In 1996’s “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace,” John
Perry Barlow claimed, among other things, that on the Internet
“identities have no bodies” so that persons acting there are immune
to “physical coercion.” More to the point, he wrote, “Cyberspace
does not lie within your borders,” implying an insurmountable lack
of jurisdiction, and thus coercive power. As Edward Snowden’s
exile, Ross Ulbricht’s arrest, and Defense Distributed’s
capitulation attest, such a view is just plain wrong. But what 2013
showed us is that as Internet technology advances, the direct and
indirect costs that the state must incur to maintain a same level
of information control continue to increase. As a result, writes
Jerry Brito, while the Internet can, no doubt, be regulated, and
information can be controlled, and those who speak and transact can
be punished, it can only be done on an increasingly small margin,
and at an increasingly high cost.
A report from Pew Research’s Religion and Public
Life Project, “Public’s
Views on Human Evolution,” finds that 60 percent of adult
Americans believe that humans and other living things evolved over
time while 33 percent say that they existed in their present forms
since the beginning of time. Essentially there is no overall change
since the last Pew poll on this topic back in 2009. One change,
however, fewer Republicans now believe in evolution. From Pew:
There are sizable differences among partisan groups in beliefs
about evolution. Republicans are less inclined than either
Democrats or political independents to say that humans have evolved
over time. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats (67%) and independents
(65%) say that humans have evolved over time, compared with less
than half of Republicans (43%).
The size of the gap between partisan groups has grown since
2009. Republicans are less inclined today than they were in 2009 to
say that humans have evolved over time (43% today vs. 54% in 2009),
while opinion among both Democrats and independents has remained
about the same.
The religious views of Americans have an impact on how they view
evolution. From Pew:
A majority of white evangelical Protestants (64%) and half of
black Protestants (50%) say that humans have existed in their
present form since the beginning of time. But in other large
religious groups, a minority holds this view. In fact, nearly
eight-in-ten white mainline Protestants (78%) say that humans and
other living things have evolved over time. Three-quarters of the
religiously unaffiliated (76%) and 68% of white non-Hispanic
Catholics say the same. About half of Hispanic Catholics (53%)
believe that humans have evolved over time, while 31% reject that
idea.
While a majority of Americans think that biological evolution
has taken place, a substantial proportion believe that the process
has been guided by the Deity. From Pew:
Those saying that human evolution has evolved over time also
were asked for their views on the processes responsible for
evolution. Roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that “a supreme
being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of
creating humans and other life in the form it exists today,” while
about a third (32%) say that evolution is “due to natural processes
such as natural selection.”
The Washington Post
continues the recently popular sport of contrasting Texas and
California political styles and attitudes toward the size of the
state, and then posing the federalism-defying question: Which is
the better model for America’s future? (Cue ominous music in the
background.) Strictly speaking, there should be room in the United
States for a variety of policy experiments, so long as basic
liberties are respected. People can then vote with their money and
their feet. And, in fact, as the article and data from elsewhere
indicate, Americans have favored Texas with their votes for many
years.
Perry ran for president in 2012 championing Texas as an economic
model for the nation, pointing to the tax and regulatory structure
of the Lone Star State as the engine that had helped produce more
new jobs in the post-recession America than any other state. His
campaign faltered, but that did little to dim the story of “Texas
rising.”
“California declining” was the narrative Brown inherited when he
returned to Sacramento in January 2011. The Golden State, once the
envy of the nation, was beset with problems, including high
unemployment, persistent budgetary imbalances and political
dysfunction in the state capital. Today, with the state’s fiscal
situation stabilized, Brown is described as the Democrat who is
giving the country a new model of progressive governance.
Perry continues to promote the contrasting narratives. “These
are big, powerful economic states,” he said in a recent interview.
“Twenty years ago, California was considered to be the absolute
economic center of America. You pointed to California and said,
‘Gee, wouldn’t you like to be like them?’ And I would suggest
that’s not the case, and I will suggest to you that’s because of
the burdensome tax environment, a regulatory climate that is very
unpredictable and unstable and public schools that are continuing
on a downward trajectory.”
Brown and his advisers find the Texas-vs.-California story
tiresome. “Shakespeare said comparisons are odious,” Brown quipped
in a recent telephone interview. “Another version was that they’re
odorous.”
