could become very important for the uptrend.
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State Department ordered to produce records pertaining to the 2012 Benghazi attack, search email accounts belonging to Hillary Clinton"s closest advisers
WASHINGTON (INTELLIHUB) — On Friday, a federal judge ordered a State Department search of email accounts belonging to Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers during her tenure at the State Department for any information pertaining to “Benghazi.”
The search was ordered after a judge agreed with details submitted in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch aimed at exposing the former Madam Secretary’s mishandling of classified information which led to the Benghazi attack in 2012.
“This is a Freedom of Information Act case that we filed for all of Secretary Clinton’s emails related to the Benghazi attacks and from the onset the State department said that they are not going to search the official state.gov email accounts of her most senior aides who the State Department itself identified as individuals who worked closely with Secretary Clinton about Benghazi,” Judicial Watch attorney Ramona Cotca told One America News Network. “So it’s astonishing that that’s their position. We fought it in court this week and the judge agreed with us that the State Department needs to go back and search those email accounts.”
Cotca said that it’s been a long uphill battle trying to get the State Department to search the emails and said that they previously had “flat out refused to do it.” The attorney also pointed out how Hillary Clinton had “hand selected” and turned over only a small number of the 33,000 total emails in question and said that there is “no assurance provided by the State Department that that is a complete set of emails.”
According to Cotca, it should be a “simple” task to search the server for the records requested.
WASHINGTON (INTELLIHUB) — The Republican House Judiciary Committee decided to finally take note of President Trump’s tweets and has ordered a new probe into the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server following the recent arrest of Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ IT guy, Imran Awan.
When speaking about the matter publically Wednesday, Committee member Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said, “If it’s in the public interest to investigate the Trump administration, it is most certainly in the public interest to investigate the real crimes by the real criminals.”
All of this comes on the heels of a Tuesday tweet straight from President Donald Trump’s device which read: “Problem is that the acting head of the FBI & the person in charge of the Hillary investigation, Andrew McCabe, got $700,000 from H for wife!”
Problem is that the acting head of the FBI & the person in charge of the Hillary investigation, Andrew McCabe, got $700,000 from H for wife!
The graphic below shows a timeline of some of the biggest data breaches on record. As Visual Capitalist"s Chris Matei notes, each bubble represents the number of records lost in any given breach, with the most sensitive data clustered toward the right side.
This data visualization comes to us from Information is Beautiful. Go to their site to see the highly-recommended interactive format that visualizes the same data, while providing additional details on each specific hack.
Before 2009, the majority of data breaches were the fault of human errors like misplaced hard drives and stolen laptops, or the efforts of “inside men” looking to make a profit by selling data to the highest bidder. Since then, the volume of malicious hacking (shown in purple) has exploded relative to other forms of data loss.
FROM MILLIONS TO BILLIONS
Increasingly sophisticated hacking has altered the scale of data loss by orders of magnitude. For example, an “inside job” breach at data broker Court Ventures was once one of the world’s largest single losses of records at 200 million.
However, it was eclipsed in size shortly thereafter by malicious hacks at Yahoo in 2013 and 2014 that compromised over 1.5 billion records, and now larger hacks are increasingly becoming the norm.
SMALL BUT POWERFUL
The problems caused by hacks, leaks and other data breaches are not just ones of scale. For example, the accidental 2016 leak of information from spam/email marketing service River City Media stands out at an alarming 1.37 billion records lost. However, sorting by data sensitivity paints a different picture. The River City leak – represented by the larger blue dot below – is surpassed in severity by hacks at Yahoo, at web design platform Weebly, and even at adult video provider Brazzers.
Much of the data lost in the River City hack was made up of long lists of consumer email addresses to be used for spam email distribution, while the other hacks listed compromised items like account passwords, banking information, addresses, phone numbers, or health records. While having your email address become the target for spam exploitation is a serious annoyance, the hacking of much more sensitive personal data has quickly become the norm.
