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Cops: U.S. law should require logs of your text messages

Declan McCullagh
CNet
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:47 UTC
Image
© U.S. House of Representatives
House subcommittee chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (center) will preside over today's hearing to discuss updating a 1986 privacy law. A proposal backed by Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and other companies is scheduled to be discussed along with law enforcement-backed proposals.
Silicon Valley firms and privacy groups want Congress to update a 1986-era electronic privacy law. But if a law enforcement idea set to be presented today gets attached, support for the popular proposal would erode.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to capture and store Americans' confidential text messages, according to a proposal that will be presented to a congressional panel today.

The law enforcement proposal would require wireless providers to record and store customers' SMS messages -- a controversial idea akin to requiring them to surreptitiously record audio of their customers' phone calls -- in case police decide to obtain them at some point in the future.

"Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity," Richard Littlehale from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation will tell Congress, according to a copy (PDF) of his prepared remarks. "In some cases, this means that critical evidence is lost. Text messaging often plays a big role in investigations related to domestic violence, stalking, menacing, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking."

Littlehale's recommendations echo a recommendation that a constellation of law enforcement groups, including the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, the National District Attorneys' Association, and the National Sheriffs' Association, made to Congress in December, which was first reported by CNET.

They had asked that an SMS retention requirement be glued onto any new law designed to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act for the cloud computing era -- a move that would complicate debate over such a measure and erode support for it among civil libertarians and the technology firms lobbying for a rewrite.
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Airplane

MoD flies 1m euro emergency cash to Cyprus for British personnel


BBC
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:02 UTC
British forces cyprus
© army.mod.uk
British forces in Cyprus

The UK has sent 1m euros (£850,000) to Cyprus as a "contingency measure" to provide military personnel with emergency loans.

The money is to be used for British personnel and their families if cash machines and debit cards stop working.

Officials confirmed a plane carrying the money had arrived in Cyprus.

MPs in Cyprus have rejected a 10bn-euro (£8.7bn) EU-IMF bailout which European officials say is needed to prevent the collapse of its banking sector.

Cypriots are angry at a planned one-off levy of up to almost 10% on savings.

The tax is a condition for Cyprus to get a loan from the EU and IMF.

Comment: Is the Ministry of Defense aware of the danger posed by 3000 soldiers revolting over theft from their bank accounts by the EU/IMF?

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Brick Wall

Israel and the politics of boycott

Joseph Massad
Al Jazeera
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:27 UTC
Apartheid Wall
© EPA
Israel's expertise in separation fences and walls was put to productive use with the massive "Apartheid Wall" it built on Palestinian lands
Zionism and Israel will continue to support any boycott that seeks to institutionalize racism and racial separatism.

"Boycott" is a term as old as political Zionism. As is commonly known, it came into circulation in 1880, starting out as an Irish peasant action to prevent peasant evictions from the land by landlords and their agents - in that inaugural case an agent named Charles Boycott. This is not to say that this was the first time such a tactic had been used. Indeed, half a century earlier, in 1830, in the United States, the National Negro Convention supported a boycott of slave-produced goods, a movement which had started among White Quakers at the end of the 18th century and which would spread among White and Black abolitionists during the 19th century until the American Civil War.

These auspicious beginnings of the boycott to restore the land and freedom of peasants and slaves would inspire movements in the 20th century that would range from anti-colonial tactics (as in the Indian boycott of British goods beginning in 1919 to end the British occupation of India) to anti-colonial-settler tactics (including the Arab League boycott of the Jewish settler-colony since the mid-1940s and the anti-South African Apartheid boycott beginning in the 1960s) to anti-racist tactics (including the anti-Nazi Jewish boycott of 1933 to end Nazi racial separatism and the Montgomery Bus Boycott by African Americans in the mid-1950s to end American white colonial settler apartheid in Alabama and the rest of the American South).
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Family

Cyprus parliament overwhelmingly rejects bank deposit tax

Michele Kambas and Karolina Tagaris
Globe and Mail
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:06 UTC
cyprus protests 2

The levy sparked angry protests in Cyprus
Cyprus's parliament overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout on Tuesday, throwing euro zone efforts to rescue the latest casualty of the currency area's debt crisis into disarray.

The vote by the small state's legislature was a stunning setback for the 17-nation euro zone, after lawmakers in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy had repeatedly accepted unpopular austerity measures over the last three years to secure European aid.


Comment: And none of the above mentioned countries is now in any better financial position than before. So maybe it is time for European countries to stop accepting "unpopular austerity measures" imposed by a system that cares only to destroy them and claim total control over them?


The rejection, with 36 votes against, 19 abstentions and one absence, brought the east Mediterranean island, one of the smallest European states, to the brink of financial meltdown.

EU countries said before the vote that they would withhold €10-billion ($12.9-billion U.S.) in bailout loans unless depositors in Cyprus shared the cost of the rescue, and the European Central Bank has threatened to end emergency lending assistance for teetering Cypriot banks.

But jubilant crowds outside parliament broke into applause, chanting: "Cyprus belongs to its people."

Comment: It was the first time that such plundering of people's private money was proposed, and the answer was No. We still do not know what awaits the people of Cyprus tomorrow, but at least the Troika might think twice now before trying to impose such outrageous measures on other countries under the pretext that it's for "their own good".

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Dollar

New Zealand government planning Cyprus-style solution


Voxy.co.nz
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:37 UTC
The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English's favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank's bail out.

"Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand - a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts," said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.

"The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.

"Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.

