FBI

So what’s a Peeping Tom, anti-democratic, Constitution-trampling intelligence crony to do after leaving decades of “public service?” Move into the private sector and collect a fat paycheck from Wall Street, naturally. So what is Mr. Alexander charging for his expertise? He’s looking for $1 million per month. Yes, you read that right. That’s the rate that his firm, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., pitched to Wall Street’s largest lobbying group the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA)

Following Darrell Issa's subpoena of Lois Lerner's hard drive, the rather stunning (and ripped from the pages of a badly written inside-Washington TV mini-series) news is that the IRS reports that the hard drive in question has been destroyed (just as we hinted last night). "We've been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away," Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a brief hallway interview and as Politico reports, Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources. Issa is pissed... blasting in a statement that the 'lost emails' meme was "just one more attempted deception... e-mails of a prominent official, don’t just disappear without a trace unless that was the intention." His response... requesting the White House attorney's testimony on Lerner's emails.

UPDATE: Sure enough, this was serious! *FBI, N.Y. POLICE ANNOUNCE FINANCIAL CYBER CRIMES TASK FORCE

Hacking Target... or The Pentagon... or Alcoa... or some Chinese military installation is all well and good; but mess with the US equity markets' mainstay market structure and it's getting serious. As BAE Systems reports, hackers slowed down high-speed trading at a large hedge fund last year and rerouted information about the company’s trades to offsite computers. The cyber-attack targeted the hedge fund’s trade order entry system and added gaps to the company’s trading algorithm - delaying orders by milliseconds. The hack went undetected for 8 weeks.  Though the hedge fund was not named, it is believed that 'organized crime' is behind the hack - ironic really...

"In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss & Howe – 1997

Yesterday, the republican campaign to get to the bottom of IRS' targeting of conservative groups was dealt an absolutely idiotic blow when the IRS, in all seriousness, announced that it had lost two years worth of emails to and from the chief subject of the investigation: former agency official Lois Lerner.  What, however, was simply a bizarre, if idiotic, lie has just been taken to a whole new level of ridiculousness, when moments ago, representative Steve Stockman (R-Texas) announced he would request that the National Security Agency help in the hunt for missing emails to and from the IRS’s Lois Lerner, and recover two years worth of "lost" emails.

The feds are so concerned that more truth about the VA scandal will get out there they have resorted to subpoenas to cover up as much as possible. Of course, considering that the entire Administration, and indeed the entire status quo in America, appears to be essentially a criminal syndicate, there is a naturally an endless stream of abuses that must be concealed from the plebs. One thing that has become entirely clear since the Snowden revelations is the fact that the status quo in both political parties has absolutely zero intent on rolling back unconstitutional surveillance whatsoever. This became completely obvious recently when: Congress Gutted Anti-NSA Spying Bill Beyond Recognition; Original Cosponsor Justin Amash Voted No. Fortunately for those of us interested in transparency, some additional information is starting to come out regarding just how far these crooks are willing to go in order to spy on your every move and conversation.

He also DEMOLISHES Intelligence Agencies’ Excuse for 9/11, Confirms They're Recording Our CONTENT, Explains They've Got "Dataddiction" ... and Confirms We're Living In a Police State

With nicknames like "The Money Wizard" and "Gran Hustle," 88 people have been indicted in what the FBI calls "one of the largest federal food program frauds ever." Grocery stores were created for the express purpose of laundering WIC (Women, Infant & Children) and Food Stamp (EBT) funds from willing benefits-receivers who were given discounted cash for the "food" stamps canvassed from "low income neighborhoods" in Georgia. The government seeks the forfeiture of $20 million in bank accounts and assets, including two luxury vehicles, a 2008 Mercedes Benz and a 2008 Land Rover. Exceptional!

The FBI announces it is preparing to sell the 144,341 Bitcoins that were collected during raids in the online drug market Silk Road. While the WSJ reports, the timing and sales method are unclear, it is already weighing on the virtual currency as the Bitcoin traders front run the Fed's unwind...

Just when the administration thought they had thrown enough people under the bus and the news cycle had moved on to Bergdahl (how did that work out?), WSJ reports:

FBI OPENS CRIMINAL PROBE OF VA SCANDAL

FBI Director James Corney says that the Phoenix office of the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the VA scandal, adding that "We're working with the VA IG and we'll follow it wherever the facts take us." We are yet to hear what the over/under on 'pleading da fifs', but we suspect it will be high.

From Ancient Egypt to Modern America …

Orwell Much?

It’s been obvious for quite some time that the so-called “war on terror” is nothing more than a fear-mongering induced power grab; a convenient excuse to strip the citizenry of its civil liberties and humanity. Many commentators, including myself, have predicted for years that the entire counter-terror juggernaut that has been constructed post-9/11 would be ultimately redirected upon the domestic population. Snowden’s heroic whistleblowing has already proven without a doubt that the government spy apparatus (along with tech company complicity) has been zeroed in on the domestic population for quite some time, but is the situation about to escalate? Are the feds so fearful of their own people, they are about to focus all their counter-terror energy on U.S. citizens? It appears so.

We have long warned of the vulnerability of having all your investments and savings in electronic format. The nature of our modern financial and banking system exposes investors and savers to new risks that were not there a generation ago.  Prudent diversification today, involves owning some actual physical gold and silver coins and bars in your possession or in allocated, segregated accounts that can be taken delivery of with a phone call.

The war on privacy continues unabated, as the U.S. government continues to prove time and time again that it views the citizenry as a bunch of cattle to be branded, herded and dealt with at will. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone in the establishment that the public has lost all faith in institutions and so-called “authority” (a concept which I do not believe in to begin with). The evidence of a growing number of Orwellian databases being created has been available for quite some time. And now, the public faces another sinister and unacceptable invasion to our privacy. A national financial database is being planned, which would contain the most intimate details of our entire financial lives. It may apply to as many as 227 million Americans.