GovTech: Activists file lawsuit over LAPD’s predictive policing program
WSWS: British judge refuses to overturn Assange’s arrest warrant
The Federalist: The Left is conditioning college students to hate free speech
The Quint: Can you really prevent Google from spying on you?
Quartz: What we miss about AI when we’re worried about killer robots
The solution to eliminating whatever threat our leaders believe that North Korea poses to our precious bodily fluids is also the simplest: remove all trade restrictions, tear down the Berlin Wall-style barrier between North and South, and allow them to talk. It removes the risk of a devastating war in which millions of innocents were perish over the course of several years, it would save North Korea from starvation, and it would slowly allow unfiltered news from the outside world to seep into that Hermit Kingdom. Trade would transform the country for better, in a way that no other option could. And it wouldn’t cost a thing. BUT. But.
Washington D.C. is shopping for a war. War means justifying future $700 billion “defense” budgets that are divvied up among an entire industry that is devoted to waging war. That industry is what we call the military-industrial complex. That industry needs enemies, needs constant wars around the globe. Conflict is good for business. And peace is bad, not only for business, but also power.
Peace is simple, and inexpensive relative to the human and economic costs of war. But war props up power, not only within our borders, but also in the country being targeted. North Korea builds its dictatorship upon the very real threat of invasion and attack.
Washington Examiner: Every Pentagon wish is granted in Trump’s defense budget request
The Federalist: Why it’s a big problem if the FISA court relied on Steele’s hearsay to grant surveillance order
Alternet: Trump’s budget doubles down on the Drug War
National Review: Duke professor: “Libertarians seem to be on the autism spectrum.”Ed: Bahaha. It does sound as though she is actually implying that Public Choice Theorist, and academic god among insects, James Buchanan, is on the autism spectrum. Nothing more than a middle-school slur from someone with no actual arguments. “Oh those people I don’t like? They’re just retarded.”
New York Times: Are spies like us? A national security reporter says yes, and no
ACLU: A California city fights off ICE’s digital deportation machine
The Intercept: Republican scaremongering on “Sanctuary Cities” backfires, Democrats win big upset in Florida special election
Valley News: Facebook loses Germany court battle over privacy settings
The Week: Is America the main obstacle to peace in Korea?
Techdirt: More than 4,000 government websites infected with covert cryptocurrency miner
Business Insider: US intelligence officials say they wouldn’t use a Chinese-made phone for fear of spying. Ed: They speak from the experience of what they themselves do. Safe to assume US-made phones are little more than our own personal self-surveillance devices.
National Interest: The Deep State is very real
Forbes: Try exercising this Constitutional right and you’re apt to regret it
The Guardian: Social media spying is turning us into a stalking society
TechCrunch: UK unveils extremism-blocking tool and could force tech firms to use it
Antiwar.com: The UK’s hidden role in Julian Assange’s detention
Bloomberg: US airstrikes in Syria killed over 200 Russian contract soldiers, sources say
McClatchyDC: Report: patient advocacy groups pushed opioids after getting industry money
The Intercept: GOP law enforcement chiefs invited donors to help set policy via secret bulletin board
WND: The top 10 colleges that are the worst for free speech
Slate: The arming and disarming of black America
FEE: The most basic freedom is the freedom to quit: “If we move our minds out of the quagmire of competition (indeed, we can’t win tennis matches by quitting) and think of life’s broader goals — the goals of surviving, avoiding injury, finding happiness, and living in accordance with our personal values among people whom we respect and who respect us — then we see that freedom to quit is essential to all of these goals. I am talking here about the freedom to walk away from people and situations that are harmful to our well being.”
The American Conservative: Inside the chilling world of artificially intelligent drones
USA Today: Pentagon risk getting “fatter, not stronger” with spending increases in new budget
Techdirt: Your ‘smart’ TV remains a privacy and security dumpster fire: Consumer Reports
The Guardian: Encryption keeps us safe. It must not be compromised with ‘backdoors’
WND: Who’s the bigger threat to privacy, the NSA or Google?
Activist Post: German court rules Facebook violates users rights with illegal default privacy settings
RON PAUL: E-Verify threatens us all
Reason: West Virginia cop fired for not shooting suicidal man settles lawsuit against city
MintPressNews: Lifting of US propaganda ban gives new meaning to old song
High Times: Is it possible to trick a drug-sniffing dog?
The Guardian: Government spying on immigrants in America is now fair game. What next?
