News Items

Editor of Tennessee Paper Fired for Headline Critical of Obama

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Does running this headline seem like a fireable offense to you? “Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough.” Apparently, the powers that be at the Chattanooga Times Free Press thought so. They may want to drop the “free press” part of the paper’s name going forward. The editor, … Read more

Pakistan Bans Gold Imports for 30 Days

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The latest buzz circulating around the gold market relates to news that Pakistan’s Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet (ECC) has decided to ban duty free gold imports for thirty days. Why you ask? Because those pesky Indians are using Pakistan as a conduit to get around the country’s recent 8% duty imposed on gold imports.

All of this of course begs the question: With the price of gold “plunging” over the past several months, why did Pakistan and India both feel the need to take such draconian measures against a barbarous relic that everyone is supposedly panic selling? If there is so much gold to be had and no one wants it, what’s the problem? Strange indeed. From the The Express Tribune:

The Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet, headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, took the decision to ban the import of the yellow metal for one month with immediate effect.

During a meeting with Dar in Karachi last week, the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (ECAP) had claimed that smuggling of gold to India was causing rupee devaluation, as the importers were mopping up dollars from the market to meet the needs of the Indian buyers.

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Decoding the NSA: How the Agency Manipulates Language to Mislead the Public

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When we as a species use language to communicate and engage with one another, we have a certain understanding that certain words mean certain things. That is the entire purpose of language, effective communication between human beings that can be easily understood. As a result, we should be able to assume that when government bureaucrats utilize words that are commonplace within society, that these words represent specific commonly understood meanings. That would be a huge mistake.

Jameel Jaffer and Brett Max Kaufman of the ACLU have compiled an excellent list of some commonplace words used by the NSA to mislead us into thinking they aren’t doing the bad things that they are actually doing. Words such as “surveillance,” “collect,” and “relevant.” From Slate:

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has been harshly criticized for having misled Congress earlier this year about the scope of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities. The criticism is entirely justified. An equally insidious threat to the integrity of our national debate, however, comes not from officials’ outright lies but from the language they use to tell the truth. When it comes to discussing government surveillance, U.S. intelligence officials have been using a vocabulary of misdirection—a language that allows them to say one thing while meaning quite another.

Surveillance. Every time we pick up the phone, the NSA makes a note of whom we spoke to, when we spoke to him, and for how long—and it’s been doing this for seven years. After the call-tracking program was exposed, few people thought twice about attaching the label “surveillance” to it. Government officials, though, have rejected the term, pointing out that this particular program doesn’t involve the NSA actually listening to phone calls—just keeping track of them. Their crabbed definition of “surveillance” allows them to claim that the NSA isn’t engaged in surveillance even when it quite plainly is.

Collect. If an intelligence official says that the NSA isn’t “collecting” a certain kind of information, what has he actually said? Not very much, it turns out. One of the NSA’s foundational documents states that “collection” occurs not when the government acquires information but when the government “selects” or “tasks” that information for “subsequent processing.” Thus it becomes possible for the government to acquire great reams of information while denying that it is “collecting” anything at all.

That definition of “collect” is completely and totally insane.

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Student Forgotten in California Jail Cell by the DEA for 5 Days Without Food or Water

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Crazy story here from late April that I hadn’t heard about before. Daniel Chong will receive a $4.1 million settlement as compensation for being forgotten about in a holding cell for 5 days without food or water. In fact, his situation became so desperate that he was forced to drink his own urine in order to survive.

While a cash payout should be part of any sort of justice for Daniel, I wonder if any of the individuals responsible for this will be held accountable? That to me is the key point. Just as bankers simply pay a fine for egregious crimes that represent only a small part of their profit from the activity (but almost never face criminal charges), so too it seems the police and government bureaucrats almost never face serious repercussions for any their actions, no matter how heinous or unconstitutional. From the Daily Mail:

The college student forgotten in a holding cell for five days without food or water, took a $4.1 million settlement from the Justice Department his lawyer announced Tuesday.

24-year-old University of California, San Diego student Daniel Chong was arrested on April 21, 2012 as part of a major drug bust.

He was taken to county jail and subsequently forgotten in a cell for five days – starving and hallucinating.

