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For the 4th day in a row, the magical VIX clubbers are back at work to manufacture a 2,100 print for the S&P 500…
S&P and Dow scrambled back to green…
S&P 500 at 2,100 means everything is awesome?
So down overnight?
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In a speech given in Elkhart, Indiana on Wednesday, President Obama called for a strengthening social security, and even expanding the benefits of the program.
Obama's tone on the entitlement program (that is underfunded by trillions of dollars) went over well with the progressive base, who were still upset about Obama's wavering about a social security "task force" a few years ago, and his support of social security being linked to a chained CPI which would effectively lower the cost of living adjustments for recipients. Of course the plan called for the "wealthiest Americans" to pay for it, which resonated even more. The White House downplayed that the comments were part of any type of pressure the president had been under from liberal groups, saying it's been Obama's stance all along.
From Politico
President Barack Obama called for expanding Social Security on Wednesday, prompting progressive groups to declare victory after they tangled with him over a plan to save costs in the entitlement program three years ago.
“And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned,” Obama said in an economic call to arms in Elkhart, Indiana. “We could start paying for it by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more.”
The White House dismissed suggestions that Obama’s statement marked any policy change.
“For many years — dating back to before he became president — President Obama has made clear that we need to strengthen Social Security,” a White House official wrote in an email. “In his speech today, the president reiterated that as we ensure the program’s solvency for generations to come, we should also enhance benefits so that Americans can retire with dignity.”
But while Obama repeatedly called for ways to shore up the Social Security trust fund — including possibly taxing the rich — he said, as he ran for reelection in 2012, that he would not “slash benefits” or privatize the program.
However, it’s unclear whether he has officially backed expanding benefits. In fact, in 2013, he endorsed a plan to change the way cost-of-living increases are measured for Social Security, to a formula known as “chained CPI,” that would have slowed the growth of checks relative to inflation.
Progressives are crediting Bernie Sanders for Obama's pivot to bringing the issue of social security back up. Sanders has unquestionable momentum generated by his presidential campaign, and Sanders also spearheaded a letter in 2015 that was signed by Democratic members of congress including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), calling on Obama to fill gaps in shrinking retirement plans by expanding social security, something Obama spoke about on Wednesday when he said that fewer and fewer people have pensions they can really count on.
“If anyone has ever wondered what impact the grass-roots political revolution behind Bernie Sanders is having on the future of the Democratic Party, the sharp, populist progressive turn that President Obama made today on Social Security expansion should answer those questions," said Democracy for America chairman Jim Dean in a statement.
* * *
Of course, the "wealthiest Americans" don't have pockets deep enough to pay for all of the unfunded liabilities of the federal government, especially not when they're going to be taxed significantly to cover state pension deficits first. Incidentally, this is the problem that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan continues to hammer on in his atonement tour.
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Are non-inclusive safe spaces—ones designed for members of a specific minority—bastions of toleration? Not at the Claremont Colleges.
One of the more curious demands made by activists students in the past few months has been the repeated call for segregated safe spaces: places where black students, Latino students, female students, etc., could go to feel comfortable and protected. Such spaces are often closed to people who don’t belong to the group, even if those people are supportive. At the University of Missouri, for instance, students of color formed a blacks-only healing space, and asked white allies to leave. If the space were to be invaded by members of an out-group, it would become unsafe—that’s the thinking.
The Claremont Independent, a conservative student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges, recently obtained screenshots from a virtual safe space: 5C Women of Color, a Facebook group for black female students at the colleges. The group was private. It no longer exists—the women shut it down after they discovered that the Independent was planning to run an article about it.
I don’t really want to shame these young women, who probably never expected that their conversations would become fully public. And I’m sure context would mitigate the offensiveness of some of their remarks.
But the reality is undeniable: this so-called safe space is just really racist. One woman, an Asian student, referred to Asian men as “nerdy ones who can just hide in their tech caves” and “they get all angry when it comes to how Asian men are asexualized/emasculated.” Another female student, who works for the Asian American Resource Center and sits on the mental health committee, commented, “F*ck your masculinity whiny Asian cis bros this is why I only hang out with femmes.”
