Sorpresivamente fallece exguardespaldas de Fidel Castro en Miami

primera noticia que el exguardespaldas de fidel castro, juan reinaldo sanchez, autor del revelador libro "la vida oculta de fidel castro" [2014], sufriera algun tipo de enfermedad terminal. asiduo a programas sobre tematica cubana, recientemente participo  en uno de ellos donde no se observo ninguno sintoma del avanzado cancer de pulmon que ahora se afirma padecia.

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AmericaTeVeCanal41

Canada’s spy agency may have illegally targeted Canadians: watchdog

Lee Berthiaume & Jason Fekete, Postmedia News 
OTTAWA — Canada’s super-secret electronic spy agency may have illegally targeted Canadians over the past year, a government watchdog has concluded.

The findings, contained in a report tabled by retired judge Robert Decary in Parliament Wednesday, are particularly explosive now given revelations prompted by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the U.S. government conducting widespread snooping of its citizens.

Decary, who has served as independent watchdog for the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) since 2010, said he discovered the potentially illicit spying during a routine review of the electronic surveillance agency’s activities over the past year.

“A small number of records suggested the possibility that some activities may have been directed at Canadians, contrary to the law,” Decary wrote in his report.

But Decary said he was unable to determine conclusively whether the snooping was legal or not because “a number of CSEC records relating to these activities were unclear or incomplete.”

“After [an] in-depth and lengthy review, I was unable to reach a definitive conclusion about compliance or non-compliance with the law.”

CSEC is forbidden from spying on Canadians no matter where they are in the world. It is also prohibited from eavesdropping on individuals within Canada.

More on National Post >>

Underpants-Clad Bodybuilder on Ecstasy Breaks into Angela Merkel's Jet

Associated Press

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
An intruder managed to break into German Chancellor Angela Merkel's jet at Cologne Airport for several hours last month, playing around with buttons in the cockpit, activating the escape slide and using fire extinguishers before police put an end to his escapades.

The incident took place the evening of July 25 and the case is still being investigated, a spokesman for Germany's air force said Tuesday. Merkel was not in Cologne during the incident, he said.

"The man probably got onto the airfield because there was construction and that's why the alarm system was turned off," said the air force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "He then pulled down the jet engine's cover, climbed up and entered the plane through its emergency exit."

The intruder, a 24-year-old bodybuilder whose name was only given as Volkan T., somehow pressed an alarm button in the cockpit, which is how police were alerted to the incident. When he refused to leave the plane, police entered with dogs and he was bitten twice in the leg before they could overpower him, the German news agency dpa reported.

German media, citing a leaked report from the Federal Police, said he had taken ecstasy pills.

"According to witnesses, he seemed to have been under the influence of drugs, but we are still waiting for a scientific evaluation to confirm this," Ulrich Bremer, Cologne's senior prosecutor, told The Associated Press.

The Airbus A319 is one of two VIP planes that are usually on call for Germany's top lawmakers at the military section of Cologne's airport. In contrast to President Barack Obama's Air Force No. One, the two Airbus planes are not only reserved for Merkel but can also be used be the country's president, Joachim Gauck, or high-ranking ministers.

Bremer would not comment on German media reports that Volkan T. was dancing around on the plane in his underpants when he was caught by police.

"It seems his behavior may have been related to a psychiatric illness and he has been put up in a mental institution while we're waiting for a psychological evaluation," Bremer said. "He may not fully be held responsible for his acts."

The intruder had no previous history with the police, he added.

The air force official said there was no way the intruder could have started the plane, since it "was on power-off mode." Air force personnel made a complete technical check of the plane, changed the emergency exit door and held a test flight before it was put back on active duty on Aug. 13.

"As a consequence, we have ordered an extra employee to guard the government planes at all times,'" the air force spokesman said. 

"Chip cubano" prolifera en América Latina

El Universal

CARACAS.— Un contrato con Venezuela fue el trampolín que utilizó Cuba para comenzar a vender servicios de identificación a gobiernos latinoamericanos afines con el proyecto político del fallecido presidente Hugo Chávez.

