Judge Declares Law Governing Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Unconstitutional
November 19th, 2011The NSA smiles at the part in bold below.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
In a succinct one-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes of the Southern District of Texas declared that the law authorizing the government to obtain cellphone records without a search warrant was unconstitutional.
“The records would show the date, time, called number, and location of the telephone when the call was made,” Judge Hughes wrote in the decision, dated Nov. 11. “These data are constitutionally protected from this intrusion.”
Judge Hughes’ decision comes as the U.S. government is facing increasing judicial challenges to its practice of obtaining information about the location of individuals without a search warrant. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case where the government placed a GPS tracking device under a vehicle and monitored the driver’s movements for a month without a search warrant.
During the argument, Chief Justice John Roberts said to Michael Dreeben, deputy solicitor general of the Justice Department: “If you win this case then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States.” The Justice Department argues that people have no expectation of privacy on public roads.
Cellphone records are governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that permits law enforcement officers to obtain certain digital records – such as some e-mail and cellphone records – without a search warrant. A coalition of technology companies—including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Corp.—is lobbying Congress to update the law to require search warrants in more digital investigations.
At Planned Sunny Isles Beach Condo, Cars and Drivers Ride Elevator Home
November 19th, 2011Via: Miami Herald:
Pull over into the designated space. Turn off the engine. And enjoy the oceanfront view as you escalate in a glass elevator that takes you, while you are sitting in your car, to the front door of your apartment.
No, this is not the latest Disney ride.
The $560 million Jetsonesque tower will rise in Sunny Isles Beach as part of a collaboration between Germany-based Porsche Design Group and a local developer, Gil Dezer. It likely will be the world’s first condominium complex with elevators that will take residents directly to their units while they are sitting in their cars.
“You don’t have to leave your car until you are in front of your apartment,” said Juergen Gessler, CEO of Porsche Design Group.
Here is how it will work: After the resident pulls over and switches off the engine, a robotic arm that works much like an automatic plank will scoop up the car and put it into the elevator. Once at the desired floor, the same robotic arm will park the car, leaving the resident nearly in front of his front door. Voila, home!
The glass elevators will give residents and their guests unparalleled views of the city or of the ocean during their high-speed ride, expected to last 45 to 90 seconds.
Fake Terror Plots, Paid Informants: The Tactics of FBI ‘Entrapment’
November 18th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Critics say the FBI is running a sting operation across America, targeting – to a large extent – the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots. FBI bureaux send informants to trawl through Muslim communities, hang out in mosques and community centres, and talk of radical Islam in order to identify possible targets sympathetic to such ideals. Or they will respond to the most bizarre of tip-offs, including, in one case, a man who claimed to have seen terror chief Ayman al-Zawahiri living in northern California in the late 1990s.
That tipster was quickly hired as a well-paid informant. If suitable suspects are identified, FBI agents then run a sting, often creating a fake terror plot in which it helps supply weapons and targets. Then, dramatic arrests are made, press conferences held and lengthy convictions secured.
But what is not clear is if many real, actual terrorists are involved.
Research Credit: noncompliant
All French Nuclear Reactors Need Safety Upgrades
November 18th, 2011Via: Reuters:
France needs to upgrade the protection of vital functions in all its nuclear reactors to avoid a disaster in the event of a natural calamity, the head of its nuclear safety agency said, adding there was no need to close any plants.
A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage
November 18th, 2011I have a special relationship with the McRib sandwich. Long ago, I had a friend who used to eat those things and the smell of them turned my stomach. He found my revulsion hilarious and he would taunt me by offering me some of the McRib, or blowing the putrid fumes my way. One time, he pulled back the soggy bun to reveal a gruesome, Giger-esque, horror within. Rubbery, gray-green-pink, form pressed “rib” with brown slime sauce…
And that’s when it hit me:
“You’re eating a slab of pig snouts and sphincters,” I said.
And then he’d load the thing up with fries, plop the bun back on top and just go to town on that mess.
Mmm mmm good.
I don’t know what percentage of the McRib “meat” component is comprised of pig snouts and sphincters, if any, (the article mentions pork offal slurry, which is close enough for me), but the image of that bread being pulled back, and the smell… *shiver* *goose bumps* The sick feeling is with me even now, decades later. It comes to me anytime I see a reference to McDonald’s. Whether my epiphany about the “true” nature of the McRib sandwich is real or not, I can assure you, it’s real to me.
The Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, 1971 Warner Bros.
I should be thankful for the experience. It put me off McDonald’s for good.
Via: The Awl:
The physical attributes of the sandwich only add to the visceral revulsion some have to the product—the same product that others will drive hundreds of miles to savor. But many people, myself included, believe that all these things—the actual presumably entirely organic matter that goes into making the McRib—are somewhat secondary to the McRib’s existence. This is where we enter the land of conjectures, conspiracy theories and dark, ribby murmurings. The McRib’s unique aspects and impermanence, many of us believe, make it seem a likely candidate for being a sort of arbitrage strategy on McDonald’s part. Calling a fast food sandwich an arbitrage strategy is perhaps a bit of a reach—but consider how massive the chain’s market influence is, and it becomes a bit more reasonable.
Arbitrage is a risk-free way of making money by exploiting the difference between the price of a given good on two different markets—it’s the proverbial free lunch you were told doesn’t exist. In this equation, the undervalued good in question is hog meat, and McDonald’s exploits the value differential between pork’s cash price on the commodities market and in the Quick-Service Restaurant market. If you ignore the fact that this is, by definition, not arbitrage because the McRib is a value-added product, and that there is risk all over the place, this can lead to some interesting conclusions. (If you don’t want to do something so reckless, then stop here.)
The theory that the McRib’s elusiveness is a direct result of the vagaries of the cash price for hog meat in the States is simple: in this thinking, the product is only introduced when pork prices are low enough to ensure McDonald’s can turn a profit on the product.
Related:
McDonald’s Food Doesn’t Break Down Over Time?
Deconstructing The McRib’s Cult-Like Allure
Research Credit: BW
GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits
November 18th, 2011Via: The Weekly Standard:
General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn’t pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.
Pentagon Successfully Tests Hypersonic Flying Bomb
November 18th, 2011Via: AFP:
The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.
Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific “at hypersonic speed” before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.
Is the U.S. Getting Domestic Indefinite Military Detention for Thanksgiving?
November 17th, 2011Via: Mother Jones:
A bipartisan group of senators is poised to force through dramatic changes to how the US government handles suspected terrorists—over the objections of the White House and Senate Democratic leadership.
Legislative language that emerged from the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday afternoon would mandate the automatic, indefinite military detention of noncitizens apprehended in the United States who are suspected members of Al Qaeda or associated groups. The wording, which is part of a must-pass bill to fund the military, also appears to allow the indefinite military detention of citizens and legal permanent residents. The bill would also extend restrictions on transfers of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, though only for one year.
Research Credit: noncompliant
‘Super Soldiers’: The Quest for the Ultimate Human Killing Machine
November 17th, 2011Via: Independent:
The era of The Terminator, the perfect robotic killing machine, is decades away; to date, all efforts to create a humanoid robot that can climb the stairs, let alone fight the Taliban, have been risible. But scientists are reporting breakthroughs with the next-best thing – the creation of human terminators, who feel less pain, less terror and less fatigue than “non-enhanced” soldiers and whose very bodies may be augmented by powerful machines.
Efforts to understand the brain of the soldier and put this knowledge to good use have been going on for some time. Professor Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at Pennsylvania State University, studies the way neuroscience is being co-opted by the military. “Right now, this is the fastest-growing area of science,” he says.
Research Credit: Phantom Report
Russian Military Chief Warns of Nuclear War Risks
November 17th, 2011Via: AP / ABC:
Russia is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that have the potential of turning nuclear, the nation’s top military officer said Thursday.
Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned over NATO’s expansion eastward and warned that the risks for Russia to be pulled into local conflicts have “risen sharply.”
Makarov added, according to Russian news agencies, that “under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons.”
A steady decline in Russia’s conventional forces has prompted the Kremlin to rely increasingly on its nuclear deterrent.
The nation’s military doctrine says it may use nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an ally, or a large-scale conventional attack that threatens Russia’s existence.
Russia sees NATO’s expansion to include former Soviet republics and ex-members of the Soviet bloc in eastern and central Europe as a key threat to Russia’s security.