"While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.
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Attention

Indonesian official compares WWF to thieves


NOconsensus Org
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:20 UTC
WWF
© WWF-UK
The behaviour of green NGOs in the developing word resembles foreign adventurism: arrogant, reckless, and exploitative.

Just in time for Earth Hour this coming Saturday - that annual feel-good, accomplish-little World Wildlife Fund (WWF) event - a news story in the Jakarta Globe quotes Firman Subagyo, the head of the forestry commission for that country's House of Representatives:
Foreign NGOs like the WWF are like thieves visiting our homes to steal our treasures without us realizing it. The NGO's arrogance has impacted our weakened industrial competitiveness overseas, which will [in the] end worsen Indonesia's economy. [bold added, backed up here]
It seems the WWF took responsibility for helping to slow deforestation in a particular part of that country, but matters haven't gone according to plan. The article quotes Ir. Darori, the director general for forest protection:
We will evaluate [the WWF's work]. If it proves to have no benefit, we will terminate the partnership.
The willful blindness of groups such as the WWF and Greenpeace toward economically struggling nations around the globe is breathtaking. Their own, narrow agenda is the only thing that matters to these activists. The welfare of ordinary people who reside in those countries doesn't make it onto their radar (see a discussion of Mexico and Poland in this context).
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Question

Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France

Ezra Klein
Washington Post
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:33 UTC
Image
Steve Brill's massive Time article focused national attention on the price of health-care services in the United States. Sarah Kliff got further data showing an MRI can cost anywhere from $400 to $1,861 in Washington, DC alone. But as startling as the price difference between one hospital and another, or one insurer and another, can be in America, the difference between America and other countries is even more extraordinary. I wrote this piece in March 2012. But it's worth revisiting now.

There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher.

That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America's deficits would vanish. Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive.

There are many possible explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that we're sicker. Or that we go to the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories. As Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt, Peter Hussey and Varduhi Petrosyan put it in the title of their influential 2003 study on international health-care costs, "it's the prices, stupid."
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Bad Guys

Israel, Obama, and other people's oil

Nadia Hijab
Al Jazeera
Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:06 UTC
Golan Heights
© Reuters
Even as it plans to illegally drill for oil in the occupied Golan Heights, "Israel appears to have its eye on the occupied West Bank oil", according to a classified Foreign Office correspondence
If the US stops Genie Energy from going ahead with oil contract, it invites the wrath of myriad pro-Israel groups.

The schedule for President Barack Obama's first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories next week has just been released and it is no surprise that the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is not on his travel agenda.

And yet Israel put it on the international agenda less than a month ago with its award of a licence to a US energy firm to explore for oil in the Golan Heights. Oil drilling by the New Jersey-based Genie Energy Ltd in the occupied Golan Heights could well result in a lawsuit claiming that Israel is engaged in an illegal act of pillage as defined in the Hague Convention. Perhaps Israel is now so used to living off the fat of other people's land - Palestinian and Syrian soil and water, among other resources - it has seemingly thrown caution to the wind.

The award puts the US on the spot. If the Obama administration tries to stop Genie from going ahead with the contract, it invites the wrath of myriad pro-Israel groups and their neocon allies, whose strength was most recently on display in the battle to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

And if the administration ignores the oil deal, it leaves US corporations exposed to potential lawsuits for profiteering from Israel's violations of human rights and international law.
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Light Saber

They want to humiliate us, to destroy our dignity, say Cypriot protesters

Nathalie Savaricas
The Independent
Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:40 UTC
Angry mobs lower the German flag and draw swastikas in anti-EU demonstrations

cyprus protests

One demonstrator dumped sheep wool and animal feces in front of a line of police officers guarding the entrance of the Cyprus parliament building

They're robbing us, they want our savings, they want to humiliate us, to destroy our dignity - and all this for the EU and IMF," said 45-year-old Maro Pashali, one of hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the Cypriot parliament in Nicosia yesterday in protest at the country's bailout deal. Demonstrators showed their anger by climbing a pole outside the building to lower the German flag, while others brandished placards bearing a European Union insignia with the stars drawn in the shape of swastikas. Some called for a referendum - the right to decide on their future independently of "German diktats" - as young men with scarves hid their faces and chanted anti-German slogans.

As their politicians were attempting to renegotiate the EU/IMF deal to make the terms more favourable to smaller savers, many in the crowd were wondering whether there was not a better way.

Former Foreign Minister and politician Giorgos Lilikas, who attended the protest, told The Independent: "There was another solution which was to offer our natural resources in exchange for help from Europe. If we have to put our banks as a warranty, we don't need the Troika, we can do it on our own."
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Treasure Chest

The likely way social security benefits will be cut

Bob Rosenblatt
Next Avenue
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:40 UTC
Image
© iStockphoto/ThinkStock
An arcane change to the way Social Security's annual Cost of Living Adjustments, or COLAs, are calculated may be part of a deficit reduction deal between President Barack Obama and Congress. The revision, known as the "chained CPI," could cut the size of Social Security recipients' benefits starting in 2014.

You could feel a financial pinch if COLAs get tweaked this way, especially if you're fortunate enough to live for decades in retirement.

The Chained CPI and the Deficit

Deficit cutters like the idea of switching to the chained CPI because it would save the government an estimated $200 billion or so over 10 years.

In addition to reducing the growth in Social Security, the new math also would slow spending increases for many other federal outlays linked to inflation, like veterans benefits and government salaries, and bring in additional tax revenue because tax brackets are adjusted for inflation annually.
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