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Assange: Trump-tied firm sought WikiLeaks’ help before …

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I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks, Julian Assange wrote. | Jack Taylor/Getty Images

By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM

10/25/2017 01:51 PM EDT

Updated 10/25/2017 05:12 PM EDT

One of the Trump campaign's top data firms sought to connect with Julian Assange before the 2016 election, the Wikileaks founder said on Twitter on Wednesday.

I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks, Assange wrote.

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The interaction was first reported by The Daily Beast, which said the firm approached WikiLeaks about finding emails sent during Hillary Clintons time as secretary of state that were not made public by the State Department. Assange, however, did not specify in his tweet who from Cambridge Analytica approached him or what they sought.

We have confirmed the approach and rejection only. Not the subject, Assange later added on Twitter.

WikiLeaks has come under scrutiny since the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the organization was given Democrats' hacked emails as part of a Russian government effort to interfere in the election to help Donald Trump. WikiLeaks has denied any connection to the Russian effort.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 campaign, including whether any Trump associates colluded with Moscow.

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Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with deep ties to the billionaire Mercer family, was paid $5.9 million by Trump's campaign during the 2016 campaign cycle. Neither WikiLeaks nor Cambridge Analytica responded to POLITICOs request for comment.

Trumps campaign released a statement later Wednesday that appeared to try to distance itself from Cambridge Analytica.

Once President Trump secured the nomination in 2016, one of the most important decisions we made was to partner with the Republican National Committee on data analytics, Michael Glassner, executive director of the Trump campaign, said in the statement. We as a campaign made the choice to rely on the voter data of the Republican National Committee to help elect President Donald J. Trump. Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false.

According to the Daily Beast report, Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix approached Assange about recovering 33,000 emails that were deleted from Clintons private email server. She has said the emails were deleted because they did not relate to government business.

Clintons use of a private email server while secretary of state was a major focus of the 2016 campaign, as Trump and other Republicans argued she mishandled classified information to a degree that they said merited criminal charges. The FBI declined to charge Clinton.

Trump called on Russia at one point to dig up his Democratic rival's deleted emails, though he later said his comment was a joke.

He regularly praised WikiLeaks during the campaign as the organization dumped a slew of hacked emails from the account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, as well as internal Democratic National Committee emails.

I love WikiLeaks, Trump quipped at one campaign rally.

Trump has subsequently dismissed the Russia investigation as a witch hunt and fake news and defended Assange and WikiLeaks.

Mike Pompeo, Trumps CIA director, has described WikiLeaks as behaving like a hostile intelligence service.

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Assange: Trump-tied firm sought WikiLeaks' help before ...

Julian Assange confirms data firm Trump hired during campaign …

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange confirmed Wednesday that the CEO of a data analytics firm President Trump's campaign hired during last year's election offered to help him handle 33,000 emails he claimed to have recovered from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Cambridge Analytica leader Alexander Nix told a third party he had contacted Assange about partnering to work on the emails, though the specific task at hand was not shared.

Assange did not accept Nix's offer to help, sources familiar with a congressional probe into the Trump campaign's possible relationship with Russia said Wednesday. Assange tweeted a statement mid-Wednesday local time.

"I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks," he said.

However, it's still unconfirmed since the Clinton emails were never released that Wikileaks has the thousands of pages of electronic messages.

A federal team and the House and Senate intelligence committees have so far been unsuccessful at finding any evidence of collusion between Trump's associates and Russia before, during, or after the 2016 presidential election.

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Julian Assange confirms data firm Trump hired during campaign ...

Julian Assange confirms Cambridge Analytica sought …

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A data-mining firm that worked for Donald Trumps election campaign made an approach to WikiLeaks, founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday.

The statement followed a report in the Daily Beast that Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix made contact with Assange about the possible release of 33,000 of former secretary of state Hillary Clintons missing emails.

I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks, Assange tweeted. He did not elaborate on the content of the request.

The Daily Beast report said: Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the WikiLeaks founder release Clintons missing emails, according to two sources familiar with a Congressional investigation into interactions between Trump associates and the Kremlin.

Those sources also relayed that, according to Nixs email, Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didnt want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own. If the claims Nix made in that email are true, this would be the closest known connection between Trumps campaign and Assange.

Another report by CNN, citing two unnamed sources, said Nix wrote to several people including Trump mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, explaining that he had emailed Assange seeking access to the Clinton emails to turn them into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee.

Mercer and her father Robert, a hedge fund billionaire, are major investors in Cambridge Analytica. Steve Bannon was a vice-president of the company he reportedly had holdings valued at between $1m and $5m before joining the Trump campaign and becoming the White House chief strategist, a post he left in August.

Cambridge Analyticas website claims it holds up to 5,000 data points on more than 230 million American voters. It promises to help clients gain the advantage over your opponents by adding our blend of big data analytics and behavioral psychology to your campaign arsenal. It is believed to analyse social media, such as Facebook likes, to build a psychographic picture of target voters.

The company was hired as part of the Trump campaigns data operation, led by Brad Parscale and overseen by Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Between 29 July and 12 December the Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.9m, according to the Federal Election Commission. Soon after the election Forbes magazine reported that Kushner turned to it to map voter universes and identify which parts of the Trump platform mattered most.

But on Wednesday afternoon Michael Glassner, executive director of the Trump campaign, released a statement that did not mention Cambridge Analytica or WikiLeaks by name. We as a campaign made the choice to rely on the voter data of the Republican National Committee to help elect President Donald J Trump, he said. Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false.

The Trump campaign is under federal investigation over alleged collusion with Russia. Parscale was interviewed on Tuesday by the House intelligence committee and, according to CNN, many of the committees questions were about the campaigns work with Cambridge Analytica, which Parscale downplayed.

