Posts from — June 2013

Mr Snowden is heading for a different venue. He had a tourist visa for Hong Kong, so he couldn’t stay there for long. As expected the Hong Kong legal system didn’t accept the larceny charge as valid, and let him leave.

In as much as many governments, like the UK had already told their airlines not to give Mr Snowden a seat, even before he had been charged with anything, his choice was severely limited. He apparently took a flight to Moscow, which certainly did not have US Air Marshals on board.

He wasn’t in Hong Kong long enough to arrange a visa for Russia, so he will be staying in the airport awaiting another flight to his destination, possibly Ecuador.

There have been suggestions that his moves are making it seem like he is attempting to escape justice. People who think that should ask themselves where they think he would find justice? When it comes to terrorism or ‘espionage’ charges, the US no longer offers due process or a speedy trial. Look at what happened to Jose Padilla or Bradley Manning and then tell me that you believe that Edward Snowden can receive a fair trial in the United States.

This was taken from my front door looking northeast. Just to the left of the trunk of the pear tree in the center, if you look closely, you can see two white posts with orange tops.

They didn’t just install another fiber conduit, they installed a junction of some kind across the street from my house.

This is going into Eighth Amendment territory. Gigabits, possibly Terabits of connectivity in the ground across the street, and I limp along at 1.5 Megabits.

In the Soviet Union most people lived in apartment buildings. On every floor of every apartment building there was an old woman, a ‘grandmother’ [in Russian – Babushka] who sat in the hallway and kept track of all comings and goings. The ‘babushki’ received extra benefits from the KGB to supplement their meager pensions.

Given Zero’s latest ‘national security’ absurdity, I can see them appearing in the halls of all Federal buildings in short order.

Asking every government employee to be an informant [betrayer, blabbermouth, canary, deep throat, double-crosser, fink, grasser, narc, rat, shopper, sneak, snitch, squealer, stool pigeon, tattletale, tipster, turncoat, weasel] on all of their coworkers to stop whistle-blowers, should pretty much destroy ‘unit cohesion and morale’ as the military is wont to say.

The majority of ‘leaks’ come from the White House and Congress, not Federal civil service workers. Maybe if Zero tried to introduce a few of the policies that people actually want and need, and stopped pushing the Republican policies that the majority of people hate, he would have smoother sailing.

Update: Charlie Pierce is going with Orwell’s Big Brother, while others are talking about the Stasi. [Aside: Charlie, tell Ralph Lauren to buy that young woman a good dinner. She looks about ready for an ad on famine instead of denim.]

They have been digging again on the right-of-way across the street from my house. I assumed it had something to do with the new gas line they just put in, so I haven’t been paying too much attention. Then, this afternoon they put in a white post with orange top. I don’t have to cross the street to know what it says -‘Caution Buried Fiber Optic Cable’.

This is the second time they have done this. They have now have two bloody conduits, so the first one must have been filled, and now they are filling another, and I’m still stuck with twisted pair copper.

ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV or the Internet, but the Hong Kong legal system is based on English common law, and charging Edward Snowden with theft is going to be a bit of a problem. I realize they did it to get the Hong Kong authorities to arrest Mr Snowden, but the facts don’t support their charge.

To support a charge of larceny/theft something of value must be taken. Snowden made copies, he didn’t take anything. The originals from which the copies were made are still there. You don’t charge someone with theft of the Washington Monument if they take a picture of it.

Talk about ‘stealing’ music or videos is not accurate. No one steals them, they violate the copyright. Even that isn’t possible with what Mr Snowden copied, because, although it might be classified, it cannot be copyrighted – products of the US government are in the public domain.

Hauling out the benighted Espionage Law of 1917 is an admission of failure. Some court should show mercy and put a stake through the heart of that beast. It was a pitiful mutant when it was passed, and it is still a monstrosity.

The only real charge is passing classified information to people without the clearance necessary to see it. Even that has a problem, as Bruce Schneier noted. Snowden’s legal team can argue that the government must show the legality and Constitutionality of the programs before prosecuting Snowden for revealing them. There are rules about what can be classified, and crimes or embarrassing information don’t make the cut.

They weren’t kidding about the moon being supercharged tonight. For the moment the clouds have cleared out, and even with the light pollution from the street lights, it appears to be a third larger than normal and putting out enough light to block out the stars in the sky to the southeast.

Today at 12:04AM [CDT] is the Summer Solstice, technically considered the “first day of Summer”, but the mid Summer by much of Europe.

Many Wiccans celebrate the day as Litha, while computer programmers honor their predecessors, the druids, who build the first solid-state computing devices, the megaliths, like Stonehenge.

