FCC's website crashes, John Oliver's army of Cable Company Fuckery trolls blamed - Boing Boing: "The FCC's website has fallen over, and many blame John Oliver's incandescent exhortation to Internet trolls to flood the Commission with comments about its assault on Net Neutrality (or support of "Cable Company Fuckery"). The comedy potential is rich ("Hey, FCC, you shoulda paid Comcast for the fast lane, huh?") "
Tyrion used to rock the power mullet. Also, science - Yes, That Game of Thrones Exploding Head Thing Could Really Happen (Probably) | TIME
The Top 5 Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to Remain Credible | Electronic Frontier Foundation: "The discredited claim The argument goes like this: Metadata can’t be privacy invasive, isn’t very useful and therefore its collection isn’t dangerous—so the Constitution shouldn’t protect it. Even the President said, “what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content”—as if that means there is no privacy protection for this information...
Why it’s not credible: As former director of the NSA and CIA Michael Hayden recently admitted: “We kill people based on metadata.” And former NSA General Counsel Stu Baker said: “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” In fact, a Stanford study this year demonstrated exactly what you can reconstruct using metadata: “We were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership, and more, using solely phone metadata.” Metadata can show what your religion is, if you went to get an abortion, and other incredibly private details of your life."
Admiral Michael Rogers, New NSA Director Really Doesn't Get Why Americans Don't Want to Be Spied On - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Here's what the admiral needs to understand: Many Americans do not count on the permanent good will of the minions of the domestic surveillance state..
With its powers of compulsion and criminal prosecution, the government poses unique threats to privacy when it collects data on its own citizens. Government collection of personal information on such a massive scale also courts the ever-present danger of “mission creep.” An even more compelling danger is that personal information collected by the government will be misused to harass, blackmail, or intimidate, or to single out for scrutiny particular individuals or group.
...while the danger of abuse may seem remote, given historical abuse of personal information by the government during the twentieth century, the risk is more than merely theoretical.
Perhaps government spies will always and everywhere be punctilious in their respect for the liberties guaranteed Americans under the Constitution, but it's better to make sure that they never have access to tools that might tempt them not to be."
Matt Taibbi's The Divide: incandescent indictment of the American justice-gap - Boing Boing: "Since the Clinton years, the American state has treated poverty as a crime, turning the receipt of state aid into a basis for the most invasive intrusions into your personal life, for a never-ending round of barked accusations and cruel threats to your freedom, your family, and your future. Meanwhile, Eric Holder's "Collateral Consequences" doctrine -- conceived under Clinton, revised under GWB, and perfected under Obama -- tells federal prosecutors to punish big companies carefully, even for the worst crimes imaginable, in order to protect the innocents who work for those companies and rely on them.
The net effect is a society where HSBC can be found guilty of laundering billions for brutal Mexican drug-cartels who torture and murder with impunity, pay a fine equal to a few weeks' profit, and partially defer bonuses for a few of its executives. But on the same day, across America, poor and mostly brown people are locked into inhumane prisons for selling a joint or two of the weed those cartels control."
Particularly last night. Fucking insomnia.
No comments:
Post a Comment