July 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Local Regulations Keep You Unemployed
Local politicos and their backroom “business partners” are creating phoney licensing scams to keep you out of work. Check out your local licensing regulations and see if any of them are based in reality. Fight for your right to work!Amplify’d from www.ncpa.orgProponents of such requirements justify these barriers by endlessly parroting the same worn-out phrase: public health and...
2 tags
EFF Campaign Increases the Number of TOR Relays
Amplify’d from www.eff.orgThere is an acute need for circumvention technologies in authoritarian regimes - and even activists in many would-be progressive societies may feel safer if they can avoid the electronic gaze of authorities. Our gratitude goes out to the hundreds of individuals who set up relays and donated bandwidth to help strengthen the network. They are true defenders of online...
4 tags
The Stimulus that Didn't
It should also be noted that ‘official’ unemployment figures ignore the completely disenfranchised who do not ‘qualify.’Amplify’d from www.ncpa.orgMyth 1: Stimulus spending can jump start the economy and fix unemployment.Since the enactment of the stimulus bill in February 2009, the unemployment rate has not approached pre-American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)...
3 tags
The War on Food: are we Winning or Losing?
Federal, State and Local governments continue to pour money and manpower into the War on Food, but who’s winning?
Here’s a brief selection of examples from 2011 to 2008:
“Government regulation … requires costly procedures that drive small producers out of the market without necessarily improving the quality of food.”...
4 tags
Privitized Oppression
You may think this is about Xe, or Blackwater, or top secret torture camps. It’s not.Amplify’d from wikileaks.orgFor six months now, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of the non-profit...
June 2011
10 posts
5 tags
OECD Draft of Internet Policy-Making Principles...
Amplify’d from www.eff.orgEFF has joined with a coalition of more than 80 global civil society groups which have declined to endorse a set of Internet Policy Principles presented today in Paris by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). EFF and the other members of the OECD’s Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council (CSISAC) were unwilling to accept the high...
5 tags
The Greek Bailout: Who Profits?
Defaults and bailouts. The dominoes are falling.Amplify’d from esr.ibiblio.orgLost in the eye-glazing babble about maturity extensions, haircuts, and which acronymic organization is going to funnel the money into place is the real magnitude of the stakes here. It’s not just the Greeks’ opera-bouffé parody of the modern redistributionist state that is circling the structural-insolvency drain;...
5 tags
Know Your Rights: Protect Yourself from Illegal...
Amplify’d from www.eff.orgThe Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects you from unreasonable government searches and seizures, and this protection extends to your computer and portable devices. In EFF’s “Know Your Digital Rights” guide, we outline various common scenarios and explain when and how the police can search the data stored on your computer or portable electronic...
3 tags
U.S. Personal and Economic Freedom Index
The Mercatus Institute ranks the American states on public policies that affect individual economic, social and personal freedoms.Amplify’d from mercatus.org
Purpose of the Index
This project develops an index of economic and personal freedom in the American states. Specifically, it examines state and local government intervention across a wide range of public...
5 tags
This Week in Internet Censorship
Top stories from EFFAmplify’d from www.eff.orgCanadian Filtering Tool Used in Middle EastCrackdowns on ‘Anonymous’Tunisian Activists Speak Out Against Porn BlockingRead more at www.eff.org See this Amp at http://bit.ly/jGTuzY
4 tags
Protecting the Economic Elite
Amplify’d from c4ss.orgWhen the state seems to “tighten the screws” on commercial power, limiting its range of motion for (supposedly) the consumer, the outcome is to reduce the field of competitors. Only the savviest, richest and most well-connected business players will be able to afford compliance with the state’s largely arbitrary rules, so only small businesses — those without K Street suits...
5 tags
Intellectual Property as Licensed Monopoly
Is thought property? Without expression thought is a pretty solitary pastime.Amplify’d from c4ss.org“Intellectual property,” like tariffs and all other monopolies, is a barrier to the free movement of labor and capital into certain legally defined areas of production, which has the effect of maintaining artificially high prices that would not exist under free market competition. “Intellectual...
6 tags
The War on Drugs has Failed
Fight drug related violence and drug abuse with the only weapon proven to be effective: education.Amplify’d from www.msnbc.msn.comA new report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy argues that the decades-old worldwide “war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” The 24-page paper was released Thursday.The commission called...