This person agreed to an interview with the Independent, so I will quote her by name:
“As a feminine gay Asian woman,” Kristine Lee told the Independent, “I’m not interested in surrounding myself with the kind of possessive, toxic masculinity exhibited by the type of Asian American men we were discussing in the post.”
Other students talked about their unwillingness to enroll in classes that would be “dominated by white men.” Another student didn’t want to take a class that was taught by a conservative professor of color.
One student, who had been adopted, complained about her white parents. Another responded by making fun of white people’s paleness and receding hairlines.
It was okay to make fun of white people because they were responsible for colonialism, said another.
Again, these students are entitled to their feelings. They may have had really bad experiences with white and Asian men—and conservative black professors—that validate their feelings. But they are clearly demeaning entire categories of people based on specific negative interactions. Is this not a kind of racism?
One of the purposes of a college education is to undermine racist and collectivist thinking by exposing students to the uniqueness and intrinsic worth of all people, regardless of skin color, gender, sexuality, ability status, etc. Imagine a student from a socially conservative background meeting an out-gay person for the first time and developing a new attitude about gay rights, or a militant atheist learning to empathize with devout followers of Christianity or Islam, or a Midwesterner developing an appreciation for Chinese culture after taking a class about it. This is the public good that college is supposed to facilitate.
But if students break off into groups based on immutable identity—and constantly reaffirm their prejudices about members of other identity-based groups—they aren’t just missing the point of college: they are actively working against it.
Students, of course, have free speech and assembly rights, and should be allowed to sort themselves into whatever groups they want (even at Harvard). It should go without saying, but I don’t think Claremont should take any action against these students or discourage their activities. But the next time students demand a formal race-based safe space—they have already done so at Western Washington University, the University of Arizona, and other places—the public should keep in mind that there are good reasons to rebuff them.
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While June rate-hike odds slide, July’s conditional probability of a hike is surging to 48% – its highest since the end of QE3 following Dallas Fed’s Robert Kaplan’s comments that “rates this low can cause distortions,” adding that the US economy is “getting to the point where it makes sense to hike rates.”
But given all that relative hawkishness… Kaplan goes CYA…
And the reaction in markets…
Chart: Bloomberg (Note – these are conditional probabilities of a hike at that point in time (not cumulative))
This implies July is the next rate-hike and then we are done until at least December… which is perhaps why the long-end of the curve is seeing rates tumble.
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Submitted by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,
The Islamic State (ISIS) has been making up for its oil profit losses by increasing the taxes it levies on the people living on territory it still controls.
Terrorism experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez from the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism concluded in their report on Wednesday that "ISIS's military defeat is not imminent… as things stand, ISIS economic collapse remains some way off in the mid-term."
At $2.4 billion in revenues during 2015, it made $500 million less than the year before, according to the researchers’ figures. Despite the drops – reportedly caused by the international military coalition’s attacks on the group’s oil strongholds, “ISIS remains the richest terrorist organization on the planet.”
Enhanced extortion tactics used by the group have led tax revenues to increase from $360 million in 2014 to almost $800 million in 2015, the authors said.
Evidence of the group’s failing financial state has been mounting as it cut fighters’ salaries in half for a second time earlier this year.
The U.S. military has said ISIS has lost control of roughly 40 percent of its territory, though eight million men, women and children still reside in occupied lands.
Those who remain face an array of taxes, all marketed as zakat, or tithings. There is a 10 percent income tax, up to 15 percent in business taxes, five percent fees for cash withdrawals and up to 35 percent in taxes on essential drugs.
Christians must also pay the jizyah tax, which ensures their protection from ISIS’ enforcers.
"It's really an adaptive organization," Brisard told CNNMoney. "What strikes me is the fact that they're clearly behaving as managers, not simple looters. They really have budget requirements, and they're compensating."
Researchers estimate that Turkish buyers have been conducting business with organizations in ISIS controlled territory, but the United Nations has not been able to approve an embargo on countries or individuals known to work with the terrorists, Brisard said, noting that the situation is “absurd.”
In the meantime, Oilprice.com sources on the ground in Turkey caution that much of the reports claiming that Turkey is complicit in smuggling ISIS oil is Russian propaganda. It is also the result of skewed information on smuggling chains that have existed long before the emergence of ISIS and not through major Turkish suppliers or the government.
