What’s in Your Xbox? A Lot of Surveillance Capabilities

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Attention all gamers.  There’s something you may want to be aware of before you plug in that new Xbox One.  Apparently, there are a lot of Big Brother features embedded into the system, so much so that that Germany’s privacy chief, Peter Schaar, is raising serious concerns. From Slate:

The complaint stems from the latest version of the motion-sensing Kinect technology. The Kinect device designed for the Xbox One can monitor users’ movements with a camera that sees in the dark, picks up voice commands with a microphone, and reads your heart rate using infrared cameras that track blood flow underneath the skin. Because the device is connected to the Internet, malicious hackers could potentially hijack the console and use it for spying.  In addition, Microsoft has filed a patent that suggests it is interested in using Kinect to count the number of people in a room in order to charge each person for providing pay-per-user content. The patent outlines how a camera could be used with face and gesture recognition as part of a Kinect-style system to enforce “age and identity restrictions” on certain kinds of content, effectively granting copyright holders virtual access to private dwellings, as Wired described it.

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Carrington Bails: More Smart Money Leaves the “Buy to Rent” Game

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“Buy to rent” has been one of my favorite topics to write about as of late, since the creation of this “asset class,” combined with the total madness that follows from money printing, has once again created a major housing bubble in many markets in these United States.  In recent months, I’ve noted how some of the earliest participants in this market have pulled back.  Most notably Och Ziff, but now Carrington as well.

The signs are everywhere that this market is not only overheated, but downright filled with insanity, and as Carrington’s head Bruce Rose states “stupid money.”  Las Vegas is a prime example of this, where 8% of single family homes are vacant, yet new construction permits are up 50%.  More from Bloomberg:

Hedge fund manager Bruce Rose was among the first investors to coax institutional money into the mom and pop business of single-family home rentals, raising $450 million last year from Oaktree Capital Group LLC. 

Now, with house prices climbing at the fastest pace in seven years and investors swamping the rental market, Rose says it no longer makes sense to be a buyer.

“We just don’t see the returns there that are adequate to incentivize us to continue to invest,” Rose, 55, chief executive officer of Carrington Holding Co. LLC, said in an interview at his Aliso Viejo, California office. “There’s a lot of — bluntly — stupid money that jumped into the trade without any infrastructure, without any real capabilities and a kind of build-it-as-you-go mentality that we think is somewhat irresponsible.”

No joke, I actually heard an ad on local Boulder radio that explained how you could “get in” on buy to rent schemes.

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I Pledge Allegiance…

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I’m on a plane about to take off for Colorado, but figured I’d leave everyone with my updated Pledge of Allegiance applicable for modern day America.  Enjoy comrades. I pledge allegiance to the Fed of the United States of Bernakistan, and to the S&P 500 for which it stands, one ponzi, under Federal Reserve Notes, with … Read more

High School Teacher Faces Disciplinary Action for Informing Students of Their Rights

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Rather than being reprimanded, Illinois high school teacher John Dryden, should be held up as an example of what it truly means to be a teacher.  When confronted with a situation where he knew his students might be giving up their Fifth Amendment rights, the social studies teacher did what he believed was the right and … Read more

Chants of “End the Fed”…Heard at Anti-Monsanto Rallies

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While most of my readers know about the widespread anti-Monsanto/GMO rallies that took place all over the world this past weekend, the rest of the public has no idea due to a mainstream media blackout.  That’s ok because that industry is dying quickly anyway.  Although I haven’t spent much time watching footage from the rallies, I … Read more

Video of the Day: Government Explained

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Ever wonder what would happen if an alien came down to earth and asked an average human to explain the dominant political systems in place?  Although the video is more than a year old, I had never watched it before and find it a really effective way to wake people up as to how absolutely … Read more

The Scorecard: 8,000 Wall Street Protesters Arrested, Zero Bankers

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America really has become the “land of the thief, home of the slave.”  While a minority of awake citizens desperately tries to shake their neighbors from their deep slumber, the masses continue to sit in front of the television, suck their thumbs and watch Desperate Housewives, while the oligarchs laugh incredulously at them all the … Read more

