No trust without independent control

those who believed the propaganda that TOR was a secure system never looked Under the hook and didn't read the news (who mostly didn't report it)

but there are major security issues with TOR and if TOR wants to be a real security and privacy alternative there is a huge investment of money and resources to be done

and some international technology player are earning so much money complying with dictatorships that they should invest part of that money in TOR to make it a real alternative for their big brother versions they are delivering the people living Under these dictators

source http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/26395/hacking/tor-net...

"Latvia on Thursday said it would open a NATO-backed strategic communications center in the capital Riga amid fears the Kremlin is influencing the Baltic state’s large ethnic Russian minority over the Ukraine crisis.The center will focus on providing an alternative to the official Russian narrative on the crisis and should receive full NATO accreditation “by the end of the summer,” the Latvian defense ministry told AFP.

Concern runs high in all three of the formerly Soviet-ruled Baltic states that Russia is mounting a propaganda campaign to win over the region’s ethnic Russians, who account for around a quarter of the population in both Latvia and Estonia.

Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma on Thursday said Russia was waging an “information war” in Latvia, which joined NATO and the European Union in 2004.“The Latvian government cannot allow foreign countries to meddle internally, undermining the state,” Straujuma told parliament. Lawmakers also backed legislation more than doubling defense spending to the NATO-recommended minimum of two percent of GDP by 2020.
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140703/DEFREG01/3070...

they were killed during the last ATO campaign

you see that two of them are first and all military (on leave ?)

if the Russian state now pays a military pension to their widows, than they ackowledge the official character of their mission

http://blogs.ipress.ua/blogs/v_moskve_horonyat_soldat_45g...

"Children arriving without their parents are transferred to custody of the Health and Human Services Department, which tries to reunite them with family members in the U.S. Both groups have often been allowed to remain in the U.S. while their immigration cases move forward, a process that can sometimes take years.

Migrants' willingness to surrender to authorities has created a system in which smugglers need only to get their human cargo to the American side of the river, rather than guiding them to a populated area.

Just since October, the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector has made more than 194,000 arrests, nearly triple that of any other sector. In the first week of June alone, agents in this area south of Mission arrested more than 2,800 people, most from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, making it the highest-volume arrest zone on the entire U.S. border. More than 60 percent were children.

All through the night, government buses idle near the border wall — a mile or two from the river — awaiting loads of immigrants. The zone is patrolled by no fewer than six local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies, including gunboats crewed by Texas state troopers with night-vision goggles and the Border Patrol's white and green trucks. Helicopters swoop above the winding waterway.

But there's little cat-and-mouse pursuit. Every day, hundreds of immigrants walk up to agents, wave to their remote cameras or simply wait to be picked up on the side of a road like Trevino's group in the park
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/south-texas-shows-drama-be...

In the depths of the Russian State Library, Marina Chestnykh takes the creaking elevator up to the ninth floor. She walks past stack after stack of books behind metal cages, the shelves barely visible in the dim light from the frosted-glass windows. This is the spetskhran, or old special storage collection — the restricted-access cemetery for material deemed “ideologically harmful” by the Soviet state.

She arrives at a cage in the floor’s back corner. When she inserts a key in the padlock, the door swings open to reveal thousands of books, paintings, engravings, photographs and films — all, in one way or another, connected to sex.

It was the kinkiest secret in the Soviet Union: Across from the Kremlin, the country’s main library held a pornographic treasure trove. Founded by the Bolsheviks as a repository for aristocrats’ erotica, the collection eventually grew to house 12,000 items from around the world, ranging from 18th-century Japanese engravings to Nixon-era romance novels.

Off limits to the general public, the collection was always open to top party brass, some of whom are said to have enjoyed visiting. Today, the spetskhran is no more, but the collection is still something of a secret: There is no complete compendium of its contents, and many of them are still unlisted in the catalogue.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/inside...

Most of the EU’s other big exporters - Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden - have followed suit.

In Belgium, licences are granted separately by the regions of Flanders and Wallonia. Both regional authorities told this website they would block new Russia sales.

A Finnish defence ministry official, Arto Koski, said: “If there would be a new application … I think our answer would be negative”. A Dutch diplomat, Roel van der Meij, noted: “All new licence applications for export of military goods to Russia have been suspended”. Sipri, a Stockholm-based arms-control NGO, said Sweden, a British and US ally, would not have approved sales of sensitive items to Russia even before the crisis.

Pieter Wezeman, a Sipri researcher, noted that, unlike official embargoes, the "de facto bans ... can easily be adapted when the circumstances change again".

