Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts

19 June 2019

Charles Reich Scholar 1970 Bestseller "The Greening Of America" Dies At 91


Charles Reich, author of 1970 bestseller ‘The Greening of America,’ dies at 91


Charles Reich, author of “The Greening of America.” (Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)

"For a brief time in the early 1970s, Charles Reich was one of the most famous writers and teachers in America. He was a Yale Law School professor who taught a popular undergraduate course, “The Individual in America,” that attracted more than 600 students per session.
Sensing a new spirit of enlightenment in the youth revolution of the 1960s, he put his observations into a 1970 book, “The Greening of America,” that sold millions of copies and became one of the defining manifestos of the era of hippies, psychedelic music and love beads. . . . "

"Charles Reich. author of 1970 bestseller, 'The Greening of America,' dies at 91" by Matt Schudel, The Washington Post, 18 June 2019:https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/charles-reich-author-of-1970-best-seller-the-greening-of-america-dies-at-91/2019/06/18/87c13664-91d6-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html
Copyright Martin P. 2019 All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to The Washington Post content).

25 March 2018

IG: FBI Too iPhone Inept Perjurer Sessions DOJ Racks Up Another Court Loss Encrypted Device Keys Demanded Putrid Trump Serial Perjurer Sessions DOJ Despite NSA Idiot Rogers Letting Every Top Secret US Cyberweapon Be Stolen MIT Weitzner With 3 Rat Hacks Help Dirty Trump State Break In Private Devices

UPDATE to 27 March 2018     

       Sunday, 25 March 2018, WASHINGTON,D.C. - For concerned readers including those who may not want the Trump most corrupt and inept U.S. government in history snooping and spying in their private encrypted phones and other devices the following three hacker rats named in the article directly below Ray Ozzie, Stefan Savage and Ernie Brickell each also with their own informational link are identified as those computer science experts sadly abusing their computer expertise to attempt to further corrupt Trump executive branch violations of the U.S. Constitution including Bill Of Rights privacy rights conspiring with the criminal Trump administration (despite the Trump campaign likely having itself conspired with Russia and illegally having used shell company Cambridge Analytica closely affiliated with the Trump criminal co-conspirator Mercers, Kushner and Bannon to exploit 50 million Americans' Facebook accounts' most private information without their permission or knowledge to break U.S. election laws) to breach all Americans' encrypted private phones and other secure devices this pack of Trump hacker rats led by tragically misguided M.I.T. Daniel Weitzner for the benefit of Trump Racist "Disgrace" DOJ  so-called "Attorney General" Serial Perjurer Russia Pal Jefferson Beauregard "Jefe" Sessions III who also has distinguished himself by directing all federal prosecutors to seek the harshest penalty provable for all federal criminal defendants (other than himself) including the death penalty for pot dealers when possible only fitting for the only Reagan nominee in eight years ever rejected as a federal judge by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the grounds that he Sessions was a racist "disgrace" unfit to serve in the U.S. government in any position and urged to resign permanently from the position he then held.
       The following excerpt on breaking into Americans' encrypted phones and other private devices is from the New York Times article dated 24 March 2018 by Charlie Savage which interested readers will find in its entirety at the first link below:

(begin excerpt)     Building an exceptional access system is a complicated engineering problem with many parts that all have to work perfectly in order for it to be secure, and no one has a solution to it,” said Susan Landau, a Tufts University computer security professor. “Any of the options people are talking about now would heighten the danger that your phone or your laptop could be hacked and data taken off of it.”

Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, stressed the importance of strengthening — not weakening — security protections for products like the iPhone, saying threats to data security were increasing every day and arguing that it was a question of “security versus security” rather than security versus privacy.
“Proposals that involve giving the keys to customers’ device data to anyone but the customer inject new and dangerous weaknesses into product security,” he said in a statement. “Weakening security makes no sense when you consider that customers rely on our products to keep their personal information safe, run their businesses or even manage vital infrastructure like power grids and transportation systems.”
But some computer security researchers believe the problem might be solvable with an acceptable level of new risks.
A National Academy of Sciences committee completed an 18-month study of the encryption debate, publishing a report last month. While it largely described challenges to solving the problem, one section cited presentations by several technologists who are developing potential approaches.
They included Ray Ozzie, a former chief software architect at Microsoft; Stefan Savage, a computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego; and Ernie Brickell, a former chief security officer at Intel.


Photo

Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, stressed the importance of strengthening — not weakening — security protections for products like the iPhone. CreditRalph Orlowski/Reuters

According to several people familiar with the new round of deliberations, those three men have been participating in a series of workshops convened at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Daniel Weitzner, a computer science professor. They have discussed their research with government officials, including Valerie Cofield, a senior F.B.I. science and technology official working on “going dark” issues.
The researchers, Mr. Ozzie said, recognized that “this issue is not going away,” and were trying to foster “constructive dialogue” rather than declaring that no solution is possible.  (end excerpt)


An iPhone in 2014. (Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency)

UPDATE to 27 March 2018 The Department of Justice Office of Inspector General has released a March 2018 report available in its entirety for interested readers at the link directly beneath the first link below to Ellen Nakashima's 27 March 2018 Washington Post article "Inspector General: The FBI Didn't Fully Explore Whether It Could Hack A Terrorist's iPhone Before Asking A Court To Order Apple To Unlock It" regarding the IG's report that the FBI did not adequately coordinate in order to ascertain whether the FBI had the ability to hack the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone contents but was too ineptly uncoordinated to figure out that another FBI division likely could (similar to when the FBI more recently failed to prevent the Parkland, Florida school shooting despite having been provided sufficiently detailed information to the FBI "hotline" of the shooter's means, motive and opportunity to prevent the massacre entirely but just failed to act on the information due without explanation other than sheer FBI ineptitude) with serial Senate Russia perjurer Sessions (why again was he made the nation's top "law enforcer" who just fired FBI Andrew McCabe for "lack of candor" when Sessions seemingly should be serving years in prison under his own policy for repeatedly unequivocally perjuring himself to Congress before millions of Americans as well as in sworn lying written statements to the Senate?) DOJ under Sessions supervision once again to legally inept to do anything but run prematurely to try to get a court order to make Apple figure out how to unlock the iPhone. (DOJ did not in fact seek a court order because the FBI then claimed in the San Bernardino matter it found a "third party" who could access the iPhone's contents and found nothing but raises the question as to why the FBI has not hired them.)


Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director, right, authorized an investigation into Russia serial perjury over congressional statements by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. McCabe the "uncandid" was fired by Sessions the perjurer. 
CreditJim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
o https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inspector-general-fbi-didnt-fully-explore-whether-it-could-hack-a-terrorists-iphone-before-asking-court-to-order-apple-to-unlock-it/2018/03/27/b56a9dca-31cf-11e8-8abc-22a366b72f2d_story.html "Inspector General: The FBI Didn't Fully Explore Whether It Could Hack A Terrorist's Phone Before Asking A Court To Order Apple To Unlock It"
o https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/o1803.pdf March 2018 OIG USDOJ "A Special Inquiry Regarding The Accuracy Of FBI Statements Concerning Its Capabilities to Exploit an iPhone Seized During The San Bernardino Terror Attack Investigation 
o https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/nsa-shadow-brokers. html NSA Rogers top secret cyberweapons stolen 
o https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-and-intelligence-community-chiefs-have-urged-obama-to-remove-the-head-of-the-nsa/2016/11/19/44de6ea6-adff-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html?utm_term=.cea6951748dd  Secretary Of Defense Ashton Carter And DNI James Clapper Together At WH Asked Obama To Fire NSA Mike Rogers November 2016 For Rogers' Total Cyber Ineptitude - Now America Knows Why - Rogers Violated UCMJ Behind Commander-In-Chief Obama's Back Begged Russia Stooge Trump For A Job  

Copyright 2018 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

23 April 2015

Airliner Hacker Hysteria Years-Old Story Planted By FBI Site "Airline Notice" On Day Of Expected Congress Cybersecurity Vote For Internet Militarization

     Thursday, 23 April 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - It comes as no surprise to the Ninth Amendment and readers of its recent posts which include the "Internet 'Militarization' Threat" post here of last Sunday, 19 April 2015 that the U.S. Government right on schedule yesterday on the expected day of the full Congressional House on the so-called "cybersecurity" bill vote eagerly awaited by corporate U.S. business to be "immunized" and the U.S. civilian and military "intelligence" community potentially greatly (legally) to expand its surveillance of and amassing of untold further amounts of private consumer information already largely compromised as revealed by Edward Snowden and others as to the NSA, took the occasion to fan public hysteria over alleged "cyberthreats" including the apparently recently coined "cyberjihad" most directly through the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) yesterday posting on the FBI's previously unknown "private airliner notification" feature of its FBI website nevertheless available for all to see and dutifully picked up by the media as in the BBC Technology News article linked to below a warning that airliner onboard wi-fi systems "might theoretically" be compromised by a hacker. This is by no means even remotely breaking but more along the lines of archival "news" if that noun even is appropriate.
     Any report of a notice from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which regulates the airline industry also has been oddly absent from news reports. In any case the FBI notice advised airlines to perform reports and reviews concerning listed "suspicious activity" that airlines presumably already would be doing since "[a]irline experts have warned for years that airlines are a potential target for hackers". The reason for the notice and suspected apparent attempt to further fan immediate public hysteria about "cyberthreats" on the day of the Congressional "cybersecurity" bill vote was implied to be tied to a virtual non-incident concerning an onboard United Airlines "tweet" last week by private security expert Chris Roberts making a joke in which he "suggested that he might be able to deploy the oxygen masks on the flight".
     The media dutifully has greatly expanded on this incident reported right on schedule that "[a] terrorist theoretically could take over systems that fly a plane by compromising equipment at their seat". However the report also notes that "[t]he FBI and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) (ed. note - which TSA perhaps is best known for its agents knowingly having allowed passengers to take guns and suitcases of illegal drugs aboard planes for cash and small gifts and more recently allegedly for 'groping' passengers) said they had no information to support claims a plane's information system could be interfered [sic] via its onboard wi-fi kit, but they were evaluating the evidence". Hopefully the FBI and TSA (not to mention the FAA and other federal agencies) have already been "evaluating" the hypothetical threat for some time as Mr. Roberts previously has given multiple public interviews including on CNN expressing his concerns (and presumably publicizing his private security company) in which he already "explained" weak points in airliners stating that one might conceivably hook up a computer under one's seat to "monitor" data from three of the onboard airline systems.
     Whatever the case Mr. Roberts co-founder of private security company One World Labs following the perpetration of his "tweet" last week was questioned by the FBI which "seized" his laptop computer and unidentified other devices (see previous Ninth Amendment posts for information on the very remote chance of getting back any "seized" items and cash from the government). United Airlines subsequently denied Mr. Roberts boarding to his flight to Seattle and banned him from all United flights so he now in punishment will need to travel by air on another airline. 
     Following last week's Mr. Roberts "tweet" incident security expert Bruce Schneier had explained " [t]he risk is a hacker sitting in the back of a plane, or even one on the ground, could use the wi-fi connection to hack into the plane's avionics and then fly the plane". He went on the the explain that no vulnerabilities to hackers were "currently" known but noted that such an attack was "theoretically possible" as all networks were "inherently insecure". Most significantly news reports rather downplayed that Mr. Schneier finally "added" that "[i]n the scheme of internet risks I worry about, its not very high".
     History would strongly suggest that the federal government (the State) here seized on the opportunity to take the occasion yesterday of the expected Congressional vote on the rushed through committee "cybersecurity" bill unconscionably to fan public fear and manipulate the People of this country over an apparent businessman's publicity stunt using an unjustified extraordinary action by the FBI and TSA (of all agencies) that could only serve needlessly to fan public hysteria over some specific remote act of "terrorism" when there undoubtedly are more pressing concerns at hand which this type of action can only serve dangerously to discount.
     It is well worth and in fact extremely important to recall at such times that from likely centuries before the time of the "Gulf of Tonkin" Congressional resolution over a totally phony incident which nevertheless drew the U.S. into the years-long nightmarish quagmire of what the military officially terms the "Vietnam conflict" since no war ever constitutionally has been declared since WWII up to and doubtless even beyond the known exploitation of public and even lawmakers' hysteria over the more recent extraordinary horrors of the 9/11 attacks and complicating subsequent anthrax scares which even had extended to the Capitol building all of which lead directly to the surreal passage of the blatantly unconstitutional last-minute ink still wet on the page unreviewed by Congress dangerously rambling laundry wish list of the illegitimate Bush Administration's worst civil liberties nightmares come true cynically misnamed "Patriot Act" that the State will exploit public fears and even create them and fan subsequent hysteria to achieve approval of extraordinary powers for the State to which it is not entitled under the U.S. Constitution and which the People in more reasoned times would not even purport to grant to the State when under the existing text of the Constitution the powers are not legitimate and therefore invalid and void as a competent U.S. Supreme Court should recognize as its sacrosanct duty under our system of government.
     In conclusion the so-called "cybersecurity" bill appears entirely objectionable on its face and in any case must be subjected to much more widespread public scrutiny than some behind-closed-doors deal between the Obama White House and Republican congresspersons before its passage by the Senate and signing into law by the President and as for the filthy piece of trash advanced by individuals who no longer even support its interpretations said to justify State abuses abhorrent to all founding principles of this republic the misnamed "Patriot Act" President Obama must not yet again betray his supporters who believed in and elected him by his once again routinely rubber-stamping out "sunset" provisions of this Bush Administration rotten legacy but on 1 June 2015 it is well past the time President Obama must allow the obviously unconstitutional and widely misused Section 215 and other provisions of the repulsive misnamed "Patriot Act" set to expire to lapse back into oblivion and most certainly not abdicate his duty only to relinquish this power to make such a critical decision to the following presidential administration.
     Without editorial comment the Ninth Amendment directs readers interested in more information on the above to the link below.   

