Nigerian villagers announced a settlement of a Bay Area federal court suit Friday that sought information from Chevron Corp. about its alleged practice of illegally burning natural gas released during oil extractions in the Niger Delta. Residents of five villages in the community of Ugborodo sued the San Ramon oil company in U.S. District Court in 2012, asking for records on the environmental impact of gas "flaring," Chevron's use of the practice and any penalties it has paid. Earth Rights said flaring, or disposing of natural gas by burning it when it spews from the ground during oil drilling, contaminates the air and soil, causes respiratory infections, skin rashes and other health problems. Reported by SFGate 21 hours ago.

One-third of microbial life on our planet lives in one of the most extreme environments on Earth: deep beneath the ocean floor. Reported by L.A. Times 19 hours ago.

Megachurch Tries to Scrub the Web of Pastor's 'Jesus Made Mistakes' Sermon (Video)
Megachurch Tries to Scrub the Web of Pastor's 'Jesus Made Mistakes' Sermon (Video)
Internet
Religion
Pastor Mark Driscoll
Has Been Optimized

Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Wash., recently edited six minutes from a sermon by Pastor Mark Driscoll who was preaching about the "mistakes" that Jesus made during his life on earth.

Anthony Ianniciello, executive pastor of Media & Communications at the megachurch, told The Christian Post at the time: "It is standard operating procedure at Mars Hill to take the first two sermons that Pastor Mark Driscoll preaches each week and edit the best possible version of the message for distribution to the other Mars Hill locations, and our online audience. Partly because it is necessary to edit the sermon to conform to time restraints."

"We welcome anyone to come and visit our services to see the amazing things God is doing among the people of the cities we serve. Pastor Mark's sermons can also be found on the Mars Hill website, MarsHill.com, each week for all to learn from and enjoy, or even criticize if you wish," added Ianniciello.

However, the missing six minutes (video below) about Jesus' "mistakes" are not at MarsHill.com or any other Mars Hill church website. In fact, Mars Hill Church doesn't seem to want that part of Pastor Driscoll's message anywhere on the web.

Psychology professor and blogger Warren Throckmorton recently uploaded the missing "mistakes" video to YouTube, but Mars Hill Church filed a copyright infringement claim to get it taken down.

Throckmorton responded on his blog:

In my opinion, the use of the material falls under the fair use exemption. The sermon was delivered in a public setting with many witnesses and was a part of the total work that I excerpted in order to critique the work in question. The use of the material does not deprive Mars Hill of any income since the sermon is offered for free on their website. I am considering how to respond.

Throckmorton also posted a transcript of the video on his blog.

Mars Hills Church has been in the news over the past several weeks due the resignations of various pastors who claim the church elders are heavy-handed, even forcing pastors to sign a non-compete clause that places limits on the churches that they can preach at.

For his part, Pastor Driscoll has been laying low after allegations of plagiarism in his books, reports of the church hiring an outside company to buy his books to boost sales and Pastor Driscoll himself telling non-Christians they were going to hell on Twitter. He also questioned if President Obama was really a Christian.

Sources: The Christian Post, Warren Throckmorton, AlterNet.org

1
Video Piece: 
Video Piece (This piece contains embedded video content) Reported by Opposing Views 19 hours ago.

*University of Leeds*

The first ecological study of an entire glacier has found that microbes drastically reduce surface reflectivity and have a non-negligible impact on the amount of sunlight that is reflected into space.

The research, led by the University of Leeds and published June 12 in the journal FEMS Microbiology Ecology, will help improve climate change models that have previously neglected the role of microbes in darkening the Earth's surface.

Observing how life thrives at extreme cold temperatures also has important implications for the search for life on distant worlds, such as Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

Stefanie Lutz, a PhD student at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, and lead author of the study, said: "Our three-week field trip revealed a 'microbial garden' of life forms flourishing in this cold environment, including snow algae, bacteria, fungi and even invertebrates.

"Skiers may have seen snow algae before, but not been able to identify it. They are visible to the naked eye as colored snow – most often red – and are frequently referred to as 'watermelon snow'."

The study was carried out on the Mittivakkat Glacier in south east Greenland during the summer of 2012, which was the hottest summer and thus the fastest melting season recorded for 150 years.

"Our timing was serendipitous, as it meant we were able to see changes in microbial processes over an extremely fast melting season and observe a process from start to end across all habitats on a glacier surface. This is the most comprehensive study of microbial communities living on a glacier to date," said Lutz.

The research showed that, compared to pure snow and ice, the reflectivity of the glacier (known as the "albedo") can be reduced by up to 80% in places where colored microbial populations are extremely dense, leading to the darkening of the glacier surface.

Professor Liane G. Benning from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and co-author of the study, said: "Previously, it was assumed that low albedo, which is most often measured from satellites, was primarily due to soot or dust. However, our research provides a first, ground-based measure for the microbial contribution to albedo. We have shown that albedo is strongly affected by and dependent upon the development and dominance of microbial communities.

"In future climate scenarios, where even more melting is predicted, it is crucial that we are able to better discriminate between all factors affecting albedo."

The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under grant agreement n° 262693 [INTERACT] and a University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environment grant to Stefanie Lutz and Liane G. Benning. Reported by redOrbit 10 hours ago.

*University of Innsbruck*

One of the most remarkable consequences of the rules in quantum mechanics is the capability of a quantum particle to penetrate through a potential barrier even though its energy would not allow for the corresponding classical trajectory. This is known as the quantum tunnel effect and manifests itself in a multitude of well-known phenomena. For example, it explains nuclear radioactive decay, fusion reactions in the interior of stars, and electron transport through quantum dots. Tunneling also is at the heart of many technical applications, for instance it allows for imaging of surfaces on the atomic length scale in scanning tunneling microscopes.

All the above systems have in common that they essentially represent the very fundamental paradigm of the tunnel effect: a single particle that penetrates through a single barrier. Now, the team of Hanns-Christoph Nägerl, Institute for Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, has directly observed tunneling dynamics in a much more intriguing system: They see quantum particles transmitting through a whole series of up to five potential barriers under conditions where a single particle could not do the move. Instead the particles need to help each other via their strong mutual interactions and via an effect known as Bose enhancement.

In their experiment the scientists place a gas of Cesium atoms at extremely low temperatures just above absolute zero temperature into a potential landscape that is deliberately engineered by laser light. This so-called optical lattice forms a regular and perfect structure constituting the multiple tunneling barriers, similar to a washboard. As temperatures are so low and thus the atoms' kinetic energies are so tiny, the only way to move across the washboard is via tunneling through the barriers. The tunneling motion is initiated by applying a directed force onto the atoms along one of the lattice axes, that is, by tilting the washboard. It is now one of the crucial points in the experiment that the physicists control through how many barriers the particles penetrate by the interplay between the interaction and the strength of the force in conjunction with Bose enhancement as a result of the particles' quantum indistinguishability.

Very similar to a massive object moving in the earth's gravitational field, the tunneling atoms should loose potential energy when they move down the washboard. But where can they deposit this energy in such a perfect and frictionless environment? It's the interaction energy between the atoms when they share the same site of the lattice that compensates for the potential energy. As a result, the physicists found that the tunneling motion leads to discrete resonances corresponding to the number of barriers the particles penetrate through.

It is left for the future to explore the role of such long-range tunneling processes for lattice systems with ultracold atoms in the context of quantum simulation and quantum information processing, or for different physical settings, for instance electronic quantum devices, molecular or even biological systems.

