"Radioactive leak feared from tank in Wash.; High levels seen at site" by Shannon Dininny | Associated Press, June 22, 2013
An underground tank holding some of the worst radioactive waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site might be leaking into the soil.
The US Energy Department said workers at Washington state’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation detected higher radioactivity levels under tank AY-102 during a routine inspection Thursday....
Also see: The Winds of Washington State
Yeah, but it's the marijuana that stinks up there. Pfffft!
State and federal officials have long said leaking tanks at Hanford do not pose an immediate threat to the environment or public health.
Sigh. And they wonder why we no longer believe them. Yeah, nothing to worry about here.
The largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest — the Columbia River — is still at least 5 miles away and the closest communities are several miles downstream. However, if this dangerous waste escapes the tank into the soil, it raises concerns about it traveling to the groundwater and someday potentially reaching the river.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement that the situation ‘‘must be treated with the utmost seriousness.’’
Which the Globe doesn't because the web version just lopped off all the print save for the next sentence. I guess the cesium-137 and strontium-90 are not that big of a concern, and who cares that this is all the result of the hush-hush WWII program to build the atomic bomb?
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Related:
"Japan OK’s new nuclear safety requirements" by Mari Yamaguchi | Associated Press, June 20, 2013
TOKYO — The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant currently relies on a precarious makeshift cooling system and is struggling with large amounts of radioactive water leaking out of its broken reactors.
Wednesday’s decision setting the launch date for the new safety requirements came nearly two weeks ahead of the legal deadline, prompting critics to suspect industrial and political pressure so utilities can restart their reactors quickly.
Many utilities have complained about soaring fuel costs for running conventional thermal power plants needed to make up for power shortfalls caused by idle nuclear plants.
Paving the way for the reopening of facilities. Who cares about health when there is profit$ to be made?
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Related: Slow Saturday Special: California Nuclear Plant Closed
Yup, radiation leaking all over the place.
Another hot leak:
"NSA leaker Edward Snowden charged by US" by Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz | The Washington Post News Service, June 21, 2013
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.
Snowden was charged with espionage, theft and conversion of government property, the officials said.
The complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered and a district with a long track record of prosecuting cases with national security implications.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Snowden flew to Hong Kong last month after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii with a collection of highly classified documents that he acquired while working at the agency as a systems analyst.
Related:
Sunday Globe Special: NSA Clapper Trapper
Sunday Globe Special: NSA Scandal a Mess For McConnell
Slow Saturday Special: U.S. Government Defends Privacy of Illegal Immigrant Criminals
Government Snow Job?
With the agenda-pushing media the blower.
Globe and the G8
G8 Update
That should get you up to date.
The documents, some of which have been published in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, detailed some of the most-secret surveillance operations undertaken by the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as classified legal memos and court orders underpinning the programs in the United States.
The 29-year-old intelligence analyst revealed himself June 9 as the leaker in an interview with the Guardian and said he went to Hong Kong because it provided him the ‘‘cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained.’’
Snowden subsequently disappeared from public view; it is thought that he is still in the Chinese territory. Hong Kong has its own legislative and legal systems but ultimately answers to Beijing, under the ‘‘one country, two systems’’ arrangement.
The leaks have sparked national and international debates about the secret powers of the NSA to infringe on the privacy of both Americans and foreigners. President Barack Obama and other federal officials have said they welcome the opportunity to explain the importance of the programs and the safeguards they say are built into them.
What bullcrap when they are charging the kid.
Skeptics, including some in Congress, have said the NSA has assumed power to soak up data about Americans that was never intended under the law.
And they have been doing it for decades.
There was never any doubt that the Justice Department would seek to prosecute Snowden for one of the most significant national security leaks in the country’s history. The Obama administration has shown a particular propensity to go after leakers and has launched more investigations that any previous administration.
I thought they were called whistleblowers, but....
Justice Department officials had already said that a criminal investigation of Snowden was underway and was being run out of the FBI’s Washington field office in conjunction with lawyers from the department’s National Security Division....
Snowden could remain in Hong Kong if the Chinese government decides that it is not in the defense or foreign policy interests of the government in Beijing to have him sent back to the United States for trial.
