Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules
(From 2006, The year Ponzi Scum Stanford investigation stopped)
Now, the White House's top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses from reporting requirements...
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye...
Ponzi Scum Stanford a cog in the U.S. intelligence
dirty money laundering machine
By Wayne Madsen
“Sir” Allen Stanford appears to be yet another multi-billion dollar cog in a network of off-shore banks, corporate contrivances, and folding tent operations. Although Stanford is being investigated for a $8 billion fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Stanford has “extensive” holdings on the island of St. Croix, told the Associated Press that the Obama Justice Department is “not actively pursuing” Stanford.....
On March 6, 2007, WMR reported: “WMR’s report about ‘Sir’ R. Allen Stanford and his Stanford Financial Group in Houston buying up land in Antigua and Barbuda and running roughshod over the government of that nation turned up an interesting important footnote to the story. Stanford’s Houston offices are directly across Westheimer Road in the part of the Galleria complex where Carlyle Group offices are located. Coincidence? Not with the Bush criminal cartel.”
The FBI is reportedly now investigating Stanford’s firms for laundering money for Mexico’s Gulf drug cartel. Stanford, Houston, off-shore banks, and drugs equal the perfect brew for another Bush family criminal cartel operation tied to the CIA.
China prepares to buy up foreign oil companies
China is preparing to open a new phase in its race for the world's resources by using its huge currency reserves to buy foreign oil and gas companies.......
U.S. home price drop at record pace in December:18.5%
Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged 18.5 percent in December from a year earlier as the monthly pace accelerated, according to a Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index on Tuesday...."There are very few, if any, pockets of turnaround that one can see in the data," David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee, said in the statement. "Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path."
In a separate index, home prices depreciated at a 18.2 percent pace in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, for the largest drop since the series began 21 years ago, it said. From the housing market peak in the second quarter of 2006, home prices have plummeted 26.7 percent, it said...
20+ Windows Vista Features and Services Harvest User Data for Microsoft
Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company.
Microsoft makes no secret about the fact that Windows Vista is gathering information. End users have little to say, and no real choice in the matter. The company does provide both a Windows Vista Privacy Statement and references within the End User License Agreement for the operating system. Combined, the resources paint the big picture over the extent of Microsoft's end user data harvest via Vista.....
GOP: ISPs, Wi-Fi Must Keep Logs For Police The bill would require unprecedented data retention by small businesses, corporations, hotels, libraries, schools, universities, airplanes, government agencies, and home Wi-Fi users
Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points - even hotels, local coffee shops and home users - to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.
The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.....
Crogressman Kucinich on Stanford Group Fraud: SEC Told to “Stand Down” by Unknown Federal Agency in 2006
( What Agancey would shut down the SEC, are they based in Langley Virginia, is their headquarters named after George H W Bush? Did President Bush 43 Order the Stand Down?)
Dennis Kucinich is trying to determine which federal agency told the SEC to stand down with regard to Allen Stanford in 2006......Well, last Tuesday (17 February 2009), Allen Stanford was unable to charter a private jet to take him from Houston to Antigua. Then, of all the places he could have gone, where did he turn up two days later?
Virginia. With an unidentified woman. At a private residence. With the FBI waiting for him at that private residence.
Some guesses:
Maybe he had to come in from the cold to get instructions on how this was going to play out. He wants to stay alive. He wants his family to stay alive. Obviously, he’s not going to talk on the phone. So he drives, and drives and winds up in Virginia.
Sure, it could be a Coincidence that Virginia just happens to be the home of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency… But why Virginia, of all places?
To meet the CIA case officer who has been tasking him?....
Thanks for the philanthropy, billionaires. Now pay your tax
Stanford epitomises the uber-rich who hid behind a fig-leaf of charity while avoiding their dues and helping banks to collapse.....
It is, perhaps, the greatest surprise since the citizens of Troy discovered that the wooden horse in their town square was not the generously gifted piece of public art they'd hoped. Sir Allen Stanford - the Texan billionaire who landed his Trojan helicopter at Lord's cricket ground and emerged with crates of cash - has turned out not to be the exquisitely cultured philanthropist his every action hitherto had indicated.
