Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
Visitor Logs Show Google’s Unrivaled White House Access
May 18th, 2016Via: watchdog.org: A project examining White House visitor logs shows the Obama administration has extended an open door to Google. Johanna Shelton, Google’s director of public policy — in effect, the company’s top lobbyist — has visited White House officials 128 times since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. To put that in perspective, […]
Stanford Quantifies the Privacy-Stripping Power of Metadata
May 17th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch: More proof, if proof were needed, of the privacy-stripping power of metadata. A multi-year crowdsourced study, conducted by Stanford scientists and published this week, underlines how much information can be inferred from basic phone logs cross-referenced with other public datasets. (Reminder: the former director of the NSA and the CIA, General Michael […]
Pentagon Wants AI to Read Social Media and Draw Up Lists of People for Lethal Autonomous Robots to Kill
May 16th, 2016Via: Medium: “LARs [lethal autonomous robots] have the unique potential to operate at a tempo faster than humans can possibly achieve and to lethally strike even when communications links have been severed. Autonomous targeting technology will likely proliferate to nations and groups around the world. To prevent being surpassed by rivals, the United States should […]
UK Developing Digital Driving Licence
May 16th, 2016Via: BBC: The UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is working on a smartphone version of its driving licence. Chief executive Oliver Morley tweeted a photo showing a “prototype” using Apple’s Wallet app on an iPhone. He says it will be an “add-on” to the plastic card rather than a replacement. Research Credit: Jb
Hillary Clinton Holds $100,000-a-Head Fundraisers, Including One at Rothschild Residence
May 15th, 2016Via: Wall Street Journal: Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is ramping up her fundraising schedule, attending a number of fundraisers this week that cost donors six-figures to attend. The former secretary of state attended a pair of small, intimate gatherings in New York City on Thursday evening that cost donors a minimum of $100,000 to […]
Hyperloop One: Open Air Prototype Tested in Nevada
May 11th, 2016I’ve found that Americans, in general, only have a vague concept of what a bullet train is. They know that it’s theoretically possible to travel around the Homeland on the ancient and lumbering Amtrak system, if they want to pay a lot and go slow, but that’s about it. Nothing worth seeing in other countries, […]
Transparency EU-Style
May 11th, 2016Via: The Journal: A VIDEO BY Irish MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan criticising the secretive process of viewing classified documents relating to a massive US-EU trade deal has been viewed nearly 70,000 times online. In the video – entitled ‘TTIP reading room farce’ – Flanagan says he is banned from transcribing notes verbatim from texts relating […]
‘Emails From Hillary Clinton’s IT Director at State Department Appear to Be Missing’
May 9th, 2016This is absurd to the point that I’m rocking back and forth in my chair and speaking in tongues. I’m going to push back from my desk and go feed the chickens… Assuming I don’t have a grand mal seizure first. Via: ABC: The State Department said today it can’t find Bryan Pagliano’s emails from […]
U.S.-Funded Somali Intelligence Agency Has Been Using Kids as Spies
May 7th, 2016Via: Washington Post: For years they were children at war, boys given rifles and training by al-Qaeda-backed militants and sent to the front lines of this country’s bloody conflict. Many had been kidnapped from schools and soccer fields and forced to fight. The United Nations pleaded for them to be removed from the battlefield. The […]
CNN: “Donald Trump: Presumptive GOP Nominee”; Destroys Cruz in Indiana Primary
May 3rd, 2016Via: CNN: Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee following a decisive victory in the Indiana primary and the decision by Ted Cruz to drop out of the race. Though Trump has not formally secured the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination — and likely won’t until June — there is no […]
