The Ledes

Monday, October 7, 2024

Weather Channel: “H​urricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 3 and hurricane and storm surge watches are now posted along Florida's western Gulf Coast, where the storm poses threats of life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds and flooding rainfall by midweek. 'Milton will be a historic storm for the west coast of Florida,' the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay said in a briefing Monday morning.”

CNN: “This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on the discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated. Their research revealed how genes give rise to different cells within the human body, a process known as gene regulation. Gene regulation by microRNA – a family of molecules that helps cells control the sort of proteins they make – ... was first revealed by Ambros and Ruvkun. The Nobel Prize committee announced the prestigious honor ... in Sweden on Monday.... Ambros, a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, conducted the research that earned him the prize at Harvard University. Ruvkun conducted his research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.”

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The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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The Commentariat -- June 7, 2013

Josh Lederman & Donna Cassata of the AP: "Moving to tamp down a public uproar spurred by the disclosure of two secret surveillance programs, the nation's top intelligence official is declassifying key details about one of the programs while insisting the efforts to collect America's phone records and the U.S. internet use of foreign nationals overseas were legal, limited in scope and necessary to detect terrorist threats. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in an unusual late-night statement Thursday, denounced the leaks of highly classified documents that revealed the programs and warned that America's security will suffer. He called the disclosure of a program that targets foreigners' Internet use 'reprehensible,' and said the leak of another program that lets the government collect Americans' phone records would change America's enemies behavior and make it harder to understand their intentions." ...

... Here's Clapper's full statement. ...

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "New disclosures about top-secret government programs to collect data on Americans' phone calls and Internet activity are likely to overshadow President Obama's two-day summit this weekend with the president of China. Mr. Obama is set to meet with President Xi Jinping on a 200-acre estate in Southern California on Friday and Saturday, a historic visit that was expected to be a venue for Mr. Obama to raise concerns about Chinese cyber attacks and spying. But now, that diplomatic conversation will take place in the midst of striking revelations about the United States's surveillance operations on its own citizens." ...

... Barton Gellman & Laura Poitras of the Washington Post: "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind." ...

... Glenn Greenwald & Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian broke the story at about the same time. (Apparently, the two papers worked together on the story.) ...

... Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "The federal government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation's largest Internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats, the director of national intelligence confirmed Thursday night." ...

... Siobhan Gorman, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities." ...

... Noam Cohen & Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times profile Glenn Greenwald. "The article [on Verizon], which included a link to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers."

"President Obama's Dragnet." New York Times Editors: "To casually permit this surveillance [of Americans' phone records] -- with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power -- fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy. The defense of this practice offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching, was absurd.... This stunning use of the [Patriot Act] shows, once again, why it needs to be sharply curtailed if not repealed." ...

     ... Margaret Hartmann & Joe Coscarelli of New York: "On Thursday afternoon (even before the world learned of 'PRISM'), the New York Times published a blistering editorial on the developing government surveillance scandal that declared, 'The administration has now lost all credibility.' The phrase was soon all over Twitter and appeared prominently on websites ranging from Politico to Drudge -- everywhere but the New York Times. As cataloged by NewsDiffs, by the evening, the phrase had been modified to read, 'The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.' (Emphasis added.)"

... Ellen Nakashima & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration and key U.S. lawmakers on Thursday defended a secret National Security Agency telephone surveillance program that one congressman ... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) ... said had helped avert a terrorist attack in recent years."

... Elspeth Reeve of the Atlantic: "The NSA spying is bigger than Verizon." Way bigger. P.S. NSA workers think your phone sex is, well, fucking hilarious. ...

... Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: "... it's worse than many might think." ...

... William Saletan of Slate is sanguine: "The government's phone surveillance isn't Orwellian. It's limited and supervised." ...

