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The following is from Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson. Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

If you think youre hearing more accounts than ever about improper government intrusion into our lives, youre a lot like author and journalist David Kirby. He researched that for new book When They Come For You: How Police and Government Are Trampling Our Liberties and How to Take Them Back.

Sharyl: When you say, When They Come for You, who is the They?

Kirby: The they can be anything from a local social services agent in your community, to the president of the United States. This goes on at the state, federal and local level. It goes on in red states and blue states, rich states, and poor states, big cities, and small towns. I found violations of the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, freedom of speech, people having their homes raided without a warrant. People having their cars taken away from them because they were suspected of a crime even though they didnt commit a crime. People in debtors prison because they cant pay their court fees and fines, and of course child protective services that come in the middle of the night, and just yank your kid away.

Sharyl: Do you think theres been an escalation in events like this, or are we just able to find them, and notice them more?

Kirby: Its a very good question. Theres not a lot of hard data unfortunately. There is more monitoring. Social media, people have cameras with them everywhere so its more noticeable. But I do think it is getting worse. I think particularly with surveillance, with the First Amendment, with freedom of the press, freedom of protestors. I think it started after 911, the PATRIOT Act. It got worse under Obama, as you well know, with surveillance of the media. Now I think its getting even worse, particularly cracking down on protesters, spying on protestors, and doing things like threatening to sue media outlets for libel, or wanting to change the libel laws.

Sharyl: Many Americans say, I obey the law. If the government wants to surveil me, look at my computer, I dont really care. Is there a counterpoint to that?

Kirby: I mean thats the Fourth Amendment. Its the most threatened amendment in our country, I think, after the First Amendment, which is a close second. But we need to protect those protections for everybody, and once you just acquiesce and say, Well, its okay if theyre listening in on my phone call, then the door starts opening wider and wider.

Sharyl: Is it fair to say you consider yourself a liberal, or a liberal Democrat?

Kirby: Im a lefty. Yes. Left of center.

Sharyl: Do you notice any division? Is one party or the other better or worse at any of this?

Kirby: Theyre both bad to be honest. I can pick apart, and my book does, and Im equally critical of the Obama Administration as the Trump Administration. A lot of my stories take place in blue states.

Sharyl: But what do you attribute that to, if there isnt even an ideological divide into where this happens?

Kirby: Well, I think when you talk about ideology, I think people on the far left and on the far right are actually a lot more united over these issues than they realize. People on the left dont like government intrusion any more than anybody else does. It is more of a libertarian point of view. I call myself a lefty libertarian, which sounds oxymoronic, but I figured it out. I would say people like Rand Paul is certainly bringing these things up once in a while. He has sponsored some bills in Congress. They go absolutely nowhere. He does get Democratic cosponsors. There are people, progressives, who are interested in reforming these issues, and reigning in the government. But like I said, it goes nowhere.

Sharyl: What would you say is the takeaway message you would like people to walk away from reading your book with?

Kirby: Know your Bill of Rights. Read them, study them, know what protections you are offered under them in case you ever need to use them, and if you are concerned about these things, its up to us. These are our personal freedoms, and they are under attack.

A new report from Pew Research Center says a majority of Americans, 64%, are concerned about how much data is collected about them by the government online.

Watch the interview by clicking the link below:

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/when-they-come-for-you

Read more from the original source:
When They Come for You - Sharyl Attkisson

DECEMBER 15, 2019

I GENERALLY CARE relatively little for the personal lives of people of note, but something that always nagged me just slightly about Edward Snowdens 2013 revelations that the NSA was spying on pretty much everyone was how angry was his girlfriend?

After all, we all knew Snowden had a girlfriend, since it didnt take long for the media to uncover that her name was Lindsay Mills, that (much to their infinite delight) she had photos of herself in lingerie, and that her significant other had suddenly turned up in Hong Kong halfway through a business trip and started to fill the world in on US mass surveillance without running it by her first.

It must have been quite the shock.

I therefore found it uncharacteristically satisfying that Permanent Record included a chapter composed of extracts from Lindsay Millss diary. It was genuinely interesting to get an insight into how someone might cope with this very unusual situation being thrust upon them in a more candid tone than we generally get from the guarded Snowden throughout the rest of the book. These excerpts were all the more necessary, as this really is a book about the personal no further details of public significance are released in this title, which is a work primarily of analysis and reflection.

