Special Services Group makes surveillance crapgadgets for cops and spies: cameras and mics hidden in tombstones, vacuum cleaners, children’s car-seats, and other everyday items. Muckrock’s Beryl Lipton used a Freedom of Information Act request to get a copy of “Black Book,” SSG’s massive sales brochure out of the Irvine police department, with minimal redactions.
Continue reading “A company that makes spy-tech for cops threatened to sue Vice for publishing its sales literature (because Iran!)”
Tag: beltway bandits
McKinsey bills the US government $3m a year for anodyne advice from 23-year-old college grads
McKinsey made more than $20m helping ICE design its gulags, advising them to skimp on medical care, food and supervision in a cost-savings measure. But if Uncle Sugar really wants to save some money, it should fire McKinsey, which is by far the most expensive consultancy with a US government contract.
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Defense contractors gleefully report record earnings in divisions that bid on “classified” projects, the fastest-growing part of the Pentagon’s budget
Classified Pentagon spending is the fastest-growing part of the US military budget, rising to 11% of the total $716b proposed for 2020; this spending is not subject to oversight and House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith [D-WA] says it leads to waste.
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Without right to repair, the military can’t fix its own battlefield equipment
Captain Elle Ekman is a US Marine Corps logistics officer; in a New York Times op-ed, she describes how the onerous conditions imposed by manufacturers on the US armed forces mean that overseas troops are not permitted to fix their own mission-critical gear, leaving them stranded and disadvantaged.
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Leaks reveal that disgraced, hacked surveillance company wrote Republican Congressman’s border security talking-points
Remember Perceptics, the Border Patrol contractor whose facial recognition database was hacked, along with hundreds of gigs’ worth of internal files?
Continue reading “Leaks reveal that disgraced, hacked surveillance company wrote Republican Congressman’s border security talking-points”
Elizabeth Warren proposes a ban on private prisons and immigration facilities
Elizabeth Warren has added another plank to her prodigious and admirable campaign platform of well-thought-through, progressive, sensible, popular proposals for a Warren administration: banning federal agencies (including ICE and the Department of Corrections) from contracting with private prisons. Warren also wants to stop contractors from charging inmates fees for essential services (including price-gouging on phone-calls, videoconferncing, mail, and email), and forcing contractors to comply with FOIA requests for information on their activities on behalf of government agencies.
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Hackers stole a US Customs and Border Patrol facial recognition database
Data from facial recognition scans performed by US Customs and Border Patrol on travelers crossing at an unnamed lander border point (an anonymous source says it’s a US-Canada crossing) have been stolen by hacker or hackers unknown.
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Congressional shaming prompts notorious Pentagon price-gouger to refund $16.1m
Transdigm is a notorious military supplier/hedge fund that used acquisitions to attain a monopoly over many spare parts so they could charge exorbitant markups — as high as 4,451%! — on materials procured with tax dollars.
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Ex-NSA whistleblower says she and other US ex-spooks targeted Americans on behalf of UAE
Lori Stroud is an ex-NSA spy who also contracted with the NSA through Booz Allen, who says that after she left the NSA, she was recruited to work on Project Raven, a secret, offensive surveillance and digital attack squad working for the autocratic United Arab Emirates regime alongside other ex-US intelligence operatives, working with the knowledge and approval of the NSA.
Continue reading “Ex-NSA whistleblower says she and other US ex-spooks targeted Americans on behalf of UAE”