Tag: Big Brother

Posted on

New evidence Common Core was a waste

Children-of-the-Core

New evidence Common Core was a waste
March 22, 2014
Heartland Institute

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new set of data analyses provides more evidence Common Core is likely a massive waste of time and money.

Here’s the conclusion of the Common Core portion of the Brookings Institution’s 2014 Brown Center report:

It is doubtful that even the most ardent Common Core supporter will be satisfied if the best CCSS can offer–after all of the debate, the costs in tax revenue, and blood, sweat, and tears going into implementation–is a three point NAEP gain.

The 2012 Brown Center Report predicted, based on an empirical analysis of the effects of state standards, that the CCSS will have little to no impact on student achievement. Supporters of the Common Core argue that strong, effective implementation of the standards will sweep away such skepticism by producing lasting, significant gains in student learning. So far, at least–and it is admittedly the early innings of a long ballgame–there are no signs of such an impressive accomplishment.

https://eagnews.org/new-evidence-common-core-was-a-waste/#more-29138

Posted on

When U.S. Steps Back, Will Russia and China Control the Internet?

FREE SPEECH NOT

When U.S. Steps Back, Will Russia and China Control the Internet?

Some fear foreign powers will fill the void.

The United States is planning to give up its last remaining authority over the technical management of the Internet.

The Commerce Department announced Friday that it will give the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international nonprofit group, control over the database of names and addresses that allows computers around the world to connect to each other.

Administration officials say U.S. authority over the Internet address system was always intended to be temporary and that ultimate power should rest with the “global Internet community.”

But some fear that the Obama administration is opening the door to an Internet takeover by Russia, China, or other countries that are eager to censor speech and limit the flow of ideas.

“If the Obama Administration gives away its oversight of the Internet, it will be gone forever,” wrote Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Castro argued that the world “could be faced with a splintered Internet that would stifle innovation, commerce, and the free flow and diversity of ideas that are bedrock tenets of world’s biggest economic engine.”

https://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/when-u-s-steps-back-will-russia-and-china-control-the-internet-20140317

Posted on

New study shows NSA phone metadata can reveal EVERYTHING about your life

bigbrother

New study shows NSA phone metadata can reveal EVERYTHING about your life

New research published by Stanford Univeristy Wednesday reveal phone and Internet metadata collected by the NSA can expose far more information about an individual than the agency admits, including, “medical conditions, financial and legal connections, and even whether they own a gun.”

Two of the school’s computer science graduate students were able to uncover the sensitive personal details of individuals from phone data details, like the numbers of callers and recipients, the location of callers, phone serial numbers and the length of conversations — all of which are data the signals intelligence agency collects in bulk both domestically and internationally.

Of the 33,688 unique numbers called by the study’s 546 study volunteers, students were able to positively identify a specific individual in 18 percent of those calls. They were also able to discern 57 percent made at least one medical call and 40 percent made a financial services call.

Computer scientists Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler, the doctoral students that authored the study, say metadata are “extremely sensitive and revealing,” and “can yield a wealth of detail about family, political, professional, religious and sexual associations.”

“It would be no technical challenge to scale these identifications to a larger population,” Mayer told Stanford News, referencing similar metadata analysis the NSA is almost certainly already engaged in.

Read more: https://dailycaller.com/2014/03/13/new-study-shows-nsa-phone-metadata-can-reveal-everything-about-your-life/#ixzz2vvLeMtUQ

Posted on

Who’s Watching You Online?

whoswatchingyou_v1

Who’s Watching You Online?
Amy Payne
March 10, 2014 at 5:30 am

In recent years, the world has watched as Twitter and Facebook made political uprisings possible. In countries where dissidents previously had trouble making their voices heard and connecting with one another, these tools changed history.

On the flipside, however, everyone from terrorists to foreign intelligence agencies rushed into the open space online.

