Friends of Liberty

IRS intimidation scandal proves 2nd Amendment needed to stop government tyranny

Sunday, May 19, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) In the face of the outrageous IRS intimidation scandal now sweeping across America, gun control advocates are changing their tune. All of a sudden, the idea that the federal government could engage in tyranny against the People of America is no longer a "conspiracy theory." It's historical fact right in your face thanks to all the recent scandals now bursting onto the scene: IRS intimidation, secret targeting of non-profit groups for possible "thought crimes," the Department of Justice seizing AP phone records and so on.

Just which liberals are changing their minds on all this? Piers Morgan, for starters. The man who once called Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America a "very stupid man" on live national television is suddenly reversing course. Here's what Morgan now says in the wake of the IRS intimidation scandal:

"I've had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here saying to me, well the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government, and I've always laughed at them. I've always said don't be so ridiculous. Your government won't turn itself on you. But actually when you look at this [IRS scandal]... actually this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government. I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior, I think what the Department of Justice has done to the Associated Press is bordering on tyrannical behavior."...

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040398_gun_control_trust_in_government_tyranny.html#ixzz2Tk2rA6Rz

How to stay anonymous online

By Drew Prindle
May 16, 2013
DigitalTrends.com

You don’t have to be a secret agent or a notorious hacktivist to care about anonymity. Even regular Joes like you and I have plenty of good reasons to care about the privacy and security of our online activity. Pretty soon, just about everything we do on the Web will be logged, analyzed, and used for things outside of our control. In a lot of ways, it’s already happening – but that’s not to say there’s nothing you can do about it.

This guide will help you learn ways to anonymize the majority of your Internet-based communications and activities. But before we get started, it should go without saying that if you’re trying to stay anonymous online, you shouldn’t use your real name when creating any account and shouldn’t sign in with any profile that has your personal information connected to it (ie, Google, Facebook, Twitter). We’ve left out the obvious stuff here and instead focused on offering a quick summary of ways that you can keep your identity and location hidden while browsing, communicating, and downloading and transferring files.

LEVEL 1: Anonymous Web browsing

The best thing you can do to stay anonymous online is to hide your IP address. This is the easiest way to trace your online activity back to you. If someone knows your IP address, they can easily determine the geographic location of the server that hosts that address and get a rough idea of where you’re located. Broadly speaking, there are three ways to obscure your IP address and hide your location:

Use a proxy server. If you want all of your online activity to be anonymized, the best way to do it is to pretend to be someone else. This is basically what a proxy server does: it routes your connection through a different server so your IP address isn’t so easy to track down. There are hundreds of free proxies out there, and finding a good one is just a matter of searching. Most major browsers offer proxy server extensions that can be activated in just one click
Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). For most intents and purposes, a VPN obscures your IP address just as well as a proxy does – and in some cases even better. They work differently, but achieve the same result. Essentially, a VPN is a private network that uses a public network (usually the Internet) to connect remote sites or users together. So, if I were to log into Digital Trends’ VPN, anyone looking at my IP address would think I’m in New York when I’m actually on the West Coast. Here’s a list of good VPN services to get you started.
Use TOR. Short for The Onion Router, TOR is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Browsing with TOR is a lot like simultaneously using hundreds of different proxies that are randomized periodically. But it’s a lot more than just a secure browser. We won’t get into the details here, but you should definitely check out its site if you’re concerned about anonymity.

LEVEL 2: Anonymous email and communication

Using proxies, VPNs, and TOR will obscure your IP address from prying eyes, but sending emails presents a different anonymity challenge. Let’s say you want to send somebody an email, but you don’t want them to know your email address. Generally speaking, there are two ways to go about this:

Use an alias. An alias is essentially a forwarding address. When you send mail through an alias, the recipient will only see your forwarding address, and not your real email. Since all mail is forwarded to your regular inbox, this method will keep your real email address secret, but it will not, however, keep you from being spammed like crazy.
Use a disposable email account. This can be done in two ways: either you can just create a new email account with a fake name and use it for the duration of your needs, or you can use a disposable email service. These services work by creating a temporary forwarding address that is deleted after a certain amount of time, so they’re great for signing up for stuff on sites you don’t trust and keeping your inbox from being flooded with spam.