Stanford is now accused of masterminding a multibillion dollar fraud, and many of you will be facing up to the possibility that everything you thought you knew was wrong. You might be desperately searching for something, anything, that could count as a chink of light. If it helps, I have found my mind returning to the strongest of rumours that, during the course of that edifying Twenty20 tournament last October, Sir Allen discovered that his fiancee had been - how to put this euphemistically? - overly charmed by Chris Gayle, captain of the Stanford Superstars, and the man to whom Stanford eventually had to present a million dollar winner's cheque with a big smile...
Gone in 60 Days: Citi and Bank of America Won’t Live to See May, Or maybe next week...
If there’s one thing our readers know, it’s that ChartingStocks.net has made some bold calls in the past which seemed controversial and highly unlikely at the time. Our January 2007 post warned of the coming stock market crash at a time when the market was making new all time highs. In February 2007 we warned about the breakdown of the brokerage stocks and singled out Bear Stearns (Trading at $160), Merrill Lynch (Trading at $87), and Morgan Stanley (Trading at 78). In September 2007, we warned of a selloff in the coming weeks. The market peak and decline began 4 weeks later.
We’re going to make another bold prediction. Bank of America and Citigroup won’t live to see May. The two banks will be nationalized in the coming weeks, and we think that the announcement can come as soon as tomorrow evening (Friday evenings are when major bank announcements and failures occur).....
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act....
Ponzi Scum Stanford Found In U.S.
- According to one of his lobbyists, Ben Barnes, Stanford has turned in his passport and said he won't flee. He's described as "very depressed" and sought to end the manhunt by approaching DOJ officials himself.
- In addition:
In the meantime, the SEC has begun to seize an array of private property owned by Stanford and his firm.
Stanford's fleet of six private jets were recalled to the corporate hangar at Sugarland Airport outside Houston, including the Bombardier 500 luxury jet that was used exclusively by Stanford.
According to flight records, the Stanford jet flew into Washington, D.C. earlier this week and returned to Houston yesterday afternoon. Flight crews said Stanford was not seen on the plane when it unloaded.
SEC Vet: Agency Should Have Looked Closer At Stanford
Did the SEC fall down on the job by not paying closer attention to Allen Stanford, the billionaire Texas banker accused of orchestrating an $8 billion fraud? One former long-time enforcement director for the agency thinks it may well have.
Robert Fusfeld, who spent 31 years as an SEC enforcement lawyer, and for 15 managed the trial unit in the commission's Denver office before retiring in 2006, told TPMmuckraker that there was plenty of reason for the SEC to aggressively scrutinize Stanford's operation.
"A registered broker dealer and registered investment adviser is selling offshore Caribbean CDs in mammoth volumes, and nobody's looking at the bonafides of the bank," he said....
Stanford’s Alleged Fraud Said to Be Under Investigation by FBI
U.S. regulators’ allegations of a “massive” fraud run by Houston billionaire R. Allen Stanford and companies he operated are being investigated by the FBI, a person familiar with the case said.....
Obama to address protectionist fears on Canada trip
Barack Obama will seek to quell Canadian concerns about U.S. protectionism when he makes his first foreign trip as president on Thursday to the United States' biggest trading partner and energy supplier. Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will discuss trade, clean energy technology, the global economic crisis and the war in Afghanistan, officials said, but the president's tight schedule on the one-day trip to Ottawa leaves little time for substantive talks.....
Will there be another Russian revolution?
These are hard times for the town of Asbest, deep in Russia's Urals industrial belt. For more than a century, asbestos has been mined here on a grand scale. And in recent years, despite an EU ban on the use of asbestos, the 19 factories that make up the world's biggest asbestos mining and processing operation have been working at full stretch, fuelled by Russia's construction boom.
Andrei, a 37-year-old local, has worked in the asbestos industry for 13 years, along with thousands of the town's 76,000 residents. More than 70 per cent of all families here have at least one member working in the asbestos plant. Indeed, without it, the town would be nothing. Across Russia's Urals region, and elsewhere, there are many places like Asbest. In a hangover from the days of Soviet planning, Russia has more than 500 "monotowns" – communities where one factory accounts for most of the local budget and employs the majority of the population....
Drug violence spins Mexico toward 'civil war'
A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.....
Facebook Withdraws Changes in Data Use
After a wave of protests from its users, the Facebook social networking site said on Wednesday that it would withdraw changes to its so-called terms of service concerning the data supplied by the tens of millions of people who use it.
The about-face was made known to many users in a message posted on the Facebook home page saying : “Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.
The Truth About Facebook (Video)
A Must Watch for any Facebook User...
Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information
Reacting to an online swell of suspicion about changes to Facebook’s terms of service, the company’s chief executive moved to reassure users on Monday that the users, not the Web site, “own and control their information.”.....This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated...
Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever..."
This post has generated a lot of responses, including from Facebook. Check them out here.
Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.
Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.* Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.....
Biggest Fraud Ever: Iraq “Reconstruction”
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme. “I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003......
EU foiled in bid to force France, Greece to allow Monsanto GM crop
The European Commission was foiled Monday in its bid to force France and Greece to allow genetically modified maize from US biotech giant Monsanto to be grown in their fields. Food chain experts from the EU member states, meeting in Brussels, could not reach agreement on whether to back or oppose the French and Greek refusal to allow the maize, which has been given the green light to be grown in Europe.
Genetically Modfied Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach
People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their GMO seeds.
Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?
Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop. It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice.
And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.
1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.
2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That’s been killed.....
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
Everyday I receive an email from somebody about how their account was hacked, how a friend tagged them in the photo and they want a way to avoid it, as well as a number of other complications related to their privacy on Facebook. Over the weekend one individual contacted me to let me know that he would be removing me as a friend from Facebook because he was “going to make a shift with my Facebook use - going to just mostly family stuff.”
Perhaps he was tired of receiving my status updates or perhaps he didn’t want me to view photos from his personal life. Whatever the reason for ending our Facebook friendship, I figured that many people would benefit from a thorough overview on how to protect your privacy on Facebook. Below is a step by step process for protecting your privacy....
As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes
THERE are plenty of people who can muster outrage at Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees third baseman who is the latest example of win-at-any-cost athletes. But I’d prefer to see him as at the cutting edge of another scourge — the growing encroachment on privacy.....
“Pork” Bailout Bill Could Ban Guns for Millions of Americans
But now that some of the details are finally starting to leak out of Washington, Gun Owners -– and a lot of other analysts -– are beginning to look at the fine print. And some of it is particularly scary....But of even greater concern to gun owners is the fact that a government-coordinated database (which government can freely access) will now contain all records of government-provided and private psychiatric treatment -– including, in particular, the drugs which were prescribed.
Remember last year’s “NICS Improvement Act” otherwise known as the Veterans Disarmament Act? This law codified ATF’s attempts to make you a prohibited person on the basis of a government psychiatrist’s finding that you are a “danger” –- without a finding by any court. Well, roughly 150,000 battle-scarred veterans have already been unfairly stripped of their gun rights by the government.
But people who, as kids, were diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder… or seniors with Alzheimer’s… or police with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder… or people who are now theoretically covered by the new law… these people have, generally, not suffered the consequences of its sanctions YET. And the chief reason is that their records are not easily available to the government in a central, easily retrievable, computerized form.
Decade at Bernie’s
By Paul Krugman
By now everyone knows the sad tale of Bernard Madoff’s duped investors. They looked at their statements and thought they were rich. But then, one day, they discovered to their horror that their supposed wealth was a figment of someone else’s imagination. Unfortunately, that’s a pretty good metaphor for what happened to America as a whole in the first decade of the 21st century....
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
The legendary editor of The New Republic, Michael Kinsley, once held a "Boring Headline Contest" and decided that the winner was "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." Twenty-two years later, the magazine was rescued from its economic troubles by a Canadian media company, which should have taught us Americans to be a bit more humble. Now there is even more striking evidence of Canada's virtues. Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th....
Failure to save East Europe will lead to worldwide meltdown
If mishandled by the world policy establishment, this debacle is big enough to shatter the fragile banking systems of Western Europe and set off round two of our financial Götterdämmerung. Austria's finance minister Josef Pröll made frantic efforts last week to put together a €150bn rescue for the ex-Soviet bloc. Well he might. His banks have lent €230bn to the region, equal to 70pc of Austria's GDP. "A failure rate of 10pc would lead to the collapse of the Austrian financial sector," reported Der Standard in Vienna. Unfortunately, that is about to happen.....
Amazing Video Of Fish Being Caught By A Bird, Seen From The Fish's Perspective (VIDEO)
Nature videos are full of raw footage of predators tearing into their prey, whether it's lions ripping apart antelopes or frogs catching flies. But rarely is the moment captured from the viewpoint of the prey. Here is an amazing video of a fish being caught underwater by a bird - from the perspective of the fish with the bird seemingly appearing out of nowhere:
In New Opinion, Minnesota Election Court Seriously Damages Coleman's Chances (Too Bad So Sad Norm)
The Minnesota election court has just handed down a very important ruling that will determine the entire course of the rest of this trial -- and it's very bad news for Norm Coleman, cutting off multiple avenues he was pursuing in order to get more votes for himself thrown into the count.....
