http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/north-korea-holds-un-press-conference-check-your-sanity-at-the-door/ For the first time since 2010, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son Ho, held a press conference [1]Friday at the UN — thus establishing that once every three years is far too often. Sin held forth for about 50 minutes, most of which he spent reading a prepared statement denouncing the […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/06/barack_bamboozles_berlin.html Barack Obama showed up again in Berlin. Sadly, 194,000 of the fawning devotees that cheered him like a rock star in 2008 chose to skip the 2013 encore. Nonetheless, directly out of the Brandenburg gate, the president commenced with injecting race and gender into the conversationwhen he said “Angela and I don’t exactly look […]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-are-the-nsa&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20130621
A metadata expert reveals the sobering implications of personal data collection by governments and companies
Earlier this month, former NSA employee Edward Snowden revealed the agency is collecting data on millions on Americans, from phone call durations to Facebook posts, all through a program codenamed PRISM. The resulting media backlash has revived the debates about internet privacy and government surveillance techniques, but questions remain: how is the National Security Agency taking in the data, and how much of a threat to our civil liberties does such data-collection efforts pose?
To find out, Scientific American spoke with metadata expert Mark Herschberg, CTO at Madison Logic and instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Herschberg has worked with the programs used to gather big data and was able to elucidate how our internet data has become an important—if not invasive—commodity.
An edited transcript of the interview follows.
What kind of software can be used to collect big data?
It can be collected a number of different ways. It sounds like the NSA is going into the servers of Facebook and others and accessing their log files through some kind of “backdoor.” In that case, you can write pretty simple programs that can copy those files and transfer them to local servers. You could also get this data by installing spying software on an individual’s computer. The third option is actually listening through the pipe, the digital version of wiretapping.
When an individual downloads something or visits a webpage, all the data go through the Internet service provider. By effectively wiretapping their line, you can see every single byte they’re sending back and forth.
Why would the NSA want access to things like Facebook posts?
What you can get are signals. For example, if you look at teens committing suicide, they often spend a lot of time thinking about it and planning. There are signs that professionals have been trained to look for, such as saying goodbye to people before they take their own life.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351748/rewriting-fisa-history-andrew-c-mccarthy
Representative Sensenbrenner does not appear to have read the law he “wrote.”
Confronted with a few embarrassing assertions in his autobiography, pro-basketball legend Charles Barkley famously protested, “I was misquoted.” Apparently, Representative James Sensenbrenner knows the feeling. The Wisconsin Republican claims to have written the PATRIOT Act. Like the Round Mound of Rebound, though, he seems less than familiar with his handiwork.
Congressman Sensenbrenner purports to be stunned by revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has, for years, collected records of phone usage by untold millions of Americans. This was done under the PATRIOT Act’s business-records provision, passed and later reauthorized while Sensenbrenner chaired the House Judiciary Committee. He is thus closely identified with the law and incensed over its use to amass this “metadata” trove. Or is it that he is mortified over publicity about the trove and the ensuing ire it has provoked in some Republican and tea-party precincts?
In such a spot of bother, most politicians would be content to gripe that their legislation is being used in a way they never contemplated. Not Sensenbrenner. He insists that the law is being violated. The PATRIOT Act’s plain terms, he maintains, do not permit the ongoing data collection, period. He therefore accuses both the Justice Department (which began the program under Bush and has expanded it under Obama) and the judges of the FISA Court (the special tribunal created by Congress in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) of running roughshod over the strict, clear limitations he says he wrote into the law.
So is Sensenbrenner encouraging you to verify this by reading the law for yourself? Nope. His highly exaggerated claim of PATRIOT Act authorship is a transparent attempt to become the showstopper authority on what the act says. Just take his word for it — no need to check his version against the text.
In truth, the controversial PATRIOT Act had many authors, drawn from both parties, both political branches of government, and both chambers of Congress. Sensenbrenner conceded as much in a recent op-ed he penned for the U.K.’s Guardian — correctly crediting the Bush Justice Department with primary authorship, but noting that many lawmakers got involved in the drafting process, especially during the frenetic aftermath of the 9/11 atrocities.
As I’ve recounted elsewhere in refuting Sensenbrenner’s claims, lawmakers also got a good deal of drafting advice from outside the government. That was especially true in 2005–06, when, largely due to Sensenbrenner’s insistence at the time of PATRIOT’s original passage, several significant provisions were scheduled to sunset. As public debate over the question of reauthorizing PATRIOT heated up, the American Bar Association sponsored exchanges between former government lawyers on the national-security Right, including moi, and our progressive and libertarian counterparts. (See, e.g., this debate between Ohio State law professor Peter Swire and me over the business-records provision — eventually published in a 2005 ABA compendium called Patriot Debates: Experts Debate the USA PATRIOT Act.) I was also involved in a bipartisan working group of former government officials who helped lawmakers work through PATRIOT issues. After months of debate, our group (which eventually included future Obama-administration attorney general Eric Holder, as well as several other Clinton- and Bush-administration veterans) came to a consensus about the need to reauthorize several PATRIOT provisions — very much including the business-records statute.