“Exploiting social networks for military and intelligence purposes is a global game,” explains Heritage’s E.W. Richardson Fellow, James Jay Carafano. “China, for example, has stepped up its efforts to recruit Americans studying abroad as future ‘sleeper’ agents. The top tools they use to evaluate potential recruits? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and reunion.com.”

Yesterday, Carafano spoke at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) Festival in Austin, Texas. Carafano, author of Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World, joined the technology and ideas conference to speak on the impact of social networking on today’s warfare.

It may come as a surprise to many of us that, for example, not all email spam is harmless. Carafano warns:

Foreign intelligence services also use social media to try to get inside our computers. That malware your officemate downloaded by clicking on the email offering “50 percent off pizza”? It might just as easily have come from a hacker working for the Chinese military as from a Russian cyber-criminal or some punk cyber-dude in California.

And what is the U.S. government doing to protect us?

https://blog.heritage.org/2014/03/10/whos-watching-you-online-cyber-security/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell

Posted on

CIA Took Secret, “Unprecedented Action” Against Senate Intelligence Committee

bigbrother

CIA Took Secret, “Unprecedented Action” Against Senate Intelligence Committee
Nick Gillespie|Mar. 5, 2014 8:08 am

The New York Times is reporting that the CIA took what Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) called “unprecedented action” against the Senate Intelligence Committee in response to an investigation of the spy agency’s actions following the 9/11 attacks.

The [Senate Intelligence] committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation….

The specifics of the inspector general’s investigation are unclear. But several officials interviewed in recent days — all of whom insisted on anonymity, citing a continuing inquiry — said it began after the C.I.A. took what Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, on Tuesday called an “unprecedented action” against the committee.

The action, which Mr. Udall did not describe, took place after C.I.A. officials came to suspect that congressional staff members had gained unauthorized access to agency documents during the course of the Intelligence Committee’s years-long investigation into the detention and interrogation program.

Welcome to the 21st century, which is looking a whole lot like the 20th when it comes to CIA fooling around in places it shouldn’t be. The Times story is short on specifics but includes this gem from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who generally has never met a government incursion against civil liberties she doesn’t like.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/03/05/wtf-cia-took-secret-unprecedented-action

Posted on

Supreme Court Expands Police Power to Seize Your Assets Before Conviction

Supreme_Court_US_2010

Supreme Court Expands Police Power to Seize Your Assets Before Conviction
Damon Root
|Feb. 27, 2014 3:22 pm

It’s been a banner week for law enforcement at the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, in the case of Fernandez v. California, the Court broadened the power of the police to conduct warrantless home searches. But it was a decision handed down on Monday that’s likely to have the greatest impact on our criminal justice system.

At issue in Monday’s ruling in Kaley v. United States is an area of the law known as asset forfeiture. In essence, asset forfeiture is designed to help law enforcement officials seize the ill-gotten fruits of criminal activity, such as cash, cars, or homes. To that end, prosecutors are permitted to freeze the assets of criminal suspects during trial if there is probable cause to believe those assets constitute “proceeds” of the alleged criminal activity. Notice that this freezing occurs before the suspect has been duly convicted.

That timing matters a great deal to the plaintiffs in this case, a married couple by the name of Kaley who have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of selling stolen medical supplies. That may sound like a finding of guilt, but in fact grand jury proceedings are a non-adversarial process where the prosecution alone is permitted to call witnesses and present evidence. The suspects have no opportunity at that point to rebut anything the government alleges against them.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/02/27/supreme-court-expands-police-power-to-se

Posted on

Dinesh D’Souza Speculates on ‘Retribution’: ‘Vindictive’ Obama Sees Critics as Enemies

99456

Dinesh D’Souza Speculates on ‘Retribution’: ‘Vindictive’ Obama Sees Critics as Enemies

by Evan McMurry | 12:46 pm, February 22nd, 2014

Author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souzaspeculated to Megyn Kelly Friday night that FBI’sindictment of him for campaign finance fraud may be Alinsky-style political retribution for his anti-Obama film 2016. Earlier this week, four Senatorssent a letter to FBI Director James Comeydemanding an explanation for what they termed the “selective prosecution” of D’Souza.

