Category: News You Need to Know

SOPA and PROTECT-IP Were Irrelevant

The Internet blackout did a good job of raising awareness of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT-IP, PIPA, or entirely absurd acronym). In fact so much awareness was raised and so many calls were made to “representatives” that both bills lost a great number of co-sponsors. People are cheering this as proof that democracy works and that we only need to bring attention of erroneous legislation to our “representatives” to stop the advance of the police state.

Unfortunately I have some bad news to report. You know all of those calls and e-mails made to “representatives” in Washington DC? They accomplished nothing. How can I say that? Simple, since passing either SOPA or PROTECT-IP became too difficult the government simply gave the middle finger to us serfs and decided to proceed as though either bill was passed. The popular file-sharing website MegaUpload was shutdown by the federal government*:

One of the world’s most popular file-sharing sites was shut down Thursday, and its founder and several company officials were accused of facilitating millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content.

A federal indictment accused Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to make it easier for authorities to go after sites with pirated material, especially those with overseas headquarters and servers.

Here’s a copy of the indictment [PDF] for those who are curious. When those assholes in Washington can’t get what they want in the form of legislation they just go ahead and do what they want anyways. In their eyes passing legislation is just a formality.

Many people were chanting, “This is what democracy looks like!” as “representatives” repealed their sponsorship of SOPA and PROTECT-IP. What they should have been saying is, “This is what a police state looks like.” The United States isn’t a republic or a democracy, it’s a fascist empire.

* As of this writing MegaUpload can be accessed using the IP address 109.236.83.66.

My First TSA Opt-Out

Unfortunately my record of bypassing the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) has been nullified. Last night flying out of Dayton, Ohio there were no scanner-free lines so I had to go through the sexual molestation instead.

Without any doubt I have learned that the pat downs performed by the TSA are done exclusively to humiliate flyers into submitting to those forsaken body scanners. How did I come to this conclusion? Besides my famous cynicism I paid careful attention to where the bad man was touching me and I can tell you taping something to your body and smuggling it in won’t present much trouble.

While the bad man felt around the collar of my shirt, my torso, arms, and legs he didn’t actually touch my groin or ass. Likewise I stashed a set of earbuds in the breast pocket of my shirt and the bad man failed to find them. Each time I’m submitted this this I’m going to try smuggling in larger items and see what I can get away with (do note that none of the items will actually be verboten, I do actually want to get on my plane). Honestly though if you stick the contraband down the front or back of your pants I doubt it will be discovered. If the item you’re smuggling is sufficiently small you could put it in your socks because they don’t pat down the bottoms of your feet.

I also noticed that no additional search is done of your belongings. My computer bag, laptop, carry-on bag, and coat went through the regular scanner but no additional search was done. Items that don’t show up on their scanners can be easily smuggled in by slipping them into a computer bag or coat.

Another thing I confirmed is that you aren’t required to buy the bad man dinner afterwards. Upon concluding his molestation I asked the bad man, “This is complimentary right? I’m not expected to buy you dinner or anything?” He chuckled and said no (I’m glad that the agent at least had a sense of humor, if he was a prude I’d have kept egging him on). After being given the all clear I walked forward, clicked my boots together, and raise my hand in the classic heil Hitler position, and said, “I have diligently followed the commands of the states.” Why did I do that last part? Because I’m an asshole and have to make at least some kind of scene.

Overall the pat down is a joke that doesn’t make passengers anymore secure. In fact the pat down shares that trait with the body scanners without actually having the potential to cause cancer.

Let me also close by encouraging all flyers to opt out of those body scanners. You may think the pat downs are humiliating or embarrassing but truthfully they’re only embarrassing for the bad man tasked with touching your naughty bits. As he’s patting you down he has to deal with the shame of being a jack booted government thug who is paid only to harass the flying public. When you see one of those body scanners be firm and say, “You’ll have to get a thug over here to pat me down because I won’t go through that scanner.”

Iraqi Government Detaining Contractors

This was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the United States military has receded to the Iraqi Embassy, I mean left the country, the actual government of Iraq has started rounding up some of our mercenaries, I mean private contractors:

Iraqi authorities have detained a few hundred foreign contractors in recent weeks, industry officials say, including many Americans who work for the United States Embassy, in one of the first major signs of the Iraqi government’s asserting its sovereignty after the American troop withdrawal last month.

The detentions have occurred largely at the airport in Baghdad and at checkpoints around the capital after the Iraqi authorities raised questions about the contractors’ documents, including visas, weapons permits and authorizations to drive certain routes. Although no formal charges have been filed, the detentions have lasted from a few hours to nearly three weeks.