Commenting on the France, Igor Sutyagin, a military expert exiled from Russia on espionage charges who now works for Rusi, a think tank in London, said the Mistral deal is important because it includes transfer of high-end “command and control” technology He noted that Europe’s arms industry has a history of odd behaviour, with Britain’s Rolls Royce, for instance, supplying engines to the German airforce after the outbreak of WWII.

He added that if any Western ban is to have teeth it should target “dual-use” material instead of weapons.  He said European firm Eads makes components for Russian spy satellites, while Pentium, a US company, makes microchips for Russian military computers. IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, a British consulting firm, added that France sells avionics for Russian jets and “electro-optic infrared” technology, used for surveillance and targetting, for Russian helicopters and tanks
http://euobserver.com/investigations/124883

taking a risk

will something go down or not

they have already destroyed three bridges going into Donetsk

Ukraine has to thank weird Putin for its stupid bullish behavior because otherwise it would never have the Financial support it has received, never have a commercial trade agreement with the EU, never have all those experts coming over from all kinds of international aid organisations to help them rebuild their failed state into a modern state

Ukraine has to thank stupid Putin for being so bullish that he has really forged a new Ukranian identity, lost nearly all of his support (even in the Eastern provinces) and helped public opinion to look only west and to ask for membership of the EU and if possible NATO

Ukraine has to thank cowardly Putin for not having the guts to invade Ukraine and only sending amateurish militants and some older military material making it possible for the Ukranian army to be on a level playing field because of the lack of investment in its training and material the last decennium

Ukraine has to thank the shortsightedly Putin for waking all of its border countries that are not Under its control to remember that they have to invest in military and espionage and have to work together to pressure NATO and the other states to show more solidarity and readiness and to help each other exchanging information for example

NATO has to thank the childlish Putin for the stupid remarks, speeches and reactions nobody in the west except extremists understood to come from such an important man and for his fantastic provocations with nuclear airplanes and submarines across the Channel and near the USA, NATO couldn't have wished for more publicity for the reason of its existence. Those who believed that NATO was not necessary anymore because Russia was Partner and the Continent was a continent of cooperation and peace couldn't have proven wrong in a more convincing way

USA has to thank little Putin for giving it once again the status of the country of the free and the keeper of the peace if nobody else can do it while everybody was talking about China, brics and how close the US was to default and how Europe was the new superpower. But it is proven again that a superpower without an army and without the will to intervene and with a diplomacy that is alwasy too complacent has no stature, no influence and doesn't impress much. So as so often in history, Europe turns to the US for leadership. Maybe we will have a matured union with its own president, diplomacy and army in 10 or 50 years from now, but for the moment we can only turn to the USA.

Our banks and industry are drinking champagne again on you because never has so much money came back to their western enterprises and banks out from Russia (and other BRICS countries) and even if the sanctions will have some economic repercussions they have forced us to look for more stable and reliable markets

the Nuclear and franking industry is having a party for you because never before in their recent history has anybody made so clearly the case that as a country you need to have a certain independence from external energysources.

The proponents of an Atlantic Free Trade agreement have never thought that they would have so many strategic reasons now to create a commercial branch of their political and military Relationship.

The intelligence agencies are just thinking every morning that they are dreaming if they are reading about your newest comments and actions because every time you think you made a Wise move, they see their powers and resources increase tenfold (and the critics diminish by the hundreds)

so thank yoiu Putin for you have forged a real patriotic unified Ukraine supported by a big part of the international community in a region where the military and intelligence investments will go up enormously and which will increase the presence of NATO at your borders even more while getting closer with the USA and setting up new agreements

but fuck you Putin

because we could have a real peace without all those military investments that are in fact worthless and should have been invested in economic and social development

you have changed Europe and especially Eastern-Europe in a permanent possible conflict zone while you shouldn't have but you could and it was your choice

and for that you will always be paying because we will never forget, never

so thank you, but fuck you

you have lost and it is up to your country to deicde if they want to go down with you

because this isn't 1938 again

history repeats itself but never exactly the same way

AFter several days of intense combat with real rockets and tanks from both sides and hundreds of soldiers and militiamembers death and wounded (the Ukranian army lost over 200 soliders already) the Ukranian army is quickly reconquering lost territory (while now the Russians are asking for an  urgent truce while it didn't interest them when their proxy armies seem to be winning)

this map shows that the rebel territories have been cut off from the sea and are steadily being cut off from the Russian borders their life-saving link

this is not a guerilla group like we like to see it as a group of rebels with macine guns, no they have bazooka's and rocketpropellers in the hundreds (decommissioned but still functioning stuff), tanks from across the Russian borders and hundreds of other military vehicles and guns and rocketlaunchers (not hundred of each, but quite impressive)

this map is totally different from a few months ago when Ukraine was really on the brink of losing all its eastern provinces who were falling like rotten fruit in the hands of a coalition of local crime, proxy instigators and warlors and russian activists

if you compare this map with the map of a few months ago, you would really think that they have come from far and that it is now neraly impossible without a clear invasion from Russia to accomplish that goal

there are still three difficulties ahead

First is to conquer the remaning strongholds like Donetsk (with 1 million inhabitants and a few thousands militiamembers) without too much bloodshed and destruction so that Russia can't use this as a reason to intervene (while at the other hand you have to advance militarily to have a military impact)

