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Eye 1

Data 'sharing': Amazon's Alexa sends thousands of recordings to the wrong user

Joseph Archer
The Telegraph
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 10:30 UTC
Amazon Alexa
Amazon accidentally sent recordings made by its Alexa voice-activated assistant to the wrong user raising fresh privacy concerns about the use of digital devices.

Amazon confirmed what it described as "an unfortunate case that resulted from a human error," adding that it was an "isolated incident."

German magazine c't reported that a user had asked Amazon to send him all of the data the company had stored on him.

The man, who wasn't identified and who had never used one of Amazon's voice-activated assistants, received 1,700 audio files made inside a stranger's home.

Comment: Despite Amazon's assurances, this wasn't an 'isolated' case. Amazon can't be trusted with your privacy:

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Sheriff

Berlin police chief creates 'safety feeling', but fears to jog outside own office


RT
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 19:28 UTC
German police
© FILE PHOTO REUTERS/Florian Ulrich
The head of Berlin police publicly claimed the German capital has become more secure, but media reports said not quite - at least outside the official's own office where she doesn't jog fearing for her safety.

Barbara Slowik, chief of the German capital police, tried her best to ensure the public that the 3.7-million city is in safe hands. She told the Die Zeit newspaper that security situation was appalling when she was appointed as the head of Berlin police department.

Now, things have changed after police deployed mobile patrols to various public places, she claimed, adding, "I intentionally created the feeling of safety."

"This was a deliberate measure to ensure that safety feeling," Slowik reiterated, "so that citizens and tourists know - police are here watching." The comment looked robust at a glance, but then something went wrong.
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Bad Guys

Islamic State threatens US and EU cities with drone attacks in chilling new poster after Gatwick chaos


RT
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 19:24 UTC
isis poster

Islamic State poster circulating online
Terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has launched a new propaganda campaign against the West, threatening US & EU cities with drones, in a new poster prompted by the travel chaos at London's Gatwick Airport.

The post, circulating on social media, shows a photoshopped image of a drone carrying cargo with the terrorists' logo, ominously flying over New York city, with five separate scenes of carnage at the bottom, seemingly the aftermaths of attacks on Western cities carried out by IS.

Attached is the tagline: "Sender: The Islamic State."

It comes on the back of travel chaos that has brought London's Gatwick Airport to a standstill due to drones hovering in the skies above. All departing flights had to be grounded and incoming planes diverted to other airports, including Dublin, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Paris.
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Eye 2

Two Scandinavian backpackers hacked to death in Morocco by 'ISIS terrorists' with one filmed being beheaded

Andrew Koubaridis
news.com.au
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 18:20 UTC
Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland

Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland
Two Scandinavian backpackers were hacked to death and one beheaded in what is believed to have been a terrorist attack in Morocco.

Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, were knifed and beheaded on camera while camping in the Atlas Mountains.

Their bodies were found on Monday morning.

Footage of the horrifying attack has been shared on social media and has caused outrage in Morocco. The footage shows a blonde woman screaming while a man cuts her neck with what appears to be a sharp kitchen knife.
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Stop

Appeals court ruling: Colleges must censor and block online services if they offend someone

Greg Piper
The College Fix
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Campuswalk
© Robarts
Censorship? Speak 'not', a word.
Dissenting judge to university: Appeal this immediately

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, not his death, which happens in the spring. When it comes to dead litigation, it's apparently the opposite. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has resurrected a lawsuit against the University of Mary Washington for not meddling enough in its students' lives.

Here's some background: A location-based social media app called Yik Yak used to exist. It let users post things anonymously in a given geographic area, such as around colleges. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people posted boorish and offensive things. Even less surprisingly, people with fascist tendencies demanded their universities identify and punish those people.

A feminist group at UMW took this to the next level by filing a lawsuit last year alleging the public university failed to protect them from a "sexually hostile environment." Also named as a defendant was the university's former president Richard Hurley, who allegedly retaliated against the plaintiffs ... by publicly defending the school against the students' claims. I'm not kidding.

The lawsuit's other legal reasoning was not particularly convincing. The plaintiffs said UMW should have shut down Yik Yak by banning the app from the campus network. This would not have stopped anyone with a data signal from using the app. Which is basically everyone.

A federal judge knocked down the lawsuit a year ago, saying that implementing the plaintiffs' demands "may have exposed the university to liability under the First Amendment."

Comment: There are several options, but only one 'choice': freedom of speech.

