"City leaders in Riverside, California are backing off the promise made last November to allow residents to make the call about whether to keep or eliminate red light cameras. The city council votes later today on a staff recommendation to pull the plug on the public vote. The city has already postponed the ballot measure that was to be considered in June." Continue reading →
"Robert Khuzami, the former head of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is joining Kirkland & Ellis LLP, reports BusinessWeek. Mark Filip, a partner in charge of Kirkland’s government enforcement defense and internal investigations, said Khuzami will help immediately in securities enforcement defense, advising boards and companies and counseling financial institutions on securities regulations." Continue reading →
"Adam is in a cage in solitary confinement, and he wants to reach out to his friends and fans in person. For the next few hours, he'll be able to interact with his fans through the mail, and he'd like to be able to thank his supporters personally and answer any questions they might have. While the government has desperately struggled to silence Adam, we shouldn't forget about the positivity that defines his approach. I would love for everyone to send him messages about how they woke up to the liberty movement, and how they plan to spread the message of Liberty in their own personal lives. Let's make sure that the Man can't get him down." Continue reading →
"Inventors are continuing to tap into the power of surveillance cameras, and capabilities that might have seemed like James Bond tricks are now reality, such as face-recognition software and license-plate readers. One such invention aims to 'see' potential crime before it happens. AISight is software that uses artificial intelligence to learn over time what normal behavior the camera records, so it can recognize when there is abnormal behavior. The system will send an alert to whoever is monitoring the cameras, such as a security guard, who can then decide how to react to the situation." Continue reading →
"Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly said she knew nothing about American surveillance activities in Germany. But documents show that German intelligence cooperates closely with the NSA and even uses spy software provided by the US. The shift to a more offensive German security policy began in 2007. Since then, there have been 'regular US-German analytic exchanges and closer cooperation in tracking both German and non-German extremist targets.' The German foreign intelligence agency went even further in its effort to please the Americans, 'working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws'." Continue reading →
"Istanbul’s administrative court gave a green light to demolish city’s Gezi Park, which was at the center of heated nationwide protests sparked by the decision to get rid of the park and turn it into a monument to the Ottoman Empire. The protests against the construction spread nationally since late May, growing into a larger opposition by those unhappy with Erdogan’s 'authoritarian style of rule.' The park has turned into a cradle of anti-government unrest, where the protests quickly became violent as police used teargas and water canon to disperse protesters. The demonstrations resulted in the death of four people and around 7,500 injured." Continue reading →
"The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed permission to the U.S. government for a controversial program to collect telephone metadata in bulk. The office of the Director of National Intelligence said the government filed an application with the FISC seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and the court renewed that authority, which expired on Friday. The information was being disclosed 'in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the telephony metadata collection program,' and an earlier decision by DNI James R. Clapper to declassify certain information relating to the program, it said." Continue reading →
"The letter continues, 'the Government is prohibited ... from indiscriminately sifting through the data. The data-base may only be queried for intelligence purposes by NSA analysts where there is a reasonable, articulable suspicion (RAS), based on specific facts.' If the government wants to take a closer look, any data gleaned must be associated with people or phone numbers already identified and approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2012, the letter revealed, the court approved fewer than 300 'query terms' that would allow intelligence analysts to pursue a phone call further." Continue reading →
"The process for determining subsidy eligibility could require 21 different steps, involving at least five separate entities—the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service, and state exchanges—and utilizing a process called the Income and Family Size Verification Project. Yet the Obama Administration believes spending more money will solve the problem. Just for the IRS implementation of Obamacare, the Administration requested $439.6 million for nearly 2,000 bureaucrats." Continue reading →
"On Thursday, we learned that the decision had been made for the city of Detroit to formally file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It was going to be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States by far, but on Friday it was stopped at least temporarily by an Ingham County judge. How 'honoring the president' has anything to do with the bankruptcy of Detroit is a bit of a mystery, but what that judge has done is ensured that there will be months of legal wrangling ahead over Detroit's money woes. But one thing is for sure - the city of Detroit is flat broke. One of the greatest cities in the history of the world is just a shell of its former self." Continue reading →