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"It is a sad day for Miami, the United States and the game of golf" is the way Donald Trump started his statement in response to the news that the PGA Tour has decided to move a long-standing golf tournament from Donald Trump's golf course in Miami, Florida.
The PGA Tour announced Wednesday that the event formerly known as the WGC-Cadillac Championship that was held at Trump National Doral will now be called the WGC-Mexico Championship, and will be held at a venue in Mexico City starting in 2017.
Trump Doral had been the site of a PGA Tour event since 1962 according to ESPN, and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem insists that it is not a political decision.
"Some of the reaction revolves around the feeling that this is a political exercise, and it is not that in any way, shape, or form. The decision here was based on the reality that we were not able to secure sponsorship for next year's WGC at Doral or for years out for that matter. At the same time, we had an opportunity to build what we think is going to be a spectacular event in an area that is strategically important to the growth of the sport and the activity of the PGA Tour that has been focused in South America and Central America for the last good number of years" Finchem said.
Cadillac did not renew its sponsorship after the 2016 tournament, and even though in 2013 the PGA Tour announced a 10-year contract extension with Trump National Doral through 2023, the deal was contingent upon title sponsorship. A sponsorship requires around $10 million for one event according to ESPN.
Although the move from the Tour's perspective was business related, Finchem hinted that the tournament's inability to find a sponsor may have been related to Trump's politics: "I know everybody's talking about politics, but it's actually not that, in my view. I think it's more Donald Trump is a brand, a big brand, and when you're asking a company to invest millions of dollars in branding a tournament and they're going to share that brand with the host, it's a difficult conversation."
The irony wasn't lost on the world's former number one ranked golfer Rory McIlroy, who said "It's quite ironic that we're going to Mexico after being at Doral. We just jump over the wall."
As for Trump, he had his usual headline grabbing comments on the matter as well.
"I just heard that the PGA Tour is taking their tournament out of Miami and moving it to Mexico. It's at Doral, they use one of my places – They're moving it to Mexico City which by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance."
* * *
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle on what happened to the tournament, but one thing is for sure, there is rarely a dull moment when it comes to The Donald.
Full Trump Statement
"It is a sad day for Miami, the United States and the game of golf, to have the PGA Tour consider moving the World Golf Championships, which has been hosted in Miami for the last 55 years, to Mexico. No different than Nabisco, Carrier and so many other American companies, the PGA Tour has put profit ahead of thousands of American jobs, millions of dollars in revenue for local communities and charities and the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of fans who make the tournament an annual tradition. This decision only further embodies the very reason I am running for President of the United States."
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The Fed may be worried about deflation – and specifically wage deflation, which is now failing to keep up with rent, tuition, housing and healthcare – but when it comes to the the favorite stomping grounds of Wall Street’s partygoers, it has nothing to worry about: inflation here is alive and well. Case in point, this weekend’s launch of the official summer season in Southampton, where as Page 6 reports, among the usual sights were record prices and a long wait for tables at a new Hamptons hot spot which set off a near-brawl over the weekend.
The drinks menu at the new Jue Lan Club in Southampton includes a 6-liter Methuselah of Dom Perignon Rose for an astonishing $27,000, and a 3-liter Jeroboam of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque Rosé for $12,000 (usually retails at around $1,600).
And there’s a 3-liter bottle of Dom Perignon for $7,600.
Do high prices scare of consumers? According to Page 6 the restaurant was so packed that “people had to wait hours for tables and someone punched the owner, Stratis Morfogen.” Maybe for not charging more and keeping the rifraf, i.e., below bulge bracket bankers out…
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A story in the Los Angeles Times describes a cultural crossroads that would have sounded like science fiction 60 years ago. It’s about immigrants coming to California from Latin America, getting jobs in Orange County restaurants, and deciding to learn the language to get ahead. And by “the language,” I mean Vietnamese.
