Glenn Greenwald drops another bombshell — on Canada's NSA, the CSEC; agency spied on Brazil's Mines and Energy Dept., allegedly for Canadian industry

To hear Greenwald's CBC interview (about nine minutes, and you should) click here. Below is a brief excerpt:

Carol Off: The organization that was doing this spying, Communications Security Establishment Canada, not an organization very well known, even here, but its mandate is to safeguard Canadian government communications from foreign hackers, to help federal security agencies where legally possible, and to gather foreign intelligence. Do you have any sense that what they're pursuing would fall into any of those categories?
     Glen Greenwald: No definitely not. And I think if you look at the statements made by the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, that's the point that she's making, which is that this espionage is clearly intended to bestow economic and industrial advantage onto Canadian Industry. Exactly what the United States and its allies, including Canada routinely denounce China for doing. And that's what makes this espionage so disturbing — not just the espionage itself, but the fact that the leaders of the United States and Great Britain, Canada, routinely mislead not only world but their own citizens about what this spying system is actually designed to achieve.

Below: Last Thursday, on the BBC program Newsnight, Glen Greenwald demolishes repeated attempts by a very hostile journalist, Kirsty Wark, to trap him with gotcha questions that could have been scripted by GCHQ, Britain's NSA.

The Omaha World-Herald reminds you that Democrats — not just its boy, Lee Terry — are keeping their pay too and never you mind that they weren't the ones who shut down the government, okay?

Actually, the World-Herald did finally endorse an opponent of Lee Terry's in 2012, but Terry still won because of attack ads by outside groups, his own well-funded campaign and Democrats who didn't bother to show up at the polls in a district that went for Obama in 2008. Nice work all around.
     Lately Lee Terry's expansive sense of entitlement (that would be his, not yours, as displayed recently in his nonlistening appearance in North Omaha) caused him to be so dismissive about questions regarding his salary during the shutdown he helped effect (and then lied about on his taxpayer-funded web site) that he got spanked by some of the biggest sites on Internet, apologized, and then got whipped by Wonkette, which found his apology wanting.
     Here is what Joeseph Morton slipped into his World-Herald article today about Terry's apology, miraculously achieved after his hubris virally boomeranged, carrying back with it thousands of angry Internet comments and causing a sudden (but heartfelt, we're sure) epiphany in the beating breast of Nebraska's second congressional district representative, regarding his transformative sorrow at having put "my needs above others in a crisis:"

Plenty of Democrats have refused to suspend their pay, too, including Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hasn't said she's giving up her checks and neither has President Barack Obama.

An exuberant, almost giddy Lee Terry exits the open bar closed-door Republican meeting Saturday, 9/28/2013, in which GOP representatives decided to vote for a government shutdown.

     Does Morton think his readers are really gullible enough to believe that congressional Democrats share responsibility for the latest GOP government shutdown stunt and therefore some sort of obligation to share the economic pain they didn't cause?
     Oh please. Only in the World-Herald.

Are you ready for some denial? PBS' Frontline tackles NFL's cynical concussion coverup

PBS has already aired a program on this subject, but this two-parter, the initial installment of which will be the season premiere of Frontline, tomorrow night, evidently digs deeper into the NFL's duplicity on the issue.

 

The people who killed Lincoln's fairness ordinance now are going after transgendered school kids. Here's how you can defend them, since Nebraska's leading LGBT organizations apparently aren't

A quick looksee by AKSARBENT this morning seems to indicate that, of the leading Nebraska gay organizations, not one is devoting a bit of space on its website to defending transgendered schoolkids against the Nebraska Family Alliance's new antiLGBT Jihad.
     Not Citizens for Equal Protection. Not Heartland Pride. Not Outlinc. And neither PFLAG Lincoln nor PFLAG Omaha.
     While the new Nebraska Family Alliance (the merger of Family First of Nebraska and the Nebraska Family Association) is busy lobbying the Nebraska School Activities Association to keep life difficult for transgendered kids, Nebraska's gay groups don't seem to have organized any website pushback at all.
     (AKSARBENT doesn't use Facebook, so we can only hope that said organizations are at least doing something effective on that platform, but we wouldn't stake our lives on it.)

