Spyspace? Facebook for spooks?

Granting credibility to the long established rumor that government agencies have trouble sharing ... information that is, they are now to start using "A-space", a social networking site for members of the US intelligence community. It would allow them to share intel quickly and efficiently, information that would otherwise remain classified within one agency.

A good evolution, or a huge security risk once 4chan gets wind of it?
How long until somebody misplaces a flash drive with sensitive information?

An interesting concept with an intriguing future!

Laser rifles on the coming?

Chemical based lasers are already a reality, even if not battlefield tested at the moment. One problem though is that these devices are big and heavy, unfit for small arms. As a matter of fact, the first likely carrier would be a boeing 747.

But now, wired reports of an electrical laser under development, the kind that is small enough to be turned into a laser rifle ...
Yes I am sitting here with a grin on my face, what off it? :p

Blood for oil!

Now in a package that even the most liberal tree hugging hippie can embrace!
Give blood, get gas.

Turn a criminal in, get gas

With current gas prices at their outrageous level (more than half of the European price!), authorities are offering gas cards redeemable for $250 worth of gas to people who assist in the capture of a wanted criminal.

I'm having seriously mixed feelings about this!

Are they bribing people into cooperating with the police? If before, citizens could turn in a criminal, wouldn't they? In that regard, it amounts to little more than trying to break down the "stop snitching" wall.

Now, dream with me for a minute: what if next food keeps rising in price as it has been doing for quite some time now, it'll be pretty friggen expensive pretty fast! Food stamps for snitches? Come on, turn in a criminal and get a weeks worth of rations ...
Hungry people will do anything to not be hungry anymore. Suppose a "less-than-freedom-oriented" body were to come in control of the nation, how fast would they implement such a scheme to track down all the firearms that "got stolen" when they were banned? To track down "terrorists" or whathever else they're calling dissenters.

I'd keep an eye on this!

Private bodyguards on the rise.

Okay, I'm trying not to post too much about the UK, but this is a most interesting devellopment:

While everybody has been disarmed, stripped of effective weapons for self defence (and this includes tazers and chemical sprays), there are still haves and have nots: the rich and the poor.

Rich people are paying upwards a $100 000 a year for personal protection that the police can't or will not provide. Security firms are already organising neighbourhood patrols so they can see to it that their clients can get from their car to their houses and back unmolested.

How long untill a system of private police/protection services arises to fend for those rich enough to pay their fee?

DC to introduce "neighbourhood safety zones"

And a rose by any other name means to say: cordoned off areas accessible only to those able to prove with ID that they belong there at checkpoints.
I guess we should be expecting metal detectors, drug dogs and the like to be present as well soon enough ...

Articles:
DCist.com
MSNBC

Don't like where this is going ...

We interrupt this program with a special bulletin:
The district of Columbia is now under martiall law.
All constitutional rights have been suspended.
Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact love ones, insurance agent or attorneys.
Shut up.
Do not attempt to think or depression may occur.
Stay in your homes.
Curfew is at 7 PM sharp after work.
Anyone caught outside of gates of their suveillance sectors after curfew will be shot.
Remain calm, do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine examples in the morning.
Anyone caught interfering with the collection of urine examples will be shot.
Stay in your homes, remain calm.
The number one enemy of progress is question.
National security is more important than individual will.
All sport broadcasts will proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission.
Use only the drugs described by your boss or supervisor.
Shut up, be happy.
Obey all orders without question.
The comformental mandor is now mandatory.
Be happy.
At last everything is done for you.

Cyberarmy to the rescue?

I previousy wrote two about beatings captured on camera. (first, second)

Now ABC is running a story on this subject as well, the interviewed Parry Aftab, head of Wired Safety, an organization dedicated to combating Internet abuses such as these fight videos.

He suggest things like people monitoring websites, and removing undesired content and he is -in my humble opinion- an utter and complete failure at his jobs.
Parry, no offence, but there already is an army deidicated to keeping the web cut to the shape they want, and they are not nice people! Oh what, you tought I meant the Chinese? :p

In all seriousness, trying to remove something from the net is futile! It cannot be done. Before the age of remote servers, FTP databases and bittorents, then it was hard already, now? Not a snowballs chance in hell! Removing videos from youtube and myspace, sure, but that won't make them dissapear.
You can stop the messanger and all that jazz you know.

Why don't you suggest investing in a better educational system?

Think of the children!

Love's forbidden, so is passion. This whole place is sterilized.

