Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

And the Privacy Invasion Award Goes To ...

Rebecca Bowe
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fri, 11 May 2012 20:23 UTC
1984 film screenshot
© Umbrella-Rosenblum Films
Who's playing fast and loose with your data? The Big Brother Awards, billed as the "Oscars for data leeches" by the hackers and privacy advocates who hand out the prizes, shine a high-intensity spotlight on companies and individuals with poor privacy track records. Since 1998, Privacy International and a host of affiliated organizations have singled out the worst privacy violators in various countries including the UK, Austria, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and the U.S. The title evokes the totalitarian cult personality featured in George Orwell's 1984, set in a dystopic world of mass surveillance.

In Germany, privacy advocates held their annual edition of the Big Brother Awards in April. The panel of judges was made up of representatives from privacy advocate FoeBuD and other organizations campaigning for data protection and human rights. Curious to know who made Germany's list of privacy offenders? Here's the rundown.

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior, snagged a Big Brother Award in the category "Government and Administration" for presiding over a veritable data tsunami that swept up mobile phone data belonging to hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens. Police filed data requests with cell phone service providers for connection logs over a 12-hour period in Dresden, resulting in the staggering release of more than a million phone records associated with some 55,000 identified subscribers. The requests were filed in the wake of a February 2011 mass demonstration against a Dresden Nazi parade. The police were targeting the anti-Nazi protesters.
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Eye 1

India Moving Ahead With Universal Biometric ID Program Despite Growing Concern

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
Sun, 06 May 2012 15:41 UTC
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Only three months ago, I wrote an article entitled "Cashless Society: India Implements First Biometric ID Program for all of its 1.2 Billion Residents," where I discussed the implementation of a relatively new policy in India geared toward the creation of a massive biometric identification database for all 1.2 billion Indian residents.

The system consists of fingerprints, iris scans, and facial photographs - information which will be attached to a Unique Identification Number to be referenced when combined with the traditional methods of identification and included on the chip-enhanced National ID card.

Thankfully, after some time with little or no opposition, the UID program is receiving a bit more attention in the mainstream press as well as from privacy protection organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation which recently produced an excellent article entitled, "Growing Mistrust of India's Biometric ID Scheme," which reaffirms everything I had previously written.

Although the program is allegedly voluntary, as I have written on numerous occasions in the past, the mask of being "voluntary" is inevitably removed after the program has been in place for a set amount of time, particularly as more and more people begin to participate or as the government gradually forces more and more to participate for one reason or another. Eventually what was once voluntary always becomes mandatory. In addition, it always carries with it the full force of the State backing the change.
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Pirates

No surprise: BP wins delay of Gulf spill trial until 2013

Jonathan Stempel
Reuters
Thu, 03 May 2012 15:33 UTC
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A trial to assign blame and damages that could total tens of billions of dollars for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been put off until January, in a setback for the U.S. government, which wanted to try its case this summer.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans on Thursday scheduled a trial for Jan. 14, 2013, more than 10 months after it had originally been scheduled.

The decision means the federal government and Gulf Coast states, which also wanted a summer trial, may have to wait longer to recover money from BP Plc and its drilling partners.

It is unclear how the new timetable will affect strategy, or whether it might spur the federal government to press harder for settlements and help local residents seeking money for cleanup or restoration.

"This may spur the government to settle," said Edward Sherman, a professor at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. "The Obama administration may want to show its stuff before the November elections."
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Stormtrooper

Lords of the Rings: Olympic paranoia targets protests


Russia Today
Fri, 11 May 2012 04:12 UTC
As London prepares for the Olympics, bureaucrats and law-makers have been busy too - enacting a range of rules and regulations. Draconian measures are already excluding some people from the country, while a number of residents have been banned from the games -simply because they've objected to the construction of Olympic facilities near their homes. RT's Laura Smith has more.

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USA

The Jones Plantation

LarkenRose
YouTube
Wed, 09 May 2012 04:09 UTC
One cannot change reality by changing the words you use to describe reality. Look beneath the rhetoric, and glimpse the truth.

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Light Sabers

Putin to skip G8 summit, talks with Obama in US


Press TV
Thu, 10 May 2012 03:50 UTC
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Russia's newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin speaks during a reception marking Victory Day at the Kremlin in Moscow, on May 9, 2012.
Russia's newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin has pulled out of the Group of Eight summit in Maryland, US, and ice-breaker talks with US President Barack Obama next week, the Kremlin says.

