Facebook came under fresh pressure in Germany Thursday after authorities reopened a probe into the website's facial recognition software which they say violates the privacy of its users.

The head of the data protection office in the northern city of Hamburg, Johannes Caspar, said he would resume an investigation launched against Facebook more than a year ago but suspended in June.

Caspar agreed at the time to let negotiations between Facebook and Irish authorities about the software run their course, in the hope that the US-based company would accept stricter terms for the use of such data in Europe.

Facebook's European operations are based in Ireland.

"This hope has only been partially fulfilled," he said in a statement. "The potential for abuse with a biometric database is immense."

He accuses the online social network of contravening European privacy laws with its system for registering the faces of users in photographs posted on the site.

The nation's police chiefs have adopted a code of conduct for their use of drones, including letting any images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, be open to inspection by the public, and that the images not be stored unless they are evidence of a crime or part of an ongoing investigation.

The chiefs also said that if they plan to fly drones over an area where they are likely to spot criminal activity and where they would be intruding on someone's "reasonable expectations of privacy," they should seek to get a search warrant first.

In their three-page document, the chiefs said they are aware of privacy issues that have arisen with the prospect of an explosion in both governmental and private use of drone technology.

"Privacy concerns are an issue that must be dealt with effectively if a law enforcement agency expects the public to support the use of UAV by their police," the chiefs said.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the industry trade group, applauded the new rules, saying they struck a good balance.

If you want to figure out what is going to happen next in the financial markets, carefully watch what the insiders are doing. Those that are "connected" have access to far better sources of information than the rest of us have, and if they hear that something big is coming up they will often make very significant moves with their money in anticipation of what is about to happen. Right now, Wall Street insiders and central banks all around the globe are making some very unusual moves. In fact, they appear to be rapidly preparing for something really big.

So exactly what are they up to? In a previous article entitled "Are The Government And The Big Banks Quietly Preparing For An Imminent Financial Collapse?", I speculated that they may be preparing for a financial meltdown of some sort. As I noted in that article, more than 600 banking executives have resigned from their positions over the past 12 months, and I have been personally told that a substantial number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for "prepper properties" this summer.

But now even more evidence has emerged that quiet preparations are being made for an imminent financial collapse. That doesn't guarantee that something will happen or won't happen. Like any good detective, we are gathering clues and trying to figure out what the evidence is telling us.

Why Is George Soros Selling So Much Stock And Buying So Much Gold?

I am certainly not a fan of George Soros. He has funneled millions upon millions of dollars into organizations that are trying to take America in the exact wrong direction.

However, I do recognize that he is extremely well connected in the financial world. Soros is almost always ahead of the curve on financial matters, and if something big is going to go down George Soros is probably going to know about it ahead of time.

That is why it is very alarming that he has dumped all of his banking stocks and that he is massively hoarding gold. The following is from shtfplan.com....

In a harbinger of what may be coming our way in the Fall of 2012, billionaire financier George Soros has sold all of his equity positions in major financial stocks according to a 13-F report filed with the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.

Soros, who manages funds through various accounts in the US and the Cayman Islands, has reportedly unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million.

What's equally as interesting as his sale of major financials is where Soros has shifted his money. At the same time he was selling bank stocks, he was acquiring some 884,000 shares (approx. $130 million) of Gold via the SPDR Gold Trust.

Why would you dump over a million shares of stock in major banks and purchase more than 100 million dollars worth of gold?

Well, it would make perfect sense if you believed that a collapse of the financial system was about to happen.

Earlier this year, George Soros told the following to Newsweek....

"I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've experienced in my career," Soros tells Newsweek. "We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system."

It looks like he is putting his money where his mouth is.

Perhaps even more disturbing is what he believes is coming after the financial collapse....

As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. "Yes, yes, yes," he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. "It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States."

That doesn't sound good.

UPDATE: Here's the link for my portion of the BBC Newshour segment in which I was interviewed about the Israeli government document.

Israelis are posting a claim that the document I published is identical to a post published by Fresh, an Israeli gossip/news portal, a few days ago. It is not. My original IDF source leaked the post to a Fresh member and me at the same time. That person published a small portion of the original memo at Fresh, embellishing it with much material that was meant to disguise what it was and where it came from. I can't ascribe motives to whoever published it at Fresh, but much of it fantasy and isn't in the original document. This story is now a screaming headline in the Israeli media and at no point has anyone in the Israeli government maintained that this document is anything other than what I claim it to be. They know it is authentic. Anyone else who claims otherwise does so at the risk of their own credibility (if they have any).


In the past few days, I received an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel's war plans against Iran. The document was passed to me by a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer. My source, in fact, wrote to me that normally he would not leak this sort of document, but

"These are not normal times. I'm afraid Bibi and Barak are dead serious."