Noam Chomsky on the Classification System: “It’s to Protect the State from the Citizens”

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I’ve spent quite a lot of time studying declassified internal documents, and written a lot about them. In fact, anybody who’s worked through the declassified record can see very clearly the reason for classification is very rarely to protect the state or the society from enemies.  Most of the time it’s to protect the state … Read more

How Traffic Cameras are Intentionally Ripping You Off

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Traffic cameras raise privacy issues for sure, but they can also be devastating to your bank account.  When I see these things hovering over my head on the pleasant streets of Boulder, Colorado not only do I think of Big Brother, but also of some overbearing bureaucrat trying to get his or her hands in my pocket.  To be fair, I haven’t had any specific issues locally with the cameras and I hope not to have any in the future, but residents of Florida tell quite a different story.

In what is merely a sign of our completely corrupt and immoral times, many communities in Florida are intentionally shortening yellow light intervals at traffic intersections in order to catch unsuspecting drivers running red lights.  Not only does this lead to soaring ticket issuance, it also causes more accidents.  WTSP 10 News in Tampa completed a phenomenal investigative report.  Key excerpts are below:

TAMPA BAY, Fla. — A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida’s rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines.

The 10 News Investigators discovered the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) quietly changed the state’s policy on yellow intervals in 2011, reducing the minimum below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from FDOT and local municipalities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras (RLCs).

While yellow light times were reduced by mere fractions of a second, research indicates a half-second reduction in the interval can double the number of RLC citations — and the revenue they create. The 10 News investigation stemmed from a December discovery of a dangerously short yellow light in Hernando County. After the story aired, the county promised to re-time all of its intersections, and the 10 News Investigators promised to dig into yellow light timing all across Tampa Bay.

Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year inapproximately 70 Florida communities, with 52.5 percent of the revenue going to the state. The rest is divided by cities, counties, and the camera companies. In 2013, the cameras are on pace to generate $120 million.

Money, money, money, at all costs, money.  America’s new religion.

“Red light cameras are a for-profit business between cities and camera companies and the state,” said James Walker, executive director of the nonprofit National Motorists Association. “The (FDOT rule-change) was done, I believe, deliberately in order that more tickets would be given with yellows set deliberately too short.”

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How Undercover Animal Rights Activists are Winning the Ag-Gag War

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I previously covered these crazy “ag-gag” laws being passed in states with large meat production industries back in March in my piece:  States Move to Criminalize Whistleblowing on Food Fraud and Animal Cruelty.  Such laws represent a really disturbing macro trend in America where, rather than deal with inhumane, criminal and immoral practices, large corporations and government would just rather the public not know.  The Obama Administration exemplified this practice perfectly in its recently exposed war on journalism.

The good news is that if care enough and stand our ground through non-violent resistance, we can win.  We are already seeing examples of this in the battle against “ag-gag.”  From the Village Voice:

Cody Carlson had no way of preparing for this moment. He was a Manhattan kid, days removed from working as an analyst for a business-intelligence firm, where he scrutinized corporations and their executives.

Now he was standing in a bleak barn at New York’s largest dairy farm.

His first job, technically speaking, was to repair the mechanism that pulled manure from the barn.

His real job: covertly filming it all for Mercy for Animals.

His hidden camera caught employees kicking and shocking animals that wouldn’t bend to their will. Supervisor Phil Niles is heard recounting an abuser’s greatest hits: how he beat cows with wrenches, smashed their heads with two-by-fours, kicked them when they were too feeble to rise.

“Fucking kicking her, hitting her,” he chortles while recalling one incident. “Fucking jumping off the top of the goddamned gate and stomping on her head and shit.”

After five weeks of filming, MFA took the footage to ABC’s World News. Niles was subsequently charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty. His penalty for 19 years of beating cows in every way imaginable: a $555 fine.

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