#wiretapping

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Wiretapping

Artist: Jason A. Engle TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[magnetictapedatastorage]

text from CYBERThrash (1990) by Julian Dibbell

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Hegseth aide upended Pentagon leak inquiry with false wiretap claims

Exclusive: ex-Doge staffer Justin Fulcher suggested he had evidence of wiretap that would help investigation

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:

Days before Pete Hegseth fired three top aides last month over a Pentagon leak investigation into the disclosure of classified materials, according to four people familiar with the episode, a recently hired senior adviser said he could help with the inquiry. The adviser, Justin Fulcher, suggested to Hegseth’s then chief of staff, Joe Kasper, and Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, that he knew of warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had identified the leakers. Fulcher offered to share the supposed evidence as long as he could help run the investigation, three of the people said. But when he eventually sat down with officials, it became clear he had no evidence of a wiretap, and the Pentagon had been duped. The problem was that development was not communicated to the White House – so several Trump advisers who were told of the NSA wiretap claim believed that was part of the “smoking gun” evidence against the three aides fired by Hegseth, until they developed their own doubts. The Guardian revealed last month that there were unsubstantiated NSA warrantless wiretap claims underpinning the leak investigation, but its origin story and the involvement of Fulcher in the controversy has not been previously reported. Fulcher has said this account is not correct. In a statement, he said he never suggested there were NSA wiretaps or that he had access to wiretap records. “I never approached Parlatore, Kasper or anyone else offering ‘surveillance evidence’ and did not ask to join an investigation on that or any other basis,” he said. The extraordinary episode adds to the growing portrait of dysfunction inside Hegseth’s front office, which is involved in setting the direction of a department that has a budget of nearly $1tn and oversees more than 2 million troops around the world. The investigation prompted Hegseth to fire his senior adviser Dan Caldwell, the deputy chief, Darin Selnick, and the deputy secretary’s chief of staff, Colin Carroll, creating a leadership vacuum filled by Ricky Buria, the ex-junior military aide to Hegseth considered by the White House to be a liability.

The Guardian has a report on how Justin Fulcher, an aide for the embattled Pete Hegseth, helped upend a Pentagon leak inquiry.

[art-of-mtg]

Wiretapping (Streets of New Capenna) - Jason A. Engle

More cards with art by Jason A. Engle on Scryfall

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

Are we being watched? Our surveillance society, then as now.

[indio-politics]

so my intrusive thoughts fueled by OCD, PPD, SZTPD and generational trauma were right to be afraid of FEDex gotcha

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

How long until the Gonad Lump claims the FBI put bugs all over mar-a-largo? On the one hand, that's pretty much exactly what you'd expect them to do, but on the other hand Trump is NOT an enemy of the FBI. The FBI openly and unapologetically wanted MLK and Malcolm X dead, and Bobby Kennedy claims J Edgar Hoover was laughing his ass off when he called him to say Jack had been shot in 63, but the FBI doesn't hate Trump like that. Wray isn't the only Trump appointee still in power, so it's very likely the Bureau is chock full of old guard loyalists who would sabotage their own bugs or tip off his secret service detail where they hid them in order to protect him. The FBI isn't "doing the right thing," certainly not "for the good of the country." At best it's a routine confiscation, "sorry sir, we can't let you keep these anymore," and at worst it's collusion, "don't worry sir, we didn't look you know where, wink-wink."

I don't trust either party of this raid.

[ml-pnp]

Mark Levin noted that he had been vindicated in his early suspicions that the outgoing Obama administration had staged a "silent coup."

“There is a much bigger scandal here,” Levin said more than three years ago. “We have a prior administration, [President] Barack Obama and his surrogates, who were supporting Hillary Clinton, and their party, the Democrat Party, who were using the instrumentalities of the federal government, intelligence activities, to surveil members of the Trump campaign, and to put that information out in the public. Those are police state tactics,” Levin declared.

Levin built his case using sources from the mainstream media, who had been the beneficiaries of leaks from law enforcement and intelligence sources. He called the effort a “silent” coup” against the incoming Trump administration.