LAPD to Occupy LA: “You Have Ten Minutes to Disperse”
November 30th, 2011Via: OakFoSho:
U.S. JUDGE ORDERS HUNDREDS OF SITES “DE-INDEXED” FROM GOOGLE, FACEBOOK
November 30th, 2011Via: Ars Technica:
After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered “all Internet search engines” and “all social media websites”—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to “de-index” the domain names and to remove them from any search results.
The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common. When Chanel finds more names, it simply uses the same case and files new requests for more seizures. (A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)
How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.
That was good enough for Judge Kent Dawson to order the names seized and transferred to GoDaddy, where they would all redirect to a page serving notice of the seizure. In addition, a total ban on search engine indexing was ordered, one which neither Bing nor Google appears to have complied with yet.
Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet’s global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to US-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the US.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the US court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.
The US government has made similar domain name seizures through Operation In Our Sites, grabbing US-based domains that end in .com and .net even when the sites are located abroad. Such moves by themselves would seem to do little to stop piracy in the long-term; they simply teach would-be miscreants to register future domain names in other countries.
Related: YaCy: Free Software Activists to Take on Google with New Free Search Engine
Widespread Police Use of Drones Coming Soon
November 30th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, may be coming soon to the skies near you.
Police agencies want drones for air support to find runaway criminals. Utility companies expect they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers believe drones could aid in spraying crops with pesticides.
“It’s going to happen,” said Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association. “Now it’s about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace.”
That’s the job of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which plans to propose new rules for using small drones in January, a first step toward integrating robotic aircraft into the nation’s skyways.
The FAA has issued 266 active testing permits for civilian-drone applications but hasn’t permitted drones in U.S. airspace on a wide scale out of concern they don’t have an adequate “detect, sense and avoid” technology to prevent midair collisions.
Other concerns include privacy — imagine a camera-equipped drone buzzing above your backyard pool party — and the creative ways in which criminals and terrorists might use the machines.
Feds Want to Digitize Records
November 30th, 2011Transparency? Oh sure.
Alternative explanation: It would be nice to be able to disappear documents down the memory hole as easily as it is to print money.
Via: Computer World:
President Obama this week gave government agencies four months to come up with a plan to improve records management by moving to electronic records management systems “where feasable.”
In a memorandum, Obama said one aim of the plan is to improve public access to government records by moving them to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which will “provide the prism through which future generations will understand and learn from our actions and decisions.”
Paul Wester, chief records officer for the U.S. Government, said in an interview with Computerworld that the president’s directive is really about driving a more open government where citizens can access information in a more “Web 2.0” format.
“No one is completely electronic now, and that’s one of the challenges we’re driving toward with the presidential directive,” Wester said. “The wider direction is about open government and transparency, being more responsive to citizens, implementing more open business operations” between agencies who can then interact with one another.
Wester said new laws and regulations may be needed to move the process of creating a more unified electronic records system forward.
But, the U.S. government does not have a good track record when it comes to developing electronic archives. Earlier this year, due to cost overruns and project mismanagement the NARA announced it was ending a 10-year effort to create an electronic records archive.
U.S. Settles Suit Over Anthrax Attacks
November 30th, 2011Via: New York Times:
The federal government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and children of the first person killed in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, settling a lawsuit claiming that the Army did not adequately secure its supply of the deadly pathogen.
The settlement with the family of Robert Stevens, a tabloid photo editor in Florida, follows an eight-year legal battle that exposed slack rules and sloppy recordkeeping at the Army’s biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. As part of the agreement, Justice Department lawyers are seeking to have many documents that were uncovered in the litigation kept under court seal or destroyed.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
November 30th, 2011Thank you.
Eileen $100
Anonymous NZ$50
CP $40
404.co.nz NZ$25.00
Egypt Imports 21 Tons Of Tear Gas From U.S., Port Staff Refuses To Sign For It
November 30th, 2011Via: Bikyamasr:
CAIRO: The arrival of 7 and half tons of tear gas to Egypt’s Suez port created conflict after the responsible officials at the port refused to sign and accept it for fear it would be used to crackdown on Egyptian protesters.
The shipment has been moved by the ministry of interior to its Cairo storage facility, amidst strick and secretive security measures. Local reports say the staff, initially under investigation, have been spared investigation after having a discussion over the matter with their superiors.