The committee has also requested information from Cambridge Analytica about its work for the Trump campaign. The company has said it is complying but is not under investigation and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing.

The 33,000 emails deleted from Clintons personal email server have never come to light and there is no evidence that WikiLeaks possessed them. In July last year Trump told a press conference: Russia, if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

He made Clintons emails a central focus of the campaign in which his supporters chanted, Lock her up! and regularly lavished praise on WikiLeaks. In October he declared: I love WikiLeaks!

WikiLeaks published emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta just hours after the release of a potentially campaign-ending Access Hollywood tape in which Trump could be heard boasting about groping women. Assange has denied receiving help from Russian hackers.

During the election campaign, the veteran political operative Roger Stone, who is close to Trump, told Boston Herald Radio that he expected Julian Assange and the Wikileaks people to drop a payload of new documents on a weekly basis fairly soon. And that of course will answer the question of exactly what was erased on that email server.

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Cryptojacking Lets Strangers Mine Cryptocurrency With Your …

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Theres something new to add to your fun mental list of invisible internet dangers. Joining classic favorites like adware and spyware comes a new, tricky threat called cryptojacking, which secretly uses your laptop or mobile device to mine cryptocurrency when you visit an infected site.

Malicious miners arent new in themselves, but cryptojacking has exploded in popularity over the past few weeks, because it offers a clever twist. Bad guys dont need to sneak software onto your computer to get it going, which can be a resource-intensive attack. Instead, the latest technique uses Javascript to start working instantly when you load a compromised web page. There's no immediate way to tell that the page has a hidden mining component, and you may not even notice any impact on performance, but someone has hijacked your devicesand electric billfor digital profit.

The idea for cryptojacking coalesced in mid-September, when a company called Coinhive debuted a script that could start mining the cryptocurrency Monero when a webpage loaded. The Pirate Bay torrenting site quickly incorporated it to raise funds, and within weeks Coinhive copycats started cropping up. Hackers have even found ways to inject the scripts into websites like Politifact.com and Showtime, unbeknownst to the proprietors, mining money for themselves off of another sites traffic.

'Theres no opt-in option or opt-out. Weve observed it putting a real strain on system resources.'

Adam Kujawa, Malwarebytes Labs

So far these types of attacks have been discovered in compromised sites' source code by usersincluding security researcher Troy Murschwho notice their processor load spiking dramatically after navigating to cryptojacked pages. To protect yourself from cryptojacking, you can add sites you're worried about, or ones that you know practice in-browser mining, to your browser's ad blocking tool. There's also a Chrome extension called No Coin, created by developer Rafael Keramidas, that blocks Coinhive mining and is adding protection against other miners, too.

"Weve seen malicious websites use embedded scripting to deliver malware, force ads, and force browsing to specific websites," says Karl Sigler, threat intelligence research manager at SpiderLabs, which does malware research for the scanner Trustwave. "Weve also seen malware that focuses on either stealing cryptocurrency wallets or mining in the background. Combine the two together and you have a match made in hell."

What complicates the cryptojacking wave, experts argue, is that with the right protections in place it could actually be a constructive tool. Coinhive has always maintained that it intends its product as a new revenue stream for websites. Some sites already use a similar approach to raise funds for charitable causes like disaster relief. And observers particularly see in-browser miners as a potential supplement or alternative to digital ads, which notoriously have security issues of their own.

Early adopters like the Pirate Bay have made a pitch to their users that the technology is worth tolerating. "Do you want ads or do you want to give away a few of your CPU cycles every time you visit the site?" Pirate Bay asked its users in mid-September. Most commenters on the feedback request supported in-browser mining if it reduced ads, but one noted that if multiple sites adopt the technique, having multiple tabs open while browsing the web could eat up processing resources.

The concerns run deeper among audiences unaware that their devices are being used without their knowledge or consent. In fact, malware scanners have already begun blocking these mining programs, citing their intrusiveness and opacity. Coinhive, and the rash of alternatives that have cropped up, need to take good-faith steps, like incorporating hard-coded authentication protections and adding caps on how much user processing power they draw, before malware scanners will stop blocking them.

Everything is kind of crazy right now because this just came out, says Adam Kujawa, the director of Malwarebytes Labs, which does research for the scanning service Malwarebytes and started blocking Coinhive and other cryptojacking scripts this week. But I actually think the whole concept of a script-based miner is a good idea. It could be a viable replacement for something like advertising revenue. But were blocking it now just because theres no opt-in option or opt-out. Weve observed it putting a real strain on system resources. The scripts could degrade hardware.

To that end, Coinhive introduced a new version of its product this week, called AuthedMine, which would require user permission to turn their browser into a Monero-generator. "AuthedMine enforces an explicit opt-in from the end user to run the miner," Coinhive said in a statement on Monday. "We have gone through great lengths to ensure that our implementation of the opt-in cannot be circumvented and we pledge that it will stay this way. The AuthedMine miner will never start without the user's consent."

This course-correction is a positive step, but numerous cryptojacking scriptsincluding Coinhive's originalare already out there for hackers to use, and can't be recalled now. Experts also see other potential problems with the technique, even if the mining process is totally transparent. "An opt-in option...doesnt eliminate the problems of potential instability introduced by this," Trustwave's Sigler says. "When dozens of machines get locked up at a company, or when important work is lost due to a mining glitch, this can have a serious effect on a organizations network."

And with more malware scanners on the alert, hackers will start to evolve the technology to make it subtler and more difficult to find. As with other types of malware, attackers can bounce victims around to malicious websites using redirect tactics, or incorporate Javascript obfuscation techniques to keep scanners from finding their script-based miners.