El acuerdo comercial de 172 millones de dólares, suscrito en 2007 para la provisión de la cédula electrónica venezolana, le abrió las puertas a empresas estatales de la isla para participar como intermediarios y proveedores en el mercado de documentos de identidad con chips, el cual está dominado por un selecto grupo de países en cuya cima se encuentran Alemania, Países Bajos, Francia, Finlandia, China y Estados Unidos.

La negociación entre Caracas y La Habana —que se hizo sin discusión pública— no sólo puso en manos extranjeras los datos de los venezolanos. También constituyó la oportunidad ideal para Cuba de ampliar sus horizontes estratégicos. El acuerdo —cuyos detalles fueron revelados por El Nacional el de 17 de julio de 2011— fue firmado por el Ministerio del Interior, Justicia y Paz con la compañía cubana Albet Ingeniería y Sistemas, la cual a su vez subcontrató a la multinacional holandesa Gemalto para desarrollar el proyecto de la cédula electrónica venezolana.

El documento incorporó la figura de la “autoría moral” para garantizar a los antillanos la propiedad de los programas que fueron desarrollados entonces y que ahora forman parte del portafolio comercial que los cubanos ofrecen en el continente.

Por medio de decretos presidenciales, Argentina y Bolivia también pusieron en manos de Cuba el diseño y manejo de nuevos sistemas de identificación electrónica. Funcionarios de la isla ahora están involucrados con servicios gubernamentales que contienen datos sensibles de más de 80 millones de ciudadanos en Latinoamérica.

“Hemos desarrollado una tecnología que nos ha permitido afrontar con éxito la seguridad de un país asediado”, dijo Rolando Gómez, embajador de Cuba en Bolivia, cuando fueron presentados en La Paz los sistemas de emisión de pasaportes con chips en 2012. En ese acto dijo que así lograron controlar la subversión. “Ha sido neutralizada a partir de nuestros propios sistemas de seguridad, mediante el control de entrada y salidas al territorio para ejercer plena soberanía”.

En 2005, Cuba comenzó a crear una red de compañías públicas de exportación de productos informáticos. Unas dependen del Ministerio de Informática y Comunicaciones, que primero estuvo bajo la égida del general Ramiro Valdés —considerado el artífice de los sistemas de inteligencia política cubanos— y ahora del general Medardo Díaz. Otras compañías están adscritas al Ministerio de Interior, al cual le reporta la Dirección General de Inteligencia, conocida como G2, servicio considerado por expertos como uno de los cinco mejor entrenados del mundo.

Pero hay quienes dudan de que los antillanos se limiten a ofrecer a los gobiernos herramientas para la preservación del orden y la seguridad ciudadana. “Estas compañías forman parte de una estrategia cubana para extender sus redes de inteligencia en la región. Son en realidad una fachada del G2 que les permite tener control de los sistemas de emisión de documentos de identidad con lo cual pueden otorgárselos a cualquiera”, señala Anthony Daquin, ex asesor del Ministerio del Interior, Justicia y Paz de Venezuela y quien tuvo participación en los procesos de selección de los proveedores para la cédula y pasaporte electrónicos.

El ingeniero ahora se encuentra en Estados Unidos en busca de asilo después de que —asegura— fue víctima de una persecución policial en Caracas por sus críticas al tutelaje cubano.

Las empresas estatales cubanas tienen distintas denominaciones. En Caracas funciona Albet Ingeniería y Sistemas, que vende los programas producidos en la Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas de La Habana. Fue esa la compañía encargada del proyecto de cedulación venezolano. Otra firma, sin embargo, constituye el rostro más internacional: es Datys. Produce software para fines múltiples, desde identificación de huellas digitales y rostros hasta escuchas telefónicas y monitoreo de redes sociales, entre otros. Esta empresa contribuyó con el diseño del sistema de seguridad basado en el reconocimiento de trazas dactilares que se comenzó a emplear en Argentina desde 2012.

En Bolivia, Datys puso en marcha la elaboración de los pasaportes electrónicos junto con otra empresa isleña, Impresos de Seguridad.