Publication: Observation of many-body dynamics in long-range tunneling after a quantum quench. Florian Meinert, Manfred J. Mark, Emil Kirilov, Katharina Lauber, Philipp Weinmann,  Michael Gröbner, Andrew J. Daley, Hanns-Christoph Nägerl. Science 2014 DOI: 10.1126/science.1248402 (arXiv:1312.2758) Reported by redOrbit 10 hours ago.

*Elizabeth Zubritzky, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center*

NASA scientists have created a new recipe that captures key flavors of the brownish-orange atmosphere around Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

The recipe is used for lab experiments designed to simulate Titan’s chemistry. With this approach, the team was able to classify a previously unidentified material discovered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in the moon’s smoggy haze.

“Now we can say that this material has a strong aromatic character, which helps us understand more about the complex mixture of molecules that makes up Titan’s haze,” said Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The material had been detected earlier in data gathered by Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer, an instrument that makes observations at wavelengths in the far infrared region, beyond red light. The spectral signature of the material suggested it was made up of a mixture of molecules.

To investigate that mixture, the researchers turned to the tried-and-true approach of combining gases in a chamber and letting them react. The idea is that if the experiment starts with the right gases and under the right conditions, the reactions in the lab should yield the same products found in Titan’s smoggy atmosphere. The process is like being given a slice of cake and trying to figure out the recipe by tasting it. If you can make a cake that tastes like the original slice, then you chose the right ingredients.

The challenge is that the possibilities are almost limitless in this case. Titan’s dirty orange color comes from a mixture of hydrocarbons (molecules that contain hydrogen and carbon) and nitrogen-carrying chemicals called nitriles. The family of hydrocarbons already has hundreds of thousands of members, identified from plants and fossil fuels on Earth, and more could exist.

The logical starting point was to begin with the two gases most plentiful in Titan’s atmosphere: nitrogen and methane. But these experiments never produced a mixture with a spectral signature to match to the one seen by Cassini; neither have similar experiments conducted by other groups.

Promising results finally came when the researchers added a third gas, essentially tweaking the flavors in the recipe for the first time. The team began with benzene, which has been identified in Titan’s atmosphere, followed by a series of closely related chemicals that are likely to be present there. All of these gases belong to the subfamily of hydrocarbons known as aromatics.

The outcome was best results were obtained when the scientists chose an aromatic that contained nitrogen. When team members analyzed those lab products, they detected spectral features that matched up well with the distinctive signature that had been extracted from the Titan data by Carrie Anderson, a Cassini participating scientist at Goddard and a co-author on this study.

“This is the closest anyone has come, to our knowledge, to recreating with lab experiments this particular feature seen in the Cassini data,” said Joshua Sebree, the lead author of the study, available online in Icarus. Sebree is a former postdoctoral fellow at Goddard who is now an assistant professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

Now that the basic recipe has been demonstrated, future work will concentrate on tweaking the experimental conditions to perfect it.

“Titan’s chemical makeup is veritable zoo of complex molecules,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “With the combination of laboratory experiments and Cassini data, we gain an understanding of just how complex and wondrous this Earth-like moon really is.”

The laboratory experiments were funded by NASA’s Planetary Atmospheres program. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Goddard built and manages the Composite Infrared Spectrometer.

Related Links

› NASA's main Cassini website

› Cassini project website at NASA JPL

› More information about the Composite Infrared Spectrometer Reported by redOrbit 7 hours ago.

*redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online*

If there are cracks on the ice-covered surface of Charon, an upcoming analysis of those fractures could help determine whether or not the interior of Pluto’s moon was warm enough to have been home to a subterranean ocean of liquid water.

In April, research funded by the US space agency and published in the journal Icarus reported that tidally-driven fractures could have formed on the moon if its orbit was previously eccentric. Likewise, other moons in the outer solar system, including Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, also have surface fractures with evidence for ocean interiors.

Given Charon’s distance from the Earth, it has been difficult to make the detailed observations required to determine whether or not this is the case. However, that will change next July, as NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will travel to Pluto and its moon for the first time, providing the most detailed observations of each to date.

“Our model predicts different fracture patterns on the surface of Charon depending on the thickness of its surface ice, the structure of the moon's interior and how easily it deforms, and how its orbit evolved,” explained Alyssa Rhoden of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and lead author of the Icarus research paper.

“By comparing the actual New Horizons observations of Charon to the various predictions, we can see what fits best and discover if Charon could have had a subsurface ocean in its past, driven by high eccentricity,” she added.

Pluto orbits the sun at a distance more than 29 times farther than Earth, and has a surface temperature estimated to be approximately 380 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. As such, this extremely distant world and its moons are much too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface – but underneath the surface might be a different story.

“As Europa and Enceladus move in their orbits, a gravitational tug-of-war between their respective parent planets and neighboring moons keeps their orbits from becoming circular,” NASA explained. “Instead, these moons have eccentric (slightly oval-shaped) orbits, which raise daily tides that flex the interior and stress the surface.”

It is believed that tidal heating helped keep the interiors of those two moons warm, thus extending the lifespan of their subsurface oceans. However, that is not the case with Charon, as the study authors found that prior high eccentricity might have produced large tides that resulted in friction and surface fractures.

Charon, which is about one-eighth of Pluto’s mass, is described as unusually massive in comparison to the planet it orbits. It is believed to have formed much closer to Pluto, having formed (along with several smaller moons) from material ejected from the planet’s surface following a giant impact that coalesced under its own gravity.

At first, there would have been strong tides on both Pluto and Charon as the gravity between them caused their surfaces to bulge towards one-another, creating friction beneath the surface. This friction, in turn, would have caused the tides to lag slightly behind their orbital positions – slowing Pluto’s rotation and transferring rotational energy to Charon. That would cause the moon to increase in velocity and move further away from Pluto.

“Depending on exactly how Charon's orbit evolved, particularly if it went through a high-eccentricity phase, there may have been enough heat from tidal deformation to maintain liquid water beneath the surface of Charon for some time,” said Rhoden. “Using plausible interior structure models that include an ocean, we found it wouldn't have taken much eccentricity (less than 0.01) to generate surface fractures like we are seeing on Europa.”

“Since it's so easy to get fractures, if we get to Charon and there are none, it puts a very strong constraint on how high the eccentricity could have been and how warm the interior ever could have been,” she added. “This research gives us a head start on the New Horizons arrival – what should we look for and what can we learn from it. We're going to Pluto and Pluto is fascinating, but Charon is also going to be fascinating.” Reported by redOrbit 10 hours ago.

*EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Senior NSA Executive: NSA Started Spying On Journalists in 2002 … In Order to Make Sure They Didn’t Report On Mass Surveillance*

-The Story of NSA’s “First Fruits” Program Has Never Been Told-

You may have heard about the government’s spying on the Associated Press. And high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney told Washington’s Blog that the government also spied on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen, and chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen.

But Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake tells Washington’s Blog that the spying on reporters started 12 years ago – in 2002 – and has been fairly systematic.

By way of background, Drake had championed the “ThinThread” program, which automatically encrypted Americans’ data (data could only be decrypted after a court found there was probable cause that the American was a bad guy).

But after 9/11, NSA instead adopted the competing “Stellar Wind” system, which didn’t protect Americans’ privacy, and was less effective and more expensive.

*THOMAS DRAKE:* Part of what I discovered is that part of the surveillance system, part of the Stellar Wind system – and that’s an umbrella term in itself – there were offshoots of that.

It metastasized. It grew like a cancer on the body politic.