... Adam Serwer of NBC News: Judge Roger Vinson was so worried that the federal government could force him to eat broccoli that he declared the Affordable Care Act an unconstitutional violation of the commerce clause, yet somehow Vinson is with shredding the Fourth Amendment. CW: I guess Vinson is not concerned that the Feds can find out who is mistress & bookie are.

... Not as Bad as John Yoo! Scott Lemieux in the American Prospect: "At the very least, the indiscriminate nature of the Verizon order indicates flaws with the FISA framework established by Congress in 2007 and recently extended until 2017." That the Obama administration acted "legally" and "that the Supreme Court probably won't hear a challenge to current FISA arrangement and would probably uphold it if it did doesn't make the Court right." ...

 ... Atrios: "It's totally not a big deal and that's why it needs to be completely secret and free from meaningful oversight." ...

... Marcy Wheeler: "Here's the question, though: if this program is no big deal, as the Administration and some members of Congress are already claiming in damage control, then why has the Administration been making thin non-denial denials about it for years? If it is so uncontroversial, why is it secret?... The secrecy has been entirely about preventing American citizens from knowing how their privacy had been violated.... [Its purpose is to] undercut separation of powers to ensure that the constitutionality of this program can never be challenged by American citizens." ...

... John Sides: "... the presence of a fairly sturdy bipartisan elite consensus on domestic surveillance -- whether it is motivated by partisanship (Republicans defended Bush, Democrats defend Obama) or by a sincere belief in the value of the policy -- makes it hard to imagine that revelations about the NSA-Verizon agreement will lead to dramatic changes in policy."

... Matt Apuzzo of the AP has a pretty good -- and simple -- Q&A on the NSA's sweep of Verizon (and most likely other company) phone records. ...

... Timothy Lee of the Washington Post also has a good post explaining what the NSA is probably doing. ...

... Ed Kilgore: "... for the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, a civil libertarian who has been fighting a long war against national security surveillance practices, it has to be a peak moment to be the public conduit for leaked documents establishing what he had long suspected."

"The Spite Club." Paul Krugman: "... the only way to understand [Republican-dominates states'] refusal to expand Medicaid is as an act of sheer spite. And the cost of that spite won't just come in the form of lost dollars; it will also come in the form of gratuitous hardship for some of our most vulnerable citizens.... The rejectionist states would lose more than $8 billion a year in federal aid, and would also find themselves on the hook for roughly $1 billion more to cover the losses hospitals incur when treating the uninsured."

Alan Fram & Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: Faris Fink (his real name), "an Internal Revenue Service official whose division staged a lavish $4.1 million training conference and who starred as Mr. Spock in a 'Star Trek' parody shown at the 2010 California gathering, conceded to Congress on Thursday that taxpayer dollars were wasted in the episode.... [The IRS Inspector General's] report concluded that rather than saving money by negotiating lower room rates with ... three Anaheim hotels, the IRS paid a standard government rate of $135 per room but accepted perks in return. Asked why the IRS didn't negotiate for lower room rates, Fink said, 'I was not aware we had the ability to do that.'" CW: really? This guy is definitely not smart enough to audit my taxes. ...

... Another IRS training video surfaces, this one supposedly an attempt to parody Don Draper, the "Mad Man" character. (I think the actor sounds more like Rod Serling of "The Twilight Zone"):

William Gibson of the Orlando Sentinel: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he's working really, really hard to pass immigration reform legislation even though "Both sides accuse him of playing political games. Some speculate that his shifting stance -- going from cheerleader to occasional critic, and back again -- is part of a strategy to enact a signature piece of legislation without political damage while preparing to run for president in 2016."

"Big Pot." Tim Egan on nascent efforts of big-name capitalists to make big pots of gold selling legalized pot in Washington state & Colorado.