Still, the positive potential of in-browser miners seems worth the complications to some. "Im hoping that within a year well see even more evolution of this technology to the point where it cannot be abused by website owners who want to trick people into running these miners," Malwarebytes' Kujawa says. "But if it's only associated with malicious activities, then it might take awhile for the technology to evolve to a place thats more secure, and for anyone to trust using it."

Like so many web tools, cryptojacking has plenty of promise as an innovationand plenty of people happy to exploit it.

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Cryptojacking Lets Strangers Mine Cryptocurrency With Your ...

Whistleblower Julian Assange Sounds Off on #MeToo Twitter …

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Julian Assange, the whistleblower once accused of rape, comparedthe men accused by sexual assault victims in the #MeToo campaign to black men beinglynched after being wrongly accused of raping white women.

Assange posted on Twitter asking how women posting with the #MeToo hashtag would have reacted back whenthe lynching of black men accused of sexual misconduct against white women was a common occurrence.

"All I can say is thank god the Twittermob wasnt around in the Old South: there would have been a hell of a lot more black men swinging from trees as tweeters said: I believe the woman. Hes definitely a rapist. #metoo," Assange tweeted.

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Many people called out the founder of WikiLeaks for his tweet, with some reminding him that he was accused of rape and molestation in two incidents in 2010.

"Is that why youre hiding in a cupboard from being questioned on sex abuse allegations?" said Twitter user Art Steventon."You have zero agency on this subject."

Otherusers called the tweet a disgusting analogy, with some saying Assange wants rape victims to keep quiet.

The #MeToo campaign, started byTarana Burke, went viralon social media when actressAlyssa Milano posted a tweet urging women to come forward with their stories of sexual harassment. The post cameafter scores of women in Hollywood accused now-disgraced movie executiveHarvey Weinsteinof sexual harassment and rape.

Assange followedhis tweet with another poston Saturdaythat also didn't sit well with social media. He said he wanted to let women in on a "male secret": that men who call themselves feminists are "predatory sleaze bags."

The post was an apparent reference to Weinstein, who was known for contributing to causes that supported women's equality despite his long history of allegedly abusing them.

Assange linked to a story about a retired Swedish police chief whohad tried to end sexism in the police force but was also accused of sex trafficking and rape. Assange compared the chief to Weinstein.

Social media users began to poke fun at Assange for his male secret comment, with some arguing that Assange was trying to dissuade men from becoming feminists.

Assange has spent nearly seven years living in the embassy after the accusations of sexual harassment were aired. Assange tried to clear his name in 2016 when he claimed the sex with the woman accusing him of rape was "entirely innocent" and consensual.

After Swedish authorities dropped the rape charge, his lawyers said in May that he would stay at the embassy until it was clear whether or not the U.S. would extradite him for leaking classified military information.

Assange's lawyer Melinda Taylor previously told Newsweek that her client would remain in the embassy until "the ongoing national security prosecution in the United States" had ended.

WikiLeaks then released a statement in May on Assanges stay in the embassy.

UK refuses to confirm or deny whether it has already received a US extradition warrant for Julian Assange. Focus now moves to UK, the group said in a tweet.

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Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth

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On 16 October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired an interview with Hillary Clinton: one of many to promote her score-settling book about why she was not elected President of the United States.

Wading through the Clinton book,What Happened,is an unpleasant experience, like a stomach upset. Smears and tears. Threats and enemies. They (voters) were brainwashed and herded against her by the odious Donald Trump in cahoots with sinister Slavs sent from the great darkness known as Russia, assisted by an Australian nihilist, Julian Assange.

InTheNew York Times,there was a striking photograph of a female reporter consoling Clinton, having just interviewed her. The lost leader was, above all, absolutely a feminist. The thousands of womens lives this feminist destroyed while in government Libya, Syria, Honduras were of no interest.

InNew Yorkmagazine, Rebecca Traister wrote that Clinton was finally expressing some righteous anger. It was even hard for her to smile: so hard that the muscles in her face ache. Surely, she concluded, if we allowed womens resentments the same bearing we allow mens grudges, America would be forced to reckon with the fact that all these angry women might just have a point.

Drivel such as this, trivialising womens struggles, marks the media hagiographies of Hillary Clinton. Her political extremism and warmongering are of no consequence. Her problem, wrote Traister, was a damaging infatuation with the email story. The truth, in other words.

The leaked emails of Clintons campaign manager, John Podesta, revealed a direct connection between Clinton and the foundation and funding of organised jihadism in the Middle East and Islamic State (IS). The ultimate source of most Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia, was central to her career.

One email, in 2014, sent by Clinton to Podesta soon after she stepped down as US Secretary of State, discloses that Islamic State is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Clinton accepted huge donations from both governments for the Clinton Foundation.

As Secretary of State, she approved the worlds biggest ever arms sale to her benefactors in Saudi Arabia, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms sales to the world for use in stricken countries like Yemen doubled.

This was revealed by WikiLeaks and published byTheNew York Times.No one doubts the emails are authentic. The subsequent campaign to smear WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, as agents of Russia, has grown into a spectacular fantasy known as Russiagate. The plot is said to have been signed off by Vladimir Putin himself. There is not a shred of evidence.

The ABC Australia interview with Clinton is an outstanding example of smear and censorship by omission. I would say it is a model.

No one, the interviewer, Sarah Ferguson, says to Clinton, could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at that moment [of the inauguration of Trump] Do you remember how visceral it was for you?

Having established Clintons visceral suffering, Ferguson asks about Russias role.

