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Morning news dump and music from REO Speedwagon.

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Current NSA Officials Admit Agency Is Drowning In TOO MUCH Info
The Problem Isn’t Too Little Spying … It’s Too Much

Former top NSA officials have repeatedly said that the NSA is collecting TOO MUCH information on Americans to be able to stop terror attacks.

The Intercept reports that current mid-level NSA officials confirm that the NSA is gathering TOO MUCH information… and it’s making it impossible to focus:

“We in the agency are at risk of a similar, collective paralysis in the face of a dizzying array of choices every single day,” the analyst wrote in 2011. “’Analysis paralysis’ isn’t only a cute rhyme. It’s the term for what happens when you spend so much time analyzing a situation that you ultimately stymie any outcome …. It’s what happens in SIGINT [signals intelligence] when we have access to endless possibilities, but we struggle to prioritize, narrow, and exploit the best ones.”

The document is one of about a dozen in which NSA intelligence experts express concerns usually heard from the agency’s critics: that the U.S. government’s “collect it all” strategy can undermine the effort to fight terrorism. The documents, provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, appear to contradict years of statements from senior officials who have claimed that pervasive surveillance of global communications helps the government identify terrorists before they strike or quickly find them after an attack.

Monsanto’s sick new power play: Why we could all be eating their GMOs
The biotech giant is close to the biggest agribusiness merger in history. Our food supply hangs in the balance

Earlier this month, Swiss seed and agrochemical company Syngenta rejected Monsanto’s second takeover bid in a year. Syngenta’s board said the offer undervalued the company and did not fully address regulatory risks.

But the St. Louis-based biotech giant, the world’s biggest seed seller, is not deterred and is planning a new offer to Syngenta, the world’s biggest pesticide and fertilizer seller. If approved, it would be the biggest agribusiness merger in history. But clearing antitrust regulators in the U.S. and the EU is a big if.

The combined behemoth would be the world’s largest seed and crop chemical company with more than $30 billion in revenue and control over 35 percent of the world’s seed supply. It would dominate a market that includes other Big Ag players like BASF SE, Bayer AG and Dow Chemical Co.

Possible antitrust issues arise specifically because of the potential merger’s business overlaps in the herbicide markets in North American and Latin America, as well as the North American seed market, according to Morgan Stanley. To get the deal approved, Monsanto said it would divest Syngenta’s seed business. But that isn’t enough for critics who argue that the merger would result in a near-monopoly on the global food system.

Critics Blast 'Compromises' as Patriot Act Barrels Toward Sunset
'The USA Freedom Act alone does fundamentally very little in terms of significantly constraining the ability of the National Security Agency to perform bulk collection of data about anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise.'

With the sunset of key spy powers on the near horizon and lawmakers scrambling to save them, privacy and internet freedom groups are dialing up the pressure on Congress to end mass surveillance as we know it.

The Senate will return to Washington, D.C. for a rare session on Sunday, on the heels of a week-long Memorial Day recess. With sections of the Patriot Act barreling toward a 12am June 1 expiration, lawmakers are reportedly scrambling to come up with a last-minute deal to save the law after a series of Senate votes on Friday failed to resolve an impasse.

The debate over the National Security Agency's (NSA) spy powers has some senators pushing to kill the Patriot Act entirely and others advocating for "clean" re-authorization.

Still others—backed by the White House—in favor of the USA Freedom Act, so-called reform legislation that privacy advocates say doesn't go far enough. That bill would renew three expiring Patriot Act powers while ending the NSA's controversial bulk collection of U.S. phone records. Records would be held by phone companies instead.

Pentagon admits 24 US labs, 2 foreign states received live anthrax shipments

The Pentagon has revised the number of instances in which live anthrax samples have “accidentally” been shipped both across US and abroad, and has announced a comprehensive review into the poor handling of the deadly bacteria.

“As of now, 24 laboratories in 11 states and two foreign countries are believed to have received suspect samples,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

Earlier this week it was revealed that US Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah had shipped live anthrax to labs in nine states, and to a US military base in South Korea.

With the new discoveries, the Pentagon is urging all those who received such shipments to stop working with those samples, until further notice from the US authorities. The shipment of supposedly deactivated anthrax specimens reportedly began in March 2014 and continued through April 2015. These samples were mistakenly marked inactive.