The rock group Silversun Pickups is objecting to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign using their song 'Panic Switch.'

WRCB-TV reports that the Silversun Pickups' attorney sent a cease and desist letter to Romney's campaign on Wednesday.

According to a press release by Silversun Pickups lead singer Brian Aubert, the band "has no intention of endorsing the Romney campaign."

"We don't like people going behind our backs, using our music without asking, and we don't like the Romney campaign. We're nice, approachable people. We won't bite. Unless you're Mitt Romney!"

"We were very close to just letting this go because the irony was too good. While he is inadvertently playing a song that describes his whole campaign, we doubt that 'Panic Switch' really sends the message he intends."

British foreign secretary says WikiLeaks founder won't be allowed out of country
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hailed the decision of the government of Ecuador to grant him political asylum, calling it "courageous."

Assange, a 41-year-old Australian, has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London since June 19, just 10 days before he was supposed to turn himself in to police.

He is trying to avoid extradition from the U.K. to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning for alleged sexual misconduct. He has exhausted all his legal avenues in his bid to avoid extradition.

"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation," Assange said in a statement.

Speaking in Quito, Ricardo Patino, the foreign minister of Ecuador, announced the decision to grant Assange asylum. Patino said Assange faces the threat of political persecution including the possibility of extradition to the United States, where Patino said the Australian would not get a fair trial. Patino added that neither the U.K. nor Sweden would offer Ecuador assurances that Assange would not be turned over to another country.

"It is not impossible that he would be treated in a cruel manner, condemned to life in prison, or even the death penalty," Patino said. "Ecuador is convinced that his procedural rights have been violated."

Two US lawmakers probing bribery allegations against Walmart in Mexico say they have documents suggesting the US retail giant may also have engaged in tax evasion and money laundering.

The congressmen, Elijah Cummings and Henry Waxman, made their claim in a letter to Walmart Chief Executive Michael Duke dated Tuesday, urging him to respond to requests for information about allegations that the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

"We have obtained internal company documents, including internal audit reports, from other sources suggesting that Walmart may have had compliance issues relating not only to bribery, but also to 'questionable financial behavior' including tax evasion and money laundering in Mexico," said the letter, dated Tuesday.

Baghdad - At least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded when insurgents launched attacks in central and northern Iraq on Thursday, the latest wave of scattered but persistent strikes aimed at undermining the government's authority.

More than 100 people have been killed in violence across the country since the start of August, showing that insurgents led by al-Qaida's Iraqi franchise remain a lethal force eight months after the last U.S. troops left the country.

Thursday's carnage began with a predawn attack against the house of a military officer. Militants planted four bombs around his house near the northern city of Kirkuk, according to the city's police commander Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir. The officer escaped unharmed, but his brother was killed and six other family members were wounded.

Hours later, a bomb in a parked car exploded near a string of restaurants, killing one and wounding 15, Qadir said. The blast seriously damaged the eateries' storefronts, scattering shattered glass and debris across the sidewalk.

Another parked car bomb targeting a police patrol followed, injuring two policemen and two civilian bystanders.

A couple hours later, two car bombs exploded simultaneously in a parking lot near a complex of government offices in the city's north, injuring four people.

Kamra - Islamist militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fought their way into one of Pakistan's largest air bases on Thursday, the air force said, in a brazen challenge to the nuclear-armed country's powerful military.

The attack was repelled and only one aircraft was damaged, said an air force spokesman, adding that the Minhas air base at Kamra, in central Punjab province, did not house nuclear weapons.

"No air base is a nuclear air base in Pakistan," he said.

The gunbattle raged for hours, and eight militants and one soldier were killed, the spokesman said. Commandos were called in to reinforce and police armored personnel carriers could be seen heading into the base.

Pakistan's Taliban movement, which is close to al Qaeda and seen as the biggest security threat to the South Asian nation, claimed responsibility for the assault.

"We are proud of this operation. Our leadership had decided to attack Kamra base a long time ago," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The militants moved through a nearby village under cover of darkness and climbed a nine foot (2.7 meter) wall strung with barbed wire to break into the base, the air force spokesman said. Some were wearing military uniforms.

The diplomatic standoff over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange escalated on Wednesday after Britain threatened to raid Ecuador's embassy in London if Quito did not hand over Assange, who has been taking refuge there for two months.

The Ecuadorean government said such an action would be considered a "hostile and intolerable act" as well as a violation of its sovereignty.

"Under British law we can give them a week's notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

"But that decision has not yet been taken. We are not going to do this overnight. We want to stress that we want a diplomatically agreeable solution."

Quito bristled at the threat and said it would announce its decision on Assange's asylum request on Thursday at 7 a.m.

"We want to be very clear, we're not a British colony. The colonial times are over," Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement after a meeting with President Rafael Correa.