Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
Former Stasi Lieutenant Colonel On NSA’s Mass Surveillance: ‘It Is The Height Of Naivete To Think That Once Collected This Information Won’t Be Used’
June 28th, 2013Via: McClatchy: Wolfgang Schmidt was seated in Berlin’s 1,200-foot-high TV tower, one of the few remaining landmarks left from the former East Germany. Peering out over the city that lived in fear when the communist party ruled it, he pondered the magnitude of domestic spying in the United States under the Obama administration. A smile […]
Foxconn to Speed Up ‘Robot Army’ Deployment
June 27th, 2013Via: IT World: Manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group is on track with its goal to a create a “million robot army”, and already has 20,000 robotic machines in its factories, said the company’s CEO Terry Gou on Wednesday. Workers’ wages in China are rising, and so the company’s research in robots and automation has to […]
License-Plate Readers Let Police Collect Millions of Records on Drivers
June 27th, 2013Via: Center for Investigative Reporting: When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car. The results shocked him. The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police […]
Africa: U.S. Spreads Blowback Nightmare
June 25th, 2013Via: Asia Times: A careful examination of the security situation in Africa suggests that it is in the process of becoming Ground Zero for a veritable terror diaspora set in motion in the wake of 9/11 that has only accelerated in the Obama years. Recent history indicates that as US “stability” operations in Africa have […]
Digital Dementia
June 25th, 2013Digital crackpipes for the children! The younger the better. Via: Digital Journal: South Korean doctors have found that increasing use of smartphones among young Koreans has led to a surge in incidence of “digital dementia” characterized by deterioration of cognitive abilities and symptoms found in people who have suffered head injury. In Other News: Some […]
U.S. Surveillance Best Suited for Gathering Information on Law-Abiding Citizens
June 24th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: The debate over the U.S. government’s monitoring of digital communications suggests that Americans are willing to allow it as long as it is genuinely targeted at terrorists. What they fail to realize is that the surveillance systems are best suited for gathering information on law-abiding citizens. People concerned with online privacy tend to […]
The Insider Threat Program
June 23rd, 2013Via: McClatchy: Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented […]
Captain Obvious: GCHQ Taps Fiber Optic Cables
June 22nd, 2013Via: Guardian: Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA). The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition […]
Beijing Pollution So Bad That International Schools Build Filtered Air Domes for Children
June 22nd, 2013How about if all the shit-for-brains politicians in New Zealand, who gladly bend over for China, send their kids over there to play in the domes? Hmm? John Key? How does that grab ya? Via: Los Angeles Times: After nearly two decades in Beijing, David Wolf knew it was time for a change when his […]
U.S. CIA and Special Forces Training “The Terrorists” in Syria
June 22nd, 2013Now that Uncle $cam is shredding million dollar MRAPs for scrap in Afghanistan, it’s time to get the party started all over again. Via: Los Angeles Times: CIA and U.S. military operatives have been secretly teaching Syrian rebels how to use anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, the Los Angeles Times has learned. The White House refuses […]
