Silver Prices Advance in July, Just Second Month Higher in 2013

Silver advanced in July, scoring a monthly gain for the first time since January. The precious metal notched an increase of 16 cents, or 0.8%, from a month ago. On Wednesday, silver prices for September delivery declined 5 cents, or 0.3%, to finish at $19.63 an ounce on the Comex in New York. Silver traded […]

On ‘Keiser Report,’ bullion trader Maguire describes run on the London gold banks

GATA

9:52p ET Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Interviewed yesterday by Max Keiser on the “Keiser Report” on the Russia TV television network, London bullion trader and silver market rigging whistleblower Andrew Maguire said there is a run on the London bullion banks, that the Federal Reserve’s big dumping of paper gold in April bought a little time for the banks but only increased the offtake of real metal from the grossly overleveraged fractional-reserve gold banking system, that the Bank of England is advancing metal into the London market every day to avert defaults, that the United Kingdom’s gold sales begun in 1999 were undertaken to rescue gold short Goldman Sachs, and that the Western gold banking system is now in the same short squeeze that threatened it 14 years ago. Yesterday’s “Keiser Report” is posted at YouTube and the interview with Maguire is about 13 minutes long and begins at the 13-minute mark here:

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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Mike Kosares: Bernanke’s gift (or tempering the taper tantrum)

GATA

4:20p ET Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Mike Kosares of Centennial Precious Metals in Denver is first up with analysis of the Federal Reserve’s latest posturing, which Kosares writes couldn’t be more favorable to easy money. Kosares’ commentary is headlined “Bernanke’s Gift: Tempering the Taper Tantrum” and it’s posted at Centennial’s Internet site, USAGold.com, here:

http://www.usagold.com/cpmforum/2013/07/31/bernankes-gift-cooling-the-ta…

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

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http://www.gata.org/node/16

Market rigging is even easier when you know everybody’s trade instructions

GATA

XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects ‘Nearly Everything a User Does on the Internet’

By Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian, London
Wednesday, July 31, 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-onli…

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats, and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian’s earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden’s most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email.”

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks — what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing “real-time” interception of an individual’s internet activity.

Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a ‘US person’, though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst’s ability to query the databases at any time.

The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a “selector” in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.

Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.

One document notes that this is because “strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability” because “a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous.”

The NSA documents assert that by 2008, 300 terrorists had been captured using intelligence from XKeyscore.

Analysts are warned that searching the full database for content will yield too many results to sift through. Instead they are advised to use the metadata also stored in the databases to narrow down what to review.

A slide entitled “plug-ins” in a December 2012 document describes the various fields of information that can be searched. It includes “every email address seen in a session by both username and domain”, “every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)” and user activity – “the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddylist, machine specific cookies etc”.

In a second Guardian interview in June, Snowden elaborated on his statement about being able to read any individual’s email if he had their email address. He said the claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the NSA.

One top-secret document describes how the program “searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents”, including the “To, From, CC, BCC lines” and the ‘Contact Us’ pages on websites”.

To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual’s email address into a simple online search form, along with the “justification” for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought.

The analyst then selects which of those returned emails they want to read by opening them in NSA reading software.

The system is similar to the way in which NSA analysts generally can intercept the communications of anyone they select, including, as one NSA document put it, “communications that transit the United States and communications that terminate in the United States”.

One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications.

Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.

An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.

An analyst can monitor such Facebook chats by entering the Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen.

Analysts can search for internet browsing activities using a wide range of information, including search terms entered by the user or the websites viewed.

As one slide indicates, the ability to search HTTP activity by keyword permits the analyst access to what the NSA calls “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet.”

The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.

The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn “call events” collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.

William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had “assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens”, an estimate, he said, that “only was involving phone calls and emails”. A 2010 Washington Post article reported that “every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications.”

The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while metadata is stored for 30 days. One document explains: “At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours.”

To solve this problem, the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store “interesting” content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years.

It is the databases of XKeyscore, one document shows, that now contain the greatest amount of communications data collected by the NSA.

In 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period.

While the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 requires an individualized warrant for the targeting of US persons, NSA analysts are permitted to intercept the communications of such individuals without a warrant if they are in contact with one of the NSA’s foreign targets.

The ACLU’s deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans’ communications without individualized warrants.

“The government doesn’t need to ‘target’ Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications,” said Jaffer. “The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans” when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.

An example is provided by one XKeyscore document showing an NSA target in Tehran communicating with people in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and New York.

In recent years, the NSA has attempted to segregate exclusively domestic US communications in separate databases. But even NSA documents acknowledge that such efforts are imperfect, as even purely domestic communications can travel on foreign systems, and NSA tools are sometimes unable to identify the national origins of communications.

Moreover, all communications between Americans and someone on foreign soil are included in the same databases as foreign-to-foreign communications, making them readily searchable without warrants.

