Border property owners livid after feds seize their private land
"The Department of Homeland Security is buying up property, but paying very little for it. They may use it to build up permanent camera towers near the border." Continue reading →
Hacker: US government tricked Anonymous into attacking foreign targets
"Just as a former member of Anonymous accuses the United States government of coercing hackers to do their dirty work in America’s cyberwars, the sentencing hearing for the group’s alleged ex-ringleader has been mysteriously delayed yet again. News has surfaced that the hacker-turned-informant who compromised the underground movement for the FBI and helped facilitate Hammond’s arrest will remain free for now. Hector Xavier Monsegur, a single father from New York involved with a number of high-profile hacks carried out by Anonymous and its offshoots, pleaded guilty to a dozen criminal counts two years prior and stands to face more a maximum sentence of more than 124 years." Continue reading →
Obamacare is About to Get More Personal
"Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and a dozen other state attorneys general asked U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to implement more stringent privacy requirements and safeguards on these so-called navigators. Who is in charge of monitoring these navigators? Who will be liable if someone’s identity is stolen? And who is responsible for alerting the American public about fraud prevention? Bondi said that the HHS is making it easier for your private information to fall into the wrong hands by cutting back on employee background checks and eliminating a fingerprinting requirement for navigators and those that work with them." Continue reading →
The NSA and Its “Compliance Problems”
"For ordinary citizens, 'compliance problems' with the law are better known as 'crimes' (or possibly civil wrongs) and these lead to judgment debts, fines, and possibly even jail time, depending on the severity of the lack-of-compliance. But for government officials such notions are irrelevant — legal compliance problems are just something you file a report about, and send to another bureaucrat higher up in the government chain, so that he can bury it on his desk. Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. The notion of the rule of law is the wellspring of an endless stream of hypocrisy in the modern social-democratic welfare-warfare state." Continue reading →
Arrests in Vanuatu over dubious citizenship approvals
"Among those arrested are a former chairman of the Citizenship Commission and former MP, Jack Eric, and a former secretary of the Commission, Eloi Leye. Chief Inspector, George Toomey, has declined to give details but says those investigated include politicians, leaders and public servants. He says the suspects have been selling Vanuatu citizenship at a low price and ignored the law that requires ten years’ residence for a foreigner to become a citizen. Sources close to the citizenship office and police say it has became a tradition that a month before general elections, politicians collect applications forms from the citizenship office in order to receive sponsorship for their political campaign." Continue reading →
Freedom Requires Whistleblowers: The Importance of Transparency
"Does it bother you that government agencies are able to spy on everything you do online? The power we give to one set of leaders continues to the next, whether you agree with them or not. Prof. James Otteson says we should be concerned about government overreach. The government should be accountable to the citizens, not the other way around. Whistleblowers play an important role in making sure the people know when the government is doing things it shouldn't do." Continue reading →
Sales Of Public Data To Marketers Can Mean Big $$ For Governments
"Spokesperson Andrew Cole confirms the Secretary of State sells business information for monetary amounts ranging from $200 to $12,000, depending on frequency and amount of information requested. The Secretary of State also sold voter registration information — including names, addresses and political party affiliation of voters — for $58,000, last year. The Denver Clerk and Recorder made $32,000 last year selling home sale data. It happens in college, too. The University of Colorado Boulder buys names from the SAT for 33 cents each and names from the ACT for 34 cents each. CU sells student information to private meal plans and storage companies for $15,000 a year." Continue reading →
Civil liberties may not survive the ‘Gorgon Stare’
"At the top of the executive branch, President Obama and his team favor Orwellian euphemism, preferring wordblobs like 'disposition matrix' to the harsh Anglo-Saxon of 'kill list' -- mumbling 'kinetic military action' when what they really mean is 'war.' But further down the administrative ladder, the language sometimes gets admirably blunt. The National Security Agency has programs with names like 'TRAFFICTHIEF' and 'PANOPTICON.' And DHS has even expressed interest in 'Gorgon Stare,' a drone-mounted camera array under development by the Air Force that can watch whole cities at a time (and turn the inhabitants to stone?)." Continue reading →
Obama Signs Law Gutting Insider Trading Regulations For Congress
"President Obama signed a law that gutted the reporting requirements originally included in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. Before these changes were made the STOCK Act required congressional staffers to disclose their finances to the public to help ensure they were not engaging in corrupt practices. But on second thought, President Obama and Congress decided that congressional staffers should be able to escape transparency. Unanimous consent, no one wanted to put their name down as openly supporting corruption while supporting corruption. And now President Obama has signed the bill guaranteeing a more corrupt Washington." Continue reading →
Spendopedia: Federal waste collection site opens on Internet
"Has government waste become so bad that we need an encyclopedia to keep track? One watchdog group seems to think so and has started a publicly edited, crowdsourced website that compiles cases of fiscal abuse, modeled after the popular site Wikipedia. Spendopedia, launched this month, is an attempt to organize examples of fiscal waste into a central, easily searchable database. The site documents programs that have been labeled as wasteful by news organizations, members of Congress or federal investigators. The website catalogs more than 100 examples of waste, including a lavish conference of the GSA and excessive severance packages at the Energy Department." Continue reading →
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