     The other day, Zack Ford, at D.C.'s ThinkProgress, went so far as to publish a POINT BY POINT rebuttal of the Nebraska Family Alliance's attack, just perfect for emailing to the board members of the NSAA, now being lobbied hard by the usual antigay suspects from all over the state.
     It's a sad state of affairs when a D.C. policy group is so outraged by what is happening to gay kids in Nebraska that it does a better job of providing a blueprint for pushback than the state's own LGBT groups seem to be doing, which, as far as AKSARBENT can see, is either relatively little or absolutely nothing.
     Here's something you can do, dear reader, that Nebraska's biggest LGBT organizations aren't:
     1) Open your email and copy the email addresses below into the "To" box; if NSAA's server bounces your email because it mistakes your missive for spam, then send the letter nine times, each time to a different recipient (hassle, I know);
     2) Copy the letter below the first dotted line into the body of the email and click "send" (Obviously you should read the letter first and add or delete whatever you think is appropriate. If you choose to include Zack Ford's arguments, you should not modify them. Be polite, persuasive and firm.)

NSAA Board & Executive Director contact information:

Wendy Henrichs, Dist. I, Lincoln East
Mark Norvell, Dist. I, Fillmore Central
Dr. Jerry Bartee, Dist. II, OPS
Dr. Bob Reznicek, Dist. II, Boys Town
Mr. Jay Bellar, Dist. III, Battle Creek
Dr. Brian Maher, Dist. IV, Kearney
Alan Garey, Dist. V, Medicine Valley
Mr. Kent Halley, Dist. VI, Mitchell
Rhonda Blanford-Green, Executive Director

whenrich@lps.org, mark.norvell@fillmorecentral.org, jerry.bartee@ops.org, bob.reznicek@boystown.org, jbellar@bcpsne.info, brian.maher@kearneypublic.org, agarey@esu15.org, khalley@panesu.org, rblanfordgreen@nsaahome.org

-----------------------------------------------------

As a Nebraskan concerned with the exclusion of some students who may wish to participate in school activities, I am disturbed by the campaign being mounted by the Nebraska Family Alliance, a recent merger of two organizations, the Nebraska Family Council and Family First of Nebraska, to limit opportunities for transgendered Nebraska students.

These organizations have a history of objecting to fair treatment of LGBT Nebraskans and a pattern of misrepresenting facts. Recently they have begun a pressure campaign to persuade your organization not to adopt an enlightened transgender policy and, apparently, to raise money for their own organization by fear-mongering regarding this issue.

They allege the following regarding your proposed policy:

• It  creates the potential of allowing some students unfair advantages, particularly in the case of a biologically male student playing on a girls’ athletic team.
• It is unclear how this would affect gender-separated locker rooms and restrooms. If transgendered males or females may use the opposite sex’s facilities, it raises safety concerns.
• A transgender policy could create an undo [sic] financial burden on local school districts to accommodate transgender students in regard to athletic facilities, such as restrooms and locker rooms.

Not one of the above Nebraska Family Alliance objections is defensible, as Zack Ford at Washington D.C.'s ThinkProgress noted in a recent article about your policy deliberations and the NFA's current attempt to influence those deliberations.

Here is what Mr. Ford wrote about the truthfulness of the arguments that the Nebraska Family Alliance is employing to sway you:

---------------------------------------------

These three misguided notions about transgender students can be easily rebutted.

First, the claim of unfair advantages relies on a number of assumptions that paint an incomplete picture. A national report on transgender equality in scholastic athletics points out that this argument only applies to trans women (those born male), assumes that trans women are not “real” women, and leaves no room for trans women who have used hormone blockers to avoid the impact pubescent testosterone might have on their bodies. Further, research has found no evidence to suggest trans women actually have a competitive advantage:

It is also important to know that any athletic advantages a transgender girl or woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen therapy. According to medical experts on this issue, the assumption that a transgender girl or woman competing on a women’s team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence. As one survey of the existing research concludes, “the data available does not appear to suggest that transitioned athletes would compete at an advantage or disadvantage as compared with physically born men and women.”

There is nothing to substantiate the claim that allowing transgender people access to the locker room they identify with will have any implication on “safety.” This relies on assumptions that trans people are inherently deviant, or that gender identity is a switch someone can flip on any given day. Like those fighting California’s protections for transgender students, the Nebraska Family Alliance provide no answers as to which — if any — facilities transgender people should be able to use.

Perhaps conservatives believe that trans people should have their own separate — and thus ostracizing — facilities. Only that could explain the third claim of a financial burden for schools. All that needs to happen is for schools to learn how to respect and defend students’ gender identities and whatever facilities they already have will suffice. At worst, schools might accommodate a trans student by installing a privacy stall or curtain, a negligible cost that can be administered in a given afternoon by a maintenance person.

----------------------------------------------

I encourage you to adopt the proposed reforms that your organization is considering.

Educational: Shirtless dude teaches you how to pronounce hard food words

Well, he's funnier than Wavy Davey (ewwww!) and smarter too, though probably not by much on either count. You'd think that the people who make these click-bait videos would scour college theatre departments for people who can wring out some humor or personality from a line.

Is Putin trying to co-opt gay protests by supplying Russia's athletes with rainbow-colored gloves?

Zippo flame starts epic 39,000 mile journey across Russia!

Excerpts from the the footage below of the Olympic torch going out in Moscow, then being relit with a cigarette lighter, have been widely circulated but no blogs we've seen seem to have commented on the rainbow-colored gloves on Russian athletes. Good. AKSARBENT wins!

Sochi surveillance: Russia's FSB sees NSA's PRISM and raises it one with "Sorm;" can stop Olympic protests before they start by spying on gay athletes

Russia's security agency, the FSB, has initiated a "Sorm" program, described as the NSA's "PRISM" program, but even more intrusive, if that's possible.
     Ironically, journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, experts on the Russian security services, probably had an easier time documenting the Russian government's spy initiative than journalists in the U.S. have had in busting the NSA because in Russia, dozens of open source technical documents were published on the Zakupki govern­ment procure­ment agency website, and public records of government oversight agencies were available, unlike in the U.S.
    As usual, The Guardian has the story:

     ...newly installed telephone and internet spying capabilities will give the FSB free rein to intercept any telephony or data traffic and even track the use of sensitive words or phrases mentioned in emails, webchats and on social media...
     ...earlier this year a leaflet from the US state department's bureau of diplomatic security warned anyone travelling to the Games to be extremely cautious with communications.
     "Business travellers should be particularly aware that trade secrets, negotiating positions, and other sensitive information may be taken and shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal entities," the document reads. The advice contains an extraordinary list of precautions for visitors who wish to ensure safe communications, such as removing batteries from phones when not in use and only travelling with "clean" devices...

     Yeah, try removing the battery from an iPhone or many newer Android phones.

     ...the FSB can access data without the provider ever knowing, meaning every phone call or internet communication can be logged. Although the NSA FSB technically requires a warrant to intercept a communication, it is not obliged to show it to anyone...

     Gee, now Russia is now copying the questionable legal techniques of American repression! How the worm turns.

But wait! There's more! Agence France-Presse adds:

...analysts said national telecom provider Rostelecom is installing DPI (deep packet inspection) systems on all its mobile networks, technology which will allow the FSB not only to monitor all traffic but also to filter it. 

