What Happens In Vegas, Doesn’t Stay In Vegas (Anymore)

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The Intellistreets system has finally come to the corridors of Las Vegas. So what is Intellistreets?

On its website, the system is described as “the only wireless information and control network for sustainability, security and entertainment.” Even more amusing, the company that owns the Intellistreets system is rather appropriately called Illuminating Concepts. The best part is that city officials claim “right now our intention is not to have any cameras or recording device.”

This is far from the first time we have learned about the installation of devices that can record audio and video being surreptitiously put in public places. I covered this late last year with regard to how the Department of Homeland Security was using grants to fund the placement of such devices on buses in my piece: Public Buses Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations. 

Now from CNET:

Las Vegas, you see, has invested in Intellistreets. These aren’t streets that carry you along, so that you don’t have to put one foot in front of the other.

 

Instead, this is a lighting system that, as MyNews3 reported, enjoys “all sorts of fancy features.”

 

These lights can broadcast messages and play music. Which sounds very Vegas.

 

However, they have other aspects: they can shoot video and record sound.

 

This being Vegas, you will understand the words of Neil Rohleder of the city’s Public Works Department: “We want to develop an experience for the people who come downtown.”

 

But what kind of experience are they truly developing? The company behind Intellistreets, Illuminating Concepts has as its motto: “Assisting in the Creation of Memorable Environments since 1981.” The word “memorable” might interest some.

 

Las Vegas public works Director Jorge Cervantes told MyNews3 that this was all entirely innocent: “Right now our intention is not to have any cameras or recording device. It’s just to provide output out there, not to get any feed or video feed coming back.”

 

Indeed, the explanatory video of how the system works spends most of its time presenting a compelling case for its excellence.

 

Near the end, however, there is this phrase: “Intellistreets also enables a myriad of homeland security features.”

This is what they look like.

 

 

Enjoy Big Brother Vegas…


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/AyhEEiXaY84/story01.htm Tyler Durden

What Happens In Vegas, Doesn't Stay In Vegas (Anymore)

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The Intellistreets system has finally come to the corridors of Las Vegas. So what is Intellistreets?

On its website, the system is described as “the only wireless information and control network for sustainability, security and entertainment.” Even more amusing, the company that owns the Intellistreets system is rather appropriately called Illuminating Concepts. The best part is that city officials claim “right now our intention is not to have any cameras or recording device.”

This is far from the first time we have learned about the installation of devices that can record audio and video being surreptitiously put in public places. I covered this late last year with regard to how the Department of Homeland Security was using grants to fund the placement of such devices on buses in my piece: Public Buses Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations. 

Now from CNET:

Las Vegas, you see, has invested in Intellistreets. These aren’t streets that carry you along, so that you don’t have to put one foot in front of the other.

 

Instead, this is a lighting system that, as MyNews3 reported, enjoys “all sorts of fancy features.”

 

These lights can broadcast messages and play music. Which sounds very Vegas.

 

However, they have other aspects: they can shoot video and record sound.

 

This being Vegas, you will understand the words of Neil Rohleder of the city’s Public Works Department: “We want to develop an experience for the people who come downtown.”

 

But what kind of experience are they truly developing? The company behind Intellistreets, Illuminating Concepts has as its motto: “Assisting in the Creation of Memorable Environments since 1981.” The word “memorable” might interest some.

 

Las Vegas public works Director Jorge Cervantes told MyNews3 that this was all entirely innocent: “Right now our intention is not to have any cameras or recording device. It’s just to provide output out there, not to get any feed or video feed coming back.”

 

Indeed, the explanatory video of how the system works spends most of its time presenting a compelling case for its excellence.

 

Near the end, however, there is this phrase: “Intellistreets also enables a myriad of homeland security features.”

This is what they look like.

 

 

Enjoy Big Brother Vegas…


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/AyhEEiXaY84/story01.htm Tyler Durden

It Still Doesn’t Matter if NSA Spying is Legal, It’s Wrong Anyway

Gen. Keith AlexanderCindy Cohn at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation addresses the New York Times’ eternal
agonizing over its internal decision to delay, by 13 months, a
major 2005 story about warrantless wiretapping by the Bush
administration. That decision still raises doubts about the
Times’ relationship with government officials, and led to
Edward Snowden bypassing the gray lady when looking for a willing
outlet for this year’s revelations about NSA spying (that’s NSA
honcho, Gen. Keith Alexander, pictured). Cohn takes issue with
Times’ staffers conclusions that all of this intrusive
surveillance is now legal, arguing that the Obama administration
relies on tortured interpretation of the law to intercept phone and
Internet communications. But Cohn is letting herself get caught up
in an side-show argument that ought to be left to the increasingly
irrelevant scribblers at fading media institutions. In fact, it
doesn’t matter if the government’s vast surveillance schemes are
legal. What matters is that the spying is despicable and should be
fought, frustrated, and sabotaged by anybody with the means to do
so.

