"An anti-NSA surveillance nationwide protest and online campaign was triggered on Thursday. It aimed to restore the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which protects US citizens from 'unreasonable searches and seizures.'" Continue reading →
"It’s official: the Bank of England and the European Central Bank announced a policy of guaranteed counterfeiting on a permanent basis. They will keep short-term interest rates low for years. They did not say for how many years. The promise of unlimited counterfeiting pushed up European stock markets. This joint announcement makes it clear that Europe’s central banks have no exit policy, any more than the Federal Reserve does. Once a central bank adopts monetary inflation, it cannot stop without creating a recession. Europe’s central bankers have decided that they prefer risking price inflation as opposed to recession." Continue reading →
"Reports are now getting out that the French government and the British government both run data-monitoring programs that involve spying as comprehensive as NSA’s. But this is not getting as much attention, because they have not had leakers with stolen documents that prove this. The protests of European governments against NSA spying on their people turns out to be turf war. The government’s politicians resent the fact that the NSA has invaded their turf. Only domestic spies are allowed to spy on domestic populations in European countries. Privacy is a thing of the past all over the world. The cost of spying on us keeps falling." Continue reading →
"Two insurance companies have announced that they will no longer offer health care insurance to individuals in California next year. They will sell policies only to group insurance policies. Obama promised this: 'If you like your health insurance, keep it.' He and Pelosi forget this: 'Of course, your existing company may decide not to sell it to you after we’re finished with the health insurance system.' Nobody says that companies have to sell policies that are money-losers. So, the way for companies to protect themselves against rising claims is to pull out of the market. If other firms think they want the risk, they can keep selling these individual policies." Continue reading →
"New York passed the SAFE law on gun manufacturers in January, after debating for one day. That sent a message to one gun manufacturer. It bought 600 acres — almost a square mile — of land in Pennsylvania. It’s moving out. The Kahr company’s vice president of sales explained: 'One of our big concerns was, OK, the SAFE Act was passed in the middle of the night. You wake up the next morning and boom, that was it. We just felt like, gee, if they can do this, what can they do next?' This used to be called 'voting with your feet.' If you get tired of living under a government’s taxes and regulations, you move." Continue reading →
"The Domestic Surveillance Project division of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced Thursday that it plans to file a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) ruling which authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect metadata on domestic phone calls. Domestic Surveillance Project Director Amie Stepanovich made the announcement at a Restore the Fourth rally in Washington on Thursday, one of several rallies across the country dedicated to protesting the NSA’s sweeping spying programs and invoke the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures." Continue reading →
"One of the most profitable red light camera intersections in Virginia Beach, Virginia has been pulling in millions based from faulty engineering. The automated ticketing machine at the corner of Great Neck Road and Virginia Beach Boulevard generated $10 million worth of red light camera tickets, only to see profits tumble 64 percent when the yellow signal timing was extended by half-a-second in January. The longer yellows provide only partial relief, as the city and its for-profit vendor Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia have issued 92 percent of the tickets to drivers turning right on red in a perfectly safe manner." Continue reading →
"In 2000, the US Supreme Court ruled that warrantless narcotics checkpoints in Indiana were unconstitutional. Police in at least two states have responded by setting up fake checkpoints, and then stopping motorists who seek to avoid them. Police in Mayfield Heights, Ohio are now using the same tactic by placing 'Drug Checkpoint Ahead' signs in the express lanes of Interstate 271. Although such checkpoints are illegal, observes Professor Ric Simmons of Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, lying about one is not, because police 'can lie to anybody.'" Continue reading →
"Apple’s Nevada data center has been in the works for quite some time: a 2,200-acre plot outside of Reno will host a 90,000-square-foot datacenter that, in turn, will support the tech giant’s cloud services. Apple will reportedly spend $1 billion over the next decade on the facilities, in return for significant tax abatements at the city, county and state levels. It will also fund and build a 137-acre solar farm, managed in conjunction with NV Energy, to power the datacenter (it will generate approximately 43.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity). The Reno datacenter will be the third Apple cloud facility in the U.S. that is powered largely or entirely by solar power." Continue reading →
"It looks like Apple didn't buckle and provide mass data to the USG until after the death of Steve Jobs. Microsoft, which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan 'Your privacy is our priority,' appears to be the first to have buckled, in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and Apple,which joined the program in 2012." Continue reading →