How Much is Your Private Data Worth?

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Interesting article from the Star Tribune that shines a small degree of light on the fees telecommunication companies and others charge the U.S. government for your personal data.  Interestingly, while AT&T charges a $325 million activation fee per wiretap and $10 a day for maintenance, “Facebook doesn’t charge the government for access.”  That’s mighty generous of you Mr. Zuckerberg.

Also of interest, is the revelation that AT&T devotes roughly 100 employees to review each request and hand over data, while Verizon has a team of 70 employees that work around the clock on spying.  More below:

In the era of intense government surveillance and secret court orders, a murky multimillion-dollar market has emerged. Paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but with little public scrutiny, surveillance fees charged in secret by technology and phone companies can vary wildly.

AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 “activation fee” for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

Meanwhile, email records like those amassed by the National Security Agency through a program revealed by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden probably were collected for free or very cheaply. Facebook says it doesn’t charge the government for access.  And while Microsoft, Yahoo and Google won’t say how much they charge, the American Civil Liberties Union found that email records can be turned over for as little as $25. 

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Search Engine “Duck Duck Go” Experiences Traffic Surge in Wake of NSA Scandal

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The tremendous positive impact from Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations will only be properly appreciated in the years and decades ahead, but I believe they will be extraordinary. In fact, we are already seeing many of them. From the recent halt on the CISPA bill in Congress, to the forced exposure of authoritarian shills in the mainstream media as they struggle to publicly defend the NSA. However, perhaps the most significant long-term impact will be the resulting boom in the privacy business.  If you recall, I wrote a piece titled Bitcoin and Kim Dotcom: Why it’s Time to “Encrypt Everything” a couple of months ago.

In what I think is great news, the alternative, “non-tracking” search engine Duck Duck Go has seen a surge in traffic since the NSA scandal was revealed.  As was noted in a Guardian article from today: “If the NSA demanded data from DuckDuckGo, there would be none to hand over.”  More on this fascinating trend below:

Gabriel Weinberg noticed web traffic building on the night of Thursday 6 June – immediately after the revelations about the “Prism” program. Through the programme, the US’s National Security Agency claimed to have “direct access” to the servers of companies including, crucially, the web’s biggest search engines – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Within days of the story, while the big companies were still spitting tacks and tight-lipped disclaimers, the search engine Weinberg founded – which pledges not to track or store data about its users – was getting 50% more traffic than ever before. That has gone up and up as more revelations about NSA and GCHQ internet tapping have come in.

Using it is very definitely an active choice, whereas using Google is the default option on most browsers. And 95% of people never change the default settings on anything.

But this 20-person business offers what none of the big search engines do: zero tracking. It doesn’t use cookies or store data about its users’ IP addresses, doesn’t offer user logins, and uses an encrypted connection by default.

 If the NSA demanded data from DuckDuckGo, there would be none to hand over.

Having decided that searching is intimately personal, he deduced that governments would want to get hold of search data. “I looked at the search fiascos such as the AOL data release, and decided that government requests were real and would be inevitable, and that search engines and content companies would be handing over that data [to government] in increasing amounts.”

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The Las Vegas Housing Market has Gone Full Chinese

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Let’s face it, the Las Vegas real estate market has gone full Chinese.  By full Chinese I mean a centrally planned bubble has been created that is just asking to blow up.  I’ve covered the renewed insanity of the Las Vegas market before, but this article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal provides even more detail.  In a nutshell, as a result of Assembly Bill 284, which essentially made foreclosures impossible in Nevada, extremely delinquent homes are not coming for sale, and this phony market signal is leading to rampant overbuilding and price speculation.

Here are some numbers. Utility data showed nearly 64,000 vacant homes in Las Vegas at the end of last September, only 8,000 of which are on the market. Meanwhile, new home sales are up 87% and new building permits are up 52% this year. What’s the end result? Another bubble, but this time one where Blackstone and other private equity firms are pricing out average citizens with elevated all cash bids.  USA! USA!  From the WSJ:

LAS VEGAS—In a city dotted with tens of thousands of vacant houses, Jericho Guarin figured it would be easy to buy his first home. But nearly a year after beginning a search late last summer, he has come up dry.

“It has been a nightmare,” says the 37-year-old U.S. Air Force officer. “There are plenty of empty houses, but they’re just not for sale.”

Thank you for your service Mr. Guarin, now go rent from Blackstone.