MS sued for charging for Vista-XP downgrade
Microsoft has been sued this week over claims that the necessity to pay for its Vista-to-XP downgrade program abuses the company's Windows monopoly. Filed in a Seattle federal district court, the lawsuit found by the Seattle Times accuses Microsoft of violating Washington state business and consumer protection laws by creating an unfair license that cost plaintiff Emma Alvarado $59.25 to revert from Windows Vista Business to XP Professional when she bought a Lenovo notebook in June 2008.
Microsoft Terrified Companies Won't Upgrade To Windows 7
For the moment, put aside any concerns over Microsoft's flagging online presence or the long-term threat of Office-competitors like Google (GOOG) Apps. The biggest problem for Microsoft over the next 12-18 months is whether enterprise customers, a whopping 71% of whom never upgraded off Windows XP, will embrace the upcoming Windows 7, or whether they'll stick it out with XP for years to come.....
European Economic Collapse:
“It May Already be Too Late to Prevent Social Unrest”
Jon Moulton, the private equity chief, warned a City lunch this week that he feared serious civil unrest. There was, he said, a 25 per cent chance of one of the 15 member countries of the eurozone pulling out of the currency club. That, he said, would be a catastrophic shock leading to a “far greater financial crisis” than the current one.
The mind boggles at a financial crisis far worse than the current one. Is such a thing possible? Even with this one, it may already be too late to prevent social unrest, especially in Britain, which is tipped to be one of the worst-hit countries economically....
How to Trade a PPT Day
Ever notice how official speeches to prop up the US capital markets are timed right before a massive sell off? How about those last hour rallies when the market looks really bad? Today was a great example of a Plunge Protection Team (PPT) trading day. This article will explain who they are, how they operate, and how you can profit.
Consider the background story on today’s market. Does it make sense to engineer a rally while stalling on a stimulus plan. The Washington wait-n-see numbers game is going strong. Politicians, and the money behind them, are holding their ammo in reserve–no matter how often they deny this agenda. They did it with the auto makers two months ago. Remember that? A bailout was going to save the auto makers and then the market rallied out of nowhere, just when all looked lost. The auto bailout almost became a non-event. The critical size of their cash infusion was nowhere near the size initially rumored. The reality is, credit needed to cover all systemic threats to the market doesn’t exist. They wait and see for who is about to die, then they jump....
Apple now worth quintuple Dell’s market value
On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he'd do if he was in charge of Apple Computer, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly, "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
A little more than a month later, on November 10, 1997, new Apple Interim CEO (iCEO) Steve Jobs responded, speaking in front of an image of Michael Dell's bulls-eye covered face, "We're coming after you, you're in our sights.".....
Today in NASDAQ trading, Apple rose $2.60 to hit a market value of $88.37 billion or 5 times that of Dell's current 17.52 billion. Apple is also a debt-free company and currently has significantly more cash on-hand, $28.8 billion, than Dell is worth.
Got any snappy retorts now, Mr. Dell? What's that, cat got your tongue?
Daily Show offers stimulus plan: Free cocaine (Video)
If the market's reaction to President Barack Obama's stimulus plan is an indication of future success, maybe it's time for a totally new approach. The Daily Show sardonically thinks they have the answer: cocaine.
The Daily Show's "resident expert," John Hodgman, who also appears in Apple Computer ads, suggested making cocaine available at every cash register. "I have discovered that the substance cocaine makes people feel very confident," he explained....
NYPD Cuts Cops, Keeps Spycams for Terror Defense
Turning New York's financial district into a panopticon was just supposed to be phase one. The real heart of the New York Police Department's "Lower Manhattan Security Initiative," I was repeatedly told, was going to be 800 more officers, protecting the bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, and landmarks of the most visible terrorist target on the planet. But now, bad economic times are forcing the NYPD to "slow down plans to assign 800 officers to the area near Ground Zero and Wall Street," Newsday reports. The surveillance cameras are remaining, however, at least for now....
Special Forces' Gigapixel Flying Spy Sees All
You may think your new ten-megapixel camera is pretty hot –- but not when you compare it to the 1.8 Gigapixel beast built for the Pentagon. The camera is designed as a payload for the A-160T Hummingbird robot helicopter now being quietly delivered to Special Forces. It will give them an unprecedented ability to track everything on the ground in real time. The camera is scheduled for flight testing at the start of next year....
Orbital Collision: Please Pick Up the Nearest Black Courtesy Phone
So, an Iridium satellite just happened to collide with a defunct Russian military satellite…You’re about to learn how the sausage gets made, and, before we begin, you should know that it’s not pretty. I don’t know the whole story about Iridium, but it has got to be one of the spookiest tales of them all.
In November 1998.....
How to Disappear and Fall off the Grid...
One easy route to anonymity is to establish an International Business Corporation. IBCs, available in many countries, are both legal and allow for complete secrecy with directors and officers of the corporation not having to be listed. An IBC enables you to open an offshore bank account and get a so-called “black” credit card in its name, keeping your personal shopping history anonymous....
The Multiple Ways Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach
People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their GMO seeds.
Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them? Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop. It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice. And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds....
Pain Beam to Get Tougher, Smaller, More Powerful
The Pentagon's pain beam weapon could get tougher, smaller, more powerful, and more mobile under a series of new research and development projects. And that could pave the way for the so-called "Active Denial System" to finally be sent to war.....
Judges allegedly took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juveniles in lockups
For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.
In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers...
New Canadian law to give police access to online exchanges
The Conservative government is preparing sweeping new eavesdropping legislation that will force Internet service providers to let police tap exchanges on their systems - but will likely reignite fear that Big Brother will be monitoring the private conversations of Canadians.
The goal of the move, which would require police to obtain court approval, is to close what has been described as digital "safe havens" for criminals, pedophiles and terrorists because current eavesdropping laws were written in a time before text messages, Facebook and voice-over-Internet phone lines.....
Obama orders review of cyber security
Barack Obama has ordered a review of America's cyber defence strategy, opening the possibility of a wholesale change to the country's approach to online security.
At the moment, a wide spread of agencies are involved in protecting the US from attack over the internet, including the Department of Homeland Security, National Security Council and the various branches of the military. That situation could be simplified, according to the results of the 60-day review announced by the White House yesterday....
European disunion: Is the EU cracking up?
Is the European Union showing signs of cracking? There are new signs of unprecedented strain as the economic crisis kicks in......
Daily Show salutes O'Reilly's 'great ambushes...of justice' (Video)
Ambush journalism by the press sucks, according to Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. That is, unless it's O'Reilly Factor correspondents doing the ambushing. Comedy Central's Jon Stewart pointed out the hypocrisy of Bill O'Reilly's attacks on the paparazzi when his show seems to thrive on them....After showing a clip in which O'Reilly called the press "the scum of the earth," Stewart playfully imitated him, saying, "We're Fox News and I think we know a little about scum."....
Spy centre will track you on holiday
THE government is building a secret database to track and hold the international travel records of all 60m Britons. The intelligence centre will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details for all 250m passenger movements in and out of the UK each year.
The computerised pattern of every individual’s travel history will be stored for up to 10 years, the Home Office admits. The government says the new database, to be housed in an industrial estate in Wythenshawe, near Manchester, is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism. However, opposition MPs, privacy campaigners and some government officials fear it is a significant step towards a total surveillance society....
The all-seeing eye of state surveillance
It is not any one cigarette or one extra drink that is ruinous to the health. The damage is done over the years, almost imperceptibly. Grave threats to the health of democracy can also accrue so incrementally that they draw little attention. A committee of peers diagnose one such danger today in a report on the steady creep of surveillance. The charge of hysteria is routinely used to sweep aside such talk when it comes from crusading journalists and pressure groups. The Lords constitutional affairs committee, however, cannot be dismissed the same way. A more dignified band of dignitaries would be hard to imagine - it includes a former attorney general who is a conservative champion of that antiquated role, a Tory expert on the constitution, and a founder of that force of militant moderation that was called the SDP....
The peers' view of the UK's surveillance society is a vindication for those fighting for civil liberties, and a warning for the future
The House of Lords report on Britain's surveillance society is a devastating analysis of the systems that have been installed by the authoritarian Labour government and the controlling forces emerging in local government. There is no question now that Britain's free society is under threat, and it is time for the public and opposition parties to declare an end to this regime of intrusion.....
