Sharyl Attkisson

Untouchable Subjects. Fearless, Nonpartisan Reporting.

Sharyl Attkisson

READ: The indictment of Julian Assange

Image by Cancillería del Ecuador

Here’s the link to the Department of Justice document detailing the indictment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange dated March 6, 2018.

The indictment doesn’t associate Assange with Russian documents or spying.

The charges are related to former intelligence analyst Bradley Manning and his theft of top secret government documents.

Julian Assange Indictment

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Analysis: Amazon's About-Face on Facial Recognition Accuracy

The following is an excerpt from "About-Face: Examining Amazon’s Shifting Story on Facial Recognition Accuracy" by Jake Laperruqe

People shouldn’t have to worry that police are going to improperly investigate or arrest them because a poorly designed computer system misidentified them, but facial recognition surveillance could soon make that risk a reality. And, as detailed in the timeline below, over the last ten months, Amazon, a major vendor of this technology to law enforcement, has exacerbated that risk by putting out inconsistent information on the “confidence threshold,” a key means of determining the accuracy of matches produced by facial recognition systems. 

It’s time to set the record straight on how improper use of confidence thresholds by law enforcement could increase the frequency of misidentification, and how Amazon’s shifting story has obfuscated the very real risks present in the technology.

The development and spread of facial recognition continue to outpace meaningful oversight of law enforcement’s use of the technology, and Congressional inquiries about misidentification risks have gone unanswered. The use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement, particularly without proper checks, presents a variety of threats to civil rights and civil liberties, including free speech, equal protection, due process, and privacy, as discussed in a recent report by The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight’s (POGO) Task Force on Facial Recognition Surveillance. These threats are of immediate importance: law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels already use facial recognition. The FBI oversees a massive program that conducts an average of over 4,000 facial recognition scans per month. As POGO reported in The Daily Beast, Amazon pitched its facial recognition technology to Immigration and Customs Enforcement last summer.

You can read the rest of the story here: About-Face

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Bubbling Crude. Black Gold. Texas Tea.

You may not have heard, but the U.S. has become the world's number one oil producer. The heart of the surge is in west Texas and the big boom has drawn thousands of people seeking their fortunes. It's possible for people without a high school diploma to earn six figures, as long as they're willing to work hard. But the oil surge has an impact far beyond Texas: it means we have new leverage for negotiations on the world stage. Scott Thuman will have all the details Sunday on Full Measure.

Also this week on Full Measure, we hear quite a lot about spying -- but not so much about the spying that's happening at some of our academic institutions. It turns out foreign researchers are stealing our intellectual property and results of research funded by grants of your tax dollars. We'll talk with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about what he thinks needs to be done.[hr]

[hr]Lisa Fletcher updates her investigation into a huge spending hole that critics call the Pentagon's slush fund.

And Joce Sterman takes us to a creepy corner of a parking lot in Georgia and-- wait until you hear what she finds!

We never waste your time rehashing news you've already seen all week. Find out how to watch on TV, on line or on demand by clicking the link below.

How to watch Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson

Fight government overreach and double-standard justice by supporting the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund for Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI for the government computer intrusions. Click here.

Polio-like Virus Continuing to Sicken Children

The following is an excerpt from “US health officials alarmed by paralyzing illness in kids” by Mike Stobbe

NEW YORK (AP) — One morning last fall, 4-year-old Joey Wilcox woke up with the left side of his face drooping.

It was the first sign of an unfolding nightmare.

Three days later, Joey was in a hospital intensive care unit, unable to move his arms or legs or sit up. Spinal taps and other tests failed to find a cause. Doctors worried he was about to lose the ability to breathe.

“It’s devastating,” said his father, Jeremy Wilcox, of Herndon, Virginia. “Your healthy child can catch a cold — and then become paralyzed.”

Joey, who survived but still suffers some of the effects, was one of 228 confirmed victims in the U.S. last year of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, a rare, mysterious and sometimes deadly paralyzing illness that seems to ebb and flow on an every-other-year cycle and is beginning to alarm public health officials because it is striking more and more children.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it may bear similarities to polio, which smoldered among humans for centuries before it exploded into fearsome epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fauci, who published a report about the disease Tuesday in the medical journal mBio, said it is unlikely AFM will become as bad as polio, which struck tens of thousands of U.S. children annually before a vaccine became available in the 1950s.

