Salesforce.com reported its fiscal 2015 second quarter today: a solid beat on both profits and sales.

Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.13, which beats analysts expectations by $0.01. Revenue was $1.32 billion, up 38% over the same quarter last year. That beat analysts expectations, too, of $1.29 billion.

The company also raised guidance on sales for the year (its fiscal year ends January, 2015). It expects to bring in $5.34 billion to $5.37 billion. Analysts had been projecting $5.34 billion. Salesforce expects EPS of $0.50-$0.52. Analysts were projecting $0.51.

Salesforce reported a net loss of $61.1 million, compared with a profit of $76.6 million a year ago. The company has been spending on acquisitions, building massive new buildings in San Francisco, Paris and elsewhere and hiring new employees.

Here's the  press release:

Salesforce.com Announces Fiscal 2015 Second Quarter Results

- Revenue of $1.32 Billion, up 38% Year-Over-Year
- Deferred Revenue of $2.35 Billion, up 31% Year-Over-Year
- Unbilled Deferred Revenue of Approximately $5.0 Billion, up 32% Year-Over-Year
- Operating Cash Flow of $246 Million, up 34% Year-Over-Year
- Raises FY15 Revenue Guidance by $30 million to $5.34 - $5.37 Billion

Revenue: Total Q2 revenue was $1.32 billion, an increase of 38% year-over-year.  Subscription and support revenues were $1.23 billion, an increase of 37% year-over-year.  Professional services and other revenues were $86 million, an increase of 58% year-over-year. 

Earnings per Share:  Q2 diluted GAAP loss per share was ($0.10), and diluted non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.13. The company's non-GAAP results exclude the effects of $142 million in stock-based compensation expense, $36 million in amortization of purchased intangibles, $10 million in net non-cash interest expense related to the company's convertible senior notes, including the related loss on conversions of our convertible 0.75% senior notes, due 2015, and is based on a projected long-term non-GAAP tax rate of 36.5%.  GAAP EPS calculations are based on a basic share count of approximately 617 million shares. Non-GAAP EPS calculations are based on approximately 648 million diluted shares outstanding during the quarter, including approximately 20 million shares associated with the company's convertible 0.75% senior notes due 2015.    

Cash:  Cash generated from operations for the fiscal second quarter was $246 million, an increase of 34% year-over-year.  Total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities finished the quarter at $1.67 billion.

Deferred Revenue:  Deferred revenue on the balance sheet as of July 31, 2014 was $2.35 billion, an increase of 31% year-over-year. Unbilled deferred revenue, representing business that is contracted but unbilled and off balance sheet, ended the second quarter at approximately $5.0 billion, up 32% year-over-year.

As of August 21, 2014, salesforce.com is initiating revenue and EPS guidance for its third quarter of fiscal year 2015. In addition, the company is raising its full fiscal year 2015 revenue guidance and its EPS guidance previously provided on May 20, 2014.

Q3 FY15 Guidance:  Revenue for the company's third fiscal quarter is projected to be in the range of $1.365 billion to $1.370 billion, an increase of 27% year-over-year.

GAAP loss per share is expected to be in the range of ($0.13) to ($0.12), while diluted non-GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of $0.12 to $0.13.  The non-GAAP estimate excludes the effects of stock-based compensation expense, expected to be approximately $147 million, amortization of purchased intangibles related to acquisitions, expected to be approximately $36 million, and net non-cash interest expense related to the convertible senior notes, including loss on conversions, expected to be approximately $10 million.  EPS estimates assume a GAAP tax rate of approximately negative 30%, which reflects the estimated quarterly change in the tax valuation allowance, and a projected long-term non-GAAP tax rate of 36.5%.  Note that the tax valuation allowance adds complexity, causing potential volatility in our forecasted GAAP tax rate.  The GAAP EPS calculation assumes an average basic share count of approximately 630 million shares, and the non-GAAP EPS calculation assumes an average fully diluted share count of approximately 664 million shares.

Full Year FY15 Guidance:  Revenue for the company's full fiscal year 2015 is projected to be in the range of $5.340 billion to $5.370 billion, an increase of 31% to 32% year-over-year.

GAAP loss per share is expected to be in the range of ($0.48) to ($0.46) while diluted non-GAAP EPS is expected to be in the range of $0.50 to $0.52.  The non-GAAP estimate excludes the effects of stock-based compensation expense, expected to be approximately $580 million, amortization of purchased intangibles related to acquisitions, expected to be approximately $151 million, and net non-cash interest expense related to the convertible senior notes, including loss on conversions, expected to be approximately $47 million.  EPS estimates assume a GAAP tax rate of approximately negative 19%, which reflects the estimated annual change in the tax valuation allowance, and a projected long-term non-GAAP tax rate of 36.5%. Note that the tax valuation allowance adds complexity, causing potential volatility in our forecasted GAAP tax rate.  The GAAP EPS calculation assumes an average basic share count of approximately 624 million shares, and the non-GAAP EPS calculation assumes an average fully diluted share count of approximately 657 million shares.

The following is a per share reconciliation of GAAP EPS to diluted non-GAAP EPS guidance for the third quarter and full fiscal year:

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Nike is celebrating itself in an digital campaign called "Genealogy of Innovation" that documents the evolution of Nike sneakers.

The company launched the web experience in June, and held exhibitions at Nike’s Phenomenal House spaces in Paris, London and Berlin earlier this summer. 

Now, Nike has partnered with production company Golden Wolf to create a brief video consisting of changing images of their shoes from 1971 until today. They've labeled different time periods with grandiose terms like "Genesis" and "Enlightenment" and pair them with nostalgic themes.

Check out each phase below: 

Genesis: 1971-1994

Reformation: 1995-1998

Golden Years: 1999-2002

 Enlightenment: 2003-2006

Renaissance: 2007-2010

 Transformation: 2011-2013

Revolution: 2014

And here's the full video: 

Nike Genealogy of Innovation from Golden Wolf on Vimeo.

SEE ALSO: 50 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Adidas

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PETA owns SeaWorld stock.

When Cher found out the news on Thursday, the international recording star was less than thrilled.

But PETA's stake really isn't a big deal.

After the recent tumble in shares of SeaWorld, PETA said in an emailed statement that it purchased more shares of SeaWorld, "in order to retain the minimum investment that it needs to propose shareholder resolutions and submit formal shareholders questions" to the company. 

This minimum investment, per SEC rules, is just $2,000.

In a phone call on Thursday, PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt said the company bought 55 shares of PETA after its recent fall, bringing its holdings in the company to 135 shares.

