[url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/louis-proyect-snowden.html]Film review: Snowden[/url] | Louis Proyect, naked capitalism

[I][QUOTE]Last fiddled with by ewmayer on 2016-09-18 at 22:23 Reason: added missing link [/QUOTE]
[/I]Oops. Thanks![I] :smile:
[/I]

[url=https://theconversation.com/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know-65620]Feds: We can read all your email, and you’ll never know[/url] | The Conversation ... Good [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/links-92316.html#comment-2673832]reader comment[/url] on this one:
[quote]From Clark Cunningham’s article “Feds: we can read all your email” —
[i]
“To get these [secret email] warrants in the first place, the feds are using the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986.”
[/i]
Rich, huh — a so-called “communications privacy” act destroyed communications privacy, just as the “Bank Secrecy Act” of 1970 destroyed bank secrecy, and the “Foreign” Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended to retroactively legalize bulk domestic wiretapping.

Equally rich are the judicial fiddles described by Cunningham, in which plaintiffs are denied standing to sue for govt theft of their emails because they can’t prove they were subjected to secret warrants. This Catch-22 rationale was perfected in earlier litigation over NSA bulk surveillance of phone calls.

Orwellian statute names and terms such the nazi-inspired “Homeland Security” constitute a kind of malicious wink from our overlords. it’s like a sadistic tormentor inquiring rhetorically, “What am I doing to you, huh? What am I doing to you?”

That this extra-constitutional government has become wholly illegitimate goes without saying.[/quote]

And on the "privacy invasions by commercial interests" front, we [url=http://motherboard.vice.com/read/apple-deleting-the-iphones-audio-jack-is-good-news-for-marketing-companies]have Apple[/url]:
[quote]The reason for the celebration is Bluetooth beacons, a “proximity marketing” technology that’s been pushed by the ad-tech industry for years. The beacons come from tiny Bluetooth Low-Energy (BTLE) transmitters that have already been planted inside many retail stores, airports, and museums, which send signals to nearby mobile devices. If your device has Bluetooth enabled and comes in range of a beacon (say, in a clothing store) any apps you’ve installed that are listening for Bluetooth beacons can determine exactly where you are, target you with ads, or record your real-world shopping habits, among other things.

And now that Apple has gotten rid of the iPhone’s headphone jack, marketers are anticipating that a whole lot of people will soon be leaving their Bluetooth enabled, effectively “opting in” to the beacons’ tracking.[/quote]
But Apple CEO Tim Cook is like, all "progressive" and "gay activist" and stuff, so any criticism marks one as a bigot!

There are many reasons that Apple is on my Evil List. Start with tax dodging.

There's plenty more. Not all of it is directly from Apple. As a PC person in a Mac world (graphics) I dealt with plenty of Mac chauvinists who thought the danged things were totally stable. This was in the days of the Power PC chips. It was also common to stop and wonder if one should reboot before starting work on a, say, 200 MB tif file. Question was, "Will a memory leak kill me before I save?" The same kind of thing applied when considering transmitting said file across a 10 base network. Better be sure everything was right before committing the time involved.

EDIT: If they were totally stable, why did the "Dead Mac" icon and sound even exist?

o [url=https://pando.com/2016/12/21/norman-bates-20-starwood-and-wynn-are-excited-put-camera-and-microphone-your-hotel-room/9ab671d8583160e09c2559978472273b66ee8d17/]Norman Bates 2.0: Starwood and Wynn are excited to hide a camera and microphone in your hotel room[/url] | Pando.com

o [url=www.politico.eu/pro/ecjs-uk-ruling-will-impact-telecoms-internet-companies/]Politico: Europe's top court guts key parts of UK spy law[/url] : [i]Snooper’s Charter decision could still affect Britain after Brexit[/i]

"Want to read the whole article? Become a Pando member."
Yuck.
Added to banlist.

[QUOTE=LaurV;449842]"Want to read the whole article? Become a Pando member."
Yuck.
Added to banlist.[/QUOTE]

The article must've been 24-hour unlocked when I viewed it, because I am not a member. Reloaded just now and see the same as you.

[url=foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/20/the-multibillion-dollar-u-s-spy-agency-you-havent-heard-of-trump/]The Multibillion-Dollar U.S. Spy Agency You Haven’t Heard of[/url] | Foreign Policy

I suspect such surveillance has already been ongoing to a much greater extent than the article claims. To throw out just one obvious stratagem, here are already millions of private and local-government data feeds operational, from traffic cams to police cell-tower-hijacking to security cams of all stripes. Tapping into those would be a readymade way to surveil the citizenry without any telltale instruments like drones circling overhead. Think Room 641A, but now in a distributed local-feed fashion.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;455512][URL="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/20/the-multibillion-dollar-u-s-spy-agency-you-havent-heard-of-trump/"]The Multibillion-Dollar U.S. Spy Agency You Haven’t Heard of[/URL] | Foreign Policy

I suspect such surveillance has already been ongoing to a much greater extent than the article claims. To throw out just one obvious stratagem, here are already millions of private and local-government data feeds operational, from traffic cams to police cell-tower-hijacking to security cams of all stripes. Tapping into those would be a readymade way to surveil the citizenry without any telltale instruments like drones circling overhead. Think Room 641A, but now in a distributed local-feed fashion.[/QUOTE]
With ever-more-powerful facial recognition, scanning all that data could become much more automated and easier, too.

[QUOTE=kladner;455514]With ever-more-powerful facial recognition, scanning all that data could become much more automated and easier, too.[/QUOTE]
And with these tools in many different hands, how do the police mount undercover operations any more?
How do public health authorities persuade people to come for testing & treatment of embarrassing diseases?
At some stage, pervasive surveillance starts to hinder the authorities themselves, surely.

[QUOTE]How do public health authorities persuade people to come for testing & treatment of embarrassing diseases?[/QUOTE]The way health care for everyday people is headed, at least here in the States, the authorities may not be all that concerned. If we can't pay, we should just die. Besides, how did we acquire that "embarrassing disease" anyway? The newly created Department of Christian [STRIKE]Decency[/STRIKE] LOVE[SUP]®[/SUP], under Vice Fuehrer Mike Pence, deems us unworthy of treatment for anything we came by sinfully.