42 posts tagged government
Courts and law enforcement agencies in the United States have asked Twitter to hand over user information far more than any other country, according to a transparency report released by the social networking website on Monday.
“Wednesday marks Independence Day here in the United States,” Jeremy Kessel, the legal policy manager for Twitter, said. “Beyond the fireworks and barbecue, July 4th serves as an important reminder of the need to hold governments accountable, especially on behalf of those who may not have a chance to do so themselves.”
Since January of this year, Twitter has received 679 requests for user account data from the United States. The country that made the second most requests for user information, Japan, has only made 98 requests. Canada and the United Kingdom each made 11 requests, while all other countries listed made less than ten.
The social networking website said it complied with 63 percent of the requests.
As more and more people tweet about their personal life, the amount of requests appears to have grown. Twitter has received more requests for user data in the first half of 2012 than in all of 2011, Kessel said.
Internet giant Google also releases biannual transparency reports. Its most recent report, from July to December 2011, found that the United States made 6,321 requests for user information. That number includes requests made by U.S. authorities on behalf of other governments.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Communities in remote corners of Brazil’s Amazon jungle are facing repeated assaults and death threats from illegal loggers who want to steal their lands, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
The human rights group said there was no police presence in parts of Brazil’s northwestern Amazonas state and no investigation into illegal activities reportedly taking place there.
“Those living in the region are in danger,” it said in a statement, urging Brazilian authorities to protect local residents and stop the illegal logging.
The target of the invading land-grabbers known as “grileiros” and illegal loggers are small communities living from timber extraction in legally recognized reserves located south of the town of Labrea.
Many residents have fled the region fearing for their lives, Amnesty said.
Dinhana Nink was gunned down in front of her son in a nearby town in Rondonia state where she has sought refuge after her house was set ablaze, the statement said.
Community leader Nilcilene Miguel de Lima, who has denounced the influx of illegal loggers in the reserves, was beaten up, threatened with a pistol and had her house set ablaze. She has been under armed protection by federal agents since October, according to Amnesty.
In April, she had to be evacuated by authorities after her dog was shot in the head and killed, it said.
The police station covering the area is located hundreds of kilometers (miles) north of Labrea and can be reached only by air.
The Pentagon is creating a new intelligence agency that will focus on Iran and China as it begins to pivot away from war zones in Iraq andAfghanistan, the New York Times reported.
The newspaper said late Monday that the new Defense Clandestine Service would make use of existing agents, authorities and assets and work closely with the Central Intelligence Agency to track emerging threats.
“It will thicken our coverage across the board,” it quoted a senior defense department official as saying.
Case officers from the Defense Intelligence Agency already secretly gather intelligence outside of conventional battle zones, the Times said, and the latest move further cements cooperation between the military and the CIA.
The new intelligence service is expected to grow “from several hundred to several more hundred” agents in the coming years by shifting personnel and funding from existing assignments, the Times quoted the official as saying.
Defense officials did not immediately respond to AFP requests for further information.
The announcement of the new agency comes a week after the Pentagon nominated Lieutenant General Michael Flynn — who previously served with the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) — to head military intelligence.
The selection of Flynn — who had been a strong critic of military intelligence when he served as the topintelligence officer in Afghanistan in 2010 — reflects the ascendancy of special forces in recent years.
The JSOC has been behind the killing of numerous suspected top insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years and carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden nearly one year ago.
![fuckyeahdrugpolicy:
Obama’s pot promise a pipe dream? | POLITICO
The hopes that Obama would be a kinder, gentler, more tolerant drug warrior have gone up in smoke.
“I’m very disappointed,” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a longtime supporter of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana, told POLITICO. “They look more like the Bush administration than the Clinton administration.”
The dejected medical marijuana supporters are hardly alone. For many in 2008, candidate Obama was like a political Rorschach test: They projected strong progressive positions about everything from legalizing gay marriage to ending all military involvement onto a candidate who never said he agreed with them — but also never explicitly said he didn’t.
Now they’re looking at four years into the Obama administration and wondering where they went wrong.
