Tag Archives: False Sense Of Security

Sheldon Richman: How to Respond to the Paris Attacks

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“Even authoritarian and totalitarian states can’t prevent domestic terrorism. What hope do relatively open societies have? Open societies abound with ‘soft targets,’ that is, noncombatants going about their everyday lives. They are easy hits for those determined to inflict harm, especially if the assailants seek to die in the process.  We also know, as U.S. officials acknowledge, that NATO bombing of jihadis boosts recruitment.  So if Americans and Europeans want safer societies, they must discard the old, failed playbook, which has only one play — more violence — and adopt a new policy: nonintervention.”

https://sheldon.liberty.me/how-to-respond-to-the-paris-attacks/

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NSA Whistleblower: Don’t Blame Edward Snowden for Paris Attacks

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“With intelligence protection largely illusionary, the only way to prevent continued terrorists attacks is for countries to re-evaluate their foreign policies. For more than a decade, Western countries have waged endless war in the Middle East producing only death, destruction, hatred—and now ISIS. At the same time, those countries have come to assume they could conduct violent regime change throughout the region—Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria—like pieces on a chessboard, with no price to pay. For them, sadly, Paris may at last be a wake-up call. There are no Robert’s Rules of Order when it comes to war, and one man’s Hellfire missile is another man’s suicide belt.”

http://time.com/4114789/paris-attacks-intelligence/

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Failed Windows 3.1 system blamed for shutting down Paris airport

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“Paris Orly airport had to close temporarily last Saturday after the failure of a system running Windows 3.1—yes, the operating system from 1992—left it unable to operate in fog.  This use of ancient systems is apparently not unusual. Vice quotes Alexandre Fiacre, the secretary general of France’s UNSA-IESSA air traffic controller union, as saying that ‘The tools used by Aéroports de Paris controllers run on four different operating systems, that are all between 10 and 20 years old,’ with Windows 3.1 being joined by Windows XP and unspecified UNIX systems. Fiacre says that the systems are poorly maintained as well.”

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/failed-windows-3-1-system-blamed-for-taking-out-paris-airport/

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Officials Worldwide Seek New Powers in Wake of Paris Attacks

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“Officials in several countries are wasting no time in trying to convince the public to trade essential freedoms for the promise of enhanced security.  US officials are also eager to cash in on the panic with more powers, seeking to expand their ability to carry out mass surveillance, citing the largely toothless ‘reforms’ of NSA surveillance as proof that the US has intelligence ‘gaps’ that need to be filled by more intrusion into ordinary citizens’ affairs.  Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was the least specific but the most direct, insisting that Paris proved the need to favor security over basic human rights, and predicting a massive shift toward more government power.”

http://news.antiwar.com/2015/11/16/officials-seek-new-powers-in-wake-of-paris-attacks/

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The Dismal State of Police Body-Camera Laws

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“Des­pite fed­er­al sup­port, there are few fed­er­al laws or guidelines for the use of body cam­er­as. Rules are set piece­meal city-by-city. There are vast dif­fer­ences between how even the largest de­part­ments, like New York and Chica­go, handle film from body cam­er­as. A co­ali­tion of ma­jor civil-rights groups re­leased guidelines for op­tim­al rules in May. The re­port re­leased on Monday is the first to sur­vey how many loc­al de­part­ments stack up.  The res­ults are not good. No city po­lice de­part­ment was ideal. Two de­part­ments stood out in par­tic­u­lar as hav­ing es­pe­cially dread­ful rules: At­lanta and Fer­guson, Mis­souri.  City de­part­ments in Phil­adelphia, De­troit, San Ant­o­nio, and Al­buquerque also did not fare well.”

http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/criminal-justice/dismal-state-police-body-camera-laws

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Who controls the cop cam?

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“Once a simple stun-gun manufacturer, Taser has reinvented itself as an all-in-one law enforcement technology ecosystem: less-lethal weapons linked to cameras that automatically send footage to Taser’s evidence management database, where it can be edited and packaged using Taser’s cloud software tools. It’s a single walled garden, explicitly modeled after Apple’s software controls, extending from the camera lens to the prosecutor’s laptop. And as it grows more popular, that system has put us on the cusp of a fundamental change in the way law enforcement works in America, shaping police departments to the logic of a software startup.”

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body-cams-transparency-violence-taser

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Body cam shows dad had hands up when cops killed his 6-year-old son

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“A lawyer says body camera video shows the father of a 6-year-old autistic boy who was shot to death in his car had his hands in the air and did not pose a threat before police opened fire last week.  Mark Jeansonne is the attorney for Chris Few, who was seriously woundedwhen local marshals in the town of Marksville opened fire.  His 6-year-old, Jeremy Mardis, was strapped into his seatbelt in the front passenger seat. Jeansonne said ‘this was not a threatening situation for the police.’  Jeansonne spoke with The Associated Press after a closed hearing for the two marshals, now jailed on $1 million bond.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/la-dad-hands-cops-shot-son-6-lawyer-article-1.2428316

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Facebook Monitors Private Messages and Photos, Reports to Police

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“Facebook has a new little known software that monitors your profile chat and pictures for criminal activity. The software will proceed to alert an employee at the company who will then decide whether to call authorities or not.  Facebook’s software focuses on conversations between members who have a ‘loose’ relationship on the social network. For example, if two users aren’t friends, only recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.”

http://www.copblock.org/146809/facebook-monitors-private-messages-photos-criminal-activity-reports-to-police/

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US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina [2013]

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“A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.  The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961

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Bruce Schneier: Why are we spending $7 billion per year on TSA?

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“The only reason they’ve been able to get away with the scam for so long is that there isn’t much of a threat of terrorism to defend against.  Even with all these actual and potential failures, there have been no successful terrorist attacks against airplanes since 9/11. If there were lots of terrorists just waiting for us to let our guard down to destroy American planes, we would have seen attacks — attempted or successful — after all these years of screening failures. No one has hijacked a plane with a knife or a gun since 9/11. Not a single plane has blown up due to terrorism.”

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/05/opinions/schneier-tsa-security/

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