SecureDrop Project Will Pay To Install WikiLeaks-Style Anonymous Submission Systems for the Media

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Photo Credit: Forbes In an age of pervasive surveillance that makes no exception for the media, the idea of a WikiLeaks-style secure submission system for anonymous whistleblowers may be more important than ever. Now one group believes in those leaking tools so strongly that it’s willing to pay for mainstream media to install them.

On Tuesday the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) announced the launch of SecureDrop, a piece of open-source software designed to serve as an anonymous submission systems for media organizations. And to encourage news outlets to install it, the Foundation has offered to send one of SecureDrop’s creators, security consultant James Dolan, to willing news outlets to help install it, in some cases even paying for the necessary hardware.

“We want to take all the pain out of this process so that they have no excuse but to use this technology. The barrier has been cost and the technical ability,” says Trevor Timm, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s executive director. ”So we’re actually going to physically fly [Dolan] around the country to major media organizations to install this.”

SecureDrop, which like WikiLeaks depends on the anonymity software Tor to hide leakers’ identities, was developed from the open-source software DeadDrop, initially created by the late coder and activist Aaron Swartz along with Dolan and Wired editor Kevin Poulsen. The system was initially created to serve as a leak submission system for Wired, but was dropped after a management shakeup at the magazine and adopted instead by fellow Conde Nast publication the New Yorker under the name Strongbox and launched in May. The code behind that system has remained free and open-source, allowing any other media outlet to adopt it.

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High Stakes for Obama: No Deal Means First Modern President to Default

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Photo Credit: APFor President Barack Obama, the outcome of this week’s fiscal fights with Republicans could have broad consequences for his stalled second-term agenda.

A favorable deal for the White House might give Obama an opening to marginalize the tea party Republicans who have tried to win concessions from him in order to reopen the government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling. But if no agreement is reached by Thursday’s debt limit deadline, Obama will become the first modern president to preside over a government default, a dubious distinction with potentially calamitous economic consequences that could consume the White House for the foreseeable future.

Another, perhaps more likely, option: Obama ends up signing short term bills that keep Washington in the never-ending cycle of deadline-driven budget battles. For Obama, that would mean fiscal issues would keep consuming the oxygen in the nation’s capital at a time when he is already watching his window for passing significant domestic legislation close.

“It’s a ticking clock,” Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, said of presidential second terms. “He’s already into the red zone in terms of getting things done.”

On Monday, Obama and Senate leaders indicated they were optimistic that an agreement might be at hand to prevent a national financial default and reopen the government after a two-week partial shutdown. Officials in both parties were discussing a proposal to raise the debt ceiling through the spring, as well as a shorter deal to fund the government for several weeks.

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US Army Defines Christian Ministry as ‘Domestic Hate Group’

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Photo Credit: Fox News Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.

The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.

A soldier who attended the briefing contacted me and sent me a photograph of a slide show presentation that listed AFA as a domestic hate group. Under the AFA headline is a photograph of Westboro Baptist Church preacher Fred Phelps holding a sign reading “No special law for f***.”

American Family Association has absolutely no affiliation with the controversial church group known for picketing the funerals of American servicemembers.

“I had to show Americans what our soldiers are now being taught,” said the soldier who asked not to be identified. “I couldn’t just let this one pass.”

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As Washington Crumbles, This Senator’s Rise To The Presidency Is Almost Assured

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Photo Credit: Standard CompliantToday is a rainy, gloomy day in Washington.

And as John Boehner is up at the White House negotiating the unconditional surrender of House Republicans, I unexpectedly ran into Senator Ted Cruz outside of Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel.

Cruz was smiling and said he was invigorated by the outpouring of support for his campaign against Obamacare.

Of course, you may be wondering why Cruz is happy while the Republican leaders around him are groping for a lifeline from Obama and a way to settle the dispute.