One of the things that was done was [along the lines of]: “You know what? We’ve got to make sure” (because they were paranoid) “we’ve got to make sure that this stuff doesn’t get out … oh yeah, the press. *Let’s violate the Fourth Amendment and just monitor the press*.”

The whole story of that has not come out.

There was a program called “First Fruits”. They’ve no doubt changed the name of the program [since then.]

And that First Fruits program was a cutout which was designed from all of the domestic surveillance take. “Let’s just pipe off from all” that is involving designated [reporters] … or in some cases whole groups of reporters and journalists.

So you’re targeting actual newspapers. You’re targeting media outlets.

And you’re monitoring – on a persistent basis – their communications.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* How early did that start?

*THOMAS DRAKE:* The preliminary version of that – as far as an active program – was in *2002*.

Postscript: Sadly, journalists are treated like the like enemy in modern America.

*Senior NSA Executive DEMOLISHES Intelligence Agencies’ Excuse for 9/11*

-9/11 Should Have Been Stopped-

The U.S. government pretended that 9/11 was unforeseeable.

But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable.

The fallback government position is that the problem was that intelligence agencies were prohibited by law from sharing intelligence, because there was a "Chinese Wall" put up between agencies focusing on foreign and domestic threats.

Washington’s Blog spoke with senior NSA executive Thomas Drake about this claim.

9/11 was Drake’s first day on the job at the NSA. Drake was tasked with investigating what intelligence NSA had on the 9/11 plot, in order to document that 9/11 wasn’t NSA’s fault. However, Drake discovered that NSA had a lot of information on the hijackers, and could have stopped 9/11 had it shared its data with other intelligence agencies.

Drake’s NSA bosses didn’t like that answer, so they removed Drake from his task of being the NSA’s investigator and spokesman regarding 9/11.

Here’s what Drake told us.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* A lot of people blame a “Chinese Wall” between foreign intelligence activities and domestic intelligence activities for not sharing the pre-9/11 data.

*THOMAS DRAKE:* That is a completely false “wall.” It was essentially to protect the status quo, or what they call “equities.”

It’s not true at all.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* Was it a turf war?

*THOMAS DRAKE:* Yes, it’s partly that. People have this idea that the government is all powerful, all-knowing, and everybody is in league with each other.

That’s not true. In fact – in this space – you more often than not find agencies at war with each other, effectively. Such that NSA is at war with Congress to keep them in the dark about what they’re really doing.

“I have knowledge, you don’t.” Information is power. “If I give it to you, then I’m giving away my power, and I’m not going to do it!”

Information is a currency. “Why would I give you my money. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with it. I don’t know how you’re going to spend it. I don’t know how you’re going to invest it. You may convert it, because money is fungible.”

Information is far more fungible even than traditional definitions of money.

I’ve never accepted the premise or the arguments. I’m aware that [9/11 Commissioner] Jamie Gorelick [who has potential conflicts of interest in the subject matter], for example, is well-known defender who kept saying that the “wall” was there when, in fact, there wasn’t a wall.

And we had special procedures where you had known ways to go through the wall when it was necessary.

Here’s the hypocrisy … It is true that in terms of separation between [domestic] law enforcement and normal causal chain of evidence, and information that was collected for intelligence purposes. But that’s not a wall as much as it’s due process.

Remember, what’s now used is parallel construction. [Background.] So, what was the wall again?

Intelligence is always carefully vetted for that reason. But if you’re talking U.S. domestic law, U.S. judicial process, due process, you couldn’t just take [raw] intelligence.

But here’s the kicker … If you believed that the intelligence rose to the level someone who has a U.S. person was involved in acts or planning to harm the United States, then the wall *disappears*, and there are *actual procedures* for that.

When you’re dealing with U.S. persons, then you had these procedures in which you could actually present [evidence for the need to target terrorists or other actual bad guys.] That was the whole thing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* If they’re actual bad guys, then you can go after them.

*THOMAS DRAKE:* Yes! And you had mechanisms where you actually end up putting them on trial. You have mechanisms where you can introduce that as evidence.

It wasn’t like, “Oh, we can’t tell anybody.” That’s the reason they didn’t want to tell anybody … because they’re actually abusing the system.

There isn’t a “wall” … it’s because there’s due process. With foreign intelligence, we had standing procedures.

We’ve tried bad people … in Article III courts. You didn’t have to do the rendition stuff. And you don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to be put on trial.

For a short, must-watch interview with Drake and other high-level intelligence officials on agency turf wars, check this out:

 

*Senior NSA Executive: OF COURSE They’re Collecting Everyone’s Content, As Well As Metadata*

-The Government’s “Limited Hangout” In Mass Surveillance-

The NSA claims that it only collects our “metadata”, and not our content.

Washington’s Blog called senior NSA executive Thomas Drake and asked him whether it’s only metadata we have to worry about, or whether the government is collecting our content as well.

Initially, Drake explained that admitting to metadata collection is simply a “limited hangout” by the NSA: admission of one small piece of the puzzle which Snowden’s documents already reveal, in order to hide the bigger picture of mass spying on all Americans.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* NSA apologists claim that the agency is just collecting metadata and not content.

NSA whistleblowers Bill Binney and Russ Tice – and Tim Clemente from the FBI and a lot of other people – say that they’re recording all content, and that’s why they’re building the massive data storage facility at Bluffdale, Utah. [Background See here, here and here.]

What do you think?

*THOMAS DRAKE: *Simple response. I’ve been by Bluffdale [and it's huge.] I call it the “dark cloud on the ground.” It’s the dark digital cloud that’s sited on the ground.

And you don’t build a facility of that size if it’s all about metadata.

I could put the metadata of the *world* – with current technology – in less than the space of an average size house.

In fact, I could essentially put the metadata of the world in a couple of rooms. But we’ll be fair … with infrastructure and racks and all of that, the size of a house. A regular house, maybe 2,500 to 3,000 square feet.

That type of facility [a giant data storage facility like Bluffdale] was in the planning stages many, many years ago, while I was at NSA … in 2002.

It’s far beyond metadata. The technology gave them the ability to store everything that they collected.

 

*Senior NSA Executive: Spy Agencies Seduced by Power to “Collect It All”*

-The “Dataddiction” of America’s Spies: “No Detox at the Data Center … You’re High All the Time”-

While Edward Snowden’s revelations have made Americans aware of mass spying by the NSA, there has been very little discussion of the psychology behind mass surveillance.

Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake explained to Washington’s Blog the little-known psychology of workers at NSA who conduct mass surveillance.

*THOMAS DRAKE:* Information is power, and the government is addicted to data. They have to have their daily “data fix”, and they’re “mainlining” who we are.

I know it’s seductive psychologically: “I have all of this evidence. It doesn’t matter what the source is, and whether it’s sourced from intelligence. Because I’m going to use it for other purposes.”

Not only can you not get enough of it, but you have to keep what you have. You just “never” get rid of it.

And here’s the other dynamic which I’m intimately familiar with, given my technical background. The cost for processing and storing information is – for all practical purposes – essentially approaching zero.

I understand the seductive psychology behind surveillance. You’re a nameless face behind a screen somewhere (or you don’t even need a screen anymore). And all this stuff keeps pouring in about just about everything and everybody.

[I know from the cold war spying days,] It’s hard to separate yourself from that type of habit.

In the digital space, you’re “data drug” habit goes exponential, because there’s just so much. You can mainline this all day long.

