Land Of The Flea

The Real, Terrifying Reason Why British Authorities Detained David Miranda

"Those in power were angry and impulsively acted on that anger. They're lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they're not to be messed with -- that the normal rules of polite conduct don't apply to people who screw with them. That's probably the scariest explanation of all. Both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence apparatuses have enormous money and power, and they have already demonstrated that they are willing to ignore their own laws. Once they start wielding that power unthinkingly, it could get really bad for everyone." Continue reading →

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NSA’s surveillance “most serious attacks on free speech we’ve ever seen.”

"The chilling of free speech isn’t just a consequence of surveillance. It’s also a motive. We adopt the art of self-censorship, closing down blogs, watching what we say on Facebook, forgoing 'private' email for fear that any errant word may come back to haunt us in one, five or fifteen 15 years. 'The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting,' writes Janna Malamud Smith. Indeed. Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that 'the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.' Hentoff stressed that privacy invasions of this magnitude are 'attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.'" Continue reading →

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Banish the trolls, but web debate still needs anonymity

"So the proprietor of the Huffington Post has decided to ban anonymous commenting from the site. It seems like common sense [that people will behave better]. Whether it is supported by evidence is uncertain. The most striking study I’ve come across is the experiment conducted by the (South) Korea Communications Commission from July 2007. From that month onwards, anyone wanting to comment on any of the 146 Korean websites with more than 100,000 members was required by law to submit resident registration or credit card details. The hypothesis behind the requirement was that people would behave better online if they were easily identifiable. But it didn’t turn out that way. Continue reading →

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Drone crashes into crowd at American ‘Running of the Bulls’

"The inaugural installment of an American adaptation of the famous Spanish 'Running of the Bulls' ended up with an unintended sideshow when a drone filming the action crashed into the audience. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that five people suffered minor injuries during the incident at the first 'Great Bull Run' in Virginia on Saturday, when the drone, operated by event organizers, went down, leading an unidentified person filming it to yell, 'It just hit that dude in the face!'" Continue reading →

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NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests

"National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said. The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT. Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of 'INT,' such as 'SIGINT' for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and 'HUMINT' for human intelligence, or spying. The LOVEINT violations involved overseas communications, officials said, such as spying on a partner or spouse." Continue reading →

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Edward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the internet is

"First, the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty. Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, 'the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingEdward Snowden’s not the story. The fate of the internet is

Run Snowden Run!

"NSA leaker Edward Snowden set the world on fire when he stood up to the powerful and secretive National Security Agency, exposing its illegal and unconstitutional spying to a global audience. Since that time, statists, neoconservatives, and supporters of the Obama administration have called for him to stand trial for treason. Meanwhile, civil liberties activists have hailed him as a whistleblower and a hero. Some have even suggested that the NSA should be disbanded, that its officials should be held accountable, and that Edward Snowden deserves a ticker tape parade. Today's Enemies Domestic short tackles this national conversation head-on." Continue reading →

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Why Amazon’s Fighting So Hard for a CIA Cloud Contract

"Amazon actually won the contract to build private-cloud infrastructure for the CIA in January, but IBM asked the GAO to reopen the agreement to bidding. Amazon locking down a $600 million cloud contract was clearly viewed as a serious competitive threat by IBM, which already supplies IT infrastructure to the U.S. intelligence community. Big Blue managed to successfully argue that, because it bid lower than Amazon, the contract-approval process should be reconsidered. If Amazon wins the contract and pulls that project off to the CIA’s satisfaction, it could open the door to still more federal contracts—and make the online retailer a genuine threat to longtime fed-tech contractors." Continue reading →

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Arab-American Group Asks Government to Intervene in Bank Account Closures

"A Dearborn-based Arab-American advocacy group is asking the federal government to investigate banks in southeastern Michigan for closing accounts of community members. Abbas said since the Bank Security Act (BSA) went into effect in 2001, Arab Americans have been increasingly targeted with account closures. The act requires financial institutions to monitor and report certain transactions to the FBI. 'Banks are misinformed and they are using their discretion to close accounts as a preemptive strike. If they are in doubt, they shut it down,' he said." Continue reading →

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Mike Gogulski: We Need Freedom of Speech in our Financial Commerce

"Financial privacy has almost completely disappeared, except for the very wealthiest. Cash transactions larger than $10,000, €5,000, €2,500,€1,500, €1,000 and now even €500 are being or have been outlawed in some places. And on and on. The suppression of financial speech is being used as a weapon of war against the people of this planet just as surely as drone strikes, pervasive surveillance and land mines are and have been. The time has come to begin separating money and currency from state, irrevocably and irretrievably. Free people and a free world deserve currencies that they control directly." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMike Gogulski: We Need Freedom of Speech in our Financial Commerce