5 tags
Fight Internet Censorship, take the Tor Challenge
Amplify’d from www.eff.orgActivists worldwide use Tor to protect their anonymity online and to circumvent Internet censorship. But they all rely on a limited number of user-provided “relays” to protect themselves and communicate with others. Internet users worldwide need your help to make the Tor network stronger and faster, so take the Tor Challenge today!Read more at...
May 2011
7 posts
3 tags
Spinning the Political Compass
A political indoctrination tool turns out to be inaccurate.
Who knew.Amplify’d from c4ss.orgThe Political Compass, a popular online quiz, was supposedly designed to remedy the simple-mindedness of the left-right spectrum by replacing it with two axes: political and social libertarianism vs. authoritarianism, and economic Left vs. Right. Basically, everything nice you say about big business...
4 tags
Encrypted currencies and darknet economies
Bitcoin ushers in the Diamond Age.Amplify’d from c4ss.orgJason Calacanis and his colleagues at LAUNCH describe it as “The Most Dangerous Project We’ve Ever Seen” (May 15, 2011). Not only is it “the most dangerous open-source project ever created,” but “possibly the most dangerous technological project since the Internet itself.” It “could topple governments, destabilize economies and create...
4 tags
Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse
The CDC uses zombie madness to present emergency preparedness.Amplify’d from emergency.cdc.govThe rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do...
6 tags
Get a Warrant Before Searching Cell Phones
Make those folks on CSI work a little harder, support SB 914.Amplify’d from www.eff.orgEFF is proud to support SB 914, a bill that requires the police to obtain a warrant before searching a recent arrestee’s cell phone.The bill is expected to be on the Senate floor soon. All Californians should ask their state lawmakers to support SB 914 and tell law enforcement that if they want access to the...
5 tags
Fight Internet Censorship
Check out “Documenting Tools for Beating Internet Censorship” on the EFF blog.Amplify’d from www.eff.orgNetwork censorship and surveillance is a booming business. Censorship schemes continue to fragment the Internet and new censorship proposals are constantly introduced around the world, including in liberal democracies. (Lately governments have gotten fascinated by the idea of...
3 tags
Rationalizing and Reason: Unbelievable Beliefs
Why does the mind challenge fact with fiction?Amplify’d from m.motherjones.comThe theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly...
3 tags
Routine Maintenance: Tracking the Trackers
Rotate your GPS tracking devices every 1000 miles for even wear.Amplify’d from www.wired.comHow to find it? Just get under your car and look around. If you see a black box, give it a yank. If it comes free, it’s probably not factory-installed. Even if you’re not sure what a normal car underside looks like, a surveillance device is going to look out of place. While you’re at it, check the car...
April 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Tyranny of the Mob
Democracy: a Florida professor and a planeload of paranoiacs deciding what to have for lunch.Amplify’d from www.disinfo.comA Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment.That “suspicious package” turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.Read...
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Public Trust in Media and Government
A survey on public trust, main-stream media and transparency in government and the effects of WikiLeaks.Amplify’d from www.kwiksurveys.comThe purpose of this survey is to measure public opinion and trust in WikiLeaks, the government and the mainstream media. It is anticipated the results will be collated, analysed and published as an Honours Dissertation as a partial fulfillment of a Bachelor of...
5 tags
Reduce Oil Dependence-Open Fuel Standard
Promoting choice at the pump.Amplify’d from www.hoover.orgTo outmaneuver OPEC, the market needs to be able to react dynamically. That means giving purchasers of fuel the ability to choose a different fuel at the pump if it’s cheaper that day than gasoline or diesel. Brazilians already have this option: During the oil price spike in 2008, with 90% of their new cars fuel flexible, they bought...
7 tags
Government Job Monopoly
The job market can be a gamble, but the house always wins. State and Federal governments continue to dominate employment with guaranteed perks and pensions paid for by ever rising taxes.Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.comEvery state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California,...
3 tags
The Video Game Preservation Crisis
Ask not what your console can do for you. Ask, rather, what you can do for your console.Amplify’d from www.gamasutra.comTrash cans, landfills, and incinerators. Erasure, deletion, and obsolescence. These words could describe what has happened to the various building blocks of the video game industry in countries around the world. These building blocks consist of video game source code, the actual...