To me, there’s a psychology that’s not often written about: What happens when you have this much reach and power, and constraints of law and even policy simply fade into the woodwork.

Because you’re already in a secret world, and “let’s just do a little query…”

Which is made worse by the fact that you can’t get enough, there’s never enough, and there’s more coming. It’s never like it ends one day and you get to go on a fast …

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* We won, it’s over …

*THOMAS DRAKE:* There’s no detox at the data center …. You’re high all the time. Because you’re plugged in. It’s now 24/7. There’s no relief from the addiction.

I call it the “Dataddiction”.

 

*Senior NSA Executive: We’re In a Police State*

-“We Have a Significant Element of Our Government In League With Corporations and Other Unelected Officials Who’ve Decided That The Constitution Is Essentially Null And Void”-

Thomas Drake is a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran, who has been awarded numerous medals including:

· Meritorious Service Medal

· Air Medal

· Air Force Commendation Medal

· Ridenhour prize

· Sam Adams Award

Drake was a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service.

With a strong technical background in surveillance and computers, Drake was also one of the top NSA executives, and was Senior Change Leader within the NSA.

To get a sense of who Drake is, watch this recent PBS interview.

Washington’s Blog asked Drake if America is drifting towards tyranny.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* Senator Frank Church – who chaired the famous “Church Committee” on the unlawful FBI Cointel program, and who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – said in 1975:



“Th[e National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and* no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything:* telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] *could enable it to impose total tyranny, and *there would be no way to fight back.**“



Is the NSA turning its capability around on the American people, as Senator Church warned?

*THOMAS DRAKE: *I believe they are. Those words are words that have been ringing from inside Pandora’s box … the one that I opened and looked into right after 9/11.

I grew up in the early 70′s as a very young teenager, and I remember those hearings in 1975. And it was rather a dramatic warning that he [Senator Church] actually issued to the nation.

I never imagined in ’75 that in a short 26 years later that I would become confronted by the stark reality that my own government would jettison the Constitution.

And doing so in the deepest of secrecy under the mantle, the excuse, the label of “national security”. I shudder every time I hear national security invoked. Somehow it’s some “special dispension” when you use it in any sentence, that “justifies” anything when it’s done for (ostensibly) national security purposes.

It’s not rule of law. This secret law, secret rule, executive authoritarianism has saddled up again. [Indeed, the government now uses secret evidence, secret evidence, secret witnesses, and even secret laws.]

In many respects, the most virulent form [of tyranny] is when it’s least obvious.

There’s already a digital fence all around us. Extraordinary reach by the government, often in direct partnership with certain corporations, usually very large corporations.

It’s actually replacing the body politic with an alien substance. And it’s certainly not the form of government – or substance of government – that I took an oath to support and defend four times.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* Do you think we already have tyranny in the U.S.? Or how close do you think we are?

*THOMAS DRAKE: *We’re not an actual fascist surveillance state in the traditionally defined sense of the word.

Even the Stasi – who were the dreaded secret police in East Germany, a country upon which I became an expert during my RC-135 crypto-linguist and electronic warfare days, during the latter days of the cold war, even going into the ’70s, when they would use rather harsh techniques on their own population, or dissidents, or those who were considered enemies of the state – they actually went to *psychological* techniques.

The term they used was “zersetzlich” – the German translation is “to decompose”, really to fragment you, to isolate you. That’s psychological … and that has far greater greater impact.

So what you would do is selectively go after certain people to send the message. So you don’t have to be taking people off the street each and every day. Because that’s an obvious thing, and you’re going to resist it.

Remember, this is ultimately about social control. This is about social tracking. [He's right.] It goes far beyond any stated purpose of providing for common defense ….

This upends it, because now you’re using the very instruments of power to track and control your own population. And it’s better [from the perspective of those in power] to do it behind the scenes and without the population knowing fully how you’re doing it, as opposed to being on the street with tanks on the corners.

We have episodes [of tyranny]. With the Boston Marathon bomber, we effectively had martial law for short periods of time in certain neighborhoods. People who’ve seen the videos … there was no law. [See for yourself.] “The law is what we say it is, because we’re in charge.”

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* High-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney says that we already have a police state, because government agencies are using information gathered through mass NSA surveillance – laundering it in order to hide its origin – and using “parallel construction” to create the evidence to use against people. [Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State”] What do you think?

*THOMAS DRAKE: * Yes. Remember, this is behind the scenes. Secret evidence collected for national intelligence purposes gets “repurposed”.

The cover of collecting for intelligence purposes gives me wide purview, because I also have enabling act legislation that’s allowed me to do that – and then some – plus the secret interpretations. [See this for an explanation of the "secret interpretations".]

And I can take that evidence – which completely flips our system of justice – and then I can use it for other purposes.

In this case, they can use it to go after people with evidence that was actually gained by other means and then use that as the hidden cover … and then assert a standard judicial mechanisms when you go after somebody as if it was traditional law enforcement.

When in fact, you are actually corrupting the justice system, you’ve actually flipped the whole notion of innocent until proven guilty and the whole notion of – and this is crucial – under fifth and sixth amendment, never mind the fourth (as to how it was acquired) you have the right to face your accusers … you have a right to face witnesses.

How do you face your accusers when – and I saw this, unfortunately – in my own criminal case – that whole process is completely subverted? [See below for Drake's Kafkaesque treatment in his criminal case.]

That raises the ugly specter of a police state mentality. We’re just going to go after anybody and how convenient is it to have mass surveillance data and “evidence”. If we already have it, then it’s not probable cause … but we’re going to assert it, because we have it. And it’s secret evidence. It’s literally secret evidence gained by other means.

And then you hide behind “state secrets” and executive privilege. And you have no “standing” [explanation] because you don’t know if you were harmed.

I think the most stark examples for me as far as what has transpired since the Snowden disclosures, is the claim by Keith Alexander about the “54 terrorist plots” that were somehow stopped, mitigated or blunted. But – in fact – what it turns out is that they weren’t. [Mass spying by the NSA has never stopped a single terrorist attack.]

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* $8,500 bucks sent abroad … [The one possible time that NSA mass surveillance might arguably have even contributed to stopping terrorism involved guys who sent $8,500 to their tribesmen in Somalia.]

*THOMAS DRAKE: *Right … and even that [could have been caught through] traditional law enforcement! So by saying that, [they're showing this is not really focused on stopping terrorism.]

The parallel construction is a means to an end. And what is the end? Complete dismantlement of due process. We choose to go after who we decide is a threat.

There is no bar … Any of the rights which are enumerated, in the Bill of Rights in particular, which are created for people … just forget it; it doesn’t apply. [Sadly, he's right.]

To me, the behavior – in terms of how they go about the abuse of the system – speaks volumes as to how far we’ve departed not just from the rule of law but from the Grand Experiment called the Constitution. Nothing was supposed to be above it … no president, no congress, no government agency.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* Even in times of war?

*THOMAS DRAKE: *I’ve heard it said that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” But that’s a hyperbolic response.

In fact, I believe our system of government is strongest when it is under the greatest pressures and the greatest threats. That’s when you actually exercise who we are.

And it’s not this either/or … that it’s only national security and all else pales.

And so – when in doubt – we always err on the side of national security … when in fact, we’re losing both. We’re losing the very essence of who we are – in terms of the Great Experiment – and we’re actually making ourselves even more insecure as a result.

But then, [mass surveillance is really geared towards] protecting power. There is the whole thing about “yeah, it’s okay, except when it involves those in power.”

