Michael Kleen Strike The Root Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:02 EST
Part I
If the United States came under the control of a totalitarian regime, would we recognize it? This question is of utmost importance today, when many of us harbor fears that some time in the near future ideas such as freedom, liberty, and privacy will be alien to our society. But as we witness the regular passage of legislation designed to restrict and regulate, and the tendency of the Federal government to increase rather than decrease its power (with a handful of exceptions), we are struck by the uninterrupted routine of life in the USA . As the central government brings more and more of private society under its control, we continue to watch cable TV, shop at supermarkets overflowing with products, and eat at our favorite restaurants. Could it be that we have already passed that dreaded threshold and missed it?
The trouble with diagnosing our condition is that most people are unaware of what totalitarianism actually is. Among even the most politically astute, there is little mental room for the possibility that a state in the process of becoming totalitarian might lack the most brutal and outward signs of oppressive regimes portrayed in popular culture. Because of our rather simplistic frame of reference - picture black and white images of National Socialist Germany or the Soviet Union - we recognize a country as either being in the advanced stages of totalitarianism or not at all. But just because a state maintains the structures and language of democracy and continues to have elections, for instance, that does not preclude it from being totalitarian.
The National Security Agency has been working with Microsoft Corp. to help improve security measures for its new Windows 7 operating system, a senior NSA official said on Tuesday.
The confirmation of the NSA's role, which began during the development of the software, is a sign of the agency's deepening involvement with the private sector when it comes to building defenses against cyberattacks.
"Working in partnership with Microsoft and (the Department of Defense), NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user's ability to perform their everyday tasks," Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's Information Assurance Director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a statement prepared for a hearing held this morning in Washington. "All this was done in coordination with the product release, not months or years later in the product cycle."
Laurence M. Vance Lew Rockwell Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:48 EST
In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four the government had three slogans emblazoned on The Ministry of Truth building: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. True, the dystopian society depicted by Orwell existed only in his mind. Yet, the doublespeak that existed in that made-up society has increasingly been adopted by governments - our government.
It is a tragic thing that the U.S. government employs doublespeak to deceive the American people; it is even more tragic that most Americans accept government doublespeak as the gospel truth.
There is no greater instance of government doublespeak than when it comes to the military. Here are some examples:
A police officer used a Taser stun gun to subdue a 10-year-old girl in her own home.
The officer had been called to the girl's home in Ozark, Arkansas, by her mother because she was behaving in an unruly manner and refusing to take a shower.
In a report on the incident the officer, Dustin Bradshaw, said the mother gave him permission to use the Taser.
When he arrived, the girl was curled up on the floor, screaming, and resisting as her mother tried to get her in the shower before bed.
"Her mother told me to take her if I needed to," the officer wrote.
Along with a bouquet of flowers, the global CEO of Yahoo! Inc, Carol Bartz, offered the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, whom she met on Wednesday morning, help with the Unique Identification (UID) programme being put in place in the country when she met him on Wednesday morning.
"The UID project involves a huge database. We, at Yahoo, have expertise in handling such huge amount of data. We met the Prime Minister today and discussed, among other things, how Yahoo can help the Government in the project," Bartz said here at an editorial round table with the media.
However, Yahoo also said that it was not looking at the UID project for any commercial interest but to pay back to the nation where it has had a presence for so many years.
Comment: As Wikileaks points out in their announcement of the leaked plans, "the project will likely become a model for many countries."
New Tang Dynasty Television Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:20 EST
On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to more than 400 Chinese students at the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology. Obama spoke and answered questions on a range of issues - including freedom of speech and religion.
However, it's not clear how many Chinese people could actually see or hear the event in the media. A scheduled live video stream of the event on the website of state-run Xinhua News Agency turned out only to be a transcript of the event. And while it was shown on a local Shanghai TV station, it was not broadcast on national television.
CCTV cameras are being fitted inside family homes by council 'snoopers' to spy on neighbours in the street outside, it was revealed today.
The £1,000 security cameras have been placed inside properties but are trained on the streets to gather evidence of anti-social behaviour.
Each device is linked to a laptop computer and accessible online by police and council officials 24 hours a day.
But the trial inside two homes by Croydon council in south London has sparked new fears about invasion of privacy and Britain's 'surveillance society'.
The world is becoming unsafer by the day. Before the end of November, half a billion new terrorists will be added to the list kept by the US government.
On November 30, one day before the Lisbon Treaty is scheduled to take effect, the ministers of justice of the EU's 27 member states will sign yet another security agreement with the US. It is supposed to be an essential weapon in the global "War on Terror" the US claims to be fighting.
Under the new agreement, the US government will get access to all the banking data of all Europeans. This means that from December 2009, every single financial transaction done by every single European banking customer will come under the scrutiny of the US authorities. Henceforth, whenever the US government suspects a European "citizen" of supporting terrorism, it can request all his or her banking data, including all bank statements as well as any and all personal data connected with the account.
No doubt, many people will fail to see much harm in this, because "they have nothing to hide." But such an attitude is based on the assumption the US is governed by benign, rational individuals, controlled by an elaborate system of checks and balances.
Geoffrey Alderman The Guardian Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:28 EST
The London Safety Camera Partnership is dominated by bureaucrats, has no constitution and holds meetings in secret
On Wednesday the London assembly member Victoria Borwick will, on my behalf, put a series of questions to the mayor, Boris Johnson, relating to the present plight of the London Safety Camera Partnership, a road safety initiative designed to reduce speeding and the number of vehicles running red lights in the capital.
The LSCP is a curious entity. It has no written constitution. Why not? The LSCP has not met since January. Why not? We are told that the LSCP is now in financial crisis, and may be "mothballed". Would this matter?
There are now 38 SCPs, covering most police force areas. Until April 2007, local SCPs received a proportion of the income from fines generated by traffic-enforcement cameras, but the well-founded suspicion that the cameras were being used primarily for revenue-raising purposes led the government to abandon this method of funding. Nowadays all local authorities with a responsibility for road safety receive an annual road safety grant not related to the number of penalty notices issued.
John Oates The Register Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:23 EST
Cardiff Airport is joining Manchester in using facial recognition technology to automate passport checks for inbound passengers.
Anyone over 18 with a biometric passport issued since 2006 can choose to have their face scanned, matched to the picture held on a chip on their passport and, assuming there's a match, be allowed in.
Doesn't this sound marvellous? Except the gates in Manchester were throwing up so many false results that staff effectively turned them off. Previously matches had to be 80 per cent the same - this was quickly changed to 30 per cent.
This means the machines are unable to distinguish between the faces of Winona Ryder and Osama bin Laden. Even more worryingly, the adjusted gates failed to distinguish between renownded pseudo-Scot Mel Gibson and actual Scot Gordon Brown.
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"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson
"There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Bill Moyers
"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000
"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823
"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know.": Murray I. Gurfein
One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free. N.A. Scott
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