Daily Archives: October 27, 2014

Comforting the NSA and Afflicting Its Dissenters

Posted: October 27, 2014 at 5:51 pm

No serious defense of the surveillance state can ignores its anti-democratic abuses, its lawbreaking, and its record of punishing whistleblowers.

Eddie Keogh/Reuters

In a New Republic article on NSA surveillance, Yishai Schwartz defends the U.S. government against the critiques of whistleblower Edward Snowden and his supporters. This defense warrants close scrutiny, because several of the arguments offered echo misinformation spread by national-security state officials.

The article begins by analyzing scenes in the Laura Poitras documentary Citizenfour where Snowden is holed up in a Hong Kong hotel, anxious that authorities might burst through the door and arrest him at any moment. "The implication is that Snowden has been targeted and persecuted by the government because he is a dissenter," Schwartz writes. "This is false. Snowden is a dissenter, but he is also a law-breaker. And the latter is the reason he has been targeted .... The government seeks to punish Snowden in order to make an example, but it is an example to future law-breakers (and in particular, those who expose classified information), not to deter future dissenters. Snowden happens to fit into both categories, but most dissenters do not, and they have nothing to fear."

Tell that to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In 2007, a dozen FBI agents stormed into his house with weapons drawn. "One of them ran upstairs and entered the bathroom where Mr. Binney was toweling off after a shower, pointing a gun at him," The New York Times reported. "Agents carried away a computer, disks and personal and business records .... Mr. Binney spent more than $7,000 on legal fees. But far more devastating, he said, was the N.S.A.s decision to strip his security clearance ... costing him an annual income of $300,000."

'What the War on Terror Actually Looks Like': Laura Poitras on Citizenfour

Or consider Thomas Drake, who was careful to avoid revealing classified information in correspondence with a reporter about NSA waste, fraud, and abuse. Jane Mayer documents the trumped-up charges used to persecute him and destroy his career. Or ponder Jesselyn Radack's story.

Is Schwartz unaware of these people? Surely he is at least familiar with Poitras, whose film he is reviewing. She committed no crimes when making documentaries about Iraq and Gitmo, yet wound up on a secret government watch list, subjecting her to harassment, interrogations, and equipment seizures. The claim that lawful dissenters "have nothing to fear" is demonstrably false.

* * *

A bit later in Schwartz's article, he objects to the argument that "our surveillance programs are unnecessary, that increases in government capabilities inherently infringe on our liberty, and warns ominously that dictatorships begin their oppression with the collection of data," countering that "surveillance is essential to countering threats from both terrorists and state espionage in the world today."

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Comforting the NSA and Afflicting Its Dissenters

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The First Amendment (Historically Speaking) – Episode #6 – Video

Posted: at 5:50 pm


The First Amendment (Historically Speaking) - Episode #6
Frederick Douglass Dixon hosts this weekly segment on UPTV.

By: UPTV6

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IX Tab – Dance Dance Dance – Video

Posted: at 5:50 pm


IX Tab - Dance Dance Dance
a short promo for the second IX Tab album, ROC, featuring a first amendment of the track St James and The 28 Pieces that I had lying around.

By: saxonroach

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IX Tab - Dance Dance Dance - Video

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Anti Abortion Group Says SA Must Learn 'The Hard Way' How First Amendment Works

Posted: at 5:49 pm

Posted Monday, October 27th 2014 @ 4pm

The anti abortion group that was denied the right to display photos of aborted fetuses on a 'Jumbotron' at Alamo Plaza last week is hinting again that a lawsuit against the city may be in the works, Newsradio 1200 WOAI reports.

"The First Amendment was adopted by our founder to protect offensive or disturbing speech, because popular speech needs no protection," said Mark Harrington, Director of the Ohio based pro life group 'Created Equal.' "Unfortunately, this is something the City of san Anto0nio is going to have to learn the hard way."

Created Equal was granted a permit to hold a rally in Alamo Plaza, but was denied the use of the Jumbotron under a never before enforced city ordinance that prohibits the use of 'electronic devices' in historic areas.

"What better way to honor the men who died fighting for Texas independence from Mexico than to protect the rights of all Americans to express themselves regardless of viewpoint," Harrington said.

He said his group was the victim of 'viewpoint discrimination,' which the courts have said is a violation of the first amendment.

"Arbitrary enforcement of city codes to chill free speech is a classic case of governmental content-based discrimination," he said.

Created Equal cancelled the rally, but did hold a march through downtown.

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Anti Abortion Group Says SA Must Learn 'The Hard Way' How First Amendment Works

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Letter: The Second Amendment

Posted: at 5:49 pm

Posted: Sunday, October 26, 2014 10:57 pm

Letter: The Second Amendment Philip Jones, junior in computer science technicianonline.com

More people need education about the Second Amendment and why the Second Amendment was created in the first place. The Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment as a means to protect the peoples rights throughout future generations. They also created the Second Amendment to be prepared for the next revolution. However, gun control laws are taking these rights away. The more gun control laws on the books, the weaker our country gets. Gun-free zones right here at North Carolina State and other colleges is not only an infringement of our law-abiding rights, but it also makes the campus more unsafe. Campus police is a great resource to have. However, they can only respond so quickly. Concealed carry should be supported on campus, not feared. There have been no incidents since the gun rights in-car campus gun laws were passed. About 99 percent of concealed carry permit holders are law-abiding citizens because criminals will not go through the process to get a concealed carry. Having concealed carry on campus would make our campus and other colleges safer. Off campus, the worst thing to hear is people saying, The Founding Fathers only had muskets. Well, that is also saying the First Amendment should only apply to print media and not television or the Internet. The same applies to the Second Amendment, such as AR-15s and AK-47s. I would hate to see the day when the next revolution comes to our home country and we are unprepared because of tyranny from our lawmakers. Too many people died for the freedom of the Second Amendment, and my generation and future generations are the only people who can be more educated about our Constitution, and stop tyranny from the government.

