Congratulations to Class of 2014, Most Indebted Ever - Real Time Economics. What Obama Really Meant Was ... - Chris Hedges. What Obama Really Meant Was ...
Posted on Jan 19, 2014 By Chris Hedges (Page 2) In the 1960s, the U.S. government spied on civil rights leaders, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and critics of the Vietnam War, just as today we are spying on Occupy activists, environmentalists, whistle-blowers and other dissidents. And partly in response to these revelations decades ago, especially regarding the FBI’s covert dirty tricks program known as COINTELPRO, laws were established in the 1970s to ensure that our intelligence capabilities could not be misused against our citizens. The fall of the Soviet Union left America without a competing superpower. From Frog, How To Collect Consumers' Data Without Freaking Them Out. Personally, I’m having trouble giving it up.
By "it," I mean information about me, details that I’ve worked hard to safeguard and keep private. In fact, the same companies that are now soliciting, or simply taking, my personal data still encourage me to create strong user IDs and passwords to protect my privacy. This can sometimes feel like a conflicting message to the consumer. After working in the product strategy, design, and development industries for nearly 25 years, I’ve seen how relinquishing some of my autonomy can be a good thing.
Through smartphones, tablets, watches, Google Glasses, and Fitbits, companies are using my personal data to help me in ways that feel comforting instead of unnerving. Here are five tips for brand leaders to consider when harvesting personal data so consumers feel okay about giving it up. Listen to Your Consumers. John Stossel: New Tactics of the Police State. A Browser To Keep The NSA From Snooping On You. Concern over personal privacy in the era of NSA spying revelations has reached something of a Code Orange.
Facebook is bad for you: Get a life! Snowden: UK government now leaking documents about itself. (Updated below) The Independent this morning published an article - which it repeatedly claims comes from "documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" - disclosing that "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies.
" This is the first time the Independent has published any revelations purportedly from the NSA documents, and it's the type of disclosure which journalists working directly with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have thus far avoided. Snowden’s Secure Email Service. Ron Paul on Julian Assange. Edward Snowden: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' – video interview. Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies. U.S. Confirms That It Gathers Online Data Overseas. After Edward Snowden's revelations, why trust US cloud providers?
'It's an ill bird," runs the adage, "that fouls its own nest.
" Cue the US National Security Agency (NSA), which, we now know, has been busily doing this for quite a while. As the Edward Snowden revelations tumbled out, the scale of the fouling slowly began to dawn on us. Outside of the United States, for example, people suddenly began to have doubts about the wisdom of entrusting their confidential data to cloud services operated by American companies on American soil.
As Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president responsible for digital affairs, put it in a speech on 4 July: "If businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less reason to trust the cloud and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes? Edward Snowden's leaks are a grave threat to US national security. A 2001 Pentagon report said the Chinese military was investing in cyber capabilities.
Photograph: Lang Lang/Reuters Edward Snowden's revelations regarding highly sensitive US techniques for gathering foreign-intelligence continue roiling Washington. And because Snowden combined elements of truth swirled together with paranoid speculation, outright lies and pure hype, reviving a rational discussion has been hard. Snowden's sympathizers and anti-American activists have so far largely controlled his story line. But that is changing, and with it, the likely tenor of the debate over whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor. Snowden initially violated his oath to safeguard the national security secrets entrusted to him by revealing National Security Agency (NSA) programs arguably affecting the privacy of US citizens. Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is. Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story.
How The Government & Media Cheated Ron Paul. NASA, Chris Hadfield's YouTube "Oddity," And Zero-G Tweets: Social Media Lessons From Space. Tell Me The Truth: Oscar Winner Alex Gibney on WikiLeaks And Uncovering The Story Behind The Topic. Alex Gibney is no stranger to controversy. In fact he is drawn to it. As a documentary filmmaker, his films have taken on Eliot Spitzer ( Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer ), Enron ( Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ), Jack Abramoff ( Casino Jack and the United States of Money ), the Catholic church ( Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God ), and the U.S. government in his Oscar-winning film Taxi to the Dark Side about torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.
In recent years, documentary filmmaking has become an increasingly compelling medium for those challenging power.