The crackdown comes amid other moves by the Iraqi government to take over functions that had been performed by the United States military and to claim areas of the country it had controlled.

I’m not surprised that the Iraq government has started to crackdown on these contractors considering the atrocities they were caught doing in the past. Still the fact contractors are being arrested at airports and checkpoints isn’t the most interesting news for me, it’s the fact we have contractors at airports and checkpoints outside of our Embassy. When Obama announced the end of the Iraq war I was quick to say we were probably replacing a large number of our troops with private contractors:

I’m actually willing to bet money that we’re going to increase the number of mercenaries in the region which means we’ll still be dumping untold trillions into this ill-fated war.

Too bad nobody took me up on my bet.

Felony Whale Feeding

Whenever somebody tells me all felons should be prohibited from owning firearms I show them shit like this:

For this, Ms Black might now face up to 20 years in prison and half a million dollars in fines, after a federal grand jury indicted her this month. Little about the charges makes common sense. The federal law in question is the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, which was intended to save dolphins, seals and whales from being killed and harassed. The law also banned feeding these animals, on the theory that doing so might compromise their ability to forage naturally in future. Feeding is what Ms Black is now accused of. She says she was using the protocols she had learned from the federal agencies that are now investigating her to observe a natural feeding that was already in progress.

That’s right a marine biologist is facing felony charges for observing Orcas as they feed. The last time I checked observing marine mammals feeding is in the marine biologist job description. This poor woman could lose her right to own a firearm and vote because she was literally doing he fucking job. On top of that she is also being nailed with a double-standard:

Just as ridiculous, says Mr Biegel, is the accusation, increasingly common in federal cases, that Ms Black lied to the authorities, which carries its own prison terms. Ms Black always edits the commercial videos of her whale outings to make them more interesting. When investigators demanded footage, she gave them one of these edited videos. Prosecutors now claim that she had tampered with evidence.

Remember the police can lie to you but if you lie to them you’re in deep shit. Or, in this case, if you give them edited footage instead of raw footage they can claim you lied to them and pile on more charges to ensure you get more than mere felony whale feeding. Felony. Whale. Feeding. Just typing that sounds like a bad joke I would use as a hypothetical example of a stupid overreaching law. The problem here is this law isn’t hypothetical, it’s actually on the damned books and being enforced.

It bears repeating that the prohibition against feeding whales, like all prohibitions, actually requires the use of violence to enforce. If you toss a whale some dead meat you can actually be murdered by the state. Think about that.

Death is Never Far Behind the United Nations

I’m guessing few people remember Haiti. It’s a small country that was rocked by a major earthquake two years and five days ago. Billions of dollars were donated to the Haiti relief but nobody is quite sure where that money went. To add insult to injury the United Nations went ahead and brought colera to the island nation after their occupation relief effort:

Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera — a super bug — into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.

The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 — two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.

Thanks a lot guys. Not only did you offer no help to the people of Haiti but you also went ahead and brought them plague and pestilence. What’s wrong? At least when Genghis Khan invaded a village he only burned the building down and stabbed the men.

A tip of the hat goes to Dvorak Uncensored for this depressing piece of news.

There’s No Such Thing as Private Data

I hope most people have learned this lesson but I’m sure some have not: there’s no such thing as private data if you don’t entirely control the server that data resides on. This lesson should hold especially true for those who use Facebook as it appears that company is more than willing to throw privacy to the wind in the name of making a buck (and don’t get me wrong I have no issue with that, it’s a service that is free to me and I decide how much personal information to give them). Facebook is now giving Politico access to a lot of previously private data:

A partnership between Facebook and Politico announced today is one of the more far-reaching efforts. It will consist of sentiment analysis reports and voting-age user surveys, accompanied by stories by Politico reporters.

Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users’ private status messages and comments.

Politico is going to have a field day with the politically oriented posts I throw up on Facebook.

The EFF Files Suite Against FAA Regarding Drone Flights

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a suit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding drone flights in the United States:

Today, EFF filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration seeking information on drone flights in the United States. The FAA is the sole entity within the federal government capable of authorizing domestic drone flights, and for too long now, it has failed to release specific and detailed information on who is authorized to fly drones within US borders.

Up until a few years ago, most Americans didn’t know much about drones or unmanned aircraft. However, the U.S. military has been using drones in its various wars and conflicts around the world for more than 15 years, using the Predator drone for the first time in Bosnia in 1995, and the Global Hawk drone in Afghanistan in 2001.