La irrupción de Cuba en el mercado de identificación llegó en un momento crucial: la Organización de Estados Americanos estableció 2015 como el plazo para que países de la región modernicen sus registros civiles y sistemas de emisión de documentos, como medida para masificar el derecho a la identidad. Además, la Organización para la Aviación Civil Internacional endureció sus normas de seguridad y estableció que a partir de 2010 los Estados debían emitir únicamente pasaportes electrónicos con datos biométricos (como el rostro o la huella).

Gran Hermano

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, presidenta de Argentina, celebró la cooperación cubana en el desarrollo del Sistema Federal de Identificación Biométrica para la Seguridad (Sibios), un proyecto que pretende recabar los datos filiatorios, rasgos físicos distintivos y huellas digitales de los 40 millones de argentinos y que, explicó la mandataria, “va a permitir, en tiempo real, conocer y saber quién es la persona que está ante un personal de seguridad o en cualquier otro lado”, dijo en noviembre de 2011.

Fernández creó Sibios como apoyo para la investigación de delitos y en funciones preventivas de seguridad. Los datos biométricos de la población serán incorporados en un chip en el pasaporte y podrán ser utilizados y cruzados por la Policía Federal, la Gendarmería Nacional, la Prefectura Naval, la Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria, el Registro Nacional de las Personas y la Dirección Nacional de Migraciones. Ha habido detractores destacados del sistema. “Argentina tiene el régimen de vigilancia más agresivo de todos los Estados latinoamericanos de tamaño mediano”, alertó Julian Assange, fundador de WikiLeaks, en julio.

Escala boliviana

Los técnicos cubanos de la isla recalaron en Bolivia en 2009, año en el que ese país estrenó un censo electoral con datos biométricos, que incluía las huellas y señas físicas de los ciudadanos. El 8 de abril de ese año, el presidente Evo Morales emitió el Decreto Supremo 068, que autorizó la contratación directa —por un monto de 1.47 millones de dólares— de las empresas cubanas Datys y Acited-Impresos de Seguridad para proveer los equipos y programas informáticos que expiden los pasaportes de lectura mecánica y para suministrar al Estado 350 mil libretas para el documento corriente, el oficial y el diplomático.

En 2010 y 2011, otros decretos de Morales pusieron en manos de Datys la instalación de equipos para la captura de registros biométricos y la base de datos en 9 sedes departamentales y en 16 oficinas consulares bolivianas en países como España, Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Estados Unidos, Italia, Francia, Inglaterra y Japón.

En octubre de 2012, el Ministerio de Gobierno de Bolivia firmó un nuevo contrato con Datys —esta vez por casi 700 mil dólares— para la provisión de software, licencias y hardware especializado para el Sistema Migratorio Nacional. Los sistemas también tienen la misión de ayudar a detectar quiénes provienen de “países de riesgo”, así como comprobar los impedimentos para entrada y salida de nacionales y extranjeros por “listas negras de instituciones bolivianas u organismos internacionales”.

Ni el Ministerio ni la Dirección General de Migración de Bolivia respondieron las solicitudes de entrevistas para aclarar hasta qué punto tienen acceso los cubanos a las bases de datos nacionales. Más allá del silencio, los chips cubanos alcanzan nuevas latitudes en el continente.

Cuba podría haber accedido a datos sensibles de más de 80 millones de latinoamericanos

europapress 

Las empresas de la isla han prestado servicios en Venezuela, Argentina o Bolivia para la elaboración de carnés de identidad y pasaportes

   CARACAS, 3 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

   Las autoridades cubanas podrían haber manejado datos sensibles de más de 80 millones de latinoamericanos gracias a los servicios de implantación de identificación electrónica que ofreció a gobiernos latinoamericanos afines al chavismo y llevado a cabo a través de una red de empresas de exportación de productos informáticos.