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

19 April 2015

Internet "Militarization" Threat As White House And GOP Congress Conspire On "Cyberdefense" Corporate Immunity Bill For Personal Privacy Invasions

     Sunday, 19 April 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - Exploiting the latest government-contrived hysteria over dire cybersecurity threats including a well-timed "chilling" Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluding that hackers "potentially" could take control of airliners exploiting onboard Wi-Fi passenger networks (not to mention some kid just taking aircraft down with a consumer drone bought at a local market) further raising the alarm of those "confessing" the "rising threat of cyberjihadists" two Texans (freshmen from the endemically corrupt Lone Star state Republican party John Heath and formerly with the C.I.A. Will Hurd) have "written and engineered" a so-called "cyberdefense" bill (doubtless "engineered" as capably as the Patriot Act) granting businesses "broad immunity" for sharing "cyberthreat indicator" information with each other and the government's "obscure" National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and for launching counterattacks (potentially against consumers' computers and phones) on the basis of "suspected" attacks which bill last week was rushed in a day through the House Homeland Security Committee by another Texan Republican chairman and "chief architect" of the bill (which apparently also required architecture as well as engineering and writing) Michael McCaul "working with the White House" who before calling for a vote informed committee members that "American companies are under siege" and also mentioned that hackers had this month acquired "nonclassified" but "sensitive" White House information including the President's unpublished schedule (President Obama's "published" schedule for the day is available to anyone signing up for daily White House emails).
     The House of Representatives is expected to pass the corporate immunity from "reasonable" privacy invasions and computer counterattack damages bill (the Ninth Amendment editorial board's proposed alternative name for the bill) as early as this week although the House and Senate still must resolve differences over privacy protections (or the lack thereof) and overcome concerns of civil liberties advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who "worry" about spying on innocent people and others about Internet "militarization" because of private companies being authorized or effectively deputized to "launch countermeasures" against those suspected of "attacking" them. Businesses long until now have been particularly concerned about liability for accidentally releasing personal customer information "compounded by leaks from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden" which also reportedly causes industries to "fear disclosing vulnerability" presumably about themselves as well although it is unclear how. In any case reportedly "[i]n the end, fear may outweigh concerns about civil liberties".
     Readers interested in more information about the above can go to the San Antonio Express-News article link below also describing in some detail the huge cybersecurity apparatus in that city (which former C.I.A. Republican freshman Hurd represents) said to employ 2,000 through 3,000 in private companies and 7,000 through 10,000 in government cybersecurity installations including the Air Force Cyber Command and "one of the largest" National Security Agency (NSA) centers outside of the NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters. (Readers not presently subscribed to that newspaper can get a free two week all digital subscription which would seem to be necessary to read the article in its entirety although the Ninth Amendment by no means intends this as a promotion nor endorsement of that newspaper.)

http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Cybersecurity-bill-could-let-companies-trade-info-6208429.php

 Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved  

12 April 2015

Facebook "Amassed The World's Largest Privately Held Database Of Consumer Biometrics Data" Claims Class-Action Lawsuit By "Hated" Law Firm Believed To Have Recovered $1 Billion For Tech Firm Privacy Violations

     Sunday, 12 April 2015, SAN FRANCISCO - In the face of longtime U.S. government lassitude in enforcing privacy, anti-trust and other laws against giant technology firms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and a host of others big and smaller doubtless largely because of the documented complicity of most if not all giant tech firms in contributing data to continuing blatantly unconstitutional U.S. government domestic mass surveillance and data collection operations even as European regulators have pounded these tech behemoths with privacy and other violation rulings and huge fines to which big tech seems all but impervious, there is one most unlikely lawyer Jay Edelson, 43, and his most unconventional law firm Edelson PC (whose 20 lawyers reportedly wear hoodies sporting the firm's logo to work) which has been taking a leading role in class-action attacks using mostly older laws against these technology monsters based on their invasions of Americans' privacy and has earned Mr. Edelson the New York Times tribute (or condemnation depending on one's point of view) of being "if not the most hated person in Silicon Valley, very close to it" as well as earning Edelson PC an estimated $1 billion in recoveries from these companies for alleged privacy violations.
     The class-action lawsuit brought most recently by Edelson against Facebook for its allegedly "private" data collection from use of widespread facial recognition biometric technology which as reported here in an earlier Ninth Amendment post immediately had European regulators up in arms long ago yet met with a resounding silence in the U.S. is but one in a very long series of Edelson class-action lawsuits against a virtual who's-who of tech companies which also recently saw the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rule that the named plaintiff had standing in another Edelson lawsuit claiming misinformation about him was sold by Spokeo a search engine that purports to sell all the (presumably correct) information it can gather on a person to whomever wishes to pay for it. Spokeo is appealing that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court with plenty of friendly firepower provided by lawyers for other big tech companies in the form of amici curiae (friends of the Court) briefs. Mr. Edelson noted that since the revelations of contractor Edward J. Snowden of massively unconstitutional privacy breaches by the National Security Agency (N.S.A.) that courts have been much more willing to allow cases to go forward for widespread abuses and violations of Americans' privacy rights. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reportedly finally also has picked up the pace of initiating some actions. (The unofficial U.S. government regulatory motto being: "We're slow, but we're here.")
     Meanwhile Facebook unsurprisingly vigorously denies the charges filed against it claiming that Facebook users could turn off facial recognition biometric technology (if only they knew where to look in the notoriously confusing ever "evolving" user privacy controls of that Zuckerboy enterprise). This in fact also points to a bigger issue which may be facing Edelson in the future being that merely by clicking on a box users of many computer applications allegedly now are agreeing to the extremely lengthy "terms and conditions" which increasingly somewhere buried in them contain mandatory arbitration clauses as the days seem long gone when courts actually ruled in such cases for example against insurance companies that used such (once) obviously deceptive devices as "adhesion contracts" which virtually no one read and if they did found them essentially impossible to understand and digest much less being able to have them changed in any case if they did. Nevertheless Edelson PC reportedly took on one such matter with an arbitration clause against AT&T by filing dozens of arbitration cases just to "send a message" to other tech giants (although AT&T reportedly still does have the arbitration clause in its contracts which the Ninth Amendment thankfully has not had occasion to review).
     Whatever the case Mr. Edelson and his firm would seem to be undaunted based on his interview in San Francisco in the article linked to below as well as in viewing the photographs therein showing lawyers and/or staff from Edelson PC back in Chicago engaged in a seemingly casual untroubled game on a ping-pong table which apparently occupies one corner office of the most colorfully decorated firm of the "Billion Dollar Man" who some believe a chamption of privacy rights and others just another class-action scoundrel. In full disclosure Mr. Edelson is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School which also was attended by a member of the Ninth Amendment's editorial board albeit in a different time period with no compensation sought nor provided for the publication of this post. Readers interested in more information concerning the above including some of the more obscure statutes relied on in lawsuits brought by Edelson PC can go to the link below.
       