CLINTON: I think Russia affected the perceptions and views of millions of voters, we now know. I think that their intention coming from the very top with Putin was to hurt me and to help Trump.

FERGUSON: How much of that was a personal vendetta by Vladimir Putin against you?

CLINTON: I mean he wants to destabilise democracy. He wants to undermine America, he wants to go after the Atlantic Alliance and we consider Australia kind of a an extension of that

The opposite is true. It is Western armies that are massing on Russias border for the first time since the Russian Revolution 100 years ago.

FERGUSON: How much damage did [Julian Assange] do personally to you?

CLINTON: Well, I had a lot of history with him because I was Secretary of State when ah WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive ah information from our State Department and our Defence Department.

What Clinton fails to say and her interviewer fails to remind her is that in 2010, WikiLeaks revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered asecret intelligence campaign targeted at the United Nations leadership, including the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent Security Council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.

A classified directive, signed by Clinton, was issued to US diplomats in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks.

This was known as Cablegate. It was lawless spying.

CLINTON: He [Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And ah, he has done their bidding.

Clinton offered no evidence to back up this serious accusation, nor did Ferguson challenge her.

CLINTON: You dont see damaging negative information coming out about the Kremlin on WikiLeaks. You didnt see any of that published.

This was false. WikiLeaks has published a massive number of documents on Russia more than 800,000, most of them critical, many of them used in books and as evidence in court cases.

CLINTON: So I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator.

FERGUSON: Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr for free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him? Well, youve just described him as a nihilist.

CLINTON: Yeah, well, and a tool. I mean hes a tool of Russian intelligence. And if hes such a, you know, martyr of free speech, why doesnt WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia?

Again, Ferguson said nothing to challenge this or correct her.

CLINTON: There was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to weaponise that information, to make up stories to help Trump.

FERGUSON: Now, along with some of those outlandish stories, there was information that was revealed about the Clinton Foundation that at least in some of the voters minds seemed to associate you .

CLINTON: Yeah, but it was false!

FERGUSON: with the peddling of information

CLINTON: It was false! It was totally false! ..

FERGUSON: Do you understand how difficult it was for some voters to understand the amounts of money that the [Clinton] Foundation is raising, the confusion with the consultancy that was also raising money, getting gifts and travel and so on for Bill Clinton that even Chelsea had some issues with?

CLINTON: Well you know, Im sorry, Sarah, I mean I, I know the facts .

The ABC interviewer lauded Clinton as the icon of your generation. She asked her nothing about the enormous sums she creamed off from Wall Street, such as the $675,000 she received for speaking at Goldman Sachs, one of the banks at the centre of the 2008 crash. Clintons greed deeply upset the kind of voters she abused as deplorables.

Clearly looking for a cheap headline in the Australian press, Ferguson asked her if Trump was a clear and present danger to Australia and got her predictable response.

This high-profile journalist made no mention of Clintons own clear and present danger to the people of Iran whom she once threatened to obliterate totally, and the 40,000 Libyans who died in the attack on Libya in 2011 that Clinton orchestrated. Flushed with excitement, the Secretary of State rejoiced at the gruesome murder of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.

Libya was Hillary Clintons war, Julian Assange said in a filmed interview with me last year. Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. Thats documented throughout her emails theres more than 1700 emails out of the 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that weve published, just about Libya. Its not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President.

So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the LibyaTick Tockthat was produced for Hillary Clinton, and its the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.

Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself was no longer able to control the movement of people through it.

This not Clintons visceral pain in losing to Trump nor the rest of the self-serving scuttlebutt in her ABC interview was the story. Clinton shared responsibility for massively de-stabilising the Middle East, which led to the death, suffering and flight of thousands of women, men and children.

Ferguson raised not a word of it. Clinton repeatedly defamed Assange, who was neither defended nor offered a right of reply on his own countrys state broadcaster.

In a tweet from London,Assange cited the ABCs own Code of Practice, which states: Where allegations are made about a person or organisation, make reasonable efforts in the circumstances to provide a fair opportunity to respond.

Following the ABC broadcast, Fergusons executive producer, Sally Neighbour, re-tweeted the following: Assange is Putins bitch. We all know it!

The slander, since deleted, was even used as a link to the ABC interview captioned Assange is Putins (sic) b****. We all know it!

In the years I have known Julian Assange, I have watched a vituperative personal campaign try to stop him and WikiLeaks. It has been a frontal assault on whistleblowing, on free speech and free journalism, all of which are now under sustained attack from governments and corporate internet controllers.

The first serious attacks on Assange came from theGuardianwhich, like a spurned lover, turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, aGuardianbook led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. Assange was portrayed as callous and a damaged personality.

It was as if a rampant jealousy could not accept that his remarkable achievements stood in marked contrast to that of his detractors in the mainstream media. It is like watching the guardians of the status quo, regardless of age, struggling to silence real dissent and prevent the emergence of the new and hopeful.

Today, Assange remains a political refugee from the war-making dark state of which Donald Trump is a caricature and Hillary Clinton the embodiment. His resilience and courage are astonishing. Unlike him, his tormentors are cowards.

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Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth

On the trail of Edward Snowden – variety.com

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From the Kennedy Assassination to Edward Snowden, Edward Jay Epstein has built a career out of challenging the conventional wisdom. The author of several seminal works of investigative journalism is the subject of an arresting new documentary, Hall of Mirrors, which premiered at the New York Film Festival this month. It is looking for distribution. The film marks the directing debut of sisters Ena and Ines Talakic, and serves as both a retrospective of Epsteins fascinating career and a memorial to a type of reporting that has largely fallen out of favor in an era of clickbait headlines.

