© Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Puppet Masters
State surveillance of personal data: what is the society we wish to protect? One of the writers who signed a letter demanding an international bill of digital rights, says 'our masters are in the grip of a delusionary nightmare'
What in principle would justify the scope of the surveillance revealed by the Snowden leak? Would it be enough, for example, if it could be shown that a specific potential act of terrorism had been prevented by, and could only have been prevented by, the full breadth and depth of what we now have learned is the playing field of the security services?
We should hesitate before we stray off the touchline. The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.
Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. Flying would be safer if airport security demanded body searches with no exceptions and the examination of every item in every piece of luggage. On the matter of surveillance in general we have, without much discussion, learned to live with almost blanket surveillance by CCTV in our towns and cities. As a result thousand of crimes, including murder, have been solved and perhaps many more prevented. But how many more would there have been if we doubled the number of cameras, or increased them tenfold, a hundredfold?
© Felix Clay
Tom Stoppard: 'The world of surveillance operated by the people we pay to guard us exceeds the fevered dreams of the Stasi'
Tom Stoppard: 'The world of surveillance operated by the people we pay to guard us exceeds the fevered dreams of the Stasi'
We should hesitate before we stray off the touchline. The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.
Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. Flying would be safer if airport security demanded body searches with no exceptions and the examination of every item in every piece of luggage. On the matter of surveillance in general we have, without much discussion, learned to live with almost blanket surveillance by CCTV in our towns and cities. As a result thousand of crimes, including murder, have been solved and perhaps many more prevented. But how many more would there have been if we doubled the number of cameras, or increased them tenfold, a hundredfold?
Josh Shapiro lived the high life during the 1990s and drove a red Porsche.
In his early 20s, he was pulling down tens of thousands of dollars a month, working hard and partying harder at Stratton Oakmont, the notorious Long Island boiler room that sold investors the moon but delivered sawdust.
Shapiro idolized scheme masterminds Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush, who will be immortalized by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, out on Christmas.
"The lie becomes the truth," said Shapiro, 41, who eventually became disillusioned, traded in his Porsche for a Buick, and left finance entirely for a life devoted to helping people.
Here's his story, as told to The Post's Gary Buiso.
Seven months ago, Edward Snowden was a Hawaii-based employee of a US defence contractor, living an everyday life unknown to the public. At that time, in the US as elsewhere, national security issues also lived in the political shadows, almost as if the cold war had never quite ended. Back then, mainstream politics still tiptoed respectfully around the agencies, such as America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ, in the national security field. This was partly because they felt this was the proper patriotic course, partly because, fearful of terrorism, citizens seemed willing to trust the agencies to protect them from harm, and partly because they simply didn't know much about what the agencies were actually up to. It was another world.
Greenwald, Omidyar and Snowden
That is the somewhat thorny question facing the founders of what is thus far dubbed NewCo, the shadowy media start-up funded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar to the tune of $250 million in entrepreneurial partnership with the journalists who worked with former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden to bare the spying secrets of the National Security Agency to the world.
© John Macdougall/AFP/Getty
Informing the American people about how their government spies on them can be risky business for journalists.
Rajiv Pant, chief technology officer at The New York Times, thought he could be killed for it.
It was the IT help request from hell.
British newspaper The Guardian provided the Times with top-secret electronic documents exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Pant oversaw the handoff between the Guardian and the New York Times.
At the recent AppSec USA cybersecurity conference, the Times' chief technology officer described those tense initial moments.
© Ramin Talate/Getty Images
The New York Times has partnered with other media outlets to release top-secret documents detailing the extent of unwarranted government surveillance. It's a frightening task.
The New York Times has partnered with other media outlets to release top-secret documents detailing the extent of unwarranted government surveillance. It's a frightening task.
It was the IT help request from hell.
British newspaper The Guardian provided the Times with top-secret electronic documents exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Pant oversaw the handoff between the Guardian and the New York Times.
At the recent AppSec USA cybersecurity conference, the Times' chief technology officer described those tense initial moments.
© ProPublica
Security contractor SAIC produced the 66-page report "Games: A look at emerging trends, users, threats and opportunities in influence activities" in early 2007, and the document gives a rare window into how the US intelligence community views interactive games as a potential tool to be used by foreign actors. While parts of the report seem pretty realistic about gaming's potential use as a propaganda and planning tool, other sections provide a more fantastical take on how video games can be used as potential weapons by America's enemies.
Comment: The aforementioned report is trying hard, but unsuccessfully, to give credence to the unlawful infiltration of online gaming by military intelligence, whose actual purpose seems to be spying, the collection of data from the private lives of American citizens and their recruitment as cannon fodder or informants. IF there is any group out there plotting against the US empire, they must have better communication means than hiding behind a fantasy-creature avatar and trying to get their message through the busy battlegrounds of online gaming.
So, with the above in mind, it makes one wonder what kind of a "leak" this was, since it agrees with the propaganda agenda of our times.
Read also: U.S. and UK military intelligence 'planted agents' into World of Warcraft, Second Life to spy on gamers
Voters across America are heading to the polls today for state and local elections, and just like in federal elections, big business has been writing big checks to campaigns across the country. To follow the money in your state, see which industry topped the list of campaign contributions in the last election cycle:
© Bohdan Burmich/Noun Project
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke has suggested that she is open to the possibility of raising taxes on the wealthy - at least by changing the deductions.
"I believe in people paying their fair share," Burke told The Capital Times.
But Republicans are asking if Burke has always paid her fair share. Specifically, Burke - now a Madison millionaire - paid no state income taxes for three full years during the 1990s and only a minimal amount in another year. She lived outside Wisconsin for most of that time.
Records show the one-time Trek Bicycle executive paid no taxes to the state in 1990 and 1992-'93. She paid $2,807 in 1991. Numerous stories and her Facebook page say she went to work for Trek, a Waterloo-based company founded by her father, as director of European operations in 1990.
By comparison, she has paid more than $100,000 in state income taxes in three of the past four years.
"It is deeply concerning that Millionaire Mary Burke didn't pay taxes at several points in her career, and she owes the people of Wisconsin a serious explanation - not excuses," said Joe Fadness, executive director of the state Republican Party.
Burke spokesman Joe Zepecki said there is no issue here. Burke plans to challenge Republican Gov. Scott Walker during his 2014 re-election bid.
Comment: Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013