Fort Hood Shooter Convicted, Obama Defends NSA as Agency Admits to Willful Violations, Tech Companies Paid for Surveillance Compliance Costs: P.M. Links

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  Source: Bell County Jail

  Maj. Nidal Hasan was convicted of murder in his shooting rampage in Fort Hood and is now eligible for the death penalty.

• In an interview with CNN, President Barack Obama said safeguards that prevent the National Security Agency from abusing its surveillance powers have worked. Then, in correspondence to Bloomberg News, NSA admitted there had, indeed, been "willful violations" of the rules. Just going to guess here that the administration treats the safeguards as "successful" because the violators were caught.
• Tech companies have been paid millions by the NSA to cover the costs of complying with its surveillance program.
• The Independent in the United Kingdom is reporting Britain has a secret monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept communications. They claim they got the information from leaked documents from Edward Snowden. Snowden, however, says he did not provide any information to the Independent, leading to theories that the British government leaked it to try to make Snowden look bad.
• Rapper 2 Chainz was tired of his tour bus constantly getting pulled over by police for drug searches, so after another incident of "you have a broken taillight/we need to search your vehicle" in Oklahoma he refused until they got a search warrant, tying up police for nine hours.
• The FDA in its infinite nannyism is considering a ban on selling e-cigarettes online to keep them out of children's hands.

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