Network Archives

New York Banking Regulator Subpoenas Two Dozen Bitcoin Companies

"New York's top banking regulator has issued subpoenas to roughly two dozen companies associated with bitcoin as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the business practices of the fledgling virtual-currency industry. The department also plans on Monday to issue a memo expressing concern that virtual-currency companies aren't complying with the state's money-transmission laws. As a result, the state is considering setting new guidelines that are specifically aimed at virtual currencies. Companies that received subpoenas include some of the best-known names in the nascent industry, including Coinbase Inc., BitInstant and Coinsetter." Continue reading →

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Entire New York Town Placed On Lockdown Over Police Standoff

"The entire upstate New York town of Bovina was placed on lockdown Sunday while police were engaged in a standoff with an armed man. A New York Alert notification was activated at about 2 p.m. Sunday, but a Delaware County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher said people in the town of Bovina were not in imminent danger and nobody was injured. There were no official details released about the man or why police were after him, the newspaper reported. Police officers were seen swarming on the ground as helicopters flew overhead, and residents were stopped by police and advised not to pick up hitchhikers, the paper reported." Continue reading →

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Android Security Vulnerability Threatens Existing Bitcoin Wallets

"We recently learned that a component of Android responsible for generating secure random numbers contains critical weaknesses, that render all Android wallets generated to date vulnerable to theft. Because the problem lies with Android itself, this problem will affect you if you have a wallet generated by any Android app. An incomplete list would be Bitcoin Wallet, blockchain.info wallet, BitcoinSpinner and Mycelium Wallet. Apps where you don't control the private keys at all are not affected. For example, exchange frontends like the Coinbase or Mt Gox apps are not impacted by this issue because the private keys are not generated on your Android phone." Continue reading →

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James Bovard: Obama, NSA, Gulf of Tonkin, & Governing as Lying

"This is the 49th anniversary of Congress’s passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, by which the Lyndon Johnson administration lied the nation into the Vietnam War. Last night, President Obama appeared on the Jay Leno show and declared: 'We don’t have a domestic spying program.' He explained: 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.' Why would Obama continue to shovel such bilge? Does he assume that no one has read a newspaper for the past 2 months, or what?" Continue reading →

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The NSA-DEA police state tango

"As revolutionary and noted hypocrite Thomas Jefferson once observed, the spread of tyranny only requires our silence. Millions of people have been sent to prison on drug-war convictions over the last 20 years. Most of those people have been poor and black. We will never know how many of those cases resulted from secret evidence collected by spy agencies, but it might not be a small number. One of the Reuters articles that broke this story quotes DEA officials as saying that the 'parallel construction' tactic had been used by the agency 'virtually every day since the 1990s.'" Continue reading →

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Meet Liberty’s Exiles – The Loyalists in the Revolution

“On November 25, 1783, the last British troops pulled out of New York City, bringing the American Revolution to an end. But for tens of thousands of American loyalists, the British evacuation spelled worry, not jubilation. What would happen to them in the new United States? Would they and their families be safe? Facing grave doubts about their futures, some sixty thousand loyalists—one in forty members of the American population—decided to leave their homes and become refugees elsewhere in the British Empire. They sailed for Britain, for Canada, for Jamaica, and for the Bahamas; some ventured as far as Sierra Leone and India." Continue reading →

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Northern Michigan Secession

"For those who have never been to northern Michigan, and the Upper Peninsula in particular, there is a culture here all its own, with no special love for the politics of Lansing and Detroit. As with Vermont, the effort to secede in northern Michigan still has passion and traction. And with American secession efforts receiving more visibility and thus being taken more seriously, we will hear much more about it in the coming years." Continue reading →

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Disabled veteran kicked off boardwalk because of service dog

"A North Wildwood police officer issued Jared and his wife a summons because of the dog. Goering said, 'I expected to get more respect from him because of the jobs that we both have to do.' 'He mockingly asked if all veterans get service dogs,' said Jared’s wife, Sally Goering, 'his dog is medically necessary and he is a service dog.' In 2009, Jared was serving in Afghanistan when his vehicle was blown up by IEDs, twice, within 36 hours. Now, Jared uses his 3-year-old service dog, Gator, short for Navigator, to help him walk, and to get up and down stairs." Continue reading →

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