Local news sites published documents regarding the shipment shows that the cargo that arrived in 479 barrels from the United States was scheduled to be delivered to the ministry of interior.
The reports also mentioned in the documents that a second shipment of 14 tons of tear gas was expected, making the total 21 tons, in one week.
The importing of tear gas comes after thousands of tear gas canisters were fired at Egyptian protesters last week as clashes raged in downtown Cairo, just off from the iconic Tahrir Square, where thousands of protesters had gathered.
More: Ahram Online: Suez Port Employees Reveal 21-Ton U.S. Tear Gas Order for Interior Ministry
Research Credit: Zuma
The One About Growing Food Becoming Illegal in New Zealand
November 30th, 2011Lots of people are submitting NZ Food Security, a site that focuses on fascist elements of the Food Bill.
I’m posting this mainly to let people know that, yes, I know about this and to ask others to please stop submitting it.
A couple of comments:
First, there are so many insane laws in New Zealand that nobody pays any attention to that I don’t see how the Food Bill would be any different. Anyone who thinks that people are going to stop buying/selling/trading seeds here, regardless of whatever bogus laws are passed, is nuts.
A little anecdote about where we live:
One night, a drunk driver rolled her car a few times. The totaled car was in the middle of the road and the driver was bleeding from an injury to her head.
My neighbor called for paramedics.
It took an hour for a police car to show up.
So, tell me another one about how the filth are going to arrest me for saving seeds. Get real, man. They can’t even keep the electricity on out here.
Second, the sovereign man on the land thing: I personally know people in the U.S. and New Zealand who have had their lives ruined by believing that their secret handshakes and crackpot gibberish trumped the actions of states. It doesn’t. These regimes sit atop mountains of skulls. They’re not interested in your ideas about how their laws don’t apply to you.
I’m not kidding when I say that I have been hearing about this “sovereignty” thing for longer than some of you reading this have been alive. I warned someone here who started heading down that path that he and his family were in for the shock of their lives for believing in this nonsense. What happened in the end? Sure enough, this family has fled New Zealand and the husband is now an international fugitive. No amount of 1834 flags and arguments in court about common law were going to keep this guy from becoming a guest of Her Majesty at the Ngawha hinaki (Northland Region Corrections Facility).
The bottom line is that anyone who is selling you on the idea that the state doesn’t have authority over you because you don’t write your name in all capital letters (etc., etc.) is just as nuts as a state that thinks it’s going to bust people for growing carrots.
In activist circles, over painful decades of observation, I’ve noticed that people will buy into just about anything that isn’t the state, the enemy, the corporation, etc. Just keep the following in mind: The state doesn’t have a monopoly on madness. In fringe circles, I’ve seen egos and mental illness that rival anything you would see in a government or corporate setting. We all know that questioning authority is important. Unfortunately, people generally aren’t discerning when it comes to questioning the alleged solutions.
Yoshimasa Sakurai: Sustainable Way of Living
November 30th, 2011This is an astonishing resource, especially for people in New Zealand. Save locally and consider printing hard copies.
Via: ecohouse.co.nz
Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths
November 30th, 2011Via: Counterpunch:
One of the most downplayed stories of our time ended with a whimper this week. “Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx,” the New York Times reported Nov. 23 (in the business section, where important medical news is usually found). The pharmaceutical giant copped to a misdemeanor: urging MDs to prescribe Vioxx for Rheumatoid Arthritis prior to 2002, when the Food & Drug Administration approved its use for that disorder.
The FDA had initially approved Vioxx (after a hasty “priority review”) in May, 1999 to treat osteoarthritis, acute pain, and menstrual cramps. By September 30, 2004, when Merck announced its “voluntary recall,” some 25 million Americans had been prescribed the widely hyped drug. Evidence that using Vioxx doubled a patient’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke —based on a review of 1.4 million patients’ records— was about to be published in Lancet by David Graham, MD, an FDA investigator. The FDA director’s office, devoted valet of Big PhRMA, had contacted the Lancet in a futile effort to stop publication of their own scientist’s findings.
Graham’s data indicate that 140,000 Americans suffered Vioxx-induced heart attacks and strokes; 55,000 died, and many more were permanently disabled. The Merck executives’ real crime was conspiracy to commit murder.
Research Credit: noncompliant