He was quick to counter Perry’s claim that Texas should be the
nation’s model. Yes, he said, if you want to build something, you
can do it faster in Texas than in California, where there are more
regulations and governmental red tape. “That’s true,” he said, but
he added, “Would you rather live in Houston or Santa Barbara, or
maybe Santa Monica or San Francisco?”
There’s a reason Brown and company find the comparison
“tiresome.” That is, more people seem to prefer the Texas model
over the California model. That’s despite the real advantages that
California historically has held as a refuge for people looking for
open minds and social elbow room. Stephen Levy, director of the
Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, insists,
“If you look at the areas that are the most tolerant — the Bay area
and Hollywood — you find the highest clusters of creativity and
innovation.” That’s long been true, but it’s probably not enough in
an era when Texas and California aren’t as far apart on the
tolerance issue as they were in the past (a
plurality of Texans now support gay marriage).
And, in fact, the Post points to Census Bureau figures
showing that, last year, “63,000 people moved from California to
Texas, while 43,000 in Texas moved to California.”
Just as important, money moved, too. Travis H. Brown, author of How
Money Walks, points to IRS figures that track the flow of
wealth from some states and to others. From 1992 -2010, California
was a net loser of $45.27 billion in adjusted gross income. $6.02
billion of that went to Texas. Texas, on the other hand, gained
$24.94 billion in AGI during those years, with California the top
source for transfers.
Reason’s Matt Welch
chatted with Travis Brown last summer to discuss the things
that inspire people to move themselves, their businesses, and their
money from one place to another, no matter what pundits think they should be doing. The video is below.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/30/red-vs-blue-battle-continues-as-money-fl
via IFTTT
Following up on the latest stunning revelations released yesterday by German Spiegel which exposed the spy agency’s 50 page catalog of “backdoor penetration techniques“, today during a speech given by Jacob Applebaum (@ioerror) at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress, a new bombshell emerged: specifically the complete and detailed description of how the NSA bugs, remotely, your iPhone. The way the NSA accomplishes this is using software known as Dropout Jeep, which it describes as follows: “DROPOUT JEEP is a software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted.”
The flowchart of how the NSA makes your iPhone its iPhone is presented below:
NSA ROC operator
Load specified module
Send data request
iPhone accepts request
Retrieves required SIGINT data
Encrypt and send exfil data
Rinse repeat
And visually:
What is perhaps just as disturbing is the following rhetorical sequence from Applebaum:
“Do you think Apple helped them build that? I don’t know. I hope Apple will clarify that. Here’s the problem: I don’t really believe that Apple didn’t help them, I can’t really prove it but [the NSA] literally claim that anytime they target an iOS device that it will succeed for implantation. Either they have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning that they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves. Not sure which one it is. I’d like to believe that since Apple didn’t join the PRISM program until after Steve Jobs died, that maybe it’s just that they write shitty software. We know that’s true.”
Or, Apple’s software is hardly “shitty” even if it seems like that to the vast majority of experts (kinda like the Fed’s various programs), and in fact it achieves precisely what it is meant to achieve.
How ironic would it be if Blackberry, left for dead by virtually everyone, began marketing its products as the only smartphone that does not allow the NSA access to one’s data (and did so accordingly). Since pretty much everything else it has tried has failed, we don’t see the downside to this hail mary attempt to strike back at Big Brother and maybe make some money, by doing the right thing for once.
We urge readers to watch the full one hour speech by Jacob Applebaum to realize just how massive Big Brother truly is, but those who want to just listen to the section on Apple can do so beginning 44 minutes 30 seconds in the presentation below.
via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Tnj5pSic_5Q/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Two weeks ago, when U.S. District Judge Richard
Leon
issued a preliminary injunction against the National Security
Agency’s mass collection of telephone records, he was skeptical of
the government’s claim that the program has been instrumental in
preventing terrorist attacks. “The Government
does not cite a single instance in which
analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an
imminent attack,” he
wrote, “or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any
objective that was time-sensitive in nature.” By contrast, U.S.
District Judge William Pauley, who on Friday
rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge to the NSA’s phone record
dragnet, says “the effectiveness of bulk telephony metadata
collection cannot be seriously disputed.” But Pauley’s most
powerful example is a debatable counterfactual, while the other
cases he cites do not actually show that the NSA’s database has
been crucial in stopping attacks.