Many real-estate agents, home builders and consumer advocates argue that the law, intended to remedy foreclosure-processing abuses, has backfired. Some owners who are behind on payments aren’t maintaining their homes as banks refrain from eviction proceedings. The perverse outcome: Inventory shortages have spurred new developments despite a glut of properties stuck in foreclosure limbo.

“The people hurt most by this law are the middle class,” says Steve Hawks, a real-estate agent in Henderson, Nev. He refers to the phenomenon wrought by the foreclosure measure, Assembly Bill 284, as the “A.B. 284 bubble.”

The middle class…what’s that?

Mr. Guarin, the Air Force Captain, is preapproved for a mortgage backed by the Veterans Administration for up to $185,000. But like many buyers who need financing, he is at a severe disadvantage because sellers often prefer all-cash deals that won’t be tied up by a low appraisal or other red tape. “There’s no way I can match the cash offers,” says Mr. Guarin.

With investors in the game, more properties are commanding prices above asking—a phenomenon real-estate agent Bryan Lebo knows all too well. Recently, he listed a bank-owned property for $86,000. The home, which he said needed around $20,000 in repairs, drew 41 offers—39 of them all-cash—and sold to an investor for $135,000. “If you’re an honest working person, you pretty much don’t have a chance,” says Mr. Lebo of current market conditions.

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How Edward Snowden Helped Kill CISPA (for now)

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If you forgot about CISPA, it’s the latest version of the internet spying bill that Congress has been trying to pass for years. So not only did Edward Snowden alert the American public and the world of the extraordinarily unconstitutional and immoral activities of the NSA and U.S. government, his information also stopped CISPA dead … Read more

Good News: Judge Orders U.S. to Release Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File

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What is so disturbing about this aspect of the Aaron Swartz tragedy is the fact that the Secret Service had thousands of pages on Aaron Swartz to begin with.  Considering he was known to all as a kind and gentle soul, what was the Secret Service so worried about?

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is now inescapably clear.  When the U.S. government refers to “national security,” what it actually means is the wealth and power of the status quo, the 0.01%.  That is why a genius such as Aaron Swartz was considered an enemy of the state, and why the government amassed thousands of pages on him and drove him to his death. His genius and kindness was a threat to the corrupt establishment.  As I’ve noted before:  All My Heroes Have FBI Files.  From Wired:

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Friday ordered the government to promptly start releasing thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz, following months of roadblocks and delays.

The order was issued in my ongoing FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security – the Secret Service’s parent agency.

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The Michael Hastings Car Crash: No Skids Marks, a Flying Engine and “Boston Brakes”

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In cases such as the highly suspicious and tragic car crash/explosion that killed celebrated investigative journalist Michael Hastings, I try to reserve commentary for a little bit to let facts emerge following the initial speculative flurry. Particularly when it involves a journalist with whom I am only slightly familiar.  I think we can all agree at this point that based on what has come forward in the past several weeks it is more than likely Mr. Hastings was murdered. The following report from San Diego News 6 provides an excellent summary of what we know, and what we don’t know.  The LAPD doesn’t seem to care much about the latter.  From San Diego 6:

An eyewitness at the scene, Jose, employed at nearby business ALSCO Inc said, the car was traveling very fast and he heard a couple explosions shortly before the car crashed. In fact, the explosion was so intense that it took the LA County assistant corner, Ed Winter, two days to identify the burned-beyond recognition body of Hastings.

As news of the journalist’s death reached family and work colleagues another story emerged, one that would seemingly contradict the LAPD’s verdict. It quickly surfaced that Hastings reached out to Wikileaks attorney Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before his death claiming the FBI was investigating him. 

One particular passage in Hastings book, “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan,” revealed that a former McChrystal staff member made a death threat. “We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write,” the unnamed staffer said. Hastings coolly retorted: “Well, I get death threats like that about once a year, so no worries.”

He later wrote; “I wasn’t disturbed by the claim. Whenever I’d been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people, one of them would usually mention that they were going to kill me.”

But the most significant missing evidence was the absence of any skid marks—even though the car made a 60-degree turn into a palm tree.

Research of this topic reveals a new angle to this story, namely —Boston Brakes.

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U.S. Government’s Secret Move to Hide Files on the Osama Bin Laden Raid

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The Osama Bin Laden raid was suspect from the very beginning.  Not only were key initial descriptions of the assault completely incorrect (such as him being armed and his wife being killed), but the manner in which his body was rapidly tossed into the ocean was beyond bizarre.  I mean, Tony Soprano keeps a body longer than that.