Hes just someone who asks basic questions and gets full access to the most incredible people, said Ines Talakic. He takes his time and he digs deep.

Thats been a hallmark of Epsteins career. As an undergraduate at Cornell he managed to speak to nearly every member of the Warren Commission save for Chief Justice Earl Warren. His resulting book, 1966s Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, pulled back the curtain on a shoddy investigation into Lee Harvey Oswalds motives and methods at a time when the consensus view was the government has left no stone unturned. A long line of Kennedy conspiracy theories can be traced back to the questions Inquest raised.

I like learning, said Epstein. I spend years investigating something and over that time you really become an expert.

Armed with a deep-seeded curiosity, Epstein spent the rest of his career tackling thorny subjects. He wrote one of the early works of media criticism, News From Nowhere, after spending four months in the newsroom of NBC, and an additional two months in those of CBS and ABC. Later works such as The Rise and Fall of Diamonds, a look at the cartels behind the precious gems, and Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, a biography of the monomaniacal and ethically shady chairman of the Occidental Petroleum Company, were also deeply researched.

But its not just unscrupulous moguls and political conspiracies. Epstein has also written lucidly about Hollywood. Hes had a particular fascination and fluidity with the movie business economic underpinnings and colorful accounting project. Perhaps it was an earlier failed attempt to produce a film version of the Illiad that interested him in Tinseltown. The 81-year old writers next project will look at digital disruption and its impact on the film industry.

The Talakic sisters met Epstein at a party hosted by Nouriel Roubini, the noted economist, and eventually convinced the writer that he would be a good subject for a documentary. They then spent more than four years getting an up close and personal look at Epsteins methods and archives.

Ed is fascinating because you realize that he is really a part of history through all of his investigations, said Ena Talakic. We found it interesting that someone who just asks basic questions can end up getting full access to people and can convince them to talk to him.

Over the course of the film, the Talakic sisters follow Epstein as he heads to Hawaii, Hong Kong, and Russia, re-tracing the route that Snowden took as he decided to reveal the inner workings of Americas intelligence gathering operation, and later was forced to seek asylum from Vladimir Putin.

To prove his point that Snowden might have been a spy, Epstein tracked down former neighbors, co-workers, and members of the KGB. The book that emerged from the months of reporting, How America Lost Its Secrets, elicited some heated criticism, particularly from journalists such as Glenn Grenwald and Barton Gellman, who broke the initial Snowden pieces.

How America Lost Its Secrets debuted in January of 2017. Epstein wonders if the book and its claims about Russias designs on Snowden wouldnt have been more warmly received if it came out a few months later, when Russia was a hot topic. After all, the Kremlin is in the headlines for trying to manipulate the U.S. presidential election, and Putins ambitions to influence Western politics have become clearer.

Its hard to pretend now that it didnt matter that Snowden went to Russia, said Epstein. The view of Russia at the time was benign. Now its demonic.

Hall of Mirrors is very much a celebration of a life well lived and a body of investigative work that has helped shape popular perceptions of government, culture, and commerce. Theres something sad about it, however. Its a reminder that the kind of reporting that Epstein does research intensive, meticulous, and wide ranging is fading. The journalism that is replacing it looks flimsy by comparison.

There are fewer and fewer outlets for investigative reporting, said Ines Talakic. Most people arent able to spend the same type of time. People are under so much pressure to rush stories.

Epsteins career and writings are a reminder that great reporting shouldnt be rushed. It takes time to discover the truth.

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On the trail of Edward Snowden - variety.com

Open Source Software List: 2017 Ultimate List – Datamation

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It's become a annual tradition at Datamation to publish an complete roundup of all the open source projects we've featured throughout the year. This year's update includes a vast trove of open source software: 1,343 different projects, from 138 different categories, including two brand new categories.

This year's open source list has quite a few new additions related to cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). It also has quite a few new projects related to marketing software.

Please note that this is not a ranking. The projects are organized into categories and then listed alphabetically within the categories.

As always, if you know of additional open source software that you'd like to see us cover in future lists, feel free to note them in the Comments section below.

Table of Contents

Sure, youre a Windows user in fact youre using an up to date Windows OS. But in todays world, its still entirely likely youre looking for the best open source software for your PC. This list gathers some familiar names with lesser known apps, all with an eye toward boosting your Windows 10 machine. Which app do you think is the best open source software for Win10

There are countless websites that offer extensive lists of open source software to download. But finding the best open source website is easier said than done. To help, weve compiled a list of the very best open source websites let the downloading begin.

In this aggregation of open source BI tools, youll certainly see some famous names: MySQL, Pentaho, along with some names that get less buzz as well. Of course in the rapidly changing business intelligence market, todays big names could easily be surpassed over time by a little known tool feature sets change quickly. Which open source BI tool on this list will be most popular in the years ahead?

Theres no debate about it: Windows XP is an aging operating system. For those looking to replace it and yes, its time with an open source operating system, this is the list for you. This survey of open source operating systems includes superstars like Ubuntu along with solid players like Knoppix. Come on, replace that old Windows OS!

It makes perfect sense: youre using financial software to track your expenses, so naturally youre interested in open source financial software. Open source much of which is a free download is made for penny pinchers. The open source financial software in this list may save you, in some cases, hundreds of dollars. A penny saved is a penny earned.

Its clear that, as value propositions go, this ones a no-brainer: replace your expensive apps with low-cost or free open source applications. Certainly theres debate about feature sets: some commercial software partisans argue that the feature sets for open source applications do not match their commercial counterparts. Undoubtedly the other side disagrees strongly. You can be the judge download a few open source applications and check them out. Do they compare?

