Archives for March 2016

Clarice Palmer
March 4, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) In order to celebrate man’s most valuable freedom — the freedom to choose — Danish volunteers are now giving grocery shoppers the option of purchasing items seen as “unloved” by other major supermarkets in the nation.

According to TreeHugger.com, Denmark’s WeFood grocery store, located in Copenhagen, has a different proposal. Instead of wasting mislabeled products, ugly produce, or items that come in damaged packaging, the brand new grocer wants to offer consumers a choice — and everyone is cheering it.

Each year, TreeHugger reports, 163,000 tons of food are discarded by Danish grocers. In many cases, discarded products aren’t necessarily bad. Instead, consumers are wasting “treats for a holiday that happened last week, a ripped box of cornflakes, plain white rice mislabeled as basmati, or anything nearing its expiration date.”

With that in mind, the WeFood founders decided to sell these perfectly fine products that don’t pass the standards of what consumers usually expect from a typical grocery store. They created a business model based on the idea that consumers have a choice, and if those consumers are comfortable with the fact that what they are consuming may not be ‘acceptable’ elsewhere, they are free to purchase that food.

According to TreeHugger, WeFood is a non-profit run by volunteers and members of DanChurchAid, a charity that “assists the world’s poorest to lead a life in dignity.” DanChurchAid’s Per Bjerre explains that the organization decided to avoid labeling WeFood as a “social supermarket” because “it’s difficult to get customers to go there. Who wants to be poor?”

“If you want to stop [the] waste of food, everybody has to be into it.”

Unlike grocers that focus on selling surplus food to people with limited means, or so-called “social supermarkets,” WeFood targets the general public.

According to NPR, the idea is a hit. Ever since WeFood opened its doors on February 22, people have been “lining the sidewalks each day” to shop there. But the success comes with new problems. According to TreeHugger, the store is running out of food almost every day — something DanChurchAid volunteers didn’t expect.

Some of the customers who visit WeFood, TreeHugger reports, “are low-income people looking for a deal,” but often, they visit WeFood mostly “for more political reasons.”

Recently, France made it illegal for supermarkets to throw out unsold food, but the effort in Denmark is different. Instead of pressuring government authorities to impose this approach on all other grocers, WeFood is quickly becoming a hub for “unloved food,” boosting the local economy and providing a major boost to consumers’ power of choice.

“While all other animals are unconditionally driven by the impulse to preserve their own lives and by the impulse of proliferation,” the late economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in his celebrated book, Human Action, “man has the power to master even these impulses.”

Man, Mises concluded, “is capable of dying for a cause or of committing suicide. To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value.”

Mises’ words aptly describe the current movement to conserve food and help distribute resources in Denmark more efficiently — and with the project’s great success, maybe more will follow.

This article (New Grocery Store Sells Food Other Stores Would’ve Trashed, Shelves Empty Daily) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Clarice Palmer and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: WeFood.  If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

The $1 trillion War on Drugs launched by President Nixon in 1971 created the Mexican drug cartels, now legalizing weed is killing them.

Nick Bernabe
March 4, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) The Mexican drug cartels are finally meeting their match as a wave of cannabis legalization efforts drastically reshapes the drug trafficking landscape in the United States. It turns out that as states legalize cannabis use and cultivation, the volume of weed brought across the border by Mexican drug cartels dramatically decreases — and is putting a dent in their cash flow.

A newly-released statistical report from the U.S. Border Patrol shows a sharp drop-off in cannabis captured at the border between the United States and Mexico. The reduction in weed trafficking coincides with dozens of states embracing cannabis use for both medical and recreational purposes.

In fact, as the Washington Post reports, cannabis confiscations at the southern border have stumbled to the lowest point in over a decade — to only 1.5 million pounds. That’s down from a peak of four million pounds in 2009.

Speaking to Anti-Media, Amir Zendehnam, host of the popular show, “In the Clear with Amir” on cannabis-oriented network Z420.tv, told us what he thinks of these new statistics:

“The economics of the cannabis industry show us that with healthy competition in the market, prices drop, quality rises, violence diminishes, and peaceful transactions increase. As constant new research emerges detailing the plant’s benefits, the negative stigma of using cannabis, both medicinally and recreationally, is diminishing, raising the demand for high quality product.

