JaneyVee
JaneyVee's JournalObama administration declassifies order directing Verizon to turn over Americans' phone records
The Obama administration has declassified a secret order directing Verizon Communications to turn over a vast number of Americans’ phone records, and it plans to disclose the document Wednesday morning in time for a Senate hearing, according to senior U.S. officials.
The order was issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to a subsidiary of Verizon in April. Officials described it as the formal order underlying the directive that was disclosed in June by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.
The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the court order released by Snowden was a “secondary” order. They expressed hope that the document being released Wednesday will shed light on how the U.S. government obtains communications records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the restrictions placed on surveillance programs.
The release is set to come in advance of a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee at which officials from the Justice Department, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will face questions about NSA surveillance programs and the collection of Americans’ communications data. At a similar hearing by the House Intelligence Committee this month, lawmakers expressed deep skepticism over the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records.
The rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2013/07/30/88c62600-f97f-11e2-afc1-c850c6ee5af8_story.html?
Detroit’s Bankruptcy and America’s Future: Robots, Race, Globalization and the 1%
The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and likely further decline is a fluke or whether it tells us something about the dystopia that the United States is becoming. It seems to me that the city’s problems are the difficulties of the country as a whole, especially the issues of deindustrialization, robotification, structural unemployment, the rise of the 1% in gated communities, and the racial divide. The mayor has called on families living in the largely depopulated west of the city to come in toward the center, so that they can be taken care of. It struck me as post-apocalyptic. Sometimes the abandoned neighborhoods accidentally catch fire, and 30 buildings will abruptly go up in smoke.
Detroit had nearly 2 million inhabitants in its heyday, in the 1950s. When I moved to southeast Michigan in 1984, the city still had over a million. I remember that at the time of the 1990 census, its leaders were eager to keep the status of a million-person city, since there were extra Federal monies for an urban area of that size, and they counted absolutely everyone they could find. They just barely pulled it off. But in 2000 the city fell below a million. In 2010 it was 714,000 or so. Google thinks it is now 706,000. There is no reason to believe that it won’t shrink on down to almost nothing.
The foremost historian of modern Detroit, Thomas J. Sugrue, has explained the city’s decline. First of all, Detroit grew from 400,000 to 1.84 million from 1910-1950 primarily because of the auto industry and the other industries that fed it (machine tools, spare parts, services, etc.) From 1950 until now, two big things happened to ruin the city with regard to industry. The first was robotification. The automation of many processes in the factories led to fewer workers being needed, and produced unemployment. (It was a trick industrial capitalism played on the African-Americans who flocked to Detroit in the 1940s to escape being sharecroppers in Georgia and elsewhere in the deep South, that by the time they got settled the jobs were beginning to disappear). Then, the auto industry began locating elsewhere, along with its support industries, to save money on labor or production costs or to escape regulation.
The refusal of the white population to allow African-American immigrants to integrate produced a strong racial divide and guaranteed inadequate housing and schools to the latter. Throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s, you had substantial white flight, of which the emigration from the city after the 1967 riots was a continuation. The white middle and business classes took their wealth with them to the suburbs, and so hurt the city’s tax base. That decrease in income came on top of the migration of factories. The fewer taxes the city brought in, the worse its services became, and the more people fled. The black middle class began departing in the 1980s and now is mostly gone.
The rest: http://www.juancole.com/2013/07/bankruptcy-americas-globalization.html
A 12-Year-Old Egyptian Boy Flabbergasts An Interviewer. They Weren't Expecting A Political Genius.
This 12-year-old Egyptian boy is putting together some very complex arguments against the Muslim Brotherhood's attempt to grab power in Egypt. If you think he's just regurgitating a script or something, watch him answer a question about gender equality at 1:57.
Why didn't George Zimmerman try starting a conversation with Trayvon Martin instead of killing him?
Why not just announce "I'm the neighborhood watch, is everything OK?" even if Trayvon couldn't be seen, or even when he did visibly see Trayvon, perhaps when he was driving and pulled up next to him. He could have kept announcing it allowing Trayvon to earn his trust, not be afraid, and explain who he was and where he was going.
It seems like a million different scenarios could have prevented what happened, unless of course Zimmerman WAS looking for a confrontation. Even law enforcement announce themselves.
It sure seems like George Zimmerman desperately wanted a confrontation, while Trayvon Martin desperately DIDN'T, hence Trayvon eventually running AWAY from creepy stalker.
It's just sickening that so many different scenarios could have played out without confrontation yet Trayvon ends up dead (RIP).
