U.S. Government Wants to Archive Information on All Bank to Bank Overseas Money Transfers for Ten Years
December 30th, 2010Via: EFF:
What do an online donation to the International Red Cross, a bank transfer to family members living in Vietnam, and a payment sent through PayPal for an expensive rug in Turkey have in common? The government wants to know about them. And, if new rules proposed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, go into effect, the government will — along with your name, address, bank account number, and other sensitive financial information.
In September, FinCEN, an agency component of the Department of the Treasury,
proposed a set of rules (pdf) that would require banks and money transmitters to report to the government any cross-border electronic funds transfer. Yesterday, we submitted a comment (pdf) opposing the agency’s proposal.
Essentially, under the proposed rules, anytime you electronically transfer money into or out of the country, the government wants to know. The proposed rules require banks and money transmitters, like PayPal or Western Union, to submit reports documenting the amount of money sent or received, where that money came from, and where it is going. Depending on the type of transfer, a variety of information would be included in the reports, including the name, address, bank account number, and taxpayer ID number of the sender; the amount and currency of the funds transfer; and the name and address of the recipient. Passport numbers or alien ID numbers could also be required for some transfers.
The government wants reports on all electronic bank-to-bank transfers, regardless of whether the transfer is $1 or $1,000,000. For money transmitters, reports would be filed for transfers at or above $1,000. FinCEN estimates it will receive 750 million reports every year, and the agency wants to keep the data for ten years. Once the reports are filed with FinCEN, other federal law enforcement agencies — the FBI, IRS, ICE, and the DEA — would all have access to the data.
Chat with Other Cryptogon Users?
December 30th, 2010Cryptogon has readers and supporters across the entire ideological spectrum, anarchists, alien abductees, mind control victims, government employees, cops, professors, homeless people, farmers, politicians, monotheists, pantheists, atheists, agnostics, and this list could go on and on.
Do you people have any interest in chatting with each other in an affable manner?
A very primitive chat system is open to Cryptogon account holders.
If you guys just start throwing feces at each other, I might be able to use the chat tool in a quasi Twitter-like manner for breaking news situations.
Besides not throwing feces at each other, please don’t complain about the lack of features. I know. Like I said, it’s primitive. If chat is useful for people, however, I’ll look for something else. Pierre’s Wordspew was free, ad free, integrated with the WorPress user database and took about three minutes to implement.
Homeland Security Trolling ‘We Won’t Fly Blog’
December 30th, 2010This is just some troglodyte with bits of gas station deli meat down the front of its shirt and undiluted non dairy creamer on its upper lip.
Wait until they start showing up in teams, and from different, normal looking ISP IPs (not proxies). The admin will be wondering whether the site needs an enema or an exorcism.
Via: We Won’t Fly:
I was about to delete an offensive comment on this blog – one of the very few we get – and thought, hmm, I wonder where this guy is posting from? Because, really, it is quite unusual for us to get nasty comments. Lo and behold, the troll posted to our website from an IP address controlled by the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security! Here is the taxpayer-funded troll’s gem of a comment, for your entertainment:
Fuck you, Fuck all you cocksuckers, you wont change anything. ride the bus, TSA is here to stay there doing a great job keeping americia safe.
Living Earth Simulator
December 29th, 2010I seriously need a Magic 8 Ball category.
Via: BBC:
It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived.
An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth – from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on Milton Keynes’ roads.
Nicknamed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), the project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world.
“Many problems we have today – including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading – are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work,” says Dr Helbing, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who chairs the FuturICT project which aims to create the simulator.
Related:
Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
U.S. Postal Service Vehicles to Carry Sensor Packages
2010 Worst Year for Bank Failures Since 1992 (Savings and Loan Crisis)
December 29th, 2010Via: Washington Post:
More banks failed in the United States this year than in any year since 1992, during the savings-and-loan crisis, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Amid high unemployment, a struggling economy and a still-devastated real estate market, the nation is closing out the year with 157 bank failures, up from 140 in 2009. As recently as 2006, before the bubble burst, there were none.
Now, there are more on the horizon.
80% OF ANTIBIOTICS SOLD IN U.S. USED FOR LIVESTOCK AND POULTRY
December 29th, 2010Via: Center for a Livable Future:
Antibiotics, one of the world’s greatest medical discoveries, are slowly losing their effectiveness in fighting bacterial infections and the massive use of the drugs in food animals may be the biggest culprit. The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is largely due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in both people and animals, which leads to an increase in “super-bacteria”. However, people use a much smaller portion of antibiotics sold in this country compared to the amount set aside for food animals. In fact, according to new data just released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of the antibiotics sold in 2009 for both people and food animals almost 80% were reserved for livestock and poultry. A huge portion of those antibiotics were never intended to fight bacterial infections, rather producers most likely administered them in continuous low-dosages through feed or water to increase the speed at which their animals grew. And that has many public health experts and scientists troubled.
U.S. Changes How it Measures Long-Term Unemployment
December 29th, 2010Via: USA Today:
So many Americans have been jobless for so long that the government is changing how it records long-term unemployment.
Citing what it calls “an unprecedented rise” in long-term unemployment, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), beginning Saturday, will raise from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless.
The move could help economists better measure the severity of the nation’s prolonged economic downturn.
The change is a sign that bureau officials “are afraid that a cap of two years may be ‘understating the true average duration’ — but they won’t know by how much until they raise the upper limit,” says Linda Barrington, an economist who directs the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Likening recessionary unemployment spikes in recent decades to a storm at sea, she says, “The waves are getting higher, and we want to understand the intricacies of how they’re made up.”
The change involves the form used for the bureau’s Current Population Survey, based on interviews with thousands of the unemployed. Currently, no matter how much longer than two years someone has been out of work, the form allows interviewers to check off only “99 weeks or over.” Starting next month, jobless stints of “260 weeks and over” can be selected on the response form.
“The BLS doesn’t make such changes lightly,” Barrington says. Stacey Standish, a bureau assistant press officer, says the two-year limit has been used for 33 years.
Research Credit: RD
Number of Multifamily Households at Record as People Try to Avoid Becoming Homeless
December 29th, 2010Obviously, the economy is playing a big part in this, but I wonder how many households choose this route even though they aren’t broke? This is the default setting for billions of people.
Update: Pew Research Center: The Return of the Multi-Generational Family Household:
Another factor has been the big wave of immigration, dominated by Latin Americans and Asians, that began around 1970. Like their European counterparts from earlier centuries, these modern immigrants are far more inclined than native-born Americans to live in multi-generational family households.
…
Some 18.8% of people living in immigrant households in the U.S. live in a multi-generational family household, compared with 14.2% of people in native-born households, according to a Pew Research analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s 2009 Current Population Survey. Interestingly, however, among the nation’s two largest immigrant groups by race and ethnicity – Hispanics and Asians – the native-born households of these groups have a slightly higher tendency to be multi-generational families than the foreign-born households.
Via: New York Times:
Of the myriad ways the Great Recession has altered the country’s social fabric, the surge in households like the Maggis’, where relatives and friends have moved in together as a last resort, is one of the most concrete, yet underexplored, demographic shifts.
Census Bureau data released in September showed that the number of multifamily households jumped 11.7 percent from 2008 to 2010, reaching 15.5 million, or 13.2 percent of all households. It is the highest proportion since at least 1968, accounting for 54 million people.
Even that figure, however, is undoubtedly an undercount of the phenomenon social service providers call “doubling up,” which has ballooned in the recession and anemic recovery. The census’ multifamily household figures, for example, do not include such situations as when a single brother and a single sister move in together, or when a childless adult goes to live with his or her parents.
For many, the arrangements represent their last best option, the only way to stave off entering a homeless shelter or sleeping in their cars. In fact, nearly half of the people in shelters in 2009 who had not previously been homeless had been staying with family members or friends, according to a recent report, making clear that the arrangements are frequently a final way station on the way to homelessness.
Water Pipes Freeze Then Burst in Northern Ireland: Tens of Thousands Left Without Water
December 29th, 2010Via: Washington Post:
Frustration and fears of disease mounted in Northern Ireland Wednesday as tens of thousands of people were left without water after much of the supply drained away through broken pipes following a deep freeze and a sudden thaw.
In many towns and cities water supplies were cut off as residents turned to emergency water tankers and bottled water for their cooking, cleaning and drinking needs.
Some families have not had fresh running water for eight days, with officials predicting it will take several more days to restore normal service. Reservoir levels have dropped dangerously low, straining the entire system.
“This may go on for another short period but we are doing our best to keep it as short as possible to get those reservoir levels up and provide water to our customers,” said Liam Mulholland, of Northern Ireland Water.
He said the shortage had been aggravated by the many vacant properties that have experienced burst pipes, allowing water to drain away until technicians can trace and repair the problem.
There was also substantial flooding, with some floodwaters contaminated by sewage, raising public health concerns.
Baby Boomers’ Retirements in Jeopardy
December 28th, 2010What is this ‘Retirement’ you speak of?
—Generation X
Also, Pookie sent me this set of age distribution charts for the U.S.
If we didn’t know anything else about political and economic doom, this alone should be enough to indicate that bad trouble is ahead. Look at those charts and then consider the unemployed, underemployed and those like Becky and me who have opted to simply get by on much less than the rat-race nut house expects us to.
That’s the freight train, hurtling down the rails with nobody at the controls.
This is the wall:
In other words, the Ponzi scheme wreck is assured, in part, because millions of us who are now supposed to keep it going can’t, or won’t.
I often hear from people who are trying to manage with eldercare situations while working full-time jobs, or while unemployed. My own dad is driving my sister into the madhouse where he belongs. Forget about vague, distant, theoretical doom: When you have elderly people going nuts on you, it’s a whole new ballgame.
I have no idea how this is going to play out. It’s too big of a clusterfuck for me to get my head around.
Via: Time:
Through a combination of procrastination and bad timing, many baby boomers are facing a personal finance disaster just as they’re hoping to retire. Starting in January, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65, a pattern that will continue for the next 19 years.
The boomers, who in their youth revolutionized everything from music to race relations, are set to redefine retirement. But a generation that made its mark in the tumultuous 1960s now faces a crisis as it hits its own mid-60s. (See 10 smarter ways to reach your retirement goals.)
“The situation is extremely serious because baby boomers have not saved very effectively for retirement and are still retiring too early,” says Olivia Mitchell, director of the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