By recounting this kitchen glutted with chefs, I do not mean to suggest that Sensenbrenner was a tangential figure. The Justice Department was the lead executive agency pushing the bill, and he chaired the committee responsible for Justice Department oversight. Plainly, his support was pivotal — and he is no wallflower. Nevertheless, he now says he not only helped push the measure through but actually wrote it. “I authored the Patriot Act,” he proclaimed in the Guardian. With even less restraint, he repeated the claim Monday night when interviewed on Hannity, my friend Sean Hannity’s prime-time Fox News television program, popular among conservatives.
Sensenbrenner’s authorship claim, implausible enough under the circumstances of the PATRIOT Act’s drafting, is even harder to fathom once his description of the business-records provision is compared with the law Congress actually passed. After agreeing that it was he who “wrote the PATRIOT Act,” Representative Sensenbrenner told Sean (at the 2:30 mark of the interview):
One of the most difficult things in getting the Patriot Act passed was the business-records section of the law, which is called “section 215.” And in order to get the act passed, it was limited. It was limited only to getting the business records of a foreigner, not an American, who was the target of an authorized terrorism investigation.
This is false, through and through.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351741/obamas-melting-wings-mark-steyn
Descending from the heavens for the G8 summit at beautiful Lough Erne this week, President Obama caused some amusement to his British hosts. The chancellor of the exchequer had been invited to give a presentation to the assembled heads of government on the matter of tax avoidance (one of the big items on the agenda, for those of you who think what the IRS could really use right now is even more enforcement powers). The president evidently enjoyed it. Thrice, he piped up to say how much he agreed with Jeffrey, eventually concluding the presentation with the words, “Thank you, Jeffrey.” Unfortunately, the chancellor of the exchequer is a bloke called George Osborne, not Jeffrey Osborne. President Obama subsequently apologized for confusing George with Jeffrey, who was a popular vocal artiste back in the Eighties when Obama was dating his composite girlfriend and making composite whoopee to the composite remix of Jeffrey Osborne’s 1982 smoocheroo, “On the Wings of Love.”
I suppose it might have been worse. When Angela Merkel proposed a toast to a strong West, he could have assumed that was the name of Kim and Kanye’s new baby. At any rate, President Obama’s mishap had faint echoes of a famous social faux pas during the Second World War. Irving Berlin, the celebrated composer of “White Christmas,” was invited to lunch at 10 Downing Street and was surprised to find that Churchill, instead of asking what’s that Bing Crosby really like, badgered him with complex moral and strategic questions and requests for estimates of U.S. war production. It turned out the prime minister had confused Irving Berlin with the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, then under secondment to the British embassy in Washington, and thought it was the latter he’d invited to Number Ten. In the Obama era, any confusion is the other way around. It would be a terrible thing for the president to invite the eminent rapper Jay-Z to lunch only to find himself stuck next to the turgid British philosopher Professor Sir Jay Zed. Although Obama’s confusion went largely unreported in America, the BBC’s enterprising Eddie Mair got Jeffrey Osborne on the line and inveigled him into singing George Osborne’s best-known words — “Tax cuts should be for life, not just Christmastime” — to Jeffrey’s best-known tune.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/06/21/telling-the-truth-about-ukraine%E2%80%99s-rising-anti-semitic-svoboda-party-an-eye-opening-experience-%E2%80%93-with-portents-for-ukraine%E2%80%99s-future/
SORRY, BUT WHY ARE THERE ANY JEWS IN THE UKRAINE?….RSK
On May 24, my commentary, “Svoboda Fuels Ukraine’s Growing Anti-Semitism,” was published in The Algemeiner, raising concerns about growing anti-Semitic political forces in Ukraine. In it I noted the overtly anti-Semitic, anti-Russian and anti-Polish rhetoric of Svoboda (“Freedom”) party. The rich history of Nazi-like symbolism and glorification of Ukrainian collaborators with the Third Reich did not stop the supposedly more responsible elements of Ukraine’s political opposition, the Batkivshchina (“Fatherland”) and UDAR parties from joining forces with Svoboda.
My article, which unbeknown to me, was translated and published in Russian, generated interesting comments both on The Algemeiner page and elsewhere. Some supported while others attacked me.
A supportive message, posted on The Algemeiner site from “Aleks,” included a piece of news: a Svoboda member of parliament, Mikhail Golovko, met in Germany with representatives of the (neo-Nazi) National Democratic Party (NDP) of Germany. In Germany, the NDP is shunned by other parties, has no seats in the Bundestag, and even has to hold their party conferences in a tent because conference halls will not rent to them. In Ukraine, by contrast, Svoboda’s political rise and entry into the parliament has been abetted by Opposition politicians and parties hailed by western governments as the standard-bearers of democratic values.