Shares of SeaWorld closed at $19.01 on Thursday, making the value of PETA's stake in the company just over $2,900. 

Rajt said PETA plans to hold onto its stake to retain the ability to submit shareholder proposals and ask questions at the company's annual meeting.

According to PETA website seaworldofhurt.com, Jessica Biel submitted a question at SeaWorld's June annual meeting about whether or not the company has any plans to release some of its whale's into the wild.

A webcast replay of SeaWorld's annual meeting shows SeaWorld CEO Jim Atchison responding to PETA's question about releasing its whales back into the wild. Atchison said setting their whales free into a coastal environment makes "no sense" given that the whales are born and bred in captivity.

But SeaWorld's most recent quarterly results indicate that the company is clearly contending with an ever more hostile PR environment. Shortly after its quarterly report, SeaWorld announced it would build bigger tanks for its Orca whales.

PETA called this a "drop-in-the-bucket move."

And so while PETA maintains a small economic interest in SeaWorld, it's stake could also a drop-in-the-bucket.

So Cher can probably relax. 

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The shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri has set off more than a week of protests, raising the issue of racial tensions in the United States to the national level.

Given that racism deals with social perceptions and belief systems, it is incredibly complex and difficult to qualify and quantify as people can experience racism both on an individual level and on a group level. But there is hard evidence of the continued gap in life expectancy between black and white Americans, a recent Health Affairs study has shown.

The black-white life expectancy gap has been shrinking over the past 20 years; on a national level, the gap is 5.4 years for males and 3.8 years for females. However, some states are seriously lagging behind.

Bridging the gap

The latest study relied on data from the National Vital Statistics System for the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Five states were excluded — Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont — because they all had extremely small populations of black Americans, so small that the data couldn't be considered reliable.

At 3.1 million people, New York State has the largest population of black Americans. And, at the same time, New York has seen an incredible drop in the life expectancy gap over the last 20 years. In 1990, the life expectancy of a black male in New York was 63.9 years. It shot up to 75.4 years by 2009.

Other states that helped reduce the black-white life expectancy gap included Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey, according to the study.

That's the good. Now for the bad: Washington, DC was dead last. In the nation's capitol, life expectancy for black Americans over the past 20 years has remained "dramatically more unequal than every other state."In 1990, the gap was 14.4 years for males and 10.4 years for females and has not seen any significant change since then.

Other states that kept the black-white gap from falling included: Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

This chart from the CDC — published earlier this year — shows how the racial gap has been perpetuated through time on a national level.

In 2009, the average life expectancy of black men and women in the United States was just 75. That's roughly the same as the average life expectancy of white men and women in 1979 — 30 years earlier. The average life expectancy of black men in 2009 was just 71 (compared to 76 for white men). It's easy to see here:

What is killing black Americans?

In a 2013 report, the CDC investigated persistent causes for the racial gap in life expectancy in more detail.

"Higher death rates due to heart disease, cancer, homicide, diabetes, and perinatal conditions" accounted for 60 percent of the gap, the report noted. The report goes on to say that the gap would have been even larger "if not for the lower death rates for the black population for suicide, unintentional injuries, and chronic lower respiratory diseases."

Below you can see what is disproportionately killing blacks (the dark blue bars) and where their death rates are actually lower than those of whites (the green bars). The gap exists because the higher death rates due to certain causes still outweigh any advantages.

"Death rates for the black population [are] higher than those for the white population for 8 of the 15 leading causes of death,"the CDC has reported.

Black people in the U.S. are likelier to die from heart disease, for example, and white people are more than twice as likely to die from suicide than black people — but heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., and suicide is number 10.

When we talk about Ferguson, we should also talk about health disparities and other social justice issues that drive the inequality between races in the U.S.

SEE ALSO: This Chart Shows The Divide Between Whites And Blacks In Ferguson

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Binge drinking is typically thought of as a college activity, but in some states, it's popular with older adults as well.

A map created by Ramiro Gomez and posted on Reddit shows the states where binge drinking among people age 26 and above is most common (the data comes from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Bloomberg):

As the map shows, more than 30% of adults in North Dakota and South Dakota admitted to binge drinking during the previous month. Those in surrounding states had high rates of binge drinking, as well.

Utah — which has a high population of Mormons compared to the rest of the U.S. — ranked low, as did North Caroline and Tennessee.

North Dakota is also one of the biggest consumers of beer in the U.S., and Utah usually ranks low when it comes to alcohol consumption.

Binge drinking is commonly defined as drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion.

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Drunkest Countries In The World [MAP]

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In the first quarter of 2014, 198 million U.S. consumers bought something online, according to comScore's quarterly State Of Retail report. That translates to 78% of the U.S. population age 15 and above. 

But who are these shoppers driving the trend of buying online and on mobile devices? 

In a new report, BI Intelligence breaks down the demographics of U.S. online and mobile shoppers by gender, age, income, and education, and takes a look at what they're shopping for, and how their behaviors differ. 

It's important for retailers to know who their potential customers are online in order to market to them effectively. 

Here are some of the most important takeaways about who shops online:

• The conventional wisdom is that women drive shopping trends, since they control up to 80% of household spending. However, when it comes to e-commerce, men drive nearly as much spending online in the U.S. as women.
• Men are more likely to make purchases on mobile devices. Fifty-seven percent of women made a purchase online in 2013, compared to 52% of men, according to a study conducted by SeeWhy. But 22% of men made a purchase on their smartphones last year, compared to 18% of women. 
• Millennials, those consumers aged 18 to 34, remain the key age demographic for online commerce, spending more money online in a given year than any other age group.They spend around $2,000 annually on e-commerce. This, despite having lower incomes than older adults. 
• Boomers and seniors have adopted mobile commerce. One in four mobile shoppers in the U.S. is over the age of 55. That's about even with their share of the overall U.S. population. 
• Online shoppers tend to live in households with higher-than-typical incomes.An Experian survey found that 55% of e-commerce shoppers in the U.S. live in households with incomes above $75,000 (40% were in households earning $100,000 and above). The median household income in the U.S. is around $50,000, according to the Census. 

Access The Full Report by Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

In full, the report:

• Explains why men are so much more important for e-commerce retail, compared to in-store, and why they are more likely to buy on smartphones than women. 
• Indexes e-commerce spending by age group against the amount of time a given demographic spends online.
• Breaks down online spending habits of teens, including the brands and products they shop for. 
• Examines the factors behind what drives online purchases among millennials.
• Identifies Gen X, boomer, and older consumers' online spending tendencies.
• Looks at how education and income influence e-commerce spending.

