Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Kafkaesque and Orwellian are Inadequate Words to Describe This

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The CIA is arguing for an extension and broadening of The Intelligence Identities Protection Act because they need to conceal their role in torture and other crimes against humanity.

I’m serious about this. The state security apparatus is actually using their role in torture to call for greater legal jeopardy for reporting the misdeeds of the state security apparatus:

The C.I.A. is quietly pushing Congress to significantly expand the scope of a law that makes it a crime to disclose the identities of undercover intelligence agents, raising alarms among advocates of press freedoms.

The agency has proposed extending a 1982 law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to identify covert officers who have served abroad in the past five years. Under the C.I.A.’s plan, the law would instead apply perpetually to people whose relationships with the intelligence community are classified — even if they live and operate exclusively on domestic soil.

………

The C.I.A.’s proposal “seriously expands the felony criminal penalties that could be used against journalists, against whistle-blowers and against public-interest organizations,” said Emily Manna, a policy analyst for Open the Government, a group promoting accountability. “It opens the door to a ton of abuses and secrecy to a much greater extent,” she said.

The proposal would also outlaw the identification of American citizens who serve as classified agents or informants for intelligence agencies, or otherwise help them. Currently, the identities law covers only classified informants who reside and act abroad.

The push was aimed at protecting clandestine officers, said Timothy Barrett, the C.I.A. press secretary. In the past five years, he said, “hundreds of covert officers have had their identity and covert affiliation disclosed without authorization,” and under current law, the identities of officers who are based on domestic soil but travel frequently overseas are not protected.

………

The C.I.A. also argued that lawmakers’ original rationale for only protecting agents abroad — that they faced special physical danger — was “no longer valid” because “organizations such as WikiLeaks” are willing to go to great lengths to publish government secrets, and because of the fallout from revelations about the C.I.A.’s defunct torture program, according to a copy of the agency’s written justification for the proposal obtained by The New York Times.

Still, critics said that the agency’s proposed language is too broad, covering people who have not been in harm’s way abroad for years.

The proposal also comes at a time when defense lawyers at the military commissions system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are trying to identify eyewitnesses from the C.I.A. black sites whom they could potentially call to testify about their clients’ treatment, including in the case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other detainees accused of aiding the Sept. 11 attacks.

Last month, when the Senate Intelligence Committee unveiled its annual intelligence bill, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, flagged his concern that the C.I.A. provision would allow the protections for undercover identities to apply indefinitely.

“I am not yet convinced this expansion is necessary and am concerned that it will be employed to avoid accountability,” he wrote.

The C.I.A.’s push comes against the backdrop of a sharp increase in the prosecution of current and former officials accused of providing government secrets to the news media in recent years. It also comes against the unprecedented Justice Department decision in May to expand the criminal case against the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, to include Espionage Act charges for soliciting, obtaining and publishing classified information — including files that identified people in dangerous countries who had helped Americans.

Congress enacted the identities law after Richard S. Welch, the C.I.A.’s station chief in Athens, was murdered in 1975 and Philip Agee, a former C.I.A. officer who had grown to oppose American foreign policy, revealed numerous covert officers’ identities.

The identities law supplemented the Espionage Act, which more broadly makes it a crime to disclose potentially harmful defense-related information to someone not authorized to receive it. The identities act is narrower but easier to use in some respects: Prosecutors need only prove that the disclosed identity met the definition for “covert.”

Prosecutors have only rarely used the law, but they won a conviction under it in a 1985 case involving a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana and in the 2012 case of John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to telling a reporter the name of a covert officer involved in the agency’s interrogations.

Another part of the identities law, which prosecutors have not used, might apply to journalists under some circumstances. It covers outsiders who do not have authorized access to classified information but learn about and disclose covert identities anyway, “in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents.”

………

In a House committee report accompanying the 1982 bill, lawmakers stressed that they intended to limit its coverage to clandestine agents abroad, or agents who may be “temporarily in the United States for rest, training, or reassignment” before returning abroad, because they face special dangers.

The 1982 report also said that the public should be able to discuss intelligence informants living in the United States, saying they “may be employees of colleges, churches, the media, or political organizations. The degree of involvement of these groups with intelligence agencies is a legitimate subject of national debate.”

(emphasis mine)

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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The headline in American Conservative, :Americans Shocked to Find their Rights Literally Vanish at U.S. Airports,” pretty much says it all.

