Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2592 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Phi Beta Iota strongly supports the registration of all baseball bats, and licensing of the right to own a bat, together with mandatory training in the safe use of a baseball bat. The training should be repeated every two years, as unsafe habits can creep back in without the strictest government oversight and micro-management of the extremely serious threat to our obese children that are too slow to run away from a crazed lunatic weilding a lethal baseball bat. This is of such great importance to our nation that we would like to see the Department of Homeland Security propose a Baseball Bat Authority (BBA), make that a model, and then move down the lethality pecking order to create separate new Authorities for the control of hockey sticks, lacross sticks, tennis rackets, and so on. Eventually handball players should be required to register their hands and demonstrate safe hand use practices.

We Must Stop Baseball Bat Violence!

By Mark R. Ferran, BSEE

A Message from the Coalition to Stop Bat Violence. (Formerly known as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence).

Setting: The Year 2020, six months after the last privately-owned gun was found and destroyed. We have finally made All Americans (including intruders) Safe from Gun Violence in Americans' Homes. But we must continue our struggle to make All Americans safe from Violence in homes and businesses, and on the streets.

“Adolpho Hernandez was executed today for the Sept. 30, 1988, robbery and murder of 69-year-old Elizabeth Alvarado who was beaten to death with a baseball bat bat inside her Lubbock, Texas, home.” (“Elizabeth's family was again devastated one year later, when Elizabeth's granddaughter, Melissa Ann Garcia, was raped and stabbed to death by Texas death row inmate Jack Wade Clark.”

Read full article with many explicit guidelines.

2012/12/162012/12/16

Anthony Judge: Beware of Legality, Accountability, Marketability, Security! Be where the Four Hoarsemen of the Apocalypse are not?

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

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Beware of Legality, Accountability, Marketability, Security!

Be where the Four Hoarsemen of the Apocalypse are not?

Introduction
Being wary of “legality”
Being wary of “accountability”
Being wary of “marketability”
Being wary of “security”
Systemic implications of “horsemen” and “hoarsemen” and correspondences between them
Being wary of the Four Hoarsemen acting together
Being where and how “to be”?
Conclusion
References

Phi Beta Iota: This is one of Anthony Judge's shorter and more poignant essays. It is reproduced in full below the line, along with his links, and our on duty editor has added links to the Amazon pages of all the books that he cites. In this essay, complicity is the opposite of integrity, the single word (integrity) most embedded across Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. To read the essay at its source, click on the title above.

Continue reading “Anthony Judge: Beware of Legality, Accountability, Marketability, Security! Be where the Four Hoarsemen of the Apocalypse are not?”

2012/12/162012/12/16

Richard Falk: The Future of International Law and Human Rights

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

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The Future of International Law and Human Rights

An Interview With Richard Falk

by CIHAN AKSAN and JON BAILES

Richard A. Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories. He has authored, edited or contributed to 40 books, including The Great Terror War; The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq; Achieving Human Rights; and International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice.

Read questions and answers.

Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes are the editors of www.stateofnature.org. The following is a chapter from their new book of interviews, Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on US State Terrorism (Pluto Press, 2012).

Weapon of the Strong analyses the forms of US state terrorism through exclusive, never before published interviews with leading commentators and theorists. The interviews explore the different aspects of state terrorism: its functions, institutional supports and the legal and moral arguments surrounding it, and consider specific case studies in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.”

2012/12/162012/12/16

Event: 27 Dec 2012 Hamburg DE Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, IO Technologies

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Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime

Blowing the Whistle on Spying, Lying & Illegalities in the Digital Era

Featuring Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jessaelyn Radack

With the post 9/11 rise of the leviathan national security state, the rule of law in the United States under the Constitution is increasingly rule by secrecy, surveillance and executive fiat.

Under the guise and veil of “national security” and “protecting” America through enabling act legislation and state “privilege,” the United States government embarked on an unparalleled expansion of secret government power after 9/11, operating largely in the dark, while using extra-judicial executive authority for justifying its policies, including secret spying on its own citizens in violation of the Constitution.

Speakers Radack, Drake and Binney will highlight their searing experiences with the Department of Justice and the National Security Agency, when they were marked as criminal targets of the US government due to their whistleblower disclosures involving rendition/torture, national security, multi-billion fraud, pervasive institutional corruption, violations of the 1st and 4th Amendments, civil and human rights, illegal surveillance on a vast scale and other unlawful secret government conduct and wrongdoing.