The reasons are simple…

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Senate Deal to End Government Shutdown, Raise Debt Limit Appears Near (+video)

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Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak/APA planned meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders Monday afternoon was postponed right as the meeting was supposed to take place – but that may actually be a sign that an end is in sight to the debt-limit negotiations as well as the two-week-old government shutdown.

Leadership from both parties expressed optimism that they were nearing an agreement that could end the standoff before Thursday’s deadline for raising the debt ceiling, and the White House, while it did not set a new date for the meeting, said in a statement that the meeting was postponed to “allow leaders in the Senate time to continue making important progress towards a solution that raises the debt limit and reopens the government.”

Earlier on Monday, Mr. Obama had warned lawmakers that if they don’t reach a resolution, the US has “a good chance of defaulting” – which could have devastating economic repercussions.

The Senate has been making steady progress toward a deal, and the current one gaining traction reportedly would fund the government through the end of the year and raise the debt ceiling until mid-February. It would also call for new budget negotiations to happen before the next round of sequestration cuts takes effect, and might make some minor concessions on the Affordable Care Act, including a delay of the tax on medical devices.

Senate leaders from both parties spoke on the Senate floor Monday afternoon, sounding the most optimistic they have since the shutdown began.

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Republicans Can Say “We Told You So” as Obamacare is Inflicted on America

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Photo Credit: Irish Central President Obama and his Democrat colleagues must take all of the credit as Nancy Pelosi’s promise: “we will find out what is in Obamacare after it is passed,” starts to become reality.

Since not one Republican voted for Obamacare and Republicans were shut out of putting any input into Obamacare, the credit and or blame will fall appropriately

The President made all kinds of promises as he sold Obamacare to the people of the United States.

But Seems like most of them have fallen by the wayside as promises face the dawning of reality.

Were these claims the President made, honest miscalculations? Or were they cynical lies designed to get a gullible public to accept a government takeover of our healthcare system?

According to the latest estimates, Obamacare will cost around $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, nearly $1.7 trillion more than Obama’s initial promise of $900 billion.

President Obama’s claim that if you like your existing healthcare plan, you can keep that plan is proving utterly false as Obamacare gets unveiled. Millions of Americans are getting rude shocks as employers start to drop their plans and force employees into the new healthcare exchanges.

He also promised if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor…Period! But of course that whopper has fallen to the wayside as people are kicked off their existing healthcare plans and new plans don’t include their doctor.

President Obama claimed the average healthcare premium savings would be 2,500 per family. That claim is proving to be bogus as families get sticker shock from the new healthcare plans with Obamacare mandates. To add insult to injury, many of these plans have huge deductibles that must be paid before the insurance kicks in.

Most Americans will soon forget this latest budget impasse and the resultant government “shutdown.” The negativity directed toward the Republicans who tried to block or make changes to Obamacare before it gets implemented will swiftly pass in the coming weeks and months.

But in a little over a year, the all important midterm elections will occur; with House and Senate seats up for grabs…

The quotes below from two naive supporters of Obamacare just discovering huge increase in healthcare premiums may prove ominous for Democrats trying to retain their seats:

“Of course, I want people to have health care I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.” Or: “I was laughing at Boehner until the mail came today.”

What will be fresh on American workers and voters minds as the November elections arrive, will be who has raised their taxes and who is responsible for the huge increases in their healthcare costs…..They will also remember who tired to keep their taxes lower and tried to warn them about Obamacare.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Fighting Obamacare: The Difference Between Cutting Spending and Limiting Harmful Government

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photo credit: fibonacci blueAs Mitch McConnell puts the finishing touches on his terms of surrender, here are some thoughts to ponder.

Republicans and conservatives have spent the past few years messaging their platform to the American people built upon budget-speak. It’s all about the debt and cutting spending.

In reality, we don’t have a spending problem per se, we have a big and harmful government problem. The two are not always the same.