The general schema of the book is precisely what one might expect: Snowdens childhood in North Carolina and the DC Beltway; his decision to enlist in the US Army following 9/11; his roles as a defense contractor in the United States, Switzerland, and Japan; his ultimate decision to blow the whistle on mass surveillance and subsequent temporary asylum in Russia. Prior reviews have been accompanied by a few snarky remarks: The New Yorker, for example, claimed that Snowden saw the early internet as a techno-utopia where boys and men could roam free, although I cannot recall Snowden making such exclusionary gendered distinctions. Presumably it complements Malcolm Gladwells earlier piece on why Snowden is not comparable to Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg (since he is a hacker not a leaker) in flat contradiction to Ellsbergs own defense of Snowden published in the Washington Post:

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I dont agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago. [] Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly.

So eager has everyone been to snipe and show their moral fiber as good little citizens, that they have rarely found the time to dig into Permanent Records main themes. Rather than spilling more facts, Snowdens aim seems to have been to contextualize his previous disclosures and explain their significance. Thus, while many parts of the book are truly gripping a goodly portion of it details how Snowden removed information detailing surveillance from his workplace under a pineapple field in Hawaii and arranged to share it with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong it is the authors underlying themes and motivations that truly deserve our attention.

It is apparent early on that Snowden pursued two main purposes in releasing Permanent Record: 1) to convince skeptics that he acted for the good of the country and to defend the US Constitution (indeed the books release was timed to coincide with Constitution Day on September 17), and 2) to educate readers about technology, or at least that part of it related to mass surveillance.

Early on, while still describing his 80s childhood and initial fascination with what he then termed Big Masheens, Snowden recalls imbibing lessons from his Coast Guard father Lonnie about the potential for technology to bring its own form of tyranny with it. According to Snowden:

To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, youll work, but when your equipment breaks down youll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you.

Technological tyranny is a theme Snowden comes back to later in the book, reflecting on Mary Shelleys Frankenstein he was after all posted to Geneva, where part of the novels action is set.

That may sound a bit clich, until you learn that Snowdens sales partner during his time at Dell literally nicknamed the cloud system they developed for the CIA Frankie because its a real monster. That wasnt just a private office joke, but how he tried to convince the agency to greenlight the project during a sales pitch. Its these little pieces of not-exactly-earth-shattering, but still pleasantly informative detail that help the book keep ticking over and compensate for the often distant tone of its author. Snowden frequently describes his feelings, but rarely does he make the reader feel them.

Snowden also lavishes attention on explaining how he interacted with the internet as a child and teen. While many have interpreted these lengthy passages as either nave utopianism or pathetic addiction, his point is much more important than that. Im much of an age with Snowden and therefore remember many of the things he recalls: phreaking, personal homepages, chat rooms, and the days when you could just ask perfect strangers for advice and theyd give it to you. What I think I hadnt fully considered before reading this book is that at least some people in this rather narrow cohort absorbed some knowledge of modern technology. Despite being nowhere near as interested in computers as Snowden (and having a positive antipathy to Big Masheens), I learned how to build circuits and program from Basic to Java as part of my general education. That gave me the ability to learn more later in life and to form a better (if still far from expert) understanding of the nuts and bolts of computing infrastructure.

By contrast, many people today know how to use tech, but they dont understand it. Just like few people who use money understand economics. And just like an ability to grasp finance creates an enormous power differential, so does the ability to understand tech.

Snowden is at pains to redress this balance, methodically explaining everything from SD cards, to TOR, to smart appliances, to the difference between http and https, to the fact that when you delete a file from your computer, it doesnt actually get deleted. He bestows the same attention to detail on these subjects as he does describing the labyrinthine relationships of his various employers and the intelligence agencies, and this clarity helps turn the book into a relatable story about issues rather than a jargon-stuffed, acronym-filled nightmare.

Only by understanding how technology works on a basic level, so argues Snowden, can journalists ask the right questions of power and regulators regulate effectively. He strengthens this case by noting examples of times when major announcements (construction of enormous data storage facilities; a CIA presentation in which the speaker literally admonished the journalists present to think about their rights) were simply ignored.

They did not make waves, Snowden thinks, because journalists and regulators simply didnt realize their significance. There is, as he says repeatedly in the book, a lag between technology and regulation.

It is an issue that others in a position to know, like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have pointed out. Everything from advances in robotic warfare to artificial intelligence to total surveillance aided by facial recognition is dismissed as alarmist until well after it is happening, when its then dismissed in true Nineteen Eighty-Four style with a shoulder shrug as inevitable.

