Source: EFF
Source: SF Chronicle
Oakland's City Council voted to move ahead with controversial city surveillance center during a raucous council meeting Tuesday morning that only ended when the police cleared out the chambers.
The council voted 6-1 to approve an incremental resolution allowing the city to hire a new contractor to assemble the Domain Awareness Center, a surveillance hub that would allow police and city officials to continuously monitor video cameras, gunshot detectors and license-plate readers across the city.
Dozens of Oakland residents, deeply worried the center would allow the city to spy on people's everyday lives, tried to turn the resolution into a referendum on surveillance and persuade council members to stall, or scrap, the process.
Read More...
The newest round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations begin today in Salt Lake City, Utah, where trade representatives will work towards finalizing the text of this sprawling secret agreement. Last week's publication of the controversial "Intellectual Property" chapter by Wikileaks confirmed our worst fears: the TPP carries draconian copyright enforcement provisions that threaten users' rights and could stifle innovation well into the 21st Century. Public opposition to the TPP continues to grow as a result of the leaked document; an opaque policymaking process that seems geared towards appeasing Big Content does not provide much in the way of legitimacy.
In the past week, 23 Republicans and 151 Democrats in the House of Representatives wrote letters to the Obama administration indicating their unwillingness to comply with the Executive's request for power to fast-track trade agreements through Congress. Fast-track authority, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, limits congressional approval over trade agreements to a yes or no, up or down vote. If a bill granting fast-track were to pass, hearings would become extremely limited, and lawmakers would have no ability to make amendments. It would give the Obama administration unchecked power to shape TPP and other agreements like the EU-U.S. trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP).
There are some Congress members who are actively pushing for fast-track and are vowing to introduce legislation to enact it by 2014. Thankfully, these letters from the House show the White House is going to have difficulty in finding support in Congress to pass such a bill. Still, the Obama administration is going to push hard for the passage of fast-track. The U.S. trade office is negotiating TPP as if it already has fast-track authority, by deciding for itself which countries to negotiate with and what issues are on the table.
Without fast-track, it's inconceivable that the TPP would survive congressional debate. And that's the point of all of this secrecy: the TPP's myriad harmful provisions for users wouldn't survive the sunlight of transparency, so it's being negotiated in the dark. And since negotiators only get to hear corporations' concerns while drafting these policies, it only makes sense that its agenda would exclude users' interests.
So we need to demand that our lawmakers oppose fast-track. Let's ask them to call for a hearing and exercise their authority to oversee the U.S. trade office’s secret copyright agenda.
SOPA rides again: USA’s secret TPP treaty outlaws phone jailbreaks and unlocking, introduces crazy copyright law
November 19, 2013
Source: Extreme Tech
The TPP is an agreement between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The TPP is a huge treaty, with 29 chapters that deal with a variety of issues including economic tariffs, health care standards, product manufacturing guidelines, and access to medicines and medical training, to name a few. The section we’re focusing on in particular is the intellectual property (IP) chapter, because that’s where the US is hell-bent on enforcing a draconian standard that flies in the face of the Obama Administration’s own promises regarding consumer rights.
Specifically, the United States is backing treaty terms that would: increase copyright duration to life of the author + 95 years; further narrow the interpretation of what activities would qualify as copyright infringement; and implement stronger patent rights, longer patent terms, and to allow for software patents, despite widespread domestic calls to abolish them. Under the current text of the TPP, activities like cell phone unlocking or jailbreaking devices would be explicitly illegal.
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Over the last few weeks, a storm has been gathering around a treaty known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, or TPP. Last week, Wikileaks published a draft version of the TPP that dates to this previous August, and the restrictions it places on digital freedoms and consumer rights are incredible. If you thought that the content creation industry had learned something from the failure of SOPA in the US or the international ACTA treaty, you were wrong. Or rather, you were right. What the content industry learned was that treaty negotiations needed to be kept even more secretive. Access to the TPP text is so tightly controlled, even members of Congress were kept in the dark.
The TPP is an agreement between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The TPP is a huge treaty, with 29 chapters that deal with a variety of issues including economic tariffs, health care standards, product manufacturing guidelines, and access to medicines and medical training, to name a few. The section we’re focusing on in particular is the intellectual property (IP) chapter, because that’s where the US is hell-bent on enforcing a draconian standard that flies in the face of the Obama Administration’s own promises regarding consumer rights.
Specifically, the United States is backing treaty terms that would: increase copyright duration to life of the author + 95 years; further narrow the interpretation of what activities would qualify as copyright infringement; and implement stronger patent rights, longer patent terms, and to allow for software patents, despite widespread domestic calls to abolish them. Under the current text of the TPP, activities like cell phone unlocking or jailbreaking devices would be explicitly illegal.
Read More...
Police State Updates.....
Source: SF Chronicle
Oakland's City Council voted to move ahead with controversial city surveillance center during a raucous council meeting Tuesday morning that only ended when the police cleared out the chambers.
The council voted 6-1 to approve an incremental resolution allowing the city to hire a new contractor to assemble the Domain Awareness Center, a surveillance hub that would allow police and city officials to continuously monitor video cameras, gunshot detectors and license-plate readers across the city.
Dozens of Oakland residents, deeply worried the center would allow the city to spy on people's everyday lives, tried to turn the resolution into a referendum on surveillance and persuade council members to stall, or scrap, the process.
Read More...
Source: NBC DFW
“It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong,” said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street.
Read more
Source: 3 TV
Have you seen some strange activity in the valley skies? Many people have been reporting spotting lots of helicopters flying around over central Phoenix and surrounding areas.
Here's the explanation: For the second night in a row, military training exercises are underway around the valley. The Phoenix Police Department confirmed to 3TV that they are supporting Department of Defense training around the city.
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The typical procedure for taking a blood sample.
Some drivers along a busy North Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood.It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers.“It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong,” said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street.
Read more
Source: 3 TV
Have you seen some strange activity in the valley skies? Many people have been reporting spotting lots of helicopters flying around over central Phoenix and surrounding areas.
Here's the explanation: For the second night in a row, military training exercises are underway around the valley. The Phoenix Police Department confirmed to 3TV that they are supporting Department of Defense training around the city.
Read More...
Source: The Hill
Three Democratic senators filed a brief in federal court on Tuesday supporting a lawsuit to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records.
Sens. Mark Udall (Colo.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (N.M.), who all have access to classified information as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued that the controversial program does little to combat terrorism.
"[The senators] have reviewed this surveillance extensively and have seen no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records has provided any intelligence of value that could not have been gathered through less intrusive means," lawyers for the lawmakers wrote.
Read More...
The TSA is now installing exit “detention pods” at major airports that will temporarily “jail” passengers before they are allowed to leave terminals.
Here is how the pods work: when passengers are ready to leave a terminal, they will be forced into the pods, one at a time. Each passenger must remain in the pod until an electronic voice gives them permission to leave and the door opens.
After passing through a pod, passengers may not re-enter the terminal without going through security again.
Currently at most airports, TSA agents stand at terminal exits for safety purposes. The idea is that these new pods will replace such agents, therefore saving money and increasing security.
The pods are already being used in the Syracuse International Airport.
Syracuse Airport Commissioner Christina Callahan said, “We need to be vigilant and maintain high security protocol at all times. These portals were designed and approved by TSA which is important.”
At Callahan’s airport, the post cost $60 million to install.
While the pods will likely make some passengers feel secure, other travelers are likely to feel like they are being treated like prisoners.
InfoWar’s Paul Joseph Watson pointed out that there are already multiple TSA standards in place that make “travelers feel like they are under constant suspicion”:
“While threatening to arrest passengers who make jokes about airport security, the federal agency has also instituted a ludicrous ‘freeze’ policy whereby travelers are ordered to stand in place like statues while TSA agents resolve some unexplained security threat.Of course, some level of security is necessary in any international airport. However, there is a balance to be struck between making passengers safe and making them feel imprisoned or violated.
Another policy that has provoked questions is the TSA’s random testing of passengers’ drinks for explosives after they have already passed through security and purchased beverages inside the secure area of the airport.”
Read more: http://benswann.com/new-detention-pods-being-installed-at-airports-thanks-to-the-tsa/#ixzz2l6Y3kNqY
Source: Ars Technica
“No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?” said one officer who spoke anonymously to the Globe because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. “If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say, 'Why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes?' It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.”
The “Eye of Sauron” never sleeps?
Not surprisingly, civil libertarians are relishing the rank and file's own backlash.
"The irony of police objecting to GPS technology for privacy reasons is hard to miss in the aftermath of United States v. Jones," Woodrow Hartzog, a law professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, told Ars. "But the officers’ concerns about privacy illustrate just how revealing GPS technology can be. Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior. On one hand, police departments are likely to see a reduction in many kinds of undesirable behaviors involving an abuse of discretion. However, as we’ve seen in other areas involving continuous and precise surveillance, individuals are likely to refrain from any activities that could be perceived the wrong way, even if they are ultimately legal and socially desirable. Police departments should be very clear about how the GPS technology is to be used and what administrators expect from police officers."
Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said he hadn't heard of other police departments tracking their own like this but that Boston police's reaction was not surprising.
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