“I am a public critic of the president and I do recognize this has made me vulnerable to a form of counterattack,” D’Souza said. He added that Obama, whom he characterized as “vindictive,” had released a video response to 2016 on his website, proving the film had gotten under the president’s skin.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/dinesh-dsouza-speculates-on-retribution-vindictive-obama-sees-critics-as-enemies/

Posted on

Andrea Mitchell Plots Dem Strategy: ‘Many of Us in the Media’ Touted More Spending

2014-02-21-AMR-Chart-1

Andrea Mitchell Plots Dem Strategy: ‘Many of Us in the Media’ Touted More Spending

By Scott Whitlock | February 21, 2014 | 17:55

This was Orwellian. On her MSNBC show, Andrea Mitchell explained the new Democratic spin on our skyrocketing national debt: “for this round of the debt ceiling debate, they had to reframe it so that it wasn’t the Democrats wanting to spend more money.” [?????] Mitchell un-self-consciously continued, “As hard as MANY OF US IN THE MEDIA TRIED to persuade people, this is money that’s already been spent, we’re just paying the bills.”Brent Bozell

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Friday openly plotted strategy with a senior Democratic adviser, complimenting him on successful efforts to convince Americans think that raising the debt ceiling wasn’t “running up the credit card.” [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Mitchell talked to Doug Hattaway, a member of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. She praised, “You were one of the advisors to persuade the Democrats that for this round of the debt ceiling debate they had to re-frame it so that it wasn’t the Democrats wanting to spend more money.” Mitchell unselfconsciously continued, “As hard as many of us in the media tried to persuade people, this is money that’s already been spent, we’re just paying the bills.”

Read more: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2014/02/21/andrea-mitchell-plots-dem-strategy-many-us-media-touted-more-spendin#ixzz2u9u32l

Posted on

Welcome to Fascism 101: The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom

bigbrother

Welcome to Fascism 101: The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom

Why is the agency studying ‘perceived station bias’ and asking about coverage choices?

Feb. 10, 2014 7:26 p.m. ET

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579366903828260732

Posted on

NSA Weighs Retaining Data for Suits

can-you-hear-me-NSA

NSA Weighs Retaining Data for Suits

Rule That Evidence Can’t Be Destroyed Would Lead to Expansion of Controversial Phone Program

WASHINGTON—The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of Americans’ phone records—an unintended consequence of lawsuits seeking to stop the surveillance program, according to officials.

A number of government lawyers involved in lawsuits over the NSA phone-records program believe federal-court rules on preserving evidence related to lawsuits require the agency to stop routinely destroying older phone records, according to people familiar with the discussions. As a result, the government would expand the database beyond its original intent, at least while the lawsuits are active.

No final decision has been made to preserve the data, officials said, and one official said that even if a decision is made to retain the information, it would be held only for the purpose of litigation and not be subject to searches. The government currently collects phone records on millions of Americans in a vast database that it can mine for links to terror suspects. The database includes records of who called whom, when they called and for how long.

https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579393413176249186

Posted on

The United States of Decline

obama-golf_2549316b

The United States of Decline
America unravels at an increasingly dizzying pace.
By Deroy Murdock

America is unraveling at a stunning speed and to a staggering degree. This decline is breathtaking, and the prognosis is dim.

For starters, Obama now rules by decree. Reportedly for the 27th time, he has changed the rules of Obamacare singlehandedly, with neither congressional approval nor even ceremonial resolutions to limit his actions. Obama needs no such frivolities.

“That’s the good thing about being president,” Obama joked on February 10. “I can do whatever I want.” In an especially bitter irony, Obama uttered these despicable words while guiding French president François Hollande through Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson — a key architect of America’s foundation of limited government.

https://www.nationalreview.com/node/371248/print

Posted on

How much phone data does NSA collect?