But he warned: “Don’t assume that it’s going to stay at a couple of hundred cases every other year.”

You can read the rest of the article here: US Health Officials Alarmed by Paralyzing Illness

You can also watch the Full Measure story on the virus here: http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/mysteryvirus

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A Supreme Court "Bromance"?

Above image: Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (left) and Chief Justice John G. Roberts (right), Credit: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The following is an excerpt from “Conservatives' takeover of Supreme Court stalled by John Roberts-Brett Kavanaugh bromance” by Richard Wolf

WASHINGTON – The conservative takeover of the Supreme Court that was anticipated following President Donald Trump's two selections has been stalled by a budding bromance between the senior and junior justices.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's newest member, Brett Kavanaugh, have voted in tandem on nearly every case that's come before them since Kavanaugh joined the court in October. They've been more likely to side with the court's liberal justices than its other conservatives.

The two justices, both alumni of the same District of Columbia-based federal appeals court, have split publicly only once in 25 official decisions. Their partnership has extended, though less reliably, to orders the court has issued on abortion funding, immigration and the death penalty in the six months since Kavanaugh's bitter Senate confirmation battle ended in a 50-48 vote.

You can read the rest of the article here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/07/supreme-court-bromance-john-roberts-brett-kavanaugh-tie-up-court/3342377002/

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Report: Health worker who spread measles had been vaccinated

Above image: a photo of a measles rash, which is typically uncomfortable but non life-threatening.[hr]

The following is an excerpt from "‘Vague symptoms’ explains delay in confirming measles case, MUHC says" by Aaron Derfel

The employee at the McGill University Health Centre who contracted the measles  — and who might have inadvertently exposed dozens of patients to the highly contagious virus for several days at the end of March — had received the standard two shots years earlier, an MUHC infectious-diseases specialist said Monday.

The employee, whose name or position has not been disclosed, had returned recently from a vacation in the Caribbean, where it’s likely that he contracted the virus, Dr. Marie-Astrid Lefebvre told reporters.

Initially, the employee suffered from “vague symptoms,” which explained the delay in confirming his measles diagnosis. From March 23 to March 27, the employee worked while contagious in the adult intensive-care unit, cardiac surgery unit, infectious diseases clinic and cardiovascular, heart failure and heart transplant clinic at the Glen site in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

“We believe that the individual in question acquired the infection while on a trip to the Caribbean roughly three weeks before the start of his symptoms,” Lefebvre said. “We do not believe it was an acquisition from Montreal itself, and we do not believe we have any secondary infections as well.”

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.


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Are American Hackers Working With UAE?

The following is an excerpt from “American Hackers Helped UAE Spy on Al Jazeera Chairman, BBC Host” by Joel Schectman

A group of American hackers who once worked for U.S. intelligence agencies helped the United Arab Emirates spy on a BBC host, the chairman of Al Jazeera and other prominent Arab media figures during a tense 2017 confrontation pitting the UAE and its allies against the Gulf state of Qatar.

The American operatives worked for Project Raven, a secret Emirati intelligence program that spied on dissidents, militants and political opponents of the UAE monarchy. A Reuters investigation in January revealed Project Raven’s existence and inner workings, including the fact that it surveilled a British activist and several unnamed U.S. journalists.

The Raven operatives — who included at least nine former employees of the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.S. military — found themselves thrust into the thick of a high-stakes dispute among America’s Gulf allies. The Americans’ role in the UAE-Qatar imbroglio highlights how former U.S. intelligence officials have become key players in the cyber wars of other nations, with little oversight from Washington.

The crisis erupted in the spring of 2017, when the UAE and allies — including Saudi Arabia and Egypt — accused Qatar of sowing unrest in the Middle East through its support of media outlets and political groups. The UAE camp demanded Qatar take a series of actions, including shuttering the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera satellite television network, withdrawing funding from other media outlets Doha supports, and cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement some Arab governments regard as a threat.

You can read the rest of the story here: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-raven-media/

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