News You Need to Know – Page 67

A Preview of How Useful Body Cameras on Cops Will Be

Body cameras are being touted as the saviors of modern policing. We told that police will behave themselves so long as they’re expected to wear body cameras. But body cameras have some major limitations. First of all they are facing away from the cop, not at him. The footage collected by the body cameras currently on the market remains in the control of the police department where it can be conveniently erased. There is also the issue that body cameras on cops are under the control of the cop, which means they can be readily disabled:

OAKLAND, Calif.—Over the last two years, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has disciplined police officers on 24 occasions for disabling or failing to activate body-worn cameras, newly released public records show. The City of Oakland did not provide any records prior to 2013, and the OPD did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

The records show that on November 8, 2013 one officer was terminated after failing to activate his camera. Less than two weeks later, another resigned for improperly removing the camera from his or her uniform. However, most officers received minor discipline in comparison.

Not surprisingly accountability in Oakland is pretty damn low. Of the cops that did disable their body camera few suffered any meaningful consequences. It’s almost like they killed a family pet after kicking in the door of the wrong house during a drug raid!

The root of the problems facing modern policing is the lack of accountability. When cops are getting away with murdering people who sold some tax-free cigarettes then getting away with disabling body cameras or tampering with footage is a walk in the park. At this point the only solution is to tear down the entire institution and create a replacement based on the lessons we’ve learned.

And Suddenly People Care About Torture Again

Shortly after it was known that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were being tortured there was an uproar by the neoliberals. They claimed to be very upset by the fact that people were being tortures. As it turns out they were only unhappy that their man wasn’t in charge when the torture was occurring and shortly after Bush was replaced by Obama they faded into the background (sadly joining most of the anti-war movement).

Yesterday a report on the torture performed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was released and suddenly people care about torture again:

The summary of the report, compiled by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the CIA misled Americans about what it was doing.

The information the CIA collected this way failed to secure information that foiled any threats, the report said.

In a statement, the CIA insisted that the interrogations did help save lives.

“The intelligence gained from the programme was critical to our understanding of al-Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day,” Director John Brennan said in a statement.

However, the CIA said it acknowledged that there were mistakes in the programme, especially early on when it was unprepared for the scale of the operation to detain and interrogate prisoners.

Welcome back everybody! Glad to have you with us again! Of course the reactions to this report have been very predictable. The neoliberals, who are again feigning outrage, keep reiterating that this happened under Bush’s watch. I guess the important take away from this report is that the old war criminal was in charge instead of the current war criminal (he’s probably too busy ordering the bombings of Middle Eastern children to bother overseeing torture operations).

The neocons have been equally predictable. Their main takeaway from the torture report is that it was totally cool because it was happening to Middle Easterners. They have also been busy trying to claim that the torture saved the lives of American soldiers even though no evidence exists supporting such a claim (and anybody who has studied interrogation techniques knows torture produces unreliable information because tortured people will tell you whatever they think you want to hear in the hopes you’ll stop inflicting pain).

I don’t care which war criminal was in charge at the time and I don’t care if acts of torture saved lives. Torture is unacceptable. Period. Not only does it produce unreliable information but it’s inhumane as Hell. The only thing torture is useful for is detecting people who should be removed from society. That is to say if somebody is willing to torture another human being they shouldn’t be in society.

Anyways this state crime, like all of its previous crimes, will likely be swept under the rug next week. Then it can go on to torture some other people and everybody can pretend to care for another week after a report is published by whatever party doesn’t hold the position of war-criminal-in-chief.

How Not to Get Killed By a Cop

So many people have been getting killed by police that I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to survive an encounter with one of those costume clad thugs with a shiny liability shield. I searched through several police department websites seeing if they had any tips or tricks but came up empty handed. It was then that I decided to consult with experts on modern policing, neocons and other petty authoritarians.

After some discussions I finally learned the trick to avoid getting killed by a cop and it’s really simple. If you encounter a cop you just need to be a good little slave, kowtow to the costume clad master, and beg the courts for freedom after you’ve had the shit kicked out of you because the cop didn’t want you to beat the ride even if you could beat the charge.

By simply allowing the petty man with a badge to scream at you, rough you up, and kill your family pets you can survive! At least some of the times. Really it’s up to the office and their decision will likely depend on whether or not they had the opportunity to beat somebody up recently or not.

Bathroom Wars in Minneapolis End Well

What bathroom should we use? That seemingly irrelevant question has drummed up a lot of political drama as of late. Arizona was looking to pass a law that would make it a criminal offense to use the “wrong” bathroom. A bigoted dipshit attempted to scare everybody into opposing a policy that wouldn’t criminalize “improper” bathroom and locker room use. In Minneapolis the question came up and, thankfully, ended in a relatively sane manner:

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. — Minnesota’s high school sports league passed a set of guidelines for transgender student-athletes on Thursday, bringing months of fevered debate to a close.

Dozens of supporters and proponents packed the Minnesota Sports High School League’s boardroom, hoping for one last chance to sway members with signs, buttons and speeches about how the rules would give students a sense of acceptance or could cost them a spot on their high school volleyball team.

