Skynet Watch in the Media (Friday)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-14 23:03:33 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-14 23:05:21 UTC
Summary: Unwise policies that breed mistrust and even hatred continue to receive scrutiny from the media
Surveillance
-
Since the intelligence contractor Edward Snowden began exposing surveillance programs by the National Security Agency last June, trust overseas in U.S. technology companies has plummeted. In some cases, sales have slowed. And foreign regulators have been licking their chops in anticipation of a crackdown. Estimates of the cost to these companies have ranged from $21.5 billion to $180 billion by 2016.
-
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) announced this week that he is suing the Obama administration in a class-action lawsuit over the surveillance excesses of the NSA, as revealed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Specifically, he is challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata.
-
Top execs from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, LinkedIn and Twitter have formed a coalition known as Reform Government Surveillance, and are urging changes to the NSA spying programs that would include a government agreement not to collect bulk data from Internet communications. Tumblr, Mozilla and Reddit also support the effort.
-
As the Framers conceived it, our system of government is divided into three branches — executive, legislative and judicial — each of which is designed to serve as a check on the others. If the president gets out of control, Congress can defund his efforts, or impeach him, and the judiciary can declare his acts unconstitutional. If Congress passes unconstitutional laws, the president can veto them, or refuse to enforce them, and the judiciary can declare them invalid. If the judiciary gets carried away, the president can appoint new judges, and Congress can change the laws, or even impeach.
-
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) on Thursday said he doesn’t support Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) lawsuit against President Obama and the National Security Agency.
"I believe that legislation, not a Senate-brought lawsuit is the only effective way to stop this behavior of the NSA,” Wyden said in a statement provided to The Hill.
-
Thanks to everyone who participated on Tuesday. Together we demonstrated that activists, organizations, and companies can work in unison to fight mass surveillance, and laid a foundation for escalation over months to come.
-
Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has become prominent in the debate. This reflects not only the extent of continuing public alarm about the activity, but also the fact that Congress is exercising growing policy leadership in this realm as in others, including fiscal and budgetary matters.
-
For nine years, the U.S. government refused to let a Stanford PhD student named Rahinah Ibrahim back in the country after putting her on the no-fly list for no apparent reason. For eight years, U.S. government lawyers fought Ibrahim’s request that she be told why. Last April, despite his promise in 2009 to do so only in only the most extreme cases, Attorney General Eric Holder tried to block Ibrahim’s case by asserting the state secrets privilege, declaring under penalty of perjury that the information she wanted “could reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to national security.”
-
The East German secret police, known as the Stasi, were an infamously intrusive secret police force. They amassed dossiers on about one quarter of the population of the country during the Communist regime.
But their spycraft — while incredibly invasive — was also technologically primitive by today’s standards. While researching my book Dragnet Nation, I obtained the above hand drawn social network graph and other files from the Stasi Archive in Berlin, where German citizens can see files kept about them and media can access some files, with the names of the people who were monitored removed.
Ethics
-
Pete Seeger’s life, like the arc of the moral universe famously invoked by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., bent toward justice. He died this week at 94. Pete sang truth to power through the epic struggles of most of the last century, for social justice, for civil rights, for workers, for the environment and for peace. His songs, his wise words, his legacy will resonate for generations.
-
That’s right, Bezos bought the grey Lady, that Washington Post-pone, and, alas, you think the WP is going to cover the Amazon contract with the guys and gals who take contracts out on us, them, anyone, with that drone thing, the favorite toy of Bezos’ Prozac mind – he wants drones all over Seattle first, to try out his 30 minute or you get it free delivery idea for orders for his useless shit, the upside down world of Maslow’s hierarchy of misneeds/deeds.
Drones
-
xhaustive independent studies by the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the New America Foundation and the Long War Journal have documented that civilian casualties are endemic – the latest count is at least 440 since the drone campaigns began, according to the BIJ.
And countless journalistic accounts have described how the strikes are counterproductive, increasing civilians’ sympathy for al Qaeda and its allies in Yemen today as in Pakistan and Afghanstan before, and as in Somalia next.
-
Every time you think the war on terror can’t get any weirder, it does.