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Arrow Down

Peter Schiff on US economy: 'This isn't a bear market, we're in a house of cards that the Fed built

Mark DeCambre
Market Watch
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:51 UTC
Peter Schiff
© Bloomberg
Peter Schiff, president and chief global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital
Where in the world is Peter Schiff, as the stock market entered an apparent unraveling phase?

Find the chief executive of Euro Pacific Capital, a longtime gold bug and market pundit, on a beach in Puerto Rico, where he's taken up residence as he watches the equity market get rocked.

"I'm watching the U.S. economy implode from the beach," Schiff told MarketWatch during a recent phone interview. "We're in a lot of trouble," he said.

"This isn't a bear market, we're in a house of cards that the Fed built," he said.
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Biohazard

India's drug regulator orders Johnson & Johnson to stop manufacturing baby powder using raw materials

Rahul Singh, Krishna N. Das
Reuters
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:46 UTC
baby powder
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
India's drugs regulator has ordered Johnson & Johnson to stop manufacturing its Baby Powder using raw materials currently in two of its Indian factories until test results prove they are free of asbestos, a senior official said on Thursday.

The official at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), who declined to be named citing the sensitivity of the matter, said a written order had been sent to the U.S. company telling it to stop using the "huge quantities" of raw materials stocked in its plants in northern and western India.

The company said on Wednesday that Indian drug authorities visited some of its facilities and took "tests and samples" of its talcum powder. It also said that the safety of its cosmetic talc was based on a long history of safe use and decades of research and clinical evidence by independent researchers and scientific review boards across the world.

Comment: Previously:

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Sheriff

Drunk and crazed cops flash badges, threaten to kill people and carry out mass shooting

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 16:49 UTC
bexar county sheriffs
The Bexar County sheriff's department is no stranger to controversy. Their history includes killing children, raping toddlers, and shooting innocent elderly grandmothers. Now, the department is in the spotlight once again-this time, for threatening to carry out a mass shooting.

According to surveillance video and multiple witnesses, two Bexar County deputies were off duty and drinking at Deol's Bar in San Antonio last week when things took a turn for the worse.

"They said that they were going to come back and shoot up the bar and kill people," said Joshua Cornell, a bouncer at Deol's.

According to witnesses, the cops were not only drunk on alcohol but they were also drunk on power as they ordered patrons around and demanded the DJ play what they wanted. The deputies went so far as to show the patrons their badges to demand they comply. When people refused to comply with the power-tripping deputies, the deputies became enraged.

"They were trying to order people around and tell them what they could and couldn't do just because they're Bexar County sheriff," said Cornell.
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Eye 1

Because a citizen filmed it, cop found guilty for kicking handcuffed teen's head

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 16:41 UTC
Anthony Foster Junior
As TFTP reported in May, a vigilant citizen with a cellphone captured video of the ridiculously excessive force by police on 18-year-old kid who ran from them. In spite of the teen being handcuffed, face-down on the ground, with another officer on top of him, a Franklin Township police officer is seen punting his face like a football. This week, in a rare move, the officer was actually found guilty for his crimes.

Former Franklin Township Police Officer Robert Wells, 49, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, according to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien.

"While we support police officers, whenever an office uses excessive unreasonable force such as this there is just no justification for that," said O'Brien. "Everyone has the right to be free from the use of excessive force by law-enforcement officers."
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Propaganda

Fighting the mob: PewDiePie's battle for the soul of the internet

Allen Farrington
Quillette
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:01 UTC
PewDiePie
This is a story about the question of who holds power over what we can say, hear, watch and read on the internet - an increasingly urgent issue that many ordinary people have cause to think about every day. And yet the protagonist in this story, the man whose fate symbolizes the future of social media and the corporate web that controls it, is unknown to the vast majority of educated readers.

That man is PewDiePie, a Swedish comedian whose real name is Felix Kjellberg. With 77-million subscribers, he has the most popular YouTube channel in the world. Within YouTube's video subculture, he is regarded as a true celebrity - a sort of Joe Rogan, Kanye West and Ben Shapiro all rolled into one. As of this writing, PewDiePie is closing in on 20-billion total views - roughly equivalent to three views for every human on the planet.

Comment: Love him or hate him (or never having heard of him) by being YouTube's ultimate champion content creator, PewDiePie has painted a giant target on himself for the PC mob to attack. Much like with Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Sargon of Akkad and any number of other targets of the PC police, the accusations against PewDiePie are ridiculous in the extreme. But given what's happening with Patreon at the moment, perhaps these giant social media platforms will think twice about deplatforming users simply because a vocal, outraged minority demands it. YouTube's user base is unlikely to stand for their favourite personality getting the boot because some professional offendees can't get a life.

See also:

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