Sure, the Googlebots know your deepest secrets - but it's worth it
Sure, the Googlebots know your deepest secrets - but it's worth it I use Googlemail for my e-mail. As is the case for millions of others, it is the hub of my online existence.
I have just sent myself an e-mail saying that I wanted to buy a new bed. Within four minutes this link appeared in the small ad box at the top of my inbox: Temperature-pedic 70% off www.eBed.com/Tempur-Pedic - Mattress Sale: Get Free Delivery, Free Pillows, No Tax & Much More.
What has happened is that Google has digitally "crawled" my inbox, noted that I was writing about beds, and sent me a targeted advert. To some this is very scary. Google knows what I am writing about all the time. In theory, it knows that I have just been to the doctor for a check-u.
THE NEW THOUGHT POLICE: THE NSA WANTS TO KNOW HOW YOU THINK— MAYBE EVEN WHAT YOU THINK
BY JAMES BAMFORD
The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell's Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.
With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.
The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.
GETTING AQUAINT
Known as Aquaint, which stands for "Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence,"....
Book gets Boston talking about RFK's search for JFK's killers
Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General and President Kennedy's younger brother, never did believe the Warren Commission despite his public refusal to contradict the official version of events. The younger Kennedy began his own investigation the day of the murder convinced that members of the U.S. government were responsible for the shooting in Dallas. Author David Talbot perhaps sums it up best in his book Brothers. "Robert Kennedy did not resign himself to the lone gunman theory. On the contrary, he immediately suspected that President Kennedy was the victim of a powerful conspiracy. And he spent the rest of his life secretly searching for the truth about his brother's murder."
The Attorney General had been informed of the shooting by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover had no love for either Kennedy and abruptly delivered news of the shooting. Later, Robert would tell Nicolas Katzenbach that Hoover seemed to enjoy being the bearer of bad tidings. "I think he told me with pleasure."
Kennedy so little trusted Hoover he declined FBI protection for his family. Uncertain if a conspiracy included members of the Secret Service, Robert pieced together his own security detail out of the U. S. Marshal Service in those early awful hours after the assassination....
Daily Show: Darth Vader wants Cheney analogies to stop (Video)
Jon Stewart may have just ended a cultural meme. Comparisons of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Star Wars villain Darth Vader, who led the evil galactic empire as the emperor's right hand, abound on the Internet.
But it's not just the netizens who are fond of the likening. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as a Senator from New York in 2007, told a Times Square town hall meeting, "you can always tell when the republicans are restless - because the Vice President's motorcade pulls into the Capitol. Darth Vader emerges. And honestly I’m not invited to their meetings I don’t know what he says or does."
Olbermann: 'It may be time for Mr. Cheney to leave this country' (Video)
Pentagon clashes with media over control of information
The black-and-white video starts with a mini-van locked in the crosshairs and the sound of a missile launching. A ball of fire suddenly consumes the van and a palm grove somewhere in Iraq. "Good shot," says a voice squawking over what sounds like a military radio. Before the one-minute video clip is over, two more SUVs are destroyed by Apache helicopters.
The video is one of dozens brought to viewers around the world by Maj. Alayne Conway, the top public affairs officer for the 3rd Infantry Division. When her unit was in Iraq, her office sent out four to six videos a day to media outlets around the world, as well as posting them on YouTube. "You want to make sure you edit it in the right way," Conway said. "You have to go through the steps. ... Is this something that is going to make Joe Six-Pack look up from his TV dinner or his fast-food meal and look up at the TV and say, 'Wow, the American troops are kicking butt in Iraq?'"...
Watch a live video, share your PC with CNN
Many people who watched live streaming video of the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama on Jan. 20 may not realize that their PC was used to send the video to other PCs, too.
Clicking "yes" to a CNN.com dialog box installed a peer-to-peer (P2P) application that uses your Internet bandwidth rather than CNN's to send live video to other viewers.....
Bush overpaid $78 billion for bank shares in bailout, report finds
Bush Treasury Sec. 'subsidized' his ex-firm with $2.5 billion
President George W. Bush overpaid $78 billion for investments in the nation's largest banks and brokerages, according to a Congressional report released late Thursday. The findings showed that government investment in the banks amounted to a nearly $80 billion subsidy of an industry that seems to have recently excelled at flushing money down the drain.....