Archive for the ‘The Perfect Storm’ Category

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Canadian resident sentenced to death for writing a computer program

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

These folks need to be taken down….

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Last week, the Iranian Supreme Court confirmedthe death sentence for computer programmer Saeed Malekpour, whose photography program was used without his knowledge, to upload pornography to the internet.

Saeed and his Wife

Saeed and his Wife

Canadian resident Mr Malekpour was arrested while visiting his dying father in Iran during October 2008. He was held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin Prison for a year without charge, according toAmnesty.

He made confessions, which were later televised, to his charges, which according to the EFF include “acting against national security through propaganda” and “production and publication of obscene materials through computer systems”.

However, in a letter sent from the prison in March 2010, Mr Malekpour states, he retracted these confessions, stating they had been given under duress after prolonged interrogation and torture by the “Revolutionary Guards Cyber Counterattack” team. He also wrote that he still not been allowed to visit his lawyer.

A Revolutionary Court sentenced him to death in October 2010 for his alleged confessions but the Supreme Court later overturned the sentence. When referred back to the same Revolutionary Court for reassessment, the death sentence was reinstated.

Last week, the Supreme Court approved this execution.

– More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Politics - The Wrong Way, Religion - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Anonymous Takes Down Monsanto.com

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

– The following is apparently what Anonymous wants to communicate to Monsanto…

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To the free-thinking citizens of the world: Anonymous stands with the farmers and food organizations denouncing the practices of Monsanto We applaud the bravery of the organizations and citizens who are standing up to Monsanto, and we stand united with you against this oppressive corporate abuse. Monsanto is contaminating the world with chemicals and genetically modified food crops for profit while claiming to feed the hungry and protect the environment. Anonymous is everyone, Anyone who can not stand for injustice and decides to do something about it, We are all over the Earth and here to stay.

To Monsanto, we demand you STOP the following:

  • Contaminating the global food chain with GMO’s.
  • Intimidating small farmers with bullying and lawsuits.
  • Propagating the use of destructive pesticides and herbicides across the globe.
  • Using “Terminator Technology”, which renders plants sterile.
  • Attempting to hijack UN climate change negotiations for your own fiscal benefit.
  • Reducing farmland to desert through monoculture and the use of synthetic fertilizers.
  • Inspiring suicides of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers.
  • Causing birth defects by continuing to produce the pesticide “Round-up”
  • Attempting to bribe foriegn officials
  • Infiltrating anti-GMO groups

Monsanto, these crimes will not go unpunished. Anonymous will not spare you nor anyone in support of your oppressive illegal business practices.

AGRA, a great example:
In 2006, AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, was established with funding from Bill Gates and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Among the other founding members of, AGRA, we find: Monsanto, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter and Gamble, Merck, Mosaic, Pfizer, Sumitomo Chemical and Yara. The fact that these corporations are either chemical or pharmaceutical manufacturers is no coincidence.

The people of the world see you, Monsanto. Anonymous sees you.

Seeds of Opportunism, Climate change offers these businesses a perfect excuse to prey on the poorest countries by swooping in to “rescue” the farmers and people with their GMO crops and chemical pesticides. These corporations eradicate the traditional ways of the country’s agriculture for the sake of enormous profits.
The introduction of GMOs drastically affects a local farmers income, as the price of chemicals required for GMOs and seeds from Monsanto cripples the farmer’s meager profit margins.

There are even many cases of Monsanto suing small farmers after pollen from their GMO crops accidentally cross with the farmer’s crops. Because Monsanto has a patent on theri brand of seed, they claim the farmer is in violation of patent laws.

These disgusting and inhumane practices will not be tolerated.

Anonymous urges all concerned citizens to stand up for these farmers, stand up for the future of your own food. Protest, organize, spread info to your friends!

SAY NO TO POISONOUS CHEMICALS IN YOUR FOOD!

SAY NO TO GMO!
SAY NO TO MONSANTO!

We are Anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us

– To the original… ➡

 

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Human Rights, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Supreme Court Shoots Down Warrantless GPS Tracking

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court might have delivered a big blow Monday to GPS surveillancetechniques used by law enforcement.

In effect, the justices ruled that long-term surveillance of a vehicle by attaching a GPS device without an extended warrant is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In three separate opinions, the nine justices confirmed that law enforcement’s placement in 2004 of a GPS tracking device on the vehicle of accused drug trafficker Antoine Jones’ vehicle for a period of 28 days constituted a “search,” as defined by previous case law concerning the Fourth Amendment.

The justices differed, however, on the particulars of how the GPS technology was utilized.

A joint FBI-police team in Washington, D.C., had a warrant, but it was only authorized for use within a 10-day period and only in the District of Columbia. Officers waited until the 11th day to attach the GPS device and did so in Maryland, outside of the warrant’s jurisdiction.

Writing for a five-justice majority, Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, believed that further justification was needed before using a GPS device in the situation.

– More… ➡

 

Posted in CounterCurrents, Human Rights, Technical | No Comments »

Cameras May Open Up the Board Room to Hackers

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

One afternoon this month, a hacker took a tour of a dozen conference rooms around the globe via equipment that most every company has in those rooms; videoconferencing equipment.

With the move of a mouse, he steered a camera around each room, occasionally zooming in with such precision that he could discern grooves in the wood and paint flecks on the wall. In one room, he zoomed out through a window, across a parking lot and into shrubbery some 50 yards away where a small animal could be seen burrowing underneath a bush. With such equipment, the hacker could have easily eavesdropped on privileged attorney-client conversations or read trade secrets on a report lying on the conference room table.

In this case, the hacker was HD Moore, a chief security officer at Rapid7, a Boston based company that looks for security holes in computer systems that are used in devices like toaster ovens and Mars landing equipment. His latest find: videoconferencing equipment is often left vulnerable to hackers.

Businesses collectively spend billions of dollars each year beefing up security on their computer systems and employee laptops. They agonize over the confidential information that employees send to their Gmail and Dropbox accounts and store on their iPads and smartphones. But rarely do they give much thought to the ease with which anyone can penetrate a videoconference room where their most guarded trade secrets are openly discussed.

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to Gerry B.

Posted in CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Tech-Hardware, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

– From John Turley in the Washington Post.   I hope the folks in Washington, D.C. are reading this stuff.

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Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

– Click here:  ➡  to read on and see the list of the ten things we’ve lost.   It’s scary.

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

The Wealth Gap – Inequality in Numbers

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Until protesters took to the streets last year, first in New York and then in financial centres across the world, inequality had been a low-key issue.

Not any more.

With the political temperature rising, a stream of new analysis is revealing how sharply inequality has been growing.

In October, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) caused a storm by revealing how big a slice of income gains since the late 1970s had gone to the richest 1% of households.

The message was dramatic.

Over the 28 years covered by the CBO study, US incomes had increased overall by 62%, allowing for tax and inflation.

But the lowest paid fifth of Americans had got only a small share of that: their incomes had grown by a modest 18%.

Middle income households were also well below the overall average with gains of just 37%.

And even the majority of America’s richest households saw gains of barely above the overall average at 67%.

How does that make sense?

Because the CBO found most of the income gains over the past 30 years had gone to the top 1% of US households. Their incomes had almost trebled with rises of 275%.

– More… ➡

 

Posted in CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity | No Comments »

Paybacks are hell: Parental spying prompts infiltration of German police system

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Der Spiegel published a story in yesterday’s edition of their magazine that the hack on the German police surveillance system “Patras” was prompted by a senior officer spying on his daughter’s internet activities.

The Patras system is used by the police to track suspects using so-called “silent” SMSs and GPS tracking devices planted on automobiles.

It appears that a senior policeman from Frankfurt am Main installed spyware onto his daughter’s computer to keep an eye on her online activities.

It is unclear whether this is legal under German law. It is also unknown whether he used the famous Bundestrojaner or some sort of commercial off-the-shelf spyware.

One of his daughters friends then discovered the spyware on her computer and decided that was justification enough to hack into her father’s computer.

Upon invading her dad’s system he found a selection of sensitive security related emails that enabled access to the Patras system. Two German hackers from a group called n0n4m3 cr3w (noname crew) were arrested after the system was breached in July of 2011.

According to Der Spiegel the policeman had redirected his work emails to his home computer. I expect that this is against the rules and is almost always a bad idea.

The worst part is that such a sensitive network used to covertly track people was accessible without any sort of two-factor authentication.

You would hope that intercepting a few sensitive emails would not provide enough information to allow a VPN connection or access critical infrastructure with such ease.

It is not clear whether this incident is the one that resulted in the successful attack against Patras last summer, or whether they were in fact breached twice.

It is one thing to accept the need of law enforcement to track suspects after receiving the approval of a judge, but it is becoming clear that access to these systems is too easy. It almost invites abuse and could result in criminal cases being compromised.

With great power comes great responsibility, and hopefully the German police have implemented more strict access controls and other authorities with similar power have heard this story and will look into their own security.

– To the original… ➡

 

Posted in CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Tech-Software, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Smart Phone Makers Gave India Spy Tools, “Leaked” Memos Say

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

People doubt the deep evil inherent in unbridled Capitalism.   But consider this story.   They are selling our inherent rights to personal privacy in exchange for access to markets for their own, and their shareholder’s, profit.

dennis

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Purported Indian intelligence memos also state that the backdoors provided by Apple, Nokia and RIM allowed India to spy on U.S. government officials

Apple, Nokia and Research In Motion (RIM) gave Indian intelligence agencies secret access to encrypted smartphone communications as the price of doing business in the country, according to what appear to be leaked Indian government documents.