ColinGordoninThePrisoner

How much phone data does NSA collect?
February 08, 2014, 12:08 pm
By Megan R. Wilson

The National Security Agency collects less than 30 percent of U.S. phone records due to “technical challenges” involved with the influx of cellphone data, according to media reports.

The agency’s phone data collection has dropped significantly since 2006 as it struggles to keep pace with consumers’ shift away from landlines.

It has faced issues in customizing its system to handle the increase of cell data while not sweeping in cell tower and location-based information, which the agency is not legally authorized to obtain. The records include numbers called and call duration.

Eight years ago, the NSA was collecting “almost 100” percent of bulk call data, an anonymous senior U.S. official told the Washington Post Saturday.

While officials told the Post that collection stands at under 30 percent, the Wall Street Journal pegs the telephone metadata collection levels at fewer than 20 percent – spurring questions about the legitimacy of the program.

Read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/197868-how-much-phone-data-does-NSA-collect#ixzz2spm5QccE

Posted on

Tech fears shadow campaign to seize control of Internet

alGore_1515233c

Tech fears shadow campaign to seize control of Internet
By Kate Tummarello

Fearing a power grab for control of the Internet, members of the tech industry are pleading with Congress to pay attention to the domain name expansion that is underway at a little-known nonprofit.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), led by its CEO Fadi Chehade, last year began rolling out thousands of alternatives to the traditional .com ending used by most websites. New endings using the Latin alphabet, such as .clothing and .singles, became available in January, and hundreds of others are on the way.

ICANN says it is focused on making the Internet more broadly available and has prioritized creating domain names in languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic. But critics say the nonprofit betrayed broader ambitions last year when it endorsed a statement calling for the globalization of ICANN and other domain name technical work that is currently managed by the United States.

https://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/197786-tech-fears-shadow-campaign-for-global-control-of-internet

Posted on

Authoritarianism Persists Around the World, But Not Because of an American “Crisis of Confidence”

pp2

Authoritarianism Persists Around the World, But Not Because of an American “Crisis of Confidence”
Jesse Walker|Jan. 24, 2014 11:04 am

Freedom House’s annual report came out this week, and it’s pretty glum. Here’s how the organization’s announcement of its findings begins:

The state of freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2013, according to Freedom in the World 2014, Freedom House’s annual country-by-country report on global political rights and civil liberties.

Particularly notable were developments in Egypt, which endured across-the-board reversals in its democratic institutions following a military coup. There were also serious setbacks to democratic rights in other large, politically influential countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Venezuela, and Indonesia.

The report itself notes that “the overall level of regression was not severe,” with 40 countries getting freer and 54 getting more authoritarian. Freedom House’s list of which countries are “free,” “partly free,” or “not free” hasn’t changed much: The number of countries in the “free” category declined by two, and the numbers in the other categories went up by one apiece. The number of electoral democracies actually increased by four. So while there’s plenty of bad news here, the situation isn’t as dire as that lede suggests.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/01/24/authoritarianism-persists-around-the-wor

Posted on

Federal privacy panel calls on Obama to end NSA phone spying, scrap stockpiled records

Fbigbrother

ederal privacy panel calls on Obama to end NSA phone spying, scrap stockpiled records

Thursday, January 23, 2014    Last updated: Thursday January 23, 2014, 9:20 PM
BY STEPHEN BRAUN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A government review panel warned on Thursday that the National Security Agency’s daily collection of Americans’ phone records is illegal and recommended that President Obama abandon the program and destroy the hundreds of millions of phone records it has already collected.

The recommendations by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board go further than Obama is willing to accept and increase pressure on Congress to make changes.

The 234-page report included dissents from two of the board’s five members — both former Bush administration national security lawyers who recommended that the government keep collecting the phone records. The board described key parts of its report to Obama this month before he announced his plans last week to change the government’s surveillance activities.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/Government_panel_urges_end_to_NSA_phone_data_spying_.html#sthash.UgooIl6O.dpuf