Also, using a VPN and communicating through an anonymized email address will keep your identity hidden, but it still leaves open the possibility of your emails being intercepted through a man-in-the-middle scheme. To avoid this, you can encrypt your emails before you send them. Here’s how:

Use HTTPS in your Web-based email client. This will add SSL/TLS encryption to all of your Web-based communications. It’s not bulletproof, but it definitely helps. Just make sure the URL of your webmail has an S (for Secure) after the HTTP. Gmail users, for example could use https://mail.google.com. We also recommend using the HTTPS Everywhere extension.
Use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software. We won’t go into great detail on how to install/use PGP, but you might want to consider looking into it. While using HTTPS will encrypt your data on a network level , PGP software will encrypt the actual files themselves. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it.

In addition to email, you might want to encrypt any instant messaging you do for the same reasons. We recommend the following two chat clients:

TOR chat: a lightweight and easy-to-use chat client that uses TOR’s location hiding services. It uses SSL/TLS encryption.
Cryptocat: a Web-based chat client that uses the AES-256 encryption standard, which is extremely hard to break. It also supports group chats, so its perfect for all those top-secret world domination meetings you have with your buddies.

LEVEL 3: Anonymous file transfers and sharing

Getting files from the Internet is easy, but the sender has access to your IP address when you download files. In the case of BitTorrent, there are thousands of different peers that can see your IP address at any given moment, which means downloading is one of the least anonymous things you can do on the Web. However, if done correctly, it is possible to download and share files while keeping your IP address and identity concealed.

If you’re downloading directly form a file hosting site like MediaFire or Mega, you can just use a proxy or VPN to obscure your IP.
If you’re using BitTorrent to download stuff, using a proxy or VPN will keep your identity hidden, but rather than just using any old service, we recommend using BT Guard. At its core, BT Guard is exactly the same as any other VPN or proxy service with the one difference being that the site is designed specifically for heavy BitTorrent users. Don’t worry about DMCA violation notices you might elicit – BT Guard just ignores them for you.

This tutorial touches on a lot but is by no means comprehensive. If you have any good tips or tricks for staying anonymous online, we encourage you to share them in the comments.

Six tips to bombproof your password

By Geoff Duncan
May 14, 2013
DigitalTrends.com

Major password breaches are so common they’re becoming like storms and traffic jams: One day you hear about tens of thousands of Twitter users compromised or several million at LinkedIn, the next it might be upwards of 50 million at Evernote or LivingSocial.

But despite their fallibility, passwords won’t be replaced any time soon. Two-factor authentication technologies using our mobile devices and even biometrics can help keep us secure, but so far none are foolproof, and precious few are even convenient.

How can we make our passwords more hack-resistant and manage all the passwords we need?

Entropy is your new best friend

Most attackers don’t break passwords by going to Gmail or Facebook and making guesses; that’s slow, and most services block access after a few failed attempts. However, if attackers steal account data through a security hole, they can make thousands, millions, or even billions of guesses per second offline using their own computers. If that sounds outlandish, consider that Stricture Consulting Group last year showed off a small computer cluster made from off-the-shelf components that could test as many as 350 billion passwords per second. Some password-cracking operations harness hundreds (or thousands) of computers via botnets or legitimate cloud-computing platforms, while others just use everyday PCs. They’re fast too.

The quality of a password doesn’t matter if a service stores your password as plain text and an attacker steals it. (Don’t laugh: it happens.) If passwords are encrypted, however, size and randomness are two factors that determine a password’s strength or entropy — basically, a measure of the possible combinations a password can have.

“The higher the entropy, the longer it will take, on average, for a brute-force attack to succeed,” noted Joe Kissel, author of the ebook Take Control of Your Passwords. So, all things being equal, you want a high-entropy password.”

The benefit of a password’s size is obvious: More characters means more possible combinations. The benefit of randomness is less subtle. A password like YesThisIsMyGreatNewRandomPassphrase wins points for size — 36 characters! — but loses points for randomness, since it’s just upper- and lower-case letters. (It’s also less random because it’s in English: Attackers try to take advantage of common letter patterns.)

Something like *5FRRcr62{d~OkP!{AKaxzevQZb6L{~S1F~b would be more secure — it’s both big and highly random. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible for most people to remember…but it’s easy for a computer to remember.

Ways to make strong, memorable passwords

There’s no magic formula for making passwords both very strong and easy to remember. However, here are some ideas:...

The IRS wants YOU � to share everything

By DAVID NATHER, TARINI PARTI and BYRON TAU | 5/14/13 7:36 PM EDT Updated: 5/15/13 4:58 PM EDT
Politico.com

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general report released Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions to conservative groups were way over the line — especially the one about donors.

