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The blotter: Week ending 30 January 2011
Business Still using Facebook? Really? The social network is going to start adding your “likes” and “check-ins” to advertisements in users’ news feeds. And it’s not optional, according to Irina...
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The blotter: Week ending 6 March 2011
Business The US Supreme Court has ruled (.pdf; 139KB) that corporations do not have personal privacy rights accorded to natural individuals. As a result, AT&T can’t prevent embarrassing corporate...
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The blotter: Week ending 13 March 2011
Business According to Nelson D. Schwartz, writing for the New York Times, “… industry experts estimate that nearly a trillion dollars worth of mortgage debt is ‘underwater,'” where the homeowner owes...
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The blotter: Week ending 29 May 2011
Business Square demoed the two missing pieces — an iPad-based cash register and an iPhone-based app, Card Case — from its ecommerce system at TechCrunch Disrupt. The cash register is an iPad app...
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The blotter: Week ending 17 July 2011
Business For my generation’s entire life we were told in no uncertain terms that home ownership was the bedrock of responsible personal finance. Now, of course, we’ve all learned — the hard way — that...
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The blotter: Week ending 21 August 2011
Business Google is buying Motorola for US$12.5 billion. Corporate media, at least initially, mistakenly thought that Google is getting into the hardware business. By the second day, most had picked up...
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The blotter: Week ending 28 August 2011
Business Matt Haughey reveals the utter bullshit that is the credit scoring system in the US. While in college, Haughey racked up debt because he was amazed that anyone would give him credit. His...
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The blotter: Week ending 4 September 2011
Business Richard Florida calls it the Great Reset. Others call it Freelance Nation and the Gig Economy. Sara Horowitz, writing for the Atlantic, calls it the industrial revolution of our time. It’s...
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Again, with the fear-mongering politics
President Obama was never opposed to the provisions of this year’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that allow for US citizens to be detained indefinitely without due process....
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TPP may be worse than ACTA; we’ll never know until it’s too late
The US versions of vastly overreaching anti-piracy legislation — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate — were...
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Obama misuses Espionage Act as personal Official Secrets Act
Candidate Obama promised — quite vigorously — to strengthen existing whistle-blower protection laws to protect federal workers who disclose government misdeeds. It was a cornerstone of his pledge to...
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Never can say sorry
Frahne Franovitch was the most tormented soul I’ve ever met, and after complaining bitterly about the situation in his homeland of Afghanistan in the 1970’s, Frahne took his own life in complete and...
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US Justice Department on warrantless wiretapping: Heads we win; tails they lose
For the last 12 years — and into the foreseeable future — the US government has vigorously avoided any court determination regarding its warrantless wiretapping program. The warrantless wiretapping...
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Wyden places hold on FISA Amendment Act
President Obama campaigned — adamantly — on either ceasing or significantly curtailing the warrantless wiretapping program initiated by President George W. Bush. That was then. Since the election,...
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SCOTUS upholds Affordable Care Act
It’s rare that I start an article with a disclaimer and a where I’m coming from statement, but here goes. I’ve never supported President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). I felt betrayed when he took...
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An inkling of RomneyCare II
Thanks to Trip Gabriel and Robert Pear, writing for the New York Times, we have at least an initial peek into what presumed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has in mind for healthcare...
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Maybe there’ll be butter beans in Saint Paul
One of the things that I miss most about living in the deep south is butter beans. As close as anyone gets up here on the far edge are lima beans and they’re vastly different and not nearly as tasty....
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Media and post-truth politics
In the days leading up to the Republican convention in Tampa, Jay Rosen published another insightful piece asking if journalists should call-out lies when they occur. He’s referencing Daniel Patrick...
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US Supreme Court declines to review warrantless wiretapping dismissal
For six years the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) fought a good legal battle to bring the US telecommunications giants to justice for allegedly providing backdoors to their networks allowing the...
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Obama institutionalizes kill list with disposition matrix
The Obama administration expects to continue adding names to its kill list for at least a decade — maybe more — into the future. So reports Greg Miller, writing for the Washington Post. The grand,...
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It’s not fascism when we do it
Mike Lofgren, a former congressional staffer, makes a non-compelling case in the Atlantic for voting for Barack Obama in tomorrow’s US presidential election. Basically, Lofgren’s argument boils down...
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Obama’s constitutionally questionable civil liberties missteps
Among President Barack Obama’s many accomplishments — both in and out of the US presidency — is constitutional law professor. Presumably he knows more about — and respects — the US Constitution, its...
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Obama signs whistleblower bill into law
With nary a whiff of a regard for either Bradley Manning or Julian Assange, President Obama yesterday signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (.pdf; 219KB) affording greater protection to...
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ITU/WCIT threatens open internet
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a tiny agency within the United Nations hosting the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) 3-14 December in Dubai. The...
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US Justice Department warrantlessly seizes AP phone records
Earlier this month, the US Justice Department informed the Associated Press (AP) that federal law enforcement had — without notice — seized two months of telephone records of more than 20 AP editors...
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US entertainment cartel demands ability to deploy malware
The Commission on Theft of American Intellectual Property has published its “IP Commission Report” (.pdf; 1.7MB) that would be 84 pages of off-the-rails hilarious if it weren’t likely to be adopted in...
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Verizon’s share everything plan isn’t what you think it is
The US National Security Agency (NSA) is siphoning the telephone records of Verizon’s US customers under a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order issued last April. Glenn...
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Eyes of the world: Candidate Obama v. President Obama
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world but the heart has its beaches its homeland and thoughts of its own Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings but the heart...
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Obama administration walks back Clapper appointment
President Obama’s statements are no longer allowed time to cool off even a little bit before they become outright lies. On 9 August, President Obama took to the TelePrompTer to assure the nation that...
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Now the surveillance cat’s really out of the bag
The latest cache of classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveals that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has continued to conduct a secret war on strong cryptography and has enlisted the...
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A move to expand Social Security
As the wingnuts on the right continue to howl for cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits in the US — even President Obama wants to cut benefits by using chained consumer price index (chained...
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Obama’s Orwellian surveillance reform
Last Friday, President Barack Obama announced “reforms” for the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance programs that are little more than lipstick on a pig. Like putting Bondo on a car’s...
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FCC’s Wheeler: Don’t make my pull this car over
As I recently wrote with regard to US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Tom Wheeler‘s proposed rules eliminating network neutrality in favor of a bifurcated internet, the FCC is caving to...
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Obama administration calls for limits on commercial data; ignores government...
Just in time for May Day, the Obama administration released a report recommending limits on how corporations use customer data while totally ignoring any mention of pervasive government surveillance...
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Take your war toys and leave
Several nights last week, black and mostly unmarked combat helicopters flew at very low altitude through our neighborhood (Mac Groveland in Saint Paul) and it scared the living shit right out of me....
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