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Sam Sacks - page 30

Sam Sacks has 859 articles published.

Relationship Status Complicated: While Propping Up Government, U.S. Blocks Afghan Veep From Entering States

The second most powerful government official in Afghanistan was denied access to the United States, on the basis that he is a war criminal, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum was informed this month by the US that he would not be given a visa for entry on a planned trip to New York and Washington to update American officials on his government’s fight against the Taliban. A close ally of the Bush administration, Dostum fell out of favor in… Keep Reading

250 More U.S. Troops to Creep Into Syria

Speaking from Germany on Monday, President Obama announced plans to send 250 additional special forces to Syria to assist moderate fighters confronting the Islamic State. The president claimed that the additional troops would build off “momentum” created by the roughly 50 US commandos already operating on the ground in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported. “Make no mistake these terrorists will learn the same lesson as others before them have,” Obama said in his remarks, “which is ‘your hatred is no match for our nations united in… Keep Reading

Government Suggests It May Not Hide Behind “State Secrets” in Torture Lawsuit

The government appears ready to allow a lawsuit to proceed against designers of the CIA’s torture program. Department of Justice officials have decided not to invoke state secrets privilege in a case brought by three detainees who were tortured and made the subjects of experiments while in US custody. Federal prosecutors can, with reliable success, convince judges to block litigation against government agencies if they claim sensitive information might be disclosed as a result. In this case, the DOJ has suggested that it will allow discovery… Keep Reading

Obstruction Pays Off Again for Far Right; Energy Bill Passes Senate Without Flint Aid

A sweeping energy policy bill that was once supposed to include aid for Flint, Mich. passed the upper chamber on Wednesday—sans relief. Senate Democrats, particularly Michigan’s Senate delegation, had hoped to use the Energy Policy Modernization Act, which the Senate approved in an 85-12 morning vote, to advance a $250 million measure that would have provided grants to cities facing emergency water contamination situations like Flint. They were forced to abandon those plans last week, however, following more than a month of relentless obstruction by… Keep Reading

Clinton, Trump Defend Home Turf in N.Y., Sanders “Recharging”

The presidential primaries tilted back toward the frontrunners on Tuesday night, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump pummeling their competition in New York. The former Secretary of State beat surging Sen. Bernie Sanders 58-42 percent, breaking the democratic socialist’s momentum after a string of seven straight victories. Clinton will take the majority of N.Y.’s 247 delegates, expanding her delegate lead, which already stood at more than 200 at the start of the night. “Today you’ve proved once and again, there’s no place like home,” Clinton told a crowd… Keep Reading

Lazy Cops Rail Against Encryption, Level False Accusations Against Tech

Law enforcement officials told members of congress that they don’t want to cede any ground in a digital world that has already given them a flood of sensitive information about hundreds of millions of Americans. During a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday, federal and state cops claimed that encryption technology is hindering their efforts to conduct criminal probes, but admitted that the overall digital ecosystem has been a boon to surveillance efforts. “As far as the amount of information that we can receive today,… Keep Reading

More U.S. Troops Ordered to Iraqi Front Lines

More American soldiers are being deployed to Iraq to assist local security forces trying to retake land captured by the Islamic State (ISIL). During a trip to Iraq on Monday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced plans to send 217 additional US troops to the country, expanding the Pentagon’s ongoing train and advise program. The latest deployments will bring the total US soldier count in Iraq to above 4,000 for the first time since 2011, when President Obama ordered a full withdrawal from the country. The new… Keep Reading

Has Obama Read The Report? White House Dodges Saudi-9/11 Question Every Day This Week

Despite several requests from the White House press corps, top administration spokesman Josh Earnest has this week been refusing to ask President Obama if he has read a classified section of the Congressional 9/11 inquiry–one that could implicate Saudi Arabia in the attacks. The secret text has become an issue in recent days following a “60 Minutes” report that aired last weekend. Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the co-chair of the joint Congressional inquiry, told the CBS News magazine that the chapter reveals the 9/11-hijackers received “substantial” support from elements of Saudi… Keep Reading

Judiciary Committee Pushes Forward Stronger Email Privacy Protections

Long-awaited reforms requiring law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing emails and information stored on the cloud was affirmed by a key House panel on Wednesday. The Email Privacy Act passed the Judiciary Committee in a unanimous vote, in an ongoing initiative to update laws on computer surveillance passed during the Reagan administration. The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) currently allows the government to read stored digital communications older than 180 days with only a court order—not a probable cause warrant. “To the investigators… Keep Reading

“Merk” The Establishment: Bernie Nabs First Senate Endorsement

In a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday morning, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) endorsed his colleague Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for President of the United States. Distinguishing himself from fellow Democrats in the Senate, who have nearly unanimously broken toward former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Merkley dismissed the notion of incremental change, and instead threw his support behind Sanders’ call for upheaval. “People know that we don’t just need better policies, we need a wholesale rethinking of how our economy and our politics work, and for whom… Keep Reading

Watchdog Scolds IRS For Leaving “Key Systems” Unencrypted

Federal law enforcement authorities may deny the link between strong encryption and data security, but critical government agency overseers won’t. In a report released Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) paid out more than $3 billion in 2014 to people who fraudulently requested tax returns. The tax-processing agency was vulnerable to these claims, in part, due to weak cyber security controls, GAO concluded. “Key systems we reviewed had not been configured to encrypt sensitive user authentication data,” the watchdog reported.… Keep Reading

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