-
Zara Shahid a student at Lahore University of Management Science in Pakistan, on why she values student activism on unofficial drone warfare
-
A Cambridge student has launched a campaign to encourage British universities to cease investment in companies that produce drones.
Sara Aslam, a Masters student in Modern South Asian studies, has started a petition which calls for higher education institutions to consider the human costs of the use of drones and to divest from drone technologies.
-
In an interesting turn of events which indicate a visible policy change on the part of the agencies, Karim Khan, an anti-drone campaigner from North Waziristan, seems to have been picked up by the same people who had been accused of blowing off the security cover of three previous CIA station chiefs in Islamabad who used to supervise the US drone campaign, writes Amir Mir.
[...]
But hardly a few days before he was due to travel to Britain to brief parliamentarians from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands about the impact of the drone strikes in the tribal belt of Pakistan, up to 20 armed men stormed into his home in Rawalpindi on the night of February 4, 2014 and took him away without even telling his family members who they were and what they actually wanted.
War
-
What are these words, after all, next to the iron realities of the post–September 11 world? The defense budget has more than doubled, including a Special Operations Command able to launch secret, lethal raids anywhere in the world that has grown from 30,000 elite troops to more than 67,000. The drone force has expanded from fewer than 200 unmanned aerial vehicles to more than 11,000, including perhaps 400 “armed-capable” drones that can and do target and kill from the sky—and that, following the computer directives of “pilots” manning terminals in Virginia and Nevada and elsewhere in the United States, have killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia an estimated 3,600 people.
-
And I'm Renee Montagne. Good morning. We have been hearing for months about how disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have shaken the intelligence community and spurred Congress to try to impose new limits on surveillance. In recent weeks, after-shocks from those leaks have been rippling through the courts as well. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports some judges have signaled they're no longer willing to take the government's word when it comes to national security.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft Windows Used to Have Nearly 100% in China and Now Google Has 50% (With Android)
- Will China bring about a faster "fall" for Microsoft?
- GNU/Linux Growing Worldwide (the Story So Far!)
- Microsoft is unable to stop GNU/Linux
- Red Hat Loves Microsoft Monopoly (and Proprietary Surveillance With Back Doors)
- full posting history in RedHat.com
- Microsoft-Connected Sites Trying to Shift Attention Away From Microsoft's Megabreach Only Days Before Important If Not Unprecedented Grilling by the US Government?
- Why does the mainstream media not entertain the possibility a lot of these talking points are directed out of Redmond?
-
- Staff Representation at the EPO Has Just Explained to Heads of Delegations (National Delegates) Why the EPO's Financial Study is Another Hoax
- Here we are again 5 years later
- [Video] Microsoft's Attack on Education
- Microsoft's cult-like activities and overt entryism
- Canonical and Red Hat Are Not Competing With Microsoft Anymore
- What a shame they hired so many people from Microsoft...
- Links 21/05/2024: "Hating Apple Goes Mainstream", Lots of Coverage About Julian Assange Ruling
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/05/2024: Losing Fats and Modern XMPP
- Links for the day
- Pursuing a Case With No Prospects (Because It's "Funny")
- the perpetrators are taking a firm that's considered notorious
- GNU/Linux in Honduras: From 0.28% to 6%
- Honduras remains somewhat of a hotspot
- Good News From Manchester and London, Plus High Productivity in Techrights
- what has happened and what's coming
- [Video] The 'Linux' Foundation Cannot be Repaired Anymore (It Sold Out)
- We might need to accept that the Linux Foundation lost its way
- Links 21/05/2024: Tesla Layoffs and Further Free Speech Perils Online
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/05/2024: New Gemini Reader and Gemini Games
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 20, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, May 20, 2024
- [Video] Just Let Julian Assange Go Back to Australia
- Assange needs to be freed
- The WWW declares the end of Google
- Reprinted with permission from Cyber|Show
- Gemini Links 20/05/2024: CMSs and Lua "Post to midnight.pub" Script Alternative
- Links for the day
- Windows Has Fallen Below 5% in Iraq, GNU/Linux Surged Beyond 7% Based on statCounter's Stats
- Must be something going on!