The basic reasons for this are simple enough. Orange County has more than 10,000 Vietnamese-owned businesses; a great deal of the available labor pool came from Mexico and other points south; the businesses hire who’s available; the workers know a useful skill when they see one. But there are a lot of culturally specific details as well. My favorite:
For Vietnamese restaurant owners there’s an added benefit, though few like to admit it openly: They worry less about Latino workers, especially chefs, taking what they’ve learned and being able to become rivals in hypercompetitive Little Saigon.
“In the Viet owner’s eyes, it’s easy to understand how they can rely on Latino workers to keep family recipes within the family,” [restaurant consultant Andrea] Nguyen says.
The reporter speaks with several Latinos who have been working on their Vietnamese, including the Mexican-American head waiter at a place called Song Long, who appears to have mastered the language. Naturally, their comments to the paper are all in English.
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After some wrangling, New Hampshire’s legislature has just approved some modest reforms to its system of police asset forfeiture. Actually, they could have been huge changes. Simply reading what they’re changing suggests that what they’re doing is a big deal. But the devil, as always, is in the details.
The biggest change is that state law will now require a criminal conviction or plea agreement in order to seize somebody’s property. On paper, this would appear to be a huge deal. One of the biggest problems that results in the abuse by police of the forfeiture process is “civil asset forfeiture.” Under civil forfeiture, officials do not have to land a conviction in order to seize somebody’s assets. Often times they don’t even have to file charges. They just have to argue, under much looser evidentiary standards, that the money or property is connected to criminal behavior. And because it’s a civil process, people aren’t guaranteed lawyers and the system is significantly different (and often more confusing).
Requiring a conviction should be a big change. And in addition, the reforms would increase the evidentiary threshold to connect property with a crime and puts the burden of proof on the state to show guilt, rather than the accused to prove innocence.
On paper, this would appear to be an end to civil asset forfeiture. That would be good for New Hampshire, which currently has terrible asset forfeiture laws, according to the forfeiture-fighting team at the Institute for Justice. They give the state a D- grade on the rules it currently has in place, which don’t require convictions and allow law enforcement to keep 90 percent of what they seize. These rule changes would be a boon to New Hampshire residents, and the Institute for Justice did praise the bill as “an encouraging reform package.”
But there is one great big problem. The Department of Justice has its own asset forfeiture program, and through its system of “Equitable Sharing,” creates a path for law enforcement agencies to bypass state law and turn to the federal government to seize people’s cash and property under laxer rules. Many states have seen a huge jump in police seizure through the Department of Justice’s Equitable Sharing Program over the past decade, even as they tighten rules for forfeiture.
We see this in New Hampshire, even under its current lax laws. The state doesn’t actually seize much through its own state rules. The New Hampshire Union Leader notes that the state only brought in about $100,000 through its own seizure laws for 2015.
But the Institute for Justice looked over the state’s participation in the federal program, and there’s a huge difference. Between 2000 and 2013, New Hampshire brought in more than $15 million with the help of the Department of Justice through the seizure program. The Union Leader story makes no reference to the revenue the police bring in from federal seizures, making this all look like small potatoes. In reality, there’s a huge amount of money coming in from a different path.
These new state reforms give no suggestion that there will be any changes with New Hampshire police turning to the feds to more easily seize assets and property. When Nebraska recently passed reforms to asset forfeiture, also eliminating the “civil” forfeiture component, they also made sure to add restrictions that control when law enforcement agencies can turn to the Department of Justice’s program.
The law had initially eliminated the state’s drug forfeiture fund and rolled forfeitures through the state system into the general fund. This would have been a good tool for decreasing the incentives for police to seize, but police complained and Gov. Maggie Hassan threatened a veto. The drug forfeiture fund has apparently been restored.
While it is good that New Hampshire is making efforts to reduce abuse, I fear that without some major federal reforms, we’re not going to see anything actually different in the Granite State. A group of lawmakers in D.C. is attempting much-needed federal reforms.
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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath — not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the Constitution. So there’s this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you’re asked to participate in.
By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.
– From the post: A Whistleblower Manifesto by Edward Snowden
Yesterday, Forbes published an interesting and disturbing article profiling a company called Ability Inc in the post: For $20M, These Israeli Hackers Will Spy On Any Phone On The Planet.
