U.S. prosecutors confirmed on Thursday night that Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law has been indicted and has been taken to New York to be arraigned on Friday. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who appeared in videos representing al Qaeda after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans. Abu Ghaith is the one of the highest-ranked al Qaeda officials to undergo a civilian trial in New York, where the courthouse is just blocks away from the World Trade Center. According to NBC News, Abu Ghaith was sent with a group of other al Qaeda operatives to Iran after the September 11th terrorist attacks, where they were promptly captured and detained. It's unclear how Abu Ghaith got to Turkey, where he was captured by the U.S.

Senator Lindsey Graham held a press conference on Thursday evening after news of Ghaith's capture and presence in New York was revealed, and made clear the the GOP wants Ghaith transferred to Gitmo. In the Associated Press video above, Graham also seems to be having a bit of a sad that the Obama administration had been -- you know, working -- and didn't make the GOP aware that the Democratic president was going to accomplish something...possibly making them look bad. C'est la vie.

ABC News:

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, has been "cooperating" and has already revealed "key intelligence" about the current status, personnel and finances of al Qaeda even before he was secretly spirited to New York City, U.S. officials told ABC News today.

"It is huge," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "This is a man who is in the inner circle of bin Laden's al Qaeda operations and now we have him alive and he's talking."

Ghaith was moved to New York sometime last week after being transferred to Jordanian custody following his capture in Turkey.

He is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in New York City Friday, and faces charges including conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, according to an indictment unsealed today.

Jake Davis, (aka "Topiary") one of the key figures of the '50 days of Lulz' and allegedly involved in the attacks on the CIA, the US Air Force, PBS, HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church and more plead guilty earlier this year, and is now on conditional bail – and barred from going online. In an article for the Guardian, he describes life without the internet; how he feels serene, and recharged.

The last time I was allowed to access the internet was several moments before the police came through my door in the Shetland Isles, over a year ago. During the past 12 months I have pleaded guilty to computer misuse under the banners of "Internet Feds", "Anonymous" and "LulzSec". One of my co-defendants and I have also been indicted with the same charge in the United States, where we may possibly be extradited, and if found guilty I could face several decades in an American prison. Now I am on conditional bail and have to wear an electronic tag around my ankle. I'm forbidden from accessing the internet.

I'm often asked: what is life like without the net? It seems strange that humans have evolved and adapted for thousands of years without this simple connectivity, and now we in modern society struggle to comprehend existence without it. In a word, life is serene. I now find myself reading newspapers as though they weren't ancient scrolls; entering real shops with real money in order to buy real products, and not wishing to Photoshop a cosmic being of unspeakable horror into every possible social situation. Nothing needs to be captioned or made into an elaborate joke to impress a citizenry whose every emotion is represented by a sequence of keystrokes.

Things are calmer, slower and at times, I'll admit, more dull. I do very much miss the instant companionship of online life, the innocent chatroom palaver, and the ease with which circles with similar interests can be found. Of course, there are no search terms in real life – one actually has to search. However, there is something oddly endearing about being disconnected from the digital horde.

It is not so much the sudden simplicity of daily life – as you can imagine, trivial tasks have been made much more difficult – but the feeling of being able to close my eyes without being bombarded with flashing shapes or constant buzzing sounds, which had occurred frequently since my early teens and could only be attributed to perpetual computer marathons. Sleep is now tranquil and uninterrupted and books seem far more interesting. The paranoia has certainly vanished. I can only describe this sensation as the long-awaited renewal of a previously diminished attention span.

Full article here.

An indictment filed on Thursday in federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina charged the former head of Bank of America’s municipal derivatives desk, Phillip Murphy, with conspiracy to defraud the U.S, wire fraud, and conspiracy to make false entries in bank records.

Bloomberg:

Bank of America, which self-reported the illegal activity, has been cooperating for more than four years with Justice Department prosecutors who say that bankers paid kickbacks to CDR Financial Products to rig bids on investment contracts sold to local governments. Municipalities bought the contracts with money raised through bond sales, which allowed them to earn a return until the funds were needed for schools, roads, and other public works.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning.