Monthly Archives: July 2013

Don’t Let Bitcoin Morph into Govcoin

"Recently, Govcoin has become a metaphor for alterations to the core bitcoin protocol that reduce its fungibility, irreversibility or privacy to conform to certain government specifications for an 'appropriate' digital currency. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not yet confirmed to what extent the implementation of Regulation E by money transmitters will be applicable to licensed virtual currency providers. Also known as the Remittance Transfer Rule, compliance will be required by Oct. 28. It requires, among other items, prepayment disclosure, transaction receipts, and transaction cancellation within prescribed time limits." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy

"Pew finds that 'a majority of Americans – 56% – say that federal courts fail to provide adequate limits on data the government is collecting as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.' And 'an even larger percentage (70%) believes that the government uses this data for purposes other than investigating terrorism.' Moreover, '63% think the government is also gathering information about the content of communications.' That demonstrates a decisive rejection of the US government's three primary defenses of its secret programs. Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far." Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: A House Divided Over NSA Spying on Americans

"Taken together, the NSA's Maryland headquarters and its newly built enormous data center in Utah will be seven times larger than the Pentagon! Over the last week we have seen two significant prison-breaks, one in Iraq, where some 500 al-Qaeda members broke out of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, which the US built, and another 1,000 escaped in a huge break in Benghazi, Libya – the city where the US Ambassador was killed by the rebels that the US government helped put in power. Did the US intelligence community, focused on listening to our phone calls, not see this real threat coming?" Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: Low-level NSA analysts can spy on Americans

"The NSA keeps trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases which they can access anytime, he said. 'And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things. It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.'” Continue reading →

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*BREAKING* Call to Action!

  “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.“ Thomas Paine American Crisis, No. 1 — 1776   CALL TO ACTION for supporters of free market alternatives to Medicaid Expansion! I just received this notification from Senator Colbeck late …

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Amazon Hiring 5,000 in Warehouses to Meet Customer Demand

"Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is boosting staff in 17 U.S. warehouses, adding more than 5,000 full-time jobs to meet brisk demand for products sold by the world’s biggest Web retailer. The new hires will join more than 20,000 employees working at Amazon’s more than three dozen U.S. fulfillment centers, the Seattle-based company said in a statement today. Amazon is also hiring 2,000 customer-service staff, including part-time and seasonal workers. The retailer plans to open five more facilities this year, after adding 20 last year. Median pay is 30 percent higher than 'people who work in traditional retail stores,' the company said." Continue reading →

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Enforcement of immigration laws could be making human trafficking tougher to detect

"The threat of arrest and deportation is a common tool traffickers use to control their victims, experts say. Even those immigrants who arrive on a legitimate work-related visa have become trafficking victims. These visas usually bind the worker to an employer, who can hold that requirement over their head and even become their trafficker. 'If employment ends, then so does visa status,' says Avaloy Lanning, a senior director at Safe Horizon, a New York-based victim's services agency. 'The trafficker uses that against them, [saying], if you run then you're going to be illegal, then immigration is going to pick you up, arrest you and deport you.'" Continue reading →

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State Battles vs. Private Battles

"The most prominent battles are taking place in Syria & Egypt; but they're mainly just rhymes of every similar episode that has occurred throughout mankind's history. What's it all for? To control The State...the great weapon that one group of people can use against its neighbors and enemies; that legal use of force to get you (and your friends) what you want the easy way, instead of the voluntary and moral way. So powerful is this lust to control The State that, in Syria alone, 100,000+ have died in just the last several years. Imagine if the rest of life's battles were conducted in the same manner...." Continue reading →

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Reforms of Domestic Government Surveillance

"Proposals to reform the court have included publishing declassified summaries of all its rulings and the creation of a public advocate to argue against the government’s filings with the court and to appeal FISA court rulings (now only the government can appeal). These proposals to increase the court’s transparency would be an improvement on the current Orwellian situation, but a better solution would be to get rid of the Orwellian situation. There is no place in a constitutional republic for a secret, parallel system of justice with lower standards. Thus, both the FISA Court and the Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act (actually the entire PATRIOT Act) need to be neutered." Continue reading →

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New Beer Lawsuit Could Spell Trouble For Keystone XL Pipeline

"In a statement issued on July 2, Larry Bell, President of Bell’s Brewery, explained: 'As Michigan’s oldest and largest brewery, Bell’s has a longstanding commitment to quality. While Bell’s uses water from the municipal water system to brew our beer, the pristine cleanliness of the water and air around our brewery and neighbors is of the utmost importance to us.' Evidently Bell’s concerns were not addressed, because last week the company filed a lawsuit against Enbridge and CCP, the developer of the site where the pollution facility is being located, at Comstock Commerce Park." Continue reading →

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