There's a certain gun mentality.
PRISM Isn’t Data Mining and Other Falsehoods in the N.S.A. “Scandal”
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Some explanation up front: I spent seven years investigating the national-security systems and policies established in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks for my book 500 Days. I learned a fair amount about the data-mining programs of the N.S.A. and wrote about it. I summarized those findings in my last post. However, now it has become obvious to me that I need to go further than I did in my book, at least in hopes of calming things down. When discussing errors, I’m going to mention “reports” regarding news articles, but I’m not going to identify them—the last thing I want is for this to become a back-and-forth between reporters.
First, the much-ballyhooed PRISM program is not a program and not a secret, and anyone who says it is should not be trusted because they don’t know what they’re talking about. PRISM is the name for the government computer system that is used to handle the foreign-intelligence data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Those rules are very specific. The targeting can only be of foreign nationals outside the United States. These are the restrictions:
There are many other restrictions and requirements on how data can be properly obtained and used in the PRISM system. But since this doesn’t require some secret, confidential source to understand, I invite you to click on the link I provided above and read through the law.
However, targeting is not done willy-nilly. The system is subject to review by the judiciary, the Congress, and the executive branch. Both the attorney general and the director of the N.S.A. must make a determination that they “reasonably believe” a person they wish to target is, in fact, a foreign national outside the country whose activities raise national-security concerns for the United States. That standard, of course, is lower than probable cause, which is a small part of why any information obtained can’t be used in a criminal case.
The rest: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal
Producer of 'Modern Family' Danny Zuker Lands Crushing Blow To Donald Trump On Twitter.
Donald Trump Gets Utterly Destroyed on Twitter
In the Red corner, standing at 6 feet 3 inches tall (plus 2 inches from the hair...), we have the Baron of Bad Business, the Chieftain of Chapter 11, the Duke of D-List Celebrities, Mr. Donald Trump!
And in the Blue corner, we have the producer of ABC's Modern Family and supposed "lightweight," the Wizard of Witty Comebacks, the Czar of Zingers, Mr. Danny Zuker!
http://cheezburger.com/89605
What would be the best alternative plan to balance privacy & National security?
Assuming everyone here is for both privacy & National security, what do you envision the right balance would be?
Obama Administration Declassifies Details On “PRISM,” Blasts “Reckless” Media And Leakers.
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Following near-simultaneous reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post this week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that contrary to press reports, “PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program.” He maintained that the government computer system is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and is overseen by all three branches of the federal government. He said that the program does not target US citizens or anyone known to be in the United States, and pushed back on reports that the government has continuous access to Internet companies’ systems.
“Service providers supply information to the Government when they are lawfully required to do so,” he said.
The disclosure followed on a release Thursday of details about the National Security Agency’s collection of telephone “metadata” of all calls made in the United States.
In both instances, Clapper fiercely defended the programs, in the case of the Internet surveillance saying the program has “proven vital to keeping the nation and our allies safe.”
“It continues to be one of our most important tools for the protection of the nation’s security,” he added.
Clapper also lashed out at both the Guardian and the Washington Post, calling the disclosure of classified information “reckless.”
“There are significant misimpressions that have resulted from the recent articles,” he added. “Not all the inaccuracies can be corrected without further revealing classified information. I have, however, declassified for release the attached details about the recent unauthorized disclosures in hope that it will help dispel some of the myths and add necessary context to what has been published.”
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/08/obama-administration-declassifies-details-on-prism-blasts-reckless-media-and-leakers/#ixzz2Vf4sxOmJ
How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years.
Today: A typical-looking man and woman.
In 20,000 years: Humans have a larger head with a forehead that is subtly too large. A future "communications lens" is represented by the yellow ring around their eyes. These lenses will be the 'Google Glass' of the future.
In 60,000 years: Human beings have even larger heads, larger eyes and pigmented skin. A pronounced superciliary arch makes for a darker area below eyebrows. Miniature bone-conduction devices may be implanted above the ear now to work with communications lenses.
In 100,000 years: The human face is proportioned to the 'golden ratio,' though it features unnervingly large eyes. There is green “eye shine” from the tapetum lucidum, and a more pronounced superciliary arch. A sideways blink of the reintroduced plica semilunaris seen in the light gray areas of the eyes, while miniature bone-conduction devices implanted above the ear work with the communications lenses on the eyes.
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These are just the photos from the article which goes into detail about why we would acquire these traits: http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/06/07/how-the-human-face-might-look-in-100000-years/
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