They will also discuss the serious and compelling implications resulting from their excruciating ordeals centered on the nexus of secrecy, transparency, technology, privacy, anonymity, Internet and the law as well as actions people can take to deal with the reality of the growing surveillance state and its direct threats to human rights, liberty and freedom around the world in both our off- and on-line lives.

Conference Information

2012/12/162012/12/16

Event: 27-30 Dec 2012 Hamburg DE European Hackers Conference

Advanced Cyber/IO

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29C3: 29th Chaos Communication Congress

December 27th to 30th, 2012

CCH Congress Center Hamburg, Germany, Earth, Milky Way

The Event

The 29th Chaos Communication Congress (29C3) is an annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.

For 29 years, the congress has been organized by the community and appreciates all kinds of participation. You are encouraged to contribute by volunteering, setting up and hosting hands-on events with the other components of your assembly or presenting your own projects to fellow hackers.

Some basic survival guidelines might come in handy for everything not answered in our 29C3 FAQ. Updated information are covered by the CCC Events Blog or via Twitter (@CCC).

As this website is part of a wiki you can contribute information, too. Login or register an account and go ahead. Refer to the 29C3-wiki-usermanual and the help page for information about using a MediaWiki.

Learn more.

2012/12/152012/12/15

Review: Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities

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Harvey Molotch

4.0 out of 5 stars Theatrically Naive in Its Own Way But Recommended, December 15, 2012

I'm the former spy and honorary hacker who sounded the alarm on cyber-security in 1994 and who questioned every aspect of the Department of Homeland Security, pointing out that the joint fusion centers would be a waste of money and that, I quote “50% of the dots will be bottom up dots and we have no way of ingesting them.” I am also an arch critic of the National Security Agency, which processes less than 5% of what it collects and is generally incompetent at 163 of the 183 languages that matter–it's also largely useless and very late on out of the way threats like Benghazi.

What the author does not realize is that DHS and especially the TSA are not about security. They are a combination of employment programs to reduce the stress of 22.4% unemployment, and an alternative pork fest now that Pentagon pork is starting to wind down. “Top Secret America” is less about invading the privacy of all US citizens, or theater, and more about continuing to spend money in insane ways that reward the industrial complexes and the banks at our expense. The leadership of DHS is not stupid — they simply do not have a mandate to actually perform in the public interest. The US Government spends money the way the RECIPIENTS of our tax dollars want it to spend money, NOT on what is in our best interests.

The author may also not realize that there are rogue elements within the ultra-secret side of the US Government that are out of control and willing to kill Americans on American soil (as well as overseas) to further perpetual war. There are also evangelicals and pentecostals who are in alliance with Israel, itself famous for false flag attacks on US aircraft and barracks as well as the occasional really outrageous act such as their attack on the USS Liberty. The FBI appears to have done some spectacular work clamping down on a handful of military officers who have been trying since 2007 to fake an attack by Iran on a US naval vessel.

Continue reading “Review: Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger”

2012/12/152012/12/15

Owl: Security Theater — At What Cost?

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

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Judging by Bruce Schneier's review of Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger, a new book by Harvey Molotch, this is a must-read:

The common thread in Against Security is that effective security comes less from the top down and more from the bottom up. Molotch’s subtitle telegraphs this conclusion: “How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger.” It’s the word ambiguous that’s important here. When we don’t know what sort of threats we want to defend against, it makes sense to give the people closest to whatever is happening the authority and the flexibility to do what is necessary. In many of Molotch’s anecdotes and examples, the authority figure—a subway train driver, a policeman—has to break existing rules to provide the security needed in a particular situation. Many security failures are exacerbated by a reflexive adherence to regulations.

Amazon Page

Molotch is absolutely right to hone in on this kind of individual initiative and resilience as a critical source of true security. Current U.S. security policy is overly focused on specific threats. We defend individual buildings and monuments. We defend airplanes against certain terrorist tactics: shoe bombs, liquid bombs, underwear bombs. These measures have limited value because the number of potential terrorist tactics and targets is much greater than the ones we have recently observed. Does it really make sense to spend a gazillion dollars just to force terrorists to switch tactics? Or drive to a different target? In the face of modern society’s ambiguous dangers, it is flexibility that makes security effective.

We get much more bang for our security dollar by not trying to guess what terrorists are going to do next. Investigation, intelligence, and emergency response are where we should be spending our money. That doesn’t mean mass surveillance of everyone or the entrapment of incompetent terrorist wannabes; it means tracking down leads—the sort of thing that caught the 2006 U.K. liquid bombers. They chose their tactic specifically to evade established airport security at the time, but they were arrested in their London apartments well before they got to the airport on the strength of other kinds of intelligence.