For full access to all BI Intelligence's reports, charts, and newsletters covering the e-commerce industry, sign up and get started. 

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At The Current Valuation Stocks Can Only Offer An Attractive Return If They Mark The Start Of A Speculative Bubble (Morningstar)

Matt Coffina, editor of Morningstar's StockInvestor newsletter, writes that stocks are pricey based on the Shiller price-to-earnings ratio, which "uses 10-year average of real GAAP earnings in the denominator." The Shiller P/E is now at 26 or "about the 68th percentile relative to the last 25 years," Coffina said. "So, in other words, the market has in general been cheaper, based on this measure, 68% of the time since the late 1980s. That's certainly a cause for concern based on recent history."

"So, what we've seen historically is that any time the Shiller P/E is above, say, 25.5, which is about the 60th percentile relative to the past 25 years, subsequent total returns for investors have been very poor, on average in the low-single digits, with some very severe drawdowns, and pretty much the only time investors have achieved an attractive total return from current valuation levels is if it was at the beginning of a speculative bubble. So, say, 1996 before the late '90s bull market really got going, or 2002 and the lead-up to the housing bubble and the financial crisis. So, based on the Shiller P/E, I think there is definitely cause for concern from current valuation levels."

America's Wealth Gap Widened In The Last Decade (Bloomberg News)

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer between 2000 and 2011, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau. "Median net worth increased by $61,379 for the top 20 percent of households, which more than doubled the share of their wealth relative to lower-income groups, the report found," writes Lorraine Woellert at Businessweek. "For those in the bottom 20 percent, net assets minus liabilities declined by $5,124. U.S. median household net worth fell by more than $5,000, or 6.8 percent, from 2000 to 2011."

GARTMAN: This Is A Market Melt-Up (CNBC/Business Insider)

Dennis Gartman, author of The Gartman Letter thinks stock prices just want to move up. In an interview with CNBC he said, we had "a very severe 3.5-4% correction," a few weeks ago. "Now you're taking all of the news that I think is relatively evil for the market, expectations of tighter monetary policies, being brought closer rather than being deferred, the market has accepted that very well and here were are up 95 points on the day, I think you're having a melt-up not a melt-down."

Separately, in the Thursday edition of The Gartman Letter he wrote, "we see nothing that can or should de-rail the protracted global bull market. …It will end when it ends and it will end when trends lines are broken; it will end when a previous rally high fails to be taken out and a previous interim low is, instead, taken out to the downside."

Wells Fargo Is Loading Up On Former Morgan Stanley Advisors (InvestmentNews)

Wells Fargo has been heavily recruiting from Morgan Stanley, reports Mason Braswell at InvestmentNews. Most recently, Wells recruited a duo with $348 million in assets under management (AUM) bring the total assets recruited in the last three months to about $1.4 billion from 10 advisors. By comparison, Morgan Stanley brought in $110 million from a Wells Fargo advisor. The numbers come from InvestmentNews' "Advisers on the Move database" and Braswell does point out "not all teams make their moves public when they change firms, so the numbers in the database may not be an accurate representation of the full scale of recruiting."

Advisors Should Focus On A Niche If They Want To Grow Their Business (WealthManagement.com)

"Advisors who target a niche, often one based on a particular profession, stand a better chance of growing a business," writes Anne Field at WealthManagement.com. But Field has some advice on how advisors can go about it. Take dentists for instance, Field suggests that you can network by going to big annual meeting of the Association of Dentists, but it might be more effective to "attend monthly meetings of your state association’s local offshoots." She suggests discussing topics of interest like disability insurance. With baseball players Field suggests meeting them during spring training and focusing on subjects like "cash flow management and budgeting."

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50 Cent is changing the rules of the game in the Ice Bucket challenge.

Instead of the usual cold water-on-head routine, the rapper is challenging his former friend, boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., to "read one full page of a 'Harry Potter' book out loud without starting and stopping or f------ up." The initial challenge was posted on 50's Instagram account.

The reward? $750,000 to any charity of the boxer's choice. Clearly 50 doesn't understand the ice bucket challenge.

In the below YouTube video, the hip hop star reiterates his challenge — except he flubs "ALS" and calls the disease "ASL/ELS."

(Warning: explicit language)

The beef between the two former friends was reportedly heated up by Mayweather's interview with MLive.com, in which he stated: "Hip hop artists, they come and go. They come and go. But I'm still here."

Mayweather has also been nominated to complete an actual Ice Bucket Challenge by magician Criss Angel.

Mayweather has yet to respond to either challenge.

SEE ALSO: Bob Iger Nominated Chris Pratt For The Ice Bucket Challenge, And His Response Was Great

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The Obama administration violated the law when it swapped five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in June, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

In a letter to Republican senators made public on Thursday, the GAO said the Defense Department broke the law by not notifying the appropriate congressional committees of the swap at least 30 days in advance of the exchange. A section of the 2014 Department of Defense Appropriations Act prohibits the department from using appropriated funds to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees without notifying Congress at least 30 days in advance.

The GAO also said the Pentagon violated the Antideficiency Act — which prohibits federal agencies from spending money in excess of the amount available in appropriated funds — since no funds were technically available to transfer the detainees. The government spent almost $1 million to transfer the detainees, according to an email sent from the Pentagon to the GAO.

"In our view, DOD has dismissed the significance of the express language enacted" in the appropriations act, GAO counsel Susan A. Poling said in the letter.

The GAO said the relevant congressional committees weren't notified until the day of the transfer. Written notification from the Pentagon actually came two days after the swap.

A senior defense official told Business Insider the Pentagon disagrees with the GAO's conclusion.

"The Administration, after consultation with the Department of Justice, concluded that the transfer could lawfully proceed in the exercise of the President’s constitutional authority. GAO expressly does not address the lawfulness of the Administration’s actions as a matter of constitutional law," the official said.

"The Administration had a fleeting opportunity to protect the life of a U.S. service member held captive and in danger for almost five years. Under these exceptional circumstances, the Administration determined that it was necessary and appropriate to forego 30 days’ notice of the transfer in order to obtain SGT Bergdahl’s safe return."

The Obama administration has defended its decision to swap the detainees for Bergdahl and has argued the move was legal amid criticism from Republican lawmakers.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the White House's National Security Council, said in June that the administration determined the 30-day requirement did not apply in these unusual circumstances. She said Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, acting on behalf of the president, determined the normal notification process could endanger Bergdahl's life.

