‘This will not be quick,’ Obama says of campaign against the Islamic State
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0aa_story.html

Coalition operations against the Islamic State have scored successes in Iraq and Syria, but the battle against the extremist group promises to be a “generational” one, President Obama said after military leaders briefed him on the campaign.

Lets repeat that: the battle against the extremist group promises to be a “generational” one
...
Other officials who attended Monday’s briefing included Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command; Gen. Joseph Votel, head of Special Operations Command; and, in a sign of a worrying expansion for the group in North Africa, Gen. David Rodriguez, who heads U.S. Africa Command.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-2...al-bid/6571806
Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, has announced he is running for president, becoming the 13th Republican to launch a 2016 campaign for the White House.

Mr Jindal, who would be the first American of Indian descent to make a major run for president, announced his intentions on Twitter, hours before an address before supporters in his home state.

"My name is Bobby Jindal," he told a crowd of supporters near New Orleans.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...vacy-concerns/

In a rare move against the advance of license plate readers, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) has vetoed a plan to acquire the scanners in the Bayou State. It had previously passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature overwhelmingly.
(cont)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business...609-story.html

Background checks by the Transportation Security Administration cleared 73 people for access to secure airport areas even though their names were on a federal database of possible terrorists, a senior official told a Senate committee Tuesday.

The latest security lapse came to light as John Roth, the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security, delivered a scathing report on problems and blunders at the long-troubled agency.

They include inadequate baggage screening, hiring of convicted criminals, questionable spending, and narcotics smuggling and human trafficking by TSA employees.

...

-t

Apparently it's not just metadata. NSA has been collecting the content of calls for 10 years and the entire US GVMT has been lying about it.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/05/s...s-voice-calls/

The Intercept has released a new document from Edward Snowden's cache of government files describing how the NSA has been converting voice calls to searchable text documents for nearly a decade. The NSA has long monitored signals intelligence (SIGNIT) around the world (as is its primary function), especially in active combat zones like Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in Latin America. Traditionally, this sort of data gathering required that a live operator listen in on calls and translate them in real-time. However, the NSA has reportedly developed what it calls "Google for Voice"; an automated system that provides a rough but keyword searchable transcription. According to the documents, the NSA has also developed analytical programs and sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations for human review.

What's more, these do so on an automated and industrial scale, allowing the NSA to monitor larger amounts of the total SIGNIT traffic within a given region. Granted, these transcriptions aren't perfect -- they're pretty rough in fact -- but as NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake explained to The Intercept, "But even if it's not 100 percent, I can still get a lot more information. It's far more accessible. I can search against it. The breakthrough was being able to do it on a vast scale."

BALTIMORE — Representatives for the family of Freddie Gray expressed satisfaction at Friday's announcement by the state's attorney that charges would be filed against six city officers she says are responsible for the death of the Baltimore man.

But the family representatives also said during a Friday afternoon press conference that they hoped the case served as motivation to reform the way police do their jobs in communities across the country, and they urged members of the public to express themselves peacefully.

"We are satisfied with today's charges," said Richard Shipley, Gray's stepfather. "These charges are an important step in getting justice for Freddie and we ask that whoever comes to our city -- a city that we love, a city that we live in -- come in peace, and if you are not coming in peace, please don't come at all, because this city needs to get back to work."

Continued...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2...gray/26697169/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...-constitution/

Despite the best efforts of law enforcement to convince a Congressional subcommittee that technology firms actually need to weaken encryption in order to serve the public interest, lawmakers were not having it.
Daniel Conley, the district attorney in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, testified Wednesday before the committee that companies like Apple and Google were helping criminals by hardening encryption on their smartphones. He echoed previous statements by the recently-departed Attorney General, Eric Holder.

"In America, we often say that none of us is above the law," Conley wrote in his prepared testimony. "But when unaccountable corporate interests place crucial evidence beyond the legitimate reach of our courts, they are in fact placing those who rape, defraud, assault and even kill in a position of profound advantage over victims and society." Continued..