First, the good news. As the article notes, the company has been struggling as of late with lawsuits and it seems obvious to me that the reason Ability agreed to talk to Forbes is for some free advertising. If the company was performing particularly well, there’d be no need to agree to this interview and executives would try to keep their business practices as clandestine as possible. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that a global “industry” like this exists in the first place. While virtually all countries in the world have harsh penalties for individuals who decide to do drugs on their own time and to their own bodies, governments appear to have no problem with corporations that exist solely to violate people’s privacy. Probably because these same governments as the main clients of such companies. The fact that we put up with this and pretend it’s a legitimate business practice is an embarrassment to us as a species.
Now, without further ado, here are some excerpts from the Forbes piece:
With just a few million dollars and a phone number, you can snoop on any call or text that phone makes – no matter where you are or where the device is located.
That’s the bold claim of Israel’s Ability Inc, which offers its set of bleeding-edge spy tools to governments the world over. And it’s plotting to flog its kit to American cops in the coming months.
Ability’s most startling product, from both technical and price perspectives, is the Unlimited Interception System (ULIN). Launched in November last year, it can cost as much as $20 million, depending on how many targets the customer wants to surveil. All a ULIN customer requires is the target’s phone number or the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity), the unique identifier for an individual mobile device. Got those? Then boom – you can spy on a target’s location, calls and texts.
ULIN has no such geographic limitation. A quarterly update document posted only on May 2, spells out the tech’s power: “ULIN enables interception of voice calls, SMS messages and call-related information of GSM/UMTS/LTE phones, without the need to be close to the intercepted phone and without the consent of mobile network operators [emphasis by FORBES] and requires only the mobile device’s phone number or IMSI. Customers can use ULIN to intercept calls, and gather other information, from anywhere in the world.”
Ability’s service – it is the sole licensee from an unknown third party – exploits a weakness resident in SS7, the Signalling System No. 7. A core part of the world’s shared networking infrastructure, SS7 helps route calls between different carriers and switching centers. Service providers often use SS7 to support communications in areas where the customer’s normal network isn’t available, such as when the user is abroad. For instance, when a Verizon user is holidaying in Spain, local carriers will use SS7 to “speak” with the customer’s operator to determine who provides its service.
Hackers, however, use weaknesses in the SS7 network for a number of nefarious purposes. For instance, to forward calls heading to voicemail to their own devices. They can do this because wireless networks do not have the necessary safeguards to block these attacks. Concerns around SS7 have led House Democrat Ted Lieu to demand a Congressional investigation and the Federal Communications Commission has launched its own probe.
Ted Lieu is one of the few members of Congress worth anything. See:
This is What Happens When a Member of Congress Holds a Computer Science Degree (*Hint: Logic).
and
Apple Vows to Defend Its Customers as the FBI Launches a War on Privacy and Security
Previously, government contractors selling SS7 exploitation tools had to work with wireless service providers to access the SS7 network. These tools, according to a Washington Post report in 2014, were only able to detect users’ locations, not intercept communication. Ability, however, can do much more.
According to documents seen by FORBES, one of which was leaked by an anonymous source (published below and on Document Cloud), Ability’s ULIN service allows it to locate targets and snoop on calls and texts – without any assistance from the cellular networks. According to whitehat hacker Drew Porter from security consultancy Red Mesa, this is technically feasible, and could be done in two ways: by hacking the SS7 network or by leasing a system from a carrier that has the ability to “talk” to large parts of the network.
“Having access to SS7 is really a golden key of surveillance, I’m not surprised [Ability] capitalized on it,” said Claudio Guarnieri, a security and human rights advocate who this week helped launch a map of attacks on journalists and activists, as well as the surveillance vendors facilitating global spying. He plans to add Ability to the map this week.
Karsten Nohl, a German whitehat hacker from Security Research Labs who has frequently highlighted security shortcomings in SS7, said the intercept capabilities that SS7 provides “are probably the most powerful currently available.”
SS7 exploit services have created anxieties around a lack of oversight over their use. Until last year, cops in the United States used Stingrays without warrants. Following complaints from civil rights bodies, the Department of Justice mandated warrants, but the invasive tool had already been deployed and the damage done.
The same could happen with tools like ULIN, warned Nathan Wessler, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This system means that law enforcement will have the ability to conduct wiretaps and location tracking without anybody scrutinizing what they’re doing, and nobody may have the opportunity to push back and demand appropriate legal process,” Wessler told FORBES.
While U.S. law enforcement officers are able to get phone records from carriers with the right warrant, the Ability service means they don’t need to get such permission, he added. “There is a significance to cutting the phone companies out of that transaction, because it makes it trivially easy to totally bypass the legal protections that are required under the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”
American cops may soon be paying big bucks for Ability’s tech. The Israeli company is planning a significant expansion in America this year and is currently looking for a partner to help it sell to U.S. law enforcement, says Ability’s CEO, Anatoly Hurgin, who I spoke with as he was driving to his office in Tel Aviv on Thursday morning and later that afternoon from his company HQ.
“You cannot just ignore such a huge market. It’s about half of the world market for our kind of technology,” he said. An SEC filing detailing Ability’s merger with Cambridge Capital Acquisition Corporation, which helped the Israeli company go public, indicates the market is indeed blowing up; the U.S. lawful intercept industry worth $3.8 billion in 2015 is expected to hit $6.3 billion in 2020. That same document valued Ability at $225 million, though it’s current market cap is down at $71.1M.
Notice how he describes violating the U.S. Constitution as a “huge market.”
Hurgin’s tools may allow for easy snooping on others, but he told me he cares about his own privacy. There’s very little public information about him. His LinkedIn profile reveals nothing beyond his position at Ability. His Google+ and Skype avatars show a thin man, grey hair, sunglasses. Hurgin says he started Ability with its equally enigmatic Russian co-founder Alexander Aurovsky after a long stint in the Israeli Defense Forces, but he won’t tell me what division. He says it wasn’t the noted Unit 8200 or Shin Bet. “I started as an electronic engineer,” is all he says.
Despite the bold claims, Ability’s tool may not be as “unlimited” as advertised. Kohl notes that some operators have already deployed firewalls that prevent SS7 attacks. Many more will do so this year, he claimed, noting he is helping a handful of unnamed operators set up those firewalls. “SS7 firewalls block messages types that are clearly abusive and also some other possibly abusive messages from strange senders. A few firewall rules go a long way to solve 90 per cent of the SS7 security issue.”
Is Hurgin concerned about his pricey product becoming obsolete? “This concern does exist. But talking about [fixing the networks] and doing something are different things.”
But this month, the company suddenly found itself under threat of legal action from its own investors. Having started trading publicly on the Nasdaq in December, Ability had a steady start, but in May shares started tanking. Though Hurgin put a positive spin on profits, they masked a glaring issue: Ability had been compelled to restate its results for 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012 as it had failed to report money owed to an unnamed third-party vendor across two of those years and had improperly reported allocation and timing of revenue.
By September, Hurgin believes ULIN will be able to intercept internet traffic, including web and app use. He can’t promise, however, it will be able to hoover up encrypted data.
ULIN is a young product, and may not be in wide use. According to May’s results document, Ability has sold only one ULIN product at the low end of its price scale, but has “received inquiries from a number of existing and potential customers.” It will treat that first customer, who will not be doing cross-border exploitation but focusing on targets within their own country, as a beta test. Hurgin tells me the firm has customers in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Did that include the UK? “Let’s say we’re in touch.”
Ability isn’t the only company to target SS7 so aggressively. Indeed, Ability didn’t actually design the ULIN product, nor does it own the technology, but licenses it from an unnamed third-party. The company is investing research and development for the system, and is the only one deploying the tool on its own infrastructure, but it has relied on another firm for the core system. That other firm is only described in SEC filings as “a newly established corporation with a short operating history and is still unknown in the industry.”
It’s clear, though, that at least one company is happy to expose the security of the telecoms backbone for significant profit. And the surveillance is only getting more invasive. As with any technology, where one crosses the Rubicon, others will follow, regardless of the potential degradation of people’s privacy.
So how does this unethical person justify the obvious harm to humanity his company is attempting to inflict?
Hurgin, meanwhile, says governments need the technology to counter the rising threat of terrorism. “It is a war.”
Terrorism. The authoritarian and financial opportunists’ justification to do absolutely anything.
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