And when that doesnt happen, tech tends to be treated as an entirely new phenomenon requiring heavy-handed, and often counterproductive, regulation.

While it is entirely true that people are bullied on social media, for example, we shouldnt forget that people were bullied in real life in the past, too. And threatened. And the victims of fraud. And defamation. And child abuse. As a result, we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that we often do already have a well-developed arsenal of remedies that can be adjusted for the internet era without the need to jettison constitutional values in the name of protection and safety.

There are ways to apprehend criminals effectively without the total take of information that intelligence agencies so lazily demand. Vigilante pedophile-hunting groups have been quite successful in luring would-be predators to justice by posing as minors on social media sites. While it is beyond question that such activities should be left to properly trained and authorized police forces not righteous citizens who can do as much harm as good it does show that the individualized pursuit of crime can still be very effective in the social media age. Indeed, in regards to some crimes, like forms of child abuse, detection may well be easier than in earlier times with many culprits unable to resist the temptation to groom potential victims online.

Rather than veering between complacency and panic, we should be thinking about the various ways in which to update our legal framework for the modern digital age something Snowdens revelations about the warrantless mass surveillance programs he uncovered have given us a particular urgency to do.

The part of the law most significant to Snowden, and which he quotes in the book, is the US Constitutions Fourth Amendment, which reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

According to Snowden, the NSA sought to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by creating a huge database of all online activity the permanent record of the books title ideally stored in perpetuity and which they would only search when [the organizations] analysts, not its algorithms, actively queried what had already been automatically collected. Intelligence agencies also argued that because individuals have already given permission to third parties, particularly telecommunications companies, to host their data, that data no longer resided in the private sphere and thus constitutional privacy had been forfeited.

After all, the magic of what feels private sitting in front of your computer or scrolling through your phone at home can only happen by connecting to distant servers.

Those who support a living document interpretation of the Constitution may see this as an eventual opportunity to expand the scope of the terms papers, and effects for the modern era, something Snowden himself suggests; originalists might argue that only a constitutional change itself can suffice to fully address privacy rights in a digital age.

Some of the actions that Snowden describes monitoring people through their webcams in their homes via XKEYSCORE would certainly seem like unproblematic violations if committed against US citizens or persons on US soil under present wording and interpretations. Others like hunting through the vast reams of information we sign over to private companies may prove more difficult. Justice Scalia, the nations most well-known originalist prior to his death in 2016, is alleged to have refused to be drawn on whether or not computer data was an effect in the sense of the Fourth Amendment at a public lecture in 2014.

In more practical terms, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided in 2015 (ACLU v. Clapper) that bulk collection was not covered by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, stating in part, Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress and all members of the public were not aware, a decision followed shortly by the passing of the USA Freedom Act, under which telecoms companies keep records that law enforcement may then request.

However, it is somewhat doubtful whether legal remedies alone will effectively stop the political-intelligence agency complex that Snowden describes so adroitly in his book. He recalls the panic he witnessed at Fort Meade and outside the Pentagon during 9/11, and later the blame as politicians emphasized the prevention of terror attacks as the standard for measuring their own competence. Intelligence agencies felt both the horror of having to develop some way to guarantee safety and the power of being able to extort huge budgets from Congress in the interests of doing so. Once an agency has the capability to engage in mass surveillance and is under significant pressure to maintain security, its difficult to imagine it failing to indulge regardless of legalities.

Snowden mentions encryption, SecureDrop, and the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as potential ways for citizens to uphold their own privacy, but Im less than convinced. Encryption is not readily available to the average person working on an average budget; few people will ever have any reason to use SecureDrop, and I doubt many of the alleged positive effects of the GDPR, which has mainly led to Europeans agreeing to any and every pop-up in order to get to their content ASAP while introducing barriers to sharing and advertisement for small businesses (precisely not the threat).

In this context, perhaps the right to be forgotten (in fairness, now enshrined in Article 17 of the GDPR, although the principle derives from an earlier 2014 court case) is more relevant. After all, Snowdens main fear is the creation of the unforgiving permanent record, where every mistake, minor trespass, and ill-considered comment remains preserved for all time and just waiting to be used against one. Indeed, he contrasts this with the early days of the web, where one could develop opinions freely and cast aside identities that one had outgrown. Snowden regards this freedom as pivotal to development and maturation, as we all tend to curate our lives over the years, forming the identity we want to have at the expense of conflicting past actions.

