Police State

Encrypted email service used by NSA leaker Snowden shuts down, blaming US government pressure. More.

I'm surprised at how shocked people are about NSA spying. Decades ago, everybody in the tech business knew the government was intercepting all our communications. Many people put what they called "spook fodder" signatures - keywords designed to raise a flag at NSA - at the bottom of their email. Supposedly this was going to overwhelm the NSA's system. It didn't work. Now a Zealand professor is proposing the same thing. If you could get a billion people to do this, it might work, but he'll never get enough people.

NSA chief tells the biggest lie yet:

""No one has knowingly or willfully disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies,'' he added."

Everybody in the NSA is a saint.

The bias just drips from this article.

"At just 17, Israel Hernández-Llach was already an award-winning artist, on the threshold of acclaim in Miami Beach art circles. He was a sculptor, painter, writer and photographer whose craft was inspired by his home country of Colombia and his adopted city, Miami.
He was also a graffiti artist, known as “Reefa,” who sprayed colorful splashes of paint on the city’s abandoned buildings while playing cat-and-mouse with cops, who, like many property owners, consider graffiti taggers to be vandals, not artists."

So the authors can see the future, and they take a dig at property owners, who, oddly enough, don't want graffiti spayed on their property.

"It was while spray-painting a shuttered McDonald’s early Tuesday morning that Hernández-Llach was chased down by Miami Beach police and shot in the chest with a Taser. He later died.
Miami Beach Police Chief Ray Martinez said the department “would like to extend its condolences to the family of Israel Hernández.”
Two of the dead teenager’s friends, including one who says he was his “lookout” while Hernández-Llach applied paint, said the officers exchanged high-fives and congratulations after Tasering him."

This is uncalled for. Electrocuting people is harmful and potentially deadly, but it's ironic that the socialists writing in the article are the ones complaining about the socialists who killed the kid. This is good reminder that socialism is inherently violent and can never benefit anybody but the rulers who loot the people.

Detroit's new police chief criticizes department. I guess that's a positive sign.

All those claims of cell phone use while driving turn out to be lies. I'm not surprised. That was just an excuse for cops to pull people over.