   En 2007 Cuba y Venezuela llegaron a un acuerdo comercial por 172 millones de dólares (uno 129 millones de euros) para la implantación del documento de identidad electrónico venezolano, lo que abrió las puertas a empresas estatales de la isla para participar como intermediarios y proveedores en el mercado de documentos de identidad con chip.
   La negociación entre Caracas y La Habana, que nunca llegó a ser pública, permitió a Cuba, supuestamente, no sólo manejar datos sensibles de los venezolanos sino que constituyó una oportunidad para ampliar sus horizontes estratégicos.
   A partir de este acuerdo, las empresas cubanas tuvieron el visto bueno de otros países latinoamericanos afines a Venezuela, como Argentina y Bolivia, para poner en marcha el diseño y manejo de nuevos sistemas de identificación electrónica. Esto, en principio, les habría permitido gestionar los datos personales de más de más de 80 millones de ciudadanos en Latinoamérica, según informa el periódico venezolano 'El Universal'.
   "Hemos desarrollado una tecnología que nos ha permitido afrontar con éxito la seguridad de un país asediado", dijo Rolando Gómez, embajador de Cuba en Bolivia, cuando fueron presentados en La Paz los sistemas de emisión de pasaportes con chip, en 2012. En ese acto dijo que así lograron controlar la subversión. "Ha sido neutralizada a partir de nuestros propios sistemas de seguridad, mediante el control de entrada y salidas al territorio para ejercer plena soberanía", añadió.
   En Argentina, con el Sistema Federal de Identificación Biométrica para la Seguridad (Sibios) los datos biométricos de la población serán incorporados en un chip en el pasaporte y podrán ser utilizados y cruzados por todas las fuerzas de seguridad pero ya ha habido detractores que lo critican. "Argentina tiene el régimen de vigilancia más agresivo de todos los Estados latinoamericanos de tamaño mediano", alertó Julian Assange, fundador de WikiLeaks, el pasado julio.
   En Bolivia, los técnicos cubanos, venidos bajo varias compañías, recalaron en 2009 para poner en marcha un censo electoral con datos biométricos que incluía las huellas y señas físicas de los ciudadanos y posteriormente la elaboración de los pasaportes electrónicos. En 2012, Bolivia volvió a contar con los servicios cubanos para la provisión de software, licencias y hardware especializado para el Sistema Migratorio Nacional que ayudasen a detectar aquellos provenientes de "países de riesgo", así como registrar las entradas y salidas de extranjeros que estuvieran en "listas negras de instituciones bolivianas u organismos internacionales".
   Esta red de compañías públicas de exportación de productos informáticos dependen del Ministerio de Informática y Comunicaciones, que primero estuvo bajo el mando del general Ramiro Valdés, considerado el artífice de los sistemas de inteligencia política cubanos. Otras compañías están adscritas al Ministerio de Interior cubano, al cual le reporta la Dirección General de Inteligencia, conocida como G2, servicio considerado por expertos como uno de los cinco mejor entrenados del mundo.
   Los detractores de estas colaboraciones ponen en entredicho que los cubanos se limiten a ofrecer a los gobiernos herramientas para la preservación del orden y la seguridad ciudadana.
   "Estas compañías forman parte de una estrategia cubana para extender sus redes de inteligencia en la región y son en realidad una fachada del G2 que les permite tener control de los sistemas de emisión de documentos de identidad con lo cual pueden otorgárselos a cualquiera", señala el exasesor del Ministerio del Interior, Justicia y Paz de Venezuela Anthony Daquin, quien participó en los procesos de selección de los proveedores para la cédula y pasaporte electrónicos y ahora, según él mismo, se encuentra perseguido por Caracas por sus críticas al supuesto tutelaje cubano.

Leer más:  Cuba podría haber accedido a datos sensibles de más de 80 millones de latinoamericanos  http://www.europapress.es/internacional/noticia-cuba-podria-haber-accedido-datos-sensibles-mas-80-millones-latinoamericanos-20130803171856.html#AqZ1KOE3VTKo9q4v

Mark Zuckerberg Runs A Giant Spy Machine In Palo Alto, California

REUTERS/Jim Young

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives for the start of a town hall meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto, California April 20, 2011.

Business Insider

D.B. Grady and Marc Ambinder, Deep State

Mark Zuckerberg runs a giant spy machine in Palo Alto*, California. He wasn’t the first to build one, but his was the best, and every day hundreds of thousands of people upload the most intimate details of their lives to the Internet. The real coup wasn’t hoodwinking the public into revealing their thoughts, closest associates, and exact geographic coordinates at any given time. Rather, it was getting the public to volunteer that information. Then he turned off** the privacy settings.

