Resistance to Tyranny

Leaked Cable Confirms Israeli-Saudi Coordination To Provoke War

"The classified embassy cable, written in Hebrew, constitutes the first formal evidence proving that the Saudis and Israelis are deliberately coordinating to escalate the situation in the Middle East. As is already well-known, the Saudi and Israeli common cause against perceived Iranian influence and expansion in places like Syria, Lebanon and Iraq of late has led the historic bitter enemies down a pragmatic path of unspoken cooperation as both seem to have placed the break up of the so-called 'Shia crescent' as their primary policy goal in the region."

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Saudi Arabia to allow women to drive

"In 2016, Alwaleed bin Talal, an influential Saudi prince called for an 'urgent' end to the ban, saying it is a matter not just of rights but economic necessity. He also detailed the 'economic costs' of women having to rely on private drivers or taxis, since public transit is not a viable alternative in the kingdom. Using foreign drivers drains billions of dollars from the Saudi economy, Alwaleed said. He calculated that families spend an average of $1,000 a month on a driver, money that otherwise could help household income at a time when many are making do with less."

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Is Silicon Valley Building the Infrastructure for a Police State?

"Silicon Valley firms are building surveillance and profiling tools to help government agents make sense of the massive amount of information available on social media and in publicly accessible data sets. Are they using cutting-edge technologies to keep Americans safe, or laying the groundwork for a police state?"

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LA cops plant drugs on black suspect – unaware their body cams were on

"The body cam of a fellow officer showed one officer picking up the small packet from the ground and placing it in the suspect’s wallet — before making a show of discovering it multiple times for the camera. According Shields’ attorney, Steve Levine, officer Lee seemed stunned when he was shown the video while on the witness stand, saying the officer, 'Looked dumbstruck to me. Period. He had really no answer.' According to an expert discussing how the body cams work, the officer may not have realized that the camera was running 30 seconds before he believed he activated it."

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Homeland Security Wants Facial Recognition To Identify Travelers

"US Customs and Border Protection considers its jurisdiction to be anything within 100 miles of the border, so naturally one of the privacy questions for Americans is whether this tech would be deployed inside the United States. CBP did not respond to a request for comment on this story that was sent yesterday evening. We’ll update this post if we hear back."

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Privacy fears over artificial intelligence as crimestopper

"Police in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy 'smart' cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a fugitive, missing child or straying senior. The program is part of a growing trend to use vision-based AI to thwart crime and improve public safety, a trend which has stirred concerns among privacy and civil liberties activists who fear the technology could lead to secret 'profiling' and misuse of data."

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John Whitehead: The Anatomy of a National Nervous Breakdown

"This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by—is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long."

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Napolitano: What if Government Steals Liberty and Fails to Deliver Safety?

"What if this bulk surveillance is about power and control and not about safety? What if the use of intelligence data for political purposes and not for safety is a profound danger to democracy? What if government can't keep us safe? What if we falsely think that it does keep us safe? What if that delusion makes us less safe? What if government's bulk acquisition of private data makes us less free? What if government works not for us but for itself? What do we do about it?"

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‘Stingray on steroids’: Texas National Guard has spy devices on planes

"Devices capable of accessing calls, photos and text messages on cell phones were installed on two Texas National Guard surveillance aircraft. The project was funded by over $300,000 from drug-related asset forfeitures. The cell site simulators, known as 'dirt boxes' (after the company’s acronym, DRT), are designed to mimic cell phone towers and trick every smartphone within one-third of a mile into connecting with it. This enables operators to intercept sensitive information including the user’s location, phone numbers dialed, text messages and photos. The devices can also be used to record or listen to phone calls ‒ all of it without users or service providers knowing about it."

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Almost any Intel Skylake or later system can be owned via USB attack

"The likes of the EFF have long argued that having a “black box” that can control networking and hardware, even when the computer is switched off, represents a major security and privacy risk. Turns out they were right. Security firm Positive Technologies reports being able to execute unsigned code on computers running the IME through USB. The fully fleshed-out details of the attack are yet to be known, but from what we know, it’s bad."

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