Pauley opens his opinion by
arguing that if the telephone metadata program had existed in 2001
it might have helped prevent Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon:
Prior to the September 11th attacks, the [NSA] intercepted seven
calls made by hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was living in San
Diego, California, to an al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The NSA
intercepted those calls using overseas signals intelligence
capabilities that could not capture al-Mihdhar’s telephone number
identifier. Without that identifier, NSA analysts concluded
mistakenly that al-Mihdhar was overseas and not in the United
States. Telephony metadata would have furnished the missing
information and might have permitted the NSA to notify the [FBI] of
the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from
inside the United States.
The government has trotted out this hypothetical many times
before, presumably because it is easier to speculate about plots
that might have been thwarted by the routine collection of
every American’s phone records than it is to cite any that actually
were. But as ProPublica’s Justin Elliott
pointed out last June, “U.S. intelligence agencies knew the
identity of the hijacker in question, Saudi national Khalid al
Mihdhar, long before 9/11 and had the ability find him, but they
failed to do so.” Furthermore, it is not clear why the NSA, having
eavesdropped on seven calls between al-Mihdhar and the Al Qaeda
safe house in Yemen, needed a database containing everyone’s phone
records to identify the source of those calls. The Justice
Department “could have asked the FISA Court for a warrant to all
phone companies to show all calls from the U.S. which went to the
Yemen number,” former counterterrorism official Richard
Clarke told ProPublica. “Since they had one end of the calls (the
Yemen number), all they had to do was ask for any call connecting
to it.”
The three other examples cited by Pauley likewise do not show
that the comprehensive phone record database has been necessary to
stop attacks, as Leon noted:
None of the three “recent episodes” cited by the Government that
supposedly “illustrate the role that telephony metadata analysis
can play in preventing and protecting against terrorist attack”
involved any apparent urgency. In the first example, the FBI
learned of a terrorist plot still “in its early stages” and
investigated that plot before turning to the metadata “to ensure
that all potential connections were identified.” Assistant [FBI]
Director [Robert] Holley does not say that the metadata revealed
any new information-much less time-sensitive information that had
not already come to light in the investigation up to that point. In
the second example, it appears that the metadata analysis was used
only after the terrorist was arrested “to establish [his] foreign
ties and put them in context with his U.S. based planning efforts.”
And in the third, the metadata analysis “revealed a previously
unknown number for [a] co-conspirator…and corroborated his
connection to [the target of the investigation] as well as to other
U.S.-based extremists.” Again, there is no indication that
these revelations were immediately useful or that they prevented an
impending attack.
Pauley does not actually claim the phone record database is
necessary to thwart terrorism—only that it has been useful in
gathering intelligence. Could a less sweeping approach, such as
specific warrants seeking information about calls to or from
particular targets, have been equally effective? Pauley deems that
question irrelevant:
The ACLU also argues that “[t]here are a number of ways in which
the Government could perform three-hop analysis without first
building its own database of every American’s call records.” That
has no traction. At bottom, it is little more than an assertion
that less intrusive means to collect and analyze telephony metadata
could be employed. But the Supreme Court has “repeatedly refused to
declare that only the ‘least intrusive’ search practicable can be
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
In any case, as I
noted on Friday, the effectiveness of the NSA’s snooping is not
ultimately relevant to Pauley’s analysis. Since he concludes that
the Fourth Amendment does not apply to phone records (or any other
information held by third parties), there is no search to
justify.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/30/would-a-comprehensive-phone-record-datab
via IFTTT
“The Mike Bloomberg Legacy: 12 Years of Little Tyrannies in 2
Minutes!” is the latest from Reason TV. Watch above or click below
for full text, links, downloadable versions, and more.
Over the weekend, Heather Linebaugh wrote a powerful Op-ed in The Guardian newspaper lamenting the lack of public understanding regarding the American drone program. Heather should know what she’s talking about, she served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here are some key excerpts from her article:
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.
Moreover, the many civilians being incinerated without a trial are not the only victims here. So are the actual drone operators themselves, many of whom end up committing suicide. Recall my article from December 2012: Meet Brandon Bryant: The Drone Operator Who Quit After Killing a Child. Of course, our so-called political “leaders” never get their hands dirty, other than to take a lobbyist bribe that is. Now more from Heather:
from A Lightning War for Liberty http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/12/30/what-really-happens-in-the-drone-program-from-someone-on-the-inside/
via IFTTT
“We’re an easy target for recruiters,” one homeless man explains. “We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and we’re easy to spot. They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven’t eaten, they offer to find us a job.” As Reuters exposes, 3 years after the earthquake and tsunami that caused the meltdown at Fukushima’s nuclear facility, Northern Japanese homeless are willing to accept minimum wage (from yakuza-based entities) for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.
Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.
He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.
“This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day,”
…
It’s also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.
…
In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp’s network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.
In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai’s train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan’s second-largest construction company.
Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan’s three largest criminal syndicates – Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai – had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.
“We are taking it very seriously that these incidents keep happening one after another,” said Junichi Ichikawa, a spokesman for Obayashi. He said the company tightened its scrutiny of its lower-tier subcontractors in order to shut out gangsters, known as the yakuza. “There were elements of what we had been doing that did not go far enough.”
…
Reuters found 56 subcontractors listed on environment ministry contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion in the most radiated areas of Fukushima that would have been barred from traditional public works because they had not been vetted by the construction ministry.
…
“If you started looking at every single person, the project wouldn’t move forward. You wouldn’t get a tenth of the people you need,” said Yukio Suganuma, president of Aisogo Service, a construction company that was hired in 2012 to clean up radioactive fallout from streets in the town of Tamura.
…
“There are many unknown entities getting involved in decontamination projects,” said Igarashi, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Naoto Kan. “There needs to be a thorough check on what companies are working on what, and when. I think it’s probably completely lawless if the top contractors are not thoroughly checking.”
…
“I don’t ask questions; that’s not my job,” Sasa said in an interview with Reuters. “I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That’s it. I don’t get involved in what happens after that.”
…
“The construction industry is 90 percent run by gangs.”
It would seem, perhaps, that France (and the US) need their own nuclear accident to unleash an employment boom…
via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/kpHZRldbvBs/story01.htm Tyler Durden
“We’re an easy target for recruiters,” one homeless man explains. “We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and we’re easy to spot. They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven’t eaten, they offer to find us a job.” As Reuters exposes, 3 years after the earthquake and tsunami that caused the meltdown at Fukushima’s nuclear facility, Northern Japanese homeless are willing to accept minimum wage (from yakuza-based entities) for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.
Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.
He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.
“This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day,”
…
It’s also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.
…
In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp’s network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.
In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai’s train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan’s second-largest construction company.
Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan’s three largest criminal syndicates – Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai – had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.
“We are taking it very seriously that these incidents keep happening one after another,” said Junichi Ichikawa, a spokesman for Obayashi. He said the company tightened its scrutiny of its lower-tier subcontractors in order to shut out gangsters, known as the yakuza. “There were elements of what we had been doing that did not go far enough.”
…
Reuters found 56 subcontractors listed on environment ministry contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion in the most radiated areas of Fukushima that would have been barred from traditional public works because they had not been vetted by the construction ministry.
…
“If you started looking at every single person, the project wouldn’t move forward. You wouldn’t get a tenth of the people you need,” said Yukio Suganuma, president of Aisogo Service, a construction company that was hired in 2012 to clean up radioactive fallout from streets in the town of Tamura.
…
“There are many unknown entities getting involved in decontamination projects,” said Igarashi, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Naoto Kan. “There needs to be a thorough check on what companies are working on what, and when. I think it’s probably completely lawless if the top contractors are not thoroughly checking.”
…
“I don’t ask questions; that’s not my job,” Sasa said in an interview with Reuters. “I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That’s it. I don’t get involved in what happens after that.”
…
“The construction industry is 90 percent run by gangs.”
It would seem, perhaps, that France (and the US) need their own nuclear accident to unleash an employment boom…
via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/kpHZRldbvBs/story01.htm Tyler Durden
President Obama
and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been named the
most admired people among Americans for the sixth year in a row in
a survey conducted by Gallup, although both of their ratings have
taken a hit compared with last year.
The second most admired man was George W. Bush and the second
most admired woman was Oprah Winfrey. Former Texas Congressman Ron
Paul tied with Clint Eastwood and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as the
eighth most admired man of 2013.
President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
were named the most-admired people in 2013 for the sixth year in a
row, according to a Gallup survey.
The open-ended poll released Monday found 16 percent of people
named Obama as the most-admired man, while 15 percent named Clinton
as the most-admired woman. Both scores, however, have dropped
significantly since 2012.
In 2012, 30 percent of people named Obama as the most-admired
man, while 21 percent named Clinton the most-admired
woman.
Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/30/poll-obama-hillary-clinton-the-most-admi
via IFTTT
A report from Pew Research’s Religion and Public
The Washington Post
Two weeks ago, when U.S. District Judge Richard