Fortune: How the U.S. Courts website unwittingly became a bitcoin miner
The Daily Star: A Pentagon budget like none before: $700 billion
Reason: Donald Trump shouldn’t talk to the Feds. And neither should you.
The Intercept: How torture fuels, rather than reduces, terrorism
National Review: When border searches become unreasonable
Techdirt: Will Manhattan DA’s anti-encryption pitch change now that the NYPD’s using iPhones?
Activist Post: Baltimore will now force bad cops to pay their victims out of their own pockets
Consortium News: How Establishment propaganda gaslights us into submission
NextBigFuture: China’s techno-Police State will identify any face within 3 seconds by 2020 using billions of cameras
Politico: The Grassley Letter that everyone is ignoring is far more important that the Nunes Memo
Daily Beast: U.S. intelligence shuts down damning report on whistleblower retaliation
Consortium News: US intelligence crisis poses a threat to the world
Activist Post: Convictions thrown out after police caught paying labs for positive DUI test results
OC Register: “Attacking” the FBI is an unalienable American right
The Federalist: The GOP budget deal throws fiscal sanity out the Overton Window
Inquisitr: Scientists warn that potential FDA kratom ban could worsen America’s opioid epidemic
CounterPunch: Afghan civilians keep paying the price for the so-called ‘War on Terror’
Zero Hedge: Nassim Taleb explains why people who make money are usually wrong
Wired: The downsides of AI and deep learning
Science News: 50 years on, nuclear fusion still hasn’t delivered clean energy
Yes, it is possible to push back against surveillance expansion, and reclaim ground in the battle for privacy from government snooping. The news out of Seattle is proof of this:
In 2013, the Seattle PD installed a “wireless mesh network” with $3.6 million in grants from the Department of Homeland Security. This network consists of dozens of surveillance cameras, along with 158 “wireless access points”: small, white boxes installed on utility poles. This system can continuously track any wireless device within its perimeter, meaning it can track everyone with a cellphone. Once the ACLU of Washington caught wind of the program, along with local privacy advocacy groups, outcry ensued, and the Seattle PD deactivated the system “until city council approves a draft (privacy) policy and until there’s an opportunity for vigorous public debate.”
Now the city is spending $150,000 to have the entire network dismantled.
A big problem with programs like these is the fact that police departments across the country are setting up this technology with little oversight and no debate whatsoever. Another big problem is the fact that a federal department is providing funding for local police. Local police departments should be funded by the community they serve. That connection creates accountability. The argument is identical to the argument against foreign aid: The foreign aid is given to the foreign government, severing that government’s ties to the people they rule. Corruption and tyranny shortly emerge like the plague, with similar results.
The biggest objection, however, is that this technology violates our most fundamental capacity for self-preservation as a species: the ability to hide from our own government. The ability to live our lives unencumbered by the knowledge that someone within our government may be watching.
Total surveillance isn’t inevitable. The death of liberty isn’t inevitable, although every government in history has developed highly sophisticated web of propaganda to make it seem so. It is possible to recover ground, if only a small minority of organized, intelligent, and stubborn activists refuse to give up.
Gizmodo: NSA sent coded messages from its official Twitter account to communicate with foreign spies
The New American: “ex” CIA, NSA, FBI operatives are joining the mainstream media in droves
Zero Hedge: $20 billion hidden in the swamp: Feds redact 255,000 salaries
WILL GRIGG: Have we reached peak jackboot?
JUSTIN RAIMONDO: America, just another sh*t hole?
Libertarian Institute: Raining on the parade
Intellectual Takeout: Are schools seeking to raise social justice warriors?
The Spec: Right to privacy a quaint notion?
The Federalist: How the media buried two huge FBI stories yesterday
EFF: The CLOUD Act: A dangerous expansion of police snooping on cross-border data
WSWS: Russians reported killed in US airstrike against Syrian soldiers
The Intercept: The US military is spending millions to replace toxic firefighting foam with toxic firefighting foam
High Times: Is Arizona trying to legalize marijuana again?
Zero Hedge: Marijuana tops liquor sales for first time in Aspen
Santa Fe New Mexican: Massive infusion of spending ends era of restraint for federal agencies, Pentagon
FEE: How easy money is rotting America from the inside out
Reason: The Olympics can’t transcend politics. Just ask the Nazis.
Universe Today: Scientists scan 14 Kepler worlds for “technosignatures”, evidence of advanced civilizations