Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
“Smart Cities”
February 20th, 2014Via: Fast Company: Tech giant Cisco thinks there’s something to all this talk of ”smart cities”–and that connecting roads or license plate readers to the Internet is going to be big business. In the latest installment of their ongoing expansion into the Internet of Things, Cisco recently announced an agreement with Swiss security firm AGT […]
Ukraine: 25 Dead in Protests
February 19th, 2014Via: CNN: They’ve given up their ground before — voluntarily, as a political concession. But that seems to be over. After the deaths of 25 people in clashes a day earlier, Ukrainian protesters are prepared to stand and fight again Wednesday. Police want to clear them out of central Kiev. Some of them died trying […]
Land of the Freefalling Position on the Press Freedom Index
February 17th, 2014Via: Reporters without Borders: Countries that pride themselves on being democracies and respecting the rule of law have not set an example, far from it. Freedom of information is too often sacrificed to an overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs, marking a disturbing retreat from democratic practices. Investigative journalism often suffers as […]
U.S. Army Built a $96 Million Fake City for Combat Training Exercises
February 17th, 2014Maybe some of the tens of thousands of thousands of homeless veterans can live there. No? Via: Telegraph: The US army has built a fake city designed to be used during combat training exercises. The 300 acre ‘town’ includes a five story embassy, a bank, a school, an underground subway and train station, a mosque, […]
Push for Legal Pot Worldwide
February 15th, 2014Via: AP: In a former colonial mansion in Jamaica, politicians huddle to discuss trying to ease marijuana laws in the land of the late reggae musician and cannabis evangelist Bob Marley. In Morocco, one of the world’s top producers of the concentrated pot known as hashish, two leading political parties want to legalize its cultivation, […]
Court Overturns California Law Restricting Concealed Weapons; Appeals Ahead
February 14th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times: In a significant victory for gun owners, a divided federal appeals court Thursday struck down California rules that permit counties to restrict as they see fit the right to carry a concealed weapon in public. The 2-1 ruling by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel would overturn restrictions on […]
Secret Military Contractors Will Soon Mine Your Tweets
February 13th, 2014Via: DefenseOne: The Army wants a contractor to conduct detailed social media data mining to “identify violent extremist influences” around the world that could affect the European Command, responsible for operations in Europe as well as Iceland, Israel, Greenland and Russia. Though the project is classified Secret, an Army contract shop in Europe posted a […]
Connecticut: Thousands Flout Gun Registration Law
February 13th, 2014Via: The Courant: Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31. But few thought the figures would be this bad. By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault […]
You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi.
February 13th, 2014Via: ProPublica: 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 […]
Woman Added to No-Fly List Because FBI Agent Checked Wrong Boxes on Form
February 11th, 2014Ten years of legal battles later… Via: Wired: The government contested a former Stanford University student’s assertion that she was wrongly placed on a no-fly list for seven years in court despite knowing an FBI official put her on the list by mistake because he checked the “wrong boxes” on a form, a federal judge […]