The Stasi ultimately violated [their people's rights] – over many decades, they were the prime example of violating the privacy of people – to protect the sovereignty of the state. The sovereignty of the state reigns supreme.

Well, if the sovereignty of the state reigns supreme, what does that make us? That means we’re no longer citizens with rights … we’re simply turned into subjects of the state. And subject to the state.

“Collect it all, know it all” [the NSA's model] is actually the Stasi model. It’s not just know everything; we have to be able to keep everything that we want to know, even if we don’t know it yet.

It’s a collect it all first mentality … and then we’ll get to know it all. I call it “feeding the beast”.

I keep shuddering because I’m intimately familiar with the East German surveillance state mentality.

[If you think Drake is exaggeration, please note that a lieutenant colonel for the Stasi East German’s – based upon his experience – agrees. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel - who grew up in Stasi Germany - says the NSA is exactly the same. Top American constitutional experts also say that the Obama and Bush administration are worse than the Stasi East Germans. They also say that NSA spying is exactly the type of oppression that the Founding Fathers launched the Revolutionary War to stop. And see this.]

We have a significant element of our government in league with corporations and other unelected officials who’ve decided that the Constitution is essentially null and void and national security reigns supreme. National security is the new state religion.

And they love the power. They love the secrecy. And they want to protect it. They’ve got a lot at stake.

Frederick Douglass was right – and I’m paragraphing him – “Power does not yield willingly”. That kind of power, in particular, does not yield willingly.

Lord Acton was right that power does tend to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what if you combine that with absolute secrecy? Or enough secrecy … or an expanding secrecy?

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* What about “pre-crime” surveillance?

[Snowden has said that the NSA is engaging in pre-crime surveillance. Drake himself was the victim of the use of mass NSA surveillance to go after people it doesn't like ... and to use false "evidence" to frame someone. Specifically, the government indicted Drake on numerous counts of "espionage" ... claiming - after he blew the whistle on NSA corruption and lawlessness - that unclassified documents which he took were classified. Stunningly, the government classified some of the documents after-the-fact in an attempt to frame Drake.]

*THOMAS DRAKE:* This whole pre-crime thing was played out with me and [NSA whistleblower Bill Binney] and others.

Because – once you target, you will find what you’re [looking for]. Because some have argued, “Give me 7 pieces of evidence on anybody and I’ll find a charge.” [Here's what he means.]

It’s a pre-crime mentality …

Everybody’s suspicious. And if I decide you’re suspicious enough, or that you’ve turned into a threat … then guess what? I’ve got more than enough evidence to frame you. It doesn’t even matter if the evidence is true. It’s just evidence.

It’s obvious that Snowden really focused on what happened to me and Bill [Binney; and so Snowden went into hiding after blowing the whistle].

I was “data framed”.

*WASHINGTON’S BLOG:* And when the NSA framed you, it wasn’t just that they claimed you took classified documents – that actually were never classified – did they frame you in other ways?

*THOMAS DRAKE:* Yes. They went to the ends of the earth. It’s the ultimate prosecutorial technique: When all else fails, it’s character assassination.

And that can take many forms. You shoot the messenger to avoid the message.

They charged me in a way that I would not have any public interest defense or First Amendment defense.

One of the things they had in the secret indictment I was charged with conspiracy with others against the United States of America. Pretty serious charge. That goes beyond espionage.

They alleged that I met – in conspiracy – and they alleged that it was “proved”.

It was President’s Day in February 2007. It was my day off, and we met at lunch. And we were meeting to talk as to whether it was possible to use technology to detect *medicare fraud*. And there were several other people there.

And the government conveniently [omitted important facts]. You know those old Soviet pictures where they just conveniently airbrush people out they don’t want anymore? That’s what they did here. They just conveniently left out the fact of who else was at this meeting. And simply said that it was a conspiracy.

And they removed the evidence from my home, after we got raided. How convenient is that?

When the first 9/11 investigation was launched – in early 2002 – the Saxby Chambliss inquiry (and I also testified to the Congressional Inquiry on 9/11) – NSA in response to that Saxby Chambliss subcommittee meeting, set aside the Leadership Room at NSA (basically our briefing room for the Signals Intelligence Director). And they had a bunch of computers set up, and they air gapped it [i.e. disconnected computers from the Internet in order to make sure know one could see what they were doing], and they called it the “War Room”.

I was faced with evidence by the FBI claiming, “you were in a conspiracy with others against the United States and you set up a war room.”

That was completely false! There was a war room. But I didn’t set it up. [It has now been conclusively proven that the "War Room" was set up by NSA chief Hayden - not Drake - to contest claims that NSA dropped the ball on 9/11. Moreover, Drake has explained that Hayden believed he was at "war" with Congress ... and the press. In other words, it was the NSA chief - and not Drake - who was in a conspiracy against the Constitution and American values.] Reported by Zero Hedge 15 hours ago.

The post Netherlands, Spain Look To Next Match At World Cup by Associated Press appeared first on The Epoch Times.

SALVADOR, Brazil— The Netherlands team has to come back down to earth while Spain has to pick itself up and look for a way to bounce back from one of its worst defeats.

The morning after the rampant Netherlands beat …

The post Netherlands, Spain Look To Next Match At World Cup by Associated Press appeared first on The Epoch Times. Reported by Epoch Times 15 hours ago.

D.A.M.E. Media announces the launch of "Butterflies Wake" by Arlene Lagos, a new fiction novel about an underground female mafia who rights the wrongs of an unjust society, taking matters into their own hands where the system has failed.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) June 14, 2014

The highly anticipated novel, "Butterflies Wake" by Arlene Lagos, about an underground female mafia who rights the wrongs of an unjust society launches today, in this gripping story of everyday women taking matters into their own hands where the justice system has failed.

For many years they have worked quietly and gone unnoticed by the world in which they live, until one of them goes missing. The wrong people start asking questions and before they know it, they are in danger of being exposed. How will they save one of their own without putting their organization in danger? Will they be able to remain a secret?

Along with the book, Lagos has put together a photo campaign titled, “The Butterfly Project” depicting vigilante women in positions of power, in an effort to go up against the mainstream depictions of women as victims of a domestically violent and rape-excused culture.

“For a fiction novel it seems to hit home, with many women asking me, is it real? If so, can I join?” Lagos says.

Lagos has written poetry, stage plays, screenplays and short stories for over 20 years. In addition to writing Butterflies Wake, she’s also written the Beyond Earth Series, as well as twelve short stories that are published in the Giant Tales anthology. Lagos currently resides in Massachusetts with her husband and their daughter.

Butterflies Wake Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ6NulqdZsw

Website: http://www.butterflieswake.wordpress.com Reported by PRWeb 14 hours ago.

SALVADOR, Brazil (AP) The Netherlands team has to come back down to earth while Spain has to pick itself up and look for a way to bounce back from one of its worst defeats. Reported by FOX Sports 14 hours ago.

The post No Color’s Too Bold for Decor by Associated Press appeared first on The Epoch Times.

It might be practical, of course, to decorate your home with neutral colors and muted earth tones. No need to worry about colors clashing if most everything is white, beige, and light brown.

But what if you’re a fan of …

The post No Color’s Too Bold for Decor by Associated Press appeared first on The Epoch Times. Reported by Epoch Times 10 hours ago.

That's what scientists in France who study quartz are saying. Reported by USATODAY.com 3 hours ago.

On Feb. 10, Jason Fyk received a strange Facebook message.

“Bro.”

