Watching Your Back

If you aren't paranoid, you aren't paying attention.

Amplify’d from www.businessweek.com

Spies Fail to Escape Spyware in $5 Billion Bazaar for Cyber Arms

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The intelligence operative sits in a leather club chair, laptop open, one floor below the Hilton Kuala Lumpur’s convention rooms, scanning the airwaves for spies.

In the salons above him, merchants of electronic interception demonstrate their gear to government agents who have descended on the Malaysian capital in early December for the Wiretapper’s Ball, as this surveillance industry trade show is called.

As he tries to detect hacker threats lurking in the wireless networks, the man who helps manage a Southeast Asian country’s Internet security says there’s reason for paranoia. The wares on offer include products that secretly access your Web cam, turn your cell phone into a location-tracking device, recognize your voice, mine your e-mail for anti-government sentiment and listen to supposedly secure Skype calls.

He isn’t alone watching his back at this cyber-arms bazaar, whose real name is ISS World. Read more at www.businessweek.com

 

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"Others" Opt Out?

It's okay to for chaplains to discriminate if they don't like certain groups. Why would the military think that their metaphorical discrimination chickens wouldn't come home to roost clucking epithets?

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Army Charges 8 in Wake of Death of a Fellow G.I.

One night in October, an Army private named Danny Chen apparently angered his fellow soldiers by forgetting to turn off the water heater after taking a shower at his outpost in Afghanistan, his family said.

In the relatives’ account, the soldiers pulled Private Chen out of bed and dragged him across the floor; they forced him to crawl on the ground while they pelted him with rocks and taunted him with ethnic slurs. Finally, the family said, they ordered him to do pull-ups with a mouthful of water — while forbidding him from spitting it out.

It was the culmination of what the family called a campaign of hazing against Private Chen, 19, who was born in Chinatown in Manhattan, the son of Chinese immigrants. Hours later, he was found dead in a guard tower, from what a military statement on Wednesday called “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” to the head.

On Wednesday, the American military announced that the Army had charged eight soldiers in Private Chen’s battalion in connection with the death.

It was an extraordinary development in a case that has stirred intense reactions in the Asian population in New York and elsewhere and provoked debate over what some experts say is the somewhat ambivalent relationship between the Asian population and the United States military.

The authorities have not publicized much information about the circumstances of the death. Family members said they had gleaned bits of information about the hazing in private briefings with American military officials. But the array of charges announced — the most serious of which were manslaughter and negligent homicide — suggested that military prosecutors believed that the soldiers’ actions drove Private Chen to commit suicide.

Private Chen’s relatives and friends said they welcomed the announcement of the charges, as did Asian-American advocacy groups, which have been pressing the Army to conduct a transparent investigation into the death and to improve the treatment of Asians in the armed forces.

“It’s of some comfort and relief to learn that the Army has taken this seriously,” Private Chen’s mother, Su Zhen Chen, said through an interpreter at a news conference in Chinatown. Private Chen was her only child. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Not So Private Eyes

Not that government misbehavior relating to freedom of expression and privacy comes as much of a surprise, but looking at the actual numbers can be very sobering.

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

Google: US law enforcement tried to get videos removed from YouTube

The technology giant's biannual transparency report reveals a 70% rise in takedown requests from US government or police

Google faced down demands from a US law enforcement agency to take down YouTube videos allegedly showing police brutality earlier this year, figures released for the first time show.

The technology giant's biannual transparency report shows that Google refused the demands from the unnamed authority in the first half of this year.

According to the report, Google separately declined orders by other police authorities to remove videos that allegedly defamed law enforcement officials.

The demands formed part of a 70% rise in takedown requests from the US government or police, and were revealed as part of an effort to highlight online censorship around the world.

Figures revealed for the first time show that the US demanded private information about more than 11,000 Google users between January and June this year, almost equal to the number of requests made by 25 other developed countries, including the UK and Russia. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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Lobotomize Demented DeMint

Poor thing. Not only does it not know how the technology works, not only does it not know what "small government" mean, but it doesn't appear to know what cost-cutting and recession mean either.



At what point do we get off this politically correct kick and stop enabling severely mentally disabled people to serve in congress? It would be one thing if he was in a cage where we could look at him and laugh and throw nuts at him, but he's actually drafting legislation that puts our mothers, sisters and daughters at risk.



It needs to be kicked out of congress immediately, given a series of drug tests and find a real job. Enough with the handouts to these lazy idiots. What else can it do aside from sponge from society and draft legislation that is technologically impossible and unenforceable? On our dime. Flush it. Like the fecal strep that it is.



We shouldn't be considering the merits of his legislation at this point, but rather whether perhaps lobotomies weren't such a bad thing after all. I'll donate the drill.