The policy, which will take effect next school year, allows transgender athletes to pick the team that fits with their gender identity and provides an appeal process for students whose schools turn down their request.

The new process for establishing eligibility will include written statements from a student’s parents or guardians and health care professionals regarding the student’s “consistent or sincerely held gender-related identity.”

I’m not a fan of begging for permission but at least this is a damn side saner than sending out costume clad men with guns and a liability shield to arrest individuals who fail to use bathrooms in a manner prescribed by a bunch of suit wearing bigots in a marble building. And this decision sticks it to the fucksticks that posted a full page ad full of fear mongering, which is awesome.

Irony at It’s Finest

Anonymity is very important, which is why I hold Tor’s developers in high regard. Tor has helped political dissidents in especially tyrannical regimes speak out, made the drug trade safer by raising a barrier of anonymity between buyers and sellers, and gives people with jealous significant others a way to keep their communications secret. So when I see somebody harass any of the Tor developers my initial reaction is “Fuck that guy!”

Well an unsavory dude decided to harass Andrea Shepard, one of Tor’s developers, and learned a lesson about how valuable online anonymity is:

What happens when you troll Tor developers hard? You get unmasked.

Towards the end of last week, a troll who had sent various aggressive tweets to a host of security experts and privacy advocates associated with the Tor project and browser, which enables online anonymity, had his identity exposed. To some, that may seem hypocritical. To others, it seems like justice.

Andrea Shepard, the Tor developer who uncovered the real identity of her troll, says she was being harassed on and off for a year by a range of tweeters, all believed to be the sockpuppets of one man. The main source of abuse came from a Twitter account @JbJabroni10, but others included @JbGelasius, @SnowdenNoffect, @LimitYoHangout, @HaileSelassieYo, @thxsnowman and @PsyOpSnowden.

[…]

Things came to a head when some lighter mockery was aimed at Shepard last week, using information the troll had gleaned from her LinkedIn profile and personal website.

Unfortunately for the troll, this gave Shepard an IP address belonging to an iPhone that used a work network at atlantichealth.org to access her site. She also had some job information through LinkedIn’s “profiles that viewed yours” feature.

After searching LinkedIn for anyone with the role at Atlantic Health, she came across two profiles: one which didn’t have a name connected to it, another for a man named Jeremy Becker. She then used the Spokeo service to search for Jeremy Beckers in New Jersey, and a search for pharmacist licensees, and found only one, which gave her the middle initial ‘T’ and a hometown of Princeton, New Jersey.

She also had his father’s name, Edward Becker, and was able to find a Twitter account @ebecker which followed @JbJabroni10 and an inactive one for @JoyBecker52, apparently matching his mother Joyce Becker. Shepard had her man.

And then on 28 November, seven of the Twitter accounts linked to Becker seemed to go dark. He’d been scared off the face of the internet, to the cheers of the pro-Tor and anti-troll crowds.

Now that’s justice porn. And it should prove to be a valuable lesson to others who feel it necessary to harass security professionals. If somebody’s job is developing one of the most successful online anonymity tools chances are pretty good that they know how to uncover personally identifiable information. After all, you need to know how an attack works in order to defend against it.

The Law of Eristic Escalation in Action

Yesterday, around 14:00, a bunch of people went and got themselves in a tizzy over something that wasn’t directly impacting them. That thing was a protest of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Why were people complaining about the protests? Because it shutdown 35W, which is something that hasn’t happened since the Vietnam War:

With her 10-month-old daughter wrapped snugly at her chest, Mari Fitch marched three miles through Minneapolis on Thursday, most of it up the center of an empty Interstate 35W shut down by protest for the first time since the Vietnam War.

Along with about 150 other demonstrators, some carrying signs that read “Black lives matter,” she chanted the names of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two men killed in fatal confrontations with police officers. The protesters pumped their fists and shouted messages about justice, referencing two grand juries’ decisions not to indict the officers involved in Brown’s and Garner’s deaths.

The high-profile rally had echoes of protests that have sprouted up in other cities around the country, often fueled by crowds enraged by what they say is unfair and often lethal treatment of minorities.

Apparently having a major highway shutdown while you’re sitting at work is very rage inducing for some people. But this protest was an event made inevitable by the pathetic attempts of authority figures trying to impose order on us. Us Discordians know the Law of Eristic Escalation, which states the imposition of order equals the escalation of chaos. And it was that law that we saw in action yesterday.

For ages now the media has been doing its part to help those assholes in marble buildings impose their order. Besides lying for their benefit the media has also done a great job of avoiding covering protests of things that may be politically inconvenient. Protests against police brutality and war may get coverage on the back pages of the newspaper or a quick quip on the nightly news but rarely do they receive more. This has rendered convenient protests, those protests that fail to negatively impact our lives, worthless. Those who make convenient protest impossible will make inconvenient protest inevitable.

Sick of not having their voices heard yesterday’s protests decided to do something the media couldn’t ignore: block a major highway. And it worked. Not only was the news covering it but people were talking about it. In the end chaos sprang forth and got everybody attention, which was the entire point of the protest.

Posted with the greatest sense of irony.