The message had been sent by someone who wasn’t his friend on the social network, someone using the alias “Anthony.*” It was a name Fyk had come to know and dread.

Minutes later, the traffic on his website, FunnierPics.net, nosedived. Google Analytics showed the number of active readers drop from 3,000 to zero instantly.

When Fyk, known online as Jason Michaels, clicked over to his company’s Facebook page, WTF Magazine, he found another message from Anthony.

“Site’s down :(.”

Fyk’s business was under attack, and not for the first time. He’d spent the past few years locked in ferocious virtual combat over his Facebook pages, battling a shadowy group of adversaries that he and his friends call Script Kiddies, on the assumption that they're young hackers who exploit low-level vulnerabilities on others' sites.

Anthony prefers the name the Community, and he readily admits — albeit communicating only under a pseudonym — that the group’s activities include hijacking valuable Facebook pages for fun and viral fame. (Meanwhile, Anthony and his cohorts refer to the WTF team as the Neckbeards.)

One of Fyk’s employees quickly determined that FunnierPics.net was under a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) reflection attack. When Fyk’s team contacted the host, GoDaddy, they learned an estimated 70,000 servers had gone dead, resulting in more than 1 million customers losing web service. Fyk’s IP address, GoDaddy confirmed, was the attackers’ target. The others were collateral damage.

“Imagine the World Wide Web is like a six-lane highway, and each exit is its own server,” Fyk said. “And one of the exits is my server.” The attack sent so much traffic up the road to Fyk’s exit that every exit preceding it became jammed as well.

And the waves of bots were still coming.

Within 16 hours, Fyk’s team got his site working again, but not before they’d lost $15,000 in ad revenue. Since then, his company has been subjected to a number of similar attacks, and one of Fyk’s most valuable Facebook pages, an MTV fan page with 1.3 million fans, has been hijacked,  stolen by a user who used a security glitch.

Fyk, 40, is a self-made millionaire who’s built his fortune almost entirely on Facebook. It’s a rewarding business but not without its challenges. Not only must he play a constant game of cat and mouse with hackers and digital thieves but he must do so on a field of battle that is constantly shifting because of Facebook’s habit of routinely — and mysteriously — tweaking its algorithm.

“It’s legitimately a cyber war,” said Fyk, who describes his archenemies as tech-savvy teens who are motivated by boredom. “I make almost a quarter-million dollars a month, so I have to protect what I’m doing. That means if I have to play their kiddie game, I play. I don’t have a choice.”  

They may be kiddie games, but they are hardly trivial, having led to physical threats, out-and-out swindling, and run-ins with police.

And while Facebook security monitors for suspicious behavior, digital theft seems to be running rampant.

--------------------

*
*A Rough Road To Millions**

In 2011, Fyk was bankrupt, in jail, and borderline suicidal.

His troubles dated to 2005. Fyk had been working in real estate. As the month went by, the market turned. Eventually, it caused him to go into a “financial tailspin,” as he puts it. With a wife and a young child to support, he scrambled to find a new way to generate income.

Some friends approached him about starting a website, and he snatched up the domain WTFMagazine.com. The acronym, they decided, would stand not for What The F--- but Where’s The Fun, and the site would be a home for original, entertaining content. Fyk likens his business to College Humor.

“[Our team] was running with no money,” Fyk said of the digital business' early days. “We were doing the fake-it-till-you-make-it thing, putting content together and starting to pick up steam, but I had no idea what I was doing.”

Fyk formed an LLC on Sept. 10, 2010, and launched the website in January 2011. “It was just fun, goofy, stupid stuff,” he said. His Facebook pages and websites publish the same kind of content today.

*WATCH: Jason Fyk explains his "attempted murder" charge.*

Shortly after WTF launched, Fyk found himself behind bars. He'd driven to Baltimore to interview an American stunt group, the Adrenaline Crew, for a story. They were all hanging out in a parking lot, about to drive to the interview location, when a drunken brawl broke out. Startled, Fyk said, he stood off to the side and began filming the fight on his smartphone. When things got serious, he stopped recording and tried to break up the fight. Instead, he got blamed for allegedly planning the altercation and found himself charged with attempted murder.

“It was a stupid drunken brawl,” he said, adding that he had met the people involved in the fight only a few minutes earlier. “Granted people got hit, and granted it was a fight, but it was never a felony fight. It was misdemeanor-assault stuff.”

Still, Fyk was thrown in jail and had to spend the little money his family had left on a lawyer. Two months later the charges were dropped, and Fyk was released from prison, broke.

"I couldn’t just go get a job at McDonald’s, because my bills were massive,” he said. “My kid held me together. I was almost suicidal. It was a disaster for me. I put my head down and kept pushing forward.”

Fyk tried to think of ways to make a lot of money quickly. His jail story was so strange, he felt it might make for a compelling book. But he wasn’t an established writer, and he knew the only way to sell a book would be to build a following.

“The only resource I had was social media, and it was free,” he said. “I decided to give everything I could toward getting as many eyeballs in my possession. Basically, I needed a distribution list.”

Facebook had launched Pages for businesses in 2007, but they were slow to take off, and even by 2011, no one was quite sure of their value. Fyk saw an opportunity, though.

At first he tried to grow just one Facebook page, representing WTF Magazine. Before long, he realized that even pages that were totally unrelated to his website could be useful as well.

“It didn’t really matter if a page was specific to my brand,” he said. “I could get distribution whether it was through WTF or through a 'Family Guy' fan page, for example. As long as I got someone to like a page, they were effectively one more member of the distribution list.”

Fyk set out to build and maintain as many pages of all varieties as he possibly could. His wife thought he was crazy. “I’m sitting there when we couldn’t put food on the table spending all this time on Facebook pages,” he said. “I’m telling her, ‘Look, I know the distribution is going to be valuable.’”

Fyk now owns about 40 Facebook pages and controls more than 28 million "likes" in total. The pages reach 260 million people on Facebook and the “distribution” list sends his website tens of millions of pageviews a month. This earns him multiple millions a year in advertising revenue, which he pairs with other businesses, such as social-media consulting. He employs 16 people and has a ghostwriter working on a memoir.

It wasn’t long before other Facebook users realized how powerful pages could be. Everyone from teenagers to established publishers scrambled to create distribution lists as Fyk had on Facebook, sometimes acquiring fans through devious or illegal means.

* The ‘Likes’ Cartel*

When Facebook Pages first launched, even nonsensical pages could grow followings quickly and organically. A page titled “Can This Poodle Wearing A Tin Foil Hat Get More Fans Than Glenn Beck?,” for example, collected 230,000 followers. Pages with news hooks also took off. In 2012, a page called “Binders Full of Women” exploded after a statement Mitt Romney made during the presidential debate, quickly racking up 300,000 likes. When actor Paul Walker passed away, a fan page mourning his death, "R.I.P Paul Walker," earned 422,000 follows in a few days.

Now that the site has become saturated with pages, the easiest way to grow a following is to buy already-established pages from other Facebook users. The buying and selling of Facebook pages is forbidden, since pages aren’t owned by managers but by Facebook. But that doesn’t stop people from doing it.

The website FanPageTrading.com maintains an online marketplace for Facebook pages. Another service, called Content Promoters, fittingly advertises its service on a Facebook page and offers premade fan pages with 1,000 likes for $20 or 2,500 likes for $40.

"Buying and selling Pages is against our policies, and we use a variety of signals to help detect suspicious actions on Pages," a Facebook representative said. Facebook watches out for other methods of taking over a page, such as theft. "When we surface these high-risk actions, we help the Page admins retain or regain control of their Page using techniques like identity verification or direct one-to-one assistance. We have pursued legal channels as well to help defend our platform."

