What’s interesting in the news today?
Open thread, with a few from me to start things off.
1. Talk about overreach.
From TheGuardian “Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy“.”
2. And on a related note….
From PersonalLiberty.com “The Internet has provided a forum for average people throughout the world to disseminate, share and debate information unattenuated by gatekeepers in the mainstream media and their politically connected friends. New media outlets like Personal Liberty Digest™ have, for years, been warning readers that the well-connected and ruling elite, displeased by this newfound proletariat freedom, have been prolific in attempts to undermine and marginalize information provided by any media outlet unwilling to obey the same unspoken rules that govern the content choices of major media outlets.
Now, thanks to the efforts of National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald, readers no longer have to take the word of “paranoid” bloggers who relate tales of paid government trolls lurking in comment sections and other concentrated top-down efforts to muddy the information provided by alternative media.”
“The documents deal largely with the goals of GCHQ’s previously secret Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), an apparatus whose mission Greenwald describes thusly: “Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.””
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3. Give it to her, and then let’s hear what she has to say. After all, there’s nothing to lose here, she’s already retired, with her pension, and won’t be charged. At least this way you get her under oath and maybe find out who orchestrated it.
From USAToday “Former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner will testify about the IRS handling of Tea Party cases only in exchange for an immunity agreement, her lawyer told a congressional committee Wednesday.
Until then, Lerner will not answer questions unless ordered to do so by a federal judge, her attorney said.
The response from attorney William Taylor came the day after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ordered Lerner to reappear at a hearing next week. When Lerner appeared before the committee last May, she asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.”
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4. Not shocking. It’s how things are done in this administration.
From TheFreeBeacon “Several Environmental Protection Agency employees obstructed an investigation into the mismanagement that allowed a senior EPA official to bilk taxpayers for nearly $900,000, the EPA Inspector General said in a letter to Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) released Wednesday.
EPA employees threatened Inspector General investigators, refused to cooperate, and handed out non-disclosure agreements to other employees to keep them from being interviewed, EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr. wrote in response to a request for information by Vitter on the case.
“Over the past 12 months, there have been several EPA officials who have taken action to prevent [the Office of Investigations] OI from conducting investigations or have attempted to obstruct investigations through intimidation,” Elkins wrote.”
““We are starting to see proof of what we had already suspected: John Beale’s time and attendance fraud was the tip of the iceberg at the EPA,” Vitter said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “The whole agency seems to be in complete disarray, which is exactly why we need to have a full [Environment and Public Works] Committee hearing on the fraud surrounding this case and other prevalent problems.””
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5. Boko Haram continues it’s bloody rampage. This brings the victim count to around 240 in the last 10 days alone.
From Google/AFP “Suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed at least 37 people in three separate attacks in northeast Nigeria, including at a theological college, a local government official and residents said on Thursday.
The coordinated attacks in Adamawa state late on Wednesday came just a day after Islamist militant fighters were blamed for killing 43 people, most of them students, as they slept at a boarding school in Yobe state.”
“He had earlier put the death toll in Shuwa, part of Madagali local government area, at 17. But he later told AFP that eight more bodies were recovered in the village, including three from a Christian college, confirming the account of a resident about the three burnt corpse found in the seminary.
“The death toll in the Shuwa attack now stands at 25 after eight more bodies were recovered, including three discovered under the burnt debris of the theological school,” Ularamu said.
In Shuwa, several buildings were burnt, including a Christian theological college and a section of a secondary school.”
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Wandering Views 
2. Speaking of the internet, my son posted this yesterday and I thought it was funny (he is a software developer):
I just searched for a technical issue on Google. I found a thread on a forum from 3 years ago where someone had the exact same issue. And there was a helpful reply describing how to fix the issue… posted by me. I do not remember that ever happening. This is the weirdest moment I’ve had on the Internet.
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2. Could explain some of the nuts that use to hang out at World Mag.
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I miss some of the nuts we used to have.
They added a lot to the discourse.
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4. I don’t understand how you can refuse to talk to an inspector general.
Something’s wrong somewhere in thisi story.
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Chas,
Easy, take the 5th and say you want a lawyer before you talk to anyone.
