#security agencies

[cavalierzee]

Intelligence Agencies Coordinate ISIS Attacks In Sri Lanka

"Channel 4 interviewed a man who said he arranged a meeting between a local Islamic State-inspired group, National Thowheed Jamath, and a top state intelligence official to hatch a plot to create insecurity in Sri Lanka and enable Gotabaya Rajapaksa to win the presidential election later that year."

[townflex]

Security Agencies Encouraged to Vote in Special Voting Exercise

The National Election Security Taskforce has called on all security personnel across Ghana to participate fully in the Special Voting exercise set for Monday, December 2, 2024. This is part of efforts to ensure that security agencies are involved in the electoral process while safeguarding the integrity of the upcoming elections. However, the exercise has been postponed in the Eastern and…

[newchapter24]

FBI vs. CIA: Understanding the Differences Between Two U.S. Security Agencies

A recent YouTube video offers an insightful comparison between the FBI and the CIA, two of the most prominent security agencies in the United States. While both organizations play critical roles in maintaining the country’s safety, their missions, methods, and areas of focus differ significantly.

The FBI, or Federal Bureau of Investigation, operates as a federal agency dedicated to criminal investigations and domestic law enforcement. It serves as both a law enforcement and domestic intelligence organization, focusing on crimes such as terrorism, cybercrime, and organized crime within the United States.

On the other hand, the CIA, or Central Intelligence Agency, specializes in foreign intelligence. Its primary mission is to gather information and prevent threats outside U.S. borders. Unlike the FBI, the CIA does not have law enforcement authority; instead, it focuses on covert operations and global intelligence gathering.

The video uses an engaging anecdote to highlight the differences in their methods and priorities, painting a clear picture of how these two agencies approach their missions.

Despite their contrasting focuses, the FBI and CIA share some similarities in their recruitment criteria. Both agencies seek highly skilled, disciplined individuals with strong analytical and problem-solving abilities. However, the video emphasizes the differences in the level of secrecy and the risks faced by agents in each organization. CIA agents, for instance, often work undercover in high-risk environments abroad, whereas FBI agents generally operate within the U.S. and in less covert roles.

Ultimately, the video provides a fascinating look into the inner workings of these two agencies, shedding light on how their unique missions contribute to the overall security of the United States.

[misanthropiccatboy]

this is not the defense of the nkvd you think it is

[ireton]

Lara Logan - The Intelligence Community’s Day Of Reckoning For Decades Of Deception Is Coming.

[curlish]

I am a princess

A princess assassin

[acertifiedwitch]

DEAD BOY DETECTIVES WAS CANCELLED?!?!

NETFLIX WHEN I CATCH YOU NETFLIX OHHHH NETFLIX WHEN I CATCH YOU

[crippled-peeper]

i remember the first time ADHD paralysis happened to me, i was terrified. I could barely move. i tried to call my parents but my mouth wouldn't work. I had enough mobility to roll against the wall and make noises to get my parent's attention but they thought i was just being a kid when in reality i could not move or speak. you can't say that's not real paralysis just because it only lasts a few days/ a week at most.

anon I have ADHD and severe executive dysfunction and I can confidently tell you that no, it’s actually not the same thing as being paralyzed. they’re literally not comparable at all. you are being a melodramatic ableist fuckface trying desperately to shriek over people with paralysis and you should apologize for even sending me this horse shit

get the fuck out of my inbox shitforbrains

[galedekarios]

i wish ppl would stop making every boundary gale sets for himself about mystra or his perceived insecurities from his relationship with mystra

[alicentflorent]

If I was Rhaenys I would only agree to fight in Rhaenyra’s war if she now supports rhaena’s claim as lady of driftmark in her own right, securing the future rhaena was promised and has been preparing for since she was betrothed to Luke.

[briarpatch-kids]

Sending "fully favorable decision" vibes to everyone else fighting with the SSA.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Nichols at The Nation:

Donald Trump has made no secret of his determination to govern as a “dictator” if he regains the presidency, and that’s got his critics warning that his reelection would spell the end of democracy. But Trump and his allies are too smart to go full Kim Jong Un. Rather, the former president’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian regimes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán suggests the models he would build on: managing elections to benefit himself and his Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting and constraining press freedom; and undermining civil society. Trump, who famously demanded that the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential voting be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of democracy without the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what propaganda experts Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead once described as “demonstration elections,” in which, instead of actual contests, wins are assured for the authoritarians who control the machinery of democracy. The outline for such a scenario emerges from a thorough reading of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which specifically proposes a Trump-friendly recalculation of the systems that sustain American democracy. The strategy for establishing an American version of Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” is not spelled out in any particular chapter of Mandate. Rather, it is woven throughout the whole of the document, with key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the section on the DHS, for instance, there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors election security to prevent the spread of disinformation about voting and vote counting.