Well it seems the “most transparent administration ever” has made sure that the American public never receives any information beyond the propaganda of Zero Dark Thirty. From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the Freedom of Information Act. 

But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn’t find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and could represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny.

McRaven’s directive sent the only copies of the military’s records about its daring raid to the CIA, which has special authority to prevent the release of “operational files” in ways that can’t effectively be challenged in federal court. The Defense Department can prevent the release of its own military files, too, citing risks to national security. But that can be contested in court, and a judge can compel the Pentagon to turn over non-sensitive portions of records.

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Rapper and Actor Mos Def Undergoes Force Feeding Procedure Used at Guantanamo Bay

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Back in May, I covered the hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, which at the time consisted of 100 of 166 detainees.  I noted how the American Medical Association (AMA) expressed concern that the force feeding of many of these detainees was contrary to medical ethics.  A lawyer for one of the detainees described the force feeding practice … Read more

Stage Two of the Housing Bubble Begins: Blackstone to Lend to Others for “Buy to Rent”

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As we all know, any good ponzi scheme needs a continued stream of new investors in order to keep it going otherwise the whole thing falls apart.  We also know that the current rebound in the U.S. housing market is a centrally planned monster, led by private equity firms with access to cheap money and laundered foreign capital flooding into depressed markets, crowding out American families looking to purchase a home. Well now that Blackstone has spent more than $5 billion in its “buy-to-rent” scheme, it wants others to be able to “participate” in this wonderful investment opportunity (after them of course).  Oh and by the way, one of the most common ads on the local radio here in Boulder as of late explains to people how they too can “get in” on the buy-to-rent trade.  Best of luck. From Bloomberg:

Blackstone Group LP, the private-equity firm that has spent $5 billion on more than 30,000 distressed houses, is preparing to expand its bet on the housing recovery by lending to other landlords.

The firm, which already owns more rental homes than any other investor, has set up B2R Finance LP to offer loans starting at $10 million, according to four people who reviewed the terms. B2R is reaching out to landlords with portfolios of properties seeking to grow in the burgeoning industry for single-family homes to rent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

At least five rental companies have received non-binding term sheets from B2R, according to the people. Jeffrey Tennyson, the former chief executive officer of mortgage originator EquiFirst Corp., is running the firm, which stands for buy-to-rent. He previously led EquiFirst to become the 12th-largest wholesale subprime lender in the U.S. by 2007, when Barclays Bank PLC bought it. The London-based bank closed the business two years later after the market collapsed.

Tennyson didn’t return phone messages seeking comment on his role at B2R. Peter Rose, a spokesman for Blackstone, declined to comment.

So basically we continue to recycle the same characters from the last housing bubble to come on in and do it again.

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University of Denver Plans to Give George W. Bush the “‘Improving Human Condition” Award

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One of the more bizarre trends that I have covered this year has been the distribution of phony awards to high level crony political oligarchs either for PR purposes or for money.  I thought I had seen it all a couple of weeks ago when I read that Jeb Bush was set to present the “Liberty Medal” to Hillary Clinton.

Apparently the University of Denver was not to be outdone, as they planned to give the “Improving Human Condition” award to none other than George W. Bush! Thankfully, considerable outrage has led the University to rethink its choice, but it is inexcusable to begin with.  It is not only an embarrassment to the University of Denver, but also to the entire state of Colorado, my adopted home. From the Huffington Post:

Hundreds of students, staffers and alumni are protesting the University of Denver’s decision to honor former President George W. Bush with an award traditionally recognizing recipients for their work on behalf of humanity.

“It’s been mostly just a lot of surprise,” Seth Masket, associate professor of Political Science said of the award to be bestowed by the University’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

The school hosts the Korbel Dinner to present the award each year. In June, the Sept. 9 dinner was announced and invitations circulated both by mail and on the school’s website, pictured below, saying the 43rd president would be welcomed and honored as the 2013 recipient of the “Improving the Human Condition Award.”

On June 25, award protestor Taylor Gibson signed the petition and beseeched Korbel Dean Christopher Hill, “Don’t make a mockery of my degree.” The next day, Kiela Parks, an alumna and former employee at the University’s Office of Alumni and External Relations employee who worked at the 2011 and 2012 Korbel dinners, signed onto the movement.

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