KBells,
I wonder where you apply for such a position. I think I could be pretty good at that. 🙂
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AJ, I know. Sounds like a fun job.
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1. & 2.: Not surprised at either one. People need to remember that the internet is a public highway. Never assume that no one is watching. Is it right for governments to do this? No, it is a definite violation of their own laws of privacy and, in the case of paid trolls, libel and slander laws. However, secret services have long had the attitude that the end justifies the means. They have collected information from private citizens before – wiretapping anyone? They have conducted smear campaigns before – I remember watching a documentary about Martin Luther King, which talked about him having extramarital affairs – I did a little digging and found that the allegations of affairs had originated from the FBI and had never been proven – the documentary was a recent one so that rumour mill has not ceased to grind. So, keep on communicating and blogging and as long as you are being truthful (and avoiding immorality), their dirt won’t stick. Just remember to protect other people’s privacy.
On the dissidents that World had – I don’t think any of them were paid. They were too emotionally invested in the debates. But if they were, I hope we gave them something to think about. Whatever their reasons for being there, they were all human beings whom we could have influenced for good.
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Roscuro, Ralph Abernathy (King’s top aide and successor) confirmed the affairs.
http://www.ibtimes.com/martin-luther-king-cheated-his-wife-other-lesser-known-facts-about-civil-rights-leader-mlk-day
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Here is the NYT book review of David Garrow’s biography of MLK.
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Ricky Weaver I thought that was accepted common knowledge about MLK.
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Kim, It is among people of a certain age. On certain subjects (MLK, global warming, perversion, etc.), people below a certain age were only taught the myths.
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Ricky, aside from Abernathy – who is confusing because he said later that he never said that King had sex with the women: https://web.archive.org/web/20071211111242/http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/index_print.asp?ProgramID=1442 – all the material I could find referred back to the FBI records, which as you probably know, are sealed until 2027. With that kind of lack of documentation, I chose to reserve judgement until 2027.
On your comment about people below a certain age – you are mistaken on a number of counts:
1. On MLK – I am Canadian and thus removed from any emotional involvement with the issue. Outside the US, the Civil Rights movement is recounted with the same detachment and brevity as Americans might review Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. I actually believed the documentary’s claims with no qualms, and it wasn’t until later that I bothered to investigate and realized that the grounds were shaky. I really only mentioned it today as an example of how the secret service has always operated.
2. Global warming – you may be just generalizing about the younger generation here; but I can tell you that neither I nor my siblings nor a good number of my friends believe have bought into the global warming scare. In fact, if you had been around World any length of time, you would know I regularly engaged global warming advocates in debate and a few times they got very upset with me.
3. Perversion – what I said under the global warming heading about my opposing views and engaging in debate with advocates also applies to this subject. Ask the other people on this thread if that is not the case.
4. I was not educated in public school, but homeschooled. Most of the school material, especially in the area of social studies, which I studied was from one Christian publishing firm or another.
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ricky if you will email me at klb1668 at yahoo dot com I will tell you an interesting story.
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Roscuro, Garrow’s is probably the best biography. That is a good place to start an investigation. As indicated in the NYT review, King’s womanizing was well known by many and one of his major activities.
You are a smart young lady. You have probably been subject to less brain-washing than most folks your age, and you have resisted much of the brainwashing that came your way.
Nevertheless as Kim said, there are things that are accepted common knowledge to people of a certain age that are heresies or completely foreign ideas to many young people.
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From Ralph Abernathy, a friend of MLK’s:
“Martin and I were away more often than we were at home; and while this was no excuse for extramarital relations, it was a reason. Some men are better able to bear such deprivations than others, though all of us in SCLC headquarters had our weak moments. We all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation.”
But other rumors were not true, as Abernathy stresses (see answers — scroll down — below on the snipes site)
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/history/american/mlking.asp#GyeyfBU2Fv0qpZ9q.99
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I don’t think the accusations of extra-marital affairs were strongly rebutted, either at the time or since. Even so, MLK accomplished much good in his time and should be remembered and honored for that.
No one is spotless.
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And no excuses for the FBI in trying to discredit him.
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