5 Reasons Police Body Cameras Are a Terrible Idea
by Activist Post
Dec 26, 2014
Police abuse is a major problem not because of a few bad apples but because of the training, equipment, and tactics.
The establishment wants the public arguing about who the victims are of police brutality instead of focusing on the actions police routinely get away with. And they get away with it because it’s protocol, or standard operating procedure.
Police are somehow anointed with special privileges that regular citizens do not have. They are allowed to break into people’s homes, spy on them, harass them in the street, confiscate suspicious cash, and murder citizens if they do not comply with their demands.
These actions are obviously wrong and illegal if anyone except “authorities” carries them out. If 2014 proved anything, it’s that police can get away with murder while average citizens can’t exchange cigarettes without a license.
This has caused protests and riots throughout the country and the solution being offered is not to change the laws to remove these absurd privileges from cops, but to put a camera on every single officer.
On the surface, cameras seem like they’ll add a layer of accountability to the system. However, civil liberties groups who advocate this approach seem to be shortsighted.
Here are 5 reasons to oppose body cameras for cops:
Video didn’t matter in publicized cases: In the case of Eric Garner, the NY man who was choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, clear video footage did not matter. In the court’s eyes disobeying officers is grounds for using lethal force. Case closed, at least until laws are changed.
Privacy, facial recognition: Technology already exists for cameras to be equipped with facial recognition software that could immediately identify anyone the cop comes in contact with. And with new threat level analysis of social media and other “watch list” mechanisms, cops will be motivated to stop someone without actual probable cause. This is extremely dangerous for liberty. This alone should halt your support for mandatory police cameras.
Boondoggle – Just like Michael Chertoff cashed in on naked body scanners following the sketchy underwear bomber, several cronies will make big bucks outfitting all police with these cameras and for providing supposed oversight.
Ends being let off with a warning: Remember the good cops who let you off on warnings for minor infractions? Say goodbye to that. Police cameras will be used to hold police accountable to their bosses more than to the public.
Cops can turn them off: Cops can easily turn the cameras off, and precincts can delete or edit footage in their favor. Cameras are as good as useless if people don’t trust the system to preserve and use the footage wisely.
Cameras may prevent some good cops from acting like complete thugs; however, when thuggish behavior is not just tolerated but legal in the eyes of the system, does it really matter if we have that behavior on video or not?
Poll: Edward Snowden Has Become One of Most Admired Men in Germany
Sputnik International
03:40 04.02.2015 (updated 07:39 04.02.2015)
Edward Snowden is the fourth most admired man among Germans, according to a new YouGov poll. The NSA whistleblower, whose leaks exposed US spying on German officials – including Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, came in just ahead of racecar driver Michael Schumacher.
A mix of politicians, public intellectuals and movie stars top the annual YouGov polls of the world’s most admired people, which are compiled globally and also broken down by various countries.
Snowden, who came after former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the Dalai Lama and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, has received positive recognition in Germany for his revelations about NSA surveillance. He also placed sixth among Russians and eighth among Danes.
No Hasselhoff in Top 10? Flawed poll. MT @ggreenwald Edward Snowden is 4th most admired man in Germany according to a new YouGov poll.
— Dateline_DC (@Dateline_DC) February 3, 2015
Snowden was given the 2013 Whistleblower Award as well as the 2014 Fritz Bauer Prize, awarded by the German Humanist Union, a prominent civil rights organization. Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who worked with Snowden to publish much of his information, also received the Scholl Siblings Prize in 2014 for his book on the leaks. And both of them, along with filmmaker Laura Poitras, received the 2014 Carl von Ossietzky Medal from the International League for Human Rights.
Meet Darkleaks, a Bitcoin-Powered Black Market for Secrets
by Grace Caffyn (@GCaffyn)
Coindesk
Published on February 3, 2015 at 14:50 GMT
A new black market for secrets that rewards informants with bitcoin has been announced this week.
Darkleaks, masterminded by members of crypto-anarchist collective unSystem, will let users sell leaked data in an anonymous, trustless environment powered by bitcoin’s blockchain.
Amir Taaki, the project’s systems developer, told CoinDesk that platforms like this provide a financial incentive for insiders to reveal information in the public interest, thereby “devaluing business models based around proprietary secrecy”.
History of radical schemes
The unSystem team has divided opinion with radical projects like the anonymous Dark Wallet, due for release soon, and Dark Market, a P2P eBay-style platform designed to run outside government control.
Darkleaks, which Taaki said has been in development “on and off for many months”, builds on another proof-of-concept from his team, PayPub, revealed last May.
Unlike Silk Road’s moderated marketplace model, which has proved vulnerable to law enforcement, there are no third parties on Darkleaks who can weigh in on disagreements between sellers and buyers. In fact, buyers and sellers cannot communicate at all.