The purported documents, if they are real, indicate that the smartphone giants gave India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Indian military intelligence “backdoor” tools that would let the Indian agencies read encrypted emails sent to and from RIM’s BlackBerrys, Apple’s iPhones and Nokia smartphones.

“Military Intelligence and the CBI have been conducting bilateral cellular and Internetsurveillance operations since April 2011,” reads a document allegedly from the Directorate General of Military Intelligence and publicly posted online.

The memos refer to an agreement between India’s Ministry of Defense and RIM, Nokia and Apple, that considers data interception and surveillance part of the “general framework” allowing the smartphone makers to sell their devices in India.

A “decision was made earlier this year to sign an agreement with mobile manufacturers (MM) in exchange for the Indian market presence,” the military intelligence document reads.

– More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Human Rights, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Doomsday Clock Moved 1 Minute Closer to Midnight

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

The Fukushima nuclear disaster and interest in nuclear power from Turkey, Indonesia and the UAE raised scientists’ concern about the threat of humanity’s destruction

In a sign of pessimism about humanity’s future, scientists today set the hands of the infamous “Doomsday Clock” forward one minute from two years ago.

“It is now five minutes to midnight,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) director Kennette Benedict announced today (Jan. 10) at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

That represents a symbolic step closer to doomsday, a change from the clock’s previous mark of six minutes to midnight, set in January 2010.

The clock is a symbol of the threat ofhumanity’s imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock’s time, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focused on the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, disastrous events such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and biosecurity issues such as the creation of an airborne H5N1 flu strain.

The Doomsday Clock came into being in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. That year, the Bulletin set the time at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing humanity’s destruction. By 1949, it was at three minutes to midnight as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated. In 1953, after the first test of the hydrogen bomb, the doomsday clock ticked to two minutes until midnight.

The Bulletin — and the clock ­— were at their most optimistic in 1991, when the Cold War thawed and the United States and Russia began cutting their arsenals. That year, the Bulletin set the clock at 17 minutes to midnight.

From then until 2010, however, it was a gradual creep back toward destruction, as hopes of total nuclear disarmament vanished and threats of nuclear terrorism and climate change reared their heads. In 2010, the Bulletin found some hope in arms reduction treaties and international climate talks and nudged the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock back to six minutes from midnight from its previous post at five to midnight.

With today’s decision, the Bulletin repudiated that optimism. The panel considers a mix of long-term trends and immediate events in the decision-making process, said Benedict. Trends might include factors like improved solar energy technology to combat climate change, she said, while political events such as the recent United Nations climate meeting in Durban play a role as well. This year, the Fukushima nuclear disaster made a big impression.

“We’re trying to weight whether that was a wake-up call, whether it will make people take a closer look at this new and very powerful technology, or whether people will go on with business as usual,” Benedict told LiveScience on Monday in an interview before the announcement of the “doomsday time” decision. [Top 10 Alternative Energy Bets]

Other factors that played into the decision included the growing interest in nuclear power from countries such as Turkey, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, Benedict said.

The Bulletin panel found that despite hopes of global agreements about nuclear weapons, nuclear power and climate change in 2010, little progress has been made.

– more… ➡

 

Posted in CrashBlogging, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Saudi woman driver to be whipped

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

A Saudi woman was sentenced yesterday to be lashed 10 times with a whip for defying the kingdom’s ban on female drivers, the first time a legal punishment has been handed down for a violation of the longtime ban in the ultraconservative Muslim nation.

Normally, police just stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again.

But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo.

Making the sentence all the more upsetting to activists is that it came just two days after King Abdullah promised to protect women’s rights and decreed that women would be allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015.

Abdullah also promised to appoint women to a currently all-male advisory body known as the Shura Council.

The mixed signals highlight the challenges for Abdullah, known as a reformer, in pushing gently for change without antagonising the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population.

Abdullah said he had the backing of the official clerical council. But activists saw yesterday’s sentencing as a retaliation of sorts from the hardline Saudi religious establishment that controls the courts and oversees the intrusive religious police.

“Our King doesn’t deserve that,” said Sohila Zein el-Abydeen, a prominent female member of the governmental National Society for Human Rights. She burst into tears and said: “The verdict is shocking to me, but we were expecting this kind of reaction.”

The driver, Shaima Jastaina, in her 30s, was found guilty of driving without permission, activist Samar Badawi said. The punishment is usually carried out within a month. It was not possible to reach Jastaina, but Badawi said she had appealed against the verdict.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women – both Saudi and foreign – from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the US$300 ($382) to US$400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them around.

There are no written laws that restrict women from driving. Rather, the ban is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins.

Activists say the religious justification is irrelevant.

“How come women get flogged for driving while the maximum penalty for a traffic violation is a fine, not lashes?” Zein el-Abydeen said.

– More… ➡

 

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, Religion - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm, Women's Rights | No Comments »

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