Posted in Opinion, Letters to editor on Sunday, October 26, 2014 10:57 pm.

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Tor Browser 4.0 is released | The Tor Blog

Posted: at 5:49 pm

Update (Oct 22 13:15 UTC): Windows users that are affected by Tor Browser crashes might try to avoid this problem by opening "about:config" and setting the preference "media.directshow.enabled" to "false". This is a workaround reported to help while the investigation is still on-going.

Update (Oct 25 02:32 UTC): If you are unhappy with the new Firefox 31 UI, please check out Classic Theme Restorer.

Update (Oct 16 20:35 UTC): The meek transport still needs performance tuning before it matches other more conventional transports. Ticket numbers are now listed in the post.

The first release of the 4.0 series is available from the Tor Browser Project page and also from our distribution directory.

This release features important security updates to Firefox. Additionally, due to the POODLE attack, we have also disabled SSLv3 in this release.

The primary user-facing change since the 3.6 series is the transition to Firefox 31-ESR.

More importantly for censored users who were using 3.6, the 4.0 series also features the addition of three versions of the meek pluggable transport. In fact, we believe that both meek-amazon and meek-azure will work in China today, without the need to obtain bridge addresses. Note though that we still need to improve meek's performance to match other transports, though. so adjust your expectations accordingly. See tickets #12428, #12778, and #12857 for details.

This release also features an in-browser updater, and a completely reorganized bundle directory structure to make this updater possible. This means that simply extracting a 4.0 Tor Browser over a 3.6.6 Tor Browser will not work. Please also be aware that the security of the updater depends on the specific CA that issued the http://www.torproject.org HTTPS certificate (Digicert), and so it still must be activated manually through the Help ("?") "about browser" menu option. Very soon, we will support both strong HTTPS site-specific certificate pinning (ticket #11955) and update package signatures (ticket #13379). Until then, we do not recommend using this updater if you need stronger security and normally verify GPG signatures.

There are also a couple behavioral changes relating to NoScript since 3.6. In particular, by default it now enforces script enable/disable for all sub-elements of a page, so you only need to enable scripts once for a page to work, rather than enabling many sub-scripts. This will hopefully make it possible for more people to use the "High Security" setting in our upcoming Security Slider, which will have Javascript disabled globally via NoScript by default. While we do not recommend per-element whitelisting due to fingerprinting, users who insist on keeping this functionality may wish to check out RequestPolicy.

Note to MacOS users: We intend to deprecate 32bit OSX bundles very soon. If you are still using 32bit OSX 10.6, you soon will need to either update your OS to a later version, or begin using the Tails live operating system.

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Tor Browser 4.0 is released | The Tor Blog

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Michele Marchesi: Using an Artificial Financial Market for studying a Cryptocurrency Market 1/2 – Video

Posted: at 5:49 pm


Michele Marchesi: Using an Artificial Financial Market for studying a Cryptocurrency Market 1/2
http://bitcoinference.com/2014/Michele-Marchesi.html Bitcoin chat here: http://chat.bitcoinference.com/

By: Bitcoinference

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Michele Marchesi: Using an Artificial Financial Market for studying a Cryptocurrency Market 1/2 - Video

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CryptoCurrency Foundations Explained – Video

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CryptoCurrency Foundations Explained
In this video I explain what a foundation is and how it can be useful to all cryptocurrencies. I then talk about and reference the Bitcoin Foundation, as wel...

By: GamersGoneTech

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CryptoCurrency: Boot Strap Files Explained – Video

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CryptoCurrency: Boot Strap Files Explained
Hey guys, It #39;s Jason and today I will be explaining what a bootstrap.dat file is and how it operates. I will be disuesssing how it allows for speedy up to date block chain data set with out...

By: GamersGoneTech

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Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Bitcoin's China Resurgence and Independent Reserve Launches Exchange

Posted: at 5:49 pm

Bitcoin is experiencing a quiet comeback in China following months of unfavourable regulation(IBTimes UK)

The price of bitcoin has slid once again over the weekend, falling back down below $350 (217) for the first time since its crash earlier this month.

Other major cryptocurrencies, including dogecoin, peercoin, namecoin and darkcoin, also saw their prices fall by a similar 1% to 3% margin since Friday 24 October.

Cannabisdarkcoin was the biggest mover across all markets. The cryptocurrency, which launched earlier this month, saw its value surge by 180% in the last 24 hours.

Australia-based cryptocurrency company Independent Reserve has launched a bitcoin exchange in Sydney, claiming it is faster than other exchanges.

"As an Australian you'll be able to open an account and be verified in minutes," said Adrian Przelozny, chief technology officer of Independent Reserve.

Przelozny believes bitcoin is not far away from breaking fully into the mainstream, with around 76,000 merchants accepting the cryptocurrency around the world.

He said: "eBay is about to start accepting Bitcoin, you can buy a holiday on Expedia using Bitcoin, and you can buy a computer from Dell using Bitcoin."

Following months of unfavourable bitcoin regulation in China, the cryptocurrency is making a quiet comeback in the country, according to China's 21st Century Business Herald.

The ban on trading bitcoin introduced by China's central bank was seen as one of the main factors in bitcoin's price crashing earlier this year.

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Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Bitcoin's China Resurgence and Independent Reserve Launches Exchange

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