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/technology/unpopular-in-silicon-valley.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

11 April 2015

N.S.A. Spy Chief No "Back Door" Man Proposes Split "Front Door Key" So No Single Spy Nor Agency Could Decrypt Smartphone Nor Other Devices Data

     Saturday, 11 April 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Director of the National Security Agency (N.S.A.) Admiral "Back Door" Michael "Mike" Rogers (pictured in a recent Ninth Amendment post in a "cordial" disagreement with a reporter) has in the Washington Post article linked to below in its accompanying photo taken on a much friendlier even intellectual look with reading glasses no less a la Indicted Idiot Texas Ex-Governor Rick "Payback" Perry while reportedly one-upping the Lone Star state's brain dead still standing 2012 Presidential hopeful who just keeps coming back for more like an irrepressible zombie as N.S.A. Director Rogers used the longtime Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) spy leadership factory (particularly at its Woodrow Wilson School) Princeton University as the location for Rogers' recent announcement of his revolutionary new pitch that he in fact is not a "back door" man but instead just wants a piece of a "front door key" to decrypt data on consumer such as Apple smartphones and other devices which will be "split" so no one agency (say for example the rogue N.S.A.) nor snoop (say for example some rogue N.S.A. director, employee and/or contractor) would be able to use just their part of the key alone for decryption purposes but first would have to gather the other key piece(s).
     Given the rank and foul extensively documented many unconstitutional abuses of the N.S.A. largely initially revealed in part by Edward J. Snowden as well as given that the N.S.A. still conducts essentially unchecked criminal domestic and worldwide mass surveillance not to mention as well admitting that "[w]e kill people based on metadata" according to former N.S.A. Director Michael Hayden (per a previous Ninth Amendment post) including without limitation U.S. citizens the Ninth Amendment editorial board beyond wondering why the maniacal Kafkaesque N.S.A. invader of citizens' most sacrosanct areas and Orwellian record-keeper violating all realms of Americans' privacy (with allegedly virtually nothing to show for all its enormously expensive in every sense of the word abuses but the arrest of a California cab driver who allegedly wished to or maybe did donate $8,500 to a terrorist organization) in violation of all principles of fundamental rights not to mention common human decency should even be allowed to continue to exist much less have even part of a "front door" key to any citizen's encrypted data or home or business for that matter the Ninth Amendment does feel compelled to add it would not even feel comfortable trusting the N.S.A. nor its Director Admiral Michael "Mike" Rogers with even half a key to a public restroom.
     Reportedly as to encryption keys the jury is still out at the Obama White House still searching for a less invasive national security solution and The Ninth Amendment without editorial comment refers interested readers to the below link for considerably more information about the N.S.A. decryption proposal to come just a "piece" of the way into the "front door" as well as the history of the U.S. government versus industry debate on the subject including the strengths and vulnerabilities of current smartphone and other device encryption as well as several links therein to related articles on this and other national security trending topics.
       
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-encryption-spreads-us-worries-about-access-to-data-for-investigations/2015/04/10/7c1c7518-d401-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html?hpid=z1

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

09 April 2015

Facebook European Class Action Privacy Lawsuit Due In Vienna Court Today Even As Facebook And Google Capitulate To Turkey Censorship Pressure

     Thursday, 9 April 2015, ISTANBUL, TURKEY and VIENNA, AUSTRIA - In what appears to be shaping up as a challenging week overseas for social media behemoths of United States origin first Facebook and then Google both reportedly unlike Twitter (at least early on) caved to Turkish recurring censorship pressure in order to avoid Internet bans and removed links and images and photographs as well as other visual and audio content related to leftist hostage takers last week at an Istanbul courthouse putting a gun to the head of Prosecutor Memhet Siram Kuraz whom they later killed.
     Twitter in any case is easily accessed even when "banned" by Turkish authorities by social media users using services which do not reveal their actual Internet access points and reportedly was restored to service Monday night without mention of whether it acceded to reportedly frequent Turkish censorship practices. YouTube later also was restored although Burcak Unsal, described as "an expert in digital law", in the New York Times distinguished Google from "hosting providers like Twitter or YouTube". To the extent YouTube "held out" it in any case now is owned by Google which early on caved to censorship pressure.
     Readers interested in more information on the above as well as Turkey's apparently growing Internet censorship practices extending to news organizations in that country can go to the first link provided below to the New York Times article filed from Istanbul, Turkey.
     Meanwhile BBC Technology news today reports that Facebook European Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland which registers all users outside of the United States and Canada faces in Vienna, Austria a 25,000 user class action filed lawsuit including 900 United Kingdom site users which alleges violations of European privacy laws. The claim led by Austrian "data protection campaigner" Max Schrems reportedly focuses on the way Facebook collects and forwards data as well as alleging Facebook further violates European privacy laws by its monitoring the use of the site's "Like" button.
     The suit is intended to stop "mass surveillance" by Facebook and further claims moreover that the social media giant has co-operated with the unconstitutional "PRISM" National Security Agency (NSA) mass domestic and foreign spying bulk data collection operation launched in 2007 under the claimed authority of the equally unconstitutional and reprehensible midnight garbage legislation the so-called  "Patriot Act" which even its its alleged author has said under no reading can support such activities by the NSA nor any other United States government entity. Facebook is expected to argue the Vienna court lacks jurisdiction to hear the suit.
     Key provisions of the disingenuously titled Patriot Act hatched from the rank exploitation of fears following the "9/11" disaster by the disgraced Bush-Cheney administration including the widely condemned Section 215 (including by both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association) are set to expire under "sunset" provisions unless they are again extended by 1 June 2015. Despite sham lawsuits by social media giants against the NSA these technology behemoths' complicity in NSA mass surveillance is well documented including without limitation all of the above-mentioned social media monsters as well as Yahoo! and several others. This was perhaps most recently confirmed by exiled American NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden from his first-hand knowledge in a recent Moscow interview with John Oliver host of "Last Week Tonight" shown on Home Box Office (HBO) and available, of course, on YouTube. Mr. Snowden incidentally in this year's Academy Award winning documentary "CitizenFour" names the NSA British partner in crime GCHQ as even more prone to privacy and other abuse if imaginable than the NSA.
     Readers interested in more information regarding the European class action lawsuit being brought in Vienna against Facebook European Dublin headquarters can go to the second link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/world/europe/google-turkey-kiraz-prosecutor.html?ref=todayspaper

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32229285

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

04 April 2015

U.S. Tech Giants In Crosshairs Of Europe Regulators As Antitrust, Privacy And Other Inquiries Of Google, Facebook, Apple And Amazon Intensify