Fyk, who places the market value of his stable of Facebook pages at more than $1 million, claims some of today’s largest publishers either purchased pages a few years ago or teamed up with larger pages to grow their networks.

Upworthy, a site that grew from no readers to 30 million monthly uniques in 14 months, largely because of Facebook traffic, teamed up with established pages to help it gain early traction — not unlike the way other news sites, including Business Insider, forge content syndication deals and cross-link promotions with other publishers.

PolicyMic, a media startup that has more than 10 million monthly uniques and raised more than $12 million, also partners with a dozen popular Facebook pages to help seed and spread stories.

BuzzFeed has been rumored to have bought numerous Facebook pages to help its network grow to more than 100 million monthly unique visitors, but CEO Jonah Peretti said they have never purchased a Facebook page.

When asked how many Facebook pages BuzzFeed owns, Peretti said he isn’t sure.

“We have one main page and then I think some of the verticals have them,” he told Business Insider in an interview. “We don’t buy pages. I did talk to some startup company that buys Facebook pages, and they were explaining how they test content and run it across these things, but we don’t do anything like that.”

But he added that BuzzFeed does have informal relationships with owners of large Facebook pages.

“We have seen that if we do an awesome post about Barbie and a Barbie fan page posts it, there’s a spike in traffic,” he notes. “It’s possible sometimes someone at BuzzFeed will ping someone who runs another page, the same way they’d ping a blog or someone who runs a site. But we don’t have any agreement or exchange or anything like that."

In the past, buying and teaming up with other Facebook pages were ways to guarantee distribution on the social network. “A few years ago, you could get cross-posted on other pages and it would be insane how many people you’d get,” said Fyk.

Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm has since changed, however, making cross-promotion growth more difficult. Even organic reach, the number of people a publisher can distribute their content to via their own Facebook pages, has diminished.

In response to publishers’ complaints, Facebook recently offered an explanation for the decline in organic reach. “There is now far more content being made than there is time to absorb it,” the company pointed out. “On average, there are 1,500 stories that could appear in a person’s News Feed each time they log on to Facebook.” News Feed, it added, “is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them.” Most stuff no longer gets shown.

For businesses like Fyk’s, the development is not only frustrating but it’s also expensive. Fyk now spends more than $1,000 a day on Facebook ads.

Not long ago, Scott DeLong, founder of the fast-growing web property Viral Nova, likened Facebook’s volatility to the threat of a natural disaster.

“Reached 1m fans on FB. Post reach was promptly cut in half. Running a business on FB is like opening a McDonald's on an active volcano,” he tweeted, adding “It means you never know when the whole thing can blow up/change on a whim. FB is constantly changing things; no consistency.”

To help guarantee Facebook traffic, the buying, selling, trading, and bundling of Facebook Pages have become more popular. But there’s another popular way to acquire lots of fans quickly on Facebook: hijack them.

*
*What Teens Really Do On Facebook**

Anthony and Austin are teenagers (as such, we are identifying them by first names only). Although they have never met in real life, both said they’re like “brothers.” They bonded a few years ago when Anthony’s Facebook page was stolen and Austin helped him get it back.

Both are members of what they call the Community, an informal group that supposedly connects more than 50,000 tech-savvy teens across the web. Many have found one another through Facebook’s “mutual friends” feature. Their shared interests include social networks, gaming, web culture, and hacking, though the Facebook page's About section declares that the group is "dedicated to stopping self-harm, cyber-bullying, and underage nudity" (see the screenshot above). Anthony is often credited with being the ringleader of the Community because he created the page.

“The Community is a large collective of teens on the internet that interact a lot, whether it’s just talking and texting and Skyping each other to owning, liking, and sharing Facebook Pages, to following each other on Twitter and Instagram,” Anthony told Business Insider in a Skype interview. “The Community has gone largely unnoticed by adults, and it’s never been in the news. No one knows what the Community is outside of the Community,” he adds. “But it exists.”

The pair remember their first experiences with Facebook pages in 2009. The company had just opened up the product to the entire Facebook community and middle-school friends were making ones dedicated to favorite cartoons and celebrities.

“We were just kids, we didn’t know what we were doing, we didn’t know anything about marketing,” Anthony said. “We just kind of jumped head first into this world.”

That world quickly morphed from harmless fun into one where “people were trying to screw you over,” Anthony said.

“You had a lot of 12- and 13-year-olds getting on the internet and making Facebook pages so their friends could see them,” said Anthony. “What we didn’t expect was that this would actually get huge, with online communities of people hijacking and running pages.”

Facebook hijacking is when a person who isn’t the owner of a Facebook fan page is able to seize control of the page from its manager. Pages go largely unpoliced by Facebook, and there are a number of ways to steal a page from its owner. One method that used to be common was to earn a page manager’s trust, offer to help manage it, then delete the original owner from the admin panel and lock them out of the Page. Facebook has since cracked down on this practice by changing the way admin accounts are set up.

As a result, hijacking has become more intricate, Austin said: “It requires a lot of planning.” Groups, such as the now-defunct Church of Hijacking, teach members how to steal pages. Fyk and Austin both said that when a Facebook page reaches about 100,000 fans, it becomes a target for hijackers — especially when the pages aren’t verified by a Facebook-granted blue checkmark.

The first page Austin remembers seeing stolen was one dedicated to Justin Bieber run by female fans.

“People took these pages because the reactions of these girls were funny,” Austin said. “They would take these pages and post things about how they hated Justin Bieber and other irrelevant things, and it would make the girls really angry. The people who stole it would laugh at their reactions.”

When people began to monetize Facebook pages, in 2012, stealing pages went from fun and games to full-on cyber combat, complete with confederacies among the owners of the largest pages, and attacks against other page owners who wronged them.

“You have wars, you have diplomacy, you have betrayals, you have alliances, you have secret agreements, you have coalitions, and you have embargoes,” Austin said of the current Facebook Page battle.

One of the earliest people to monetize Facebook pages was Carl Shelbourne, now employed by Fyk. Unlike blogs, which enable owners to embed ads on their pages, Facebook does not allow advertising, except its own. Shelbourne began posting affiliate links instead — links to online merchants who pay a percentage of their earnings to whoever sends them customers — and with millions of followers, he soon began bringing in serious revenue.

But not everyone applauded the idea. “People hated it,” Austin said.

The use of affiliate links highlighted a philosophical divide among the growing Facebook mafia: users like Fyk and Community members who controlled numerous pages.

“It was like, ‘Don’t do that,’ because we ran pages for the fun,” Anthony said. “We didn’t run pages for money. That’s what separated us from a lot of other adults who ran Facebook pages. We just wanted to have fun.”

Though the battle lines were drawn, the idea of monetizing pages eventually became widely accepted, even by Austin and Anthony.

The site Mylikes.com provided moneymaking links for page managers. Meanwhile, in addition to posting affiliate links, page managers occasionally created clothing lines and sold fan T-shirts.

“The summer of 2012 was perhaps the most moneymaking period for all of us,” said Austin. He said he raked in about $10,000 in July alone.

“Everyone was making major bank,” said Anthony.

Facebook Page monetization was also made possible by the creation of tools that helped users manage more than one page at a time. Hootsuite, for example, allows page managers to blast content across multiple Facebook properties at once. Facebook has also added the ability to schedule blasts.