Raising new questions about Moscow-Washington ties, Putin, who took the oath as the new Russian leader on Monday, informed Obama of his decision during a telephone call on Wednesday.

He noted the need to stay in Moscow to finalize cabinet appointments in the new Russian government, citing he will send Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.

Putin had been expected at the G8 summit at Camp David to hold talks with the US president in a first test of whether the "reset" policy between the Kremlin and the White House will survive his return to the presidency.
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Vader

UK Prime Minister Calls For Single Eurozone Government

Soren Dreier
zen-haven.dk
Fri, 11 May 2012 03:47 UTC
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David Cameron has given his strongest warning yet that the euro is doomed to fail as fears grow that Greece is close to crashing out of the single currency.

The Prime Minister dismissed new French president Francois Hollande's claim that Britain was 'indifferent' to the fate of the eurozone, insisting it was essential for our economy that the Continent recovers.

'We want the euro area to succeed,' Mr Cameron said in an interview with the Daily Mail. 'It's 40 per cent of our exports. It's vitally important these economies get back to growth.

'The difficulty for us is we take a different view about the euro. We didn't join. We think that single currencies really require single governments if they are going to work properly.

'We have to recognise that the euro is a project in enormous transition. It could go in any number of different ways.
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No Entry

Blocking internet porn at the expense of civil liberties? UK government's plan deemed 'unrealistic'

Lizzy Davies
The Guardian
Sat, 12 May 2012 03:10 UTC
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© Kai-Otto Melau/AlamyOpt-in blocks to combat pornography can be easily avoided, say experts.
Civil liberties campaigners and technology experts join condemnation of 'opt-in' scheme favoured by children's charities

Proposals for a default block on internet pornography have been criticised as impractical and potentially counterproductive by technology experts and civil liberties campaigners, setting them at loggerheads with groups such as the NSPCC ahead of a potentially stormy government consultation.

David Cameron announced last week that the government would consult on methods to improve online child protection, including a system whereby filters on adult material were set as default. Anyone wanting to access such content would have to "opt in" with their internet service provider.

The idea, advocated by a number of MPs as the best way to safeguard minors, was the chief recommendation of an independent parliamentary inquiry into online child protection, chaired by Tory backbencher Claire Perry and published last month. It has also been vociferously championed by the Daily Mail.

But according to many in the technology community the proposal is unrealistic. They say that a combination of web-aware children and ever-resourceful pornography sites would leave a network-level block struggling to be effective.

Comment: The global push towards internet control has no greater ally than internet pornography. All healthy people would agree, with one third of boys now addicted to soul-crushing porn, that blocking children's access to it could be a good plan or at least a move in the right direction.

But do we really think governments give a damn what our children are watching online?

Beyond the Dutroux Affair: The reality of protected child abuse and snuff networks in a world ruled by psychopaths

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Vader

British Intel MI5 And MI6 Behind Underwear Bomb Plot

Brit Dee
Activist Post
Sat, 12 May 2012 02:52 UTC
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Purported bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri
British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 were ultimately behind this week's contrived underwear bomb plot, it has been alleged by sources spoken to by London's The Telegraph.

MI5 reportedly recruited a British passport holder of Saudi origin with the mission to infiltrate Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and gather intelligence which could be used to kill purported master bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri in a drone strike.

Once the double agent had been recruited, MI6 collaborated with Saudi intelligence and the asset was sent to Yemen, where he successfully infiltrated militants and walked away with the explosive device currently being analysed by the FBI in Virginia.

Upon completing his mission the man reportedly travelled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, via the United Arab Emirates, where the underwear bomb was passed to the agent's British handlers. He also provided intelligence which was used to kill purported "director of external operations" for Al Qaeda, Fahd al-Quso, in a CIA drone strike in Yemen on Sunday.
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MIB

Manufactured False Flag Bomb Plot Exposed, Officials Irate Over Leak Proving CIA Ran Entire Operation


The Intel Hub
Wed, 09 May 2012 02:24 UTC
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The supposed al Qaeda bomb plot to blow up a U.S. bound plane has completely fallen apparent with recent revelations that the terrorist was actually working for the CIA and Saudi Intelligence the entire time.

That's right, this huge corporate media manufactured story was literally a NON EVENT with the terrorist actually being an operative who then turned the bomb over to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In an all too predictable next move, the corporate media is now running direct homeland security advertisements for body scanners throughout the entire world.

Immediately after the release of this full scale propaganda story, the corporate CIA run media went to work promoting the dangerous naked body scanners and literally worshipping homeland securities draconian "security" measures.

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