So I watched "the island" yesterday, pretty good cyberpunk if you ask me, but passing that:
They didn't want their sheep (agnates, agnus: lat: lamb) hugging or getting physically close to eachother to make it easier to control them. Keeping them apathic untill the day they are led to the slaughter so to speak.

Today's society is evolving towards that premise in some places today even, Alice Cooper made a song about it back in 2000, "cold machines" from the "brutal planet" album. I like to believe that he's talking about the emotional element of people when he sais "no-one here gets out alive", as the place he's at turns lovers into cold machines, numbing their senses and killing them on the inside.

Eight year old shock rock has now become policy in an american institution, as a school in Mesa Arizona bans hugs that last more than two seconds.
This is the place you send your children to to become healthy adult beings, but it would appear that said school considers showing affection to be ... unhealthy? In bad taste? Unproductive?
Instead of showing affection, are children to become mechanical instruments that carry out assignments with question?

Having children raised by the TV is razing their future, as is wanting them to become apathic machines. It is vital to instill kindness into our children if we want them to turn out right. If anything, the present day should serve us as a warning of what can go wrong when children aren't brought up properly.
If you can stomach the heavier trash metal, Annihilators "plasma zombies" has a great message on the subject of letting electronical entertainment take over the role of parenting. (lyrics)

Scrat, now I need a hug ...

Nice mall ya got there ... wanna keep it secure?

A mother and daughter were found dead at the Boca Raton mall, in Coral springs Florida.
This gave rise to the idea that the mall might not be very secure. Fortunately, the police are only a phonecall away!

Well ... not exactly: the Coral Springs police departement is trying to get the mall to hire off-duty police officers as security agents ...

So ... they're suggesting that the mall hire people who are already paid by tax money to keep the general population safe, people who have failed to control crime in the area. Oh right I forgot: the police don't have a legal obligation to keep us safe, so ... we must pay them to do so now?
I do not like where this is going.

UPDATE

the article linked to seems to have dissapeared ... not impossible as it has been quite a while.
Here is another one:

• “Over the last three years, the police department has dedicated one officer to your property every day, at our expense. In November of 2007, I personally met with mall management to discuss our security concerns as it related to the upcoming holidays. I was assured that Simon Properties would be more than willing to increase the security at the mall during these holiday hours by hiring additional off duty police officers,”

And onother one, largely the same.

Open war has been declared

This is not a gun-related post.
I'm writing this tidbit because I think these current online events are interesting to say the least. I am not involved with anonymous or the church of scientology.
If you're not interested in the war on scientology, please skip over to my previous post concerning juvenile felons being killed during the comission of a robbery.

The "anonymous legion" has openly declared war on the church of scientology by staging protests in front of their offices worldwide, headlining frontpage news in Australia with a massive turnout (more than 150, pretty impressive for a casual internet group) and being mentioned in the news across the globe.

Sky news video.

This in suit of weeks of online -denial of service- attack, crank calls and letters containing white powders, anonymous seeks to draw attention to the atrocities committed by the church of scientology, expose Tom Cruise as a douche. In reality, they are -of course- doing it for the lulz.

Project chanology, youtube account.
In their code of conduct, anonymous issued clear direction in regards to lawfulness and proper conduct. This is commendable in my opinion.

• I am not affilated with any website that houses anonymous, but members of their forums do frequent a site which I moderate, and probably this blog as well.
• I endorse the lawful actions taken by anonymous to oppose the church of scientology.
• I endorse people excersising their right to freedom of speech.
• My thoughts and opinion on the less-than-lawful actions carried out by anonymous are reserved to myself, and I will not comment on them, or openly applaud them.

Criminals to recieve microchip implants.

The idea is old, the technology is happening right now.

The idea? Rather than giving convicts bulky ankle bracelets to verify that they abide by their curfew, and do not venture out of the geographic limits imposed on them by the crown, put a small micro-chip into their bodies. This would preform the same tracking function, but would be much less cumbersome, hindering, and doesn't broadcast the fact that you're a criminal to your surroundings.

The idea is currently most vivid in the UK, which suffers from highly overcrowded prisons. This would greatly broaden the perspective of house-arrest, coupled with working penalties. I have mixed feelings about that because I support both rehabilitation, while at the same time shunning the current policies of not locking people up who deserve to be behind bars. I suppose that the courts will use the same caution and sense with this technology as they do with the current options for punishment outside of jail. (no sarcasm intended)

The technology isn't brand new either ...
"The company claims its VeriChips are used in more than 5,000 installations, crossing healthcare, security, government and industrial markets, but they have also been used to verify VIP membership in nightclubs, automatically gaining the carrier entry – and deducting the price of their drinks from a pre-paid account."