In an
article on the controversies and debates swirling around the 2005
article, Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan quotes
Eric Lichtblau, one of the authors of the article, on the
fallout.

Given the law of unintended consequences, and a fair helping of
irony, the publication of the warrantless eavesdropping story
resonates now in quite another way: The furor it caused prompted
the Bush administration to push hard for changes in the laws
governing surveillance.

“Our story set in motion the process of making all this stuff
legal,” Mr. Lichtblau said. “Now it’s all encoded in law. Bush got
everything he wanted on his way out of office.”

There may be public outrage over the latest wave of surveillance
revelations, but the government has a helpful defense: Hey, it’s
legal.

Hold on there,
writes Cohn. Not so fast.

Not so.  The government’s claims of “legality” are wrong,
have been strongly criticized by national security
law professors, and are currently being challenged in court by
EFF, ACLU, and EPIC, among others. The Times disserves its audience
by repeating them as if they were true.

In fact, the ACLU has a hearing in New York this Friday,
November 22, in its key challenge to one of those “legal” claims:
that the NSA’s indiscriminately collecting telephone records is
“legal” under a convoluted interpretation of the section 215 of the
2001 Patriot Act that mentions neither telephone records nor the
NSA. To try to make it fit, the government attempts to redefine the
limits on production of “relevant” things to allow the collection
of massive amounts of “irrelevant” information. In other words, by
a plain reading of the statute, what the NSA is currently doing in
collecting massive amounts of telephone records on an ongoing basis
is not legal.

Cohn is likely correct, I think. The feds have stretched Section
215 well beyond the breaking point, relying on secret
interpretations of that law, as well as on executive orders that
they won’t even release to the public. Chances are, given an honest
judge, federal surveillance will eventually be found to have gone
beyond the limits of the law.

But should we be satisfied if the judicial system proves
accommodating to the silly putty theory of legal interpretations?
Or what if Senate and House leaders slap themselves on the
forehead, say “our bad,” and pass legislation that really
does authorize the snooping? Does that make it all
right?

As I’ve
written before, the answer is: No fucking way. The surveillance
is intrusive, violates privacy, and empowers untrustworthy state
officials with information that is too easily abused. That is, it
should be illegal because it’s unacceptable; it’s not unacceptable
because it’s (presumably) illegal. We shouldn’t tolerate the
surveillance state whether or not Congress dots the president’s
“i”s and crosses his “t”s for him.

I hope the ACLU, EFF, and EPIC are successful in their legal
challenges to government surveillance for tactical reasons—it’s a
path to victory over the snoops. But that doesn’t mean we should
stop fighting the surveillance state even if politicians extend the
cloak of legal rectitude to cover its transgressions.

A legal surveillance state still needs to be drowned in
the creek.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/12/it-still-doesnt-matter-if-nsa-spying-is
via IFTTT

It Still Doesn't Matter if NSA Spying is Legal, It's Wrong Anyway

Gen. Keith AlexanderCindy Cohn at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation addresses the New York Times’ eternal
agonizing over its internal decision to delay, by 13 months, a
major 2005 story about warrantless wiretapping by the Bush
administration. That decision still raises doubts about the
Times’ relationship with government officials, and led to
Edward Snowden bypassing the gray lady when looking for a willing
outlet for this year’s revelations about NSA spying (that’s NSA
honcho, Gen. Keith Alexander, pictured). Cohn takes issue with
Times’ staffers conclusions that all of this intrusive
surveillance is now legal, arguing that the Obama administration
relies on tortured interpretation of the law to intercept phone and
Internet communications. But Cohn is letting herself get caught up
in an side-show argument that ought to be left to the increasingly
irrelevant scribblers at fading media institutions. In fact, it
doesn’t matter if the government’s vast surveillance schemes are
legal. What matters is that the spying is despicable and should be
fought, frustrated, and sabotaged by anybody with the means to do
so.

In an
article on the controversies and debates swirling around the 2005
article, Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan quotes
Eric Lichtblau, one of the authors of the article, on the
fallout.

