Tag: Drug Enforcement Administration

A Front Company and a Fake Identity: How the U.S. Came to Use Spyware It Was Trying to Kill.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A Front Company and a Fake Identity: How the U.S. Came to Use Spyware It Was Trying to Kill.

The secret contract — which The New York Times is disclosing for the first time — violates the Biden administration’s public policy, and still appears to be active. The contract, reviewed by The Times, stated that the “United States government” would be the ultimate user of the tool, although it is unclear which government agency authorized the deal and might be using the spyware. It specifically allowed the government to test, evaluate, and even deploy the spyware against targets of its choice in Mexico.

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The secret November 2021 contract used the same American company — designated as “Cleopatra Holdings” but actually a small New Jersey-based government contractor called Riva Networks — that the F.B.I. used two years earlier to purchase Pegasus. Riva’s chief executive used a fake name in signing the 2021 contract and at least one contract Riva executed on behalf of the F.B.I.

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The deal unfolded as the European private equity fund that owns NSO pursued a plan to get U.S. government business by establishing a holding company, Gideon Cyber Systems. The private equity fund’s ultimate goal was to find an American buyer for the company.

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FDA Cracks Down on Animal Tranquilizer That Is Sometimes Mixed With Fentanyl

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

FDA Cracks Down on Animal Tranquilizer That Is Sometimes Mixed With Fentanyl

This is why fentanyl is used in black-market opioids in the first place. Users did not demand a substance that is 40 times more potent than heroin for recreational use; prohibitionist policies made it more challenging to procure pain medication, leading pain patients to seek out heroin. Heroin, however, is a crop drug, which makes it expensive to produce, ship, and buy. Fentanyl is synthetic, making it cheaper to produce, ship, and buy. When the law makes it harder to get legal pain pills, everybody adapts, and you get illegal fentanyl with no quality control.

Related:

The opioid crackdown leaves chronic pain patients in limbo

They Call Me a Drug Seeker. Here’s What Their Opioid Policies Did to Me.

The new CDC guidelines aren’t much better.

[2015] A Day When Journalism Died

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News. Source.

Exclusive: Dec. 9 has a grim meaning for the Republic, the date in 2004 when investigative reporter Gary Webb, driven to ruin by vindictive press colleagues for reviving the Contra-cocaine scandal, took his own life, a demarcation as the U.S. press went from protecting the people to shielding the corrupt, writes Robert Parry.

A Day When Journalism Died

Related:

Tosh Plumlee, Ex-CIA Contract Pilot, Spills Beans On Murder Of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena

Canadian reporter caught falsely claiming Trudeau was briefed with names of ‘Chinese-funded’ election candidates

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

On November 7, 2022, Global News reporter Sam Cooper published a report titled “Canadian intelligence warned PM Trudeau that China covertly funded 2019 election candidates: Sources”. Cooper has a problem though: on November 20, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau admitted that he was never briefed about supposed Chinese-funded election candidates, doesn’t know their names (if they even exist) and only learned of the alleged Chinese election interference from media reports.

Canadian reporter caught falsely claiming Trudeau was briefed with names of ‘Chinese-funded’ election candidates

The FBI and Zero-Click

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

During the Trump administration, the FBI paid $5 million to an Israeli software company for a license to use its “zero-click” surveillance software called Pegasus. Zero-click refers to software that can download the contents of a target’s computer or mobile device without the need for tricking the target into clicking on it. The FBI operated the software from a warehouse in New Jersey.

The FBI and Zero-Click

Related:

NSO Group Pitched Phone Hacking Tech to American Police

A former NSO employee told Motherboard that Phantom was “a brand name for U.S. territory,” but the “same Pegasus,” referring to NSO’s phone hacking tool that the company has sold to multiple countries including the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia for millions of dollars. Infamously, Saudi Arabia used the software to surveil associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Motherboard granted the source anonymity to protect them from retaliation from NSO

Source

DEA’s Rainbow Fentanyl Moral Panic Is Making Broadcasters, Politicians Stupider Than They Already Are

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Some news outlets engage in journalism. Others just engage in hype. The latter tend to repeat press releases verbatim, only ask for statements from law enforcement when law enforcement screws up, and otherwise cater to the “if it bleeds, it leads” maxim that has allowed mass media to portray America as a criminal dystopia despite crime levels in most of the nation still bottom-feeding on historical lows.

DEA’s Rainbow Fentanyl Moral Panic Is Making Broadcasters, Politicians Stupider Than They Already Are

Someone Decides To Say Something Less Stupid About Rainbow Fentanyl… And It’s A Cop

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Someone Decides To Say Something Less Stupid About Rainbow Fentanyl… And It’s A Cop

“I don’t think that people will be giving out fentanyl pills as candy, that doesn’t make sense from an addicts perspective that they treasure something so valuable,” said Officer Roman Trujilo, KPD. “However, with all of the candy out there, there are potential users that might have purchased these pills and if they have them around and their kids come across them, that could be absolutely deadly.”