Category: Links

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James Clapper, EU play-acting, and political priorities

Greenwald has an excellent piece pointing out just some of the hypocrisy surrounding the Snowden revelations. A taste:

The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 articlewhich exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, outright lied to the US Senate– specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs – when he said “no, sir” in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collectany type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our storiesto admit that his statement was, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he’s sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon’s David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.

There has been a considerable amount of ‘flak’ – efforts to discredit organizations or individuals who disagree with or cast doubt on the prevailing assumptions that are favourable to established power – exhibited throughout the Snowden affair. It demonstrates quite powerfully that the Propaganda Model, written about in the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent remains a powerful tool of media analysis.

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For $1,650 a month, subscribers will soon be able to fly as much as they want between four California cities, NPR’s Wendy Kaufman reports. Members (not “customers”) will be able to board as many times as they want to travel between San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles

Interesting. I can I only imagine how popular such an approach would be on some routes in Canada.

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Brent Rathgeber Quits Tory Caucus Over ‘Lack Of Commitment To Transparency’

Wow. The Tories better hope that this is really the extent to the rebellion (i.e. backbenchers’ awareness of how their power has been given away to the whip) and not the beginning of real caucuses that are willing to oppose the government.

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Links Quotations

When the Whole World Has Drones

The proliferation of drone technology has moved well beyond the control of the United States government and its closest allies. The aircraft are too easy to obtain, with barriers to entry on the production side crumbling too quickly to place limits on the spread of a technology that promises to transform warfare on a global scale. Already, more than 75 countries have remote piloted aircraft. More than 50 nations are building a total of nearly a thousand types. At its last display at a trade show in Beijing, China showed off 25 different unmanned aerial vehicles. Not toys or models, but real flying machines.

When the Whole World Has Drones
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What Your Klout Score Really Means

Your Klout score is gaining in importance: A high one might bring perks, but a low one could dash your career dreams.

Something that hit me while I was reading this (other than how much I dislike Klout) is that companies are increasingly using the ‘service’ to discriminate between preferred and non-preferred customers. I can see a service like Klout developing in the future that is widely used by marketers, insurance agencies, and other groups interested in actuarial sales/risk analysis to mine social media information in order to assign scores that invisibly affect individuals’ daily behaviours and routines.

Hopefully things won’t be so invisible that consumer protection laws can’t be activated to dilute such behaviours. Even more hopefully, let’s pray that those laws still have the dulled teeth they have today when Klout on steroids is truly birthed.

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The Politics of Academic Space

In an economy of scarcity, a rare commodity like office space will be fought over tenaciously.

I have to admit that I’ve never had an issue finding office spaces on campus; at a previous university I had three separate offices, and presently enjoy two separate (and well furnished!) offices. I tend to work out of those spaces 6-7 days a week, 6-12 hours a day. In other words: I use the spaces that are provided to me.

That said, I’ve watched just how nasty office-space wars can become. Such conflicts aren’t something that I’d wish on my worst enemy, and the most aggravating aspect of most space conflicts is the sheer amount of unused office space. There’s nothing like seeing a war occur between a small group of people in a department for a coveted office space while 95% of the offices are unoccupied because graduate students and faculty alike refuse to come and work on campus.

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Privacy organization files FTC complaint against Snapchat | Digital Trends

Snapchat’s problems with its glaring loopholes are mounting, and this time its fate may end up in the hands of the FTC after EPIC’s complaint.

Just because the American’s lack privacy commissioners doesn’t mean that there aren’t dedicated civil society advocates holding companies’ feet the fire. Nor that violating contract law is any less important in the US than in other jurisdictions.

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Snapchat: not for state secrets

Just in case you thought that Snapchat’s privacy settings were awesome, researchers have found that the security model is pretty piss poor.

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2013.5.21

There is a technical term economists like to use for behavior like this. Unbelievable chutzpah.

One potentially good thing out of all this, Tim Cook will address it directly tomorrow in front of the Senate:

Mr. Cook is expected to emphasize that Apple is most likely “the largest corporate income tax payer in the U.S., having paid nearly $6 billion in taxes to the U.S. Treasury” in the last fiscal year. “Apple does not use tax gimmicks,” Mr. Cook is expected to testify.

He is expected to seek to rebut the Congressional findings by arguing that some of Apple’s largest subsidiaries do not reduce Apple’s tax liability, and to argue in support of a sweeping overhaul of the United States corporate tax code – in particular, lowering rates on companies moving foreign overseas earnings back to the United States. Apple currently assigns more than $100 billion to offshore subsidiaries.

I figured this would lead to a change in tax policy. Now I’m sure of it.

(via parislemon)

This story, the day before Cook testifies to the Senate, is probably the worst thing Apple PR could have dreamed of. I wouldn’t want to be in Cook’s shoes tomorrow though, by the same token, if I were an American taxpayer I’d be pissed as all hell about Apple’s actions regardless of the legality of those actions.

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1TB Comes to Flickr

thisistheverge:

Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space

Looks wild.

As a pretty heavy Google user, I look forward to seeing if Google ups their own storage offerings to ‘compete’ with Yahoo!