“A 28-year-old Kansas man was shot and killed by police after a fraudulent SWAT team call sent a small army of police officers to the man’s private home. One player allegedly provided a fake address to another, who proceeded to embroil the innocent stranger in the feud without thinking of the consequences.”
“NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden is among the backers of a new surveillance app that helps guard against computer hijackings. Haven is an open source app that will run on any Android phone, particularly inexpensive and older devices. It operates like a surveillance system, using the device’s camera, audio recording capability and even accelerometer to detect movement and notify a user. The idea is that, even with the best encryption in the world, a device is vulnerability to physical, in-person tampering — also known as ‘evil maid’ because literally a hotel maid could access it.”
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/24/edward-snowden-haven-app/
“Smartphones and other personal electronics contain vastly more private information than suitcases. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed a lawsuit in Boston arguing that a warrant should be required to search such devices at the border. Last week, the Trump administration asked a judge to dismiss the case. The lawsuit comes amid a surge in agents looking through — and sometimes copying data from — cellphones and laptops. Midway through fiscal year 2017, Customs and Border Protection was on pace to search 30,000 travelers’ electronics — more than tripling the annual number by that agency since 2015.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/us/politics/us-border-privacy-phone-searches.html?_r=0
“The lives of young Americans are too high a price to pay for wars driven by threat inflation, ego, or foolhardy social experiments.”
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-the-end-to-unnecessary-war/
“Youth unemployment in the eurozone has been stuck between 19% to 25% for the past eight years. In Spain and Greece, it’s north of 40%. The bleak numbers underscore the uphill battle many young Europeans face in finding jobs that match their aspirations and education. Legions of young people have grown frustrated. Many are still living at home, while others have left their families and moved to new countries in search of work.”
Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/13/news/economy/europe-youth-unemployment-france/index.html
“Twenty-five of the EU’s current 28 members have signed up — Britain, Malta and Denmark are not involved. Key EU member states including France and Germany have long-campaigned for greater defence and security integration. And plans for an EU army were fleshed out further by EU President Jean-Claude Juncker when he unveiled his grand vision for the future of the bloc earlier this year.”
“Not only would a US blockade be an act of war, but it is one that would be responded to with retaliation from Pyongyang. Assuming even a single North Korea missile is able to penetrate America’s missile defence shield which according to recently consulted experts, only has a success rate of about 50%, millions of Americans would die as a result. If more people in the United States were exposed to this vital information about the provocative antics of their own government, it is highly likely that millions more Americans would join Russia and China in calling for an immediate de-escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula.”
Read more: http://theduran.com/threatened-us-naval-blockade-north-korea-represents-illegal-starvation-nation/
“The Trump administration’s foray into linguistic decrees is not a new phenomenon among the American Right. One recent comparable instance of state-decreed censorship: John Ashcroft, a Christian fundamentalist and the first attorney general under George W. Bush, insisted on covering the breasts of a marble statue of the ‘Spirit of Justice’ that stood in the main Justice building. This act of modesty reportedly cost $8,000 of taxpayer money.”
Read more: https://www.salon.com/2017/12/16/trump-bans-cdc-from-using-words-like-transgender/
“The Trump administration put new requirements in place on Friday for the 38 countries participating in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, including that they use U.S. counterterrorism data to screen travelers, officials said. The United States will also start assessing VWP countries on their safeguards against ‘insider threats’ at their airports, especially those with direct flights to the United States, officials said.”
“Pat Campbell talks with Shawn Jenkins about SQ 788, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Bill.”
Read more: https://art19.com/shows/pat-campbell-podcast/episodes/a8e2c969-b378-4978-9e8f-b1810850cb3c