Despite the fact that he never made it to his intended destination Ecuador Snowden remains, much like Ellsberg, a powerful example of a person who blew the whistle on state abuses and not only lived to tell about it, but is living an apparently well-adjusted life. As he lets us know at the end of the book, Lindsay eventually joined him in Moscow, refrained from slapping him silly (as Snowden admits he deserved), and agreed to marry him. Its a fitting low-key end for a book, and a story, that is more about substance than style.

Roslyn Fuller is author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose and In Defence of Democracy and is the director of the Solonian Democracy Institute.

More:
Snowden: A Whistle-Blower Who Lived to Tell About It - lareviewofbooks

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) There's an unlikely alliance between the Libertarian and the Green Parties in New York State, both fighting new rules they think might box them out of future elections.

It's not often you see leaders of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party sharing a podium, but thats exactly what happened recently, according to WCBS 880s Steve Burns.

The Libertarian Party is pleased to partner with the Green, said Libertarian Party of New York Chairman Jim Rosenbeck.

Rosenbeck says the new rules set up by the Public Campaign Financing Commission are insulting to New Yorkers.

We find it to be a shameless attempt to limit public debate, he said.

In order to have full ballot status parties need to receive at least 50,000 votes in governor's races.

The new rules raise that threshold to a 130,000 votes, or 2% of total turnout whichever is higher.

Those totals have to be attained every two years instead of every four.

Green Party of New York Co-Chairman Peter Lavenia says they'll likely be knocked off the ballot in the next two years over the changes.

Were looking at this as an assault on democracy, he said.

The two parties are filing a joint lawsuit against the commission.

State lawmakers could reconvene and change the rules, though that prospect is looking increasingly unlikely with a deadline at the end of this week.

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Green Party, Libertarian Team Up To Fight New Election Rules - WCBS 880

Falling levels of trust in our public institutions have become the backing track for the demise of the progressive political project and the rise of populist strongmen who promise to take back control.

Government becomes a problem to be solved, a bubble, a swamp of compromised technocrats and bean-counters operating against the interests of hard-working common folk, the quiet Australians whose will for a simple life is constantly being frustrated.

One of the drivers of this collapse has been the impact of technological change on our body politic, the anger-driven echo chambers of social media, the fake news and disinformation, the increasingly sophisticated targeting designed to reinforce what we already think.

Numerous benchmark surveys, including Essentials own, document this decline, which tracks closely the destruction in traditional media models at the expense of these platforms.

But as two reports released in the past week show, when it comes to thinking through the impacts of technology on the future, government leadership is more important than ever.

The first, the governments response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commissions digital platforms review, is to the point.

On one level the report, initiated as part of the deal to water down the media ownership laws that saw the Nine takeover of Fairfax, is an attempt by media giants to restore the natural order.

But somewhere along the way the ACCC inquiry became more than that. Someone inside the agency seriously put their minds around the existential challenges of Facebook and Google, setting out a detailed framework that would have ended the conceit the social networks did not carry responsibility as publishers.

While limited in scope to exploring the market dominance of the platforms as opposed to the broader social consequences of technological change, the inquiry positioned Australia as a world leader in grappling with the market power of big tech.

The governments response this week may fall short of realising the ACCCs ambition of enforceable standards, opting instead for the sort of voluntary codes that any industry lobbyist yearns, but the intent from the prime minister in launching the report is clear: The rules that exist in the real world need to exist in the digital world.

You can quibble with the ambition, and we have, but when a conservative government invests behind the ACCC to build its capacity to monitor the market operations of the platforms and get to the bottom of their algorithmic marketing model, something interesting is going on.

The second report is, if anything, even more ambitious in its vision of governments need to lead us through profound technological change. The Human Rights Commission discussion paper into AI technology calls for the establishment of rules around the way automated decisions and data-matching develop in Australia.

The report calls for all AI to be subject to scrutiny around its design and impact on users before it is unleashed on to the public, ensuring it complies with existing laws covering both direct and indirect discrimination.

Commissioner Ed Santow argues that human accountability cannot be automated and that facial recognition technology in particular needs to be tested and thought through before it is unleashed on the Australian public. And that this should be the role of a new government body, the AI Safety Commissioner.

In doing so, Santow is challenging some basic tenets of the information economy: that its OK to disrupt, move fast and break things; that the benefits of tech advancement outweigh its cost; and that the role of government is to adapt to change rather than step up and shape it.

