Puppet MastersS


USA

Federal judge rules U.S. border a constitution-free zone

David Kravets
Wired.com
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:59 UTC
US Customs and Border Protection Vehicle
© US Customs and Border Protection/Flickr
A federal judge today upheld a President Barack Obama administration policy allowing authorities along the U.S. border to seize and search laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices for any reason.

The decision (.pdf) by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York comes as laptops, and now smartphones, have become virtual extensions of ourselves, housing everything from email to instant-message chats to our papers and effects.

The American Civil Liberties Union brought the challenge nearly three years ago, claiming U.S. border officials should have reasonable suspicion to search gadgets along the border because of the data they store.

But Judge Korman said the so-called "border exemption," in which people can be searched for no reason at all along the border, continues to apply in the digital age.

Alarmingly, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation's actual border.
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Gear

We must all share the blame for our 'useless' politicians

Polly Toynbee
The Guardian
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 14:00 UTC
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© Mike Kemp/In Pictures/Corbis'No top down reorganisation' turned into £3bn of NHS turmoil. Andrew Lansley took the heat.
Public trust in politics is at a low ebb, our Guardian-ICM poll said last week. Most people are angry, not apathetic, and what makes them angriest is politicians who break their promises, which should be no surprise. In living memory there has been no greater deception than in the rift between this government's pre-election words and post-election deeds.

Nick Clegg gets most blame over tuition fees, a promise that won university seats and then betrayed so many fresh first-time voters. But David Cameron wins the mendacity prize by what he might call a country mile.

He pledged no rise in VAT; it rose immediately. On child benefit the prime minister said, "I wouldn't means test it", but he did. The education maintenance allowance would stay; it went. Vote blue, go green, became "get rid of all the green crap". Days before the election, Cameron said any minister proposing a frontline cut would be "sent straight back to their department to go away and think again".

Yet 6,000 nurses, 10,000 police officers and 10,000 teachers have gone, along with libraries, swimming pools and much care for the elderly. Cameron's posters said no NHS cuts - but that was a sleight of hand, since the NHS needs 3% just to stand still, so A&E is spilling over. "No top-down reorganisation" turned into £3bn of NHS turmoil.

Some accepted deficit reduction as an excuse - but it has corroded trust. Why should anyone believe a word any party says next time? What words are left untarnished when Cameron's "compassionate conservatism" and "big society" used them all up?
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Brick Wall

US sends 3 Uighur Guantanamo prisoners to Slovakia


The Guardian
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
gitmo
© Reuters/Lendov
Slovakia has accepted three prisoners from Guantanamo Bay who had posed a difficult resettlement challenge, helping the U.S. government move closer to its goal of closing the prison on its base in Cuba, officials said Tuesday.

The three men who left for the Central European country in recent days were Uighurs, members of an ethnic Muslim minority from western China who had been detained in Afghanistan as suspected allies of the Taliban and sent to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation.

Authorities eventually determined that the 22 Uighurs in its custody had no involvement in terrorism, but the U.S. struggled to resettle them. China requested their return, but they couldn't be sent there because of fears they would face persecution and torture. Many countries refused to accept them out of reluctance to anger the Chinese government. Congress blocked a U.S. judge's order to release them inside the United States.

Uighurs are from the northwestern Chinese region of Xianjiang, where militants have fought a low-intensity insurgency against Chinese rule.
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Bad Guys

Psychopathic Italian high court overturns paedophile conviction as 11-year-old 'in love'


The Local
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 16:57 UTC
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© AFPItaly's supreme court overturns a paedophile's conviction because the verdict did not sufficiently consider absence of physical force and the 11-year-old girl's feelings of love".
Italy's highest court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship".

Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor.

The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court.

But Italy's supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider "the 'consensus', the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl's feelings of love".
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Robot

Robotization of Earth: US names drone testing sites


Yahoo! News
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
drones
© AFP Photo/Saul Loeb drone is on display during the Unmanned Systems 2013 exhibition and symposium hosted by The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, August 13, 2013
US aviation regulators on Monday released the names of sites picked to test civilian drones whose slated 2015 debut over American skies has sparked privacy concerns.

Testing of the unmanned aircraft is due to start within three months and could continue until February 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement.

The FAA has said some 7,500 small unmanned aircraft can be expected in US airspace in the next five years -- provided regulations are in place to handle them.

As well as law enforcement, supporters say civilian drones could be used for a vast range of applications, including tracking the progress of wildfires, helping to find lost skiers, identifying criminals or mapping inhospitable terrain.

Data from the testing "will help the FAA answer key research questions such as solutions for 'sense and avoid,' command and control, ground control station standards and human factors, airworthiness, lost link procedures and the interface with the air traffic control system," the FAA said.
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Hardhat

The Red-Dead seas canal

Jamal Kanj
Sott.net
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 06:15 UTC
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The agreement for the two seas Canal connecting the Red and Dead Sea was summed up best by Israeli water minister Silvan Shalam who jubilantly described it following the December 9 signing ceremony at the World Bank headquarters as "a historic agreement that realises ... the dream of (founder of modern Zionism Theodore) Herzl."