Snowden could also apply for asylum in Hong Kong or attempt to reach another jurisdiction and seek asylum there before the authorities in Hong Kong act.
The anti-secrecy group Wikileaks has held some discussions with officials in Iceland about providing asylum to Snowden. A businessman in Iceland has offered to fly Snowden on a chartered jet to his country if he is granted asylum there.
I'm sorry, but when Wikileaks gets involved and appears in the intelligence operation that is masquerading and mocking me like a bird, the suspicions regarding a propaganda psyop only increase.
The chief executive of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said last week that the city’s government would follow existing law if and when the U.S. government requested help....
Not looking good for the kid, as China will now be owed a favor for handing him over.
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What you webbers got this morning:
"US seeking extradition of Snowden in NSA case" by Scott Shane | New York Times, June 22, 2013
Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose leak of agency documents has set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance, has been charged with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property for disclosing classified information to the Guardian and the Washington Post, the Justice Department said Friday.
Each of the three charges unsealed Friday carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, for a total of 30 years. Snowden is likely to be indicted, and additional counts may well be added....
The charges were filed June 14 by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, which handles many national security cases. US officials said they have asked the authorities in Hong Kong, where Snowden is believed to be in hiding, to detain him while an indictment and an extradition request are prepared. The attempt to extradite him is likely to produce a long legal battle whose outcome is uncertain. The extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong includes an exception for political offenses, and Snowden could argue that his prosecution is political in nature.
Hong Kong has limited autonomy, but matters involving national security and foreign policy are controlled by the Chinese government in Beijing, whose view of the possible extradition of Snowden is unclear. Last week, hundreds of people turned out in the rain for a protest outside the US Consulate in Hong Kong demanding that officials not cooperate with any US extradition request. The Global Times, a mainland newspaper controlled by the Communist Party, called an extradition of Snowden an “inconceivable option.”
The charges against Snowden, first reported by the Washington Post, are the seventh case under President Obama in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media. Under all previous presidents, just three such cases have been brought...
Snowden’s disclosures have opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, and Skype.
Snowden, who has said he was shocked by what he believed to be the NSA’s invasion of Americans’ and foreigners’ privacy, told the Guardian that he leaked the documents because he believed the limits of surveillance should be decided not by government officials in secret but by US citizens.
US officials have said his disclosures have done serious damage to national security by giving terrorists and others information on how to evade the intelligence net....
Which they would have already been doing anyway, right?
In the latest installment of the Snowden disclosures Friday, the Guardian reported that the NSA’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters has tapped into hundreds of fiber-optic communications lines and is sharing a vast quantity of e-mail and Internet traffic with US intelligence.
The disclosures immediately raised a question of whether the NSA might be able to get around US privacy laws. An NSA spokeswoman said the agency does not use foreign partners to evade American privacy restrictions.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Edward Snowden case may spark long legal fight; US wants leaks suspect returned" by Gerry Mullany and Scott Shane | New York Times, June 23, 2013
HONG KONG — The US State Department has asked Hong Kong to extradite Edward J. Snowden to face espionage and theft charges in the United States, officials confirmed Saturday, setting off what is likely to be a tangled and protracted fight over his fate.
Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security adviser, told CBS Radio News that the request makes “a good case” under the extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong for the return of Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose disclosures about US surveillance programs have riveted the country. “Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case,” Donilon said.
A public battle over the status of Snowden could prove uncomfortable for the Obama administration.
His revelations have provoked new criticism of the NSA’s eavesdropping and data collection, and a drawn-out legal struggle could put a harsh spotlight on the tension between Obama’s pledges of transparency and civil liberties and his administration’s persistent secrecy and unprecedented leak prosecutions....
If and when the Hong Kong police detain him, Snowden can then appeal to a magistrate for his release. But he faces another complication: His 90-day tourist visa in Hong Kong runs out in mid-August, giving the local authorities another reason to keep him in custody.
The more daunting challenge facing the United States is its expected request to have Snowden sent back to the United States to face criminal charges in the Eastern District of Virginia, where prosecutors have handled many major national security cases.