Secondly is that you have to cut the region from the Russian borders so their lifelines are cut and you have to cut the region in two so neither can retreat to the other to defend one last stronghold. The symbolic power of this can be too great for the prorussian propaganda machine.

Thirdly you will need a paramiliary antiterrorist force to hunt for pockets of armed resistance that are still wandering around in the region. That force and the intelligence arm will need all the investment and material that is available to intervene quickly and efficiently and with the least collatoral damage.

and after this than there is still the question of Crimea

Putin had the intention several times to invade Ukraine but never seemed to be able to pull the trigger and send in his own troops, so he send special undercover forces, money and tanks (but not enough) so he betrayed the hundreds who died in Ukraine for Novarussia and this can come to haunt him later on.

And if everything is over in Eastern Ukraine there will be one big question lingering without really spoken out loud : was it all Worth it for Russia and was there not a better way and how do we go on after this in this interconnected world

you go nowhere, you are not trusted anymore, you are a hooligan and a thief on the international scene

you are what the US was untill Obama

By the end of 2015, 70 percent of U.S. credit cards and 41 percent of U.S. debit cards will have security chips — called EMV for Europay, MasterCard MA +0.71%, Visa V +0.78% — according to the Aité Group.

While Europe, Canada and Mexico have had chipped cards for years — usually with a chip and a PIN (personal identification number), the U.S. card issuers have studiously avoided the more secure, but more expensive, cards. To some extent American issuers didn’t need the card-based security. Unlike Europe, the American card industry had grown up with cheap telecommunications, so merchants could check cards in real-time as they accepted a card in payment. American technology vendors also developed very sophisticated, if sometimes alarmist, tools to detect fraudulent card use.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2014/06/23/more...

as the fraud rate has increased so much and with some big breaches and the loss of confidence they creditcard companies and the shops have in fact no other choice if they want to keep some consumertrust

People are changing their attitudes afterwards

"U.S. consumers are beginning to see the impact of the recent spate of credit card data breaches at retail stores -- and they are doing something about it.

That's the conclusion of two separate studies of consumer attitudes and behavior published this week. The first study, National Consumer League's Data Insecurity Report, indicates that consumers are increasingly blaming retailers for the compromise of their credit card data and are responding by changing the stores they patronize.

The second study, Security Matters: Americans on EMV Chip Cards, indicates that nearly two thirds of Americans are more likely to pay in cash after hearing about security breaches at large retailers.
http://www.darkreading.com/retail-breaches-change-custome...

well both reasons are enough business and marketingwize to inspire management to make some big investments in security and keep it secure

nobody wants consumers to change shops because they feel insecure at your place and nobody wants people to pay so much in cash because it costs a lot to handle cash and it increases the risk for violent crime at the cashiers.

this is the message that appears

well this is a russian tank in an Ukranian city occupied by militias that are prorussian but not russian and Russia says that it is not responsable for them or linked to them

but

this tank has crossed the Ukr_russian border - which isn't fully Under control of the Ukr government and which the Russian government hasn't closed neither to prevent more bloodshed (calming down as it is called)

it has clearly a Russian flag

it is on Ukranian territory against the will of the Ukr government

so ..... there are some questions here

* if a tank like a ship goes Under a flag of a country it is supposed to represent that country (especially if that country doesn't deny that its tanks are on the other side of the border) and so it is responsable for these tanks (and internationally it has done a real military incursion into the country)

* if that tank was not stolen (were they prosecuted), not sold (by who to who) or given than how did these people get a Russian tank

it is said that they are given to the rebels but that doesn't make youi as a country less responsable for inciting war and civil war and so on

this is the tweet

the Ukr army and the militias have been shooting down each other drones before - some just above the Ukraine border and the Ukraine border patrol will get a new sophisticated drone to help them Watch the border

but from shooting down drones and using them for surveillance and espionage

the next step to actually use them as military attack instruments during a war

will change the whole discussion about military and espionage drones in Europe (and NATO) totally

there is no confirmation by video or pics yet but it is probable