Open source business software is, in many cases, the ideal solution for small businesses. If youre as cash-strapped as many SMBs, youll certainly want to look at this list of open source business software. Bottom line: free or low cost is better than high priced, even if that requires giving up some familiar software choices to explore options that are lesser known. If money is tight, open source business software can often be a useful option.

1. The Accessibility Project

Launched in 2013, this site aims to provide information on making other websites accessible to people with a variety of impairments, particularly those who are blind. You can read the content at the link above; if you'd like to contribute, visit the project's GitHub page. Operating System: OS Independent

2. Edoceo Imperium

This web-based accounting package was created with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in mind. It includes CRM, work order and invoice capabilities as well as standard accounting features. Check out the online demo to see it in action. Operating System: OS Independent

3. FrontAccounting

Another web-based accounting option for SMBs, FrontAccounting boasts inventory tracking and manufacturing management abilities. It's been downloaded more than 200,000 times. Operating System: OS Independent

4. GnuCash

GnuCash combines personal finance software with small business accounting software, which some small business owners find helpful. It can track investments, create graphs, import financial data, set up scheduled transactions and perform standard double-entry accounting. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X

5. LedgerSMB

LedgerSMB combines ERP and accounting capabilities in a single package, and it also includes a flexible development framework for extending its features. It has been downloaded more than 86,000 times since 2006. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X

6. TurboCASH

Used by more than 80,000 businesses, TurboCASH is a flexible accounting package that compares favorably with QuickBooks and Sage. It was created in the UK but also has a chart of accounts and currency features designed for U.S. businesses. Operating System: Windows

7. OpenDisc

The OpenDisc project collects many of the most popular open source applications for Windows into one download. You can also get the project on a CD for a donation of $10. Operating System: Windows

8. ASSP

ASSP claims to be "the absolute best SPAM fighting weapon that the world has ever known!" It offers easy, browser-based setup and works with most mail servers. Operating System: OS Independent.

9. MailScanner

Downloaded more than 1.3 million times, MailScanner is based on SpamAssassin and works with anti-virus software like ClamAV to protect mail servers at companies or ISPs. Support is available through third-party companies. Operating System: OS Independent.

10. Scrollout F1

This full-featured mail security solution incorporates anti-spam, anti-virus and other capabilities with an interface that the project creators say is as easy to use as a car radio. Paid support is available. Operating System: Windows, Linux.

11. SpamAssassin

This Apache project claims to be the "#1 Enterprise Open-Source Spam Filter." It uses a wide variety of methods to identify and block spam, and it works with nearly all mail servers. Operating System: primarily Linux and OS X, although Windows versions are available.

12. SpamBayes

SpamBayes uses statistical algorithms to calculate the probability that an incoming message is spam, and it adapts over time as spammers change their methods. It's available as a plug-in for many popular email services and clients, including Outlook, Thunderbird and others. Operating System: OS Independent.

13. ClamAV

One of the most popular open source security applications, ClamAV has been incorporated into many different products and has been called "the de facto standard for mail gateway scanning." The core program works on UNIX-based systems, but the website also offers information on Immunet, a ClamAV-based Windows solution that is available in both free and paid versions. Operating System: Linux, but front-ends and additional versions are available for other OSes.

14. ClamTk

This variation on ClamAV adds an easy-to-use GUI to the popular anti-virus engine. Now ten years old, this is a mature project that is included in many Linux distributions. Operating System: Linux.

15. ClamWin Free Antivirus

This Windows-based version of ClamAV boasts more than 600,000 users. It offers a scanning scheduler, integration with Windows Explorer and Outlook, automatic downloads of the updated malware database and support for Windows 7 and 8. Operating System: Windows.

16. Caffe

The brainchild of a UC Berkeley PhD candidate, Caffe is a deep learning framework based on expressive architecture and extensible code. It's claim to fame is its speed, which makes it popular with both researchers and enterprise users. According to its website, it can process more than 60 million images in a single day using just one NVIDIA K40 GPU. It is managed by the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center (BVLC), and companies like NVIDIA and Amazon have made grants to support its development.

17. CNTK

Short for Computational Network Toolkit, CNTK is one of Microsoft's open source artificial intelligence tools. It boasts outstanding performance whether it is running on a system with only CPUs, a single GPU, multiple GPUs or multiple machines with multiple GPUs. Microsoft has primarily utilized it for research into speech recognition, but it is also useful for applications like machine translation, image recognition, image captioning, text processing, language understanding and language modeling.

18. Deeplearning4j

Deeplearning4j is an open source deep learning library for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It runs in distributed environments and integrates with both Hadoop and Apache Spark. It makes it possible to configure deep neural networks, and it's compatible with Java, Scala and other JVM languages.

The project is managed by a commercial company called Skymind, which offers paid support, training and an enterprise distribution of Deeplearning4j.

19. Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit

Like CNTK, the Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit (DMTK) is one of Microsoft's open source artificial intelligence tools. Designed for use in big data applications, it aims to make it faster to train AI systems. It consists of three key components: the DMTK framework, the LightLDA topic model algorithm, and the Distributed (Multisense) Word Embedding algorithm. As proof of DMTK's speed, Microsoft says that on an eight-cluster machine, it can "train a topic model with 1 million topics and a 10-million-word vocabulary (for a total of 10 trillion parameters), on a document collection with over 100-billion tokens," a feat that is unparalleled by other tools.

20. H2O

Focused more on enterprise uses for AI than on research, H2O has large companies like Capital One, Cisco, Nielsen Catalina, PayPal and Transamerica among its users. It claims to make is possible for anyone to use the power of machine learning and predictive analytics to solve business problems. It can be used for predictive modeling, risk and fraud analysis, insurance analytics, advertising technology, healthcare and customer intelligence.