“I believed in him,” Montana-based activist and medical cannabis user Sarah Combs said about the president. “I don’t believe a word he says now.”
[…]
Obama sees his history on medical marijuana enforcement differently. The president was again asked about the Justice Department medical marijuana policy at a high-dollar fundraiser at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel filled with liberal mega-donors who paid $35,800 a plate to attend. According to a source with knowledge of the event, which was closed to reporters, Obama reportedly said that the DOJ was raiding purely on a case-by-case basis.
Frank says he got a frustrating response when he buttonholed Obama to complain that this wasn’t true: Obama told the Massachusetts Democrat that, to the best of his knowledge, the 2009 hands-off policy remained in place.
Frank told POLITICO that he’s preparing to send the president press clippings to demonstrate that raids continue across the country.
[…]
“Obama now lags Pat Robertson in a sensible approach to marijuana,” said Frank, referring to the conservative evangelical leader’s recent criticism of the drug war.
full article](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2y210ph7r1qc1ca1o1_500.jpg)
Obama’s pot promise a pipe dream? | POLITICO
The hopes that Obama would be a kinder, gentler, more tolerant drug warrior have gone up in smoke.
“I’m very disappointed,” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a longtime supporter of marijuana legalization and medical marijuana, told POLITICO. “They look more like the Bush administration than the Clinton administration.”
The dejected medical marijuana supporters are hardly alone. For many in 2008, candidate Obama was like a political Rorschach test: They projected strong progressive positions about everything from legalizing gay marriage to ending all military involvement onto a candidate who never said he agreed with them — but also never explicitly said he didn’t.
Now they’re looking at four years into the Obama administration and wondering where they went wrong.
“I believed in him,” Montana-based activist and medical cannabis user Sarah Combs said about the president. “I don’t believe a word he says now.”
[…]
Obama sees his history on medical marijuana enforcement differently. The president was again asked about the Justice Department medical marijuana policy at a high-dollar fundraiser at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel filled with liberal mega-donors who paid $35,800 a plate to attend. According to a source with knowledge of the event, which was closed to reporters, Obama reportedly said that the DOJ was raiding purely on a case-by-case basis.
Frank says he got a frustrating response when he buttonholed Obama to complain that this wasn’t true: Obama told the Massachusetts Democrat that, to the best of his knowledge, the 2009 hands-off policy remained in place.
Frank told POLITICO that he’s preparing to send the president press clippings to demonstrate that raids continue across the country.
[…]
“Obama now lags Pat Robertson in a sensible approach to marijuana,” said Frank, referring to the conservative evangelical leader’s recent criticism of the drug war.
“
Congress passed, and Bush signed into law, the FISA Amendments Act, which re-wrote the nation’s surveillance laws to give the NSA a much freer hand to wiretap American infrastructure wholesale. Court challenges to the program, brought by the EFF and the ACLU, attempted to argue that even allowing the NSA to harvest Americans’ communications alongside foreigners into giant databases violated American law and the US Constitution.
However, those challenges have never survived the Bush and Obama administration’s invocation of the “state secrets” privilege to have them thrown out of court. Which is another way of saying that Americans have no idea what’s going on. Given the choice between an administration official saying nothing is going on and a respected reporter with inside sources saying something wicked this way comes, I know where my trust would lie.
(via infoneer-pulse)
50 arrested as Chile education protest turn violent
SANTIAGO — At least 50 people were arrested in the Chilean capital Thursday amid clashes with police during a student demonstration over the quality and cost of higher education.
The demo involving some 5,000 protesters also saw three policemen hurt, one of them seriously, in the hours-long clashes, police said. Authorities used water canons and tear gas against the demonstrators hurling stones and other missiles.
The clashes erupted after police attempted to break up the protest, which authorities said had not be given official approval.
Chilean students staged more than 40 street marches last year. Some of them marked the country’s largest rallies in the past two decades, drawing more than 100,000 people. Several marches resulted in clashes with police.
The students, backed by professors and labor unions, are demanding President Sebastian Pinera’s conservative government to overhaul the education system to guarantee free, quality university-level education for all Chileans.