- Brodie Robertson - Never Criticise The Linux Foundation Expenses (With Transcript)
- Transcript included
- Links 20/05/2024: Protests and Aggression by Beijing
- Links for the day
- Can an election campaign succeed without social media accounts?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Read "Google Is Not What It Seems" by Julian Assange
- In this extract from his new book When Google Met Wikileaks, WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department -- and what that means for the future of the internet
- Fact check: relation to Julian Assange, founded Wikileaks at University of Melbourne and Arjen Kamphuis
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Julian Assange: Factual Timeline From an Online Friend
- a friend's account
- Breaking News: Assange Wins Right to Challenge Extradition to the US
- This is great news, but maybe the full legal text will reveal some caveat
- Gambia: Windows Down to 5% Overall, 50% on Desktops/Laptops
- Windows was measured at 94% in 2015
- Links 20/05/2024: Microsoft Layoffs and Shutdowns, RTO as Silent Layoffs
- Links for the day
- The Issue With Junk Traffic in Geminispace (Gemini Protocol)
- Some people have openly complained that their capsule was getting hammered by bot
- Peter Eckersley, Laura Smyth & the rushed closure of dial-up Internet in Australian universities
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Brittany Day, Plagiarist in Chief (Chatbot Slinger)
- 3 articles in the front page of LXer.com right now are chatbot spew
- Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com) Has Resorted to Plagiarism by Chatbots, Flooding the World Wide Web With Fake 'Articles' Wrongly Attributed to Brittany Day
- busted
- [Meme] Bullying the Victims
- IBM: crybully of the year 2024
- Ian.Community Should be Safer From Trademark Censorship
- We wish to discuss this matter very quickly
- Microsoft and Its Vicious Attack Dogs (Attacking Women or Wives in Particular)
- Sad, pathetic, destructive people
- Upcoming Series About the Campaign to 'Disappear' the Father of GNU/Linux
- Today we have Julian Assange's fate to focus on
- A Month From Now Gemini Protocol Turns 5
- June 20
- Colombia: From Less Than 0.5% to Nearly 4% for GNU/Linux
- it's not limited to this one country
- Rumour: Well Overdue Red Hat Layoffs to be Announced in About 3 Days
- we know they've planned the layoffs for a while
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 19, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, May 19, 2024
- Gemini Links 20/05/2024: Updated Noto Fontpacks and gemfeed2atom
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux in Georgia: Looking Good
- Windows down from 99% to less than 33%
- Tomorrow is a Historic Day for Press Freedom in the UK
- Take note of the Julian Assange case
- Hiding in a Forest Without a Phone and Hiding Behind the First Amendment in the United States (US)
- some serial defamer is trying to invert the narrative
- Links 19/05/2024: Iran's President Lost in Helicopter Crash, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Awaits Decisions in Less Than a Day
- Links for the day
- Links 19/05/2024: Microsoft Investigated in Europe
- Links for the day
- 4 Old Articles About Microsoft/IBM SystemD
- old but still relevant
- Firefox Has Fallen to 2% in New Zealand
- At around 2%, at least in the US (2% or below this threshold), there's no longer an obligation to test sites for any Gecko-based browser
- Winning Streak
- Free software prevalence
- Links 19/05/2024: Conflicts, The Press, and Spotify Lawsuit
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux+ChromeOS at Over 7% in New Zealand
- It's also the home of several prominent GNU/Linux advocates
- libera.chat (Libera Chat) Turns 3 Today
- Freenode in the meantime continues to disintegrate
- [Teaser] Freenode NDA Expires in a Few Weeks (What Really Happened 3 Years Ago)
- get ready
- GNU/Linux is Already Mainstream, But Microsoft is Still Trying to Sabotage That With Illegal Activities and Malicious Campaigns of Lies
- To help GNU/Linux grow we'll need to tackle tough issues and recognise Microsoft is a vicious obstacle
- Slovenia's Adoption of GNU/Linux in 2024
- Whatever the factor/s may be, if these figures are true, then it's something to keep an eye on in the future
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 18, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, May 18, 2024
- Links 19/05/2024: Profectus Beta 1.2
- Links for the day