[**Editor's note: Facebook disputes the notion that it has "turned off" its privacy settings. We have provided a statement from the company at the bottom of this post.]

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” said Zuckerberg after moving 350 million people into a glass privacy ghetto. “That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”

If the state had organized such an information drive, protestors would have burned down the White House. But the state is the natural beneficiary of this new “social norm.” Today, that information is regularly used in court proceedings and law enforcement. There is no need for warrants or subpoenas. Judges need not be consulted. The Fourth Amendment does not come into play. Intelligence agencies don't have to worry about violating laws protecting citizenry from wiretapping and information gathering. Sharing information “more openly” and with “more people” is a step backward in civil liberties. And spies, whether foreign or domestic, are “more people,” too.

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, knows better than anyone how to exploit holes in the secrecy apparatus to the detriment of American security. His raison d'être is to blast down the walls protecting state secrets and annihilate the implicit bargain, yet even he is frightened by the brazenness of Facebook and other such social networking sites:

Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to the U.S. intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo — all these major U.S. organizations have built-in interfaces for U.S. intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for U.S. intelligence to use.

It’s all there, and the Internet never forgets. But even if the impossible happened and the Internet did somehow develop selective amnesia, in the case of microblogging service Twitter, the Library of Congress has acquired every message ever posted by its two hundred million members. As Jeffrey Rosen wrote in the New York Times:

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew to overcome our checkered pasts.

The U.S. government isn't the only institution to notice. Early in the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers of the social networking generation uploaded to their MySpace profiles pictures of camp life in the war zones. Innocuous photos of troops horsing around in front of tent cities, bunkers, outposts, motor pools, and operations centers circulated freely on what was then described as “a place for friends.”

The U.S. military soon realized that foreign intelligence services, sympathetic to America’s enemies and savvy to the social revolution, could collect these photographs by the thousands and build detailed, full-color maps of American military bases. During the Cold War, this would have required the insertion of first-rate spies, briefcases filled with cash, and elaborate blackmail schemes. In the age of radical transparency, all it would take is a MySpace account to know exactly where to fire the mortar round to inflict maximum damage on the United States.

The Marine Corps confirmed this in a 2009 directive. “These Internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content are a particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries.” The directive continued, “The very nature of [social networking sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage,” putting operational security, communications security, and U.S. military personnel “at an elevated risk of compromise.”

This type of clever thinking on the part of America’s enemies is not unique to this conflict. During the run-up to the Gulf War, foreign intelligence services had a pretty good idea that the U.S. war machine was preparing for its most substantial engagement since Vietnam. The U.S. military recognized a new kind of threat — one that didn’t require foreign intelligence to insert an agent onto every base in the Republic. Open source information could be just as dangerous. Spikes in late-night orders from pizzerias near key military bases and an exceptionally busy parking lot at the Pentagon could tell hostile powers everything they needed to know.

In determining what should remain secret and what should not, the military — like each component of the American secrecy apparatus — is good at overreaction. The default answer: more secrets. To counter the MySpace problem, they banned blogs and social networks. This benefitted base security but killed morale at home. No longer could parents see their young sons and daughters safe — and even happy — in the war zone. All that remained were breathless reports of intense combat on the cable news networks. And while the average supply clerk is probably safer in Baghdad than in Detroit, every parent and spouse saw the same thing: a son or daughter in a flag-draped casket.

In 2010, the Department of Defense revised and consolidated its ad hoc policy on social media. On its official website it declared, “Service members and [Department of Defense] employees are welcome and encouraged to use new media to communicate with family and friends — at home stations or deployed,” but warned, “it’s important to do it safely.”)

From "Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry" by journalists Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady. Reprinted with permission from D.B. Grady.