"In these circumstances, delaying the transfer in order to provide the 30-day notice would interfere with the Executive’s performance of two related functions that the Constitution assigns to the President: protecting the lives of Americans abroad and protecting U.S. soldiers," Hayden said.

"Because such interference would significantly alter the balance between Congress and the President, and could even raise constitutional concerns, we believe it is fair to conclude that Congress did not intend that the Administration would be barred from taking the action it did in these circumstances."

The administration later told senators that the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if any information about the swap leaked, providing more ammunition to its argument that the on-the-spot exchange was necessary.

Bergdahl is currently stationed at Fort Sam Houston, while the U.S. Army conducts an investigation into how he fell into the Taliban's hands.

This post was updated at 5:45 p.m. ET with comment from a defense official.

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The two U.S. citizens who had been infected with Ebola are now cured. They were released from the hospital on Aug. 21.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that no trace of the Ebola virus remains in Dr. Kent Brantly or in Nancy Writebol, who had been infected while working in Liberia. After an incredibly frightening couple of weeks, both are free to return to their families and tso resume their lives.

Both Brantly and Writebol recieved an experimental drug called ZMapp before leaving Africa. There's no way to know if it helped their recovery, but here's everything we know about this "secret serum."

Who else got it?

After Brantly and Writebol received the drug and were flown to the U.S., Miguel Pajares, an Ebola-infected 75-year-old Spanish priest, was flown to Spain to receive a course of the drug, but died a few days after his return to Spain. Hospital authorities would not confirm whether he received ZMapp or not, though they had previously indicated that he would.

Three African healthcare workers received the last available doses of ZMapp in Liberia, and are reportedly doing well.

Despite these seemingly positive results, it's still hard to say whether or not these individuals would have survived Ebola without the drug, which uses lab-made antibodies to beef up the immune system's fight the virus.

This outbreak has killed 1,350 people and infected 2,473, and is still raging. Although ZMapp supplies are exhausted, the World Health Organization will meet on September 4 and 5 to discuss how they can use experimental Ebola treatments in this outbreak.

How This Treatment Works

The ZMapp serum itself is what's known as a monoclonal antibody. Antibodies are the proteins our bodies use to mark infectious agents as dangerous and target them to be killed by our white blood cells.

As James Hamblin of The Atlantic explains, these substances are created by infecting an animal with the disease in question. Then, scientists harvest and use the antibodies that the animals' immune systems create to fight the virus. In this case, the antibodies were harvested from Ebola-infected mice.

ZMapp is a blend of three different antibodies and is a collaboration between the companies Mapp Biopharmaceutical, LeafBio, and Dreyfus Inc., as well as the U.S. government and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Studies have tested various other blends of similar therapies against Ebola-infected monkeys before, with some efficacy — if the therapy is given within 48 hours of infection. As Hamblin cautions, "very little is known about the safety and effectiveness of this treatment — so little that outside of extreme circumstances like this, it would not be legal to use."

Could Drugs Stop The Epidemic?

This Ebola outbreak — the worst in history — has already killed 1,350 people. But promising news of an experimental serum doesn't mean that a treatment is close.

Developing a cure for a virus is complicated, and developing a treatment for Ebola has proven particularly difficult.

Before this emergency use, ZMapp had only been tested in a small number of monkeys. The company reported that all four monkeys who received the treatment within 24 hours of being infected survived. Half of another group of four monkeys who were treated within 48 hours survived.

Even though Brantly and Writebol are cleared — and once the virus is gone, it's gone — they could potentially have survived without the serum. It's impossible to know if it works based on the survival or death of a small number of people.

A Tale Of Two Drugs: Mapp Vs. Tekmira

ZMapp is not even far enough along to have entered the clinical trial phase, but it may have been chosen in this case instead of the promising experimental drug Tekmira because an ongoing Tekmira trial was just halted by the FDA.

That doesn't mean that all research on Tekmira is over, however. The ongoing trial was halted because healthy patients showed a problematic immune response. But the FDA could still approve a new trial of the drug in sick patients, as the risk-benefit equation would be changed. A potential benefit of surviving a disease that kills 60% to 90% of patients could outweigh the risks of many potentially problematic side effects.

CNN also reported that on July 30, the military approved additional funding for Mapp Biopharmaceutical because of their promising results so far.

If either ZMapp or Tekmira proves to be effective; testing, approving, and then producing a drug will still take time, even if the process is fast-tracked.

At this point, the best hope for stopping this outbreak is not curing it, but containing it.

Even though the virus can only be transmitted by close contact, and thus it can be contained, health officials have been completely unable to do so in West Africa due to a combination of factors including poor healthcare infrastructure, distrust of authorities, traditional burial practices, and fear of healthcare providers.

At the present rate, World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan describes the consequences of not being able to stop the disease's spread as "catastrophic."

SEE ALSO: Scientists Who Discovered Ebola Almost Caused A Disaster: 'It Makes Me Wince Just To Think Of It'

DON'T MISS: Our Ongoing Ebola Coverage

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Amazon Web Services' GovCloud (U.S.) received provisional authorization to process 'controlled unclassified' data under levels 3 to 5 from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on Thursday. AWS is the first cloud service to win approval at the 3 to 5 levels. 

AWS had the authority to cover levels 1-2 data for all U.S. regions since March. But today’s approval gives AWS authority to handle much more highly sensitive data from DoD agencies. The DoD has up to Level 6 security control baselines, with Level 6 handling classified workloads.

DoD’s official document describes Level 1 confidentiality as, “Loss of confidentiality of the information will have no impact, because the information has been approved for public release.”

Level 5, on the other hand, states, “The unauthorized disclosure of information could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals.”

With today’s announcement, AWS just opened up a whole new market segment that could turn out to be a pretty good revenue source for it. DoD agencies will also be able to move workloads a lot faster now with much less restrictions on the AWS GovCloud. AWS had more than 600 government agency clients, as of March of this year, according to ZDNet. 

The DoD has been making its shift to the cloud lately, but the speed of cloud adoption has been “fairly slow” because of the process of authorizing security, according to Defense Systems.

In fact, only four cloud service vendors currently have approvals for levels 1 and 2, and defense officials have been asking themselves if their Cloud Security Model was “too demanding,” Defense Systems said.  

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Following an Information report that eBay could spin off PayPal as soon as next year, Keith Rabois, a former PayPal exec and current venture capitalist, told Bloomberg that he  definitely thinks that eBay and PayPal should split.

