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The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom
Corbis
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.
If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet’s flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and Read more…
A US government program secretly injected people with plutonium
The horrors of the nuclear age, in terms of exploding reactors and nuclear bombs, are well known. Behind the well-publicized threat of mass death lies a secret history of nuclear projects being used to destroy individuals. In the late 1940s, United States citizens were injected with plutonium without their knowledge.
In early 1945, Ebb Cade, a worker at the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility, got into a car wreck. He survived, but was bed bound with a broken arm and a broken leg. When doctors interviewed him, they ascertained that the fifty-three-year-old African American man was otherwise perfectly healthy, eating well, drinking well, and had no history of serious illness. And so, having obtained a healthy subject, on April 10th his doctors secretly injected him with Read more…
The Price Of Gas Is Outrageous – And It Is Going To Go Even Higher
Does it cost you hundreds of dollars just to get to work each month? If it does, you are certainly not alone. There are millions of other Americans in the exact same boat. In recent years, the price of gas in the United States has gotten so outrageous that it has played a major factor in where millions of American families have decided to live and in what kind of vehicles they have decided to purchase. Many Americans that have very long commutes to work end up spending thousands of dollars on gas a year. So when the price of gas starts going up to record levels, people like that really start to feel it. But the price of gas doesn’t just affect those that drive a lot. The truth is that the price of gas impacts each Full article here
US-VISIT: Biometrics Are Here to Stay
A traveler arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport uses a scanner that records images of all 10 fingerprints. U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo
In its everyday operations, the term “biometrics” still has a fairly simple meaning for the federal border protection workforce: It means fingerprints and photographs. The immigration and border management system used by the Department of Homeland Security – the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program – collects digital fingerprints and photographs from everyone between the ages of 14 and 79 who attempts to enter the United States, and checks these images against a database of known or suspected criminals, terrorists, and illegal immigrants.
US-VISIT is a component of – or more accurately, it is a system that will soon make use of – the largest fingerprint repository and biometric-matching system in the world, DHS’s Automated Biometric Identification System, or IDENT. By the end of 2012, according to US-VISIT Director Bob Mocny, the program will become fully integrated with this fingerprint database, enabling real-time “rapid response” capability – instead of checking against the current US-VISIT watch list of about 6 million identities, the fingerprints of incoming travelers will be
Mass Surveillance and No Privacy Bill is ‘For the Children’
By Ms. Smith
What happens when stupid non-geeks write bills like SOPA and HR 1981? Rep. Lamar Smith says it’s for the children, of course, and if you object to being spied upon online then you are some kind of guilty pro-child-porn lowlife pond scum sucker. Where does the stupidity stop?
It’s for the children, of course, and if you object to online spying then you are some kind of guilty lowlife pond scum sucker. No wonder so many of us hate stupid people. Rep. Lamar Smith, infamous to geeks as the author of SOPA, is sponsoring the bill H.R. 1981 which is better known as “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act.” H.R. 1981 isn’t exactly as easy to spit out as SOPA and is closer to something out of Orwell’s 1984. The EFF summed it up like this, “This sweeping new ‘mandatory data retention’ proposal treats every Internet user like a potential criminal and represents a clear and present danger to the online free speech and privacy rights of millions of innocent Americans.”
More or less, much like the just-in-case your data trail eventually reveals you are a terrorist, this bill presumes you are guilty until proven innocent of being a child porn dog as it would require ISPs to store your data for
Iran, Russia naval presence in Syrian waters message to US: MP
Russian warships arrived at the Syrian port city of Tartus on Sunday, January 8.
Sun Feb 19, 2012 3:9PM GMT
“The United States should take Iran’s warning about [refraining from any possible] military intervention in Syria seriously.”
Hossein Ebrahimi Deputy head of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee
A senior Iranian lawmaker says the presence of Iranian and Russian naval forces in Syria’s coastal waters is a clear warning to the US to refrain from any possible military adventurism.
“The United States should take Iran’s warning about [refraining from any possible] military intervention in Syria seriously,” Hossein Ebrahimi, deputy chairman of Iran Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Sunday.
He added that in the event of a US strategic mistake in Syria, Washington may receive a crushing response from Iran, Syria and a few other countries.
On Sunday, January 8, a large Russian navy flotilla led by an aircraft carrier arrived at the Syrian port of Tartus in the Mediterranean Sea for a six-day port call, to show Moscow’s solidarity with Damascus.
“The port call is aimed at bringing the two countries closer together and strengthening their
As US Navy shrinks, China launches more, better war ships
HONG KONG — As looming budget cuts force the Pentagon to plan for a smaller US navy, China is accelerating the launch of new, increasingly capable warships as part of a sustained drive to become a major maritime power.
Shanghai’s Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding Company late last month launched the fourth of China’s new 071 amphibious landing ships according to reports carried by Chinese military web sites and the state-controlled media.
While most attention has been drawn to the ongoing sea trials of China’s first aircraft carrier, military analysts say the expanding fleet of 20,000-ton landing ships, the biggest domestically designed and built vessels in the Chinese navy, delivers a far more immediate boost to Beijing’s global influence.
“Having a significant fleet of large amphibious assault vessels clearly suggests a desire for power projection,” says Christian Le Miere, a maritime security researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“If you want the surgical insertion of forces, for a range of reasons, then you need amphibious response ships.”
Military rivalry
China’s naval buildup comes amid mounting Read more…
Is Barack Obama Going To Unilaterally Slash The Size Of The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal By Another 80 Percent?
Barack Obama wants to disarm America. There simply is no other way to explain his reckless behavior. On Tuesday it came out that the Obama administration is considering plans to unilaterally slash the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal by up to 80 percent. From a military standpoint, this is utter insanity. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama signed a treaty with Russia that restricts both nations to a maximum of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. But now Obama wants to cut the size of the U.S. arsenal down to as low as 300, without requiring the Russians to do anything. In addition, we don’t even have a treaty with Full article here
Security Slackers Risk Internet Blackout on March 8
Companies and home users whose computers or routers are infected by the DNSChanger Trojan risk being unable to access the Web come March 8, 2012. That could represent a substantial number of users, too, as half of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies are infected with the malware, according to a new report.
Back in November, the feds famously took down the DNSChanger botnet network, which a cyber criminal gang was using to redirect Internet traffic to phony websites that existed simply to serve up ads. The feds replaced the criminals’ servers with legitimate ones that would push along traffic to its intended destination.
That surrogate network was supposed to be temporary — in operation just long enough for companies and home users to remove DNSChanger malware from their machines. Said network is slated to be unplugged on March 8. Once the surrogate server network is unplugged, computers infected with DNSChanger will not be able to access the Internet: The malware will send requests to servers that will no longer be online.
Unfortunately, the cleanup process has Full article here
Unmanned drones to invade U.S. airspace in 2015
It’s been a long time coming, but the U.S. Congress just handed two orders to the Federal Aviation Administration: to upgrade its radar system to GPS and to open up manned airspace to unmanned drones. The latter is causing some concern, but both of these things, if done right, could mean some great things for aviation.Commercial pilots have raised safety concerns. Although pilots are required to spend time flying planes and are tested on their abilities to hold licenses, no similar rules exist for the controllers of remote aircraft. Likewise, the FAA doesn’t certify drones like passenger planes against engine failure or wings falling off.
Drones operate with far fewer Read more…
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