*"When the book was actually written, they were still in Palo Alto." - D.B. Grady

In a statement to Business Insider, Facebook notes:

"In reality we spend a lot of time building privacy controls, and working to make them powerful, easy to use, and also educating our users on them. For example:

- Announcing new tools in December: http://newsroom.fb.com/News/547/Better-Controls-for-Managing-Your-Content 

- (in the same post) In-product education about privacy that we did in December: http://newsroom.fb.com/News/547/Better-Controls-for-Managing-Your-Content 

- Recent flyout in the News Feed ahead of Graph Search that pointed to the new tools and highlighted how people could check their stuff: http://newsroom.fb.com/News/660/Expanding-Graph-Search-Beta"

Canadian Feds' privacy measures outdated: expert

GlobalToronto

Petraeus Affair Teaches Us About Online Surveillance

Tom Simonite

The FBI methods used to reveal the CIA director's affair are relevant to all Web users.

When the FBI started investigating harassing emails sent to a resident of Tampa Bay that organized parties for a local Air Force base, it soon became a much broader investigation that led to the uncovering of an affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell. Now reports of how the FBI uncovered a series of online email accounts and figured out who was using them have revealed things about digital surveillance that will surprise many Web users, and even tidbits that have impressed experts. Here are five things we’ve learned so far:

• No judge-issued warrant is needed for authorities to ask a company for your emails or other electronic communication records that are six months old or more. That’s thanks to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which says that a federal prosecutor’s subpoena is enough. Privacy activists have long campaigned for this to change. Leading civil liberties lawyer Kevin Bankston today suggested the Petraeus affair could help those efforts by raising awareness of the current law.
• Communicating by saving draft emails in an online account for someone else to log in and see – as Petraeus and Broadwell did – doesn’t help escape surveillance. This tactic long-used by activists and terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in 2001, prevents emails lodging in personal accounts and other places. But the FBI or law enforcement can easily ask a provider to reveal the IP addresses people used to log into an account. Those IP addresses can be matched to physical locations, and to people's known addresses and movements.
• IP addresses can be used to pinpoint people very precisely, providing a crucial match between online and offline life. The WSJ reports that the FBI figured out it was Broadwell operating pseudonymous email accounts by matching IP addresses from emails they sent to particular hotels. Those matched with particular hotels and the dates she stayed in them on a book tour.
• Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Outlook make it extra easy for investigators to find out the IP address an email originated from – and hence where an email was sent from. When emails are sent extra data goes along with them known as “headers” containing technical data. In the case of Yahoo Mail and Outlook that includes the IP address of the connection used to send an email, so investigators don't need to subpoena a mail provider to trace its origin. It’s not known if Broadwell used Yahoo accounts in the events surrounding the Petraeus affair, but she’s known to have used the service before thanks to leaks by nebulous activist group Anonymous of account information from defense contractor Stratfor.

• Email and other services hosted online make life relatively easy for investigators. Google and other online providers have legitimate reasons to log which IP addresses log into accounts and when, for example to detect hacking attempts and keep their software running smoothly. But that data hangs around, and investigators aren't shy about asking for it. Google today published new figures on government requests for its data that show U.S. authorities tapped the company 26 percent more in the first half of 2012 than they did in the second half of 2011, a total of 7969 requests of which 90 percent were complied with.

How to disappear from the Internet forever

lifehacker.com.au

On Five "easy" steps

Step 1: Delete your social network accounts

Step 2: Remove unwanted search results

Step 3: Get rid of background check, criminal, and public record results

Step 4: Remove any usernames attached to an email address with your name

Step 5: Stay off search engines without going offline by remaining anonymous  

Details with  Thorin Klosowski >>

Prostitute at center of Secret Service scandal: ’I would have been able to get any information’

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read >>

Inside the U.S. Secret Service - National Geographic

Decoding the Secret Service

http://discovery.com/ By Emily Sohn

Getty

A recent scandal involving Colombian prostitutes and the Secret Service has drawn new attention to an agency that has long been shrouded in mystery and dominated by romantic images of sculpted men wearing sunglasses and earpieces.
While investigations into the late-night carousing continue, the scandal offers an opportunity to look inside the very secret organization.
Among other little-known facts about the Secret Service, one of the agency's main purposes is to protect our nation's currency against counterfeiting, forgery and related threats. The men and women who make it into the Service go through a long and rigorous training process before they ever even get close to the President or the Vice President. Many never do.