The canal was another strategic triumph for Israel's conniving diplomacy even after the project was reduced to about one-tenth of its original size due to serious economic and environmental concerns raised by the World Bank.

The Zionist-envisioned project was repackaged and sponsored by Jordan as a must to save the Dead Sea, and building a large desalination plant providing each Israel and Jordan with eight billion to 13 billion gallons of fresh water annually.

According to Israeli and international environmentalists, Israeli government's policies of over pumping from the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River - serving Jewish only colonies - was the main cause for the loss of nearly 30 per cents of the Dead Sea's mass in the last 50 years.
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Magnify

NSA collects data from undersea cables


Press TV
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 21:33 UTC
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South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) optical fiber submarine communications cable
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected sensitive data on key undersea optical fiber telecommunications cables between Europe, North Africa and Asia.

Citing classified documents labeled "top secret" and "not for foreigners", German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that NSA spied on the so-called the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 also known as "Sea-Me-We 4 undersea cable system".

The German magazine said NSA specialists had hacked an internal website belonging to the operator consortium to mine documents about technical infrastructure including circuit mapping and network management information. "More operations are planned in the future to collect more information about this and other cable systems." Spiegel quoted the NSA documents, dating from February, as saying.
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Bad Guys

Volgograd terrorist attacks killed 32 people - Emergency Situations Ministry


Voice of Russia
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 13:09 UTC
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© Live.russia.tv
The death toll from the two terrorist attacks in Volgograd has reached 32 people, Russian Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Stepanov told reporters. The Investigative Committee has announced it established a link between the explosions at the Volgograd train station and on the trolleybus.

"We currently have information that the two explosions have hurt 104 people, of which 32 were killed," he said.

Stepanov said the process of the victims' identification has not been completed yet.

"Unfortunately, this process may take more than one day. Some victims are expected to be identified with relatives' help. There are plans to use genetic tests, too," he said.

The terrorists wanted to sow panic and fear, making use of the impossibility to ensure the complete security of transportation systems, Lev Korolkov, veteran of the Vympel special task unit, told the Voice of Russia.

"It is impossible to take each and every transportation vehicle or each and every crowded place under guard. Then, all public transport would have to be halted, all shopping centers closed and all railway stations shut. It's a process aimed at destabilizing the general situation. Such high-profile terrorist attacks inflicting a large number of casualties mean that some forces are attempting to rock the boat. Those forces could be those seeking territorial secession or maximum control over the North Caucasus to create fertile ground for a future caliphate. We have seen similar things in the Middle East and North Africa over recently," the expert said.
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Take 2

Saudi 'gift' to hide its terror hand

Finian Cunningham
Press TV
Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:21 UTC
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In November 2013, at least 23 people, including Iran’s cultural attaché to Beirut Hojjatoleslam Ebrahim Ansari, were killed
Saudi largesse is throwing money again - in a bid to cover up its bloodstained hands in violence hitting the Middle East and beyond.

The latest public relations gimmick is the "donation" of $3 billion to the Lebanese army made by Saudi King Abdullah at the weekend. The Saudi cash - twice the national military budget of Lebanon - is being regaled in the Western media as a noble offer to secure Lebanon from recent terror attacks.

The announcement was made during a visit to Riyadh by French President Francois Hollande, who met the Saudi king and the latter's Lebanese proxy, Saad Hariri. The new Saudi military aid to Lebanon is tied to the condition that it must be spent on purchasing French weaponry. Already, the outlines of a sleazy deal are emerging. The above political actors have done much to destabilize Lebanon with violence, which is now being blamed on the wrong people - Shia Hezbollah - thanks to the deft finger work of billionaire Paris-exile Hariri.
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Robot

New Pentagon blueprint sees bigger role for robot warfare

Anna Mulrine
The Christian Science Monitor
Fri, 27 Dec 2013 16:55 UTC
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© Sergio Moraes/Reuters/FileA Scout robot holds a grenade during an anti-terrorism exercise in Rio de Janeiro, Nov. 12. Rio's police organized the exercise to test out its anti-terrorism capabilities before hosting the World Cup soccer tournament next year and the 2016 Olympic Games.

The Pentagon quietly released this week a technological vision for the next 25 years - a vision including drones and robots that will be 'critical to future success' of the US military, according to its authors.

At a NASCAR racetrack in Miami earlier this month, teams from NASA, Google, and 14 other groups of engineering gurus put cutting-edge robots through some challenging paces.

The aim was to see how well the robots could tackle tasks that may sound simple, but are tricky for nonhumans - including, say, climbing a ladder, unscrewing a hose from a spigot, navigating over rubble, and steering a car.

The contest was dreamed up by the Pentagon's futuristic experimentation arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and senior defense officials were watching it carefully - well aware that the Pentagon is growing increasingly reliant on robotics.
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