Mr Chong’s attorney Eugene Iredale said that the Justice Department is still trying to figure out how Mr Chong slipped from their notice, but the inspector general still has no answers.

You don’t say…

The DEA did not have a system in place at the time on how to treat detainees, but has since installed camera in each of the cells and holds daily inspections.

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The U.S. Military Has Awarded Contracts to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan

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I suppose it just wasn’t enough that our allies, “the rebels” in Syria, have significant Al-Qaeda elements to them. No, we are the USA! USA! Best country ever. Defender of human rights. City on a hill. We must do far more than that. So we did. This story below from Bloomberg, highlights a 236-page report by … Read more

Inside Bitcoins: Welcome to Satoshi Square

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Yesterday was an absolutely amazing, jam-packed day at the Inside Bitcoins Conference in New York City, and I want to start out by thanking MediaBistro for putting it on and for having me as a media partner. 250-300 people attended the event, and roughly 30 of them took it to the next level and paid for their ticket in bitcoin.

BitInstant
The event kicked off with keynote speaker Charlie Shrem, founder and CEO of BitInstant. For those who aren’t familiar with it, BitInstant is one of the more convenient ways to acquire bitcoins for cash. Incredibly, he is a mere 23-years old and started the company while still enrolled at Brooklyn College. He shared his experience of pitching venture capital firm after venture capital firm, and his subsequent rejection by each and every one of them. He eventually convinced his mother to seed him the $10,000 needed to start the company.

Shortly after the speech, I was able to chat with Charlie in the hallway and he couldn’t have been nicer. He immediately pointed to my “Bought with Bitcoin” shirt and told me he wanted one. The shirt’s in the mail man.

Regulatory Panel
From there, the conference proceeded with a perfect mix of both subject specific panels and individual speakers. On the panel discussing regulatory issues, a really interesting debate emerged that I had not read about previously. It revolved around whether under the recent FinCEN guidelines on virtual currencies, bitcoin “miners” are considered money transmitters and thus require registration as such. Neither side could find agreement on the issue, which highlights just how much of a wild, wild-west type environment it still is.

BitPay
CEO Tony Gallippi of BitPay was a huge highlight for me. Not only have I recently integrated BitPay on Liberty Blitzkrieg to sell my Bitcoin shirts, but it was the company’s stunning growth earlier this year that got me obsessed with the entire topic. Back in late March, BitPay had 4,000 merchants and was adding them at a mind-boggling rate of 1,000 per month. Fortunately for them, they continued on that pace and Tony reported 8,000 merchants had signed up as of yesterday. Amazing.

Mr. Gallippi also made a particularly significant point about BitPay that I hadn’t even considered, one which represents a huge positive for any merchant using them. He noted that companies can avoid potentially burdensome accounting and reporting requirements since the merchant doesn’t legally hold any bitcoins themselves unless they want to.

However, the most powerful thing Tony covered was his discussion on some of the ways that banks are already going after merchants for accepting bitcoin by shutting down their bank accounts in retribution. Even more interesting, Tony sees the biggest future concern being that payment companies like Visa and MasterCard will threaten to pull their services from merchants that also accept bitcoin. Since merchants might get 95% of their revenue via the conduit of these payment companies, they would probably quickly kick Bitcoin to the curb. I think his foresight on this issue, as well as the fact he is already rallying people to prepare for it, makes him an even more impressive CEO and leader in the space than I thought.

Adam B. Levine – YouTube is Broken
Adam has a quick and interesting mind, one that hits you like a hurricane the moment he starts speaking. I was really excited for his talk, since he was focused on what I think is one of the biggest business problems on the web today. This has to do with the inefficiencies of website monetization. As a guy that runs podcasts, his particular area of concern was youtube. He demonstrated that by placing a QR code within videos to allow bitcoin donations, he was able to earn multiples of what he could via traditional ad networks. This really impressed me, mainly because such a small percentage of the population has ever owned a bitcoin.

