Comment: why worry?
The year is 1983, the city is Melbourne, and a spy agency has settled on one of the stupidest training exercises ever to become public knowledge.Acting (unbelievably) on their own initiative, ASIS trainees staged a faux hostage rescue in what was then the Melbourne Sheraton hotel, and made such an utter shambles of it that their formerly-secret agency got put under intense scrutiny at the Hope Royal Commission.
After threatening the hotel’s manager with weapons, the agents then hopped into cars, one of which got stopped by Victoria Police but the occupants declined to produce ID, and the whole thing became public.
Along the way, Melbourne newspaper The Age published details of the operation – including the agents’ names.
That whole incident would be protectable under the kind of laws that passed the Senate last night. In spite of a bunch of jejune idiots waving both pistols and machine-guns around in a public place, the “special intelligence operation” coverage of the incident would have kept it out of newspapers, backed up by the threat of ten years in the slammer.
Author: KS
Miss a Payment? Good Luck Moving That Car
The first thing that strikes me is how on earth is people going to be able to pay their loans if they can’t use their car to get to work?
The thermometer showed a 103.5-degree fever, and her 10-year-old’s asthma was flaring up. Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start.
The cause was not a mechanical problem — it was her lender.
Ms. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender, C.A.G. Acceptance of Mesa, Ariz., remotely activated a device in her car’s dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March.
“I felt absolutely helpless,” said Ms. Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. It was not the only time this happened: Her car was shut down that March, once in April and again in June.
Petition to Obama Administration: End the Harassment and Targeting of Reporters
Imagine the United States without independent reporters. Where would the news come from? Press releases and corporate statements? Government-run media? And more importantly, what would we have missed over the last century? Watergate, COINTELPRO, the CIA’s manipulation of politics in Vietnam—none of these things would be common knowledge without courageous reporters, who were willing to publish stories on scandals that rocked the entire country.
A free press has always been an essential part of any democracy. That’s why repressive governments insist on state control over media. That’s why the very first addition to the Constitution, the First Amendment, protects freedom of speech.
And that’s why EFF is joining over 60 organizations supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) #RightToReport petition.
NJ Town Proposes Law That Would Grant Law Enforcement The Right To Warrantlessly Search Houses To Find Underage Drinkers
A New Jersey town is looking to give its police officers yet another way to bypass warrant requirements for searches of homes: underage drinking. Members of the public aren’t happy with it, and the city council doesn’t want to talk about it, even though the latter have stated they’re “on board” with it.
The Threats Against Emma Watson Were All An Anti-4Chan Campaign
It turns out that this story wasn’t complicated enough. New reports have come out to suggest the viral media company behind the hoax threats is itself a hoax attributed to a couple of people known for their spamming tactics. Per Business Insider: “Rantic Marketing is a fake company run by a gang of prolific internet spammers used to quickly capitalize on internet trends for page views. The group go by a variety of different names. Collectively, they’re known as SocialVEVO, but as the Daily Dot reports, their names are alleged to include Jacob Povolotski, Yasha Swag, Swenzy and Joey B. The only known video footage of the group is a rap song about pickles that they used dubious spam techniques to make incredibly popular. The song used to have over 8 million views on YouTube.” Delightful.
AFTER LYING AND APOLOGIZING, BRENNAN QUALIFIES BOTH
CIA Director John Brennan today petulantly denied that he lied in March when he publicly insisted that the CIA had not improperly accessed the computers of Senate staffers investigating the agency’s role in torturing detainees.
Since then, an internal investigation found the CIA had done just that, and Brennan was forced to apologize to Senate intelligence committee members.
In March, Brennan told Andrea Mitchell at a Council on Foreign Relations event: “As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth… We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.”
But on Thursday, facing questions at an industry trade conference, Brennan carefully parsed his earlier statement, insisting that he had only been denying the parts of Mitchell’s question that involved accusations of hacking with the intent to thwart the investigation.
This one isn’t really ignorant or unreasonable, but it is still very funny if you’re a geek, so I’m going to post it here anyways:
What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? (Stack Overflow)
The NSA and GCHQ Campaign Against German Satellite Companies
“Fuck!” That is the word that comes to the mind of Christian Steffen, the CEO of German satellite communications company Stellar PCS. He is looking at classified documents laying out the scope of something called Treasure Map, a top secret NSA program. Steffen’s firm provides internet access to remote portions of the globe via satellite, and what he is looking at tells him that the company, and some of its customers, have been penetrated by the U.S. National Security Agency and British spy agency GCHQ.
Stellar’s visibly shaken chief engineer, reviewing the same documents, shares his boss’ reaction. “The intelligence services could use this data to shut down the internet in entire African countries that are provided access via our satellite connections,” he says.
Bibamas – First Ever Bible Pajamas
… and lets hope they’re the last.
Our desire is to help children think more about Bible Heroes and not just Super Heroes when they go to bed each night! We want Bible Pajamas to help teach kids to be more like Jesus, pray like Jonah, have courage like Esther, and exercise faith like Moses.
No thanks.
Comcast Continues To Pretend To Support Net Neutrality With Misleading Claims
We’ve mentioned in the past how Comcast has been pretending to support net neutrality, with ad campaigns stating that it does — clearly in an attempt to confuse the public. Yesterday, Comcast even put a thing on its own front page claiming that the company is “committed to an open Internet and Net Neutrality.”
That links to a blog post from David Cohen, Comcast’s chief lobbyist / government relations guy, whose job it is to convince lawmakers to rubber stamp any of Comcast’s big plans; from killing (not preserving) net neutrality to letting it acquire Time Warner Cable. Cohen, who has ridiculously and cynically been given the title “Chief Diversity Officer” (by which we assume means the guy who gives money to minority groups to have them repeat Comcast’s talking points), tries to make the argument that Comcast supports net neutrality.
