This is the first photograph ever posted on the Internet - Uploaded nearly twenty years ago -

This is the first photograph ever posted on the Internet - Uploaded nearly twenty years ago - 



The first photographic image ever uploaded to the Web was a Photoshop disaster. It was created to sell something, and featured attractive women in a come-hither pose.


In short, photo-uploading was born with some original sins that have never quite washed away.


Here it is, in all its glory:






Next Wednesday, July 18th, the photograph at the center of that image — a homemade promotional shot for Les Horribles Cernettes, a comedy band based at the CERN laboratory near Geneva — will turn 20 years old. Despite the artifact’s world-historical significance, its full story has never been told. Few enthusiasts of art or photography or technology will be marking its 20th birthday, in no small part because it’s such an odd and un-artistic image.


“It’s sort of terrible and charming,” said Lesley Martin, a photo scholar at the Aperture Foundation, after being shown the image for the first time. But she added that that’s par for the course with photographic firsts. The first known photograph, for example, was of a semi-visible rooftop, seen through a window.


“They’re always semi-accidental and seemingly inconsequential at the time,” Martin told me. “The first photos are always, from the perspective of a sophisticated viewer today, somewhat non-events and of non-subjects.”


The first Web photo was no exception. It wasn’t even taken for the purposes of science or technology. The photographer, Silvano de Gennaro, was an IT developer at CERN who worked near Tim Berners-Lee and the other inventors of the Web. But “I didn’t know what the Web was,” he recalled.


On the 18th, he was backstage at the Hardronic Music Festival, an annual event thrown by CERN’s administrators, waiting for the Cernettes — whom he managed, and whose songs he writes — to come on stage. He wanted a picture for their next CD cover, so he told the four members to lean in and smile.


His Canon EOS 650 clicked, and that was that. “When history happens, you don’t know that you’re in it,” de Gennaro said.


Read more - 
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/7/10/crossdressing-compression-and-colliders-the-first-photo-on-the-web

Where will you be this time tomorrow? Smartphone data can guess within 20 metres -

Where will you be this time tomorrow? Smartphone data can guess within 20 metres - 






Researchers have developed an algorithm that can predict where you will be in the future using data gathered from your friends smartphones.


In the study of two hundred people, the algorithm was able to predict the location of some users 24 hours later within 100 meters, some as close as 20 meters.


Mirco Musolesi, lead researcher and computer science lecturer at the University of Birmingham, said the algorithm is exploiting the synchronized rhythm of the city.


“I know this kind of thing looks kind of Big Brother,” said Musolesi.


“There is a problem for privacy, it is a big problem for these kind of services in general.”


Still, if users’ phone information could be protected, the algorithm has a potential future in targeted advertising, said Musolesi.


The algorithm predicts someone’s movements by comparing their data with people in their social group. For example, if Bob usually goes to the gym on Tuesday, but instead does an errand, the algorithm will look to his friends, Jack and Joe. If Jack and Joe are doing their normal routine, the algorithm will, probably correctly, predict Bob will continue on to the gym, his normal routine, following his errand.


“The mutual information between these two patterns is very high,” said Musolesi. “The movement of friends is highly coordinated, and synchronized.”


The Birmingham group won 3,000 euros for their work, part of a Nokia-sponsored Mobile Data Challenge, which gave a winning team an opportunity to analyze smart phone data —location, communication patterns and app usage— collected from 200 volunteers over the course of 18 months.


Read more - 
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1224211--where-will-you-be-this-time-tomorrow-smartphone-data-can-guess-within-20-metres

Broke Scranton, PA cuts all employees to minimum wage! -

Broke Scranton, PA cuts all employees to minimum wage! - 




Employees of a Pennsylvania city, who have all seen their salaries cut to minimum wage as the mayor grapples with budget problems, are hoping a judge restores their paychecks in full.



Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty cut everyone's pay -- including his own -- on Friday, saying the state's sixth-largest city is broke because the City Council blocked his proposed tax increase. Doherty, a Democrat, warned nearly 400 police officers, firefighters and public works employees about his doomsday plan, prompting a Lackawanna County judge to order the city to pay full wages to all employees, citing that it is a violation of their contracts. Hours later, the payday envelopes went out, and, despite the judge's order, they were light.
"They are now going to have to throw their bills in a hat and randomly pick what gets paid on time."
- John Judge, President of Scranton's Firefighters Union
“This needs to be resolved," Scranton firefighter and president of the local firefighters union John Judge told FoxNews.com. "My members are getting a check for $7.25 an hour. These are people that are the head of their households. They have mortgages. They have other living costs. They are now going to have to throw their bills in a hat and randomly pick what gets paid on time.”
The judge was not in his chambers Monday, but attorneys for the local city workers' unions were planning to go to court Tuesday morning to ask him to hold Doherty in contempt of court for violating the injunction.
In addition to scaling back wages, Doherty's move cut off overtime, worker's compensation and disability.
The city of Scranton has battled budget woes for years, but the problems reached a boiling point after the City Council blocked Doherty's plan to raise taxes to cover a $16.8 million shortfall, opting instead to borrow money to cover the budget gap.
“The mayor is trying to strong-arm the council into doing what he wants, but it’s the city’s employees that are paying the price,” Judge said, adding that the workers in his department saw their paystubs go from about $1,500 every two weeks after deductions to a gross pay of about $600. “This is not a case of no cash. It’s a cash-flow problem.”
The cuts were sudden, as city employees were only given eight days' notice. Doherty also claimed last week that there is only $5,000 left in the city’s accounts.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/09/political-statemate-leads-to-city-workers-salaries-cut-down-to-minimum-wage-in/

14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies That Big Brother Will Soon Be Using To Spy On You -

14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies That Big Brother Will Soon Be Using To Spy On You - 




Most of us don't think much about it, but the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other time in human history.  The explosive growth of technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big corporations monitoring tools that the despots and dictators of the past could only dream of.  Previous generations never had to deal with "pre-crime" surveillance cameras that use body language to spot criminals or unmanned drones watching them from far above.  Previous generations would have never even dreamed that street lights and refrigerators might be spying on them.  Many of the incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that you are about to read about are likely to absolutely astound you.  We are rapidly heading toward a world where there will be no such thing as privacy anymore.  Big Brother is becoming all-pervasive, and thousands of new technologies are currently being developed that will make it even easier to spy on you.  The world is changing at a breathtaking pace, and a lot of the changes are definitely not for the better.


The following are 14 incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that Big Brother will soon be using to watch you....


#1 "Pre-Crime" Surveillance Cameras


A company known as BRS Labs has developed "pre-crime" surveillance cameras that can supposedly determine if you are a terrorist or a criminal even before you commit a crime.


Does that sound insane?


Well, authorities are taking this technology quite seriously.  In fact, dozens of these cameras are being installed at major transportation hubs in San Francisco....


In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways.


The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288.


The cameras will be able to track up to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a ‘memory’ of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.


#2 Capturing Fingerprints From 20 Feet Away


Can you imagine someone reading your fingerprints from 20 feet away without you ever knowing it?


This kind of technology is actually already here according to POPSCI....


Gaining access to your gym or office building could soon be as simple as waving a hand at the front door. A Hunsville, Ala.-based company called IDair is developing a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away. Coupled with other biometrics, it could soon allow security systems to grant or deny access from a distance, without requiring users to stop and scan a fingerprint, swipe an ID card, or otherwise lose a moment dealing with technology.


Currently IDair’s primary customer is the military, but the startup wants to open up commercially to any business or enterprise that wants to put a layer of security between its facilities and the larger world. A gym chain is already beta testing the system (no more using your roommate’s gym ID to get in a free workout), and IDair’s founder says that at some point his technology could enable purchases to be made biometrically, using fingerprints and irises as unique identifiers rather than credit card numbers and data embedded in magnetic strips or RFID chips.


#3 Mobile Backscatter Vans


Police all over America will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same "pornoscanner" technology currently being utilized by the TSA at U.S. airports....


American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering's Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call "the amazing radioactive genital viewer," now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).


These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America's streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don't worry, it's not a violation of privacy. As AS&E's vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, "From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be."


You can see a YouTube video presentation about this new technology right here.


#4 Hijacking Your Mind


The U.S. military literally wants to be able to hijack your mind.  The theory is that this would enable U.S. forces to non-violently convince terrorists not to be terrorists anymore.  But obviously the potential for abuse with this kind of technology is extraordinary.  The following is from a recent article by Dick Pelletier....