Given the law of unintended consequences, and a fair helping of
irony, the publication of the warrantless eavesdropping story
resonates now in quite another way: The furor it caused prompted
the Bush administration to push hard for changes in the laws
governing surveillance.

“Our story set in motion the process of making all this stuff
legal,” Mr. Lichtblau said. “Now it’s all encoded in law. Bush got
everything he wanted on his way out of office.”

There may be public outrage over the latest wave of surveillance
revelations, but the government has a helpful defense: Hey, it’s
legal.

Hold on there,
writes Cohn. Not so fast.

Not so.  The government’s claims of “legality” are wrong,
have been strongly criticized by national security
law professors, and are currently being challenged in court by
EFF, ACLU, and EPIC, among others. The Times disserves its audience
by repeating them as if they were true.

In fact, the ACLU has a hearing in New York this Friday,
November 22, in its key challenge to one of those “legal” claims:
that the NSA’s indiscriminately collecting telephone records is
“legal” under a convoluted interpretation of the section 215 of the
2001 Patriot Act that mentions neither telephone records nor the
NSA. To try to make it fit, the government attempts to redefine the
limits on production of “relevant” things to allow the collection
of massive amounts of “irrelevant” information. In other words, by
a plain reading of the statute, what the NSA is currently doing in
collecting massive amounts of telephone records on an ongoing basis
is not legal.

Cohn is likely correct, I think. The feds have stretched Section
215 well beyond the breaking point, relying on secret
interpretations of that law, as well as on executive orders that
they won’t even release to the public. Chances are, given an honest
judge, federal surveillance will eventually be found to have gone
beyond the limits of the law.

But should we be satisfied if the judicial system proves
accommodating to the silly putty theory of legal interpretations?
Or what if Senate and House leaders slap themselves on the
forehead, say “our bad,” and pass legislation that really
does authorize the snooping? Does that make it all
right?

As I’ve
written before, the answer is: No fucking way. The surveillance
is intrusive, violates privacy, and empowers untrustworthy state
officials with information that is too easily abused. That is, it
should be illegal because it’s unacceptable; it’s not unacceptable
because it’s (presumably) illegal. We shouldn’t tolerate the
surveillance state whether or not Congress dots the president’s
“i”s and crosses his “t”s for him.

I hope the ACLU, EFF, and EPIC are successful in their legal
challenges to government surveillance for tactical reasons—it’s a
path to victory over the snoops. But that doesn’t mean we should
stop fighting the surveillance state even if politicians extend the
cloak of legal rectitude to cover its transgressions.

A legal surveillance state still needs to be drowned in
the creek.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/12/it-still-doesnt-matter-if-nsa-spying-is
via IFTTT

Gene Healy: Introversion Isn’t Obama’s Problem, His Inability To Tell the Truth Is

It never fails. Whenever a
president’s approval ratings tank, out come the deep think pieces
about how the president’s personality flaws explain his political
dilemma and ours. Obama’s is his introversion, the experts say.
It’s a common trope — and as a congenital introvert, Gene Healy is
sick of it. He argues that, simply put, Obama is a terrible
president.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/12/gene-healy-introversion-isnt-obamas-prob
via IFTTT

Gene Healy: Introversion Isn't Obama's Problem, His Inability To Tell the Truth Is

It never fails. Whenever a
president’s approval ratings tank, out come the deep think pieces
about how the president’s personality flaws explain his political
dilemma and ours. Obama’s is his introversion, the experts say.
It’s a common trope — and as a congenital introvert, Gene Healy is
sick of it. He argues that, simply put, Obama is a terrible
president.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/12/gene-healy-introversion-isnt-obamas-prob
via IFTTT

Dovish Lockhart’s Hawkish DecTaper Comments Stymie Stocks

It was all going according to plan. POMO lifted the S&P 500 instantly 7 points at 1015ET back to unchanged and the mainstream media could discuss the fact that stocks are “off the lows.” Then (admittedly non-voting member) uber-dove Dennis Lockhart hit the wires with some oddly hawkish commentary:

  • *LOCKHART SAYS TAPERING ‘COULD VERY WELL TAKE PLACE’ NEXT MONTH
  • *LOCKHART SAYS QE NOT MEANT TO BE ‘PERMANENT FIXTURE’ OF POLICY

Which sent stocks to the lows of the day. We are sure, of course, that these remarks will be walked back by the next Fed speaker but for now, it is clear the market remains entirely headline (and Fed) driven.