The article is about how the Department of Homeland Security, CBP, and ICE have asserted that they have the right to search your digital devices without a warrant, probable cause, or access to an attorney.

I seriously need to consider an app that allows people to encrypt their devices and put the decryption key in escrow with your attorney.

It’s a Start

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Maryland just passed a law requiring that the state pension fund publicly report all fees charged to it by Wall Street.

While this is not my preferred solution, I would prefer the Banksters be kicked out of public pensions completely, but I think that this is a step to that path:

A new Maryland law requires greater transparency in disclosing millions of dollars in fees paid by the state’s pension system to Wall Street investment firms.

 The Maryland State Retirement and Pension System has reported paying about $370 million annually in fees to the firms that invest its $51 billion in assets.

 But the real amount of fees paid is anywhere from $460 million to $570 million. That’s because so-called “carried interest fees” — a cut of the Maryland fund’s profits that goes to the outside investment managers — have not been not disclosed publicly.

 That’s about to change.

 ………
 At one point, the legislation sought to cap the amount of fees the firms could charge the pension system, but it was amended to become a bill requiring greater disclosure. Both chambers of the General Assembly passed the revised bipartisan legislation unanimously and Republican Gov. Larry Hogan signed it into law.

 The pension system now must publicly disclose the amount it pays in carried interest fees by the end of each calendar year. The first report, due Dec. 31, will include the fees from fiscal years 2015 through 2019.

It’s a start.

Monetizing the Public Commons

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If you look at Uber, or Lyft, or Airbnb,* onc cannot help but wonder if the source of these organizations business prospects is an attempt to make money from taking something of value from the rest of us.

For Uber and Lyft, it is increased congestion in cities, along with not paying drivers a living wage, while with Airbnb, it is skyrocketing rents as non-resident investors bid up the prices of homes.

The same is true of scooters, which The Independent properly describes as a plague.

With all of them, you have private entities making sidewalks less usable because of the people using the sidewalks, and for dockless scooters, you further have them strewn randomly around sidewalks, creating a falling hazard and blocking access for the disabled.

This is not high tech entrepreneurship, this is tech bros with more venture capital money than ethics taking the public pathways that we already paid for from us.

The technical term for this is, “Negative Externalities,” but I will call it a theft of the commons:

In cities all over Europe, in every cafe, people are talking about the same thing. No, not Brexit: it’s those damn electric scooters.

The plague started last year and has spread like wildfire: Brussels to Lisbon, Paris to Wroclaw. Silicon Valley start-ups showed up one day with vans full of them – an oversized, motorised version of the children’s toy everyone knows. They dumped them on pavements; you can find and rent them with a smartphone app and ride them around town.

If this sounds pretty cool, it actually isn’t. On the surface they look like a futuristic, green transport solution: but the problems have quickly become obvious everywhere they spring up.

They need little advertising because people start literally tripping over them as soon as they appear. The scooters, which are surprisingly large and heavy, litter public places by design, blocking pavements and making life particularly difficult for people with reduced mobility. In most larger cities there are also something like six competing systems – blocking about six times as much pavement as necessary. Their loud alarms, triggered by drunk people trying to ride them without paying, are a familiar drone in the early hours of the morning. And a string of deaths of people riding them – and collisions with people who were just walking along minding their own business – have spurred city authorities into action. It’s the free market at its best.

Britain, almost alone, has managed to stay mostly scooter free: saved by its strict road regulations. One law dating from 1853 bans the riding of a “carriage of any description” on the pavement – while licensing rules mean that they would have to be insured and number plated to be ridden on the roads. Thus the dockless schemes are de facto banned. The UK has got this absolutely spot on: they are neither appropriate to ride on the pavement, nor any different from any other motorised vehicle.

………

Could they be tamed and become a useful part of cities’ transport mix? A docking scheme – similar to the one used by Boris Bikes – would solve the biggest issue: the blocking of pavements. But of course, the tech firms pushing them haven’t bothered with that – they would have to apply for planning permission, and buying land in prime city centres would probably render the whole thing unprofitable. Better just to fly-tip their product wherever they fancy: I have seen it in Brussels, at 3am: men silently unloading scooters out of an unmarked van and leaving them on the pavement, like a reverse burglary.

There’s also no reason in principle why individuals couldn’t simply buy and own an electric scooter like they own a bike or car. Most of the problems come from the dockless rental system which encourages user to leave them strewn around the place.

