national security

First, the good news. During a Senate hearing earlier today, Gen. Keith Alexander (in charge of America's Secret Cyber Army) said: "We have over 960 Ph.D.s, over 4,000 computer scientists, over a thousand mathematicians. They are furloughed. Our nation needs people like this."

Now the bad news. While the number of NSA employees is officially classified, in 2012 the NSA said more than 30,000 employees work at Ft. Meade and other facilities. In 2012 John C. Inglis, the deputy director, said that the total number of NSA employees is "somewhere between 37,000 and one billion" as a joke, and stated that the agency is "probably the biggest employer of introverts." In 2013 Der Spiegel, likely using source data from Edward Snowden, said that the NSA had 40,000 employees.

The nation's top intelligence officer, James Clapper, is worried:

• *CLAPPER: SHUTDOWN 'SERIOUSLY DAMAGES' U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

and so is Senator Grassley:

• *GRASSLEY `CONCERNED' 70% US GOVT INTELLIGENCE STAFF FURLOUGHED

But - for those who care about personal privacy rights, there is a silver lining:

• *US GOVT SHUTDOWN HAS HIT NSA 'VERY HARD', AGENCY DIRECTOR SAYS

Mass Surveillance Destroys Innovation, Trust, the U.S. Internet Market and Other Foundations of Prosperity

Intelligence Agencies Central In Assassination Programs Carried out Without Oversight

New Revelations Are Breaking Every Day

David Asman: What happens now? If it’s Yellin she'll be like Bernanke on steroids. What does that mean for our economy?

Dr Paul:  Prepare for the destruction of the dollar and the crash of the bond market one day. The bond bubble is weakening although the interest rates have doubled in the last year.

Imagine for a second you're a terrorist intent on inflicting unimaginable harm on your enemy. Now let's further imagine that your enemy is the United States...

Three weeks ago we explained the importance of the looming cliff - in the government's reserves of helium. With a never-ending pun-trail related to "hot-air" or markets "blowing up", we stick to the facts. With the threat of a glonal helium shortage potentially weighing on fibre-optic cables and flat-screen TVs, the always-reaady-to-negotiate members at the Senate have agreed to support an amendment that prevents the October 7th termination of the helium storage program. So thanks to political "hot air" (we couldn't resist), the helium cliff is resolved... why so easy you wonder? Perhaps this is why "...Helium is also used in national defense applications such as rocket engine testing and purging, surveillance devices, air-to-air missiles and scientific balloons."

While the White House is trying to play this down currently in the press conference, Brazil's President Rousseff has issued a statement postponing her trip to the US due to the illegal espionage of the Americans:

• *BRAZIL SAYS U.S. HASN'T PROVIDED ADEQUATE EXPLANATION ON SPYING
• *BRAZIL'S SAYS IT NEEDS U.S. EXPLANATION BEFORE STATE VISIT
• *BRAZIL SAYS U.S. ILLEGAL MONITORING OF GOVT, COS. IS 'SERIOUS'
• *BRAZIL PRESIDENT ROUSSEFF POSTPONES STATE VISIT TO THE U.S.

According to AP, Obama spoke to Rouseff on the phone but that didn't do it as the Brazilian President demanded a full public apology.

Oh, and a Typhoon Is about to Hit Fukushima

Wikileaks recently continued the release of what they refer to as the “Spy Files.” These files provide a look into some of the companies behind the rapid commercialization of the spy equipment industry, who’s clients include repressive governments and dictatorial regimes around the world. In a press release announcing these files Wikileaks states: Across the world, mass surveillance contractors are helping intelligence agencies spy on individuals and ‘communities of interest’ on an industrial scale. The Wikileaks Spy Files reveal the details of which companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights. One of the companies highlighted is an Italian based company called Hacking Team...

With the NSA already tracking and recording every form of communication and electronic data exchange, it would hardly come as a surprise that the final piece of the puzzle was also actively being intercepted and collected by General Keith Alexander's superspy army: money, or rather tracking the global flow thereof. Which is why we were not surprised to learn just this, following the latest report from Germany's Spiegel that "The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions" and has even created an internal branch titled appropriately enough "Follow The Money" (FTM). Once collected, the data then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called "Tracfin," which in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions. But while collecting credit card data was to be expected, what is even worse is that the NSA has also secretly planted itself in the nexus of the entire global USD-intermediated financial transactions system courtesy of SWIFT.  In other words, America's unsupervised uber spies, when not checking in on their former significant others, spend the bulk of their time tracking who is buying what, where, and with whose money.

• U.S., Russia to push for new Syria peace talks (Reuters)
• Elite Syrian Unit Scatters Chemical Arms Stockpile (WSJ)
• Obama to nominate Summers as Fed chief: Nikkei (Reuters)
• Boehner Wants Joint Talks on Debt, Budget (WSJ)
• House Republicans go for broke in fiscal battles (Reuters)
• Pimco, BlackRock Together Received More Than a Quarter of Verizon's $49 Billion Bond Deal (WSJ)
• Insane financial system lives post-Lehman (Gillian Tett)
• JPM to add $2.5 billion to its litigation reserves in the second half of the year (WSJ)
• Goldman’s Zurich offices visited over working-hours complaint (FT)

In a world some thought we would never see, most Americans and much of Congress seem to agree with Ron Paul's foreign policy advice - at least on the question of a military strike against Syria...

I’ll scratch your back and you can scratch mine is the motto of the National Security Agency according to the latest revelations made about the data stored by the immense surveillance program of the NSA, which routinely provides intelligence data with Israel.