Congressional Race

Jenna Portnoy of the Star-Ledger: New Jersey "Gov. Chris Christie today named New Jersey attorney general Jeffrey Chiesa to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Chiesa said he won't seek election later this year." The article includes a brief biography of Chiesa. The New York Times story is here. ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "In appointing state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa to fill the seat vacated by deceased Sen. Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has come as close to appointing himself -- without actually doing so -- as possible. Chiesa is a longtime loyalist and friend of the governor -- with little public profile or known ideological agenda -- following Christie from private practice, to the U.S. attorney's office, to the governor's mansion, making one wonder if his Senate office will effectively function as an extension of the governor's office in Washington." ...

... Times of Trenton: "U.S. Rep. Rush Holt ended the speculation this morning that he might run for the U.S. Senate seat left open by the death of Frank Lautenberg by officially asking his supporters to help collect signatures for the race.... Holt, a Democrat, has represented New Jersey's 12th Congressional District since 1999." CW: Holt was briefly -- and surprisingly -- my Congressman. I like him. He's liberals, he's a physicist, and he's smarter than the computer Watson! (Really.)

Local News

Bob Warner, et al., of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Despite multiple complaints, shoddy demolition work at 22d and Market Streets went uninspected for more than three weeks before the deadly collapse of a building Wednesday, raising basic questions about the city's competence regulating demolition projects.... Mayor [Michael] Nutter and Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Carlton Williams acknowledged Thursday that the city had granted a demolition permit for that project without any inquiry into the contractor's qualifications for demolition work. The city does not require demolition contractors to establish their qualifications.... Although the city began fielding citizen complaints about the Center City project as early as May 7, city inspectors reported no problems at a May 14 visit and did not follow up.... Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said the city relied on OSHA to look into safety issues at active demolition sites." ...

... Mark Faziollah, et al., of the Inquirer: "The contractor hired to demolish the building at 2136-38 Market St. has a criminal record stemming from a phony car-wreck scheme with a Philadelphia police officer, according to court records. And his demolition work next to a Salvation Army thrift shop worried neighbors, workers, and others in the days before Wednesday's fatal collapse, because an adjoining wall was left unsupported.... Griffin Campbell ... has city permits to demolish six other properties, including three Market Street properties owned by STB Investments Corp., the owner of the collapsed building. The principal of STB is Richard Basciano, owner of many seedy properties and once dubbed 'the undisputed king of Times Square porn.'" ...

... Kathy Matheson, et al., of the AP: "The search for victims of a building collapse that killed six people wound down Thursday amid mounting questions about whether the demolition company that was tearing down the structure at the time caused the tragedy by cutting corners."

Vital International News

Secret of the Kremlin Revealed! Ellen Barry of the New York Times: Russian "President Vladimir V. Putin announced on Thursday that he plans to divorce his wife of 29 years, Lyudmila, who for years has barely appeared in public, prompting widespread chatter about the secretive leader's private life. The couple made the announcement to a television crew after attending a ballet performance at the Kremlin together -- an unusual event in itself, since in recent years Lyudmila Putin has appeared in public only rarely."

News Ledes

AP: "A pregnant Texas actress who told FBI agents her husband had sent ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been arrested for orchestrating the scheme herself, law enforcement officials said Friday. It was not immediately clear what charges would be filed against Shannon Guess Richardson of New Boston, Texas, a mother of five who has played bit roles in television shows. Two U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed her arrest to The Associated Press...."

Cleveland Plain Dealer: "A Cuyahoga County grand jury returned a 329-count indictment this afternoon against Ariel Castro, charging the 52-year-old Cleveland man with the kidnapping and rape of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. Castro was indicted for one act of aggravated murder -- for purposely and with prior calculation and design causing the unlawful termination of another's pregnancy,said County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty."

Reuters: "At least four people were wounded when gunfire erupted near Santa Monica College west of Los Angeles on Friday, about 3 miles from where President Barack Obama was attending a political fundraiser, and a suspect was arrested, authorities said. A spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol told Reuters the highway patrol had received a report of a man armed with multiple weapons, including a shotgun, firing at passing cars and a bus at two locations near the college campus." ...