He also provided another novel suggestion: That eBay should just rebrand itself as PayPal. 

"Change the logos, change the paint, change the T-shirts, and you get the same value basically as spinning off PayPal," he says. "Just rename the company. It's a really simple solution. You could do it in probably 24 hours. A lot less financial gimmicks involved, you don't have to hire investment bankers, and various other things, but you get all the benefit. The market cap will appreciate PayPal if you just change the brand."

Rabois argues that rebranding would clarify PayPal's value proposition to the world. Right now, he says, it feels like a subsidiary of eBay and people still think of it that way internally. He went as far as to say that employees "still think of themselves as hostage to the eBay marketplace, which is a declining and eventually irrelevant marketplace." 

Rabois, part of the famed group of early employees called the "PayPal Mafia," also argued that eBay and PayPal should split earlier this year. At that point, activist investor Carl Icahn was publishing open letter after open letter demanding that the two companies split. The Icahn-eBay fight finally ended when eBay agreed to Icahn's suggestion to appoint David Dorman to its board.

eBay's stock soared after The Information published its report. 

Watch the full video here:

SEE ALSO: Check Out How Much Google Has Changed Since It First Launched

SEE ALSO: A String Of Disasters At PayPal Has Capped eBay's Toughest Year Ever

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Matthew McConaughey is the new pitchman for Ford's Lincoln brand.

The company made the announcement Thursday and released a rather moody video in which the Oscar-winning star of "Dallas Buyers Club" talks about why he loves to drive and detests being a passenger, why he thinks there's good chemistry between himself and Lincoln, why he likes the MKC SUV (it has a "good stance"), why he looks forward to driving for two days from Hollywood to Austin, TX, and about how Lincoln is a "classic, iconic American brand" that's "making a transformation into the luxury market..."

Wait! Isn't Lincoln already a luxury brand?

Well, that's kind of the issue. And the reason why the brand has gone with McConaughey — who may have played a lawyer doing business out of the back of his old-school Lincoln, but who looks far more spiritually connected to something like a Ford F-150 pickup truck — to boost the division's fortunes.

Because Lincoln has lost its way. After the financial crisis, when former CEO Alan Mulally was getting rid of Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, Volvo (nameplates that collectively made up Ford's "Premier Automotive Group") to concentrate on a "One Ford" strategy, there were doubts regarding Lincoln's future.

I know because I expressed those doubts.

Heck, I did it twice.

I mean, three times.

Lincoln survived. But it hasn't been setting the luxury market on fire. As Bloomberg's Keith Naughton observed when reporting the McConaughey news:

Lincoln’s U.S. sales rose 16 percent this year through July, compared with a year earlier when sales fell to a 32-year low. Lincoln ranks eighth among luxury brands sold in the U.S. and it’s outsold by almost two-to-one by General Motor Co.’s Cadillac luxury line. A year’s worth of Lincoln sales would not fill half a Ford factory.

So obviously Lincoln has to do something to define — or more accurately, redefine — itself in the market. McConaughey is right as far as the issues of the moment are concerned: Lincoln is "making a transformation." But the brand has always been Ford's core luxury offering, even when Jaguar and Land Rover were in the stable. Ford never truly stopped thinking of Lincoln that way, but the consumer did.

The esoteric quality of the McConaughey intro is unusual, however.

"The campaign isn't screaming for attention," he says in his mellifluous drawl, as lightly trance-inducing electronic music plays and images of twilight in Texas float across the screen. "It's as much about the tone...the mood...the silent...moments...in between the words and in between the dialogue..."

He trails off, then resumes, declaring, "There's an authenticity to the campaign, and to the automobile."

The automobile. McConaughey is 44 years old but somehow he can get away with sounding like a wise man from the oily mists of Route 66, back when the authenticity of Lincolns was a given.

And then comes that genre of borderline whacky, stream-of-consciousness, back-porch philosophizing that has become a McConaughey speciality since his Oscar acceptance speech about being his own hero...but when he's a different him...in the the future...

"What does 'live in your moment' mean to me? What does it mean to everybody, all right?" he asks. "It's what everyone's trying to do. I'm not gonna say I do it all the time, I don't know anyone who does do it all the time."

Those thoughts, by the way, are preceded by this shot of a steer in a pen. Make of it what you will.

Anyway, back to living in the moment. "We know what it means," he continues. "It's not getting to far behind, it's not getting to far ahead. Once you're in the MKC, it is a good example of shutting out the rest of the world."

AdAge reports that McConaughey has a "multiyear" contract with Lincoln, so we could be in store for a lot more of this.

In a teasing YouTube video, all of 20 second, introducing himself as the new face of Lincoln, he remarks that "sometimes you've got to go back, to actually move forward."

Evidently, Lincoln wants it this way. According to the brand's media site:

In a nod to McConaughey’s storytelling talents, Lincoln and director Nicolas Winding Refn (“Drive”) created a storyline for him around the MKC. In the spots, McConaughey invites viewers to experience the vehicle through unscripted moments in the commercial.

Watch the whole Lincoln media video here. 

SEE ALSO: Here's The SUV That Will Make You Want To Drive A Lincoln Again

SEE ALSO: This Little SUV Is Lincoln's Latest Step Towards A Comeback

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iMessage is awash with spammers, according to a new Wired report.

That may not be true, though.

A recent post by AppleInsider dug into the report Wired's article is based on and searched iPhone message forums for user complaints.

They didn't find much. 

Cloudmark, the firm that produced the iMessage spam report, admitted it's hard to track iMessage spam within the broader category of SMS spam.

But if you are getting a ton of spam, here's how to fix that:

If the spammers have your number or even your email address — if it's associated with your iMessage account — you're leaving yourself open to untold annoyance and digital agony.

Luckily, there are ways you can eliminate or mitigate the spam messages you receive. 

The Nuclear Option: Disable iMessage

The best way to keep spammers out of your life is to disable iMessage entirely. This will probably be annoying for some folks, so weight that against how much spam you're getting. Don't worry, you won't miss a message. They'll just appear as regular texts.

Here's how you disable iMessage:

Go to Settings from your Home screen.

Then head to Messages.

Swipe left to turn iMessage off.

And boom! You're finished. 

There's also another option for those who don't want to abandon iMessage altogether.

The Middle Way: Reduce Your iMessage Alerts

This method disables iMessage alerts from anyone not already in your Contacts list. 

Go to Settings from your Home screen.

Then head to the Notification Center.

Go to Messages. 

Scroll down and change "Show Alerts from Everyone" to "Show Alerts from My Contacts."

