NSA Ducks Questions About ‘Back Doors’ in Tech Products
October 28th, 2020Via: Reuters:
The U.S. National Security Agency is rebuffing efforts by a leading Congressional critic to determine whether it is continuing to place so-called back doors into commercial technology products, in a controversial practice that critics say damages both U.S. industry and national security.
The NSA has long sought agreements with technology companies under which they would build special access for the spy agency into their products, according to disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and reporting by Reuters and others.
These so-called back doors enable the NSA and other agencies to scan large amounts of traffic without a warrant. Agency advocates say the practice has eased collection of vital intelligence in other countries, including interception of terrorist communications.
Medical Authorities Refuse to Mention Vitamin D as COVID-19 Treatment
October 28th, 2020Via: Peak Prosperity:
Related: Study finds over 80 percent of COVID-19 patients have vitamin D deficiency
Customs and Border Protection Conducts Warrantless Tracking of People Inside the U.S.
October 27th, 2020Via: Nextgov:
Customs and Border Protection is using commercially available location data from cell phones to conduct warrantless tracking of people inside the U.S. and refused to provide lawmakers with a legal justification for these activities, according to five senators.
In a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, five Democratic senators questioned CBP’s use of subscriptions with data broker Venntel, a government contractor based in Virginia, which gives them access to commercial location data.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, asked the inspector general to examine the legal analysis CBP performed—if such analysis exists—before the agency began using the tool.
“CBP outrageously asserted that its legal analysis is privileged and therefore does not have to be shared with Congress,” the letter reads. “We disagree.”
Privacy experts have long warned data brokers like Venntel are able to share detailed information about people’s lives using location data from apps users may not even realize are tracking such information. Many argue the need for more regulation around data privacy is urgent. Even when anonymized, geographic data can contain enough detail to re-identify individual users.
Large Anti-Lockdown Riots in Italy and Spain
October 27th, 2020Via: Daily Mail:
Protests erupted across Europe last night as thousands of angry demonstrators called on their governments to reconsider a second-round of lockdown restrictions.
In Italy, violence was reported in at least two major northern cities, Milan and Turin, as vast crowds protested freedom-limiting restrictions enforced to tackle a second surge in coronavirus cases.
Witnesses said a number of luxury stores, including a Gucci shop, were ransacked in central Turin as crowds of youths took to the streets after nightfall, letting off huge firecrackers and lighting coloured flares.
The city’s mayor today berated the violent protesters who she said had ‘polluted’ a demonstration by bar and restaurant owners who are facing another economic slump.
In Milan at least 28 people were arrested after protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police in the capital of Lombardy, the original epicentre of the virus in Italy which is now seeing a resurgence of cases.
Meanwhile in Barcelona, demonstrators set rubbish bins on fire in the streets – before riot police intervened to bring the chaos to an end.
The demonstrations came just one day after Spain declared a second nationwide state of emergency covering all regions except the Canary Islands.
The new state of emergency will initially last for 15 days but the Government plans to ask parliament for a six-month extension, meaning the restrictions – which include a 11pm to 6am curfew – could be enforced until early May 2021.
Supposedly Retired, F-117 Stealth Fighter Seen Flying in San Diego
October 25th, 2020Via: Airway 1:
Those who were driving on the highways near the Miramar Naval Base in San Diego on Tuesday may have witnessed a strange scene: two planes of unusual shapes and painted in black landing on the runway, famous for being the setting for the film Top Gun.
The mysterious planes were F-117 Nighthawk fighters, the first jet invisible to radar in history. But what did the two US Air Force aircraft at the Marines base do anyway? What’s more, why do they keep flying despite being retired in 2008?
The official answer does not exist since the US government does not admit that Lockheed Martin planes are in fact active, but it has become increasingly evident that the Pentagon has used some units to conduct military tests and exercises.
South Korea: 48 Dead After Flu Vaccination
October 24th, 2020This is the official number. What’s the real number???
Via: Reuters:
The number of South Koreans who have died after getting flu shots has risen to 48, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Saturday, adding that the vaccines would continue to reduce the chance of having simultaneous epidemics.
The health authorities said they found no direct link between the deaths and the shots. They plan to carry on with the state-run vaccination programme to try to avoid having to fight both the flu and the coronavirus over the coming winter.
“After reviewing death cases so far, it is not the time to suspend a flu vaccination programme since vaccination is very crucial this year, considering … the COVID-19 outbreaks,” KDCA Director Jeong Eun-kyung told a briefing.
Jeong said the review had shown no direct link between the flu shots and the 26 deaths that have been investigated.
Some 20 initial autopsy results from the police and the National Forensic Service showed that 13 people died of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and other disorders not caused by the vaccination.
College-Age Americans Face Worst Job Prospects in Decades
October 24th, 2020Via: Bloomberg:
America’s youngest workers started the year with a rare opportunity to slingshot their careers in the hottest job market in decades.
They’ll end 2020 facing some of the nation’s bleakest employment prospects and the most volatile job market ever for recent college graduates.
What It’s Like to Use a De-Googled Phone in Real Life?
October 23rd, 2020Via: Rob Braxman Tech:
The Fact Checkers
October 23rd, 2020Via: Awaken with JP:
Wisconsin’s Foxconn Boondoggle Looks Worse Than Ever
October 22nd, 2020Cryptogon 2017: My guess is that … the thousands of workers thing is being thrown out there for political fodder to secure corporate welfare from the state.
Via: Reason:
In June 2018, President Donald Trump and then–Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin broke ground on the outskirts of Milwaukee for what was supposed to be a $10 billion, 20 million-square-foot factory for Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn.
It was going to be “the eighth wonder of the world,” Trump said, proof that he was “reclaiming our country’s proud manufacturing legacy”—even if the project was dependent on $3 billion in subsidies from the state of Wisconsin, one of the largest corporate handouts in American history.
A little more than two years later, the factory that was supposed to produce LCD screens for TVs and smartphones doesn’t exist and “probably never will,” reports The Verge this week in a must-read investigation into the downfall of Wisconsin’s propped-up Foxconn project. The buildings that have been built on the plot of land where Trump and Walker overturned ceremonial shovels of dirt two years ago are being used for storage, not manufacturing. Promised renovations to a decades-old skyscraper in downtown Milwaukee—once intended to be Foxconn’s U.S. headquarters—have not materialized. Neither have most of the 13,000 jobs the company promised to create in return for piles of public cash.
“Even the handful of jobs the company claims to have created are less than real: many of them held by people with nothing to do, hired so the company could reach the number required for it to get tax subsidy payments from Wisconsin,” writes The Verge’s Josh Dzieza. “Foxconn failed at that objective, too: last week, Wisconsin rejected the company’s subsidy application and found it had employed only 281 people eligible under the contract at the end of 2019. Many have since been laid off.”