It's been established that it works for some matters and is no hazard to ones health, but human rights advocates are now -as they always have- objecting to the idea. They say that if we can't see why this is so bad, we need a common sense bypass. Could we be next? For all you know, there's already a nano-sized implant stuck in you, planted the last time you got a flu shot, or went to a dentist! William Gibson incorporated that little gimmick into one of his books, Mona Lisa overdrive, science fiction.

They could, couldn't they? They could be tracking your every move for all you know, does it bother you to think about that? Of course that's just a science fiction story, a paranoid delusion at worst ... a perfectly plausible, but unlikely shred of imagination.

It's also been established that one could "steal" the information from your chip, just as easy as one can with a credit card. You could also fry it out, or make an exact copy, or fry it out and carry another with you to pass yourself of for somebody you're not. So this technology isn't just not failsafe, it provides ample oppertunity for abuse in the current age of identity theft as well.

I know it's going to happen sooner or later, and it worries me, and it fascinates me ...
The diamond age is coming.

Commercial surrogacy on the rise.

I don't usually blog about issues like this, but I found this one particulary touching.

People are paying as little as $10 000 to have an Indian national bare their child. That includes fertilisation, medical expenses and the surrogate mothers fee. Said women normally make $25 dollars a week doing "regular" work, so when they get around $4500 to carrry somebody else's child, many are willing to do so.

This article by Fox paints a pretty pink picture if you ask me, but not necessairely unrealistic. It's rather surreal to read how lightly these women take the matter, strikes me as highly odd. Then again, I am not them, I don't know what life in India is like ... a good read at any rate.

The article warns of these services becoming a luxury to the rich, rather than a way for infertile couples to have a child of their own. Fools! One of my stateside friends reported that having his baby cost' him $5000 dollar in insurance related costs alone! Include medical checkups, classes taken to bear through delivery, time spent away from work during the pregnancy ... heck, ten grand is starting to sound like a bargain, allowing working mothers to keep working for an extra three to four months.

How soon will this become a commercial industry? Will women give up actually "having" their own children in exchange for a cheaper deal elsewhere? Would companies encourage their female employees to do so?
Coorporations are already starting to rival federal governments in terms of power in certain regions and on certain fields, and you may not like to hear it, but they are already trying to excert control over their employees family lifes in an attempt to maximise the amount of time spent working)
Skilled and trained workers are an important asset to these people, do you think that they'd pass up the chance of removing a womans pregnency from the equation for a measely ten grand? You know how big companies tend to forget about the human element in fuction of profit ...

Can you imagine a future where companies encourage their female employees to not have their children themselves? It used to be science fiction, right now it's projection, but how is this going to turn out?

Do we need to ban military style computers?

Oleg Volk brought it up a couple of times, should we restrict computing power and bandwidth on computers to reduce the amount of internet based fraud, and damages caused by hacking? He was, obviously, kidding, and referring to the idea that reducing gun effectiveness would curb gun crime.

Knowing that most crime is committed with very simple guns whose main design features predate the before the second world war, this is obviously a dream. A dream which I sometimes wish were true, as I am one of the fools who would gladly trade my rights to own a firearm in exchange for the guarantee that I'd never, ever need one ever after. (I plink with air rifles, so there :p)
But those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither right? I know it's a dream to believe that removing guns from society will make said society devoid of violence, so I'll defend my right to own arms as I will defend yours.

Now, you've hear it all before: "Guns? Maybe, but you don't need military style assault weapons!" Passing that said guns also date back half a century, and that the supreme court once stated that a weapon without military value isn't covered by the second amendment, what's the spirit of that phrase?
Civilians shouldn't have access to military grade equipment?
Don't forget, the military of today won't endure forever. The world is changing, and so are they.

"Cyber age prompts new war, The Miami Herald"

The article goes as far as to state that in the future, currently conventional weapons will be obsolete and that information based attacks would be far more effective than sending in grunts with guns.

Should we start fearing for our computers and broadband connection?
Computers have advanced beyond comprehension since the days of "bombe" code breakers and enigma/triton encryption devices designed by and for the military. A common cellphone today has more computing power than a PC from the years when the AK-74 was designed, and the current ease with which information can be spread stands in biblical proportions to the endeavor it was fifty years ago.
Should civilians be barred from owning military equipment? Will there be buyback programs to turn in my quad core processor in exchange for a pair of sneakers? Conveniently also eliminating all those nasty video games that are supposedly ruining todays youth (in spite of the 18+ label, opposed to parental absence and poor education).

Next up, Civilian radio ownership prohibited, radios are also military equipment, right?