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Obama Erases Campaign Promises from Election Website

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The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. – George Orwell, 1984 President Transparency, in the … Read more

How Internet in the UK is “Sleepwalking into Censorship”

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A great article has emerged from Open Rights Group detailing just how egregious David Cameron’s plan to censor the internet in the UK really is. While I’m sure most of you are aware of Cameron’s proposed plan to automatically block web access to “porn” from the British citizenry, you probably aren’t aware of some of the specifics. As usual, the devil is in the details and you discover what the whole thing is really about – censorship of political material that would prove inconvenient for the elite criminal class.

There are two main things to be aware of. First, under the rules proposed to go into effect in 2014, the default setting will be to filter a wide range of material. Second, the filtering isn’t just of porn, rather it includes nine other categories, such as “esoteric material,” “web forums,” and “extremist and terrorist related content.”

See how dangerous this is? Do you trust government to define for us what “extremist or terrorist” content is when these same governments incredibly tell us that our enemies list is “classified.” Furthermore, who defines what “esoteric” material is? Esoteric could easily be defined as anything not covered by the mainstream media, which is everything that matters.

From Open Rights Group:

After brief conversations with some of the Internet Service Providers that will be implementing the UK’s “pornwall” we’ve established a little bit about what it will be doing. 

The essential detail is that they will assume you want filters enabled across a wide range of content, and unless you un-tick the option, network filters will be enabled. As we’ve said repeatedly, it’s not just about hardcore pornography.

You’ll encounter something like this:

EDIT NOTE: the category examples are based on current mobile configurations and broad indications from ISPs

(1) Screen one

“Parental controls”
Do you want to install / enable parental controls
☑ yes
☐ no

[next]

(2) Screen two [if you have left the box ticked]

“Parental controls”

Do you want to block

☑ pornography
☑ violent material
☑ extremist and terrorist related content
☑ anorexia and eating disorder websites
☑ suicide related websites
☑ alcohol
☑ smoking
☑ web forums
☑ esoteric material
☑ web blocking circumvention tools

Remember, all of the boxes checked above represent the “default setting” for your web browser under the proposed rules. Furthermore, what about “violent material.” While that seems reasonable, something like police brutality caught on tape would surely fall into that category. Or perhaps the police tasering an elderly person to death, which just happened in the state of Illinois. That would also likely be blocked. For your own good of course.

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95-Year Old Man Tasered to Death by Police in Illinois Nursing Home

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It appears that the militarized police force running rampant on the streets of America just can’t handle the threats of a 95-year old man in a nursing home armed with a cane. Although it appears the officers are attempting to justify their violent and aggressive behavior by claiming he was wielding a “12 inch knife,” … Read more

Google Engineer Wins Award from the NSA and then Slams it

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In accepting the award I don’t condone the NSA’s surveillance. Simply put, I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.

– Dr. Joseph Bonneau

In case you weren’t aware, Dr. Joseph Bonneau, a google engineer, received an award for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper of 2012 from the National Security Agency’s first annual “Science of Security Competition” on July 19th. He experienced such mixed emotions upon its receipt that he felt the need to express them publicly in a blog post. We should all be thankful he had the courage to do so.

While his post may at first seem like no big deal, it represents another example of the extraordinarily positive impact Edward Snowden’s leaks are having throughout American culture. When a person who wins an award from the NSA immediately expresses his revulsion of its practices as a result of what he learned from Snowden’s act of civil disobedience, we can rest assured the cultural grounds underneath our feet are shifting for the better. Let’s not forget that the latest version of Congress’ internet spy bill, CISPA, has been placed on the back burner as a result, and instead Congress is being forced to vote on positive things, such as the Amash Amendment.  Dr. Bonneau’s statement simply would not have been written if it weren’t for Mr. Snowden’s whistle-blowing. His key points are:

Yesterday I received the NSA award for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper of 2012 for my IEEE Oakland paper “The science of guessing.” I’m honored to have been recognised by the distinguished academic panel assembled by the NSA. 

On a personal note, I’d be remiss not to mention my conflicted feelings about winning the award given what we know about the NSA’s widespread collection of private communications and what remains unknown about oversight over the agency’s operations. Like many in the community of cryptographers and security engineers, I’m sad that we haven’t better informed the public about the inherent dangers and questionable utility of mass surveillance. And like many American citizens I’m ashamed we’ve let our politicians sneak the country down this path.

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