March 2011
8 posts
3 tags
In-District Meetings: Defend Your Rights
Action speak louder than tweets.Amplify’d from www.eff.orgSenators and Representatives don’t spend all their time in Washington; they also head home to visit with their families and constituents. This happens frequently — in fact, Congress is only in D.C. about 137 days per year. When they aren’t in D.C., they’re at home - and you can go visit them! You can either...
4 tags
Lawsuit Challenges NSA Surveillance
Appeals Court Revives Lawsuit Challenging NSA Surveillance of AmericansAmplify’d from www.wired.comIt’s easy to forget these days, but former President George W. Bush’s illegal warrantless surveillance program was never halted by Congress, nor by the Obama administration. It was merely legalized in a 2008 law called the FISA Amendments Act. That means the surveillance of Americans’ international...
5 tags
In the Shadow of Sunshine Week
Only the guilty need fear Sunshine Week.Amplify’d from www.wired.comAs Sunshine Week sets, it’s a good time to take a quick inventory of the federal government’s ongoing failures of transparency.MapLight.org, which tracks the influence of money in politics, ran down the opacity the public confronts at every level of government — from antiquated campaign-finance reporting requirements to Freedom...
5 tags
Rushing to Regulate the Internet
Where’s the fire? What is the Commerce Dept. trying to hide?Amplify’d from techliberation.comThe Commerce Department gave the many, many interested parties the worst four weeks of the year—including Christmas, New Year’s and Martin Luther King Day—to digest and comment on an 88 page, ~31,000 tome of a report on proposed regulation of how information flows in our… well, information economy....
4 tags
Subversion, sedition and sabotage
Amplify’d from c4ss.orgYes, Virginia, there are differences between the official “left” and “right”. But those differences are “split” in such a way that one segment of the ruling class benefits no matter who you support. I tend to prefer indirect economic tyranny to direct pseudo-religious pleasure-control tyranny myself, and I suspect most of you would as well, being the shiftless deviants I...
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The Free Market’s Regulatory Model
We’ve all seen how Big Government “regulates” its Big friends in Big Business. Corporate cartels that are “too big to fail” get Big money to paper over the Big mistakes. Who pays? We do.Amplify’d from c4ss.orgBig Business, we are frequently advised, is the enemy of our natural biosphere, forever seeking new ways to sidestep its responsibilities to the environment and...
7 tags
Digital Jasmine: Flirting with Revolution
A real-world example of covert communications. Using available tools in unexpected ways to get the word out. May your day be filled with jasmine.Amplify’d from blogs.discovermagazine.comAs uprisings spread across northern Africa this month, protesters lit up social networking sites with updates—even Egypt’s attempt to shut off the Internet couldn’t stop them completely. But in Libya, where the...
February 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Collective Bargaining isn't the Problem
This is an example of what happens when people’s livelihood is tied to political posturing.Amplify’d from c4ss.orgWhen government is the employer, employment questions become policy questions … and policy questions are intrinsically political questions. This means that all the players involved will mobilize political power to get the answers they want.The problem isn’t the existence of a...
4 tags
Rapid Fire Crowd Control
“Arsenal of Freedom” alert: #activists take note, prepare to defend yourself against rapid-fire weapons of suppression.Amplify’d from www.newscientist.comTHE US army is planning to field “rubber bullets” for machine guns. Military officials claim the ammunition will allow them to more effectively quell violent protests without loss of life, but human rights campaigners are...
5 tags
Guerrilla Networking: Internet Access for the...
Keeping up with your web comics when the Zombies are at your door (not really)Amplify’d from www.pcworld.comThese days, no popular movement goes without an Internet presence of some kind, whether it’s organizing on Facebook or spreading the word through Twitter. And as we’ve seen in Egypt, that means that your Internet connection can be the first to go. Whether you’re...
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Top 10 Logical Fallacies in Politics
Knowledge is power, people. Purge these maggots of sloppy thinking from you own brains and learn to identify them.Amplify’d from open.salon.com#5.THE UNFALSIFIABLE HYPOTHESIS/SPECIAL PLEADINGWe’ve all tried debating somebody with an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and we all know how futile it is. An unfalsifiable hypothesis is exactly what it sounds like, a theory that cannot be disproved. The...
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Rushed renewal for PATRIOT Act defeated
Amplify’d from www.eff.orgToday in the U.S. House of Representatives, an unlikely alliance of House Democrats and Republicans stood up for civil liberties and successfully beat back a fast-track attempt to reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act without the much-needed checks and balances EFF has championed. The renewal bill voted on today would have extended three dangerous surveillance provisions in...