The Slavs celebrate St. John’s Night, Иван Купала [Ivan Kupala], the battle between the White god [Белобог – Belobog] and the Black god [Чёрнобог – Chyornobog] for control of the Sun. The Black god always wins and the night begins to expand.

The sound track to the battle is Иванова Ночь на Лысой Горе [Night on Bald Mountain ] by Модест Петрович Мусоргский [Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky], which everyone should play very loudly.

Archæoastronomy tracks all of the important solar events, another of the many things I learned from Andante.

Ringo

I vant to be alone…

[Editor: This is a rerun because days of thunderstorms are keeping everycat in hiding. It has been a while since I’ve seen Ringo, which is normal for her after she was ‘imprisoned’ in the house for so long. She takes off somewhere, and then wanders back when she feels like it.]

Friday Ark

The US Cyper Command is a shell populated by contractors, and they use a contractor to conduct their security clearances.

CBS reports that the firm that conducted Edward Snowden’s background is under investigation.

The company, USIS, is nationwide and I have talked to one of their investigators about an individual who once lived on my street. That investigator conducted herself in a professional manner, but I noticed that she wasn’t military, which was odd for me.

I’m wondering what anyone could have found that would have denied Mr Snowden a clearance – his belief in the Constitution and the rule of law? Snowden would pass a polygraph with flying colors because he believes he is exposing criminal behavior, not breaking the real law.

That said, everyone needs to keep in mind that these contractors are in business to make the largest profit possible, and will ‘reduce costs’ wherever they can, even if it means a lousy product.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with military contractors will tell you that you always get less than what you paid for. They call the difference their profit.

Position: 19.6N 98.2W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 6 mph [ 9 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 25 mph [ 40 kph].
Wind Gusts: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb ↑.

The storm had degenerated into a post-tropical low. This is the final NHS advisory.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

I was planning a bit of a snarkfest about the government picking up half the cost of our cell phones and Internet service, since they are using them as much as we are. As part of that I was going to do a riff on US Cyber Command providing us with free e-mail accounts at “uscyber.com”. I decided to check on that domain, figuring I would probably grab it if it wasn’t already taken. It belongs to an ISP in Virginia who has owned it since 1999. Oh, well…

I notice that Google is now using SSL, just like DuckDuckGo. Bing and Yahoo still aren’t part of the program. People are starting to react, so I expect more of the Internet to lock up to promote user confidence if nothing else.

Position: 19.6N 95.8W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 6 mph [ 9 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Wind Gusts: 55 mph [ 90 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 80 miles [ 130 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1005 mb.

Currently about 40 miles [ 60 km] Northeast of Vera Cruz, Mexico.

It is back over the water and has become a tropical storm.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect from Punta el Lagarto westward to Tuxpan, Mexico.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

In Mike Konczal’s post, What’s New in the New Surveillance State?, he notes:

In some sense, the issue of the government spying and collecting data on its citizens isn’t a new problem. One of my favorite tweets of the past week was Brooke Jarvis noting “Collapsing bridges alongside massive spy networks… Ah, the Jeffersonian ideal of government.”

I wonder if TJ could have imagined a Senator like Saxby Chambliss, who doesn’t see a need for hearings on the Snowden revelations, because his constituents haven’t called him to complain [about a classified program they didn’t know existed.]

MsExPat lives in Hong Kong a wrote a long piece explaining Six reasons why choosing Hong Kong is a brilliant move by Edward Snowden.

I have a feeling that his media appearances are designed to improve the support for him among the people of Hong Kong.

For those of you without a program, Digby notes from a CNet article that there are actually four different entities being discussed:

For your phone there is Mainway for the meta data, and Nucleon for the content;
For your Internet there is Marina for the meta data, and Prism for the content.

Now, as to the kerfuffle over whether analysts have access to whatever they want, the answer is only if they sign a copy of a permission request that states they are 51% sure that the requested content involves foreigners. This is immediately approved by the FISA court. When it turns out that it was a former girlfriend calling her lawyer about the restraining order, nothing apparently happens, because the analyst was only 51% sure.

Folks, 51% is definitely not ‘probable cause’, nor is it ‘reasonable suspicion’. Hell, 51% doesn’t qualify as a hunch, or a wild ass guess. That is coin toss territory, not analysis, but that’s all that is required to see the content.

Position: 18.9N 92.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [300°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph [ 45 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1007 mb.

Currently about 60 miles [ 100 km] West-Northwest of Carmen, Mexico.

The system is still hanging together as it crosses the land dumping heavy rain.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect from Punta el Lagarto westward to Barra de Nautia, Mexico.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]