The fact that more and more of our data is being stored “in the cloud” and among devices on the Internet of Things means that increasingly sensitive types of data are now more vulnerable than ever to being hacked. This looks to be even more cause for concern than the rapidly rising volume of records that have been exposed, whether intentionally or by accident.
Technology is already confusing, but sometimes it can just get downright daunting.
Especially these days, between the little microphones in TVs and the GPS in our smartphones, it’s easy to feel like there’s just no possibility of getting a little privacy. However, I’d have to disagree on two points.
First, Hollywood’s portrayal of tech/spy agencies is bogus. (Consider those rooms that are full of intimidating computers, making it look like their in-house hacking staff has your profile on screen as we speak — and they’re sending a strike team to reprimand you for that Facebook comment). In reality, their jobs are probably quite a bit less theatrical.
Secondly, these agencies are by no means omniscient, as they depend on the very same technologies that they attempt to exploit. Sure, they might have access to supercomputers, but even those still can’t crack a good encryption or open a bitcoin wallet without the password. You can, in fact, communicate private and confidential information over email, and the NSA couldn’t even touch it if they wanted to. There are many ways to accomplish this, but in my opinion, ProtonMail is the best by far.
ProtonMail: The Swiss Email Account
To its most basic definition, ProtonMail is a service that provides a secure server which houses email inboxes that run by default on ironclad end-to-end encryption and account anonymity. Because the system was designed in such a way that the email was encrypted by the sender’s device and only decrypted by the recipient’s device, even ProtonMail couldn’t see what the email said. Why? Because it’s Greek to them. Their servers are flowing with private, secure emails consisting of encrypted mumbo-jumbo. Sure, the NSA could try to break in … but that would be pointless. And that’s not all …
Founded in 2013, ProtonMail is based in Switzerland. Yes, the country that enjoys a good belly laugh whenever they receive a subpoena from other nations to snoop around.
Features & Other Goodies
But just because ProtonMail is based in Switzerland doesn’t mean you have to be super-rich in order to open an account. It’s free (and open source). And let’s not forget …
Protonmail offers totally anonymous accounts.
Its security capabilities are years ahead of the NSA.
It was created and built by an international group of scientists.
Its servers are housed under “1,000 meters of solid rock.”
Email accounts are easy to use with a gorgeously modern design.
On their own About page, they share their reasons behind the creation of this privacy fortress in the mountains of Europe:
“We are scientists, engineers, and developers drawn together by a shared vision of protecting civil liberties online. This is why we created ProtonMail, an easy to use secure email service with built-in end-to-end encryption and state of the art security features. Our goal is to build an internet that respects privacy and is secure against cyberattacks.”
Yeah, But Really?
February 2017 was an eventful month for the technologically savvy and privacy conscious, as Wikileaks dumped another motherlode affectionately known as Vault7. What did we learn? Well, lots. But in relation to the topic of ProtonMail, we learned that U.S. spy agencies would still have never been able to penetrate the big PM (nor other end-to-end communication services, like Whatsapp). And unless they use a keylogger — basically cheating by peeking at what buttons your fingers are pushing — they’re just plain old out of luck.
According to Warwick Ashford in ComputerWeekly, “After an in-depth analysis, we can confirm that none of the [WikiLeaks] disclosures indicate any compromise of the core cryptography that underpins ProtonMail and other popular encrypted services.”
What Have I to Hide?
Services like ProtonMail are invaluable for individuals who work overseas in hostile zones with tyrant regimes — not to mention, it’s perfect for private investigators, journalists, whistleblowers and getting around monitors from within non-government organizations. It’s also good for people who don’t want Google (or any other company) marketing to them through their emails. There are actually quite a few reasons to encrypt your comms, but fortunate for us, there’s ProtonMail.
Have you ever used ProtonMail? What are your thoughts on email encryption? Share them in the section below:
All your private online data—the websites you visit, the content of your chats and emails, your health info, and your location—just became suddenly less secure. Not because of hackers, but because Congress just blocked crucial privacy regulations. This will allow your internet service provider to collect all your data and sell that info to the highest bidder without asking you first. Welcome to a brave new world.