All of us who follow policy issues very closely understand that debt in itself is not just a problem for the federal balance sheet, it will have to be paid back by our children and grandchildren. However, most people don’t see it that way, at least not in a meaningful way. What people care about is loss of employment, lower/stagnant wages, the rising cost of living, and personal liberty. It is our job to prioritize an agenda both in substance and messaging that directly addresses the harmful effects of government on jobs, standard of living, and personal liberty. The federal budget is secondary, and will take care of itself once we restore government to its proper role.

For example, we spend roughly $8 billion in discretionary spending funding the EPA each year. Now, is that $8 billion in wasted spending contributing to our debt? You betcha. But the more serious problem with the EPA is not the $8 billion in discretionary spending, but the hundreds of billions that are removed from the private economy in the form of lost jobs and higher cost of living (not to mention personal liberty), as a result of the regulatory regime.

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The Senate GOP’s Surrender

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Photo Credit: National Review House Republicans had a joke in the mid-1990s that the Democrats were their opponents, but the Senate was the enemy. Today’s House Republicans are beginning to develop the same sentiment — but this time, it’s not a joke.

When Representative Paul Ryan last week used the pages of the Wall Street Journal to suggest a way out of the shutdown/debt-ceiling morass, conservatives complained that Ryan’s column did not even mention Obamacare. Yet now Ryan himself, less than a week after some conservatives accused him of sandbagging their efforts, is complaining that Senate Republicans are sandbagging his own compromise proposal just as it seemed to be gaining traction.

Conservatives were right about Ryan, and Ryan is right about the Senate. The Senate’s apostasy, though, appears substantially worse.

At least Ryan’s proposal aimed to accomplish conservative goals: long-term savings, entitlement reform, new limits on the coddling of federal employees, and a simplified tax code with lower corporate rates. Its deliberate refusal to include even the slightest nick in Obamacare’s edifice provided evidence that Ryan is far from averse to disappointing conservatives — but at least he could claim to be keeping his eye on the long-term goal of greater fiscal responsibility.

Nothing like that can be said about the Senate plan whose details began to emerge on Saturday. It would essentially forfeit all leverage associated with both the debt ceiling and the annual appropriations process by providing a largely “clean” spending resolution through March while raising the debt ceiling enough to last through January. The only “concession” it would extract from the Left would be a two-year delay — not even a repeal but merely a delay — in the medical-device tax. The full repeal of this tax already enjoys majority support in both houses of Congress, and Barack Obama has indicated it is not central to his health-insurance Leviathan.

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Catholic Priest Threatened with Arrest If Voluntarily Conducts Mass On Navy Base During Shutdown

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Photo Credit: WNDIn what has been described as “an astonishing attack on religious freedom,” Catholics at a Navy base were banned from attending worship services because of the partial shutdown of the federal government.

In response, the Thomas More Law Center announced it has filed a lawsuit over the orders at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia.

The legal team said a Catholic priest who serves the community on the military base “has been prohibited from even volunteering to celebrate Holy Mass without pay and was told that if he violated that order, he could be subject to arrest.”

Without explanation, however, Protestant services continued.

“This is an astonishing attack on religious freedom by the federal government and the latest affront toward the military since the beginning of the shutdown,” said a report by the Thomas More Law Center.

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Unions Poised to Win Delay of ObamaCare Tax in Budget Deal

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Photo Credit: majunznkLabor unions are poised to score the delay of an ObamaCare tax in the bipartisan budget deal emerging in the Senate.

The bargain under negotiation would make small adjustments to the healthcare law, including delaying the law’s reinsurance fee for one year. The three-year tax is meant to generate revenue that will stabilize premiums on the individual market as sick patients enter the risk pool.

The tax applies to all group health plans, but unions argue it will raise their healthcare costs while providing them no benefit.

The reinsurance tax figured prominently in discussions at a recent AFL-CIO convention, where workers passed a resolution demanding changes to ObamaCare.

The White House recently denied labor’s top priority on ObamaCare, ruling that union health plans are not eligible for the new subsidies because they are already helped by the tax code.

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