How serious a threat to democracy would that pose? Think back to November 2020, when Trump was developing his Big Lie about the election he’d just lost. Trump’s false assertion that the election had been characterized by “massive improprieties and fraud” was tripped up by Chris Krebs, who served as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the DHS. The Republican appointee and his team had established a 24/7 “war room” to work with officials across the country to monitor threats to the security and integrity of the election. The operation was so meticulous that Krebs could boldly announce after the voting was finished: “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too.” At the same time, his coordinating team declared, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” This infuriated Trump, who immediately fired the nation’s top election security official.

In Mandate’s chapter on the DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth.” Cuccinelli previously complained that CISA “is a DHS component that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections.” As for the team that worked so successfully with Krebs to secure the 2020 election, the Project 2025 document declares that “the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.” The potential impact? “It’s a way of emasculating the agency—that is, it prevents it from doing its job,” says Herb Lin, a cyber-policy and security scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about elections and democracy. A chapter on public broadcasting proposes to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of a larger plan to upend NPR, PBS, and “other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding, including the even-further-to-the Left Pacifica Radio and American Public Media.” More destabilizing than the total funding cut that Project 2025 entertains is a parallel plan to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations.” That could deny them their current channel numbers at the low end of the radio spectrum (88 to 92 FM)—a move that would open prime territory on the dial for the sort of religious programming that already claims roughly 42 percent of the airwaves that the FCC reserves for noncommercial broadcasting. And don’t imagine that the FCC would be in a position to write new rules that guard against the surrender of those airwaves to the Trump-aligned religious right.

[...]

While project 2025 seeks to rewire the FCC to favor Trump’s allies, it also wants to lock in dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission, the agency that is supposed to govern campaign spending and fundraising. Established 50 years ago, the FEC has six members—three Republicans and three Democrats—who are charged with overseeing the integrity of federal election campaigns. In recent years, however, this even partisan divide has robbed the FEC of its ability to act because, as a group of former FEC employees working with the Campaign Legal Center explained, “three Commissioners of the same party, acting in concert, can leave the agency in a state of deadlock.” As the spending by outside groups on elections “has exponentially increased, foreign nationals and governments have willfully manipulated our elections, and coordination between super PACs and candidates has become commonplace,” the former employees noted. Yet “the FEC [has] deadlocked on enforcement matters more often than not, frequently refusing to even investigate alleged violations despite overwhelming publicly available information supporting them.”

John Nichols wrote in The Nation about how Project 2025’s radical right-wing wishlist of items contains plans to wreck and subvert what is left of America’s democracy.

See Also:

The Nation: June 2024 Issue

[meangan-thee-lesbian]

I just had to share this email I got so all y'all can appreciate the absolute state of welfare services in Australia with me:

The NILs Loan Scheme is a government funded, no interest loan scheme for people on low incomes, but this leaves me wondering exactly who tf can qualify for their loans. Because it seems like if you have any symptoms of poverty it's a no.

I applied because I need the clutch replaced in my van, which I live in. It's lucky that I actually CAN afford the cost myself (due to living in a van & not participating in Australia's increasingly ridiculous housing market). I thankfully can afford such an expense these days & was just looking for a responsible financial buffer, just in case. But if this had happened to me a few years ago when I first became homeless and was far less financially stable, then my next living situation wouldn't be "affordable housing" it would be a fucking tent.

Anyway, the backwards ass state of a GOVERNMENT FUNDED welfare scheme refusing to assist those who need welfare the most because they don't want to encourage homelessness or whatever the dumb fuck? Just really rustled my jimmies tbh. Just screams "yet another govt welfare scheme that's actually just about handing out money to fake charities & not helping the poor". Good Shephard just got on the "do not donate to these grifters" list along with the Salvos😒

[commiepinkofag]

The Red Scare

Newly Declassified National Security Agency Memo Reveals That U.S. Government Knew Ethel Rosenberg Was Not A Spy Long Before Her Trial and Execution

A newly declassified document clarifies the truth. In August 2024, the Rosenberg sons obtained a handwritten memo from August 1950 authored by the NSA’s chief analyst, Meredith Gardner. He wrote that, based on Soviet intelligence, Ethel knew about Julius’ espionage work but “due to illness she did not engage in the work herself.” This document confirms what other sources such as the FBI had already indicated: Ethel was not a spy and “did not engage in the work” of espionage and – most importantly – U.S. government officials knew it. They knew it when FBI agents arrested Ethel on Aug. 11, 1950. They knew it when the jury convicted her nine months later. They knew it when the judge sentenced her to death on April 5, 1951. And they knew it when prison officials executed her on Friday, June 19, 1953. Now, Michael and Robert Meeropol are using the declassified memo to urge Biden “to exonerate (Ethel) Rosenberg by issuing a formal presidential proclamation saying that she was wrongly convicted and executed.