     ... CBS News Update: "A gunman with an assault-style rifle killed at least six people in Santa Monica on Friday before police shot him to death in a gunfight in the Santa Monica College library, authorities said." ...

... AP: "Two people were found dead Friday in a burned home near Santa Monica College, where someone sprayed a street corner with gunfire, wounding at least four people, authorities said."

AP: "Richard Ramirez, the demonic serial killer known as the Night Stalker who left satanic signs at murder scenes and mutilated victims' bodies during a reign of terror in the 1980s, died early Friday in a hospital, a prison official said."

Reuters: "U.S. employers stepped up hiring in May, a sign the economy was growing modestly but not strong enough to convince the Federal Reserve to scale back the amount of cash it is pumping into the banking system. The United States added 175,000 jobs last month, just above the median forecast in a Reuters poll, Labor Department data showed on Friday."

AP: "After bringing rains, heavy winds and even tornadoes to parts of Florida, Tropical Storm Andrea moved quickly across south Georgia and was speeding through the Carolinas on Friday morning...."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (11)

I watched an interesting documentary a while back about the Civil Rights movement through the lens of the Swedish director Göran Olsson. The documentary is called "The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975." It's far from perfect but reveals an interesting angle on the issue and has some great historical material. It aired on PBS and you can watch it on YouTube if you so desire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_qnnqyxQk

In the documentary there is an interview with a popular hip hop artist Talib Kweli. Besides music, he is also a prominent social activist, particularly for the African American community. While discussing the importance of Stokely Carmichael to the movement, Talib Kweli gives a very interesting aside into the dark powers of the NSA. He recalls a moment when he was looking up old speeches of Carmichael to find inspiration for some songs he was working on. A little later he had to take a flight and was pulled out of line and questioned by FBI agents about his interests in his Carmichael google searches... This is interesting for two reasons.

The documentary came out in 2011, so we're probably talking about a timeline of 2009-2010 when this event happened. So it's been years since the FBI has been accessing this type of digital dirt of American citizens. Secondly, not only were they actively following his online activities without his knowledge, they saw these activities to be threatening enough to warrant a shake down. This wasn't passive data mining but active investigations on an average US citizen.

The reason I bring this up is because of the insight Talib makes. Why would they come after him for reading Stokely Carmichael's speeches 50 years later when we have such inflammatory rhetoric in everyday discourse today which seems much more dangerous and hateful? Why does current virulent discourse get a pass while Carmichael's ideas raise a federal red flag? Freedom of speech exists of course, but the freedom to self-educate online is wading in muddy waters?

The answer as I see it is the power of well-formulated and directed ideas. Creating legitimate arguments testing the status quo accompanied with popular support is a very dangerous combo for the conservative powers in place. Some anarchists calling for the end of Wall Street or Tea Bumpkin' yelling don't tread on me is inconsequential to the status quo as long they remained divided, unorganized or without broad support.

Where this NSA data mining gets dangerous is when it's full capabilities are draped in shadows. The Terrorist card doesn't cut it for me anymore. That doesn't give them the right to data mine EVERY American's communications. And without even slight transparency, we can't know what they're doing with this info. If the Talib Kweli incident is a precursor, any organized civil movement trying to effect true change in Washington could be undermined if the established powers deem it necessary. Obviously paranoia comes about when you don't know who's listening in, and I don't think reality will become Brazil where men in black suits will come crashing through my roof and zip me away, but I still don't buy the "Don't do anything wrong and it doesn't matter" line. No. We have a certain right to privacy that has been established since the founding of our country. Most of you have grown up with that certain amount of privacy in private conversations. I expect the same privacy during my lifetime and that of the next generation.

What twerks me the most about all of this is that I have this blurry recollection of a certain someone talking about bringing a new transparency to Washington.... eh, must have just been a dream.