A pair of resolutions, which passed through the Senate and House with exclusivelyRepublican votes, roll back rules proposed by the Democratic leadership of the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration which, though passed in October, had not yet gone into effect.
The rules—which will be completely dead following the expected signature of President Trump—would have required ISPs to get explicit opt-in approval from customers before selling the following "sensitive data":
This doesn"t just mean that sharing that information without your explicit permission will be fine and dandy. Since the rules were rolled back through the Congressional Review Act, the FCC is also barred from creating any "substantially similar" rules down the line.
In theory, the information collected will be stored under some sort of ID separate from your actual name. But that"s a cold comfort considering the level of detail in this sort of information would make your identity a dead giveaway, and ISPs can hardly be trusted to keep your identifying information suitably safe from prying eyes. After all, they"ll be building dossiers any hacker would love to steal.
What to do? There are a few things you can do to try and keep your data safe, and while they aren"t necessarily easy or free, they"re worth it if you value your privacy.
Opt out with your ISP
Your ISP may not need your permission to sell your data, but you can still go to them and tell them not to do it. The catch, of course, is this requires you to be proactive, and there"s no real guarantee that this will protect you completely. Still, do it. Get on the phone or visit the website of your ISP and opt out of every ad-related thing—and into every privacy-related thing—you can find. The process can be a little arduous—often requiring the use of your ISP-given email address that you probably never use—and it may not take effect immediately either. All the better reason to do it now.
Time Warner/Spectrum customers can find their privacy dashboard here. Comcast customers can opt out of some targeted programs using these instructions. Verizon customers can find opt out options here. Remember, your phone company is technically an ISP too, so look up your options on that front as well.
Opting out is an important first step, but it is not enough to actually preserve your privacy. Your ISP is not necessarily giving you the opportunity to opt out of all its ad-targeting programs. As the policy counsel at the Open Technology Institute, Eric Null, told Gizmodo, it is "highly unlikely" the new FCC will go after ISPs that aren"t offering robust opportunities to opt-out.
Some smaller ISPs, which survive on small and satisfied customer bases as opposed to a large and captive audience, are more incentivized to protect your privacy with gusto. In fact, a whole host of small ISPs wrote a letter to Congress opposing this move. If you"re lucky enough to have the option of switching to one, now might be a good time.
Keep your data out of your ISP"s hands in the first place
Your ISP is uniquely suited to snoop on your information. Anything you put online has to pass through its hands. Email you send through Gmail, chats through Facebook Messenger—they all travel through your ISP before they reach the service that actually sends them on. But while it is impossible to cut your ISP out of this exchange entirely, you can hide the data as you are sending it.
Apps with end-to-end encryption can encrypt your private information on the phone or computer you"re using, ensuring that it is coded and protected through the entire delivery process. So while your ISP can see the data go by, they can"t make sense of it.
Secure chat apps like Signal will be crucial to keep your chats private not only from the government and hackers, but from your ISP. Just make sure these services have security measures that are open-source and trusted by experts who can help keep them honest. You can also encrypt data manually, using a standard like PGP, before you send it off into the web, but it can be an arduous process, because you have to ensure that the recipient has the means to decode that info and read it.
The most seamless solution is to pay for a Virtual Private Network—a VPN—which allows you to encrypt all the data that passes through your ISP. This means that while your ISP is still doing the work of hauling your data around, it can"t understand any of it. The downside to this is that VPNs (at least any VPNs you can trust) are not free. Most good ones will require a yearly subscription. Furthermore, you aren"t hiding your personal data from everyone, you are just entrusting it to the VPN instead of your ISP, so do your research and choose a VPN you trust not to sell you out. Fortunately, since VPNs exist exclusively to keep your data private, they are pretty incentivized to keep you happy.
The only one you can really trust to protect you is you.
The short and uncomfortable truth is this: Until more robust privacy protections are put in place, the burden of protecting your online data falls on you. Keep it in mind, do your research, and remember that your monopolized ISP has every reason in the world to sell you out and wring your data for every dime that it is worth. The only one you can really trust to protect you is you.
