'NSA should come clean about domestic spying': Ray Kelly - NYPOST.com →
nypost.com
Kelly gets a highly personalized lesson in, “First I spied on the Muslims, and I thought it was cool because I was not a Muslim.”
June 2013
“I don’t really want to call it “foreign intelligence” (court) anymore, because I think it’s just become a surveillance court, OK? And we are all foreigners now. By virtue of that order, every single phone record that Verizon has is turned over each and every day to NSA.”
—3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so
“Facebook’s self-reflexive utility explains why the company finds privacy so tricky. The freedom to read and experience things privately is essential to self-development, the core proposition of the Emersonian ideal to which the Palo Alto tradition is heir. But Facebook’s core proposition is that when we collectively build the social graph, everyone benefits. The exact nature of those gains is perplexing; the company’s commercials show a lot of young people touching and smiling. Something good.”
—Review: Facebook Home | MIT Technology Review
My inbound twitter feed this weekend is an eclectic treat.
Civil libertarians express horror at the extent of secret domestic surveillance by the US government. Democratic party loyalists attempt to distract with identity politics, because that has always worked. Cyclists hyperventilate about the latest citibike troll. Occupyists express hope (and envy?) for the backbone shown by our counterparts in Turkey. Everybody else pretends things are normal enough for them to tweet their usual industry-specific trivialities.
After Profits, Defense Firm Faces Pitfalls of Cybersecurity - NYTimes.com →
nytimes.com
Mr. McConnell speaks often about the need for the private sector to jolt the government out of its attachment to existing systems, noting, for example, that the Air Force fought the concept of drones for years.
Yeah, thanks for that! What amoral miracle will the merger of corporate and government interests bring next?
“Follow these rules and I’m sure your submission will be accepted by any of the A-list websites, to be forwarded on Facebook and Twitter by thousands of “my party right or wrong” stalwarts.”
—How To Write About NSA Spying - A Style Guide For Authoritarians - Not the Singularity
U.S. to increase military support to Syria rebels | Reuters →
reuters.com
Somewhere in the middle east, sunni and shi’ite people are fighting. (How dare they.)
Does anyone anywhere seriously believe, “this conflict will work out better if the United States gets involved”?
mlcastle: Is there any published research on how many more lives would be saved... →
tumble.mlcastle.net
Is there any published research on how many more lives would be saved if we stopped funding the Überwachungsstaat and instead spent the money on health care or road safety or something else known to actually have an effect?
(For example, even accepting temporarily the argument that all these…
Study say hands-free technologies still create distracted driving - UPI.com →
upi.com
The study “confirmed previous research suggesting talking on a hands-free cellphone was just as distracting as using a hand-held phone while driving.”
Most of us knew that already, but the discredited assumption that “hands free” devices are less deadly in the ears of motorists than plain old handhelds remains enshrined in laws across the country. Police carefully ignore Good Drivers wired in to expensive and complex touchscreen phones while seizing the opportunity to penalize lowlifes on tracphones.
And they all crash into each other.
“Rather than use the best practices of Europe or encourage train manufacturers to innovate, the FRA’s rules prescribe antiquated crash management technology from the 1910s.”
—Streetsblog.net » Study: FRA Regulations Make Us Less Safe
Obama on NSA surveillance: Can't have 100% security and 100% privacy — RT USA →
rt.com
I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.
Another thing that is important to recognize is that you can’t have 100% security. We never did. But you can have some greater degree of privacy than the government being informed of every phone call you make. Until last week we thought we did have that. The truth was “classified”, a fancy way of lying.
Obama, what a monster you have become.
Play
NY State Senate approves of bill making it a felony to irritate a police officer →
rt.com
Oh, this sounds great! Because there are no laws that already cover actual assault against a police officer, and this won’t be abused in order to cover up police malfeasance, monitoring, or political action, nope it won’t!
Basically, if you accidentally trip and fall into a police officer, this law makes it a felony if that officer is sufficiently annoyed at you. You’ll be in jail for weeks if you’re an indigent defendant before something like this gets cleared up. Every black kid will be in jail indefinitely for specious offenses. Just watch.
Squadron voted against this one, at least.