“The Secret Service has the romantic thing called the Presidential Protective Division, and every time you see the President, you see these guys with wires in their ears,” said Jeffrey Robinson, co-author of "Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service." “But that’s a long way away from the day you sign up.”
Abraham Lincoln started the Secret Service in 1865 as a branch of the United States Treasury. The agency’s original mission was to tackle counterfeiting crimes, which were rampant just after the Civil War. After the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, its role expanded to include presidential vigil.

The Service is required by law to protect the President and the Vice President at all times.
The President can also authorize protection for others,  including presidential candidates. Mitt Romney, for example, now has Secret Service protection.
When a President’s term is over, he and his VP can opt to keep their protective detail for 10 years, or they can opt out at any time. Once they’ve dropped their agents, though, they can’t opt back in. Their kids automatically lose protection at age 21.
There is no single way to land a job with the Secret Service. Once an agent is accepted into the service, he or she goes through an intensive training program that lasts for several months. Then, it’s off to an assignment in one of the Service’s many field offices, where agents first and foremost learn to be investigators. The Service is particularly fond of football players, Robinson said, because they understand how to play their positions in situations where teamwork is essential.
Women make up about a quarter of the 6,500-plus agents in Service, Robinson said, and like their male colleagues, they usually have athletic backgrounds. No matter their gender or size, all agents need to meet the same physical standards to qualify for certain positions. If the President is an avid runner or athlete, for example, they may need to be able to run a six-minute mile while carrying heavy guns and other equipment.
Starting annual salary for a special agent, according to the agency’s website, is between about $44,000 and $75,000.
For the first five years, the job consists mostly of grunt work, Robinson said. But every time the president comes to town, agents work long days and nights in concentric circles, creating a layered fishbowl of protection around the president’s every move.
The newest recruits do things like stand post by barricades in foul weather all night long. More experienced agents investigate every possible threat that could possibly arise during a presidential visit. They guard hotels, where they monitor every person allowed in or out. They scope out airports before Air Force One arrives. And they clear out streets before the motorcade comes through.
At every destination, agents also make sure that there is always a trauma hospital within 10 minutes of the president that is ready for an emergency situation, Robinson said. If there are no hospitals nearby, the Service sets up a temporary trauma center in a makeshift location, like on an offshore aircraft carrier that is equipped with a helicopter.
After putting in their time for six years or more, agents can apply for the Presidential Protective Division, where they again start at the bottom. At first, they do things like answer phones and scan the mail that comes into the White House.
Eventually, PPD agents get onto teams that travel at least four times to each location that the president plans to go, starting three months before the trip. Secret Service agents spend 10 days in a city before the President arrives. Some stand within bullet-blocking range of the President, but most are further out.

The work requires a stressful amount of travel, sleep deprivation, and commitment to being on call 24 hours a day. Agents often end up working 18-hour days, day after day. Added pressure comes from an intense sense of responsibility for protecting our nation’s leaders.
Bonded by such intense work, agents form close friendships with each other. But they miss more than their share of anniversaries and kid birthday parties. Divorce rates are high.
“They really are not like what we saw in Columbia,” said Ronald Kessler, author of “In the President's Secret Service: Behind The Scenes With Agents In The Line of Fire And The Presidents They Protect.” “They are very straight-laced. Sure, they drink and go to parties, but most of the time they are so overworked, they are just exhausted and they don’t have a life at all.”
What underlies the Colombia scandal, is not lack of pride among agents, said Kessler. Instead, the problem is an agency that is facing increasing demands without the resources to meet them. In turn, he argued, the Service has been cutting corners, leading to low morale, contempt for rules and a culture of recklessness.
Experts are debating whether the bad behavior of agents in Colombia actually put the President in any danger. Robinson thinks not. Most of the men implicated in the scandal were uniformed officers whose responsibilities included handling dogs and manning metal detectors. They were not part of the President’s inner circle.

“When you take a bunch of 24-year old guys, mix testosterone and alcohol and throw in a bit of hubris, you have a really bad situation, and those guys were idiots,” Robinson said. “That’s not representative of the PPD and the pride those guys have in the job they do. They’re a great bunch of men and women.” More >>