And you're finished!

This method won't stop you from receiving spam messages, but it will definitely cut down on how often you notice them. 

SEE ALSO: Why Steve Jobs Set Such An Ambitious Goal For iAd — And Why He Failed

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The world is awash in data. 

The advent of smartphone-based computing had led to much more internet-based activity, as well as new opportunities to collect location data. The consumer stampede into social media means that the tastes, preferences, and frustrations of billions are shared online. 

In a couple of recent reports from BI Intelligence, we take stock of how all this data is the bedrock for a new generation of business tactics and applications. We focus on dispelling hype around big data, and describe clearly what it is — and what it isn't. 

Consider:

• Facebook ingests approximately 500 times more data each day than the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Twitter is storing at least 12 times more data each day than the NYSE. 

• CIBC, a Canadian bank, predicts that information-generation growth will increase 50 times over the next decade. IDC, a market research firm, similarly forecasts a 44-fold increase in data volumes between 2009 and 2020. Carry-everywhere devices are playing a large part in driving this explosion in data.

• Audience targeting and personalized predictive marketing using social data are expected to be some of the business areas that benefit the most from mining big data— 61% of data professionals say big data will overhaul marketing for the better, according to Booz & Company.

Yet: 

• Most companies are underusing data: Seventy-one percent of chief marketing officers around the globe say their organization is unprepared to deal with the explosion of big data over the next few years, according to an IBM survey. They cited it as their top challenge, ahead of device fragmentation and shifting demographics.

The above data points and insights come from two BI Intelligence reports on Big Data.

Only BI Intelligence subscribers can download the reports in PDF form and download all the charts and datasets for their own research and presentations. Subscribers also gain full-access to all our ongoing charts and in-depth reports on the mobile and social industries. 

Subscribe today to access, "Social Media's New Big Data Frontiers — Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, And Predictive Marketing," and "How Big Data Will Transform The Mobile Ecosystem."

In full, the reports:

• Define what big data is
• Look at the top business areas that will benefit from big data 
• Examine mobile's and social's connections to big data
• Analyze big data potential, practical applications, and pitfalls on mobile devices 
• Look at how big data is collected
• Answer some of the most frequently asked questions about big data and mobile
• Describe how advances in cutting-edge AI research are allowing marketers to classify and extract information from "unstructured" social big data— the billions of photos, videos, and messages uploaded and shared on social networks each day. 
  

To access BI Intelligence's full reports on Big Data sign up for a free trial subscription here.

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For more than three years, the Obama administration has been content with largely staying out of the conflict in Syria. But the recent ISIS offensive in Iraq and the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley has drawn Obama closer to what he called "somebody else’s civil war.”

Top American officials now acknowledge that the U.S. must confront ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, but there is a lack of policy as to how that can be accomplished.

The administration reportedly favors bolstering moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army, which Obama has neglected for years, and there are reports of British and American special forces being unleashed in Syria. Meanwhile, others in Washington advocate working with Iran and its client, Bashar al-Assad, despite the Syrian president's track record of historic brutality against Syrian revolutionaries and civilians.

"If we want to eliminate this ISIS, we're going to have to deal with people we don't like," former White House security adviser Richard Clarke told ABC News on Sunday. "You know, the president said we wanted Assad out. Well, we're going to have to say something to the Syrian government if we're going to start bombing in Syria. And if we're going to get rid of ISIS, we're going to have to start bombing in Syria."

Given that truly countering ISIS would require much more than airstrikes, some experts see the idea of accepting Assad as a viable partner to be a particularly dangerous idea.

"Many are arguing that, in the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my friend — that the immediate threat from ISIS is so great that the United States must align with Iran and Syria in order to counter it. This view ignores the long history of Iran and Syria of playing arsonist and fireman at the same time,"Mike Doran, senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy, told Business Insider in an email.

The U.S. Treasury Department has called out Iran for allowing senior al Qaeda members in Iran to move Sunni fighters into Syria. And before Assad allowed ISIS to grow in Syria, he helped some of the same fighters flow into Iraq.

"Historically, Assad has also had a complex, at times supportive, relationship with Sunni jihadi elements--including those which eventually morphed into IS,"Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland and expert on Shia militias, told Business Insider in an email. "He was assisting in funneling a good number of these fighters into Iraq during the Iraq War and even caused Maliki to call out Damascus for its activities."

Doran argues that Syria and Iran are now "exploiting its rise in order to present themselves to the Obama administration as valuable [counterterrorism] partners," and noted that the plan may eventually work given that Obama appears receptive to the idea of partnering with Iran to re-balance the region.

"He approaches the Middle East with two core assumptions: that the United States should not again put boots on the ground, and that the ISIS threat, not the Iranian nuclear program, is the national security priority," Doran explained. "If the United States is unwilling to lead the effort to destroy ISIS, and if Iran is not a comparable threat, then he has few choices other than to work with Iran and its partners against ISIS."

'Policy Is Boxed In'

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider that Assad and Iran have been adjusting policy based on Obama's clear reluctance to interfere in Syria, his fear of what could come after Assad, and his distrust of the Free Syrian Army.

"Once you put all of these things together, and make ISIS the priority, then policy is boxed in," Badran said. In this way, working with Assad "is the option that the president has created by result of his policy decisions and the result of his grander view of the region in regards to detente with the Iranians."

However, any coordination with Iran and Assad in Syria would have far-reaching consequences in regards to America's traditional allies in the region. It would also create the awkward situation of the U.S. being on the same side as Iranian proxy groups who have targeted Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.

"Long-term consequences would amount to further distancing of the United States from Sunni Arab allies, particularly those in the Gulf," Smyth told BI."It would also signal a lack of commitment to other allies in the region and abroad. Beyond that, are we willing to accept Hizballah's and those other Iran proxy militias' growth in power? These forces have not reneged on their threats against the U.S. or deep hostility toward U.S. interests in the region."

What Can Be Done

"Assad is playing his own games and will continue to do so. A common enemy does not always create a common friend," Smyth told BI. "The U.S. is in a multipolar environment and it needs to accept that there are numerous, often competing, sets of enemies. Being dynamic is never simple."

The war on ISIS has surely made for strange alliances so far as American, Syrian, and Iranian jets fly overhead while Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi soldiers, and Iranian tanks fight together on the ground.

Nevertheless, partnering with Iran and Assad against ISIS in Syria could exacerbate the increasingly sectarian situation in the Middle East.