 


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/8nVc5qkKAXw/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Dovish Lockhart's Hawkish DecTaper Comments Stymie Stocks

It was all going according to plan. POMO lifted the S&P 500 instantly 7 points at 1015ET back to unchanged and the mainstream media could discuss the fact that stocks are “off the lows.” Then (admittedly non-voting member) uber-dove Dennis Lockhart hit the wires with some oddly hawkish commentary:

  • *LOCKHART SAYS TAPERING ‘COULD VERY WELL TAKE PLACE’ NEXT MONTH
  • *LOCKHART SAYS QE NOT MEANT TO BE ‘PERMANENT FIXTURE’ OF POLICY

Which sent stocks to the lows of the day. We are sure, of course, that these remarks will be walked back by the next Fed speaker but for now, it is clear the market remains entirely headline (and Fed) driven.

 


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/8nVc5qkKAXw/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Goebbels Would Be Proud: European Union Pulls Report Alleging Spanish Economic Data Is Made Up

One of the underreported stories from last week was the implicit announcement by the official statistical agency of the European Union – Eurostat – that Spanish budget (and who knows what other) data is now just one big lie. Last Tuesday Bloomberg reported: “European Union officials made an extraordinary visit to Spain in September that signals escalating concern about the reliability of the country’s budget data. EU statisticians ordered a so-called ad-hoc visit, a procedure reserved for urgent issues, to assess whether regional officials are complying with recommendations after failing to report all the unpaid bills they had accumulated in 2011, Tim Allen, a Luxembourg-based press officer for the statistics agency Eurostat, said in an e-mail. Eurostat raised concerns about Spanish data in April following at least two “upstream dialog visits,” the second of four levels of checks the agency has on member states’ statistical reporting.”

The report continues:

September’s visit signaled a shift in gear to the second-most serious intervention. Ad-hoc visits are triggered by urgent issues regarding the quality or the methods used to produce the data, which only can be resolved with a face-to-face meeting, according to the agency Web site.

 

Local and regional administrations in Spain need to make “substantial improvements to public accounting and statistical reporting,” the agency said in its April 30 report. “Eurostat notes the lack of initiative and preparedness to follow up the recommendations.”

The damning report by the Eurostat can be found at the following link. Or rather could because as of moments ago one is greeted with the following 404 screen:

What happened? Something that would make Goebbels giddy with pride.

Eurostat, BBG reports again, the European Union’s statistics agency, withdrew a report criticizing Spain’s processes for reporting budget data after consultations with the country’s government, Eurostat spokesman Tim Allen says by e- mail.

“Further exchanges with the Spanish authorities have shown that a few statements in the report were too general,” Allen says. “The report has been temporarily withdrawn for amendment.”

Too general as in not “everything” is made up, just this, this and this? Laughable.

But at least we just got yet another glimpse of how that sinking economic titanic, the Eurozone, deals with the truth: by withdrawing it for amendments. Because one can’t have something, anything, casting doubt on the Spanish “miracle recovery” – after all, the last thing the hedge fund scramble into Spain needs is even the faintest glimpse of not only how bad it is, but that when one strips away the endless lies, it is just getting worse.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/skCrhmL9GPA/story01.htm Tyler Durden

DoJ Folds, American Airlines And US Airways Merger Approved

Following the DoJ’s ‘surprising’ August decision to block the $11bn merger of American and US Airways (after approving other airline mergers in the recent past), it would appear the parties have reached a settlement:

  • *U.S. FILES PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN AMR CASE IN FEDERAL COURT
  • *DOJ REQUIRES US AIRWAYS, AMERICAN AIRLINES TO DIVEST FACILITIES
  • *AIRPORT SLOTS TO BE SOLD UNDER PROCESS APPROVED BY U.S.

Some of the initial details (below) include divesting slots at Laguardia and Reagan National. AMR is trading up over 25%…

 

 

Via Reuters:

  • SETTLEMENT SAYS LAGUARDIA DIVESTMENTS INCLUDE 34 SLOTS, CONSISTING OF 24 HELD BY AMR OR US AIRWAYS, AND 10 LEASED BY AMR TO SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO
  • SETTLEMENT SAYS REAGAN NATIONAL DIVESTMENTS INCLUDE 104 SLOTS HELD BY US AIRWAYS OR AMR, INCLUDING 16 LEASED BY AMR TO JETBLUE AIRWAYS CORP


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ljl8EXZB_j0/story01.htm Tyler Durden