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered Commentersafari

My belief is that the toothpaste got out of the tube a long time ago! Back in the late 70's/early 80's someone with some knowledge of these things told me that the government was monitoring international calls. The technology was not especially sophisticated, but they had the means to learn or uncover potential criminal activities and misdeeds. If such a 'listening in' discovery 'warranted it, this was (to be) followed by an appropriate (legal request) warrant/wire tap. What today's powerful and vastly improved technology has done is made stealth eavesdropping and scrutiny that much easier, more intensive, while harvesting beaucoup-bytes of 'metadata' on tout le monde.

That we would be shocked, "shocked I say..." that government can easily surveil and learn things about us via the telecommunication giants, major tech firms, credit card companies, et al didn't just start with 2001, but this access certainly accelerated.

More recently, when the Boston Marathon bombers were identified, the older brother's Amazon wish list (books, music and more) was published in short order. Don't recall anyone being surprised. Gee, how'd they get that? Seems like only yesterday when there was real outrage over privacy concerns with arguments against exposing personal buying habits from retailers such as Barnes & Nobles or accessing our library selections as material to use in court cases?

To paraphrase from Erica Jong's 'Fear of Flying," I suspect that at last, we have found the 'Zip-drive less fuck."

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterMAG

Our government's vast surveillance initiative is indeed disturbing, but for me the primary question it raises is the even larger one of whether there is even the possibility of much individual privacy when most of us seem so pleased to live in a hive.

The privacy we claim we value may assume more absolute physical and cultural barriers between and among people than ever existed, and that certainly don't exist in today's so inter-connected world.

The notion of an individual's absolute agency, as dear as it is to the American Dream, grounded as it is in our distinct history and geography, has always been part hokum. Even here the isolated, purely independent human being has not existed since Eve showed up, Adam sinned, and Caine and Abel magically followed. From family, to clan, to tribe, to nation--and now to world--the ties of dependency that both bind and bother us have only grown.

When we casually consume fruit from Chile, celebrate Valentine's with flowers from Ecuador, fear missiles from N. Korea and epidemics from Africa--let alone make yearly winter trips to Hawaii as thoughtlessly as our predecessors used to throw another log on the fire--who could claim we live independently of one another?

Every time we participate in a network, whether it be a food chain that originates in the next valley or in Thailand, attach ourselves to a power grid, to the internet or a telephone, drive on a road, read a magazine, or purchase a product made anywhere by anyone, whether we acknowledge it or not, we have signed a contract of implied interdependence and, I'd submit, unavoidably surrendered some portion of any claim to privacy.

To me, the degree of that surrender is the issue. Obviously, we're looking at compromise, not an ideal. My fear is that here too--think of climate change or any number of other challenges--we will not make deliberate deliberate, thoughtful decisions about our future, but let the forces we have unleashed but don't want to think about take us where they will.

Like most Americans, I participate in the myth of beholden to no one independence. I like to think of myself as master of my fate but know that in a world where we can and do guide bombs to their targets from half a world away, killing people we don't even know, or have the technology to data mine the millions of phone calls we couldn't even make thirty years ago, my mastery, my agency, my privacy and any rights that might accrue thereto are significantly limited by reality.

And I don't have to like to recognize it.

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

In China, where governmental monitoring of personal communications has been going on for decades, the watch word problem has been somewhat eased by euphemisms or replacement words and phrases. So instead of writing or saying "Tiananmen Square" they might say "chrysanthemum" which probably works until the listeners catch on, in which case they'd have to substitute "blue car" or something equally innocuous.

I propose a similar system in this country that might offer some tiny protection against NSA data mining operations based on watch words, many of which are incredibly common but will get the watchers on your doorstep in a couple of hours (for instance, saying "highway" or "port" might land you in an interrogation box with a cast member from the Sopranos).