(ANTIMEDIA) A private email account Vice President Mike Pence used for official state business during his tenure as governor of Indiana was hacked last year, the IndyStar is reporting exclusively.
“Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.
“Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.”
Using a private email service for official government business is worrisome because of both security and transparency concerns. In fact, as IndyStar has reported, Pence’s AOL email account was hacked in the summer of 2016.
According to IndyStar:
“Cybersecurity experts say Pence’s emails were likely just as insecure as [Hillary] Clinton’s. While there has been speculation about whether Clinton’s emails were hacked, Pence’s account was actually compromised last summer by a scammer who sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and in urgent need of money.”
Transparency advocates also worry that private email accounts are used by government officials to hide information from constituents and FOIA requests.
This breaking news story will be updated if more details become available.
Back in September, at the height of the Hillary emailgate investigation, Clinton"s IT aid who helped setup her private email server, Bryan Pagliano, apparently decided that Congressional subpoenas, like federal record retention laws, were merely optional suggestions that did not require compliance. As such, Pagliano elected to skip not one, but two, Congressional hearings in front of Jason Chaffetz" (R-Utah) House Oversight Committee despite his direct involvement in setting up he private servers.
The move did not sit well with Chaffetz, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, who blasted Pagliano"s move saying that "subpoenas are not optional” and subsequently voted to hold Pagliano in contempt of Congress.
As it turns out, after all these months, Chaffetz is still not over Pagliano"s aloof response to his committee"s subpoena and has sent a letter to Trump"s new Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking him to convene a grand jury or bring charges against Pagliano for his failure to appear before Congress. According to Fox News, Chaffetz said in a statement that allowing Pagliano"s conduct "to go unaddressed would gravely harm Congress" ability to conduct oversight."
To our complete shock, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, blasted Chaffetz" call for charges saying that pursuing charges against Pagliano would be a waste of time and money.
"Apparently, Chairman Chaffetz and President Trump are the only two people in Washington today who think we should still be investigating Secretary Clinton," Cumming said in a statement. He added: "The Oversight Committee can"t afford to be distracted by political vendettas against Hillary Clinton while our constituents are begging us to conduct responsible oversight of President Trump."
Of course, Pagliano"s attorneys defended his actions back in September saying that he had already "asserted his Fifth Amendment rights" and refused to answer any questions. Therefore, they argued that additional appearances before Congress served no "valid legislative purpose."
“You and the committee have been told from the beginning that Mr. Pagliano will continue to assert his Fifth Amendment rights and will decline to answer any questions put to him by your committee,” according to the letter.
“A subpoena issued by a Congressional committee is required by law to serve a valid legislative purpose and there is none here,” reads the letter, which refers to the committee’s efforts to force Pagliano to testify as a “naked political agenda” with “no valid legislative aim.”
Of course, as our readers are already aware, Pagliano, like Paul Combetta (the infamous "Oh Shit" guy) and a host of other Clinton aides, was granted an immunity deal by the Department of Justice in return for his FBI testimony regarding the Clinton private email servers. Unfortunately, that immunity deal won"t help him with these new charges.
"We would caution Pagliano that, as suggested by the pic above, he would probably be well served to tread lightly...not many people share the Clintons" particular talent for escaping scandal after scandal without repercussions."
Is there a coup underway, while America is in the transition period, and before Trump swears in as the 45th president of the United States?
How real is the clash between the rogue Manhattan billionaire and the intelligence gang behind the throne? Who will win the struggle for power over foreign policy? These are serious times and require serious considerations.
The U.S. sent an entire armored brigade to the Russian border, and Vladimir Putin is preparing as if for war. Missile defense systems are raised; tall claims and serious charges have been leveled; diplomatic relations have chilled to a permafrost. Several Russian diplomats have turned up dead recently, including one murdered in front of cameras during a dramatic assassination in Turkey. Russia has bucked U.S. order in the Middle East, and carved out a potential peace deal in Syria without their consultation.
