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Google plans to package & sell location data from millions of users

Ava Kofman
The Intercept
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:26 UTC
google
© Reuters / Chris Helgren
Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like "SimCity." A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, has set out to change that.

The program, known as Replica, offers planning agencies the ability to model an entire city's patterns of movement. Like "SimCity," Replica's "user-friendly" tool deploys statistical simulations to give a comprehensive view of how, when, and where people travel in urban areas. It's an appealing prospect for planners making critical decisions about transportation and land use. In recent months, transportation authorities in Kansas City, Portland, and the Chicago area have signed up to glean its insights. The only catch: They're not completely sure where the data is coming from.

Typical urban planners rely on processes like surveys and trip counters that are often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and outdated. Replica, instead, uses real-time mobile location data. As Nick Bowden of Sidewalk Labs has explained, "Replica provides a full set of baseline travel measures that are very difficult to gather and maintain today, including the total number of people on a highway or local street network, what mode they're using (car, transit, bike, or foot), and their trip purpose (commuting to work, going shopping, heading to school)."
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Megaphone

Unhinged: Ex-CIA Chief John Brennan accuses President Trump of 'posing a danger to our national security'

Cristina Laila
Gateway Pundit
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC
John Brennan

John Brennan
Former CIA Chief John Brennan accused President Trump of posing a danger to our national security on Wednesday.

President Trump criticized the Intel Community on Wednesday in a pair of tweets after Iran announced the second consignment of yellowcake uranium to its conversion facility in Isfahan province - just one day after Dan Coats, the Director of National Intel refuted President Trump and insisted the Iranian regime was not seeking nuclear arms.

On Tuesday, Dan Coats testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and defended the Iranian regime and Obama administration talking points.

Comment: Brennan is just bitter and still sore from Trump revoking his clearance. He'll throw around any accusation he can muster. We would all be wise to simply ignore him.

See also:

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War Whore

It's the oil...or is it? A backstory on Trump's coup in Venezuela

Eric Draitser
CounterPunch
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 08:54 UTC
trump venezuela
© Nathaniel St. Clair
The US-sponsored coup in Venezuela, still ongoing as I write, is the latest chapter in the long and bloody history of US imperialism in Latin America. This basic fact, understood by most across the left of the political spectrum - including even the chattering liberal class which acknowledges this truth only with the passage of time and never in the moment - must undergird any analysis of the situation in Venezuela today. That is to say, the country is being targeted by the Yanqui Empire.

This point is, or at least should be, indisputable irrespective of one's opinions of Venezuelan President Maduro, the Socialist Party (PSUV), or the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution. Imperialism, and its neocolonial manifestation in the 21st Century, is there to pick clean the bones of the Bolivarian dream and return Venezuela to the role of subservient asset, an oil-soaked proxy state ruled by a right-wing satrap eager to please the colonial lords of capital.

But in providing analysis of the situation, the Left must tread carefully with the knowledge that though it may be weak, disorganized, fragmented, and bitterly sectarian, the Left remains the principal vehicle for cogent analysis of imperialism and its machinations. This historic role that the Left has played, from Lenin and Mao to Hobsbawm and Chomsky, is of critical importance as analysis informs discourse which in turn ossifies into historical narrative.

And with that weighty and historic responsibility, the Left is duty-bound to understand at a deep level what we're witnessing in Venezuela. Moreover, the Left must beware the pitfalls of shallow, superficial analysis which can lead to poor understanding of material reality, and even poorer anti-imperialist politics.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Return of the crickets? Canada to halve diplomatic staff at Cuba embassy over 'mysterious illness'


RT
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 08:50 UTC
bushcricket
© Global Look Press / Robin Loznak
A bushcricket in Oregon, US
Ottawa is considering slashing its embassy staff in Havana by half after a new case of a diplomat suffering from a mysterious ailment causing dizziness, nausea and possible ear damage was reported on Wednesday.

The unidentified diplomat has become the 14th person in Canada's Cuban embassy to fall victim to the illness, the origins of which are still shrouded in mystery. The diplomat fell ill on December 29, displaying the same concussion-like symptoms as his previously affected colleagues, a senior Canadian official told media on Wednesday. He arrived in Cuba last summer.

The staff of Canada's embassy in Cuba began falling ill after hearing loud piercing sounds beginning in early 2017, just like their American counterparts. The majority of the cases took place in 2017, and more than a year passed before the 13th case was reported in November. At that time, the Canadian government said that it had decided to allow embassy employees in Cuba to leave for Canada if they wished.

After this latest case, the Canadian government may decrease the embassy staff from its current 16 people to 8. The remaining staff would provide full consular services, but some non-essential programs will be reviewed and potentially phased out in the coming weeks, Canadian officials said.

Comment: See also:

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Control Panel

Question: When is a Democracy not a Democracy? Answer: When it's Venezuela and the US is pushing for a coup

Joe Emersberger
Mint Press News
Mon, 28 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
polling station in Caracas
© Ariana Cubillos | AP
People wait in line to cast their ballots outside a polling station in Caracas, Venezuela, Oct. 15, 2017.
Venezuela has as much right to call itself a democracy as does the United States. Until that is understood by enough people, the Trump administration will continue to devastate Venezuela's economy with illegal sanctions and push it towards civil war. People can oppose President Donald Trump's economic sanctions and incitement of a military coup without acknowledging President Nicolas Maduro's democratic legitimacy, but by not acknowledging his legitimacy they needlessly weaken their position.