"Iran and Syria have no assets that can counter the ISIS threat without making matters worse," Doran told BI. "Assad’s basic approach, for example, has been ethnic cleansing, driving Sunni civilians from their homes. Such brutality only succeeds in creating an environment, among Sunnis, that works to the advantage of ISIS."

Consequently, Doran advocates working with traditional American partners in the region to work with the Sunnis who are living in ISIS-controlled areas.

"The key is to detach moderate Sunnis, the vast majority of Sunnis, from ISIS, by providing them with security and with a political alternative to rule by Iran and its proxies,"Doran told BI. "The first step is to commit the United States, to crushing ISIS unambiguously.

"The second step is to create a coalition to achieve that goal by creating a new order in what is now Jihadistan, the region that ISIS controls from Baghdad to Aleppo. That coalition should include, among others, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, France, Britain, and, of course, the Free Syrian Army."

The alternative — working with Assad and his allies — would play into Assad's hand, according to a diplomat for several decades in the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

"U.S coordination with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, or the Assad government in the fight against ISIS will play directly into the Assad plan," Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi wrote in the Atlantic Council recently. "It will prove to Assad that his manipulation of time and terror has once again worked."

SEE ALSO: Obama's Mission Against ISIS Just Fundamentally Changed

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Research coming out of MIT confirms that in a two-human, one-robot team working toward a common goal, the humans would rather the robot be in charge.

Not only do human participants prefer taking robo-orders when it comes to tackling a manufacturing task, but the robot ended up leading the team in a more productive manner than the humans could. From MIT:

The fully-autonomous condition proved to be not only the most effective for the task, but also the method preferred by human workers. The workers were more likely to say that the robots “better understood them” and “improved the efficiency of the team.”

[Project lead Matthew] Gombolay emphasizes that giving robots control doesn’t mean a team of cyborgs will be running the show. It means the tasks are delegated, scheduled, and coordinated via a human-generated algorithm.

This experiment was conducted in two other arrangements as well — manual, in which all tasks were coordinated by a human, and semi-autonomous, in which one human worked delegated its own work and the robot delegated tasks to the other human.

You can see how the various setups compare against each other in the data below. The team's two hypotheses are confirmed: that the level of automation in a system greatly affects efficiency, and that people want to be involved without the burdens of small management decisions.

Below is a (rather dry) video that demonstrates how the experiments were conducted.

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The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a livability survey to determine which cities around the world "provide the best or worst living conditions."

Cities with major conflicts tended to score the lowest. Military and political conflicts weigh heavily on livability because they adversely affect many other factors as well: infrastructure is destroyed; hospitals are supersaturated with the wounded and dead; and economic productivity drops.

The survey notes that it is "designed to address a range of cities or business centers that people might want to live in or visit," and consequently, it excluded hotspots like Kabul, Afghanistan, and Baghdad. 

10. Dakar

Country: Senegal

EIU Rank: 130

The EIU report gave the capital of Senegal low scores for healthcare (41.7) and infrastructure (37.5).

According to an operations officer at the World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation, "about 65 percent of people [in Senegal] do not have any healthcare coverage whatsoever." The IFC is working to help provide low-cost health insurance to students and informal sector employees in Senegal.

Dakar recently lifted a ban on solar power, which has led to lowered longterm energy costs for some people.

9. Abidjan

Country: Cote d'Ivoire

EIU Rank: 131

Abidjan, one of the largest French-speaking cities in the world, scored low on stability (30). The Ivory Coast routinely scores low on the Corruption Index, and this year it was ranked 136th with a score of 27.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) economists said Abidjan was one of the "Next 10" biggest cities in sub-Saharan Africa that investors should keep their eye on.

8. Tripoli

Country: Libya

EIU Rank: 132

Tripoli, Libya's capital and largest city, was a focal point throughout the Libyan Civil War in 2011.

In May 2014, general Khalifa Haftar launched a military assault against Islamist groups in Benghazi. Since then, Tripoli has once again been the site of turmoil, including an unverified "bombing" on Monday by an unidentified plane.

Tripoli scored low of culture & environment (37), healthcare (41.7), and stability (45).

Edward Snowden's in-depth interview with James Bamford of Wired offers details about his last job as a contractor for the NSA in Honolulu, which raise disconcerting questions about the motives of the former systems administrator.

While working at two consecutive jobs in Hawaii from March 2012 to May 2013, the 31-year-old allegedly stole about 200,000 "tier 1 and 2" documents, which mostly detailed the NSA's global surveillance apparatus and were given to American journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in June 2013. The government believes Snowden also took up to 1.5 million "tier 3" documents potentially detailing U.S. capabilities and NSA offensive cyber operations, the whereabouts of which are unknown.

We now know more about the larger and more sensitive cache of classified documents. Furthermore, a close reading of relevant reporting and of statements made by Snowden suggests that much of what the rogue NSA employee intentionally took involved operational information unrelated to civil liberties.

While the tier 3 material appears to have not been shared with American journalists, some of it was shown to a Chinese newspaper. And 14 months later, given the uncertain fate of the documents, it is not unreasonable to ask whether they could have fallen into the hands of an adversarial foreign intelligence service.

That kind of hacking — employing the most sensitive of clandestine NSA cyberspying techniques — is carried out by the NSA's Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO). Current and former intelligence officialstold investigative reporter Matthew Aid that "TAO has been enormously successful over the past 12 years in covertly inserting highly sophisticated spyware into the hard drives of over 80,000 computer systems around the world, although this number could be much higher."

Snowden's new position gave him deep access into the NSA's emerging cyber-espionage capabilities.

"Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets," Scott Shane and David Sanger of The New York Times reported in June 2013. "They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers’ hard drives or shut down the phone system."

Basically, Snowden gained the opportunity he sought.

"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on June 12, 2013. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."

For example, Snowden told NYT in October he had "access to every target, every active operation" mounted by the NSA against the Chinese."Full lists of them."

Tier 1 and 2 vs. Tier 3

"He is a whistleblower in the case of some documents, and not a whistleblower in the case of other documents,"Epstein of WSJ said in a recent interview with Scott Johnson of Powerline.

Epstein reported that Snowden's job with Dell in Hawaii"gave him access to the NSA Net, from which he pilfered most of the documents he later gave to journalists, including the ones about NSA domestic operations that have preoccupied the world's media."

These documents, which comprise tier 1 and tier 2 of the intelligence community's damage assessment,"can be called whistleblowing, whistleblowing [documents] that say he's a man of conscience and he revealed what he thought ... the public should know," Epstein explained to Powerline. "But these constituted only a small portion because then he transferred to Booz Allen on March 15, 2013."

