The revelations by Edward Snowden have brought to light so many things that the government has kept from us and set in motion many actions that were not possible before. Thanks to reader Marcus Ranum, here are five major things we have learned about the original warrantless wiretapping program called STELLAR WIND that was started under president Bush. [Read more…]
The NSA spying revelations show that Congress and the president have decided that the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”) can be ignored. [Read more…]
Mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau explains to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman how metadata can give you so much useful information that listening in to the conversation may not be necessary. [Read more…]
Watch how Ed Kilgore, a supposedly ‘liberal’ news commentator who has been a Democratic party operative, contributes to the government counter-offensive to bringing down Snowden. See if you can count how many innuendos he packs into the short passage. He pretty much follows the expected script. Kilgore’s contribution is to call Snowden a narcissist.
It is a perfect example of innuendo and we can expect much more of this type of thing in the days to come, especially from Obama supporters.
It looks like going to the FISA court and getting warrants for each new effort at widespread trawling of phone records was too much trouble for the Obama administration, even though that court is notorious for being a rubber stamp. Yet another major revelation today says that they have decided to simply get blanket permission once and for all for authorization to tap directly into the servers of major internet companies and take what they want. [Read more…]
Via Kevin Drum I came across this graphic that shows that health care costs in the US are much higher than those in other developed countries. This should, of course, come as no surprise to anyone.
But why is this the case? Many of the easy answers don’t quite cover it. This article by Elisabeth Rosenthal from which the graphic is taken looks at possible explanations. [Read more…]
I am in San Francisco for a conference and so will not be able to blog or moderate comments as frequently as usual. My apologies.
These wind-powered sculptures by Theo Jansen are amazing to behold. I have shown them before but they are so beautiful that I wanted newcomers to this blog to see them. [Read more…]
You would think that with Barack Obama’s re-election, those who had sought to deny his legitimacy to hold the office for the last four years would have finally given up. But you would be wrong because they are convinced that they are fighting for truth and justice and have a tenacity that defies all reason. And in this cause, lo! lawyer/dentist/real estate agent/Birther Queen Orly Taitz’s name, like Abou Ben Adhem‘s, leads all the rest. [Read more…]
At a news conference in Thailand on November 18, president Obama made the following comments concerning the violence in Gaza and Israel: [Read more…]