It comes in two open source versions: standard H2O and Sparkling Water, which is integrated with Apache Spark. Paid enterprise support is also available.

21. NuPIC

Managed by a company called Numenta, NuPIC is an open source artificial intelligence project based on a theory called Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM. Essentially, HTM is an attempt to create a computer system modeled after the human neocortex. The goal is to create machines that "approach or exceed human level performance for many cognitive tasks."

In addition to the open source license, Numenta also offers NuPic under a commercial license, and it also offers licenses on the patents that underlie the technology.

22. OpenCyc

Developed by a company called Cycorp, OpenCyc provides access to the Cyc knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine. It includes more than 239,000 terms, about 2,093,000 triples, and about 69,000 owl:sameAs links to external semantic data namespaces. It is useful for rich domain modeling, semantic data integration, text understanding, domain-specific expert systems and game AIs. The company also offers two other versions of Cyc: one for researchers that is free but not open source and one for enterprise use that requires a fee.

23. OpenNN

Designed for researchers and developers with advanced understanding of artificial intelligence, OpenNN is a C++ programming library for implementing neural networks. Its key features include deep architectures and fast performance. Extensive documentation is available on the website, including an introductory tutorial that explains the basics of neural networks. Paid support for OpenNNis available through Artelnics, a Spain-based firm that specializes in predictive analytics.

24. SystemML

First developed by IBM, SystemML is now an Apache big data project. It offers a highly-scalable platform that can implement high-level math and algorithms written in R or a Python-like syntax. Enterprises are already using it to track customer service on auto repairs, to direct airport traffic and to link social media data with banking customers. It can run on top of Spark or Hadoop.

25. TensorFlow

TensorFlow is one of Google's open source artificial intelligence tools. It offers a library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. It can run on a wide variety of different systems with single- or multi-CPUs and GPUs and even runs on mobile devices. It boasts deep flexibility, true portability, automatic differential capabilities and support for Python and C++. The website includes a very extensive list of tutorials and how-tos for developers or researchers interested in using or extending its capabilities.

26. Torch

Torch describes itself as "a scientific computing framework with wide support for machine learning algorithms that puts GPUs first." The emphasis here is on flexibility and speed. In addition, it's fairly easy to use with packages for machine learning, computer vision, signal processing, parallel processing, image, video, audio and networking. It relies on a scripting language called LuaJIT that is based on Lua.

27. Celestia

Travel virtually to anywhere in the known universe at any time with Celestia. It displays hundreds of thousands of celestial bodies as they would appear in the night skies. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.

28. KStars

Similar to Stellarium, KStars lets users view "up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects, all 8 planets, the sun and moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids." It also includes a number of tools helpful for amateur astronomers, such as an observation list, an FOV editor, a sky calendar, supernova alerts and a glossary of technical terms. (Note that in order to use KStars on Windows, you'll have to download KDE for Windows.) Operating System: Windows, Linux

29. Stellarium

Another option for budding astronomers, this one confines the point of view to planet earth rather than allowing users to zoom throughout the universe, but it is so accurate that it is used by many planetariums. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.

30. Amarok

Amarok invites users to rediscover their music. It integrates with a variety of Web services and includes features like dynamic playlists, collection management, bookmarking, file tracking and import from other music databases, including iTunes. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS.

31. Ardour

Designed for use by professional audio engineers, musicians, soundtrack editors and composers, Ardour is a complete audio recording, mixing and editing suite. Key features include support for most hardware, flexible recording, unlimited multichannel tracks, unlimited undo/redo and much more. Operating System: Linux, OS X

32. aTunes

This Java-based music player and manager displays complete informationincluding lyricsfor the song currently playing. It's a good option for users with particularly large music collections. Operating System: OS Independent

33. Audacious

Unlike some audio players, Audacious doesn't use a lot of system resources, so it doesn't degrade system performance when you're using your PC for other tasks as well as listening to music. The latest update offers improved playlist shuffling, easier recording of Internet streams and a better equalizer interface. Operating System: Windows, Linux.

34. Audacity

A perennial favorite among Linux desktop users, Audacity gets hundreds of thousands of downloads per month. It was updated in July with new scrubbing and seeking features, preset effects and improved plug-in installation. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X

35. CDex

Downloaded more than 60 million times, CDex is a simple, handy tool for converting CDs to data files. It supports multiple file formats, including WAV, MP3, FLAC, AAC, WMA and OGG. Operating System: Windows.

36. Cdrtools

This suite of command-line tools includes the cdrecord CD/DVD/Blu-ray recording software, as well as tools for reading optical media, extracting audio, and more. It's a mature project that has been around for quite a few years. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.

37. cdrtfe

Cdrtfe serves as a front-end for cdrtools and some other command-line recording applications. It can burn audio CDs, data discs, bootable discs, DVD-Video discs, ISO images and other types of optical media. The latest version supports Windows 10. Operating System: Windows.

38. Clementine

Based on an older version of Amarok, Clementine focuses on providing "a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music." It supports Internet radio streams, cloud computing services like Dropbox and Google Drive, CUE sheets, tabbed playlists, audio CD playback and much more. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X, Android.

39. DeaDBeeF

This self-proclaimed "ultimate music player" supports a very long list of file formats. Key features include cue sheet support, tabbed playlists, cover art display, 18-band graphic equalizer, tag editor, gapless playback and more. Operating System: Linux, Unix, Android.