January 2011
9 posts
2 tags
Our Own Worst Enemies
Stop hitting yourself.Amplify’d from c4ss.org“Government is just all of us working together.” “We are the government.” I frequently read such statements by liberals who react with alarm to the very notion that someone might fear the government.If we are the government, we certainly do a lot of stuff to ourselves that isn’t very nice. Here, in no particular order, are some examples from the past...
4 tags
Data Privacy Day is Among Us
Get out there and flaunt your privacy!Amplify’d from techliberation.comTo appreciate Data Privacy Day you must first ignore the Euro-babble description of what is Data Privacy Day (“an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information”) and take it for what it really is: a prodding for Internet users to take a critical look at how they share and...
6 tags
A Step Toward a Decentralized Currency
Rainey Reitman on Bitcoin and the value of digital curency.Amplify’d from www.eff.orgTo understand digital currency, one must first note that money in the digital age has moved from a largely anonymous system to one increasingly laden with tracking, control and regulatory overhead. Our cold hard cash is now shepherded through a series of regulated financial institutions like banks, credit unions...
6 tags
Targeting our efforts
Kevin Carson points the way.
“When the wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at his finger.”Amplify’d from c4ss.orgJohn Robb, who writes about asymmetric warfare and networked organization, is one of my favorite writers. A central theme of his work is what he calls “systems disruption.” To disrupt centralized, hierarchical systems, it’s not necessary to take over or destroy...
6 tags
Why you should always encrypt your smartphone
Ryan Radia delivers solid advice on protecting your privacy.Amplify’d from arstechnica.comLast week, California’s Supreme Court reached a controversial 5-2 decision in People v. Diaz (PDF), holding that police officers may lawfully search mobile phones found on arrested individuals’ persons without first obtaining a search warrant. The court reasoned that mobile phones, like cigarette...
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Default comment for any police misconduct story
Brad Spangler has composed a handy response for police misconduct reports. Yes, it is as simple as that. You want reform? This is reform.Amplify’d from c4ss.orgPlease feel free to save this little text blurb I composed earlier today and use it yourself as a default comment on ANY police misconduct story.“Simple economics tells us that any monopoly will have a strong tendency toward excessively...
3 tags
Greenwashed Corporatism is Still Corporatism
Posted by Kevin Carson at C4SSAmplify’d from c4ss.orgI hear frequently from a doctoral student named Keith Taylor, who’s researching electrical power cooperatives and decentralized models for developing wind power. He’s sent me quite a bit of material, over the past year or so, on the extent to which government “alternative energy” policy systematically privileges large-scale, conventional...
8 tags
The Net Neutrality Fight Goes on…and on
Larry Downes comments on CES panel debate over the FCC and the steps Congress is taking (HR96)Amplify’d from techliberation.comI published an article for CNET late last night on a spirited debate at CES yesterday over the FCC’s recently-enacted “open Internet” rules, aka net neutrality. Panelists from the FCC, Congress, AT&T, Verizon, Google and the Center for Democracy and Technology...
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The Next Net
Douglas Rushkoff prepares us for the next step.Amplify’d from shareable.netThe moment the “net neutrality” debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network - its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to...
December 2010
32 posts
8 tags
Iraq's New Government Is As Old As Time
Meet the new boss…Amplify’d from c4ss.orgThe Iraqi people ought to be euphoric with anticipation of the new governing coalition, a change a lot like the one Barack Obama represents in this country. Now that the politicians have decided how to parcel out bureaucratic realms of authority, they can get to work on discharging the terminal duty within politics, apportionment of the country’s...
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Two Scathing Dissents on the FCC's Illegal,...
Federal Communications Commissioners Rob McDowell and Meredith Baker speak their minds.Amplify’d from techliberation.comThe FCC’s order still isn’t out (just a news release in .DOC form), but the Commissioner’s accompanying statements are. Anyone interested in net neutrality regulation or the coming political, legal and constitutional fights over it must read the scathing dissents by...
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Did societies evolve to be corrupt?
Corruption is how the privileged share their privilege (Latin for “private law”) with the un-privileged. Sharing is good, right?Amplify’d from io9.comCorruption is as old as human history. For as long as people have organized themselves into groups with powerful leaders, those leaders have sometimes abused their power. But evolutionary biologists say corruption might actually be...