For those of us who have nothing to hide today, the idea that tomorrow’s leaders may be peeping at everything we do that we presume to be private is downright creepy! Indeed, the so called leak scandal in DC today is giving more and more people some pause.
Imagine that we continue to allow the government to peek in on our lives with impunity. Tomorrow, a government program that is partly privatized lands your most personal and private information in the hands of a leaker. But that leaker does not leak to the general public, he or she sells or uses your information for personal gain. The possibilities are no longer hypothetical. It all seems to be unraveling before our very eyes…
“‘WE WANT you to help us do this better,” asserted General Keith Alexander (pictured), the director of America’s National Security Agency (NSA), to hundreds of computer hackers at Black Hat, an annual information-security conference in Las Vegas on July 31st. General Alexander claimed that his agency’s mass-surveillance programmes had stopped 54 potential terrorist plots. He reassured the audience that their privacy was being protected. Still, there were a few heckles.
America’s spies have had a tough time since Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, began leaking information that revealed the massive scale of NSA snooping. Indeed, just as General Alexander tried to charm the geeks, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published another leak by Mr Snowden. This one revealed a system called XKeyscore that lets the NSA glean emails, chats and browsing histories without specific authorisation. The intelligence agency confirmed the programme, but said it was lawful and essential.”
More via Surveillance in America: Dark arts, black hats | The Economist.
Filed under: Blogosphere, Changing Media Paradigm, Culture Think, MashCrunchWired, Mass Media and Public Opinion, News, political corruption, Political Economy, Political Facts and Fiction, political plots, propaganda and spin, Public Policy, Technology and You, Big Brother is Watching; government surveillance; FBI waste; September 11th impact on civil liberties; civil liberties; civil rights; freedom under fire;
May 18, 2013 • 5:40 pm 1
Mountain of Petroleum Coke From Oil Sands Rises in Detroit – NYTimes.com
There may be no more important singular idea than the notion that corporations are persons. Indeed, they are.
The Koch brothers continue to be the target of media attention and this time they are not strategizing or paying for it. They are getting a freebee. It appears that an environmental secretion from their pursuit of wealth function has piled up higher and deeper in the eye of the media and in the middle of the “pristine” great lakes region. Oil… of course. Texas gold, or US black mud… or whatever earth exploiters and investors call it these days. Environmentalists and world builders are colliding once again as they accuse one another about tree hugging the world on the one hand and exploiting it for greed on the other. In the meantime the real lesson at hand here goes unnoticed.
The key and central problem we see on the horizon today is not piles of environmental waste but the proverbial “free rider problem” which is as old as cave metaphors and necessary untruths. It is big corporate money (to be sure corporate profits in the hands of ideologues) applied to our political discourse. The NYTs points it out… but what are we to do?
“Assumption Park gives residents of this city lovely views of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit skyline. Lately they’ve been treated to another sight: a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the other side of the …”
via Mountain of Petroleum Coke From Oil Sands Rises in Detroit – NYTimes.com.
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Filed under: Blogosphere, Changing Media Paradigm, consumers, ideology, lobbying, Mass Media and Public Opinion, News, Policy ThinkShop Comments on other media platforms, political corruption, Political Economy, profit motive and carcinogens, propaganda and spin, Public Health, Public Policy, regulations, corporate profits and politics, personal politics and corporate fortunes, The fortune 500 club ideology, The media feeds on spectacles but no solutions, The rich get to shape what we hear and what we think