Another supportive letter was from Maria Zubareva, president of a group called All-Ukrainian Association “Journalists Solidarity.” She attributes the high level of anti-Semitic attacks in Ukraine to the virulent campaign that landed Svoboda with almost 10% of the votes at last year’s parliamentary election. Svoboda legitimized racial and national intolerance, which led to increasing violence on the ground, she argued and concluded, “Svoboda [is] a real threat to the Jewish community of Ukraine.”
http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=19283&m=17792&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce
The most critical, clear and present dangers to US’ national security, homeland security and economy, are Iran’s nuclearization, Islamic terrorism, the explosive impact of the seismic Arab Street, the potential disruption of the supply and price of imported-oil and the declining US posture of deterrence.
The most clear and present policy to alleviate these threats would be US energy independence, ending dependence on unpredictable Arab oil producers, bolstering the US posture of deterrence, accelerating economic growth, improving the trade balance, reducing the budget deficit, lowering energy cost, expanding employment and availing more funds toward infrastructures, education, the elderly, Medicare and human services in general .
As demonstrated by the stormy, seismic Arab Winter, and irrespective of the Palestinian issue, the Arab Street is increasingly anti-US, Islamist-oriented, violently intolerant, unpredictable, unstable and terror-dominated.
The US mainland and vital US interests abroad are targeted by Muslim regimes and organizations. They adhere to a 14 century old trans-national, imperialistic ideology, believing that they are divinely-ordained to rule the globe. They are energized by their assessment that Europe is caving-in, while the “Great Satan” US is increasingly vulnerable.
Iran is systematically defying the US. A nuclear Iran would trigger a meltdown of the pro-US Arab oil-producing regimes; traumatizing the supply and price of oil, devastating the US economy; emboldening Islamic terrorist sleeper cells; intensifying the anti-US policy of Venezuela; accelerating nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and beyond; further eroding global sanity and undermining vital US interests.
A tour d’horizon of the Middle East reveals that Iraq has become a central theater of anti-US Islamic terrorism, increasingly controlled by Iran. Yemen is afflicted by a 14 century-old intra-tribal civil war, posing a threat to the House of Saud, Oman and oil tankers passing through the straits of Ban el-Mandeb and Hormuz. The Syrian lava – boiled by intra-Arab and intra-Muslim wars by proxies – threatens to sweep through Lebanon, Jordan and possibly the Persian Gulf. Jordan’s pro-US Hashemite regime is facing lethal threats from Syria, Iraq, disgruntled Bedouins, Hamas terrorists, the Palestinian majority and the Muslim Brotherhood. Post-Mubarak Egypt improves ties with Iran and provides a tailwind to Muslim Brotherhood cells throughout the Arab World, advancing its trans-national, expansionist anti-US agenda. Libya and Tunisia undergo a rapid process of Islamization; and Morocco and Algeria face a major challenge by Islamic oppositions. Since 2002, Turkey has veered toward the Muslim World away from the US. The current upheaval on the Arab Street highlights the Middle East as a region of unpredictable geo-political shocks.
http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/orwell-town-dc/
Welcome to Orwell Town, DC, where up is down and right is wrong.
Team Obama has decided to increase its financial support for the Muslim Brotherhood (story below), but to cut five percent from its annual military aid to Israel (story here).
It’s been said, “some folks are wise and some are otherwise.”
And with that, we rest our case.
As Egypt Unravels, Team Obama Increases Support For Muslim Brotherhood By Jay Sekulow
The news from Egypt is grim.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi made international headlines this week as he appointed Adel Al Khayat as governor of Luxor, an ancient Egyptian city that is key tourist destination.
The problem with Mr. Khayat? He just happens to lead the “political” arm of a terrorist organization that massacred tourists in Luxor in 1997. The details of the attack are beyond grisly, with many of the dead disemboweled and notes “praising Islam” placed inside their mutilated bodies.
When it comes to the Middle East, we have proven to be the worst of friends and the best of enemies.
And that’s not all.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported on the rise of blasphemy prosecutions since Morsi ascended to power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBU7fOwk0OA&feature=youtu.be
The Glazov Gang – Part 1 of 2/ One Nation Under Allah
Nonie Darwish (Author, “The Devil We Don’t Know”)
Michael Chandler (Intellectual)
www.shmuelkatz.com Since former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger served at the highest levels of government in the 1970s, he has portrayed himself as one with the Jewish community, accepting awards from the Anti-Defamation League and bestowing awards on behalf of Jewish organizations like the United Jewish Appeal. However, what has been coming out over […]
