Year: 2016

Meet “Beware” – The New Police Tool That Data Mines Your Life

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As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The searches return the names of residents and scans them against a range of publicly available data to generate a color-coded threat level for each person or address: green, yellow or red.

Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret, so it is unclear how much weight is given to a misdemeanor, felony or threatening comment on Facebook. However, the program flags issues and provides a report to the user.

– From the Washington Post article: The New Way Police are Surveilling You: Calculating Your Threat ‘Score’ 

When it comes to life on planet earth in 2016, it increasingly feels as if we are all livestock constantly being monitored, prodded and surveyed by the oligarchy and its minions. The latest example revolves around a software program for police called Beware, developed by Intrado, which consists of a secret algorithm that determines an individual’s threat levels based on a multitude of unknown factors.

Does it work? Does it violate civil liberties? Is there any public debate? These questions and more are addressed in a recent Washington Post article. Here are a few excerpts:

FRESNO, Calif. — While officers raced to a recent 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, a police operator in headquarters consulted software that scored the suspect’s potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit report.

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Liberty Links – 1/11/16

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

Audit the Fed Bill Gets a Congressional Vote Tomorrow (Time)

FBI Turns 18-Year-Old With An IQ Of 51 Into A Terrorist (Tech Dirt)

Public in Sweden Kept in the Dark About Sexual Harassment at Youth Festival (Radio Sweden)

Texas Governor Calls for Constitutional Convention to Curb Federal Power (National Journal)

The MIT Dropout Who Started an “Anti-College” (YouTube Video)

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Who’s the Real Progressive? A Side by Side Comparison of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s Lifetime Donors

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This morning, I came across a tweet that exemplified more than anything else the incredible chasm between genuine progressive Bernie Sanders and the oligarch-coddling, unimaginably corrupt status quo crony, Hillary Clinton. Here’s the tweet:

Now here are the same images in a larger size. Note, these are the career donor figures for these two individuals.

First Hillary:

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The American Public’s Positive Perception of the NRA Soars in the Face of Obama’s Gun Control Agenda

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When pollsters asked people three decades ago how they felt about the National Rifle Association, 27% said they strongly supported the gun lobby. By last month, that share had grown 38%, an 11-point increase. Meanwhile, the share that didn’t side with the NRA declined.

By an 8-point, registered voters in the Journal/NBC survey last month said they were more concerned that the government would go too far in restricting gun rights than that it fail to do enough to regulate access to firearms. When adults were asked the same question in 1995, the greater fear was that access to firearms was too widespread.

In July polling, the Journal/NBC survey found that 43% of the public had a positive image of the NRA and 32% a negative one—a more favorable view than the public held of the Supreme Court or either political party. By a 15-point margin, political independents, also viewed the NRA more positively than negatively.

– From the Wall Street Journal article: Rising Support for NRA Stymies Obama

Love guns or hate guns, one thing is becoming perfectly clear. The American public’s perception of guns and the NRA is moving in the exact opposite direction of Barack Obama’s message and agenda.

To hear Obama speak, you’d think the NRA is simply using boatloads of money and propaganda to thwart the impassioned gun control desires of the American public. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. First, let’s take a look at some powerful charts from the Wall Street Journal.

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Liberty Links – 1/7/16

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

Poll Shows Brexit Support Rising (Reuters)

NSA Whistleblower Condemns New UK Spying Powers, Calls Them “99% Useless” (The Guardian)

Isaac Asimov’s FBI File (Muckrock)

Banks Weigh Up Cost of Keeping Staff in London (FT)

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“We Came, We Saw, He Died” – Revisiting the Incredible Disaster That Is Libya

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In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.


As bad as Libya’s human rights situation was under Qaddafi, it has gotten worse since NATO ousted him. Immediately after taking power, the rebels perpetrated scores of reprisal killings, in addition to torturing, beating, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of suspected Qaddafi supporters. The rebels also expelled 30,000 mostly black residents from the town of Tawergha and burned or looted their homes and shops, on the grounds that some of them supposedly had been mercenaries. Six months after the war, Human Rights Watch declared that the abuses “appear to be so widespread and systematic that they may amount to crimes against humanity.”


As a consequence of such pervasive violence, the UN estimates that roughly 400,000 Libyans have fled their homes, a quarter of whom have left the country altogether. 


– From the post: The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya

Shortly after the NATO-led war which ousted Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ebulliently boasted with a characteristic sociopathic giddiness, the following on network television:

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Caught on Tape – TSA Gropes 10 Year Old Girl for Two Minutes Due to Capri Sun in Baggage

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Just when you thought the TSA couldn’t possibly get any worse…

From the San Diego Tribune:

A Capri Sun juice pouch mistakenly left in a 10-year-old San Diego girl’s carry-on handbag led a TSA agent to subject the girl to almost two minutes of frisking and extra screening that lasted about an hour, her father said.