Amplify’d from thinkprogress.org

GOP Senator Pushes Radical Bill To Restrict Discussion Of Abortion Over The Internet

Instead of focusing on job creation, congressional Republicans have spent their time passing socially conservative legislation like the “Let Women Die” bill that would allow hospitals that receive federal funds to deny women life-saving abortion procedures.

Now Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of the most die-hard anti-choice lawmakers, has jumped on the bandwagon by sneaking a radical anti-abortion amendment onto a completely unrelated piece of legislation. DeMint’s amendment would ban women and their doctors from discussing abortion over the Internet:

Anti-choice Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) just filed an anti-choice amendment to a bill related to agriculture, transportation, housing, and other programs. The DeMint amendment could bar discussion of abortion over the Internet and through videoconferencing, even if a woman’s health is at risk and if this kind of communication with her doctor is her best option to receive care.

Under this amendment, women would need a separate, segregated Internet just for talking about abortion care with their doctors.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said DeMint is essentially mandating “an abortion-only version of Skype.” She points out that a woman with high-risk pregnancy talking to her doctor through video conferencing would have to somehow switch to a separate communications system if abortion came up at all. “It is impractical, ridiculous, and, most importantly, bad for women in rural or remote areas who would not be able to discuss the full set of options with their doctor,” Keenan said.

DeMint’s bill is yet another Republican attempt to circumvent women’s constitutional right to an abortion by essentially outlawing doctors from discussing that option with their patients. These so-called “small government” conservatives have no problem inserting government into private conversations between women and their doctors. Read more at thinkprogress.org

 

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Une Charge De Merde

Accountability and fascism have never been particularly good bedfellows.



Oh what a brilliant way to inspire trust in French police.



Police officers arresting suspects, taunting protesters and allegedly committing acts of violence against members of ethnic minorities should not be stopped. Just its documentation.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Court Orders French Cop-Watching Site Blocked

PARIS — A court here has ruled that French Internet service providers must block access to a Web site that shows pictures and videos of police officers arresting suspects, taunting protesters and allegedly committing acts of violence against members of ethnic minorities.

Law enforcement officials, who had denounced the site as an incitement to violence against the police, welcomed the decision.

The police had said they were particularly concerned about portions of the site showing identifiable photos of police officers, along with personal data — including some cases in which officers are said to express far-right sympathies on social networks.

A report by Amnesty International in 2009 was sharply critical of the French record on police brutality, as well as the authorities’ response. “Allegations of beatings, racial abuse, excessive force and even unlawful killings by French police are rarely investigated effectively and those responsible are seldom brought to justice,” the report said. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Teaching Topeka

Not surprisingly Kansas city officials have literally put a target on the back of women, in their idiotic move to decriminalize domestic violence in the city to save money. I never advocate violence, but the only people deserving of any in Topeka are those on the city council who would vote to do this. A self-defensive, preemptive strike.

Amplify’d from www.forbes.com

Topeka Kansas Considers Decriminalizing Domestic Violence

In Topeka, Kansas city officials are considering a controversial move to decriminalize domestic violence in the city after the Shawnee County government offloaded domestic violence enforcement on to city governments. Cities facing budget cuts and lost revenue are turning to many different cost-cutting measures, but this is perhaps the most extreme. Already, the county government has turned away at least 30 domestic violence cases.

Ironically, the age of austerity may provide an out for people who abuse their wives, girlfriends, and children, but if the federal government gets its way, decriminalized marijuana will become a thing of the past. Apparently putting taxdollars to work locking up pot smokers and hippies is more important than protecting battered women.

As Marie Diamond notes, the social and economic cost of domestic violence is very real. In cold, hard economic terms, studies have estimated that domestic violence has cost the US economy between approximately $6 and $13 billion a year. The cost of prosecuting these cases is only a small sliver of that sum. The community damage extends generations and can be crippling to the well-being of children into adulthood, perpetuating the cycle of violence from one generation to the next.

Most domestic violence cases go unreported. Decriminalizing domestic violence will simply push these cases further into the shadows. Considering that marital rape was legal in almost every state until 1976, perhaps this is simply an illustration of our society slipping backwards, toward the days when men had total domination over the wives. A return to various remnants of a feudalistic society is hardly surprising given the many anti-democratic policies we’ve seen in recent years (everything from torture to assassinating US ciizens to absurd redistricting policies and more.) Still, it is worrisome. Read more at www.forbes.com

 

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Cameron's Kerfuffle Containment Strategy

Because slapping pathetically at technology is always such a clever, productive way to go about stemming violence and addressing social disorder.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

LONDON — Seeking to reestablish his authority after England’s worst rioting in decades, Prime Minister David Cameron told an emergency session of Parliament on Thursday that the authorities would consider curfews, constraining smartphones and social networking sites, and filling some police functions with soldiers to keep more officers on the street. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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