The Guardian continued:

     ...At a rare FSB press conference this week, an official, Alexei Lavrishchev, denied security and surveillance at the Games would be excessive, and said that the London Olympics featured far more intrusive measures. "There, they even put CCTV cameras in, excuse me for saying it, the toilets," said Lavrishchev. "We are not taking this kind of measure."
     ...Another target may well be gay rights, likely to be one of the biggest issues of the Games. Putin has said that competitors who wear rainbow pins, for example, will not be arrested under the country's controversial new law that bans "homosexual propaganda". However, it is likely that any attempts to stage any kind of rally or gathering to support gay rights will be ruthlessly broken up by police, as has been the case on numerous occasions in Russian cities in the past. Using DPI, [Deep Packet Inspection] Russian authorities will be able to identify, tag and follow all visitors to the Olympics, both Russian and foreign, who are discussing gay issues, and possibly planning to organise protests.

We knew this was coming: the New Yorker burlesques the 'cold call' pope

Paul Rudnick, writing in the New Yorker, wonders what it's like to field papal calls, out of the blue.

     “Hi, it’s me again. I know I’m being Pope Pushy, but I’d like your advice. I’m having problems with Pope Benedict. Well, he’s not really the Pope anymore, but he sits there, in that mother-in-law apartment, and he criticizes. He’s always, like, ‘When I was the Pope . . . ,’ and, ‘I’m fine, don’t listen to me, just go Skype with all your new gay buddies. . . .’ So I just need to hear you say that I’m doing O.K.”

Oh look — a nice liberal Garrison Keillor rant!

Graphic credit

Rounds all the bases, doesn't it?
     He blasts racism, plutocrats, sexism, bible bullies, religious hypocrites, right-wing talk radio hosts and homophobes.
     Oh wait. Scotch that last item. We forgot. Garrison Keillor has really never been one to rail against heterosexual supremacists, has he? (Unless there's something uncharacteristic of Keillor beyond the ellipsis in that quote.)
     After all, Lake Wobegon is a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, all the children are above average and all the gay people are invisible and almost never mentioned, because... superficially idyllic small town.
     Listening to Prairie Home Companion is rather like watching a Ken Burns documentary — that never-never land in which none of the Jazz stars were gay (especially that one with the "title" — Was it Count? Or maybe Duke? — whose white doctor boyfriend left his practice to accompany him on tour.)

Ventura

     None of the Baseball legends were gay or bisexual either, especially that left-handed Hall-of-Fame pitcher. Nor that other pitcher who roomed during the season with the same fellow ballplayer for something like 16 years.
     After all, popular history can only go so far.
     But we digress. Keillor's fellow Minnesotan and nemesis, ex-governor Jesse Ventura (yeah, the pro wrestler), has always been more publicly supportive of gay people than Keillor ever was.

SNL's vicious portrayal of GOP shutdown instigators as irresponsible, decadent, reckless wastrels

Vicious, but not without a kernel of truth if reports of widespread drinking by GOP house members while on the job are correct.
     Lee Terry sure seemed gleeful.

Stephen Colberts' inspired, hilarious-from-start-to-finish, on-air government shutdown wedding

Lorne Michaels should be on his knees praying that Comedy Central never starts programming a show opposite SNL on Saturday nights.

AFER has become quite media-savvy — here's its absorbing video about joining the Virginia marriage equality lawsuit

The Nation and the ACLU go after prison profiteers

The Nation and the ACLU are taking on the corporate leeches who prey on truly captive audiences and their families in sweetheart deals with public and private prisons.

     Worse than phone profiteering is the cruelty of the prison medical contractors, who ration vital treatments to prisoners, leaving them in agony and worse. For example, Correctional Medical Services "discourages treatment for hepatitis," leaving prisoners with hep. C to slide into permanent, profound disability.
     These problems are much worse in private prisons, who are guaranteed occupancy by the states and counties that contract with them -- effectively, the government promises to lock up a minimum number of its citizens as a condition of doing business with private prisons. These prisons are not subject to freedom of information requests, are not inspected in the same way as public prisons, and have profit-taking built into their billion-dollar business, meaning that every dollar they spend on care and rehabilitation for prisoners is a dollar they don't return to their shareholders.