The protests have been the biggest, and most sustained, since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet more than two decades ago.
Under Pinochet, state funding for public education was slashed, privatization encouraged and responsibility for public schools passed to municipalities.
The result has been a highly segregated system in which those who can afford it attend private schools and those who can’t are relegated to lower quality public schools.
Washington lawmakers introduce bill condemning NDAA
Five Republican lawmakers from Washington state have introduced legislation that condemns the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 for controversial measures regarding the detainment of terrorism suspects, according to the Tenth Amendment Center.
The $662 billion defense spending bill contained a controversial section that required terrorism suspects to be detained by the military without trial, regardless of where they were captured.
HB 2759, the Washington State Preservation of Liberty Act, was introduced by Reps. Jason Overstreet, Matt Shea, Vincent Buys, Cary Condotta, and David Taylor. The bill condemns the NDAA for authorizing the United States to “indefinitely detain United States citizens and lawful resident aliens captured within the United States of America without charge until the end of hostilities.”
The Washington State Preservation of Liberty Act would also prohibit state and local employees, including members of the national guard, from cooperating “with an investigation or detainment of a United States citizen or lawful resident alien located within the United States of America by the armed forces of the United States of America.” Additionally, it would bar the U.S. military from conducting an investigation or detainment of a citizen within the state of Washington. But what effect these provision would have if enacted is unclear.
Despite language in the law that states it does not affect existing authorities relating to the detention of U.S. citizens or others captured within the U.S., human rights advocates have claimed that it still allows the government to detain Americans indefinitely without trial.
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit against current and former government officials for their alleged roles in the military detention and alleged torture of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen and convicted terrorist.
While signing the bill on December 31, Obama issued a statement in which he pledged that the new laws would not violate Americans’ constitutional rights. But human rights advocates said Obama’s signing statement did not prevent future administrations from abusing the law.
EPIC.
Congressmen Battle Over Koch Brothers Keystone Pipeline Subpeona
Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman got an angry response from Republican Congressman Ed Whitfield over the idea that the right wing billionaire Koch brothers should be subpoenaed over their financial interest in the Keystone XL Pipeline. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian break it down.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/oh-snap-congressmen-brawl-over-subpoenaing-koch-br…This gives you a pretty good idea of how politics, environmental concerns, money, the 1%, and the 99% currently work in the USA-inc system.
A few other facts about the oil giant’s mind-blowing billions.
And yet they and other oil-profiteers still get incredible tax-subsidies and are hardly held accountable for endangering - and often wrecking - the environment.
That’s just really, really sick.
Today YouTube ignored a question advocating marijuana legalization from a retired LAPD deputy chief of police that won twice as many votes as any other video question in the White House’s “Your Interview with the President” competition on the Google-owned site. They did, however, find the time to get the president on record about late night snacking, singing and dancing, celebrating wedding anniversaries and playing tennis.
Stephen Downing, the retired LAPD police officer and a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), had this to say about the site ignoring his question: “It’s worse than silly that YouTube and Google would waste the time of the president and of the American people discussing things like midnight snacks and playing tennis when there is a much more pressing question on the minds of the people who took the time to participate in voting on submissions. A majority of Americans now support legalizing marijuana to de-fund cartels and gangs, lower incarceration and arrest rates and save scarce public resources, all while generating new much-needed tax revenue. The time to discuss this issue is now. We’re tired of this serious public policy crisis being pushed aside or laughed off.”
The top-voted video question from Downing is as follows: “Mr. President, my name is Stephen Downing, and I’m a retired deputy chief of police from the Los Angeles Police Department. From my 20 years of experience I have come to see our country’s drug policies as a failure and a complete waste of criminal justice resources. According to the Gallup Poll, the number of Americans who support legalizing and regulating marijuana now outnumbers those who support continuing prohibition. What do you say to this growing voter constituency that wants more changes to drug policy than you have delivered in your first term?” The question can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0IpiATxdR4.