How to Identify and Remove Facebook Trolls, Gang-Stalkers, and Disinfo Agents
How to Identify and Remove Facebook Trolls, Gang-Stalkers, and Disinfo Agents
By Jan Irvin
Dec. 16, 2014
Have you ever had someone post on a thread you created who is mean to everyone trying to have a conversation – name calling and ridiculing, or just plain lying about the information? Have you ever had someone who contacts everyone on your friends list and tells them lies about you? Have you ever had someone who just about every time you post a new thread they’re the first to reply – posting nonsense, or attacks? Have you ever had someone make repeated comments to a thread while never seeming to stay on topic?
If you can say yes to any of the above questions, you’re likely a victim of paid online cyber-bullying: trolls, gang-stalkers, and counterintelligence agents.
After going through many hundreds of friend requests each month on Facebook I’ve learned to spot many, not all, but many paid cyber-trolls, gang-stalkers, and counterintelligence agents. I’ve decided to share this information the public to help you identify them as well, if you too are experiencing the problem. Even if you aren’t, the tools here will be useful to you and your friends to help identify these potentially unsavory types in the future.
The more Facebook and internet users learn to identify paid trolls, gang-stalkers and counterintelligence agents, the less we all have to deal with them.
By exposing and sharing their methods we make them impotent and ineffectual.
In this day and age of high technology it’s important that we all realize the reality of, and learn to identify, expose, and stop, cyber-bullies, trolls and counterintelligence – for many reasons:
Trolls, cyber-bullies and counterintelligence agents waste billions of your tax dollars to intentionally mislead you on serious public matters.
Trolls, cyber-bullies and counterintelligence agents waste huge amounts of your time in productivity, etc.
Learning to identify trolls, cyber-bullies and counterintelligence agents, and expose them, we lessen their cost and impact on the rest of society.
By exposing trolls, cyber-bullies, and counterintelligence agents, we also expose their misinformation and attempts to mislead us where correct information for proper decision making is of great importance to everyone.
While this article focuses specifically with Facebook, many of the tools provided here will be relevant across the internet: on Youtube, Twitter, internet forums, news feeds, etc. Please share this article with everyone you know so that we may all benefit and prosper by the identification, and especially removal, of these counterintelligence infestations.
At the end of this short article I provide additional study materials on trolls, gang-stalkers, and counterintelligence agents, et al., for your continued study.
Psychologist Lists 8 Reasons Why Young Americans Aren’t Fighting Back…Yet
image via: anonhq.com
by EV
January 6, 2015
(anonhq) Clinical psychologist and author, Bruce E. Levine, has compiled an in depth list of reasons why young Americans don’t fight for their rights. His article has, of course, caused a little controversy. One journalist went as far as claiming Levine believes youthful resistance should focus on his own agenda, however it would seem most agree with Levine’s analysis, and even the skeptics admit the article is worth reading for the points listed and consideration.
According to Levine, young people have traditionally energized democratic movements, yet these efforts have been diminishing due to the ruling elite having created societal institutions that subdue young Americans, and break their spirit of resistance to domination. Young Americans—more so than older Americans—have basically resigned themselves to the idea that corporatocracy (a term used to describe an economic and political system that is controlled by corporations or corporate interests) can completely screw them over, and they feel helpless to do anything about it.
In a 2010 Gallup poll, Americans were asked, “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” 76% of 18 to 34-year-olds said ‘no’. Despite the fact that these individuals don’t believe they’ll receive their social security benefits, few have demanded it be shored up by fairly taxing the wealthy. They accept that they will have more money deducted for social security even though they don’t believe they’ll one day receive those benefits.
How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?
Dotcom wants ‘to kill Skype’ with MegaChat, his encrypted video calling service
RT News
Published time: January 22, 2015 18:46
Kim Dotcom (Reuters / Nigel Marple)
Kim Dotcom has launched a public beta version of his latest project, with which he aims to wipe out Skype. The video calling service called MegaChat is to be encrypted to ensure secure communications for all its users.
The program will be introduced “starting with video calling today,” the German born entrepreneur said on Twitter on Thursday. The new program registered half a million calls in just a matter of hours.
Dotcom has says the new product, which has been developed by the Mega “Conspiracy Team” will be a “Skype killer,” and hopes to end the domination of the Microsoft based product.
#Mega has over 15 million registered users now. I think #MegaChat could elevate us to 100+ million users by the end of 2015. #Prediction
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 22, 2015
MegaChat’s main selling point is that it is encrypted from both ends. The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden made revelations that Skype had co-operated with America’s spy agency to allow communications to be monitored – something that would not happen with Dotcom’s new product.
The entrepreneur also mentioned that he soon hopes to release a messaging service and a video conference call service in the near future.
PN 