Some searches conducted by NSA analysts are periodically reviewed by their supervisors within the NSA. “It’s very rare to be questioned on our searches,” Snowden told the Guardian in June, “and even when we are, it’s usually along the lines of: ‘let’s bulk up the justification’.”

In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that NSA analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance.

Acknowledging what he called “a number of compliance problems”, Clapper attributed them to “human error” or “highly sophisticated technology issues” rather than “bad faith”.

However, Wyden said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: “These violations are more serious than those stated by the intelligence community, and are troubling.”

In a statement to the Guardian, the NSA said: “NSA’s activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only against — legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests.

“XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA’s lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system.

“Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA’s analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks. … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring.”

“Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.

“These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully — to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad.”

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Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

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U.S. knows what Nazis did: Imperialism works best by rigging currency markets

GATA

3:30p ET Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Hard upon the Bank of England’s belated admission this week that it had been almost as much of a Nazi collaborator as the infamous Bank for International Settlements itself –

http://www.gata.org/node/12860

– Jan Skoyles of The Real Asset Co. in London provides what is headlined as “The Full Guide to Nazi Gold and Currency War,” history demonstrating how gold, relying on no counterparty, always has been the ultimate money:

http://therealasset.co.uk/nazi-gold-bullion/

Skoyles’ analysis touches on a point GATA often has made — that the primary mechanism of Nazi Germany’s looting of Occupied Europe during World War II was not force of arms but the rigging of the currency markets, whereby the currencies of occupied countries were devalued grotesquely against the Reichsmark and some occupied countries were forced to use special occupation currencies that could not be redeemed in Germany itself.

This rigging of the currency markets in Occupied Europe caused all production to flow into Nazi Germany and permitted it to run a spectacular trade deficit during World War II.

This was described in detail in the November 1943 edition of the U.S. War Department’s monthly intelligence letter, Tactical and Technical Trends, which is posted at GATA’s Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/node/10457

While this stuff is obscure, it is well known to the U.S. government and allied governments. They know that rigging the currency markets, which include the gold market, remains the most efficient mechanism of imperialism, since it is largely surreptitious, so few people can figure it out, and the mainstream financial news media agree not to report about it even as it can be established almost effortlessly, simply by putting a few of the right questions to Western central banks and reporting their indignant refusals to answer –

http://www.gata.org/node/12859

– as if control of the world financial system and the value of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world is nobody else’s business. Heil Bernanke!

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

Convulsed by smuggling to India, Pakistan forbids gold imports for a month

GATA

Countering Devaluation: Government Slaps Temporary Ban on Gold Import

From the Express Tribune
Karachi, Pakistan
Wednesday, July 30, 2013

http://tribune.com.pk/story/584352/countering-devaluation-govt-slaps-tem…

ISLAMABAD — In an attempt to address steep devaluation of the rupee against the dollar, Pakistan on Tuesday temporarily banned import of gold to save the precious foreign currency reserves.

The Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet, headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, took the decision to ban the import of the yellow metal for one month with immediate effect.

During a meeting with Dar in Karachi last week, the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (ECAP) had claimed that smuggling of gold to India was causing rupee devaluation, as the importers were mopping up dollars from the market to meet the needs of the Indian buyers.

After the Indian government’s decision to discourage gold import by imposing 8 percent duties, the buyers had shifted to Pakistan, where the commodity was allowed to be imported duty-free since 2001.

For encouraging re-export of gold products Pakistan had allowed the duty-free import of gold under “entrustment” and the “self-consignment” schemes of 2001.

“There have been serious apprehensions that these schemes for duty-free import of gold are being abused by some unscrupulous elements and the national interest is being damaged. Instead of being used for its intended purpose, the gold is being smuggled to India,” read an official handout.

According to the ECC decision, the operation of these schemes will remain suspended until end-August and the ban will allow the government sufficient time to re-examine the operation of these schemes with a view to speedily removing any loopholes and deficiencies.

It further stated that the government will again restore these schemes in an improved form so that genuine exporters of gold jewelry are facilitated in the best possible way to contribute to the national objective of increasing exports.

The government has partly addressed the reasons behind this steep devaluation of rupee by banning the gold import. However, it has yet to take any action against the exchange companies involved in hoarding of dollars on hope of making big fortunes, according to industry experts.

* * *

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

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Village Main falls after suspending mine funding

The company is headed for its lowest close in more than a month after suspending funding for its Blyvooruitzicht mine.

Read more….

NUM plans march to Sibanye Gold over wages

The union’s spokesman, Lesiba Seshoka, says “there will be strikes throughout the gold sector” if demands are not addressed.

Read more….

South Africa to start pumping acid water from disused mines

Acid water seeping from disused mines is rising under Johannesburg and, if left untreated, could pollute its water supply or flood the city.

Read more….

Confusion, not regulation the major dampener for Indian gold demand

According to UBS, while the recent flurry of regulations will dampen gold demand in India, it will not fundamentally change attitudes toward the metal.

Read more….

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