The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to understand the science behind what makes people violent, and then find ways to hijack their minds by implanting false, but believable stories in their brains, with hopes of evoking peaceful thoughts: We’re friends, not enemies.


Critics say this raises ethical issues such as those addressed in the 1971 sci-fi movie, A Clockwork Orange, which attempted to change people’s minds so that they didn’t want to kill anymore.


Advocates, however, believe that placing new plausible narratives directly into the minds of radicals, insurgents, and terrorists, could transform enemies into kinder, gentler citizens, craving friendship.


Scientists have known for some time that narratives; an account of a sequence of events that are usually in chronological order; hold powerful sway over the human mind, shaping a person’s notion of groups and identities; even inspiring them to commit violence. See DARPA proposal request HERE.


#5 Unmanned Drones In U.S. Airspace


Law enforcement agencies all over the United States are starting to use unmanned drones to spy on us, and the Department of Homeland Security is aggressively seeking to expand the use of such drones by local authorities....


The Department of Homeland Security has launched a program to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of small, unmanned drones by police and other public safety agencies, an effort that an agency official admitted faces "a very big hurdle having to do with privacy."


The $4 million Air-based Technologies Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems, is designed to be a "middleman" between drone manufacturers and first-responder agencies "before they jump into the pool," said John Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate's division of borders and maritime security.


The fact that very few Americans seem concerned about this development says a lot about where we are as a nation.  The EPA is already using drones to spy on cattle ranchers in Nebraska and Iowa.  Will we eventually get to a point where we all just consider it to be "normal" to have surveillance drones flying above our heads constantly?


#6 Law Enforcement Using Your Own Cell Phone To Spy On You


Although this is not new technology, law enforcement authorities are using our own cell phones to spy on us more extensively than ever before as a recent Wired article described....


Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.


A single "request" can involve information about hundreds of customers.  So ultimately the number of Americans affected by this could reach into "the tens of millions" each year....


The number of Americans affected each year by the growing use of mobile phone data by law enforcement could reach into the tens of millions, as a single request could ensnare dozens or even hundreds of people. Law enforcement has been asking for so-called “cell tower dumps” in which carriers disclose all phone numbers that connected to a given tower during a certain period of time.


So, for instance, if police wanted to try to find a person who broke a store window at an Occupy protest, it could get the phone numbers and identifying data of all protestors with mobile phones in the vicinity at the time — and use that data for other purposes.


Perhaps you should not be using your cell phone so much anyway.  After all, there are more than 500 studies that show that cell phone radiation is harmful to humans.


#7 Biometric Databases


All over the globe, governments are developing massive biometric databases of their citizens.  Just check out what is going on in India....


In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone.


This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts.


This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time.


#8 RFID Microchips


In a previous article, I detailed how the U.S. military is seeking to develop technology that would enable it to monitor the health of our soldiers and improve their performance in battle using RFID microchips.


Most Americans don't realize this, but RFID microchips are steadily becoming part of the very fabric of our lives.  Many of your credit cards and debit cards contain them.  Many Americans use security cards that contain RFID microchips at work.  In some parts of the country it is now mandatory to inject an RFID microchip into your pet.


Now, one school system down in Texas actually plans to start using RFID microchips to track the movements of their students....


Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.


District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.


#9 Automated License Plate Readers


In a previous article, I quoted a Washington Post piece that talked about how automated license plate readers are being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves....


More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.


With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.


Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.


#10 Face Reading Software


Can computers tell what you are thinking just by looking at your face?


Don't laugh.


Such technology is actually being actively developed.  The following is from a recent NewScientist article....


IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.


That vision may not be so far off. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are developing software that can read the feelings behind facial expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate and develop better adverts.


#11 Data Mining


The government is not the only one that is spying on you.  The truth is that a whole host of very large corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit.  It is called "data mining", and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.


One very large corporation known as Acxiom actually compiles information on more than 190 million people in the U.S. alone....


The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data 'transactions' a year.


#12 Street Lights Spying On Us?


Did you ever consider that street lights could be spying on you?


Well, it is actually happening.  New high tech street lights that can actually watch what you do and listen to what you are saying are being installed in some major U.S. cities.  The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com....


Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.