“Colorado, for example, is experiencing an economic boom that has never been seen in the state. The biggest issue in Colorado today is what to do with the huge amounts of revenue and economic success the state is gaining as a result of legalization. The Colorado model has proven that legalization reduces crime rates, cuts prices, pushes unfavorable competition out of the market, provides cleaner products with heightened transparency, and increases the standard of living for society as a whole.

“The only people hurt by continued societal acceptance and legalization of cannabis are the cartels and their friends, who have flourished for decades as a result of drug prohibition.

“As legalization spreads across the U.S. and the rest of the world like wildfire, I predict the industry will soon become one of the most dominant and beneficial industries humanity has ever seen.”

And the new competition from legal states has taken a big bite out of the entire illicit Mexican marijuana food chain. “Two or three years ago, a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of marijuana was worth $60 to $90,” a cannabis farmer in Mexico said in an interview with NPR. “But now they’re paying us $30 to $40 a kilo. It’s a big difference. If the U.S. continues to legalize pot, they’ll run us into the ground.”

Consumers are also starting to see the difference. Cheap low quality Mexican cannabis has become almost impossible to find in states that have legalized, while prices for high quality home-grown have steadily decreased.

This is good news for Mexico. A decreasing flow of cannabis trafficking throughout the country will likely lead to less cartel violence as revenues used to buy weapons dry up. Drug war-related violence in Mexico was responsible for an estimated 27,000 deaths in 2011 alone — outpacing the entire civilian death toll of the United States’ 15-year war in Afghanistan.

These developments reinforce criticism of the War on Drugs as a failed policy. Making substances like cannabis illegal simply drove the industry underground, helping make America the largest incarcerator in the world.

Legalizing cannabis will also save the United States a great deal of money. As Mint Press News reported:

“Since Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in June 1971, the cost of that “war” had soared to over $1 trillion by 2010. Over $51 billion is spent annually to fight the drug war in the United States, according to Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting more humane drug policies.”

Early reports from Colorado’s cannabis tax scheme show that revenues that will ostensibly help schools and rehabilitation efforts by flooding the state with cash. In fact, Colorado became the first state to generate more tax revenue from cannabis than alcohol in one year — $70 million.

But why stop with cannabis legalization? As more and more drug propaganda is debunked thanks to the legal weed movement, it’s time to also advocate for drug legalization across the board. The drug war’s criminalization of substances has done nothing to stem their use, and has simply turned addicts into criminals, even though plenty of experts agree that addiction is a health issue, not a criminal one.

Maybe it’s time for the U.S., Mexico, and other countries to embrace the Portuguese and Irish model of treating addiction to drugs like an addiction to alcohol or cigarettes, using rehabilitation — rather than incarceration — to confront the problem.

READ NEXT: 8 Reasons Why Ending The War On Drugs Would Make The World A Safer Place

This article (Legalizing Weed Has Done What 1 Trillion Dollars and a 40 Year War Couldn’t) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Carey Wedler
March 3, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Passaic County, NJ — A lab technician for the New Jersey State Police’s Office of Forensic Science has ‘retired’ early after being caught falsely identifying a substance as marijuana without conducting the proper tests. On Monday, Deputy Public Defender Judy Fallon issued a memo to Public Defender Joseph Krakora explaining Kamalkant Shah’s falsified report:

“Laboratory Technician II Kamalkant Shah of the New Jersey State Police Laboratory (in Little Falls) has been found to have ‘dry labbed’ suspected CDS specimens. Basically, he was observed writing ‘test results’ for suspected marijuana that was never tested.”

According to NJ Advance Media, “Ellie Honig, director of the Division of Criminal Justice of the Attorney general’s office, said in [a] Feb. 22 letter to county prosecutor’s offices that Shah ‘failed to appropriately conduct laboratory analyses in a drug case.’”

The letter, released from the Attorney General to the news outlet on Wednesday, disclosed that “Mr. Shah was observed in one case spending insufficient time analyzing a substance to determine if it was marijuana and recording an anticipated result without properly conducting the analysis.”

“The letter advised prosecutors to disclose this information to defense counsel,” NJ Advance Media reported.

