Keyword: stasi
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President Obama's plan to "internationalize" the Internet may be unconstitutional, key members of Congress are claiming. The group of lawmakers sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office last week, saying the plan to relinquish oversight of Internet domain name functions to a global, multi-stakeholder body raised questions about the administration's "authority to transfer possession and control of critical components of the Internet's infrastructure to a third party."
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Ever since Windows 10 launched back in July, one topic of conversation has overshadowed everything the new operating system does right: privacy concerns. Everyone with a Windows device is (rightfully) terrified that Microsoft is monitoring everything they do, so on Monday, Microsoft decided to finally issue an official response in order to clear the air. In a blog post on Windows.com, Microsoft executive VP Terry Myerson has taken the first step to earning back the trust of the individuals who are concerned about their privacy in regards to Windows 10. He noted that the data Microsoft collects “is encrypted in...
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Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the “psychological status” of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies. The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can “deliver an automated...
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Facebook temporarily banned users from posting reports by an immigration watchdog analyzing federal statistics that show immigrants in general, and illegal immigrants specifically, are taking a big share of new jobs that come open in America, according to the group producing the reports. The giant website cited an "error" causing the ban and apologized. The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank relied upon by immigration critics, said Monday that the posting of four recent reports on jobs and immigration had been barred by Facebook. . .
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said a controversial new surveillance bill could sweep away “important privacy protections”, a move that bodes ill for the measure’s return to the floor of the Senate this week. The latest in a series of failed attempts to reform cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) grants broad latitude to tech companies, data brokers and anyone with a web-based data collection to mine user information and then share it with “appropriate Federal entities”, which themselves then have permission to share it throughout the government. Minnesota senator Al Franken queried the DHS in...
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WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency's tea party scandal had been lost, according to government investigators. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence. As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were erased, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The revelation is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. George...
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Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of Privacy Defense In Depth Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.It looked like just another bug report. "When I start Chromium, it downloads something."...
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Fifty years after the birth of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, officials across the UC system are encouraging faculty and students to purge mundane, potentially offensive words and phrases from their vocabularies. Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police. Requests for...
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A civil war is raging within the Republican Party, pitting House leaders against conservatives. And “fed up” conservatives have now decided to fight back in public. A congressional aide tells WND a group of House conservatives will discuss this week how to proceed, but a few of them have already decided to speak up publicly. One tactic conservatives might employ would be voting with Democrats on procedural motions to derail legislation favored by leadership. Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network. The behind-the-scenes battle broke into open view on...
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A House subcommittee approved a bill Wednesday that would require the Obama administration to give Congress 30 days to review any final plan before handing off oversight of the back end of the Internet. A bipartisan compromise in the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology was reached after Democrats objected to a earlier version that barred the transition until the Government Accountability Office weighted in on the pros and cons of the final plan. Ranking Democrat Anna Eshoo (Calif.) said the revised bill "ensures there is a mechanism in place for public review before the transition is completed."...
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I recently had the pleasure of interviewing liberal Kirsten Powers for C-SPAN about her new book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, which takes on what she calls the “illiberal left” for using bullying, intimidation and political correctness to silence opinions that differ with their own. Really, she is criticizing the unAmerican and unconstitutional trend–whether by liberals or conservatives–to censor all opinions with which they disagree. She has amazing stories of the happenings on college campuses with kids being given “trigger” warnings on books and articles that might offend their sensitivities or give them PTSD by evoking...
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Commonly used and unregulated internet discussions and videos about guns and ammo could be closed down under rules proposed by the State Department, amounting to a "gag order on firearm-related speech," the National Rifle Association is warning. In updating regulations governing international arms sales, State is demanding that anyone who puts technical details about arms and ammo on the web first get the OK from the federal government — or face a fine of up to $1 million and 20 years in jail.According to the NRA, that would include blogs and web forums discussing technical details of common guns and...
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It's not a major news story...yet. But trust me, the Democrats and the Federal Communications Commission that they control are ready to guarantee a defeat for Republicans in close U.S. Senate races in 2016 and in the battle for the White House. This is not columnist hype. It's the real thing, and it's moving like a freight train. We all know that people hate getting those automated phone calls from politicians, creditors and vacation time-share hucksters. And rightly so. The FCC, headed by Tom Wheeler, has known that for years. But it seems they waited until now to act. After...
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The Department of Justice is concentrating on “far-right” groups in a new study of social media usage aimed at combatting violent extremism. The Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) awarded Michigan State University $585,719 for the study, which was praised by Eric Holder, the former attorney general, earlier this year. “There is currently limited knowledge of the role of technology and computer mediated communications (CMCs), such as Facebook and Twitter, in the dissemination of messages that promote extremist agendas and radicalize individuals to violence,” according to the NIJ grant. “The proposed study will address this gap through a series...
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Ugh, not this idiocy again (my bold below): A House Democrat has introduced legislation that would require sellers to obtain a background check for all guns sold at gun shows. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday reintroduced the Gun Show Loophole Closing Act, a bill long championed by former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.),. The bill would subject anyone selling or transferring a gun to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and require that transfers be reported to the attorney general.
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Complete Headline: Kerry: Internet 'Needs Rules to Be Able to Flourish and Work Properly' - Calls for more international Internet laws. In a speech today in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Internet "needs rules to be able to flourish and work properly." This, according to Kerry, is necessary even for "a technology founded on freedom." Speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, Kerry said that Internet policy is "a key component of our foreign policy." Kerry made his remarks in the context of talking about how international law is applicable to the Internet.
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The mask is off. No more pretending. The dictator is displeased and things have to change. President Straw Man: I think that the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction. And look, it’s still being propagated. I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant venue. They will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re all like, “I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obama Phone, or whatever.”...
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For going on seven years we have learned three things about President Obama: 1) He loves the poor so much he continues to create more of them. 2) He loves the poor so much he does everything in his power to keep them poor. 3) He doesn’t see the opposition as loyal, but as bad players — his enemy. This is especially true of Fox News, which Obama ripped as anti-poor bigots during a Wednesday afternoon summit on poverty.
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The year is 2023, and President Ted Cruz is ending the second of his contentious terms in the Oval Office. While his policies have been controversial — for example, undoing major social legislation (Obamacare) without a single Democratic vote — his administration’s continual expressions of hostility toward dissent have finally proved intolerable to millions of Americans. Liberal grievances date back to 2017, the first year of Cruz’s administration, when his Department of Homeland Security issued a report declaring that fears about economic stagnation and inequality combined with liberal hatred of a conservative Latino could foster left-wing extremism. Specifically, failure to...
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Looks like Pamela Geller will get her wish: More dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims. Hell, the hatemonger finally even got ISIS to pay attention to her. Last week Geller — whose repulsive anti-Muslim ad campaign caused the MTA to ban all religious, opinion and political ads — held a $10,000 contest in Texas. The aim? To draw caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which she knows is forbidden by most Muslims and frowned upon by the rest. The result? Two violent radical Muslims opened fire on the group, and the shooters ended up dead at the hands of...
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