#13 Automated ISP Monitoring Of Your Internet Activity


As I have written about before, nothing you do on the Internet is private.  However, Internet Service Providers and the entertainment industry are now taking Internet monitoring to a whole new level....


If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.


Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.


That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.


Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.


Spying On Us Through Our Appliances


Could the government one day use your refrigerator to spy on you?


Don't laugh.


That is exactly what CIA Director David Petraeus says is coming....


Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will 'transform' the art of spying - allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.


'Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,' said Petraeus.


'Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters -  all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.'


Petraeus was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously  'dumb' home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.


For many more ways that Big Brother is spying on you, please see these articles....


"Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make – 14 New Ways That The Government Is Watching You"


"30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison"


The things that I have written about above are just the things that they admit to.


There are also many "black box technologies" being developed out there that the public does not even know about yet.


So how far will all of this go?


Has Big Brother already gone way too far?


Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion below....


Read more -
http://www.blacklistednews.com/14_Incredibly_Creepy_Surveillance_Technologies_That_Big_Brother_Will_Soon_Be_Using_To_Spy_On_You/20455/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Things That Make You Go Hmmm – Such As The Transition From Conspiracy Theory To Conspiracy Fact -

Things That Make You Go Hmmm – Such As The Transition From Conspiracy Theory To Conspiracy Fact - 




Attempts to manipulate free markets invariably end badly – after all, they are, supposedly, by their very nature, free.


Over the past few weeks, the exposure of the Libor-rigging scandal has monopolized the headlines of the financial press and inveigled its way onto the front pages of every major news publication in the world through the sheer size and scale of the story.


Something as big as this just CAN’T be hidden from the public.


Only… it can.


It has been. It no doubt still is to a certain extent. I’m not going to go through all of the events of the past few weeks as you are no doubt familiar with them, but [simply understanding how LIBOR works makes for a simple conclusion].


I’m afraid it’s rather obvious. Given that almost half the reported inputs that help establish the Libor rate are discarded immediately, Barclays simply CANNOT have manipulated the Libor rate alone. Period.






What’s more, to effectively ensure the rate is set at the price required, you’d need to not only establish the highest and lowest 25% of prices, but then ensure the remaining 50% average out to the required rate and, based on the fact that there are 16 banks that submit rates, that would mean about 13 of the 16 involved would need to be complicit.


As a very good friend of mine put it earlier this week; at best this is a cartel, at worst it’s outright fraud on a scale that is completely unprecedented.


So for five years there have been attempts to fix the Libor rate and, take it from me, during that time, many inside the financial industry were familiar with the rumors of such manipulation but it was another huge scandal with such highpowered connected interests that it would no doubt be brushed squarely under the carpet. Forget ‘too big to fail’. This was ‘too deep to prove’.


Libor is so important to so many people in the financial industry that the question of why it was manipulated really ought to be framed differently:


Assuming you COULD manipulate something as important and potentially beneficial as the Libor rate with such ease for years, why wouldn’t you?


The answer to this question would ordinarily be:


“Because it’s illegal and government regulators would throw the book at us”


…


So, working from the ground up; we have a set of traders looking to produce the best profits they can for personal gain, the major bank they work for and who should be supervising them with a need to disguise the level of its own funding costs and above them all, a government seeking to keep borrowing costs down in the middle of a gigantic financial storm. From such alignments of interest are the greatest of conspiracies born.


In my humble opinion, the Libor scandal (which has a LONG way to go before it has played out and which will claim a LOT more scalps) will mark a fundamental change in the treatment of financial conspiracy theories in the media. The sheer amount of coverage it will undoubtedly receive will signal a shift in attitude towards the exposing of such scandals rather than the blind-eyes that have been regularly turned in recent years.


…


But perhaps, most-of-all, watching how quickly those in high places begin to throw each other under the bus, it will hasten the end of many other possible government conspiracies as exposing such events becomes an exercise in self-preservation. Prime amongst conspiracy theories that may soon be finally proven to be either valid or the figments of overactive imaginations, are those alleged in the gold and silver markets.


The allegations concerning precious metal price manipulation predate those surrounding Libor by decades but until now day they have remained similarly acknowledged within financial circles and ignored without. That may well be about to change.


Unencumbered by liability, the rising price of gold has always been a barometer of governmental failure to protect the purchasing power of fiat currency and the best indication of the damage that inflation does.