Downing’s question came in first place for video questions and ranked second out of all questions (with the overall top spot going to a text question about copyright infringement). Many of the other top-ranking questions were about marijuana policy or the failed “war on drugs,” as has been the case every other time the White House has invited citizens to submit and vote on questions via the web. +
(via mctranscendent)
Undocumented students risk deportation to protest Rubio
At an event with tea party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Friday, activists supporting the idea that undocumented students should be given a path to citizenship were booed and threatened with arrest.
“They were threatened with arrest, which for a young DREAM Act student means automatic deportation,” Presente Action co-founder Roberto Lovato told Raw Story.
The group had used Rubio’s appearance at the conservative Hispanic Leadership Network Conference to launch their “No Somos Rubios” campaign and to point out that the senator opposes the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act while supporting Arizona’s SB 1070 anti-immigrant law.
“On my way in today, I got a text from a friend that said someone is flying a plane over the building with a banner that says, ‘Marco, no somos Rubios,’ which means, ‘Marco, we’re not blond,’” Rubio joked. “Which by coincidence, neither am I.”
Just as he was getting warmed up, protesters supporting the DREAM Act interrupted the speech. The conservative crowd immediately responded with boos.
“These young people are very brave to be here today,” Rubio, a Cuban American, told the crowd as the protesters were being escorted from the room. “They raise a very legitimate issue. And if they would give me the courtesy of finishing my speech where I’m going to speak about this then I ask that you guys let them stay.”
But Lovato told Raw Story that Rubio’s words were just “political theater.”
“See, this is where you see the the two faces of Marco Rubio,” Lovato said. “Rubio was talking loudly about his dreamy DREAM Act and his immigration story. Meanwhile, his security was quietly telling them that they were going to be arrested if they didn’t get out now.”
“You look at his record and it’s undeniable: He supports the racist SB 1070 there in Arizona, he is against comprehensive immigration reform, he is against the DREAM Act.
Lovato noted that the “No Somos Rubios” campaign was indeed a play on words. It means, “We are not Rubios,” but Rubio in Spanish also means “blond.”
“Who is backing Marco Rubio? It’s not a bunch of Latinos from the Southwestern United States,” he explained. “It’s the tea party, which is 88 percent white, only 4 percent Latino.”
(via sinidentidades)
Ehhh, in regards to the video, in a tactical and training sense, it makes perfect sense. I think what this says more is that they are training for operations in larger and larger cities (Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Cairo, etc.). At least from the way they were doing things in the video, if they wanted to train for US cities, they wouldn’t really need to. This is more about urban tactics in general, which have become the focal point. In previous decades when war was more focused on the big open battles, the military would conduct operations in field and deserts (they still do in places like Aberdeen, MD and Nevada) but building a mockup of a major city is prohibitively expensive and time consuming.
So from a military perspective this just says they are training for urban areas, which is logical since they are the focus of military operations these days.
Of course, from a military perspective, it makes perfect sense. That doesn’t make it any less alarming from the perspective of urbanites.
LAPD, Pentagon Conduct Military Drills In Downtown LA
This is really scary, because I feel that they’re training to attack us. We’re seeing an uprising because we’re tired of our rights being taken from us, so they’re planning on riots happening, so they’re training to -shoot at us-.
There’s so many things that are freaking me out, rioters being labeled as terrorists under the hush hush NDAA and the brain washed soldiers just following orders and not fighting what they’re told, as well as the foreshadowing games like the rainbow six game: Patriots.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal with “support” from Ubisoft Toronto and Ubisoft Red Storm, Patriots revolves around “a dynamic single-player storyline that captures the reality of modern-day terrorism and allows players to experience it from multiple characters’ perspectives,” says Ubi.
As rumoured, the new game sees Team Rainbow take on a new terrorist threat called the “True Patriots,” a highly-trained, well-organized revolutionary group that claim the American government is irrevocably corrupted by greedy politicians and corporate special interests.
Playing as Team Rainbow, players will face critical scenarios that will require them to make tough ethical decisions in order to stop this new breed of terrorists, says Ubisoft.
According to earlier leaks the Patriots campaign will see payers encounter multiple “drastically” different mission endings based on their decisions in the story.
Priming the need and desire for “counter-terrorism” on US civilians in young impressionable minds.
