Flynn Intel Group / Woolsey and Turkish Lobby

3 Comments

1. 

   Marie3 on March 27, 2017 at 11:59 am

   Appears to be the “due” of retired US military generals (and some former members of Congress):

   FIG positioned itself as an elite operation with the state-of-the-art skills to protect global businesses and government agencies.

   b’s post did prompt me to go back and take a closer look at the Turkey Gravy Boat.  What a rat’s nest and appears to go back at least as far as the 1950s (surprise, surprise).  Looks to me as if Ataturk didn’t live long enough to cement that the government would forevermore be secular.  While I still don’t understand how the game worked with Gulen self-exiling to the US in 1999 (even including that he was/is a CIA asset),(an imitation of the Ayatollah?) the Erdogan/Gul/Gulen alliance appears to be the first non-secular government with enough power that it wasn’t vulnerable to a swift military response.  Erdogan followed up by purging the military of high-level Kemalists.

   Did the Gulenists not like the power sharing arrangement and/or demand a larger piece of the pie?  Or has Erdogan decided that he no longer needs to share?  My guess is that he read the coup correctly (as did Hugo Chavez in 2002).          

2. 

   Marie3 on March 27, 2017 at 12:22 pm

   Not the first incident of FBI goading/facilitating an act of terror, but the evidence of having done so is less murky in the one: 60 Minutes – Garland, TX attack

   …
   Dan Maynard: That’s right. Yeah. After the trial we found out that they had had an undercover agent who had been texting with Simpson, less than three weeks before the attack, to him “Tear up Texas.” Which to me was an encouragement to Simpson.
   …
   But it turns out the undercover agent did more than just communicate online with Elton Simpson. In an affidavit filed in another case the government disclosed that the FBI undercover agent had actually “traveled to Garland, Texas, and was present… at the event.”
   …

   Cointelpro lives on.  Also mot to be missed from a few days ago is Robert Parry’s How US Flooded the World with Psyops.  We’ve evolved from “Christian soldiers” to “Capitalist-christian soldiers.”

3. 

   Oui on March 27, 2017 at 2:05 pm

   Facial recognition database used by FBI is out of control, House committee hears

   Approximately half of adult Americans’ photographs are stored in facial recognition databases that can be accessed by the FBI, without their knowledge or consent, in the hunt for suspected criminals. About 80% of photos in the FBI’s network are non-criminal entries, including pictures from driver’s licenses and passports. The algorithms used to identify matches are inaccurate about 15% of the time, and are more likely to misidentify black people than white people.

   These are just some of the damning facts presented at last week’s House oversight committee hearing, where politicians and privacy campaigners criticized the FBI and called for stricter regulation of facial recognition technology at a time when it is creeping into law enforcement and business.

   …
   “No federal law controls this technology, no court decision limits it. This technology is not under control,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the center on privacy and technology at Georgetown Law.

   The FBI first launched its advanced biometric database, Next Generation Identification (NGI), in 2010, augmenting the old fingerprint database with further capabilities including facial recognition. The bureau did not inform the public about its newfound capabilities nor did it publish a privacy impact assessment, required by law, for five years.

   Last year, the US government accountability office (GAO) analyzed the FBI’s use of facial recognition technology and found it to be lacking in accountability, accuracy and oversight, and made recommendations of how to address the problem.

   …
   Inaccurate matching disproportionately affects people of color, according to studies. Not only are algorithms less accurate at identifying black faces, but African Americans are disproportionately subjected to police facial recognition.

   “If you are black, you are more likely to be subjected to this technology, and the technology is more likely to be wrong,” said Elijah Cummings, a congressman for Maryland, who called for the FBI to test its technology for racial bias – something the FBI claims is unnecessary because the system is “race-blind”.

   “This response is very troubling. Rather than conducting testing that would show whether or not these concerns have merit, the FBI chooses to ignore growing evidence that the technology has a disproportionate impact on African Americans,” Cummings said.

   ○ Surveillance: Half of US adults are recorded in police facial recognition databases, study says | The Guardian  – Oct. 2016 |