Forget inexorably rising gold prices. Forget the corrections that shake loose hands from the wheel at every turn. In the broader context they carry far less relevance than the intrinsic values that gold provides a consistent yardstick to.






A look at the value of assets measured in ounces of gold remains the most consistent way to get a sense of their real value and the charts below demonstrate all too clearly the true performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and average US house prices over the long term when measured in gold ounces.


If the long-stated claims about government-sanctioned, bank-led manipulation of precious metals markets put forward so eloquently by the likes of Ted Butler, Bill Murphy & Chris Powell at GATA as well as Messrs. Sprott, Sinclair, Davies et al are eventually proven to have any validity whatsoever, the fallout from the Libor scandal will prove to be (to use the words of Jamie Dimon) just another “tempest in a tea pot” as the precious metals are the very underpinnings of the entire global financial system. Conspiracy or no, it would be a blessed relief to get closure no matter what the truth turns out to be.


Read more - 
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Things_That_Make_You_Go_Hmmm_%E2%80%93_Such_As_The_Transition_From_Conspiracy_Theory_To_Conspiracy_Fact_/20437/0/0/0/Y/M.html

US government overpaid $14 billion in benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out -

US government overpaid $14 billion in benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out - 


Don't spend that unemployment check too fast. The government might ask you to pay it back.
Overpayments are a rampant problem in the unemployment insurance system. The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out, according to reports from the U.S. Labor Department.
Of the states, Indiana was the worst offender, making more improper payments than it did correct ones.
Now, the U.S. Department of Labor and the states are in the midst of a massive effort to try to recoup some of their lost funds and avoid future overpayments.
Where does the money go?
The vast majority of unemployment benefits do go to people in need. In 2010 alone they helped keep 3.2 million Americans out of poverty, according to the Census Bureau.
But of the overpaid funds, most end up in the hands of three types of people: Those who aren't actively searching for a job, those who were fired or quit voluntarily, and those who continue to file claims even though they've returned to work. Any of those circumstances would make a person ineligible for benefits.
The overpayment typically results from an administrative error made either by the government, the employer, the worker or a combination of the three.
In much rarer situations, people deliberately defraud the system, using fake documents or identities. Common scams involve prison inmates, illegal immigrants or even the deceased.


Read more - 
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/government-overpaid-14-billion-unemployment-085800667.html

Cellphone carriers reported they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year -

Cellphone carriers reported they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year - 




In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.


The cellphone carriers’ reports, which come in response to a Congressional inquiry, document an explosion in cellphone surveillance in the last five years, with the companies turning over records thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies, court orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests.


The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands that they considered legally questionable or unjustified. At least one carrier even referred some inappropriate requests to the F.B.I.


The information represents the first time data have been collected nationally on the frequency of cell surveillance by law enforcement. The volume of the requests reported by the carriers — which most likely involve several million subscribers — surprised even some officials who have closely followed the growth of cell surveillance.


“I never expected it to be this massive,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who requested the reports from nine carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, in response to an article in April in The New York Times on law enforcement’s expanded use of cell tracking. Mr. Markey, who is the co-chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, made the carriers’ responses available to The Times.


While the cell companies did not break down the types of law enforcement agencies collecting the data, they made clear that the widened cell surveillance cut across all levels of government — from run-of-the-mill street crimes handled by local police departments to financial crimes and intelligence investigations at the state and federal levels.


AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require the normal court orders and subpoena. That is roughly triple the number it fielded in 2007, the company said. Law enforcement requests of all kinds have been rising among the other carriers as well, with annual increases of between 12 percent and 16 percent in the last five years. Sprint, which did not break down its figures in as much detail as other carriers, led all companies last year in reporting what amounted to at least 1,500 data requests on average a day.


Read more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html?_r=1&hp

OOPS! Olympic Torch briefly EXTINGUISHED during white water rafting ride -

OOPS! Olympic Torch briefly EXTINGUISHED during white water rafting ride - 




The Olympic torch was splashed out briefly Saturday during a trip around a white water rafting course in the London area.


According to the Telegraph, 20-year-old British junior team canoeist Zachary Franklin held the torch aloft during a ride on the slalom course at the Lee Valley White Water Center. He “kept the flame well away from the water” until the speed and splashing evidently proved too much.



