Yearly Archives: 2013

Little restraint in military giveaways to police

"An Associated Press investigation of the Defense Department program, originally aimed at helping local law enforcement fight terrorism and drug trafficking, found that a disproportionate share of the $4.2 billion worth of property distributed since 1990 has been obtained by police departments and sheriff's offices in rural areas with few officers and little crime. The national giveaway program operates with scant oversight, and the surplus military gear often sits in storage, the AP found." Continue reading →

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US Wants Its Police in Canada and Exempt from Canadian Law

"The United States wants its police officers to be exempt from Canadian law if they agree to take part in a highly touted cross-border policing initiative, an internal RCMP memo says. … The debate over whose laws would apply to U.S. officers working in Canada raises important questions of sovereignty and police accountability, says the briefing note prepared for RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. Does this have implications for anyone who winds up in trouble/penalties over tax issues? Is Canada a sovereign country or the 51st State?" Continue reading →

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Guilty of Aiding the American People

"The 'aiding the enemy' accusation presumed that Manning’s distribution of classified material assisted al Qaeda. Actually, the information helps Americans by exposing U.S. war criminality. War criminality ranks among the most important types of government wrongdoing warranting transparency. We cannot debate foreign policy without knowing about its indecencies. What U.S. forces do abroad can endanger Americans at home. Some see the leaks, not the crimes, as the true scandal, but the Muslim and Arab world already know of these atrocities. The American people need to understand what U.S. occupations are like." Continue reading →

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After the whistle: Revealers of government secrets share how their lives have changed

"The former high-ranking National Security Agency analyst now sells iPhones. The top intelligence officer at the CIA lives in a motor home outside Yellowstone National Park and spends his days fly-fishing for trout. The FBI translator fled Washington for the West Coast. This is what life looks like for some after revealing government secrets. Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing, according to those who did it. Jeopardizing national security, according to the government. A look at the lives of a handful of those who did just that shows that they often wind up far from the stable government jobs they held. They can even wind up in the aisles of a craft store." Continue reading →

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For Congress, ‘it’s classified’ is new equivalent of ‘none of your business’

"The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly gave its approval last week to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons to moderate rebels in Syria, but how individual members of the committee stood on the subject remains unknown. There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided. Members of both the Senate intelligence committee or its equivalent in the House were difficult to pin down on their view of providing arms to the rebels. The senators and representatives said they couldn’t give an opinion, or at least a detailed one, because the matter was classified." Continue reading →

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Cops Can Track Cellphones Without Warrants, Federal Appeals Court Rules

"A divided federal appeals court ruled today that the government does not need a probable-cause warrant to access mobile-phone subscribers’ cell-site information, a decision reversing lower court decisions that said the location data was protected by the Fourth Amendment. The 2-1 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the third federal appeals court to decide the privacy issue. All the while, two federal appellate courts have now taken the government’s position that court warrants are not required for the location data. And a third federal appellate court said judges had the option to demand warrants." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin Is Not Quantum-Safe, And How We Can Fix It When Needed

"Given what is currently public knowledge, quantum computers are still far away; the most powerful quantum computer to date managed to use Shor’s algorithm to factor the number 21. However, we always need to have a plan of what we can do if Edward Snowden decides to leak out that the NSA has fully functional quantum computers hiding in a secret data center. We probably cannot handle such a sudden event, but we certainly can handle cases where we get even a month of advance warning. From there, we lick our wounds, pick up our losses and move on to enjoy some of the more wonderful things that quantum computing has to offer." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Still Grappling With Slowdown

"Mt. Gox has seen U.S.-dollar denominated trading volume fall, and has struggled to keep up with customer requests for their money. In June, it temporarily halted U.S. dollar-denominated withdrawals. In July, it announced that it had resumed withdrawals, but acknowledged it hasn’t been able to process them as fast as it would like. Several customers have contacted MoneyBeat describing the trouble they’ve experienced since in getting funds out of Mt. Gox. The company essentially said the problem lies not with itself, but with the financial system outside of virtual currencies. All of this has resulted in a less liquid market for bitcoin trading." Continue reading →

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Building Bitcoin into the Core Architecture of the Web

"At the Inside Bitcoins NYC conference, Manu Sporny shared his answer to accelerate growth and provided a vision of adding 2.4 billion people to the Bitcoin ecosystem within the next five years. Where might one find a market that large that can be on-boarded that quickly? To Sporny, the answer lies in the 2.4 billion people with access to the web and in the sheer global dominance of four popular web browsers: IE, Safari, Firefox and Chrome. The challenge that naturally follows is how to integrate Bitcoin into the browser. Sporny is tackling this challenge by pushing for new W3C standards for the browser that will allow for more simplified transactions over the web." Continue reading →

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Bank of England refuses comment on huge discrepancy in custodial gold reports

"The Bank of England refuses to explain what appears to be a huge discrepancy in its accounting of the gold it holds in custody, a difference of as much as 1,200 tonnes between the total reported in the bank's annual report in February and the total reported in a 'virtual tour' of the bank posted this month at the bank's Internet site. The discrepancy was noted by GoldMoney research director Alasdair Macleod last week during an interview with Max Keiser on the 'Keiser Report' program on the Russia Today television network." Continue reading →

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