Fyk has assembled one of the largest page networks on the platform, outside of traditional publishers like BuzzFeed who own numerous pages for different verticals. But his team has struggled to get their pages verified by Facebook, which makes them a prime target for hijackers like Austin and Anthony. Facebook isn’t as quick to help unverified Page owners retrieve their followings when they get reported or removed, and sometimes the pages are lost forever.

Austin has also felt the pain of losing a valuable Facebook Page. One of the pages he was able to grow and monetize was a 4chan fan page, which topped 500,000 followers. When 4chan complained about it to Facebook, the page disappeared.

“Facebook gave me no opportunity to change the name,” Austin recalled. “All of that work on the page, and it got deleted.”

While some pages get shut down because of complaints from the copyright owners, others are victims of the ongoing cyber war.

In April, one of Fyk’s fan pages for MTV — a page with more than 1 million likes — went missing. At first, he assumed Facebook had shut it down at the request of Viacom, but then he got a Facebook message.

“Hey man, I have your 1m page,” the message read. “I’ll give you your one million page, and I get this in return, deal?”

Fyk didn't take the deal, and he still hasn't gotten his MTV page back.

Recently, another page of Fyk’s was temporarily removed from Facebook for publishing pornographic content that Fyk said he never approved. After a little digging, he found a Facebook status update suggesting Austin was behind it.

“What a nice thing to wake up to on this fine summer morning,” Austin wrote with a screenshot of a message from Facebook that read, “You reported Cleveland Brown [a Fyk page] for harassment. This page was removed.”

Soon, Fyk received a message from another Facebook user who confirmed Austin’s involvement. This person asked Fyk to pay him a lump sum of cash in exchange for getting Austin and his friends to leave Fyk’s pages alone. Fyk, while temped to end the war, hasn't paid.

The Community's reason for partaking in Facebook pranks and hijackings is simple: They think it's funny. And the pay — money that can be generated after amassing Facebook likes — isn't bad either. 

"It provokes a reaction that some people find absolutely hilarious," Anthony said. "For others it's for monetary benefits."

Hijackers such as Anthony and Austin don’t fear Fyk or Facebook’s wrath. They’ve both been kicked off the social site numerous times. They either create new accounts or get old accounts back from friends.

"It happens," said Anthony. "I get my account back every other day."

Deleting and stealing Facebook pages is just the beginning, though. Another common tactic is trying to get innocent Facebookers in trouble with law-enforcement authorities.

Once, when some of the Facebook hackers were in a battle with Fyk, they spread a rumor on the social network, branding him a pedophile.

“He said he was going to kill my friend, so we said he was a pedophile and he got spammed and everyone who likes his page thinks he’s a pedophile now,” Anthony said with a laugh. “It’s just silly little internet things that drive him insane, and it’s nothing illegal. I have my freedom of speech to say anything like that, but we don’t do anything in terms of black-hat illegal activity.”

When we mentioned the laws against defamation, Anthony backtracked. “Probably somewhere along the lines of that, but it wasn’t me who did it, so I’m not really worried, and I forgot who even did it,” he said.

In Anthony’s defense, Fyk is not entirely blameless for the ongoing hostilities. Occasionally, the millionaire has lost his temper and said things he likely regrets.

“FYI f*cktard ... you are a laughable little boy that will never be able to do s---,” Fyk wrote Austin after one particularly aggravating spat. “But now you have gone and f----- with me again. Now I’m going to waste my money to wreck you and your moms life. Here I come.”

Another teen has tangled with Fyk online also said he was threatened.

After Ben (a pseudonym) stole one of Fyk’s Facebook groups — something he readily admits — he said he received a message back from Fyk. “I have contacts outside of Facebook,” it said. “I’ll destroy your life.” The message included his address, phone number, and father’s name.

Not every Facebook prank perpetrated by the Community is about tormenting Fyk.

Once, for example, Anthony and a friend thought it’d be funny to convince their Facebook friends they had died.

“I made a bunch of news articles about myself that I actually got hosted on news organizations’ sites for obituaries about me and my friend,” Anthony said. “We then posted in the Facebook groups saying we were going to kill ourselves. Nine or 10 hours later we got alternate accounts for Facebook and posted the news articles, and it caused this massive uproar inside the group.”

Soon a rest-in-peace Facebook page in his name appeared, racking up 20,000 likes. 

The battles among Facebook gangs have also included real-world sabotage. Anthony details some of the ugliness, which he said he doesn’t partake in but has seen firsthand.

“It was not uncommon to see stories of kids’ computers getting infected by rogue viruses and 25 gigabytes of child porn being put on their computers and a swat team being sent to their house,” he said over Skype. “It’s not uncommon for people’s personal bank details to get leaked, and it’s not uncommon for Social Security numbers to get leaked.”

“It’s an all-in prank war,” he added.

The Facebook crusades have made him paranoid. Before agreeing to be interviewed, he said, he stalked me, my husband, and my extended family online to make sure the request was authentic.

“I’ve been thrown on my bed and handcuffed [by cops] and asked questions about what I do online,” Anthony said. “I’ve been harassed and threatened before. I get death threats on a daily basis."

Despite the frightening encounters, Anthony feels largely untouchable. When his next birthday rolls around, that might change.

“The fact that I’m not 18, my personal information is not yet publicly on people-finder sites, and I kind of mask my IP address ... makes me largely untouchable by 95% of the people in the hacking community,” he said.

Fyk, too, maintains more than one identity on Facebook.

"I would never use my real name because I've seen firsthand what the internet can do," Anthony said. "The internet strips you of a lot of innocence and you fall into the wrong crowds sometimes and get desensitized to the stuff you see.”

For Anthony, whose Facebook profile said he specializes in “cyber bullying,” knowing where to draw the line in online antics requires a serious gut check. “The line for myself is two things,” he said. “I don’t cause permanent damage to people, and if I knew I was causing permanent damage to someone, I would stop it. Or, females. I don’t mess with females like that.”

That said, both hackers have regrets.

“Sometimes I look back and cringe,” said Austin. “I look at my mistakes and I say, ‘Wow, I was stupid,’ but that’s how I refine my methods.”

Anthony, too, sounded somewhat remorseful.

“One day, you’re just a normal kid,” he said. “You don’t wake up one day and say you’re going to take someone’s Facebook page. It all started out as joking and having fun.”

No doubt Fyk wishes he could hammer out a truce — or at least a cessation of hostilities — with the Script Kiddies. They've discussed it, although nothing has been resolved. Anthony said the trio is working on a "mutual negotiation" right now.

Fyk isn't sure anything will change, though.

"It has been my personal experience that they never stop," he told Business Insider in an email. "Do I want peace? Yes, peace of mind that my family, my business, my employees, and myself are safe from harassment and [cyber] terrorism."

Facebook's security team is aware of the hijacking problem and is trying to clamp down on it. "We recommend Page admins enhance their account security by enabling Login Approvals on Facebook and adding a second authentication factor for email accounts," a company representative said. "It’s also a good idea to limit the number of admins on Pages and to use less permissive roles like Moderator for administrators who don’t require access to all functions."

Even if an agreement were reached and Facebook's security improved, it would not mean the end of Fyk's difficulties by a long shot.

For that, Facebook would need to become a slightly more amenable environment in which to do business. “Facebook can be difficult,” Fyk wrote. “But without it [WTF Magazine] would never be able to be on this earth. I live a very comfortable life. So we thank them for the platform. We just ask that they don’t take it away from people once it becomes valuable to their businesses.”

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