Any one of those stories would be enough to knock an Administration back on its heels. All three — and with the IRS and AP stories coming in rapid succession over the past 96 hours — threaten to permanently derail Obama’s plans to fortify his presidential legacy in the first 18 months of his second term.
The problems are both practical and symbolic. They have both short term and long term political consequences. And almost none of it portends well for President Obama and his Administration.
Another point here worth considering: “Remember that President Obama was elected in 2008 in no small part because of his pledge to be the anti-George W. Bush. That is, prizing competence over all in governance and putting a premium on transparency. And both of those pillars are undermined by developments in the past four days.”
After voting down reform three reform amendments on Thursday, the Senate continued debate on the spy bill on Friday morning. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) offered an amendment meant to force the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency to reveal how frequently they have collected Americans’ communications as part of their efforts to amass intelligence on foreign targets. Even an estimate would suffice, Wyden has argued — but the spy agencies have rebuffed his efforts to get a general number, claiming it is not possible.
“This is the last oportunity for the next five years for the Congress to exercise a modest measure of real oversight over this intelligence surveillance law,” said Wyden, referring to the 2017 expiration date in the new law. “It is not real oversight when the United States Congress cannot get a yes or no answer to the question of whether an estimate currently exists as to whether law abiding Americans have had their phone calls and emails swept up under the FISA law.”
Wyden and other civil liberties advocates are worried that the spy agencies might be able to use intelligence gathering capabilities ostensibly targeted at foreigners — a legal practice under the law — to search their databases for Americans’ emails and phone calls without a warrant.
The FISA Amendments Act was first approved during former President George W. Bush’s time in office, though its passage has been relatively uncontroversial in comparison to the initial vote in 2008. It is worth noting that then-candidate Barack Obama vowed to block such programs, while on the campaign trail in 2008, before switching to a push for simply increasing oversight/accountability of such programs.
So the week of The Daily’s closing, they break a story revealing that city buses across the country are adding audio-recording mechanisms to eavesdrop on conversations. What terrible timing for a scoop. :/
» Wait a sec … the FBI had them? Well, funny story about that. Back in March, the group says they gained access to a computer owned by an FBI official. Just by chance, they found a file on the agent’s desktop titled “NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” — a long list of 12 million UDID identifiers for iOS devices, along with a number of other pieces of personal info. AntiSec released just 1 million of the UDID numbers (which you can analyze here to see if you were nailed), but it’s worth keeping in mind that the odds may not be super-high of getting hit. There are 410 million iOS devices on the market, as of July. The problem for many is that the FBI reportedly had this info in the first place. What did they need it for, and why was it sitting on some dude’s desktop?
UPDATE: The FBI says that there is “no evidence” they had a file like the one described above.
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New tech site “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read” wants to expose what they call “the biggest lie on the Web.” To put it simply, nobody actually reads the Terms of Service. They just say they do. And in the case of some services, such as TwitPic (above), this is pretty evil. Did you know they can sell your photos to a news wire without paying you? Scary, right?
In a Louisiana public school, female students who are suspected of being pregnant are told that they must take a pregnancy test. Under school policy, those who are pregnant or refuse to take the test are kicked out and forced to undergo home schooling.
Welcome to Delhi Charter School, in Delhi, Louisiana, a school of 600 students that does not believe its female students have a right to education free from discrimination. According to its Student Pregnancy Policy, the school has a right to not only force testing upon girls, but to send them to a physician of the school administration’s choice. A positive test result, or failure to take the test at all, means administrators can forbid a girl from taking classes and force her to pursue a course of home study if she wishes to continue her education with the school.
Charter school or not, this seems like a pretty open violation of what should be an obvious example of a person’s right to privacy.
Malte Spitz’s presentation, ”Your Phone Company Is Watching”, explores just how much can be extrapolated from the information collected by his cell phone carrier as a result of the EU’s Data Retention Directive. Working with ZEIT Online, Spitz used 35,830 lines of data to create a downloadable, interactive map chronicling his daily life during a six month period. “If you have access to this information, you can see what society is doing,” says Spitz, adding, “If you have access to this information you can control your society.” source
Skype has confirmed that — under “rare circumstances” — parts of instant message conversations made over the chat service may be forwarded to an unintended recipient.
How devastating is this issue?
A Skype spokesperson didn’t elaborate beyond a pre-written statement, but based on user comments in the official Skype support forums, we can piece together what happens if you’re one of the unlucky few affected by this bug.
Let’s say that User A and User B are exchanging instant messages over Skype today. Tomorrow, User A might log on and find a message from User C — one of his or her contacts — asking about something that was said in that conversation. The message User C received, without any action by User A or User B, would’ve been a line or two from the conversation the two had.
It’s no massive password leak, but we’re pretty sure that most Skype users are big fans of their personal privacy. Let this also serve as a reminder of why important/private business should never be discussed via instant message.
Internet content blocking travels downstream, affects unwary users
A team of Canadian researchers have uncovered an unusual new example of “upstream filtering,” where online content in one country is blocked in another country due to filtering that happens in transit.
Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, revealed that some Oman Internet users using the Omantel ISP are also being subjected to Indian content restrictions because of traffic flowing through India.
Think having your internet blocked is bad? Try having it blocked indirectly.
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