Also, why, when you can get a ticket for riding a bicycle without a helmet, are the helmet laws not being enforced.

With docked scooters, at least, there is a requirement that the businesses pay for their own storage infrastructure, as opposed to obstructing the sidewalks, but, of course, that won’t attract the VC bucks.

*Full disclosure, I use Airbnb.

In the Annals of Unserious Aircraft Carrier Design………

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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

The Nevskoye Design Bureau has revealed a design for a nuclear powered Russian supercarrier, but it is seriously weird:

The Nevskoye Design Bureau (part of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation) unveiled the newest Project 11430E ‘Lamantin’ nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Its mockup was shown on the design bureau’s display stand at the St. Petersburg international maritime defense show.

………

According to the materials presented on the Nevskoye Design Bureau’s display stand, the aircraft carrier that will get a nuclear-powered propulsion unit will displace 80,000-90,000 tonnes, feature a maximum length of 350 meters, have sea endurance of about 120 days and will be capable of developing a speed of about 30 knots. The aircraft carrier will have a crew of 2,800 and its air task force will comprise 800 personnel. The carrier will have a service life of over 50 years.

All I have to work from is the picture, but this is not a half baked design.

First, and most tellingly, is the inclusion of both catapults and a ramp.

It makes no sense, once you have accommodations for the first catapult, the impact on the design, and the cost, for subsequent catapults is far less.

What’s more, ramp launched aircraft can carry less fuel and weapons.

The second oddity is what appears to be a sonar installation in the bow of the model (the white spot on the bulbous bow), which is rarely (if ever) put on an aircraft carrier, if just because when launching and recovering aircraft it will be operating at very high speeds, which means that ambient noise would obscure any information from the system.

Finally, the island appears to be designed with little regard for managing deck operations,.

The last two items are admittedly minor nitpicks, and would probably be modified in a back and forth between design bureau and customer, but the ramp and the cat is just weird.

Linkage

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Have some Llamas with Hats:

Is This Like a Money Market Fund Breaking the Buck

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A major equity fund in the UK has suspended redemptions, meaning that investors cannot access their funds, which are normally supposed to be available within 24 hours.

This sounds a lot like what happened to institutional money market funds during the financial crash in 2008, when you could not redeem from funds that were supposed to be a safe as cash:

There’s still no sign of relief for the hundreds of thousands of investors whose money is trapped in one of the UK’s biggest equity funds, the Woodford Equity Income Fund. The fund is supposed to offer its shareholders daily liquidity, meaning they can take part or all of their money out any day of the week. But that was before a slow-motion (but accelerating) run on the fund forced its manager, hedge-fund legend Neil Woodford, into taking the last-gasp decision, on June 3, to place a ban on redemptions. Since then, investors have been unable to access their money. And it’s not clear how much longer this could go on.

The problems at Woodford have raised serious questions about just how liquid other equity funds in the UK may be. In the past few days, UK’s biggest broker, Hargreaves Lansdown announced that it plans to remove the Lindsell Train UK Equity Fund, the largest managed UK shares fund, and the Lindsell Train Global Equity Fund, from its Wealth 50 Best List due to liquidity concerns, which prompted shares in Lindsell Train Investment Trust to tumble 22% on Friday.

………

The Woodford Equity Income fund has performed terribly for the past two years. Bad bets were made, often on unlisted assets, resulting in big losses, which in turn triggered a cascade of redemptions as the sharpest investors began yanking out their money. The total amount under management at Woodford has steadily shrunk by almost two thirds since 2015, from £10.2 billion to £3.7 billion.

At the very least, Woodford’s investors will have to hang on for another three agonizing weeks, when the decision to gate the fund is scheduled to be revisited. When the last 28-day review period came up, around a week ago, Woodford told the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority that the fund was still not ready to reopen its doors.

………

Most of Woodford’s liquid assets are already gone having been sold off when the giant flood of redemptions began. By this spring, only three of the fund’s 105 holdings were FTSE 100 companies, and only 26 paid out dividends, which is highly unusual for a fund that is supposed to be almost exclusively devoted to equity-income.

In recent weeks Woodford has reduced his holdings in Raven Property and Horizon Discovery, two long-term investments, as well as other listed companies, including BCA Marketplace, New River Reit and Oakley Capital Investments. But most of the remaining assets are highly illiquid, which means selling them will be a lot more difficult, unless at a very heavy discount.