Here's the first of several videos:

Cher's Reddit AMA: If you could turn back time, would you kill Hitler?

The whole thing is here.

Jon Basso: Don't come to my restaurant. It is bad for you. It'll kill you.

Another FL cop busted, says it was because he was gay (Exhibit B)

AKSARBENT detects a trend!
     First a Manatee County Sheriff's officer's "Because I'm gay" defense, and now this, via Jay Weaver of the Miami Herald

     Vital Frederick, a young Miami cop, never disputed the undercover evidence revealing he accepted dirty money from two fellow police officers working with the FBI in a pair of sting operations.
     But Frederick, who stood trial on extortion and other charges, testified his colleagues threatened that unless he took the cash they would expose his “secret” — that he was gay and had a 10-year relationship with a boyfriend from high school.

FL cop busted, says it was because he was gay (Exhibit A)

This is what happens when GOP politicians inaugurate your airport expansion

8/19/2013


10/4/2013

(Photo: @NEStatePatrol)

Hey, if Adrian Smith can blame the Democrats for shutting down the govern­ment, AKSARBENT can blame him for the tornado that just destroyed Wayne's airport.

Alan Grayson to Bill Maher: the GOP 'has locked up the stupid vote

After Host Bill Maher referenced polling data revealing that about 45% of Republicans think President Obama wasn't born in this country and that 44% think armed revolution might be necessary, Florida Rep. Alan Grayson commented: "It's a problem for us because the other side has locked up the stupid vote," going on to explain that he sees three GOP parties: "There's the corporate shills, there are the religious fanatics and then there are the freedom fiends, the ones who want to make sure you have the right to sleep under a bridge."

James Dean, yawning

Just being a brat during a production test for Rebel Without A Cause, which Warner Bros. started filming in black and white, but restarted in color when outsized box office receipts for East of Eden started to pour in, largely on the strength of Dean's sudden popularity.

Vlad Putin daydreams about his happy place

(Via GAYSTARNEWS)

Shorts: $40 PC; Joe Manganiello's ex-roommate tells on him; NSA workers use databases agency vacuumed to spy on ex-lovers; 8 celebrities in Barilla's cookbook; proposed MN mine will need water treatments for 500 years

Interesting friendships

Joe Manganiello's former college roommate, Matt Bomer, makes an enigmatic comment about the actor's endowment which may or may not be ironic

Internal NSA bulletin reveals agency started digesting 1.8 BILLION phone records per DAY in 2011, as well as bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls, GPS location information, property records and unspecified tax data

Related: The NSA sends Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley the titillating details he requested of 12 NSA agents disciplined for spying on romantic interests instead of terrorists

Seven operating systems you can use to power the Rasberry Pi, a $40, credit-card-sized computer manufactured for a nonprofit by Sony

Seven weirdest Obamacare conspiracy theories. We smell under-the-radar dirty politics payoffs by the usual suspects

These celebrities were featured in a Barilla cookbook: Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Jimmy Fallon, James Denton, Mariska Hargitay, Martina McBride, Holly Robinson Peete, Kristin Chenowith

Robert Redford was the special guest of Equality Utah's Allies Dinner



Whatsapp seems to be a popular platform for Russians to post rape/beatings of LGBTs

Average sodium in restaurant meal has hardly budged; still 1500 milligrams

Russian expert kicks back at Lawrence O'Donnell, who "O'Reilly'd" at her on his MSNBC show

Proposed Minnesota copper/nickel mine would require billions in water treatment for next 500 years, longer than the company behind it is likely to exist. Example: When the Zortman-Landusky gold mine in Montana went bankrupt in 1999, the operator turned off its water treatment plant and left. Some financial assurance had been built into the project, but the state had underestimated the volume of water needing treatment, and state taxpayers had to create a $34 million trust fund to pay for it.