Liquids exceeding 3 ounces are not allowed in carry-on bags, for fear they might contain explosives, but the girl’s father said the resulting search was an over-reaction and an inappropriate intrusion.

Kevin Payne of Pacific Beach and his daughter, Vendela, were passing through the Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Dec. 30, 2015, headed home to San Diego, when U.S. Transportation Security Administration agents discovered the liquid.

Authorities followed up with a swab of the bag and a false-positive test for explosives, then a nearly 2-minute-long full-body pat-down in which a female TSA agent touched the girl’s buttocks and groin repeatedly.

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Additional Details Emerge on How Hedge Funds and Private Equity Firms Loot Public Pensions

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Despite the at times disconcertingly polite tone, the SEC has now announced that more than 50 percent of private equity firms it has audited have engaged in serious infractions of securities laws. These abuses were detected thanks to to Dodd Frank. Private equity general partners had been unregulated until early 2012, when they were required to SEC regulation as investment advisers.

Bowden heads the SEC’s examinations unit, and his rap sheet was based on his two years of experience in auditing private equity firms. As bad as embezzlement and other sharp practices are, at least as troubling is the revelation that the limited partners have been derelict in their duties. They’ve agreed to terms in their relationship with the general partners to make it easy for the general partners to abuse the investors. The general partners can steal from their limited partners because the limited partners are asleep. The LPs have failed to negotiate for contractual protections when they have the most leverage, prior to investing, and they’ve been unwilling or unable to monitor their investments effectively once they’ve handed over their money. Note that the industry was warned about this possible outcome; it corresponds to the worst scenario, ” A Broken Industry,” in a 2011 paper by Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner.

– From the post: SEC Official Claims Over 50% of Private Equity Audits Reveal Criminal Behavior

One of the most pernicious financial schemes of the post crisis era relates to a practice most Americans are entirely in the dark about, but may end up harming retirement plans down the line. I refer to the pervasive, incestuous and shady relationship between public pension fund managers, politicians and alternative asset firms (hedge funds and private equity).

Indeed, in the “new normal” of rigged financial markets, much of the investment industry no longer cares all that much about performance. The name of the game is to simply collect as massive an asset under management pile as possible and earn tremendous wealth by collecting fees risk-free. The enormous amount of “dumb money” residing at public pension funds provides the perfect mark, and pension managers as well as corrupt politicians and their appointed bureaucrats appear more than willing to comply.

David Sirota, investigative journalist at the International Business Times, has been one of the leading figures in exposing such schemes, and his latest piece, Wall Street Fine Print: Retirees Want FBI Probe Of Pension Investment Deals, is extremely important. Here are a few excerpts:

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New Gallup Poll – Americans Consider Government a Much Bigger Problem than Guns

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U.S. President Barack Obama is not just the world’s best gun salesman, he’s also the world’s worst gun control spokesperson.

Despite immediately politicizing every single shooting event in recent years by using his bully pulpit to lecture the American public on why citizens must give up their rights to feel safe, his message has fallen on deaf ears. Why?

Mainly because a man who consistently orders drone strikes on women and children all over the world, intentionally bombs a Doctors Without Borders hospital into oblivion, and who launched more shady wars across the globe than George W. Bush, doesn’t exactly hold much credibility as a humanitarian pacifist looking to “save the children.”

– From the post: A Majority of Americans Oppose “Assault Weapons Ban” – Highest Number on Record

We learned the above just last month, which makes the latest findings on how Americans view gun control consistent with previously observed attitudes. Meanwhile, Nick Gillespie over at Reason explains the latest poll results from Gallup, and  highlights how Obama continues to force an alternative agenda on the American people:

The first major action taken by Barack Obama in 2016—a set of new gun-control measures mandated via executive order—is aimed at a threat that Americans don’t spend a lot of time worrying about.

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Read the Powerful Saudi Arabia Article Censored by Al-Jazeera

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On December 3rd, a month before Saudi Arabia carried out it largest mass execution since 1980 — subsequently setting the region on fire — Arjun Sethi wrote an article for Al-Jazeera titled: Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As An Excuse for Human Rights Abuses. According to Cora Currier at the Intercept:

Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar appear to have blocked the article outside of the United States because it is critical of an ally of Qatar.

Naturally, this makes you want to drop everything and read it. So here are some excerpts courtesy of the Intercept:

Reports emerged last week that Saudi Arabia intends to imminently execute more than 50 people on a single day for alleged terrorist crimes.

All the convictions were obtained through unfair trials marred by human and civil rights violations, including in some cases torture, forced confessions and lack of access to counsel. Each defendant was tried before the Specialized Criminal Court, a counterterrorism tribunal controlled by the Ministry of Interior that has few procedural safeguards and is often used to persecute political dissidents. Lawyers are generally prohibited from counseling their clients during interrogation and have limited participatory rights at trial. Prosecutors aren’t even required to disclose the charges and relevant evidence to defendants.

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