Millions around the world opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the many years of sanctions that came before that invasion, while also accepting, in that case appropriately, that Saddam Hussein was a monstrous dictator. However, massive global opposition to U.S. aggression in Iraq failed to prevent the war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The most horrifying thing about Venezuela's case is that it shows (for at least the third time in this century alone) that democratic legitimacy provides very little defense for a government when the U.S. and its allies decide that it "must go."

Comment: The hypocrisy of US foreign policy is staggering, but no longer surprising. The Empire's belligerent and destructive focus on Venezuela looks to be getting worse though given the high-powered psychos put in charge of regime-changing the bolivarian country. On top of that, what Trump has done here, potentially, is to erode his own base who put him in to power largely because he promised not to do this sort of thing. So much for MAGA.

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Stormtrooper

Jackboots in the morning: No one will be spared from the American police state nightmare

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
jackboots
The American Police State does not discriminate.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now - whether it's in the name of national security or protecting America's borders or making America great again - rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

We've been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we don't seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.

For too long now, the American people have allowed their personal prejudices and politics to cloud their judgment and render them incapable of seeing that the treatment being doled out by the government's lethal enforcers has remained consistent, no matter the threat.

All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government today-warrantless surveillance, stop and frisk searches, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, indefinite detention, militarized police, etc. - will eventually be meted out on the general populace.
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Black Cat

Admitting defeat or electioneering? Poroshenko calls for peace with Russia

Paul Antonopoulos
Fort Russ News
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
poroshenko putin
The Ukrainian president, Pyotr Poroshenko, said on Tuesday that Ukraine needed peace with Russia.

"Of course we need peace with Russia, a cold peace, but peace. People are tired of the war and Russian propaganda is playing with this painful emotion," Poroshenko said.


Comment: He can't even say his country needs peace without blaming Russia for its propaganda - when its Poroshenko's junta that is one of the most corrupt in Europe, if not the world.


He added that "war and peace will be one of the main issues in the elections, because the population will elect not only the president, but the Supreme Commander."

The Ukrainian president also emphasized that Kiev will continue to seek a solution to the conflict in the Donbass region by political and diplomatic means.

Comment: Assuming Poroshenko is sincere - which is a big stretch - these recent statements may just be a fake out before another Kiev-instigated provocation in Dobass. Or worse, a false flag event designed to make 'peace loving Poroshenko' appear to be the injured party.

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MIB

At the core of Spygate scandal is FBI's reliance on 'intel' from political operatives

Brian Cates
The Epoch Times
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 19:40 UTC
fbi_comey
© Getty Images
It's well known by now that political propagandists Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS had the best of both worlds at their fingertips, thanks to accommodating officials inside the federal government.

They were simultaneously getting the Trump campaign targeted by the FBI and the news media by shopping the exact same "evidence" to both. Steele was even being paid by the FBI for providing them with his tall tales. That is, until they were forced to cut ties with him shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

We now know, however, that it wasn't just the political operatives at Fusion GPS playing the double-dealing game of giving fake allegations about the Trump campaign's supposed Russian ties to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI, while offering the same wrong information to the news media.

As former FBI General Counsel James Baker told members of Congress during his testimony before the House Oversight Committee last October, there was yet another political operative who was also playing the strategic leaking game against the Trump campaign during the 2016 election and afterward.

Baker revealed to the committee how the FBI started an investigation into supposed collusion between the Trump campaign and a bank in Russia, Alfa Bank, using information it was given by Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Perkins Coie is a name we have become quite familiar with. It's the same law firm used by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to hide their payments to Fusion GPS for the creation of the Steele dossier.
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Better Earth

Russia and Egypt discuss intensifying efforts to resolve Syria, Libya crises, "just solution to Palestine problem"


Sputnik
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 06:03 UTC
Russia Syria
© Sputnik / Andrey Chapligin
Russia and Egypt intend to step up efforts to resolve the crises in Syria and Libya as soon as possible, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday after talks between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

"During the conversation, a thorough exchange of views was held on the key problems of the Middle East and North Africa. At the same time, Moscow and Cairo reaffirmed their commitment to increasing efforts in the interests of finding coordinated political and diplomatic solutions to the crisis situations, including in Syria and Libya, as well as a just solution to the Palestinian problem", the ministry's statement reads.

Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with government forces fighting against numerous opposition groups and terrorist organizations such as Daesh and its associates. Russia, along with Turkey and Iran, is one of the guarantor states of the Syrian ceasefire. Moscow has also been assisting Damascus by providing humanitarian aid to the residents of the crisis-torn country.

Comment: That's an pretty wide ranging agenda, with some seemingly intractable problems, however Russia and Egypt have been working towards much closer relations in recent years and one hopes that, along with other willing countries, the successes they achieved in recent years will only continue:

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Bad Guys

Former Belgian official: US meddling in Venezuela elections due to Maduro's cooperation with Russia


TASS
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 22:13 UTC
Venezuela protest
© AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
Venezuela's rapprochement with Russia, especially in the military and economic spheres, was an additional factor that contributed to Washington's effort to implement regime change in that country, Belgian political scientist and former adviser to the country's Foreign Ministry, Marc Vanderlinden, told TASS on Tuesday.

"Nicolas Maduro, just like his predecessor Hugo Chavez, has always been a strong irritant for the US, who criticized their socialist methods of ruling the country, anti-liberal stance, and foreign policy, especially, its rapprochement with Cuba," he pointed out. "The economic crisis in Venezuela created the social tensions necessary for regime change. However, Russian loans and the expansion of military cooperation served as a strong impulse for decisive action. Russian strategic bombers and the likelihood of a military base there was a powerful incentive to initiate the regime change."
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