And if you didn’t like this protest you’re probably not going to enjoy almost certain protests that will be springing up as police militarization continues to spiral out of control.

Edward Snowden Receives the Swedish Right Livelihood Award

There are still a lot of ignorant worshipers of the state who see Edward Snowden as a traitor I think a majority of the people who have heard of him recognize him for what he is: a hero. And while the United States government tries to find a way to get Snowden back stateside so he can be given the Chelsey Manning treatment other governments are giving him award:

Whistleblower Edward Snowden received several standing ovations in the Swedish parliament after being given the Right Livelihood award for his revelations of the scale of state surveillance.

Snowden, who is in exile in Russia, addressed the parliament by video from Moscow. In a symbolic gesture, his family and supporters said no one picked up the award on his behalf in the hope that one day he might be free to travel to Sweden to receive it in person.

His father, Lon, who was in the chamber for what was an emotional ceremony, said: “I am thankful for the support of the Right Livelihood award and the Swedish parliament. The award will remain here in expectation that some time – sooner or later – he will come to Stockholm to accept the award.”

I also hope that he can someday leave Russia and claim is award. Sadly the wrath of the United States government is long lived and Snowden will likely die of old age before his transgressions are forgotten.

Ferguson Goes About as Expected

The grand jury decided not to indite Darren Wilson to the surprise of nobody (what with Mr. Wilson having that magical liability deflecting badge). Also surprising nobody is the reaction, which involves a whole lot of civil unrest. I don’t have much to say on this that I haven’t already. When you have a small handful of people holding a monopoly on “justice” few proles are going to take it seriously.

Anyways this kind of new always puts me in an Arch Enemy mood so here you go:

Not that I’m ever not in an Arch Enemy mood.

State Sponsored Fat Shaming

I know that I’m getting old because I can now say “Back when I was a kid.” Anyways, back when I was a kid we had it pounded into our skulls that you never, ever insulted a person’s weight. This went double if that person was a girl. As it turns out constant bombardment by various media outlets telling girls what the ideal figure was resulted in a lot of eating disorders. So the creed of the day became “Everybody is beautiful” and “True beauty comes from within.”

Now the message is changing. Fat shaming is in. In fact fat shaming is now state sponsored! This may have something to do with the state getting itself more embedded in healthcare and therefore wanting to reduce expenses by getting people to ~~kill themselves with anorexia or bulimia~~ losing weight. And since sources are now claiming obesity is costing the healthcare industry as much as smoking you can bet the state is going to be ramping up its fat shaming propaganda post haste:

The worldwide cost of obesity is about the same as smoking or armed conflict and greater than both alcoholism and climate change, research has suggested.

I don’t look forward to the new wave of eating disorders this is likely to cause.

Hear Ye Glorious Warriors of the Three Percent

Raise your hands if you know somebody in the gun rights, libertarian, or neoconservative movement that has advocating shooting a cop acting unlawfully. OK, I can’t actually see your hands so that was a stupid thing for me to request but I believe it’s a safe bet to say individuals connected with these groups know at least one person that fits this description.

Yesterday I ended up in a conversation with an individual who not only advocating shooting police officers that act unlawfully but went so far as to say it’s one’s duty to do so. Of course I pointed out that anybody who shot a cop would quickly find the wrath of that entire department, including its sizable arsenal, coming down on them like the hammer of Thor. That’s when the nonsense really started. As it turns out this individual he adamant that he would lay down his life in the name of defending another person’s rights because he was a member of the three percenters (which they stylistically type III% because they seem to think using Roman numerals makes them edgy or something). The three percenters is a movement I had forgotten about (mostly because their most outspoken members promises an American revolution and never even attempted to deliver). But my experience has show that the three precenters movement is made up heavily, if not mostly, of warrior wannabes.

Warrior wannabes are adorable, especially when they get all angsty and start talking revolution. For those of you who don’t know they take their name from the American Revolution in which, they say, only three percent of the colonists were actually involved in overthrowing the British. So they believe that if they get three percent of the current American population to join them they can successfully overthrow the current government. But there’s a big difference between then and now: back then there was actually three percent of the American population that organized and knew how to fight whereas today the three percent, even if they actually made up three percent of the current American population, are disorganized and many have no idea how to actually fight. And that’s what makes the current three percenters’ claims laughable and their most vocal warrior wannabes downright hilarious.

Let’s return to the dude I first mentioned. According to him it is everybody’s duty to shoot cops acting unlawfully. He claims he has no concern about dying defending another person’s rights in this manner. Yet it would be so easy for him to back his bluster with actual action. We currently have a hotbed of activity in Ferguson, Missouri that involves notable instances of police acting unlawfully. Why isn’t he and his ilk down there waging war against the police? Here’s a hint, it’s because they’re all talk.

Warrior wannabes, like Earth itself, can best be described as mostly harmless. They very much want to be harmful and so regurgitate statements that they think will make them sound like total badasses. But they’re not fooling anybody (besides, perhaps, each other) because their claims can be easily verified as bullshit when they sit behind their computer monitors instead of going out and doing what they claim to not only want to do but are duty bound to do.