Epstein wrote that Snowden went to Booz Allen to "get access to the crown jewels, the lists of computers in four adversary nations — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — that the agency had penetrated."

These proverbialkeys to the kingdom are considered the most sensitive of the potentially massive cache of tier 3 documents that Snowden may have obtained but did not give to American journalists.

Epstein also reported that some documents "were taken from at least 24 supersecret compartments that stored them on computers, each of which required a password that a perpetrator had to steal or borrow, or forge an encryption key to bypass."

Snowden denies scamming passwords, but former colleagues have admitted to inadvertently providing Snowden a password to access information he was not authorized to see.

Epstein told Powerline that the theft at Booz was "basically a work of espionage: Taking documents that reveal sources and methods. He's never given these documents, with one exception, to any journalist, and no one knows where these documents are.

"So in the case of his work [for Booz Allen] at the National Threat Operations Center, he is not in my book under any theory a whistleblower,"Epstein concluded."At Dell, he could be a whistleblower. These are two different jobs and two different phases."

What Happened To The Tier 3 Documents?

Though based in the "special administrative region" of Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post operates under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, particularly when it comes to matters of national security.

Dr. Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, one of the coauthors of NATO's Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, told Business Insider in June 2013 that the NSA cyberspying Snowden reportedly divulged to SCMP detailed "either espionage or some other interference with the cyber infrastructure in another state.

"Let's be quite clear,"Dr. von Heinegg added. "Intruding into another state's systems in order to figure out what's in there — that's simply espionage, everybody's doing it."

Consequently, Snowden's decision to steal and share such details of the NSA's snooping on a foreign government is not a simple matter of exposing illegality or relative wrongdoing, but suggests something far more serious.

NSA whistleblower William Binney — a hero of Snowden's — told USA Today that the SCMP leaks marked a "[transition] from whistleblower to a traitor."

And it's unclear how much of the tier 3 material, if any, may have been shown to anyone else.

In October James Risen of the Times reported that the former CIA technician said "he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong." (ACLU lawyer and Snowden legal adviser Ben Wizner subsequently told Business Insider that the report was inaccurate.)

In May 2014, Snowden thentold NBC's Brian Williams in Moscow that he "destroyed" all documents in his possession while in Hong Kong.

So, as Epstein noted, no one knows what happened to the tier 3 information that Snowden, "a genius among geniuses," managed to steal while immersed in NSA offensive cyber operations at Booz Allen.

Interestingly, in the German newspaper Der Spiegel, Poitras and "American WikiLeaks Hacker" Jacob Appelbaum reported detailed information about the NSA's elite TAO hackers and published a catalog of tools, created by TAO's technical expert division (known as ANT), used to hack into computers.

But the reports do not specify where the classified NSA documents came from.

Appelbaum, a close friend of Poitras, whom she brought in to vet Snowden, also presented the ANT catalog in December 2013 at a computer conference in Germany. (In December 2012, Snowden threw a Crypto Party with Appelbaum's former colleague at the Tor project, Runa Sandvik.)

Stuck In Moscow

After outing himself on June 9, Snowden reached out to WikiLeaks for help finding asylum. On June 15, the U.S. asked Hong Kong to provisionally arrest Snowden for the purposes of extradition and subsequently revoked his passport on June 22.

On June 23, Beijing allowedSnowden to board a flight to Moscow using a "refugee document of passage"obtained by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian consul in London. But the document wasn't even signed— meaning that Snowden had no valid travel documents when he landed on Russian soil.

The fact that Snowden ended up in Moscow was "no accident from the Russian point of view," Epstein told Powerline, noting that Putin offered to consider Snowden's asylum request on June 11. For Russia, an American systems administrator with granular knowledge of offensive U.S. cyber operations would be an extraordinary prize.

For his part, Assange has stated multiple timesthat he advised Snowden to stay in Russia, as opposed to attempting to obtain asylum in Venezuela and Ecuador.

"In Russia, he's safe, he's well-regarded, and that is not likely to change," the Australian publisher told Janet Reitman of Rolling Stone. "That was my advice to Snowden, that he would be physically safest in Russia."

Epstein, citing a U.S. official he spoke with in Hong Kong, reported that "Snowden had been observed on CCTV cameras entering the skyscraper that housed the Russian consulate on three occasions" in June.

It is not known when in June Snowden visited the Russian officials in Hong Kong, but the circumstances may inform the fate of the tier 3 documents.

On June 12, Snowden told SCMP that he wanted to make more documents available to journalists if he had "time to go through this information."If Snowden had access to the tier 3 cache when he first met with the Russians in Hong Kong, it would explain their willingness to give him a safe refuge and protect him.

A Whistleblower — And a Spy

While Snowden can legitimately claim to be a whistleblower based on the tier 1 and 2 material he gave to Poitras, Greenwald, and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, the larger cache of information about America's cyberintelligence capabilities and activities around the world is another story.

Snowden's audacious theft of tier 3 documents, which included acquiring colleagues' passwords that gave him access to secret files, could potentially put him in another category altogether. Taking that information would in theory make him a renegade spy— and possessing it would make him an especially welcome guest of the Kremlin.

"These secrets he took from [from Booz Allen] are of value to no one but Russia, China, and maybe North Korea, because these secrets are basically the lists of computers in Russia, China, and North Korea which [the U.S.] managed to compromise and tap into,"Epstein asserted to Powerline. "And not only that, ... it would take a very sophisticated counterintelligence service to reverse engineer and to figure out where all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

"So the strange thing about what he did at the National Threat [Operations] Center is what he took is ... only of use to two countries. Have they made use of them? I don't know. But they are of no use to journalists. If he supplied these to journalists, they would have nothing to publish [besides lists of compromised computers]."

Fifteen months after his epic heist, we still don't know if Snowden was telling the truth when he said he destroyed the tier 3 documents between June 12 (the SCMP leak) and June 23 (the flight to Moscow).

"The only thing that Russia and China certainly have in common is that they both want to deny American primacy," Epstein noted to Powerline. "Certainly if you can find a list of everything in your country that has been tapped, whoever you are, even if you were the Mafia, that list would be valuable to you."

As important as Snowden's exposure of illegal domestic spying undoubtedly has been, questions about the tier 3 documents — why he sought them; whom he shared them with; and where they are now — cast a dark shadow on his prominence as a hero.

SEE ALSO: There's An 11-Day Hole In Snowden's Story About Hong Kong

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