40. EasyTAG

EasyTAG allows users to view and edit the tag fields on MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack, Monkey's Audio, and WavPack files. It includes a tree-based browser and CDDB support for manual and automatic searches. Operating System: Windows, Linux

41. Exaile

Another option for Linux users, Exaile offers both playback and a powerful music manager. Key features include smart playlists, advanced track tagging, multiple plug-ins, automatic album art, lyrics and much more. Operating System: Linux.

42. FlacSquisher

This tool was made for audiophiles who like to keep their original music in the lossless FLAC file format. FlacSquisher converts those files to MP3s so that users can take them with them on mobile devices without taking up too much space. Operating System: Windows.

43. Fre:ac

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Open Source Software List: 2017 Ultimate List - Datamation

CIA ‘working to take down’ WikiLeaks threat, agency chief …

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The head of the CIA lumped WikiLeaks with al Qaeda and the Islamic State and said his agency is working toward reducing the enormous threat posed by each of them.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo placed the antisecrecy website in the same category as terrorist organizations while speaking Thursday at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies National Security Summit in D.C.

I talked about these non-state actors, and its not just Wikileaks. Indeed I may have overemphasized them they are an enormous threat, we are working to take down that threat to the United States as well, to reduce the threat from all of it, Mr. Pompeo said. But Hezbollah, [the Islamic State], al Qaeda, none of them sit at the U.N., these are all non-state actors, each of which has not only cyber capacity, but they look and feel like very good intelligence organizations.

All the tradecraft that you read about from the excellent work that the agencys done and that our state competitors have done for decades and decades, you now see it being adopted by these non-state agencies, Mr. Pompeo continued. They run assets; they run counterintelligence program; they lure dangles all the tradecraft that you read about from the excellent work that the agencys done and that our state competitors have done for decades and decades, you now see it being adopted by these non-state agencies.

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange scoffed at the CIA chiefs remarks.

All serious news organizations develop and protect sources with the intent of publishing what they find, Mr. Assange told The Washington Times. To suggest that media organizations are intelligence agencies is as absurd as suggesting that CIA employees are journalists. This ridiculous claim has a transparently insidious purpose: to gain the legal authority to treat journalists and publishers as terrorists for simply doing their job, holding the CIA to account.

When reached for clarification, CIA spokesman Dean Boyd told The Washington Examiner that Mr. Pompeos remarks described the counterintelligence threats posed by WikiLeaks and other non-state hostile intelligence services including Hezbollah and ISIS and the need to counteract the counterintelligence efforts that these groups employ against the United States.

WikiLeaks launched in 2006 and has since published more than 10 million documents, by its own accounting, including classified Pentagon and State Department materials as well as a trove of CIA hacking tools released earlier this year.

The Justice Department began investigating WikiLeaks and its staff in 2010, and members of the Trump administration including Mr. Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have endorsed escalating that probe and arresting Mr. Assange, an Australian citizen currently residing in London after receiving political asylum from Ecuador.

Mr. Assange took refuge inside Ecuadors London embassy in 2012 while wanted for questioning in Sweden regarding allegations of sexual assault. Swedish prosecutors dropped that probe this year, but Mr. Assange has refused to leave the embassy over fears hell be arrested by British authorities and subsequently extradited to the U.S. and charged in connection with WikiLeaks publishing state secrets.

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Julian Assange Thanks U.S. Government for 50,000% Gains on …

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The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has posted a tweet thanking United States government officials and the financial institutions that refused services to Wikileaks for driving them to invest in bitcoin during 2010. Assanges tweet indicates that Wikileaks bitcoin holdings have seen gains of over 50,000%.

Also Read:Your Bitcoins Open to CIA and Criminals, Heed Wikileaks Warning

On the 14th of October, Julian Assange expressed his deepest thanks to the US government, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman for pushing Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, AmEx, Moneybookers, et al, into erecting an illegal banking blockade against @Wikileaks starting in 2010. Assange stated that the financial embargo caused [Wikileaks] to invest in Bitcoin, which has generated the organization a more than 50000% return.

Wikileaks became the subject of financial blockage in 2010 after the organization released classified U.S diplomatic cables pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in November of that year. As a consequence, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union collectively refused to provide financial services to the organization. As a consequence, Wikileaks was forced to incorporate bitcoin into its financial operations, including accepting private donations in the form of bitcoin.

The prospect of Wikileaks adopting bitcoin during the infancy of cryptocurrency was met with mixed reactions by key figures within the bitcoin community. In response to a bitcointalk.org forum comment stating bring it on. Lets encourage Wikileaks to use bitcoins, the creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, requested that Wikileaks avoid adopting bitcoin, in what would come to be his second last post on the forum. On December 5, 2010, Satoshi wrote no, dont bring it on. The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to Wikileaks not to try to use bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage. As a consequence of the controversy, Wikileaks did not accept bitcoin donations until June 2011.

During August 2012, it was reported that Wikileaks had received more than 1,100 bitcoin donations at that time equating to over $32,000 USD. With the price of bitcoin then sitting at approximately $10 USD, Wikileaks owned more than 3200 bitcoin in just over one year of accepting the cryptocurrency. In November 2016,Wikileaks surpassed the milestone of having received more than 4000 bitcoins in donations.

Last week, the price of a single bitcoin broke out above $5000 USD for the first time ever, before setting a new all-time high of $5920 USD on Bitfinex. The dramatic breakout follows several weeks of consolidation after a sudden retracement of almost 40%, which was triggered by the initiation of Chinas crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Do you think that Wikileaks adoption of bitcoin was ultimately beneficial to the bitcoin ecosystem in the long term? Or do you think that Wikileaks shouldnt have risked drawing the attention of regulators during bitcoins infancy? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, WikiLeaks.org

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

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Julian Assange Thanks U.S. Government for 50,000% Gains on ...


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