Society's ChildS


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Best of the Web: 6 anti-NSA technological innovations that may just change the world

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© Unknown
Rather than grovel and beg for the U.S. government to respect our privacy, these innovators have taken matters into their own hands, and their work may change the playing field completely.

People used to assume that the United States government was held in check by the constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and which demands due process in criminal investigations, but such illusions have evaporated in recent years. It turns out that the NSA considers itself above the law in every respect and feels entitled to spy on anyone anywhere in the world without warrants, and without any real oversight.

Understandably these revelations shocked the average citizen who had been conditioned to take the government's word at face value, and the backlash has been considerable. The recent "Today We Fight Back" campaign to protest the NSA's surveillance practices shows that public sentiment is in the right place. Whether these kinds of petitions and protests will have any real impact on how the U.S. government operates is questionable (to say the least), however some very smart people have decided not to wait around and find out. Instead they're focusing on making the NSA's job impossible. In the process they may fundamentally alter the way the internet operates.

Sheriff

San Diego police officer Chris Hays pulled female drivers over and threatened them with jail if they didn't perform oral sex on him

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A San Diego police officer accused of using his badge to gain sexual favors used fear to get what he wanted, the attorney of one of the alleged victims told 10News in an interview on Monday.

Local attorney Dan Gilleon said Christopher Hays - a four-year member of the San Diego Police Department who is accused of groping female suspects during searches - "victimized" his client, and his fellow officers, through his alleged actions. Gilleon represents a sixth accuser in the case.

Gilleon said his client, who came forward over the weekend, was forced to give Hays oral sex in October 2012 after he pulled her over. Gilleon said she felt "humiliated and degraded but didn't think anyone would believe her."

"He came in contact with her, got her in his car in the front seat and drove her home," Gilleon said. "And outside her house is where he said 'listen, either do this or things are going to be bad for you.' And the way she took it was that she was going to go to jail. So basically oral sex or jail. And she chose oral sex."

Gilleon said the woman told her family about the incident, but didn't feel that anyone else would believe her. He said it wasn't until she saw Hays' picture on her Facebook news feed, from a 10News post, that she recognized who he was and decided to come forward.

Red Flag

Queens teacher wouldn't let kids write about Malcolm X for black history month

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Parents are outraged after students at a Queens elementary school were allegedly told they couldn't write reports about Malcolm X as part of a Black History Month assignment.

Last week, a technology teacher told fourth-graders at P.S. 201 in Flushing to chose a prominent African-American figure to write about.

Initially, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Malcolm X were all considered acceptable options, but that changed after the teacher realized Malcolm X had a criminal history and supported change by any means necessary, CBS 2′s Elise Finch reported.

"My son came home one day and said, 'We can write about a civil rights leader, but we can't write about Malcolm X because he was bad,'" parent Frank Brown said.

"He couldn't write about Malcolm X because he was deemed violent," added another parent, Angel Minor.

Parents demanded a meeting with the teacher who made the comment and the school's principal, which took place Monday morning.

The parents were joined by members of the City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus.

Heart - Black

TSA humiliates and bullies cancer patient wearing incontinence protection

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My DH suffers from OAB (Overactive Bladder) due to past problems with prostate cancer. (He is only 36 by the way and has been done with it for 3 years) We fly frequently and to be safe he usually wears a disposable brief (an adult diaper). He has been screened many times with the full body scanner and patted down many other times. On a few occasions, if he was being patted down, he has mentioned his "protection" and passed without further scrutiny.

Never an issue until last week. While waiting in the security line he had a strong bladder spasm and and a large release of urine into the diaper. After he emerged from the scanner the TSA officer (a female) asked if he was carrying liquids in his clothing. He explained his condition and what had happened. In the past, it was embarrassing enough for him to just tell a TSA employee that I was wearing an adult incontinence garment but now he was also announcing that he had wet himself.) She called over to another (male) officer (the boss, I guess) and explained the situation to him out loud in front of everyone else still going through the line. The problem was he did not understand what an "incontinence product" was when she told him. Myself, DH, and the female TSA employee tried explaining a few times before the woman finally just shouted " HE IS WEARING A DIAPER" which caused pretty much everyone to turn and stare at us (smaller airport so not that many people). The TSA officer then snickered which was almost enough for me to go off but I really didn't want to make an even bigger scene then there already was.

He then told us that the scanner was unable to tell what was under his clothing and that "further review" was required. I asked him what that meant and he asked us to get our bags and follow him. We were taken through an office area into a room in the back. After waiting a couple of minutes 4 new TSA officers(one of which went to college with DH but dropped out his freshman year- still embarrassing to know someone in a situation like this though) came in and one asked DH if he had any liquids in his pants. By now we were both getting quite annoyed with being asked the same question over and over and he replied that he was wearing a diaper and that he had pi---d in it while waiting in their ***** line. Probably wasn't the best idea for him to get that mad but at that point he didn't even care about people knowing he had a medical condition and we just wanted to get out of their.

Eye 2

Patient beats nurse unconscious

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Investigators were trying determine Sunday why a hospital patient in Brooklyn allegedly turned on his nurse and beat her until she was unconscious.

As CBS 2′s Janelle Burrell reported, the nurse, Evelyn Lynch, 70, is fighting for her life. She is in critical condition after undergoing emergency surgery.