     Saturday, 4 April 2015, LONDON, ENGLAND - Although the halcyon days may be continuing to the present in the United States for giant tech companies Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and others given the longtime lassitude of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in its enforcement of U.S. antitrust laws and Americans' privacy rights taking a far back seat to many of these tech monsters' documented collusion along with telecommunications companies with the United States' spy agencies, with the CIA for example even having ownership and joint partnership interests with Google and these companies routinely feeding information to the NSA and other unconstitutional domestic spying apparatus, with the occasional charade of sham suits by these filthy rich tech behemoths back against the U.S. government in lame disingenuous efforts to demonstrate to the American people that they are are not part of the U.S. government's out of control grossly unconstitutional domestic spying ubiquitous tentacles as exposed most dramatically by the the staggering NSA universal domestic spying disclosures by Booz Allen contractor Edward J. Snowden, European regulators nevertheless reportedly are losing all patience with the abuses and encroachments of these American tech giants acting in flagrant violation of European anti-trust laws and routine invasions of European citizens' privacy.
     The list of American tech monsters' physical and internet invasion of Europe especially via Ireland is well documented in previous partial European regulators' inquiries and assessment of enormous essentially meaningless fines as well as court rulings seeking to curb American tech giants' encroachments extending right into Europeans' homes in flagrant violation of free market principles and core privacy rights where a company such as Google reportedly controls 80% of internet searches effectively dictating what information European citizens will and will not see including about each other as well as undoubtedly making this information readily available to American spy agencies such as the CIA and NSA which routinely share it with the British spook octopus GCHQ which according to Mr. Snowden is even far worse in its citizen surveillance abuses than its American counterparts if such is imaginable.
     Now European regulators reportedly have these U.S. technology giants in their crosshairs with the loudest complaints perhaps against Google's market domination and Facebook's laughable "privacy" policies just being the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile in the United States it is not known if the Obama administration will order DOJ out of its dormancy while on the issue of the rank constitutional abuses of the NSA, CIA, FBI and so-called "alphabet soup" of American spy agencies the very telling sunset, i.e., end of several supposedly empowering sections supporting their illegal actions of the loathsome "Patriot Act" will be allowed to expire or will be extended by a Republican-controlled Congress seemingly incapable of doing anything positive and given the Obama Administration's latest betrayal of its voter base by taking the position that the Bush-Cheney midnight-created monstrosity should be extended.
     To date however the Obama Administration has said it will not intervene to preserve the expiring provisions of the clearly unconstitutional "law" which if anything has played right into the hands of terrorists by wrenching the fabric of fundamental American values but will allow this grotesque blemish on United States legislative history to slowly and painfully die its long-overdue death as by all accounts of their debates to the Founding Fathers it no doubt immediately would have been declared "DOA" dead on arrival.
     Interested readers in the below linked-to article can find many more specifics touching on some of European regulators past actions against U.S. tech giants as well as more details as to what these U.S. monsters "stomping the terra" to quote Dr. Hunter S. Thompson can anticipate coming at them hard from European regulators in the not-too-distant future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/technology/europe-regulators-apple-google-facebook.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

29 March 2015

Europol Chief Warns Of Terrorist Threat From Encrypted Communications

     Sunday, 29 March 2015, LONDON - Europol Chief Rob Wainwright told BBC Radio Live 5 that encrypted communications and those on the "dark net" made anonymously have become the biggest problem for law enforcement seeking to monitor terrorist communications. Mr. Wainwright who is the chief of Europe's police acknowledged that Edward Snowden's revelations about the enormous scope of unconstitutional NSA and criminal GCHQ spying on ordinary citizens' communications was the basis for the universal distrust by technology companies and ordinary citizens of the US and UK agencies and their governments for repugnant enormous continuing violations of individuals' fundamental privacy rights.
     Incidentally in "Citizen Four" the film about Mr. Snowden's path through making his astounding revelations of secret government abuses of enormous global proportions against citizens' fundamental liberties which earlier this year as covered in the Ninth Amendment won the Academy Award for best documentary film Mr. Snowden in one aside when the GCHQ comes up in conversation states to two select reporters present with him in his Hong Kong hotel room that the abuses of the British GCHQ were even significantly wider-ranging than the NSA's  (which it seems hard to believe is even possible although in any case the NSA and GCHQ are partners in crime and share their illegally gained citizen surveillance information).
     Mr. Wainwright said that law enforcement was trying hard to regain the trust of technology companies who increasingly are working to make encryption of communications available to individuals. The Ninth Amendment editorial board suggests that this seems a tall order and questions exactly how law enforcement is "trying" as neither U.S. officials including President Obama, the head of the NSA, the FBI chief, CIA chief murderer John Brennan, nor their British government counterparts are known to the Ninth Amendment to have given any indication that they intend to cease their repugnant and blatantly unconstitutional and illegal universal spying practices against ordinary citizens. In fact quite the opposite from all news accounts.
     One issue looming in the U.S. is that certain sections of the so-called "Patriot Act" the misuse of which blatantly unconstitutional legislation has appalled even its original congressional sponsor face sunset provisions in coming months which will kill significant provisions of the cynically misnamed Patriot Act failing congressional intervention (the Obama administration favors the continuation of these provisions in force but so far has claimed it will not intervene if Congress fails to act to preserve these provisions).
     Europol Chief Wainwright in warning of encrypted communications as the biggest problem facing law enforcement which presumably would include those available on certain email accounts most notably the allegedly most NSA-proof encrypted free ProtonMail also covered here in an earlier Ninth Amendment post as well as in many new apps including for cellphones being made widely available specifically referenced his concerns about Apple's new cellphones with encryption that is apparently uncrackable by law enforcement who have been provided no "backdoor" key with which to capture cellphone users every word.  
     Another area of significant concern to law enforcement is the so-called "dark net" which can be accessed easily with the U.S. government created publicly available for free immediate download "Tor" browser which although the FBI claims at least once to have cracked apparently only has endpoint vulnerability which if not exploited makes internet communications impossible to trace. Finally Europol Chief Wainwright also specifically warned of threats posed by availability of social media to terrorists. Mr. Wainwright claimed that IS (aka ISIS aka ISIL) has at least 50,000 Twitter accounts tweeting upwards of 100,000 messages a day.      In response to such challenges facing totally discredited law enforcement which has disgusted entire nations Mr. Wainwright claims that Europol is now setting up a European Internet Referral Unit to identify and remove internet sites used by terrorist organisations. The Ninth Amendment would like to point out that it most likely would be difficult to remove Twitter from online existence. In any case Mr. Wainwright unbelievably went on to apparently even better his American counterparts in criminal surveillance ambitions to state that existing laws are "deficient" and law enforcement should be able to monitor all areas of the online world. Europol Chief Wainwright's reported remarks concluded with him saying "[w]e have to make sure we reach the right balance by ensuring that the fundamental principles of privacy are upheld so there's a lot of work for legislators and tech firms to do".
     The Ninth Amendment will not be holding its breath. Interested readers will find more information on the above at the link below to the BBC News Tech article reporting on the BBC Live 5 interview with Europol Chief Wainwright also providing further links.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32087919

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

Medical Identity Theft Reportedly The Fastest Growing Type Of Identity Theft

       Sunday, 29 March 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - Medical Identity Theft reportedly is the fastest-growing form of identity theft especially with millions of Americans' personal information having been stolen from corporate employers as well as other corporations and institutions keeping individuals' information. According to the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC):

"A thief may use your name or health insurance numbers to see a doctor, get prescription drugs, file claims with your insurance provider, or get other care. If the thief’s health information is mixed with yours, your treatment, insurance and payment records, and credit report may be affected. If you see signs of medical identity theft, order copies of your records and check for mistakes. You have the right to see your records and have mistakes corrected."

       Moreover the monetization of medical information reportedly has given thieves further incentive to steal medical information in order to sell it. The FTC Consumer Information site linked to below provides reader-friendly information on detecting medical identity theft, correcting mistakes in your medical records, protecting your medical information and checking for other identity theft problems. The FTC site also provides easily accessible information on a broad range of other consumer topics.
            