The report shows that top IRS officials put a stop to some of the questions in early 2012, including the ones that asked tea party groups who their donors were, what issues were important to them and whether their top officers ever planned to run for office. And they told the investigators they planned to destroy the donor lists that had already been sent in.

But interviews with members of the groups paint a more dramatic picture than the bland language of the report, which just says the IRS “requested irrelevant (unnecessary) information because of a lack of managerial review, at all levels, of questions before they were sent to organizations seeking tax-exempt status.”

“They were asking for a U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” said Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party.

IRS scrutiny went beyond Tea Party, targeting of conservative groups

Published May 13, 2013
FoxNews.com

An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

The additional guidelines created by the agency were part of a timeline, obtained by Fox News, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which is looking into the controversial IRS practice. IRS officials apologized Friday for the scrutiny, but new information suggests senior leaders were apprised of the effort as early as 2011 despite public denials from the top.

Republican lawmakers have vowed to investigate and hold hearings, calling the revelations deeply troubling.

"The conclusion that the IRS came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation of political groups," Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers told "Fox News Sunday." "I don't care if you're a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine. It needs to have a full investigation."

The internal IG timeline shows a unit in the agency was looking at Tea Party and "patriot" groups dating back to early 2010. But it shows that list of criteria drastically expanding by the time a June 2011 briefing was held. It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to "make America a better place to live." It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of "how the country is being run."

By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in "limiting/expanding government," education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.

Taken together, the findings of the IG and the initial admissions by the IRS Friday are fueling complaints from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Evidence that the IRS was flagging such groups in 2011 was included in a draft inspector general's report obtained Saturday by Fox News and other news organizations and expected to be released in full later this week...

IRS targeted groups that criticized the government, IG report says

By Juliet Eilperin, Published: May 12, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Washington Post

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.

But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to groups that applied for tax-exempt status as “social welfare” groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,” according to the appendix in the IG report, which was requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has yet to be released.

The new revelations are likely to intensify criticism of the IRS, which has been under fire since agency officials acknowledged they had deliberately targeted groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their name for heightened scrutiny.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) described the practice as “absolutely chilling” and called on President Obama to condemn the effort.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday he’s not satisfied with the Obama administration’s handling of the controversy. The IG report was “leaked by the IRS. to try to spin the output,” Issa said, and lawmakers now need to go through the full report so they can “see what the instituted changes need to be to make this not happen again...

Gen. Hayden: Continuing Benghazi Lie 'Not Forgivable'

Thursday, 09 May 2013 06:23 PM
By Greg Richter and Kathleen Walter
NewsMax.com

The continuation of a false narrative for weeks after the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead is "not understandable and is not forgivable," former director of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency Gen.l Michael Hayden told Newsmax TV.

Hayden, in an exclusive interview, said he's been in the shoes of the State Department staff who had to deal with the aftermath of the Benghazi terrorist attacks. Knowing what they were going through, he tells Newsmax that he doesn't want to accuse anyone of wrongdoing in how they handled the situation while it was ongoing – or immediately afterward.

But he is curious about why so few options were available in the first place and why the State Department and the White House weeks later were sticking with the narrative of a demonstration over a video.

"I’ve been in these kinds of circumstances where if you’ve got a worldview, if you’ve got a narrative that you believe in, you try to make the facts presented to you fit the narrative," Hayden said. "I fear there may have been some people in our government who kind of fell into that trap in the days after Benghazi, which is understandable and, frankly, forgivable, and then in the weeks after Benghazi, which is not understandable and is not forgivable."

"Anyone like me who saw those events would quickly conclude it was a terrorist attack," Hayden said. "It was fairly complex, synchronized, direct and indirect fire weapons on multiple locations, and it took place in a part of Libya that was the heartland of the Libyan Islamic fighting group."

"I mean, the immediate explanation that this was a bad movie review, that just beggared comprehension," he said.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hayden-benghazi-lies-obama/2013/05/09/id/503742?s=al&promo_code=13706-1#ixzz2StU2ZwyL

ONSLAUGHT OF ILLEGAL AND LEGAL IMMIGRANTS LINING UP FOR AMNESTY

By Frosty Wooldridge
May 4, 2013
NewsWithViews.com

Senate Bill 744, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, promises the most prolific invasion of America since Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. But with one deadly difference: those storms subsided so we could repair the damage.

If S744 passes, we face endless immigration numbers to the tune of a minimum of 33 million immigrants within the first decade. Passing that bill means an increase of legal immigration from its current 1 million annually to 1.5 million annually. All totaled with immigrants, their offspring, chain migration and diversity visas, a mind numbing 100 million immigrants will land on America within 37 years—by 2050. (Source: www.NumbersUSA.org; US Population Projections by Fogel/Martin; PEW Research Center)

Even more sobering, we face a total population growth via “population momentum” of 138 million people to grow from 316 million in 2013 to 438 million people by 2050.

Their horrific impact on our schools, medical systems, infrastructure, water, resources, energy and environment cannot be calculated, but will exceed anything anyone can imagine. The impact of 100 million immigrants can and will degrade our quality of life and standard of living beyond anyone’s understanding. Their impact upon our environment cannot be measured, but it will be catastrophic for all Americans.

"Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass. This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable.” Dr. Albert Bartlett, www.albartlett.org, University of Colorado, USA.

Dennis Lynch created one of the most powerful films on illegal immigration. (six minutes) The number of Asian/Chinese coming across the border is rarely mentioned. But if you stop and consider the implications you will likely come to the same conclusion as many of us. An unsecured southern border presents a clear and present danger to all of us and this specific threat has little to do with cheap labor.

(Illegals migrate from the interior of Mexico, but come from as far south as Brazil.)

These immigrants bring incompatible cultures, religions and political clout. They displace American citizens, utilize welfare, housing and food stamps. They overwhelm villages, towns and cities...

Today, California pays over $10 billion in services annually for its estimated 3 to 4 million illegal aliens and its countless legal immigrants.

Bill allows for $150M in grants to sign up illegal immigrants to become citizen

Published May 04, 2013
FoxNews.com

A Washington group is criticizing the Senate immigration bill because it allows for up to $150 million for organizations to advertise citizenship opportunities and to help illegal immigrants sign up to become citizens.

The nonpartisan Center for Immigration Services calls the money “slush funds” and earlier this week cited several concerns -- particularly that the money can go to the same groups that helped craft the legislation and that the spending appears to have no cap or oversight.

“It’s virtually a blank check,” Jon Feere, a Center for Immigration Services legal policy analyst, told FoxNews.com. “And the groups that helped draft this bill can now give themselves taxpayer dollars.”

The money is divided into two parts. The first is $100 million in grants to public and private nonprofit groups for programs that help people apply for provisional immigrant status, which includes assistance with completing applications and gathering proof of identification.

The other part in $50 million for additional assistance that includes legal help and public-awareness campaigns that tell illegal immigrants about the “eligibility and benefits of registered immigration status.”

The 844-page bill calls for the grant programs to run through 2018 and be administered by the secretary of Homeland Security through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Denies Japan Invaded Asian Neighbors

englishnews@chosun.com / Apr. 24, 2013 12:30 KST

In a further lurch to the far right, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told lawmakers on Tuesday that he does not believe Japan's occupation of other Asian countries during World War II can be considered "invasions."

Abe claimed there are no set international or academic definitions of the word. "It depends on the point of view of individual countries," he said, referring to a statement in 1995 by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, which apologized to all Asian victims of Japanese aggression and from which rightwingers are scrambling to distance themselves.

Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945 and invaded China and several Southeast Asian nations during an aggressive expansion to create what was billed as the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Experts here slammed Abe's remarks. Ko Sang-tu at Yonsei University said, "That is simply absurd. It's like saying Hitler's invasion of Poland wasn't really an invasion. If a German chancellor had said the same thing, he or she would have had to resign."

Abe told lawmakers on Monday that he does not feel bound by the Murayama statement. The global press was alarmed, with the New York Times saying he sought to whitewash his country's World War II atrocities, while the Economist warned that the right-leaning Japanese Cabinet is a bad sign for the region.

Abe said Japan's pacifist constitution was put together by what he called "occupying forces," referring to the victorious U.S. at the end of the war.

The constitution, which stipulates the country's desire for peace and pledges a policy of non-aggression, effectively "entrusted the lives and safety of the public to the goodwill of other countries," he claimed.

This suggests he is throwing his weight behind moves from the far right to revise the constitution so the Japanese military can launch pre-emptive strikes abroad.

Japanese lawmakers pay homage at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Tuesday. /Reuters-Newsis

On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and other Japanese politicians visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the remains of Japan's war dead including convicted war criminals. On Tuesday, 168 members of the Diet followed suit, the biggest number of lawmakers since 1989.

The Japanese media were critical of the stunt. The Asahi Shimbun urged cabinet members to exercise "restraint" in speech as well as action, while the Mainichi Shimbun warned Japan's "national interests are at risk" if such strain is put on cooperation with China and South Korea in trying to rein in North Korea.