Submitted by lambert on Sun, 06/09/2013 - 9:39pm
Thistles of doom!
I liked the effect here: The glossy green thistles with their (soon-to-come) lovely purple flowers, with pansies and violets peeking out from their feet. Also, they were prickly and hence a living fence, like the raspberries. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Sun, 06/09/2013 - 6:38pm
Greenwald's source:
The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.
In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."
Oh, and Snowden was in Hong Kong, which explains Greenwald's trip there. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Sun, 06/09/2013 - 4:05pm
CJR's Trudy Lieberman has an excellent summing up of the media coverage on the CA rate hike story:
Last week the advocacy group Health Care for America Now [HCAN't, die-hard single payer opponents] listed 33 news outlets, mostly marquee brands, that had picked up the exchange’s “important announcement.” California is a bellwether, headlines from around the country suggested, as news outlets from CNNMoney to The Hill signaled that rates in the state’s insurance exchange would be cheaper than expected [The expectations game is an old PR trick. Notice that "cheaper than expected" is not the same is either "cheap" or "good."]. “California Insurance Exchange Rates: Not Too High, Not Too Low,” read the headline on the piece from Kaiser Health News, which quoted the executive director of California’s exchange, Peter Lee: “We’ve hit a home run for consumers. We held insurers’ feet to the fire.” ... No shock had materialized.
But the story the media told was a flawed one, characterized by gee-whiz reporting, a willingness to accept official spin, and failure to ask basic questions. “I don’t see rates going down anywhere I look,” says Robert Laszewski, an industry consultant whose blog was required reading for reporters covering the health reform debate four years ago. “Rates are consistent with what the Society of Actuaries forecasted. The fight emerging is over how to compare rates.” ... Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Sun, 06/09/2013 - 3:00pm
Rolling Stone:
This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.
Admirably concise. Read below the fold...
Submitted by danps on Sun, 06/09/2013 - 8:18am
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 06/08/2013 - 9:24pm
Go read (leaked slideshow here). So far as I can tell, this is a heat map of metadata data records. So we are not yet at the point where random, arbitrary individuals can be tracked with a mouseclick (which the name of the program suggests!). Read below the fold...
Submitted by Rangoon78 on Sat, 06/08/2013 - 4:13pm
VOA:
'
PRISM' Critical to US Internet Surveillance
As all of this information zooms around the Internet on fiber optic cables, officials are using a program called "PRISM" to sort through and analyze data. Officials said they are searching for links to known or suspected terrorists, and seeking patterns that might reveal something about planned attacks.
The Internet companies deny they are voluntarily participating in any government data collection, and say they only give the government what is required by law.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by danps on Sat, 06/08/2013 - 7:22am
Submitted by danps on Sat, 06/08/2013 - 6:47am
Ohio's natural resources agency met with concerned citizens about a proposed cluster of injection wells last week. It was billed as an informational session, and it was - but maybe not in the way intended.
Cross posted from Pruning Shears. Read below the fold...
Submitted by transcriber on Sat, 06/08/2013 - 3:41am
Picking up where they left off the day before, Marcy Wheeler is interviewed again on The Scott Horton Show. From the program notes at scotthorton.org:
Blogger Marcy Wheeler discusses how White House narratives go largely unchallenged by journalists starved of information from government leakers; the favorable testimony of prosecution witnesses in Bradley Manning’s court martial; Glenn Greenwald’s scoop on the NSA’s collection of all Verizon customer call data; how Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants help the government spy on Americans; why individuals targeted by government spying can’t get standing to sue in court; and how the FBI is used as a front to evade NSA restrictions on domestic surveillance.
Podcast here, and transcript below. Read below the fold...
Submitted by libbyliberal on Fri, 06/07/2013 - 9:40pm
Joseph Kishore in “Obama administration collecting phone records of tens of millions of Americans”
The Obama administration is engaged in a secret and illegal dragnet to accumulate detailed phone records of tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of US residents in a program organized by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 06/07/2013 - 7:57pm
Submitted by danps on Fri, 06/07/2013 - 7:10pm
Submitted by Rainbow Girl on Fri, 06/07/2013 - 6:35pm
Condemns "media hype." These are just "modest encroachments on privacy." "Nobody listens to your phone calls." You can't have "100% privacy." One has to make "reasonable" conmpromises. Plus, everybody in Congress has known and approved and we have implemented safeguards. The program is run by "professionals." And ominously: "I don't take kindly to leaks." [paraphrased, but only minimally.]
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-nsa-prism-spy-programs-phone-tap-ve... Read below the fold...
Submitted by Rainbow Girl on Fri, 06/07/2013 - 6:26pm
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