By EU law, equity funds like Woodford’s are allowed to hold a maximum of 10% of their portfolio in transferable securities that are not dealt in an “eligible market” such as the FTSE 250. To get around this rule, Woodford reportedly bundled up his fund’s illiquid unlisted assets and listed them on the minuscule Guernsey-headquartered International Stock Exchange, which despite its impressive-sounding name has barely any trading activity at all.

This was enough to lend his most illiquid assets the appearance, albeit flimsy, of liquidity. The move was within the letter — though not the spirit — of the law, according to the FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey. Mr Bailey told the Commons Treasury select committee that Woodford Equity Income fund was “sailing close to the wind,” adding that “listing something on an exchange where trading does not actually happen, as far as I can see, does not actually count as liquidity.”


So, they engaged in dodgy bookkeeping combined with a run on the fund.

Yet another dodgy player at the big casino.

They have learned nothing.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Well, I Guess That We Can All Clap Ironically

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Seriously, the Trump administration isn’t even trying to create the flimsiest facade of ethics.

Case in point, Bob Bill Barr, who is refusing to recuse himself from the Jeffrey Epstein case, despite the fact that his father hired Epstein at one point, and Barr’s law firm once had him as a client, and defended him from the same charges.

Seeing as how Trump was a close associate of Epstein, we know where THIS is going.

Absolutely shameless:

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr does not plan to recuse himself from the current investigation into multi-millionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to sources who spoke to CNN and Fox News.

A Department of Justice official told CNN on Tuesday that “Bill Barr has consulted with career ethics officials at DOJ and he will not recuse from current Epstein case.”

Barr, however, has recused himself “from any review of the earlier case in Florida,” in which Epstein received a controversial plea deal.

………

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Barr’s decision not to recuse himself from the current case was “trouble.”

“I have zero confidence Barr will let this case play out in its natural course if it should start to implicate or do collateral damage to powerful, politically-connected people,” he tweeted.

Un-dirty-word-believable.

Eat the Rich

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Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was just arrested for trafficking in minors, as in raping underage teens.

He’s already done times for this, where his high-power lawyers got him off with a slap on the wrist.

As a result of a series of Miami Herald exposes about how prosecutors cut him a sweetheart deal, he was rearrested as he stepped off of his private jet, named (I sh%$ you not) the Lolita Express, at Teterboro, NJ.

The FBI executed a search warrant, and they found sexually explicit videos of underage girls on disks found in a safe in his home:

A trove of lewd photographs of girls, discovered in a safe inside the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion the same day he was arrested, is deepening questions about why federal prosecutors in Miami had cut a deal that shielded him from federal prosecution in 2008.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Mr. Epstein on Monday with sex trafficking, dealing an implicit rebuke to that plea agreement, which was overseen by Alexander Acosta, then the United States attorney in Miami and now President Trump’s labor secretary.

The indictment in Manhattan could prompt a moment of reckoning for the Justice Department, which for years has wrestled with accusations that it mishandled the earlier case and has faced a barrage of litigation from Mr. Epstein’s accusers. In February, the Justice Department opened its own internal review into the matter.

………

Mr. Epstein, a hedge fund manager, avoided the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence, largely because of a secret agreement his lawyers struck with federal prosecutors in 2008. His social circle is filled with the rich and famous, including former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew of Britain.

Yeah, also this guy hung out with Epstein:

Epstein is the guy with the gray hair 3rd from the left.

The guy on the left is (of course) Donald John Trump.

Mr. Clinton’s office said in a statement on Monday that he knows nothing about “the terrible crimes” connected to Mr. Epstein.

In 2002, Mr. Trump described Mr. Epstein as “a terrific guy,” telling New York Magazine, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Clinton knew, and Trump Knew, and so did everyone else in his circle, and they looked the other way, because he was one of them.

Our so-called elites are rotten to the core.

Several of Mr. Epstein’s accusers said they were relieved that authorities seemed to be taking their complaints seriously after many years.

Yeah, it only took 10 years, and a dogged reporter, Julie Brown, for his victims to have their day in court.

I really hope that the prosecutors, including Trump’s current Secretary of Labor, get keel hauled over this.

Mixed Emotions

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I am heartened that some of the regime change mousketeers are finally turning their eyes toward the House of Saud, and seeing it, and particular its young scion Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as a threat to peace and stability.

On the other hand, I am terrifed that they are comparing him to Saddam Hussein, because this implies an eventual invasion, and invading Saudi Arabia, which would involve the “Infidel” in Medina and Mecca, would create a clusterf%$# that would make our little adventure in Iraq look like a game of Parcheesi.

We need to stop our incompetent meddling.

Remind Me, Is Checker Motors Still a Going Concern?

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This does not look futuristic

Well, it appears that Elon Musk has finally come up with a sustainable business model for Tesla.

Unfortunately for him, his business model is to sell only commercial self driving cars for hundreds of thousands of dollars, because self driving is such a value enhancer, because you can rent out your car as a hack while you are not driving.

Checker Motors made a dedicated taxi and failed almost 40 years ago, and while the car was specifically made to the needs of the taxi industry, it could not compete with the volume advantages of major car manufacturers.

Seriously, the idea that Tesla self-driving, which I expect to remain a decade away into the 2030s, is not going to be an exclusive feature of Tesla Motors, and (if cost trends continue) the marginal cost of the system will be under $10,000.

But still, Elon Musk has declared that it won’t sell private automobiles once its “Autopilot” is ready for unsupervised road use.

This dude is one lab accident, and one platypus, away from becoming Heinz Doofenschmirtz:

The company believes its vehicles will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over their useful lifetime.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has warned that the company’s car pricing will potentially multiply after the company launches its ride-hailing service.

The executive recently claimed Tesla’s vehicles will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over their useful life when operated as part of a fully autonomous robotaxi fleet. The presentation did not answer the obvious question at the time: why would Tesla sell any cars to consumers if they become worth so much more for a taxi service?

Musk yesterday confirmed the likely price increase when asked on Twitter if consumers have limited time left to buy a Tesla car before prices “go up severalfold to balance supply and demand” once the company solves full self-driving.

“To be clear, consumers will still be able to buy a Tesla, but the clearing price will rise significantly, as a fully autonomous car that can function as a robotaxi is several times more valuable than a non-autonomous car,” he added in a later post.

Seriously:  This business model is delusional.

Unlike Oracle, or Peoplesoft, or SAP, any car can operate on any road.

There is no vendor lock-in.

I am not surprised that Elon Musk became rich through regulatory arbitrage and luck, but I am puzzled as to why people see him as a visionary, as opposed to a purveyor of Silicon snake oil.

How Can they Both Lose?

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The Retail Industry Leaders Association, a front for Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, has offered to help the Federal Trade Commission go after Amazon and Google.

I love it when evil goes up against evil, because it’s a win-win for the rest of us:

A leading U.S. retail group, whose members include Walmart, Target, Best Buy and others, has penned a letter to the Federal Trade Commission that details its concerns over big tech companies’ dominance. The letter specifically calls out Amazon and Google for their control over the majority of internet product searches, how price and product information reaches consumers and other concerns.

The letter, written by The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), urges the FTC to take a closer look at the big tech platforms. The group also offers to help in any antitrust investigations.

“It should…be quite concerning to the Commission that Amazon and Google control the majority of all Internet product search, and can very easily affect whether and how price and product information actually reaches consumers,” write the RILA. “Moreover, these firms are extraordinarily adept at determining how small changes in the way in which information is conveyed affect consumer behavior — given that nearly everything they do is driven by big-data science and machine learning models,” the letter continues.

………

The group asks the FTC to consider rules and enforcement actions that require companies to disclose where products come from, whether they’re new or used, whether their sale is authorized and how the price from one seller compares to others. Amazon is mentioned here as an example of the problems that can arise when a firm controls an “essential platform” like Amazon Marketplace and also competes on that same platform.

Additionally, the letter asks the FTC to look beyond the consumer benefit of lowered prices or free services — sometimes by subsidizing the platform with other profit streams.

Here is hoping that they manage to reduce each other to a bloody pulp.

Clearly, They Are Barbarians, and We Must Invade to Convert Them to Democracy and Capitalism

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Kazakhstan has a problem with bad banks.

The oil rich former Soviet Republic has spent billions attempting to save its failing banks, and now, it is ditching the banks, and will write down its people’s debts, the exact opposite of what Geithner and the Federal Reserve did in the USA.

I expect the new Kazakh President to become Hitler of the Week™ shortly, because bailing out people and letting the banksters and their investors take the the hit is just unAmerican.

I am aware that there is very little to recommend Kazakhstan.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was elected in an unfair election, hand picked by his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is notorious for the suppression of free speech, torture, etc.

This is a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day:

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said he’ll write off bad loans held by a sixth of the central Asian country’s population, while signaling a sharp change in policy to end costly state bailouts of private banks.

The loan-forgiveness program is Tokayev’s first major policy announcement since he was elected president on June 9 in a choreographed transfer of power that began when longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down as head of state in March. His victory was met with rare and widespread protests.

Bank bailouts are also a sensitive issue in Kazakhstan, which has been mired in a decade-long crisis in which the government has pumped at least $18 billion into lenders to keep the sector from collapsing under the weight of bad debts. The central bank is conducting a review of asset quality, prompting speculation that a new round of bailouts may be in the works.

………

While the debt-relief initiative may help lenders, the total cost is likely to come in at “a bit less than $1 billion,” according to Tokayev. More than 3 million Kazakhs in the energy-rich country of 18 million will get help to escape debts averaging 300,000 tenge ($790), he said. It is aimed at “people who find themselves in very difficult living circumstances,” he said.

 About 4,000 people were detained by police during a rare outburst of protests against what activists said was a lack of real choice in the recent vote, which Tokayev won easily with 71% support. Leader-for-life Nazarbayev, 78, handed the presidency to Tokayev in March, who called the early election “to remove any uncertainty.” International observers criticized the conduct of the vote.

The math is pretty simple:  $18 billion did not solve the problem, versus less than $1 billion to write down personal debt, and let the banks and the banksters burn.

Works for me.

A Good Start

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About f%$#ing time.   It’s bad enough that the current Democratic Party consults make elections more expensive because they get a percentage of the media buys, but they also suck at what they do:

Two alums of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2016 presidential campaign have launched a consulting firm to help progressive candidates win elections and to stick a thumb in the eye of the Democratic Party establishment.

MVMT Communications is the brainchild of Karthik Ganapathy, who previously served as battleground states communications director for Sanders, and Mike Casca, the rapid response director on Sanders’ campaign.

“The sort of calcification around the Democratic Party’s agenda has been driven a lot by the consultant class,” Casca, who went on to serve as communications director for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, told The Daily Beast. “We have a party that is driven by a core of strategists that run a lot of their business on corporate clients and it affects everyone’s thinking.”

The launch of MVMT Communications comes as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has said it will not grant contracts to consultants who work with candidates who are running primary challenges against sitting incumbents. Though Ganapathy and Casca didn’t say they created their firm in response to that decision, it is clear that their impetus for doing so was, in part, to try to rally in support of those candidates challenging entrenched incumbents.

Let’s hope that they are more competent than the current lot.

Have I Mentioned that Amazon is Evil Before?

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When you “buy” a Prime Membership, you are selling yourself to them:


Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant may be useful, but the privacy concerns aren’t going away anytime soon.

Now, in a fresh turn of events, the retail giant has confirmed that it keeps transcripts and voice recordings indefinitely, and only removes them if they’re manually deleted by users.

………

Privacy in the Internet of Things space has already been a hot topic. Earlier this April, Bloomberg published a piece about how thousands of Amazon employees listen to voice recordings captured in Echo speakers, transcribing and annotating them to improve the Alexa digital assistant that powers the smart speakers.

Then in May, the retail behemoth came under further scrutiny for its data collection practices after CNET reported that Alexa assistant not only keeps your voice recordings, but also keeps a record of your voice transcriptions for improving its AI algorithms, with no option to delete them.

………

Amazon’s response points out that even developers of Alexa skills can keep a record of every transaction or routinely scheduled activity a user makes with an Echo device. “When a customer interacts with an Alexa skill, that skill developer may also retain records of the interaction,” the company wrote in its response.

………

But the lack of clarity surrounding its data collection and retention policies has revived debates over the sometimes conflicting goals of convenience and privacy. And Coons isn’t exactly satisfied with Amazon‘s reply.

“Amazon‘s response leaves open the possibility that transcripts of user voice interactions with Alexa are not deleted from all of Amazon‘s servers, even after a user has deleted a recording of his or her voice,” he said in a statement. “What’s more, the extent to which this data is shared with third parties, and how those third parties use and control that information, is still unclear.”

I believe the technical term for this sort of business and technical practice is, “Dystopian.”

The NRA is a Complete Sh%$ Show

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Following the Newtown Elementary School massacre, there was a debate at the NRA on how to handle the response, with many suggisting a lower key response in response to the spectacle of parents weeping over their children’s coffins.