The nurse was removing Kwincii Jones' catheter at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brownsville when he knocked her to the ground and began beating her repeatedly, police said. Lynch was transported to the trauma center at Kings County Hospital Center, Burrell reported.

Police say the man was about to leave the hospital Friday afternoon when he became agitated, struck the nurse on the head and knocked her to the floor. She was unconscious as he kicked her about the face and head, causing serious injuries.

Gold Coins

Authorities in Florida say buying bitcoins is money-laundering

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© AFP Photo
In an unprecedented move, authorities in Florida are targeting bitcoin traders simply for purchasing the currency.

Unlike previous prosecutions in which Bitcoin users were suspected of participating in other illegal activities, the Miami Beach Police Department is claiming that purchasing the currency is itself a crime punishable under state anti-money-laundering laws.

One of the men targeted is a user of localbitcoins.com named "Michelhack." The site facilitates in-person meetings between Bitcoin owners and prospective buyers, and "Michelhack" had a 99 percent approval rating, so undercover agents from the United States Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force set up a meeting with him at which they exchanged a bitcoin for $1,000.

With that trust established, the undercover agent then arranged to purchase $30,000 more in bitcoins from "Michelhack" and, according to court documents, told him that they were to be used to purchase stolen credit cards.

Heart - Black

'I hate that thug music,' white man told fiancée moments before gunning down black teen

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A Florida woman testified Saturday that her fiancée, who is on trial for murder, used a racially charged word to complain about loud music before gunning down a black teen sitting in an SUV.

Michael Dunn fatally shot 17-year-old Jordan Davis in November 2012 during a dispute at a Jacksonville gas station, but the 47-year-old man claims the shooting was in self-defense.

Dunn was charged with first-degree murder, and he was also charged with the attempted murders of three other people in the SUV with Davis the day after Thanksgiving.

Rhonda Rouer testified that she and Dunn were on their way to a hotel after drinking rum and cokes at Dunn's son's wedding when they pulled into a convenience store parking lot, where they heard loud music coming from a Dodge Durango.

"I hate that 'thug' music," she recalled Dunn saying. Some people consider the term, "thug," to be aeuphemism for another racial slur.

Prosecutors said Dunn told the teen to turn down his music while Rouer went into the store, and the pair exchanged curse words, and defense attorneys claimed Davis got out of his car with some sort of weapon.

Bulb

West Virginia families, billed for contaminated water they didn't use, bill water company for losses

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The chemical spill in West Virginia has left thousands of people near Charleston with licorice-scented tap water that they're afraid to use, despite the assurances of government and their water company.

West Virginia American Water promised customers a credit on their bills for the water homeowners needed to use to flush their pipes of contamination. But when many received their January bills, the credit was no where to be found, ThinkProgress reported. And some bills showed hundreds of gallons of water use that homeowners claimed as impossible even with the flushing, given how circumspect their water use had been since the January 9 contamination of the Elk River with 10,000 gallons of Crude MCHM.

So, about a hundred people marched Saturday to the offices of West Virginia American Water to present the company with invoices for the water they've had to buy on the open market, along with their ancillary expenses.

Arrow Down

How much of Facebook's ad revenue is from click fraud?

Facebook Likes
© PubChase.com
The following incredible video was brought to my attention by Mish at his Global Economic Trend Analysis website. As I read his post, I was blown away by the fact that his thought process on Facebook's ad revenues and his experience in running a website was so incredibly similar to my own. He wrote:
I do not pay anyone to direct traffic to my blog and I do not ask people to click on ads they are not interested in. Nor do I want them too.

On several occasions, I even reported myself to Google.
I am in the exact same camp as him, and in fact, just last month I noticed some suspicious clicks coming to my site that made no sense and generated a massive amount of revenue. I emailed Google to report this.

I was stunned when I saw Facebook's revenue for the last quarter. As someone that makes money off of online ads, I know what the trends with cost per click are. Facebook's numbers made me scratch my head. I have been trying to understand what is going on, and thanks to the following video a lot of things are starting to make sense. Something is definitely fishy with Facebook. This is a must watch video on Facebook Fraud.

Black Magic

Zombie Nation: 70 MILLION Americans are on mind-altering drugs

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The heroin-overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has caused the media to focus, however fleetingly, on America's drug problem.

News accounts of the Oscar-winner's tragic demise typically reference the startling increase in heroin-related deaths in the last four to five years. The problem, reporters explain, is the vast number of Americans addicted to prescription pain meds like OxyContin, many of whom discover heroin to be both cheaper and easier to obtain than the prescription opioid drugs to which they initially became addicted.

That's accurate as far as it goes. But by following the trail further, we arrive at a place far more shocking and consequential. We discover that not only has the traditional distinction between illegal "street drugs" and legal "therapeutic prescription drugs" become so blurred as to be almost nonexistent, but between America's twin drug epidemics - one illegal, the other legal - well over 70 million Americans are using mind-altering drugs. And that number doesn't include abusers of alcohol, which adds an additional 60 million Americans. So we're really talking about 130 million strung-out Americans. How is this possible?

Of course, most of the drug news we've heard lately has been about pot. It started with medical marijuana, with state after state successfully defying the federal ban. Then on Jan. 1, flat-out legalization took center stage, when Colorado and Washington opened their doors to exhilarated pot-smokers, while numerous other states - from Alaska, Oregon and California in the west to Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., in the east - announced plans to push for legalization in the coming months.