The torch was relit by a backup flame once it was back on dry land.


“It is not uncommon for a flame to go out and this can happen for a number of reasons,” a London Olympic organizing committee spokesman said, according to the Daily Mail. “In this instance it was due to water being splashed into the boat from the slalom course. It was relit from the mother flame, which is kept in a specially designed miners’ lantern and successfully taken down the course on the second attempt.”


Read more -
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/oops-olympic-torch-briefly-extinguished-during-white-water-rafting-ride/

US Air Force trains drone pilots by tracking civilian cars in US -

US Air Force trains drone pilots by tracking civilian cars in US - 


Holloman Air Force Base, at the eastern edge of New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, 200 miles south of Albuquerque, was once famous for the daredevil maneuvers of those who trained there. In 1954, Col. John Paul Stapp rode a rocket-propelled sled across the desert, reaching 632 miles per hour, in an attempt to figure out the maximum speed at which jet pilots could safely eject. He slammed on the brakes and was thrust forward with such force that he had to be hauled away on a stretcher, his eyes bleeding from burst capillaries. Six years later, Capt. Joseph Kittinger Jr., testing the height at which pilots could safely bail out, rode a helium-powered balloon up to 102,800 feet. He muttered, “Lord, take care of me now,” dropped for 13 minutes 45 seconds and broke the record for the highest parachute jump.


Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.


Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.


“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.


Read more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/the-drone-zone.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Is Wal-Mart Destroying America? 20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You -

Is Wal-Mart Destroying America? 20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You - 




