Politics in the News

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Too Many Secrets

reason.com

by Zach Weissmueller

September 21, 2013

One of the biggest challenges for transparency advocates is that many of the federal government's surveillance programs are so secret that government officials will not even acknowledge their existence.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been challenging surveillance secrecy for years. In June, EFF staff attorney Mark Rumold spoke with Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller about the organization's most recent victory and what's next in the fight to unmask federal snooping...

Reason.tv: Too Much Copyright

reason.com

by Zach Weissmueller

April 19, 2012

Copyright exists to "promote the useful arts" according to the Constitution. But is it still doing that? And should the government protect so-called “intellectual property” in the same way it protects other forms of property?

"This disconnect between the public's view of copyright and fair use and what should and should not be prosecuted, versus the 'copyright maximist' view of the law, is our generation's Prohibition," says Ben Huh, CEO and founder of Cheezburger and a loud voice in the recent backlash to SOPA and PIPA, two congressional bills aimed at curbing internet piracy.

Pesticide Industry Backed Opponents of GMO Labeling Get Criminal in California

occupymonsanto360.org

by Zack Kaldveer

October 23, 2012

The $36 million No on 37 campaign, bankrolled by $20 million from the world's six largest pesticide companies, has been caught in yet another lie, this time possibly criminal.

These companies and their allies in the junk food industry know that their profit margins may suffer if consumers have a choice whether to purchase genetically engineered foods or not. And that's why opponents are spending nearly a million dollars per day trying to make Prop 37 complicated. But really it's simple - we have the right to know what's in our food. To date, the No on 37 campaign has been able to repeat one lie after another with near impunity. But has this pattern of deceit finally caught up to it?

Microsoft ordered to hand over overseas email, throwing EU privacy rights in the fire

zdnet.com

by Zack Whittaker

August 2, 2014

US law can apply anywhere in the world, so long as a technology company has control over foreign data, a court rules.

A US judge has ordered Microsoft to hand over foreign data it stores back to the US, despite allegedly strong privacy protections in Europe to mitigate such processes. The logic of the court is that because the US-headquartered software giant controls the data it stores overseas, its foreign subsidiary companies are just as applicable to US law. US District Judge Loretta Preska in New York said the ruling will be stayed to allow Microsoft to appeal the decision to an appeals court. "It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information," Preska said in the ruling.

21 missing Pakistani policemen found shot dead

CNS News

by Zaheer Babar

December 29, 2012

Twenty-one tribal policemen believed to have been kidnapped by the Taliban were found shot dead in Pakistan's troubled northwest tribal region early Sunday, government officials said.

Officials found the bodies shortly after midnight in the Jabai area of Frontier Region Peshawar after being notified by one policeman who escaped, said Naveed Akbar Khan, a top political official in the area. Another policeman was found seriously wounded, said Khan. The 23 policemen went missing before dawn Thursday when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked two posts in Frontier Region Peshawar. Two policemen were also killed in the attacks.

What the? Now facts erased from schoolbooks

wnd.com

by Zahn, Drew

March 20, 2012

You won't believe what's intentionally left out from key U.S. date.

Who perpetrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - a group of men merely fighting "for a cause," or a band of radical Muslims bent on violent jihad? According to a new, comprehensive study of 6th-12th grade textbooks used by schools across the country, America's children are being taught a very different answer to that question than many alive to witness 9/11 remember.

Android And iPhone Users Beware The Hidden Dangers With New Contact Tracing Apps

forbes.com

by Zak Doffman - Cybersecurity I write about security and surveillance.

May 22, 2020

So, the big news this week is that Apple and Google have launched their watered down "contact-tracing" platforms into the world. Only "contact-tracing" has now become "exposure notification..."

...and judging by all the evidence to-date, they're not going to be effective enough to make a difference. Worse, they introduce a set of dangerous security risks that have not been addressed. False hopes, false starts. Let's clear something up from the start. Contact-tracing is not an opt-in Bluetooth app that might register your proximity to an infected person, under a very limited set of circumstances, including that you're both fully running the app. No, contact tracing is a manually-intensive, surveillance-heavy, privacy-intrusive process where a combination of brute-force measures and meticulous attention to detail, under the purview of well-trained operatives, roots out the spread of infection.

GOP Goes Public With Long-Brewing Foreign Policy Civil War

swampland.time.com

by Zeke J Miller

July 27, 2013

The long-delayed GOP foreign policy civil war is finally here. For years the Republican Party has fractured over foreign policy, but libertarians and neoconservatives, while vehemently disagreeing on substance, tried to project an air of party cohesion.

Those days are over. "We ignored them and then tried to placate them," said one hawkish Senate Republican foreign policy aide about the libertarians. "If we don't move now [to counterattack], it may be too late in 2016." New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's comments Thursday evening at a gathering of the Republican Governors Association in Aspen, Colo. calling libertarianism "a very dangerous thought" marked an opening salvo of the fight for the Republican Party's identity in an age where a war-weary public wants to focus on the home front. On one side are libertarians like Sen. Rand Paul and others in the Tea Party. On the other, more mainstream conservatives like Christie, Arizona Sen. John McCain and New York Rep. Pete King.

Gary Johnson Files Anti-Trust Lawsuit To Get Into Presidential Debates

buzzfeed.com

by Zeke Miller

September 22, 2012

Both parties and the debate commission are trying to "hoodwink" the American people.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson filed an anti-trust lawsuit in federal court Friday to try to force his way into next month's presidential debates. Johnson, who first sought the GOP primary nomination before launching a third-party bid, is suing the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates and both the Democratic and Republican parties, calling the CPD a "conspiracy." The CPD was founded jointly by the two parties and the nominee, and the lawsuit alleges that they meet every four years to set the rules for the debate to "hoodwink" the American people.

Romney Executes Republican Party Power Grab

buzzfeed.com

by Zeke Miller

August 24, 2012

The Republican National Convention Rules Committee voted 63-38 to approve a new rule allowing granting the Republican National Committee - and Mitt Romney - sweeping new powers to amend the governing document of the GOP.

The move came at the encouragement of Mitt Romney supporters on the committee, including Romney's top lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who stressed that it would grant "flexibility" to Romney and the committee to adapt to changing political environments. The rule allows the RNC to amend the party's rules without a vote by the full Republican National Convention. And it offers the Republican Establishment a new tool to keep at by Tea Party initiatives that threaten to embarrass or contradict party leadership and stray from a planned message. Romney, as his party's nominee, exerts significant influence over the RNC, which is made up of elected party officials from all 50 states, while the larger Convention Rules Committee is larger and has a more grassroots membership.

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