In recent weeks, Snowden’s plight has been seized on by multiple groups: by Hong Kong’s vocal human rights movement, by pro-Beijing activists attracted to his defiance of the United States, and by those angered by Snowden’s claims that Hong Kong was itself the target of aggressive US surveillance efforts.
It wasn't just Hong Kong, it was the whole world. That is what the intelligence operation we call a newspaper over here is minimizing.
Snowden and his lawyers could tie up any effort to have him sent back to the United States by claiming that “his offense is a political offense,” said Regina Ip, a former Hong Kong secretary of security and a current legislator. Such a claim would have to go through several levels of US courts.
Alternatively, Snowden could apply for asylum. Currently, asylum claims are facing delays of several years in Hong Kong.
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UPDATE: Snowden reported to still be in Russia
The whole focus is now a where is Snowden thing like Where's Waldo.
Someone leaked this:
"President Obama meets with privacy panel" June 22, 2013
WASHINGTON — Taking steps to temper public concern, President Obama held his first meeting Friday with a privacy and civil liberties board as his intelligence chief sought ways to help Americans understand more about the government’s sweeping surveillance efforts.
The five members of the obscure Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board huddled with Obama in the White House Situation Room, questioning the president on two National Security Agency programs that have stoked controversy after the extent of US phone and Internet records the government collects were publicly disclosed. Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and his top lawyer, Kathy Ruemmler, also joined the session.
Obama has insisted the programs are subject to intense judicial and congressional oversight and says he’s confident his administration is striking the proper balance between national security and privacy.
That would lead to believe not. How sad that this president has lost all credibility.
Still, in an attempt to show Obama is serious about welcoming a public discussion about the proper balance, the White House said Obama and his aides would start meeting with a range of interested parties to talk digital privacy — starting with Friday’s meeting.
The White House did not allow press coverage of the meeting....
Am I the only one seeing the irony there?
And more clipped print(?) for you:
Meanwhile, an effort was underway to determine whether more details about the programs could be declassified to facilitate greater public understanding of what the government can and can’t do....
And they asked the admitted liar James Clapper to do it.
The government has already lifted some of the secrecy surrounding the programs following disclosures earlier this month about their existence by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But the legal opinions from the highly secretive court remain private.
The privacy board was created in 2004 but has operated fitfully ever since, given congressional infighting and at times, censorship by government lawyers.
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Time to shift gears:
"Google fights for transparency: Shifting the Prism" June 22, 2013
It’s strange days indeed when Google, which has long attracted criticism for the opaque ways in which it handles user information, strikes a blow for greater transparency. This week the tech giant asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rescind a gag order barring the company from revealing requests for information by government agencies. As of now, Google can’t legally confirm or deny that it has received any requests for information from that secret court. The company maintains it has a First Amendment right to publish not only the exact number of requests it received from the court, but also the number of accounts included in these requests. This is a gutsy and laudable move.
Nice, but....
Currently, Google can publish at least the number of national security letters — requests for large bundles of information made by the FBI, often at the behest of other agencies — that it receives, in a range from zero to 999. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and other tech companies involved in the government’s controversial Prism program came to an agreement with security officials allowing them to publish the total number of information requests they received from all government agencies combined. That’s marginally more information than Google can publish, but they can’t specify which agencies these requests came from. They can’t differentiate between information sought by local law enforcement and requests from US intelligence.
And it's all being scooped up in any event.
Now that Prism has become public knowledge, one could argue that new revelations by Google about the scope of government requests won’t actually tell the public much more than it already knows.
Kind of like a newspaper.
Cynics might say the company mainly wants to defend itself from claims that intelligence agencies had full access to its servers. But Google’s willingness to fight for its right to share uncomfortable truths with customers shows a refreshing commitment to openness.
They should follow their own advice.
Within the bounds of the law, users have a right to know where their information is going. It’s high time someone stood for that principle.
That's all well and good; however, I won't believe Google, the Globe, or the government no matter what they tell me.
Sorry, but they brought it on themselves. The lies have never stopped.
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Also see: Seeing Through the PRISM of Obama's Spying Program
Don't prisms distort everything?
Related: Globe Scandal Coverage Sucks
UPDATE: Watch out, Superman! It’s the NSA!