America absolutely loves Wal-Mart.  100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country.  But is Wal-Mart good for America?  That is a question that most people never stop and ask.  Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with super cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Wal-Mart is destroying America in a lot of ways.  As you will see below, Wal-Mart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades.  Wal-Mart has become a gigantic retail behemoth that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States.  Unfortunately, about 85 percent of all the stuff sold at Wal-Mart is made overseas.  What that is costing the U.S. economy in terms of lost jobs and lost revenue is incalculable.  But Wal-Mart is a perfect example of where our economic system is headed.  Our economy is becoming completely and totally dominated by highly centralized monolithic predator corporations that ruthlessly crush all competition and that will stoop to just about anything in order to cut costs.  In the future, will we all be working for gigantic communal entities that funnel all of the wealth and economic rewards to a very tiny elite?  That sounds very much like how communist China works, and red-blooded Americans should want no part of that.  America is supposed to be about free enterprise and competition and working together to build up this country, and Wal-Mart is destroying all of that.
The following are 20 facts about Wal-Mart that will absolutely shock you….
#1 The average U.S. family now spends more than $4000 a year at Wal-Mart.
#2 In 2010, Wal-Mart had revenues of 421 billion dollars.  That amount was greater than the GDP of 170 different countries including Norway, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates.
#3 If Wal-Mart was a nation, it would have the 23rd largest GDP in the world.
#4 Wal-Mart now sells more groceries than anyone else in America does.  In the United States today, one out of every four grocery dollars is spent at Wal-Mart.
#5 Amazingly, 100 million customers shop at Wal-Mart every single week.
#6 Wal-Mart has opened more than 1,100 “supercenters” since 2005 alone.
#7 Today, Wal-Mart has more than 2 million employees.
#8 If Wal-Mart was an army, it would be the second largest military on the planet behind China.
#9 Wal-Mart is the largest employer in 25 different U.S. states.
#10 According to the Economic Policy Institute, trade between Wal-Mart and China resulted in the loss of 133,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2006.
#11 The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in a single hour than a full-time Wal-Mart associate makes in an entire year.
#12 Tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and their children are enrolled in Medicaid and are dependent on the government for healthcare.
#13 Between 2001 and 2007, the value of products that Wal-Mart imported from China grew from $9 billion to $27 billion.
#14 Sadly, about 85 percent of all the products sold at Wal-Mart are made outside of the United States.
#15 It is being reported that about 80 percent of all Wal-Mart suppliers are in China at this point.
#16 Amazingly, 96 percent of all Americans now live within 20 miles of a Wal-Mart.
#17 The number of “independent retailers” in the United States declined by 60,000 between 1992 and 2007.
#18 According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart spent 7.8 million dollars on political lobbying during 2011.  That number does not even include campaign contributions.
#19 Today, Wal-Mart has five times the sales of the second largest U.S. retailer (Costco).
#20 The combined net worth of six members of the Walton family is roughly equal to the combined net worth of the poorest 30 percent of all Americans.
All over the country, independent retailers are going out of business because they cannot compete with Wal-Mart and their super cheap Chinese products.  Often communities will give Wal-Mart huge tax breaks just to move in to their areas.  But what many communities don’t take into account is that the introduction of a Wal-Mart is often absolutely devastating to small businesses….
A study of small and rural towns in Iowa showed lost sales for local businesses ranging from -17.2% in small towns to -61.4% in rural areas, amounting to a total dollar loss of $2.46 BILLION over a 13-year period.
When we buy stuff made by people working for slave labor wages in China, we destroy good paying American jobs and we make America poorer.  This is a point that I have tried to make over and over.
Wal-Mart often tells one thing to the public and then does another thing in private.  Sadly, the truth is that Wal-Mart does not care about U.S. manufacturing jobs.  Wal-Mart just wants to get products as cheaply as they possibly can, and most of the time that means getting them from China.
Just check out this first-hand testimony from an 81-year-old retired apparel manufacturer….
I was president of the Southwestern Apparel Manufacturers Association. There was a meeting sometime between 1985 and 1990. Walmart had contacted our organization and asked if they could meet with us at our beautiful Apparel Mart we had here in Dallas, which has now been razed, because all the independent merchants don’t exist that used to come to it. Two people from Walmart came down and they said they were going to be sourcing goods from overseas and we would have to meet those prices for consumer products and to get ready for it—we are going to be sourcing the world. Walmart was the only company that came out and said this.
It was sort of shocking: I was selling them some merchandise at the time. On the back of their trucks it was saying “Bring it Back to America!” They had the big “keep it in America” program going at that time on the big signs in the stores. Meanwhile when I reminded the buyer of that, she told me, “that is just for domestic consumption, we’re going to buy at the cheapest we can anywhere on earth.”
As I have written about previously, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
We are losing millions of good jobs that cannot be replaced.  If you can believe it, the United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China was the biggest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world, and Wal-Mart played a huge role in that.
In fact, Wal-Mart has actually been forcing some U.S. manufacturers to pack up and move overseas.  The following is from a recent article by Amy Traub….
Walmart’s market power is so immense that the even the largest suppliers must comply with its demands for lower and lower prices because they cannot afford to have their goods taken off its shelves. Companies that used to manufacture products in the United States, from Levi’s jeans to lock maker Master Lock, were pressured to shut their U.S. factories and moved manufacturing abroad to meet Walmart’s demand for low prices.
Unfortunately, the vast wealth that Wal-Mart is sucking out of our communities is not put back into our communities.  The profits are funneled out to Wal-Mart executives and shareholders.  We may enjoy the low prices, but very little of the money that we give to Wal-Mart gets recycled in our local areas.
In the old days, you could actually support a family selling electronics or running a general store.  But you can’t support a family working at Wal-Mart.  The vast majority of the jobs that Wal-Mart creates are very low paying.  Large numbers of Wal-Mart employees are actually on welfare, and this is part of the reason why we have seen such an explosion in the number of the working poor in America.
At this point, more than 40 percent of all jobs in America are low wage jobs and the middle class is rapidly disappearing.
If we do not support American jobs and American manufacturers they will continue to go away and the welfare rolls in this country will continue to explode.
There is not going to be any prosperity in this country without jobs.  Unfortunately, most Americans simply do not understand how good jobs are being systematically destroyed in America every single day.
The path that America is headed on today is only going to end in complete and total disaster.  We are being transformed from a wealthy nation into a poor nation.  In the end, we will be dominated by a very tiny elite and everyone else will either be among the working poor or will be totally dependent on the government.
Our system is supposed to be about open, honest competition.  But that is not what Wal-Mart is about.  Wal-Mart is about crushing small businesses and manufacturers here in America and getting us all to buy their super cheap Chinese-made goods.
Shame on Wal-Mart.  They are an un-American disgrace.
So what do all of you think about Wal-Mart?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

Read more -

http://www.prisonplanet.com/is-wal-mart-destroying-america-20-facts-about-wal-mart-that-will-absolutely-shock-you.html