Things are reaching a flashpoint, and the system is concerned about controlling President-elect Trump given his rumored friendliness with Putin and plans to drop sanctions. Will there be a “shock” designed to correct Trump’s foreign policy, and set-off the ticking time bomb between East and West into all-out hostilities?
Though these two world powers have clashed repeatedly in recent years, there several key factors that make this round extra alarming – and put a peaceful transition into question of exploding into total war, and an undermining force from within the deep state, CIA and shadow government:
Until Donald Trump swears in and settles into the White House, the U.S. remains in a strange air, with an open window for a coup to take place, or a major unforeseen disruption (including something like a terrorist attack). If the deep state wants to start a war which President Trump will be forced to finish, they can. If the deep state wants that same war to block Trump from taking power, or from making major decisions, they will.
With claims that Russia hacked the U.S. election, foreign policy has never been more warlike. Despite lacking evidence, and a politically-heavy spin on events, the powers-that-be intend to drive home the narrative that Putin crossed the line, while Trump is his puppet, and the alternative media his mesmerized “fake news” cheerleaders. This narrative is false, but could fan the flames for war. The new Cold War has been solidified; the aggressive rhetoric in Washington, and highly militarized movements such something big is coming down the pipeline. Though there may not be all out war, tensions will be very high; people will be placed under suspicion; nuclear war and other highly deadly scenarios are on the table like never before. The stage is set for world war three.
Leftists and angry Hillary supporters are revolutionary, if severely misguided. Rosie O’Donnell was only the latest celebrity figure to call for martial law in order to postpone the inauguration, and put Trump on trial. The deep state crew that tags along with Hillary are also quite dangerous – the CIA and shadow advisor types. It is possible that some of these figures are involved in assassinating diplomats, chauffeurs and personal aides close to Putin and his network.
In his final week in office, lame duck Obama could lay an egg that hatches the war. Or, intelligence community figures could go rouge; black ops, a false flag or a successful provocation/antagonization event could trigger a massive kick off to war that no president could simply stop with the stroke of a pen. There is the distinct possibility that if things go hot in a very short span of time, national emergency and outright war will put all other considerations behind them. Gear up for major conflict could be the only way to reset the devastating economic conditions, and the debt bomb that the federal government and federal reserve are prepared to drop on us.
Defensive measures, including setting up anti-missile defense shields has moved inward, encircling Moscow, and those being used in the Ukraine, in Syria and elsewhere along the grand chessboard suggest extremely pugnacious diplomatic gestures – since true diplomacy has frozen up after repeated insult from Washington.
Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missile systems around Moscow to protect the capital from attack in the latest sign Vladimir Putin is preparing for war.
The s-400 Triumph air defence system has been providing air cover for Russian forces in Syria since November, and is now being deployed on home soil.
It is capable of hitting moving airborne targets including planes and incoming missiles and has a range of 400km.
The news has emerged the day the US sent more than 3,000 troops to Poland in response to Nato’s concern Russia was becoming more aggressive.
A US armored brigade (3rd Armored Brigade, 4th Infantry Division) is on the move to Russia’s Baltic border. After its equipment begun arriving in Europe last week so now have its soldiers.
The move is so big it will require 37 trains and over one thousand rail cars to transport from Germany to Poland.
A US armored brigade fields over 400 tracked and over 1300 wheeled vehicles including 80 62-ton Abrams tanks, 140 Bradley armored fighting vehicles and 400 humvees.
There is always saber-rattling and hyperbolic claims of war, but right now is a critical time that will decide the next several decades of U.S. world power.
Probably, they aren’t going to take any chances, and as desperate as they are, are looking to reignite public support for U.S. struggles abroad – by any means necessary.
This is not the time for games. Constitutional government is in jeopardy; war provocations and assassinations are taking place, and the duly-elected next president of the United States should be very carefully protected, watched over and pray for a peaceful transition.
We are at risk of entering a very difficult and dangerous time.
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Author: Mac Slavo Views: Read by 1 people Date: January 12th, 2017 Website:www.SHTFplan.com
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Shepard Ambellas
Shepard Ambellas