And if looking up Stokely Carmichael speeches can put you on the radar, I'm betting other words and names can be equally unnerving to police state types. Ergo a few suggestions:

Constitution = Sports Illustrated
Fourth Amendment = chocolate chip
Civil Rights = clown shoes
Right to Privacy = case of beer
Freedom of Speech = not sleeping too well

Since we're all under some kind of surveillance by now, I guess we'll have to change these, tout de suite. (Pssst, NSA guys, that's French for fuck off).

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

In China, where governmental monitoring of personal communications has been going on for decades, the watch word problem has been somewhat eased by euphemisms or replacement words and phrases. So instead of writing or saying "Tiananmen Square" they might say "chrysanthemum" which probably works until the listeners catch on, in which case they'd have to substitute "blue car" or something equally innocuous.

I propose a similar system in this country that might offer some tiny protection against NSA data mining operations based on watch words, many of which are incredibly common but will get the watchers on your doorstep in a couple of hours (for instance, saying "highway" or "port" might land you in an interrogation box with a cast member from the Sopranos).

And if looking up Stokely Carmichael speeches can put you on the radar, I'm betting other words and names can be equally unnerving to police state types. Ergo a few suggestions:

Constitution = Sports Illustrated
Fourth Amendment = chocolate chip
Civil Rights = clown shoes
Right to Privacy = case of beer
Freedom of Speech = not sleeping too well

Since we're all under some kind of surveillance by now, I guess we'll have to change these, tout de suite. (Pssst, NSA guys, that's French for fuck off).

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@Akhilleus or, one could say: "Va te faire foutre." French is such a sexy language!

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterMAG

@AK: My personal preference is to give the spooks more stuff to accumulate, like peppering my comments with remarks such as: "Say, I think NSA headquarters is quite close to the Port of Baltimore. In fact, I'm sure a single major strategic highway--the Baltimore-Washington Expressway--essentially connects the two, and passes quite near Baltimore-Washington International airport."

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

@James Singer: What kind of cake would you like when I do the
file-in-a-cake thing? And don't say "yellow cake", that'll do it for
sure. I have some dynamite ideas, like flooding the internet with all
of the no-no words that we've all known about for years and years
that weren't supposed to be said on the telephone. Gonna start sending to all of my contacts pronto. I don't relish being in jail
without a dozen or so of my closest friends.

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterforrest morris

Just scanned some of the naughty words from Homeland Security's list. I'm betting the NSA list is pretty close. Strangely, some of the watch words refer to natural disasters like hurricane, earthquake, snow, sleet, and mudslide. Are these really things people can make happen? If so, I want to party with those guys. "Okay boys, let 'er rip. Hurricane Peeping Tom, here we go! And can we direct it towards the NSA headquarters?"

I also noticed that they are unaware of the correct spelling of "lightning" which means, ladies, if you are texting someone about "lightening" your hair, you may be joining James and Forrest in the slammer at some black site.

I can see where including a reference to a nearby Extremist Jihad Terror School would raise some eyebrows, but talking about snow flurries or hurricanes?

Orange jump suits for all of us. Make my cake chocolate, if you please.

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

MAG,

I like your style. Maybe we can come up with our own list of phrases from a variety of languages. Not sure how to say "go fuck yourself" in Farsi but it would be a hoot.

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

As MAG said, it's too late. Remember Adm. Poindexter'sTotal Information Awarenss Project? The one that was supposedly canceled? PRISM sounds a lot like it. The project may have been conceled, but it looks as if parts of it live on.

If you're worried about government surveillance, how about private sector surveillance? Facebook, google, your inernet provider, your phone company. Solution: stay off the toobz. cancel your phone, disonnect all of your utilities. Move to the wilderness. Even the Unabomber couldn't rely on that. If someone wants to find you badly enough, they will.

The NRA's panic over the gun registry is also too late. If you bought the gun from a registered dealer. the gubmt can find out when you bought it, what you bought, and if they get persistent, the serial number. Bought it at a gun show? You'll need ammo. Not practical to constantly buy it at gun shows, so you have to go to a dealer. The caliber is the first clue.

June 7, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa
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