[…]

Now drones are also being used domestically for non-military purposes, raising significant privacy concerns. For example, this past December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) purchased its ninth drone. It uses these drones inside the United States to patrol the U.S. borders—which most would argue is within its agency mandate—but it also uses them to aid state and local police for routine law enforcement purposes. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported in December that CBP used one of its Predators to roust out cattle rustlers in North Dakota. The Times quoted local police as saying they “have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June.” State and local police are also using their own drones for routine law enforcement activities from catching drug dealers to finding missing persons. Some within law enforcement have even proposed using drones to record traffic violations.

The FAA, having total control over all aerial flights in the United States, are the only entity who is likely to both know where drones are flying and be unable to hide behind various military classifications. Obtaining this information would be of great value because it would allow us peasants to know if the government is using drones to spy domestically as well as abroad.

The United States Faces a New Crisis

I find myself in an unfortunate position as I must inform you that the United States faces a new crisis, one which threatens the very structure of our public school systems. It has recently been reported that the supply of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs are in short supply:

Medicines to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are in such short supply that hundreds of patients complain daily to the Food and Drug Administration that they are unable to find a pharmacy with enough pills to fill their prescriptions.

The shortages are a result of a troubled partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration, with companies trying to maximize their profits and drug enforcement agents trying to minimize abuse by people, many of them college students, who use the medications to get high or to stay up all night.

Emphasis mine. You can almost admire how the government ensures no “crisis” goes to waste. When a shortage of ADHD drugs occurs they claim it’s because the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been cracking down as college students are using the drugs to get high. In actuality the shortage is most likely due to the fact ADHD drugs are horrendously overprescribed because any child who acts like a normal child is instantly diagnosed with ADHD and drugged up. After all a normal child is active and curious, traits that can be hard to deal with for teachers and parents so it’s far easier for everybody involved (well except the children, but fuck them since they’re not old enough to be in the military and therefore useless to the state at this point) if kids are sedated. This article did bring up an interesting fact I was previously unaware of:

While the Food and Drug Administration monitors the safety and supply of the drugs, which are sold both as generics and under brand names like Ritalin and Adderall, the Drug Enforcement Administration sets manufacturing quotas that are designed to control supplies and thwart abuse.

I never knew the DEA put quotas on the supply drug manufacturers can produce. Economically speaking the government is creating an artificial shortage, which is likely, at least partially, responsible for the insanely high cost of prescription drugs in this country.

Mexican Drug Cartels Built Their Own National Radio System

People often complain about the lack of competition in the cellular phone market. For the most part there are only four players; T-Mobiles, Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon. Opponents of capitalism claim this is an inevitable result of capitalism when in truth it’s an inevitable result of government involvement in the free market. New cell phone providers aren’t popping up left and right because licensing spectrum from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is fucking expensive. If it wasn’t for the massive cost of licensing spectrum from the FCC the cost of setting up a national radio system would be so cheap a drug cartel could do it:

When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming.

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk.

The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

With the ever increasing stranglehold our government is establishing over the Internet there may be a day when we have to establish a new network outside of the government’s control. When that day comes we’ll likely have to take a lesson from the Mexican drug cartels in setting up a wireless communication system that is both cheap to create and maintain but robust enough to cover a large portion of the population. It’s also interesting to watch the ingenuity of criminal endeavors. Since criminals aren’t bound by the letter of law they can innovate in ways businesses can not, and many of these innovations don’t involve violence but technological solutions to avoiding government forces.

Have I Every Mentioned How Much I Love the Word Drill

OK I seriously don’t give a shit about the word drill I just wanted to be flagged by Department of Motherland Homeland Security (DHS) goons who are apparently watching Twitter for keywords:

The Department of Homeland Security makes fake Twitter and Facebook profiles for the specific purpose of scanning the networks for ‘sensitive’ words – and tracking people who use them.

Simply using a word or phrase from the DHS’s ‘watch’ list could mean that spies from the government read your posts, investigate your account, and attempt to identify you from it, acccording to an online privacy group.

[…]

The DHS outlined plans to scans blogs, Twitter and Facebook for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’, ‘outbreak’, ‘drill’, ‘strain’, ‘virus’, ‘recovery’, ‘deaths’, ‘collapse’, ‘human to animal’ and ‘trojan’, according to an ‘impact asssessment’ document filed by the agency.

I guess that’s another government watch list my name is likely on. Since the article claims DHS agents are attempting to identify people posting watched material let me just cue you in to the URL of this site, it’s my name. Let me also state that I live in Minnesota and very recently renewed my driver’s license. If that isn’t enough information for you goons to identify me I don’t know what is.

Either way my goal of appearing on every possible government watch list should be closer to fruition with this post.