Copyright Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

13 January 2015

Microsoft Gave The FBI, CIA, And NSA Encrytion Access To Skype, Oulook And Skydrive Conspiring In Illegal PRISM Other VIOLATIONS OF LAW

       Tuesday, 13 January 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Ninth Amendment Editorial Board for interested/concerned readers provides the below link to a 2013 article appearing in Neogaf.com providing detailed information on how Microsoft Corporation in advance of product launches gave the FBI, CIA and NSA encryption access to Skype, Outlook and Skydrive thereby conspiring with those federal agencies to facilitate the unconstitutional and known to be illegal PRISM and other "Operations" (Violations of Law) in the gathering of metadata and other unlawful information collection practices violating the rights of U.S. citizens including but not limited to being free of warrantless illegal searches and seizures with no showing of probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, invasion of privacy, stifling of freedom of speech and of the press when such activities became more widely known, violation of civil rights and myriad other criminal violations which as in the case of torture the United States Department of Justice has let these most serious and blatantly unarguable violations of core fundamental constitutional and human rights go absolutely unprosecuted and unpunished with perpetrators therefore not only showing remorse but in well known recent instances saying they would "engage in the same behavior again".
       These lapses in federal law enforcement and inaction of the Obama Administration specifically including the United States Department of Justice which instead waste time and resources going after far lesser particularly drug offenses (which President Obama pledged as a Presidential candidate to address but like so many other civil rights matters has not) unless remedied may go down in history as some of the most significant and unexcusedly shameful legacies of both the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder and moreover that of President Barack Obama and his entire administration given the gravity of these offenses which may well overshadow any other accomplishments of the time spent of Mssrs. Obama and Holder during their tenure in office. Without a doubt this already especially in the wake of the disclosure of the torture practices of the CIA is the case in the eyes of the world community whom the United States has so hypocritically incessantly hounded about their own human rights abuses for which it now has lost all moral authority should it not act very soon to remedy this situation by bring responsible parties to justice.
       The CIA, NSA and FBI are not in themselves either a fourth branch of government or anything more than discretionary executive branch agencies which answer to only one person who is the President of the United States Barack Obama. His continued inaction especially in the area of torture which to date he has not even addressed while leaving it to his spokesperson Josh Earnest to express the Administration's "confidence" in for example John Brennan Director of th0e CIA. Mr. Earnest must cringe inside when he is put in the position of telling that lie (although he know doubt is somewhat inured to the reality of the evil perpetrated as Mr. Brennan who when previously hanging around the White House in his counter-terrorism was  position commonly was known according to Democracy Now! as President Obama's "Assassination Czar".
        This inaction amounts to complicity and in the opinion of the Ninth Amendment editorial board further to the aiding and abetting of criminals as well as being guilty of obstructing justice and being after the fact accomplices to all crimes of which the Obama Administration is aware yet allows to go unpunished. One does not exercise prosecutorial discretion to exercise some of the gravest violations of and threats to the United States Constitution that this great Nation has ever known and which moreover must be addressed for it to continue to function with any moral authority either domestically or internationally. We must face that the "National Security" octopus must like the Republican party must constantly play over and over some fear card because that ultimately is all they have to justify their existence.
       Most shamefully not only does this failure to respect the Unites States Constitution which the Obama Administration including all federal agencies, officials and employees are sworn to uphold (not IGNORE) and which they and in particular Eric Holder's Department of Justice are charged with enforcing but as has been said publicly in no uncertain terms by guilty parties that would show so much bluster rather than any remorse given their growing conviction that by false bluster alone they will face of no punishment whatsoever it will encourage not only these criminals but their successor federal government officials to participate in the same sort of wrongdoing and if anything establish a precedent that clear statutory and constitutional violations by certain government officials as well as operatives and their contractors even most remotely acting "under" them will be immune from punishment regardless of their crimes against the American people, repugnant to the Constitution and even against humanity to the enduring disgust of the world community as the United States proceeds as if without inevitable consequence with a Constitution that after years of serious erosion at the hands of the federal government and the largely Republican appointed partisan judiciary finally collapses and with it the government that relies on it for its very existence yet has too long both ignored it and violated it with such complacency that it no longer realizes that it exists on a foundation of nothing but air and the hordes from everywhere from "das" Homeland to the four corners of the Earth are at the gates.

http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=620416

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

28 September 2014

FBI Cries Foul To Latest Generation Apple iPhones Password Protection Even Apple Cannot Bypass To Access Data At Feds' Demand And Google Follows Suit Makes Claim For New Android Phones In Wake Of Yahoo Privacy Lawsuit Against Government