Why are people hating on Microsoft's new Surface 2 tablets? They do what other tablets don't

NYT's Frank Bruni goes to Pennsylvania to visit Mike Fleck, a real life Log Cabin Republican, whose recent self-outing might make a dent in his recent election record: 100% of the vote in his last three elections

New graph shows how the State Department's Keystone XL review was compromised from Day 1

Former South Carolina State Senator John Hawkins explains why he rues his successful effort to constitutionally ban same sex marriage

The hostility of GOP states to the poor, charted

Paul Waldman, writing in The American Prospect:

When all those Southern states decided to refuse the Medicaid expansion in order to shake their fist at Barack Obama, they screwed over their own poor citizens.

And not only Southern states as you can see below, in his illuminating chart. In the piece that you really should read in its entirely by clicking on the link above, Waldman adds:

In addition, in most states childless adults can't get Medicaid no matter how poor they are, but under the ACA it will no longer matter whether you have children. This is just one more way conservative states that forego the Medicaid expansion (for which the federal government is picking up almost the entire tab, by the way) are harming their own citizens.

Don't get mad, get even: Brian Sims edition

From out Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Sims's facebook page:

All day long I've been hearing about the Governor's comments earlier this morning comparing marriage equality to incest. In truth, I'm not giving him or his comments all that much thought and I encourage you to do the same.
     No one, not even his own party, would argue that he’s an intellectual heavyweight or even a particularly thoughtful person. The larger issue is that despite the fact that the majority of Pennsylvanians disagree with him, he continues to be the heaviest hitter in Pennsylvania’s anti-equality crusade.
     Our job isn’t just to be frustrated with the homophobia coming from the Governor’s Mansion, it’s to do everything we can to ensure that his chapter in Pennsylvania’s political history is as sad and short as his record on schools, economic development and civil rights.
     Tom Corbett has been a disaster for Pennsylvania for so many reasons and I hope this fuels your resolve to vote him out of office.

Nebraska Family Alliance raising funds by unscientific, fear-mongering attack on transgender kids

The first money-beg on the newly formed Nebraska Family Alliance's web site comes just above a ginned-up attack on transgender student athletes. Why do we say "ginned-up"? Well, their very first bullet point has no scientific validity, a point raised by Zack Ford in a piece that also demolished the other two rhetorical lynchpins of NFA's cynical, fund-raising distortion of the issue.

First, the claim of unfair advantages relies on a number of assumptions that paint an incomplete picture. A national report on transgender equality in scholastic athletics points out that this argument only applies to trans women (those born male), assumes that trans women are not “real” women, and leaves no room for trans women who have used hormone blockers to avoid the impact pubescent testosterone might have on their bodies. Further, research has found no evidence to suggest trans women actually have a competitive advantage:

It is also important to know that any athletic advantages a transgender girl or woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen therapy. According to medical experts on this issue, the assumption that a transgender girl or woman competing on a women’s team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence. As one survey of the existing research concludes, “the data available does not appear to suggest that transitioned athletes would compete at an advantage or disadvantage as compared with physically born men and women.”

The Nebraska Family Alliance has published contact information for citizens to relay their concerns to the Nebraska School Activities Associations. Why not use their guide to relay your concerns about unscientific objections from right-wing pressure groups being used to create policies in Nebraska's public schools rather than the best available research?

Below: the Nebraska Family Alliance's new "team"

Left to right: Dave Bydalek – Policy Director, Karen Bowling – Outreach and Operations Director, Hallie Ewing – Communication and Office Coordinator, Hannah Buell – Policy Research and Intern Coordinator, Al Riskowski – Executive Director (Nebraska Family Alliance website)

Woman disowns son for being gay, so her father disowns her

Not only is Karma a bitch, sometimes it's immediate. (Some people are questioning the authenticity of the letter, if not its sentiment.)

