The temporary shutdown in Egypt of Internet and other telecommunication services, as well as similar interruptions in other Middle East countries experiencing large-scale protests and rebellions, has galvanized hackers and human rights activists as well as U.S. foreign policy makers. The consequences may be not be what anyone expected.
Protesters fed up with political repression, corruption and poverty (particularly recent food price inflation) toppled the government of Tunisia. They threaten to do the same in other countries throughout the Mideast as pundits hail the "Twitter and Facebook revolution." But repressive governments have as much compunction about shutting down communication services as they do about torturing dissidents.
I have often spoken about the excessive size of government, and most recently how waste and inefficiency needs to be eliminated from our military budget. Our foreign policy is not only bankrupting us, but actively creating and antagonizing enemies of the United States, and compromising our national security. Spending more and adding more programs and initiatives does not improve things for us; it makes them much much worse. This applies to more than just the military budget.
Stephen Smith of A Beginner's Guide to Freedom talks to Gard about things like the Terrorist Expatration Act, the new financial regulation bill and how it could monitor ALL of your electronic transactions, the Einstein data miner, the Enemy Belligerent Act, and more.
"People don't know what fusion centers are," says Catherine Bleish, who was the opening speaker at the 2010 New Hampshire Liberty Forum on March 19.
The document-leaking web site Wikileaks announced Tuesday that it would release 500,000 alphanumeric pager messages sent on September 11, 2001. I'm brewing coffee and preparing to "live" blog the more interesting of these half million intercepts as they are released over the next 24 hours.
Did you buy extra ammunition after Barack Obama was elected President, and are you still concerned that he might ban your guns? Are you concerned that the economic crisis could devolve into a depression, or worse? Do you think the federal government has overstepped its authority under the Constitution? If so, the government thinks you're a right-wing extremist and a potential terrorist threat.
You haven't done anything wrong, so why should you worry about surveillance? It was Cardinal Richelieu who said, "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him." The United States doesn't hang innocent people any more, but it certainly does imprison them by the millions, and occasionally does kill them.
A congressionally mandated study released Wednesday found that the U.S. national security system is outdated and needs major restructuring.
A Brooklyn jury has found Emmanuel "Toto" Constant guilty of mortgage fraud and grand larceny. Constant is the former founder and leader of FRAPH, the Haitian paramilitary group that in the early 90's systematically tortured and murdered thousands of supporters of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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