       Sunday, 28 September 2014, WASHINGTON, D.C. - In the wake of staggering revelations made public in documents still being released from Edward Snowden methodically upon determination that they will not put Government operatives or agents at direct risk steadily chronicling United States Government blatantly unconscionable unconstitutional criminal misconduct among other things in wholesale mass eavesdropping on and permanently recording its own American citizens across the board with no cause at all snooping into every aspect of the lives of all American people respecting no privacy whatsoever even in every sacred moment of their lives including their communicating about perfectly legal business, family and pleasure matters to everything in between without limitation including for example all from the most deeply personal to commercial secrets to private religious, medical, and political conversations as well as with their lawyers and accountants, political to intimate conversations between couples married and not and the millions of other types of perfectly legal totally private and personal conversations in which everyone in the United States should be able to engage with the expectation of the right to privacy being absolutely recognized and respected by the State whose morally bankrupt criminal snoops otherwise belong in prison.
       That expectation is inherent given the understanding of for what Americans have fought and died to live in a country with a government constrained and respectful of laws rather than one that routinely criminally misbehaves as a matter of course lording over its citizens as if they were the oppressed slaves of a totalitarian state now to the point that finally even America's tech giants are fighting back perhaps soon in court and right now in their research and development efforts after routinely being forced under illegal orders to execute the Government's criminal dirty work against Apple and Google's own clients and customers and then left largely to play the fall guys for these heinous illegal Government-ordered invasions of privacy on a scale so universal as to have come to seem unreal as directed by Government representatives now too young to have fought in anything but phony wars as exemplified by the phony Nixon totally hypocritical insincere losing "war on drugs" dragging on now for 40+ years with no overall progress at all to show for it but rather the establishment of highly violent international crime organizations that are at the point of rivaling the firepower of entire corrupted nations leaving behind a trail countless dead including tens of thousands of innocents and nothing to show but failure failure and misery.
       Though Facelog's Zuckerboy with his ever-evolving schemes to extract from Facebook users as much private information by any means possible with no notice whatsoever until forced to provide it has long been suspected by many of being a CIA operative with a devious brilliance this sick penchant for extracting more information through ever-expanding trickery in his Mugbook service that will "always be free" including using devices such as facial recognition technology and "tagging" and on and on as he relentlessly persists in trying to dupe Americans and persons worldwide into creating their own most intimate files to serve as ready fodder "selfie"-made dossiers for government perusal at its leisure essentially a J. Edgar Hoover sicko romp into Zuckerboy's twisted idea of privacy invasion mugshot heaven with all biographical information including birth, location, family, friends, activities, politics, thoughts, etc. to boot. The European community having a little more context long has not been amused with his twisted antics with its European Union regulators fining his spydom goldmine hundreds of millions of dollars on more than one occasion yet barely even followed in the news it means so little to the bottom line especially as it is probably paid by American taxpayers via the CIA anyway.
       Back in the United States while Zuckerboy no doubt gladly hands it all over to his handlers the other tech giants have become increasingly uneasy with first Yahoo which unsuccessfully sued the U.S. Government for ordering it to turn over clients' private information but did prevail in being able to make the damning case files public.  Unlike Zuckerboy proud to violate the Constitution at every opportunity at the Government's behest provided Zuckerboy even knows or cares what the Constitution is (or rather was), Apple too like Yahoo apparently has had it with playing criminal in the eyes of the American and foreign peoples under orders from the metastasized National Security agencies thus commercially threatening the company at home and especially abroad and yesterday announced the release of the latest generation iPhone which even Apple cannot penetrate once it is in the customer's hands. No backdoor for the suits to sneak into Americans treasure trove of private information which the U.S. Government has come to see as its birthright.
       Now Google long suspected itself of managing Americans private information in collusion with the CIA allegedly with some data centers built side-by-side has turned and also taken aim first organizing resistance to NSA blanket interception and storage of communications and now like Apple in the technology research and development arena announced it also no longer had provided a "backdoor" for the government "suits" to slip inside to snoop around Google's clients' most private information either. So Google although long suspected itself of complicity in the Government's mass surveillance run totally amok of the Constitution (although a big deal was made most likely as a cover story about the resourceful Feds having to crack the code and secretly intercept an uncooperative Google's internal date packet transmissions "on the fly" under yet another novel lame legal theory of legitimacy concocted by U.S. Government "lawyers" no doubt on the condition that whatever latest tortured analysis they had concocted justifying the Government's crimes in advance be locked deep in a vault and never looked at again until fifty years after all involved were dead now also apparently really is fed up as Google now spearheads NSA reform drives and apparently shares Apple's domestic and especially foreign commercial concerns about further even involuntary participation with the government spying on its customers and/or clients and thus made Google's own announcement on the heels of Apple's that its latest generation Android phones likewise could not be penetrated for data even by Google.
      The Feds with their newfound 21st Centuty attitude of total entitlement and apparent perceived immunity from incarceration (for themselves) are apoplectic having sucked at the tit of unconstitutionality for so long and with such impunity that the existing phone warrant requirement (still the law of the land for wired phones last the Ninth Amendment heard) seems to them a quaint relic of the dinosaur age (the 1950's) since the advent of the portable and then cellphone of course meant to them that although the legal reasoning should have been exactly the same and likewise protected such communications the Feds had soon made it clear that if it went through the air rather than a line a telephone conversation involved no expectation of privacy at all. A perfectly tautological argument making no sense whatsoever.
       And that reasoning certainly did become a self-fulfilling prophecy because law enforcement with impunity since routinely has listened in on any such telephone so there sure was no expectation of privacy since law enforcement made sure privacy in such conversations was non-existent. As the Virginia farmboys' parents and ancestors who had themselves once made honest livings and fought to the death for such liberties would say it was a case in which "the horse followed the cart". And the American people allowed this further assault to be perpetrated against their rapidly disappearing core fundamental rights under the Constitution with barely a whimper all for the sake of the instant convenience of pulling a phone from one's pocket and also because they most likely knew no better even if the government would be the third party on the line.
       Readers interested in more detail concerning this latest seemingly ever more rare "last stand" to uphold a constitutional right to privacy here by sure force of technology may refer to the CNN print story below now with a little more context perhaps as to why the FBI grown fat and lazy (at least metaphorically if not in the movies) certainly cannot abide being deprived of the convenience of merely being able to order some tech giant to suck the information out of readers' phones although the FBI apparently still grudgingly recognizes the requirement of some sham of a warrant for data surprisingly acknowledging that any part of the Constitution that protects the American people's rights still even may exist (or so it claims, but the FBI could be lying too).
       However the mere thought of Apple or Google marketing its most recent phones in the face of the FBI's brilliant (for the FBI) argument that like a closet that can NEVER be opened, now by that thought the FBI cannot just abide. The Constitution is said go be a "living document" and sometimes living things just need to die for a while before they can come back. . . . as for example . . . a totalitarian state. The infrastructure of a rigorous democracy ostensibly is still here seemingly visible for all to see although its actual out of sight functionality merely has merely changed a bit. Indeed just as Aldous Huxley predicted.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/politics/fbi-apple-google-privacy/index.html?section=money_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_topstories+%28Top+Stories%29

Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

12 September 2014

Childrens' Tech Screentime Curtailed By Steve Jobs And Many "High-Tech" Executive Parents Who Allow Very Limited Or None At All But For Homework With No Smartphones Until Age 14 Nor Data Plans Until Age 16 And In Any Case "Never" In The Bedroom

       Friday, 12 September 2014, NEW YORK, NEW YORK - The Ninth Amendment Editorial Board suggests that parents of minor children may be well advised to follow the lead of some of those who should know best including former Apple Computer chief Steve Jobs and many other current top executives of major internet players and their spouses about both educational pitfalls and more immediate real-world dangers that high-tech devices and internet "services" may bring often by stealth into their homes.
       Perhaps surprisingly most of those interviewed in the New York Times article linked below rather than having homes stuffed with iPads and the like instead have recounted rigorous household rules greatly limiting their youths' exposure to "reading" materials other than good old-fashioned paper-bound books, pens and paper particularly when it comes to anything other than legitimately creative endeavors and the necessity for computers in completing homework accompanied by family dinner conversations about current school learning and other areas of knowledge at tables with nary a tech device including screen to be found.
       Most interestingly many parents in top positions at some of the largest and biggest players in tech internet and other such companies completely ban devices and their use that other parents presumably less knowledgeable about the risks they entail for their children freely make available or even encourage as if it were a matter of right of passage to full-blown childhood. Specifically mentioned is the fact that many of these "high-tech" parents will not even allow the use of messaging devices and tech tools which keep a permanent record of personal communications which one day may come back to haunt their children from a time before they knew better than to make them.
        So sorry to Facebook's Zuckerboy, Myspace. Google+, Twitter (whose own top executives vigorously enforce such restrictive rules with their own children), Yahoo, LinkedIn and the hundreds of other such deceptively designated "social media" and e-mail, instant messenger, cellular call and text service privacy invaders and all manner of other commercial exploiters of personal information and communications for their own monetary gain.
       Regardless of whether or not they expressly "knowingly" cooperate their consistently repeated experience would alert anyone but a complete brain-dead idiot that willingly or not they are acting either constructively voluntarily in league with or as total imbecilic tools of their de facto U.S. "national security" partners who repeatedly and incessantly in wholesale criminal violation of privacy laws and other U.S. Constitutional rights and their penumbras in furtherance of their consistently misguided largely completely ineffective in the absence of actual painstaking police work criminal schemes which they bottom line justify by strong-arming what any self-respecting attorney knows or should know are completely convoluted self-serving BS made-to-order contrived bogus "legal" opinions ultimately based on nothing but the ridiculously farcical foundation that the criminal transgressions they endorse in clear violation of the U.S. Constitutional rights they are sworn to uphold can ever be more "compelling" under the U.S. Constitution than the rule of law itself.
       Many high-tech executives if they allow their children any such constantly illegally monitored activities at all allowed only specifically named services such as "Snapchat" which allegedly immediately dispose permanently of any such personal messages as soon as they are sent although based on the Ninth Amendment's experience with the U.S. Government's Executive Branch "national security underworld" we would have to find in this day and age any such assurance to be most highly suspect at best. Something that need be kept private and even for a moment is absorbed into a high-tech device even unconnected to a phone line, the internet or anything else to our understanding must immediately by sledgehammered to bits the size of pebbles burned in a barrel of jet fuel thrown with no outside observation whatsoever into the back of a dumpster on a dark Bedford-Stuyvesant sidestreet immediately emptied into the trash compactor in the back of an armored car converted into a dump truck taken directly to a mob-owned car-crusher after being liberally doused in liquid hazardous radioactive medical waste before being buried under hundreds of tons of similar debris piled on a half-mile long barge bound directly to China where it is permanently disposed of under a concrete highway along with the remains of the Twin Towers in an active volcanic crater.
       For similar reasons if one did not heed the example of these high-tech executives' universal warning to keep all such "high-tech" devices out of one's children's bedrooms we certainly would suggest keeping any computer camera or microphone even supposedly not in use well-covered with duct tape or better yet first with petroleum jelly or otherwise assume whether it is the Russian mafia, the NSA or any of a thousand others working solo or for another "outfit" that some creepy criminal geek working for whichever may well be watching and listening to one's under-age daughter talking about her parents, changing her clothes, sitting on the toilet, or worse....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