Barilla thanks you for your support

Smokey the Bear makes shocking admission to Jon Stewart; he's been getting 'bear' work on Craigslist during government shutdown

Adobe hacked: information on 2.9 million customers compromised; company has known about breach since August

     Adobe is a firm AKSARBENT loves to hate and hopes it is majorly sued over this.
     No commercial software company of which we are aware makes its customers jump through more hoops to register its programs or makes transferring licenses more complicated or is more intrusive at requiring customers to surrender information about themselves.
     Evidently information about about 3,000,000 customers was taken from Adobe, including customer IDs, encrypted passwords, names, credit and debit card numbers, and other information.
     Obviously Adobe is far less careful with customer information as it is about preventing unauthorized use of its software.
     A couple years ago, AKSARBENT purchased a Premiere/Photoshop combo at Best Buy, only to discover that the number on the package wasn't really a serial number, just the beginning step of a scavenger hunt to access a real serial number based on the package number. Ugh.
     Said software shuts down direct uploads of videos to YouTube based on the length of the video, even though (in our case) YouTube long ago expanded our upload file size limit, allowing for videos that exceed Adobe's moronic, inflexible and outdated criteria, but the product, like John Boehner, offers no way out of the problem it created.
     Adobe stinks.

Update: KrebsOnSecurity reports that:

Adobe confirmed that the company believes that hackers accessed a source code repository sometime in mid-August 2013, after breaking into a portion of Adobe’s network that handled credit card transactions for customers.

     Krebs noted that it shared several screen shots of Adobe source code repositories with Adobe that it found on a server used by cyber criminals.

Adobe has now admitted that being confronted with outside knowledge of the breach “helped steer our investigation in a new direction.”

Yeah, we bet it did, but the story gets worse:

The revelations come just two days after KrebsOnSecurity published a story indicating that the same attackers apparently responsible for this breach were also involved in the intrusions into the networks of the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), a congressionally-funded non-profit organization that provides training, investigative support and research to agencies and entities involved in the prevention, investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. As noted in that story, the attackers appear to have initiated the intrusion into the NW3C using a set of attack tools that leveraged security vulnerabilities in Adobe’s ColdFusion Web application server.

     Adobe's ColdFusion security vulnerabilities were fixed "many months ago," but hey — why would the network of an agency aiding the prosecution of cybercrime bother to keep its application server software up to date to discourage cyber criminals from finding out what the feds were working on to arrest them?
     Expect yet another Acrobat reader security update.

Exporting homophobia: Right Wing Watch exposes NOM Chief Brian Brown's secret Moscow trip to lobby for law banning adoptions by gays

Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way, has exposed the National Organization for Marriage's undisclosed trip to lobby Russia's congress, DUMA, on behalf of a law banning adoptions by qualified LGBTs, even in the face of recently publicized horrific beatings in Russian orphanages.
     The law passed less than a week after Brown's visit. NOM did not disclose the trip, refused to respond to Right Wing Watch's inquiries or to provide a copy of the speech Brown gave to DUMA lawmakers.

     According to Russian news reports, the French activists and Brown attended two events in Moscow. One was a joint meeting on changes in international adoption laws with the Duma’s committee on foreign affairs and its committee on family, women and children – whose chair, Yelena Mizulina, authored the ban on gay “propaganda” and the adoption bill.
     The other event was a roundtable discussion on "Traditional Values: The Future of the European Peoples," hosted by the St. Basil the Great Foundation – a Catholic group run by Konstantin Malofeev, the head of a private equity group and spirited anti-gay activist – and also sponsored by the Duma’s family committee, the right-wing Center for Social-Conservative Policy, and a new multi-party group of Russian MPs formed, with approval of the Russian Orthodox Church, to “protect traditional Christian values” and fight “aggressive liberalism” inreaction to Pussy Riot’s protests. Among the measures pushed by the group was the new law imposing jail time for “insulting religious feelings.”