Wayne LaPierre decided to go hard-line, going after the grieving parents, and then, LaPierre spent over $70,000 of NRA money on a vacation in the Bahamas.

That is unbelievably cold:

Twenty young children had just been gunned down by a semiautomatic rifle in their classrooms in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and inside the hardened bunker of the National Rifle Association, rattled officials were wrestling with rare feelings of self-doubt.

In the past, the gun rights organization had responded to mass shootings with unapologetic, high-profile attacks on any attempt to restrict firearms. But several senior NRA officials — laid low by images of sobbing parents planning their children’s funerals rather than tucking presents under Christmas trees — thought the organization should take a less confrontational approach this time, according to multiple people familiar with the internal debate.

Over the objections of some top officials, however, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre struck a defiant posture. In fiery public appearances crafted by Ackerman McQueen, the organization’s longtime advertising firm , LaPierre announced that the group would create a model program to train armed security guards who could protect schools from shooters, saying that was the only measure that would keep children safe.

Then LaPierre and his wife left for the Bahamas, a trip they billed through Ackerman McQueen — and was ultimately paid for by the nonprofit organization. Their post-Christmas flights to and from Eleuthera, known for its pink beaches, cost the NRA nearly $70,000, according to internal documents and people familiar with the trip.

………

New details about how the NRA handled the tumultuous moment show how Sandy Hook —one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — divided the leadership of the powerful gun rights organization. The episode also showcased the symbiotic relationship between LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen, an alliance that defined the NRA for more than three decades, several former officials said.

During that period, the bills for LaPierre’s wardrobe and his private jet travel flowed through the Oklahoma-based ad firm, recently revealed internal documents show, a practice that critics say shrouded the nature of the costs from some NRA leaders and members. At the same time, Ackerman McQueen collected tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees and kept a tight grip on the NRA’s aggressive messaging, according to documents and people familiar with the dynamics.

Who cares about dead children when you have a movement to loot, huh?

There are a lot of repulsive people in the world, but Wayne LaPierre is in a whole new class of contemptible.

Internet group brands Mozilla ‘internet villain’ for supporting DNS privacy feature – TechCrunch

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An ISP group in the UK is claiming that Mozilla is making users less safe by implementing DNS-over-HTTPS, because it won’t allow the ISPs to filter the sites that the UK government wants them to ban people from.

My guess is that they are really upset because it makes it much tougher for ISPs to collect data to resell to advertisers.

I call hypocrisy for their accusation that Mozilla is an, ‘internet villain’ for using DNS-over-HTTPS:

An industry group of internet service providers has branded Firefox browser maker Mozilla an “internet villain” for supporting a DNS security standard.

The U.K.’s Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA), the trade group for U.K. internet service providers, nominated the browser maker for its proposed effort to roll out the security feature, which they say will allow users to “bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the UK.”

Mozilla said late last year it was planning to test DNS-over-HTTPS to a small number of users.

Whenever you visit a website — even if it’s HTTPS enabled — the DNS query that converts the web address into an IP address that computers can read is usually unencrypted. The security standard is implemented at the app level, making Mozilla the first browser to use DNS-over-HTTPS. By encrypting the DNS query it also protects the DNS request against man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow attackers to hijack the request and point victims to a malicious page instead.

DNS-over-HTTPS also improves performance, making DNS queries — and the overall browsing experience — faster.

………

The ISPA’s nomination quickly drew ire from the security community. Amid a backlash on social media, the ISPA doubled down on its position. “Bringing in DNS-over-HTTPS by default would be harmful for online safety, cybersecurity and consumer choice,” but said it encourages “further debate.”

One internet provider, Andrews & Arnold, donated £2,940 — around $3,670 — to Mozilla in support of the nonprofit. “The amount was chosen because that is what our fee for ISPA membership would have been, were we a member,” said a tweet from the company.

Mozilla spokesperson Justin O’Kelly told TechCrunch: “We’re surprised and disappointed that an industry association for ISPs decided to misrepresent an improvement to decades old internet infrastructure.”

“Despite claims to the contrary, a more private DNS would not prevent the use of content filtering or parental controls in the UK. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) would offer real security benefits to UK citizens. Our goal is to build a more secure internet, and we continue to have a serious, constructive conversation with credible stakeholders in the UK about how to do that,” he said.

F%$# the ISPA.