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Two whistleblowers from French aerospace and defense conglomerate Safran SA have revealed that the company bought computer code from a Russian company with connections to the Kremlin, incorporated the code into their own fingerprint recognition software, and sold their product to the Federal Bureau of Investigation — without disclosing the presence of the Russian-made code to the FBI. Analysts are concerned that the code could provide a backdoor for Kremlin-backed hackers to steal biometric data, a potential problem compounded by the fact that over 18,000 other law enforcement agencies in the US, including the TSA, rely on the FBI’s fingerprint database.
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The Edward Snowden case could not be more dramatic or more dangerous to American security, and not only because of his revelations about the massive amount of spying the NSA, British Intelligence and others are doing. We recently ran a story on Unknowncountry.com about a group of National Transportation Safety Board officials who are petitioning the agency to re-open the investigation of the Flight 800 crash, saying that the truth is that it was hit by a missile, and that this truth was covered up.
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Senator Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy introduced a bill yesterday that is designed to place controls over intelligence agency snooping without compromising security. The 72-page bill combines parts of proposals from other senators who have long sought to control the extended government reach that comes from provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act. But can it pass both Senate and House to become law? Unknowncountry sources on Capitol Hill tell us that the bill has some chance of passing the Senate, but in an amended form. There would be further softening needed to get it through the House of Representatives.
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Michael Hastings, a contributor to Rolling Stone and BuzzFeed, died on Tuesday morning in a fiery automobile accident in Los Angeles at the age of 33. The engine of the 2013 Mercedes he was driving was found a hundred feet from the burned out ruin of the car itself. When the accident took place, local residents thought a bomb had exploded. The Los Angeles Police Department immediately ruled out foul play. In a Tweet, the Wikileaks organization said, "Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him."

He is best known for his 2010 Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of US Military forces in Afghanistan.read more