dkf
dkf's JournalWar on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Sycophant
@ggreenwald: That's perfect: RT @rsingel Better title: War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Sycophant http://t.co/8WmIhw6u3W
Musk’s New Hologram Project Invites ‘Iron Man’ Comparisons
In the “Iron Man” trilogy, billionaire inventor Tony Stark uses a gesture-controlled hologram to draft new designs of the titular armor, sending virtual parts flying around his lab with the flick of a wrist.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—who is often compared to Stark by the tech press—is apparently creating the real-life equivalent of that fictional hologram system. “We figured out how to design rocket parts just w hand movements through the air (seriously),” he Tweeted August 23. “Now need a high frame rate holograph generator.”
In a follow-up Tweet, he added: “Will post video next week of designing a rocket part with hand gestures & then immediately printing it in titanium.”
At this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, Musk sat down for a keynote talk with former Wired editor Chris Anderson. He discussed SpaceX, which he founded in 2002 with the goal of commercializing space exploration; the company now makes cargo runs into orbit for NASA.
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/musks-new-hologram-project-invites-iron-man-comparisons/
China detains well-known blogger in social media crackdown
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4bf5b3e8-0d6c-11e3-ba82-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2d2d4L3reChina has detained a well-known Chinese-American microblogger and angel investor as Beijing rolls out a new campaign to “purify” the country’s social media, writes Kathrin Hille.
Charles Xue and a 22-year-old woman surnamed Zhang were detained on Friday night for allegedly engaging in prostitution, Beijing police said on Sunday.
Sixty-year-old Mr Xue is one of China’s most popular microbloggers with more than 12m followers on his verified account on Sina Weibo, the country’s leading Twitter equivalent.
Although the authorities made no mention of his frequent liberal comments on social and economic issues, he is one of five prominent microbloggers detained over the past three days.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4bf5b3e8-0d6c-11e3-ba82-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2d2TYetti
Well I anticipate this will be the future of the US. Sad.
Corker: Congress Doesn’t Know Extent of NSA Surveillance
Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) told Fox News Sunday even he was not sure to what extent the National Security Agency kept tabs on Americans, adding he wanted the NSA to brief Congress “from top to bottom” to explain the programs in place and help ensure appropriate oversight.
CHRIS WALLACE: Let me ask you a direct question, sir. As the top Republican on Senate Foreign Relations, as you sit here today, do you feel you actually know what the government is and isn’t doing in surveilling Americans?
CORKER: No. I don’t think there are many people work harder than I do. I’m not on the intelligence committee. Obviously, they are privy to information that I am not. But absolutely not. That’s why I wrote a letter this week to the president, ask that the head of this organization come in and brief folks from top to bottom to explain every program that’s under way, understand so we can understand its intent and to understand how appropriate oversight is taking place. Look, I appreciate efforts to keep Americans secure. At the same time, this is in front of us. We are not in front of it. Every day there are stories, as you just mentioned, that are leaked out. The American people want to know that those of us who are elected, Eliot and I, understand fully what’s happening here. I don’t think we do. I would imagine there are even members of the intelligence committee themselves that don’t fully understand the gambit of things that are taking place. It’s our responsibility to know those things, to ensure they’re in balance, and I hope as soon as we get back there’ll be a full briefing from top to bottom so that can happen.
http://freebeacon.com/corker-congress-doesnt-know-extent-of-nsa-surveillance/
If AQ = Syrian Rebels why couldn't those be rebel chemical weapons?
I find it awfully suspicious that there is a chemical weapons attack as soon as the UN inspectors get there.
All we need is to get suckered into another war... Ugh.
NSA employees spied on their lovers using eavesdropping programme
WASHINGTON—National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.
The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.
Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.
The “LOVEINT” examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees, officials said.
NSA said in a statement Friday that there have been “very rare” instances of willful violations of any kind in the past decade, and none have violated key surveillance laws. “NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities” and responds “as appropriate.”
The LOVEINT violations involved overseas communications, officials said, such as spying on a partner or spouse. In each instance, the employee was punished either with an administrative action or termination.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-sometimes-spy-on-love-interests/
Staff working at America's National Security Agency – the eavesdropping unit that was revealed to have spied on millions of people – have used the technology to spy on their lovers.
The employees even had a code name for the practice – "Love-int" – meaning the gathering of intelligence on their partners.
Dianne Feinstein, a senator who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA told her committee about a set of "isolated cases" that have occurred about once a year for the last 10 years. The spying was not within the US, and was carried out when one of the lovers was abroad.
One employee was disciplined for using the NSA's resources to track a former spouse, the Associated Press said.
Last week it was disclosed that the NSA had broken privacy rules on nearly 3,000 occasions over a one-year period.
John DeLong, NSA chief compliance officer, said that those errors were mainly unintentional, but that there have been "a couple" of wilful violations in the past decade.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10263880/NSA-employees-spied-on-their-lovers-using-eavesdropping-programme.html
Google's Plan to Track Emotions Through Your Eyes
Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Google was recently granted a patent for a Google Glass-based ad system called "pay-per-gaze." Pay-per-gaze technology would charge advertisers for the number of times someone literally looked at an ad. Mashable's Chief Strategy Officer Adam Ostrow explains why this is just the beginning of changes we're going to see in the world of advertising.
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2013-08-23/googles-plan-to-track-emotions-through-your-eyes
Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal (Cass Sunstein)
FRIDAY, JAN 15, 2010 03:16 AM HST
Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story‘s Daniel Tencer.
There’s no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein’s position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein’s closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn’t an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein’s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein’s paper worth examining in greater detail.
* * * * *
Initially, note how similar Sunstein’s proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates. The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as “independent analysts” in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon. Bush officials secretly paid supposedly “independent” voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts. In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens. In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda — and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda. Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government ”propaganda” within the U.S., aimed at American citizens:
http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/
White House Picks Panel to Review NSA Programs
A group of veteran security experts and former White House officials has been selected to conduct a full review of U.S. surveillance programs and other secret government efforts disclosed over recent months, ABC News has learned.
The recent acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell, will be among what President Obama called a "high-level group of outside experts" scrutinizing the controversial programs.
Joining Morell on the panel will be former White House officials Richard Clarke, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire. An announcement is expected Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter told ABC News' Jon Karl.
The group will "consider how we can maintain the trust of the people [and] how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse,"
http://abcnews.go.com/politics/t/blogEntry?id=20030899
NSA Analysts Intentionally Abused Spying Powers Multiple Times
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/nsa-analysts-intentionally-abused-spying-powers-multiple-times.htmlNSA Analysts Intentionally Abused Spying Powers Multiple Times
By Chris Strohm - Aug 23, 2013 5:52 AM GMT-1000
Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade, contradicting Obama administration officials’ and lawmakers’ statements that no willful violations occurred.
The inspector general documented an average of one case per year over 10 years of intentionally inappropriate actions by people with access to the NSA’s vast electronic surveillance systems, according to an official familiar with the findings. The incidents were minor, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence.
The deliberate actions didn’t violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or the USA Patriot Act, the NSA said in its statement. Instead, they overstepped 1981 Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan, which governs U.S. intelligence operations.
The actions, said a second U.S. official briefed on them, were the work of overzealous NSA employees or contractors eager to prevent any encore to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/nsa-analysts-intentionally-abused-spying-powers-multiple-times.html
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