07 September 2014

ProtonMail "The Only E-Mail System That The NSA Cannot Access" According To Forbes Magazine For Persons Most Serious About Their Communications Privacy Free Service Signup Now

       Sunday, 7 September 2014, GENEVA - The Ninth Amendment editorial board cannot even nearly keep abreast of what seem to have become more or less daily (just) public revelations about the constant escalation of (just) domestic encroachments on readers' privacy ranging from the "private" sector to the "public" sector and everything in the gray area between as perpetrated in recent years most flagrantly by the wretchedly illegal unconstitutional actions of the likes of the NSA and the seemingly ever exponentially expanding number of new U.S. Government acronymed agencies which proceed headlong as if they entirely have forgotten (if the latest generation ever even knew of) the People's fundamental inalienable rights as opposed to the limited power of the State only as expressly revocably granted it by the People under the U.S. Constitution. Not to mention Benjamin Franklin's stark admonition that "[t]hose who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".
       Likewise the Ninth Amendment editorial board swiftly has come to the realization that just as it is in no position even nearly comprehensively to document and record the above relentless encroachments on the privacy of the individual it is equally ill-equipped neither to document nor offer well-informed assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of various known available means of attempting rightfully to protect and preserve one's privacy even in as limited but significant an area as e-mail communications.
       Having said that merely upon setting out just to bring to readers' attention with even minimal evaluation some few first e-mail services making heightened privacy claims such as Gmail, Hushmail and Startmail (now in beta) it readily became apparent that each was rife with complications such as that Gmail of course is a product of the ever-suspect Google known to scan e-mails for targeted advertising purposes, Hushmail although based in Canada is subject to the whims of the CSIS in seeking warrants which on further inquiry seemed at least as likely as the United States' own "intelligence" services if not more so to bumble into seeking access to innocuous encrypted e-mails stored in British Columbian servers, and as for Startmail now available in beta the Ninth Amendment admittedly by that point did not even further investigate what potential weaknesses might or might not be claimed or have merit or not as to that service.  The Ninth Amendment certainly does not mean to discourage readers from making their own decisions about these e-mail providers and in fact vigorously encourages those who are serious about their e-mail privacy to make their own investigations into the fitness of each of those services and others for readers' particular needs and comfort levels.
       Rather than give up the endeavor altogether however the Ninth Amendment was fortunate on further inquiry into e-mail privacy assessments made by others to find that the venerable Forbes magazine just months ago in an issue largely devoted to computer-age security issues included an article with link below that made the pronouncement echoed in the post heading above as to ProtonMail https://protonmail.ch that it is "[t]he only e-mail system that the NSA cannot access". Interested readers are invited to visit the link below to the Forbes assessment where they might find the credentials of the creators of ProtonMail just as impressive as we at the Ninth Amendment have.
       Also by following the above link or that in the Forbes article to this e-mail service with servers located in Geneva and protected by legendary strict Swiss privacy laws as well as with a satellite office on the MIT campus readers will find that the ProtonMail service has indeed proven very much in demand from the start although at least with limited storage it has decided to offer its service for free funded initially only by donations reportedly taking into account particularly those in countries such as Russia or China unable to pay fees but in very real need of e-mail privacy where an unencrypted e-mail message can reportedly lead to a very swift arrest indeed.
       The Ninth Amendment upon coming across ProtonMail wished to make this information available to our readers as soon as possible as consistent with the Forbes article we found upon visiting the Create Account ProtonMail webpage that the service already is at full capacity but taking usernames for a waitlist to be followed up by invitations to the service as more servers constantly come on line thanks apparently to a most generous flow of donations shown on the webpage at the time of this post to be more than one half million dollars.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/05/19/the-only-email-system-the-nsa-cant-access/

Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved      

13 June 2014

Google Blogger Fails To Report Reliable Accurate Site Statistics Nor Effectively Address Site Pageview Interference And/Or Reports Exposing Vulnerabilities Of Publishers' and Advertisers' Privacy

       Friday, 13 June 2014, MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - Despite many recent and increasing requests by the editorial board of the Ninth Amendment log Google has declined to comment and/or provide information on why this New American log's site pageview statistics have in recent weeks steadily declined either in accuracy and/or to identify whether site viewership now is suffering interference and/or denial of access as the result of the misconduct of other parties or that in which Google is complicit, has knowledge of, and/or lacks the ability to remedy.
       Statistics which have appeared to be reliable as suggested by consistency with historical site performance now increasingly are being reported as totally inconsistent for periods lasting as long periods approaching on half a day suggesting Google can no longer maintain the performance standards Google originally established in order to attract publishers and advertisers to its highly lucrative Blogger and Blogger-related endeavors including Google's expansion into the extremely data brokering area of "social media" information collection and sharing particularly through its innocuously named "plus" feature.
       As reported by Google itself this information is not only available to its CIA partner but through its "hub" and other "features" for purposes of exchanging it with other popular social media sites with an obviously extremely aggressive emphasis on its "plus" feature to which Google has gone to great lengths to draw in existing publishers who currently do not participate nor wish to participate in this personal information collection vehicle.
       Publishers and advertisers wishing to publish and/or advertise on blogs or other popularly accessible web page creation and maintenance outlets will readily find that there now are a great many other entities available providing similar or better services at little or no cost including those based in other countries including those of the European Union which have demonstrated as documented in earlier posts on this New American site significantly greater respect for and legal protections for individuals' privacy regardless of the individuals' home countries.

Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved