India: ‘Central Monitoring System’
May 8th, 2013Via: Times of India:
The government last month quietly began rolling out a project that gives it access to everything that happens over India’s telecommunications network—online activities, phone calls, text messages and even social media conversations. Called the Central Monitoring System, it will be the single window from where government arms such as the National Investigation Agency or the tax authorities will be able to monitor every byte of communication.
But privacy and internet freedom advocates are worried that in the name of security, the government could end up snooping on people, possibly abusing a system that does not have enough safeguards to protect ordinary citizens.
“In the absence of a strong privacy law that promotes transparency about surveillance and thus allows us to judge the utility of the surveillance, this kind of development is very worrisome,” warned Pranesh Prakash, director of policy at the Centre for Internet and Society. “Further, this has been done with neither public nor parliamentary dialogue, making the government unaccountable to its citizens.”
Screen Zombie Students
May 8th, 2013Via: Slate:
Concern about young people’s use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosen’s study, published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young people—so common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way.
Research Credit: conceptualdecay
Your Body Is a Corporate Test Tube
May 8th, 2013Via: Tom Dispatch:
A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote.
The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.
Research Credit: conceptualdecay
Government Accessing Data on Individuals Stored by Corporations
May 8th, 2013Via: The Atlantic:
Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received– it’s all in databases that are increasingly linked and correlated. Still, there’s a lot of personal information the government can’t collect. Either they’re prohibited by law from asking without probable cause and a judicial order, or they simply have no cost-effective way to collect it. But the government has figured out how to get around the laws, and collect personal data that has been historically denied to them: ask corporate America for it.
It’s no secret that we’re monitored continuously on the Internet. Some of the company names you know, such as Google and Facebook. Others hide in the background as you move about the Internet. There are browser plugins that show you who is tracking you. One Atlantic editor found 105 companies tracking him during one 36-hour period. Add data from your cell phone (who you talk to, your location), your credit cards (what you buy, from whom you buy it), and the dozens of other times you interact with a computer daily, we live in a surveillance state beyond the dreams of Orwell.
It’s all corporate data, compiled and correlated, bought and sold. And increasingly, the government is doing the buying.
Research Credit: conceptualdecay
Air Force Sidelines 17 ICBM Launch Officers; Commander Cites ‘Rot’ Within System
May 8th, 2013I say: Send in the W.O.P.R.
Via: Washington Post:
The Air Force stripped an unprecedented 17 officers of their authority to control — and, if necessary, launch — nuclear missiles after a string of unpublicized failings, including a remarkably dim review of their unit’s launch skills. The group’s deputy commander said it is suffering “rot” within its ranks.
“We are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” the commander, Lt. Col. Jay Folds, wrote in an internal email obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by the Air Force.
The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which earned the equivalent of a “D” grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations. In other areas, the officers tested much better, but the group’s overall fitness was deemed so tenuous that senior officers at Minot decided, after probing further, that an immediate crackdown was called for.
‘Syria Has Largely Disappeared from the Internet’
May 8th, 2013Via: Washington Post:
Both Google and a Web security company called Umbrella Security Labs are indicating that the entire country of Syria may have been severed from the Internet.
The outage appears to have begun at 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, or 9:45 p.m. in Syria. According to a blog post by Umbrella’s chief technology officer Dan Hubbard, “On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet.”
Alabama School to Jail Program
May 8th, 2013Via: Courthouse News Service:
After a diabetic high school student fell asleep in study hall, the school police officer slammed her face into a filing cabinet, arrested her and took her to jail, she claims in court.
Tieshka Avery claims she was so violently abused that she vomited in the police car. And all because she fell asleep reading “Huckleberry Finn.”
(Public school districts in the South have been accused of operating de facto “school to jail” programs, targeting minority students for arrest for minor infractions. The ACLU and the federal government have filed lawsuits alleging the practice. See below.)
Related: U.S. Judge Receives 28-Year Jail Term for His Role in Private Prison Kids-for-Cash Scheme
Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention Chief Arrested for Sexual Assault
May 7th, 2013Via: CBS:
An Air Force officer was arrested for sexual assault. The remarkable thing is the accused man was the chief of the Air Force sexual assault prevention unit.
The mug shot of Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski shows signs of struggle on his face. The police report alleges that a drunken Krusinski “approached a female victim in a parking lot and grabbed her breasts and buttocks.” The victim fought the suspect off as he attempted to touch her again and alerted police.
Obombya To Grads: Reject Voices That Warn About Government Tyranny
May 6th, 2013Via: Real Clear Politics:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.
Alex Rovt, The Fertilizer Baron Of Manhattan
May 6th, 2013This is from 2012, but it’s a keeper.
Would someone out there please email this story to Joel and Ethan Coen? This could make Miller’s Crossing look like Sunday School.
Via: Bloomberg:
Everyone looking to unload overleveraged or overpriced property, another broker who dealt with Rovt told me, is now chasing a stereotype: the Ukrainian fertilizer billionaire. This frustrates Rovt, who hates nothing more than being portrayed as an oligarch. Yes, he capitalized on post-Soviet privatizations, and sure, he looks the type, with his bearish physique, slicked-back black hair, thick moustache, and fondness for cigars. True, he made his billions overseas, under the radar—yet he lived securely within U.S. borders the whole time. His story is, despite appearances, an American one, a tale that really begins in Brooklyn, where he moved nearly 30 years ago. “I am not an outsider,” Rovt says. He’s a consummate insider—a macher, as they say in Yiddish, his first language—a canny manipulator of the levers of power.
…
The initials IBE stood for international barter exchange. The founder, Sheldon Silverston, a Korean War veteran and former intelligence operative, shipped goods to pariah states with little hard currency—Uganda after its 1980s civil war, for instance, or Romania under Ceau?escu—and accepted payment in commodities like coffee or iron ore. “He was an old spook dude,” says Bill Grant, a former Republican congressman from Florida who worked in various capacities for IBE. “Shelly Silverston knows a lot of things, and a lot of people in a lot of places, that ordinary people don’t know.”
In Rovt, Silverston found an entrée into the closed economy of the Soviet Union, where Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms were just beginning to take hold. Fertilizer was an ideal barter commodity, and the Soviet Union had made tons of it, due to its bountiful supplies of natural gas.
Rovt courted the local plant managers, who had found themselves newly empowered as the state loosened economic control. Their decaying factories needed upgraded technology, spare parts, even bricks. “[Rovt] got the concept of barter immediately,” Silverston says. “Once he met someone that had potential to do business with us, he was able to cultivate this person.” Many of IBE’s contacts wanted to send their children to America, and Silverston, a major Republican donor, says he used his influence to smooth the way, helping with visas, college placement, even jobs around the company’s office.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