Research that Essential has conducted around this report shows Australians are looking for government leadership on the issue, with the majority of the public concerned about the automating of decisions.

Santow argues that placing guardrails around how Australia develops AI will ultimately serve the national interest not just protecting citizens but also developing a uniquely Australian AI that is fair by design and can become a compelling global export.

But to get to that point, government needs to lead: not just being more assertive in taking on the recommendations of its expert bodies, but in the way it too uses its citizens information.

In an era of declining trust in government, it is hardly surprising that the My Health Record program has stalled, with millions of Australians not prepared to share their medical records, especially under a model where entrepreneurs would have been encouraged to access this data to innovate.

More profoundly, the failure of robodebt has reinforced every latent instinct that government is not to be trusted with sensitive information. That the first big government data-matching project was used to chase poor people deemed to have been overpaid says it all.

Imagine the difference in trust dividend if the first application had been to find people who had not claimed benefits they were entitled to and send them a cheque to make good; or to chase down unpaid super; or ensure workers were being paid the right amount of money.

The challenges of rapid technological change provide an opportunity for government to win back public trust, by setting rules that ensure technology serves the public interest and by being a best-practice custodian of our personal information.

As a social democrat thats what I want my government to be doing, regardless of its partisan colours. The alternative is a libertarian free-for-all that will only ensure the disruption, division, distraction and displacement of the times accelerates unabated.

Peter Lewis is executive director of Essential Media and the director of the Centre for Responsible Technology, a new initiative of the Australia Institute.

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The government must make sure technology serves public interest. The alternative is a libertarian free-for-all - The Guardian

Radio: A name that almost we all have heard in our childhood, recently and will listen to it in the future also. Some technologies never get older and Radio is for sure one of them. Being developed in the 20th century, Radio is one of the oldest modes of communication that brings up the feeling of freshness whenever we listen to it. While going through the different landscapes of innovations, this part of technology has changed a lot yet. Woking of radio is quite simple. It just works by transmitting and receiving signals where part of speech and music are being delivered in the coded format.

Ture taste lies in the variety and that this wonderful platform also offers to its listeners. Ranging from serving those old melody songs to todays top numbers from providing information about agricultural tips to introducing you with the latest technologies, there is a huge variety of options that you can easily find out here. Users can easily enjoy 24 hours of streaming here without paying any charges or data packages here. Just get a radio and stay connected with your favourite channel, thats the only rule you have to follow here.

Explore the various types of radios

Right from the launch of radio in the 20s to date, a variety of radio options from various brands are being introduced into the market. Do you know how many kinds of radios are there being available in the market? The options are huge. Ranging from Conventional FM to the latest NXDN there are so many options being present there and if we start on counting the number of brands offering radio services, the list even gets increases more. Searching out one of the best table radios for your home has become quite easier now. You not only ask your buddies or family members for the same but go through various online options and can check out the reviews of your preferred ones as well.

If you are willing to get the best table radio for your home, it would be quite beneficial for you to know about the different types of radio you have in the market. Here are the top listed for you.

Utilization of radios

AM and FM is one of the oldest forms of wireless broadcasting that works on the process of modulation and demodulation throughout. This kind of radio option is quite good to provide fair sound quality but it is vulnerable to electrical noise also.

Shortwave radio works just above the AM radio frequency bands. The frequencies of this kind of radio somewhere lie in between 1.7 to 30 MHz. If you are looking for collecting news, commercial broadcasting, informative channels and sports channels globally, it is surely a great option you can try on.

Satellite radio is based on one of the latest broadcasting techniques where radio signals are being transmitted and received using satellites. The radio option does not include any kind of digital encoding. Users are not allowed to directly get tuned into any channels here. They have to pay what they are willing to get a subscription to. One of the best things about satellite radio is that it offers you amazing sound quality and nationwide coverage to enjoy on.

Ham Radio is a kind of radio option that provides broadcasting into a restricted area and to the set frequencies only. It is a great platform for all those who are willing to improve their operator skills. Moreover, this kind of radio option serves as a great help in case of natural calamities or emergencies.

Walkie-Talkie is one of the most favoured portable and handheld radio options that sends and receives signals in about a distance of a mile. This kind of radio option is usually being used by two persons to communicate with each other. Walkie-Talkie serves as a great help where the phone call services or net services are quite poor.

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What types of radios are there? - The Libertarian Republic