The former technician’s indiscretion in that singular marijuana case has now called into question thousands of drug cases he conducted tests for, as the one in question was only the first observed instance of his dishonesty.

As Fallon noted, “Mr. Shah was employed with the lab from 2005 to 2015; obviously all his ‘results’ have been called into question.”

“In Passaic County alone, the universe of cases possibly implicated in this conduct is 2,100. The Prosecutor’s Office is still in the process of identifying them. Their plan is to submit for retesting specimens from open cases,” she said.

Shah’s fraudulent testing, overall, may have affected 7,827 drug cases on which he worked. Fallon also indicated the Little Falls crime lab provides testing for other law enforcement agencies across the state, not just the State Police.

Fallon wrote that the Prosecutor’s Office for Passaic County has not yet formulated a strategy to deal with the fallout of the falsified reports. She indicated the difficulty of identifying all the potential cases whose outcomes were influenced by the inaccurate, or downright absence, of testing:

“The larger, and unanswered, question is how this impacts already resolved cases, especially those where the specimens may have been destroyed.”

Assistant Public Defender Kevin Walker issued a statement saying there is not currently “a practical mechanism for identifying all the cases involving” Shah. According to Peter Aseltine, spokesman for the Attorney General, State Police are reportedly working with prosecutors to comb over cases that may be affected by Shah’s false reports.

“The prosecuting attorneys are going to have to do that, by reviewing the records from the Little Falls lab and cross-referencing them with their files,“ he said. “We assume the prosecutors will do that promptly. Pending that review, we are going to keep all our options on the table, including filing motions to vacate convictions in appropriate cases.“

Aseltine, like other officials, highlighted that only one case was observed to be fraudulent, but that “in an abundance of caution, we have identified every case that Shah worked on since he began working in the North Regional Lab Drug Unit in 2005, and we have notified the county prosecutors, advising them to alert defense attorneys in those cases.”

NJ Advance Media reported that “several attorneys who deal with criminal matters said Wednesday that it wouldn’t likely affect the large number of defendants who pleaded guilty to drug possession.” This assessment apparently does not consider the deep flaws of plea bargains in the American justice system, which make up 90% of court outcomes in the United States, and often result from defendants’ fears they cannot fight the power of the courts — leading even the innocent to take plea bargains. The Drug War, specifically, has led to astronomically high rates of plea deals and prison time, all for individuals who have not committed violence against others.

In spite of the great burden his actions have placed on individuals and the justice system, at large, Shah has not been charged with any crimes. Aseltine said Shah was suspended without pay on January 12, and is “believed to have retired.” Shah enjoyed a salary of over $100,000 per year for the ten years he worked for the State Police.

Unfortunately, his is not an isolated incident. Inaccurate and falsified reporting has plagued the justice system and its related appendages for decades. For example, as the Washington Post reported last year:

“The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a former prosecutor, commented on the FBI’s scandal last year, but his sentiments — barring his allusion to executions, which are rare for drug cases — could be easily applied to the current debacle in New Jersey:

“These findings are appalling and chilling in their indictment of our criminal justice system, not only for potentially innocent defendants who have been wrongly imprisoned, and even executed, but for prosecutors who have relied on fabricated and false evidence despite their intentions to faithfully enforce the law.”

This article (7,827 Drug Cases Called into Question After Police Lab Tech Caught Faking Test Results) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Amitchell125. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Claire Bernish
March 3, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Perhaps Hillary Clinton needs a reminder that people have a difficult time placing trust in known hypocrites. Or perhaps unabashed hypocrisy simply doesn’t, for unknown reasons, strike her as an ethical deficiency.

“I have made it clear based on Senator Sanders’ own record that he has voted with the NRA, with the gun lobby numerous times,” Clinton said during one Democratic debate in January, proceeding to proffer ostensible examples from his congressional voting record. “Let’s not forget what this is about — 90 people a day die from gun violence in our country. That’s 33,000 people a year.”

Clinton’s attempts to equate Sanders’ votes with moral turpitude are devoid of reason on a number of levels, most glaringly because her largest donors — and some of the largest contributors to the Clinton Foundation — are connected directly or indirectly with the defense industry and the gun lobby.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton tops the list of presidential hopefuls receiving defense lobbyist contributions — outpacing even the top Republican candidates. On March 21, according to The Intercept, a fundraising rally for Clinton’s campaign will be hosted in part by Jeff Forbes of the lobbying firm Forbes-Tate, who — until 2016, apparently — had lobbied for the National Rifle Association. Yes, the gun rights advocacy group. Guns. The very industry Hillary loves to vilify other candidates over their lack of staunch opposition toward.

No, this is not in any way intended to demonize gun rights — or, for that matter, characterize guns and gun ownership in any manner. This is about Clinton’s complete lack of consistency, penchant for outright hypocrisy, and — more to the point — blatant support for weapons manufacturers as long as their wares are employed by the military. Certainly not as constitutionally-legal protection for citizens of the country she seeks to rule.

This also pertains to Clinton’s willingness to say just about anything in order to further her apparent lust for wealth and power.

Consider an analysis by the International Business Times last May, of Clinton’s tenure at the State Department:

“Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation … That figure — derived from three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) — represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to those countries and approved by the State Department during the period of George W. Bush’s second term.

“The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase … [which] compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.”

U.S. ally and unabashed human rights abuser, Saudi Arabia, also doled out $10 million to the nebulous Clinton Foundation prior to Hillary’s appointment as Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton desperately wants you to believe her narrative — though, admittedly, keeping up with its chameleon propensity for molding to her funders’ industries or interests can be onerous.

Clinton’s lambasting of Sanders for a milquetoast gun control stance casts aside the entire industry of violence from which her direct funders amass obscene wealth. She hypocritically champions restrictive policies on private citizen ownership of weapons, but cozies up to recent associates of the NRA. And she claims the need to curtail violence and needless deaths, but acts as a de facto peddler of weapons of war.

This article (Hillary Hypocrisy: No Gun Rights for Americans, Billions in Arms for Dictators Overseas) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Carey Wedler
March 2, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) More than 60,000 people are calling for the arrest and prosecution of former president Bill Clinton, alleging he violated election laws by entering multiple polling stations in Boston and other Massachusetts areas on Tuesday. A Change.org petition launched that same evening calls on the state’s attorney general, Maura Healey, to take action against Clinton, though the Secretary of State insists his behavior was lawful.

The petition says the Bill Clinton made a “clear, knowing and egregious violation of the campaign laws to swing an election in a significant way,” alluding to Massachusetts General Laws and procedures that prohibit “[c]ampaigning within 150 feet of a polling station, or in any way interfering with the right to vote.“ According to state voting procedures, “no person shall solicit votes for or against, or otherwise promote or oppose, any person or political party or position on a ballot question, to be voted on at the current election.”

Secretary of State William Galvin told the New York Times his office “had to remind some of our poll workers that even a president can’t go inside and work a polling place. He can go in, but he can’t approach voters.”

He continued: “We just took the extra precaution of telling them because this is not a usual occurrence. You don’t usually get a president doing this.”

WVBC, a local ABC affiliate, reported that Brian McNiff, a spokesperson for Galvin, “clarified that Clinton broke no laws during his visits to the interior of polling places because he was not handing out any flyers or voting materials for Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton also entered polling centers in West Roxbury and Newton, and attended an event outside a polling center in New Bedford. In West Roxbury, Clinton visibly spoke to a poll worker and agreed to take a picture with her, remarking, “As long as we’re not violating any election laws.” McNiffsaid of the New Bedford appearance that “No one was prevented from voting. The city and voters were notified well in advance of the event.”

He admitted that Galvin’s office notified Clinton’s campaign of possible violations. “We have heard about it, and the clerks have been instructed and the campaign has been instructed that 150 feet is the rule.”

Clinton supporter and mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, declined to acknowledge any illegal activity. Rather, he shook poll workers’ hands with the the former president in West Roxbury. “President Clinton joined Mayor Walsh to thank poll workers in West Roxbury this morning,” a spokesperson for his office said, adding that Clinton did not campaign inside the polling place.

The Massachusetts’ state brass is defending the Clintons in spite of unethical and likely illegal behavior, and the petition disputes the apparent free pass.

“Bill Clinton was not only electioneering within the boundary. Although the spokesperson for Bill Clinton denies that he was ever inside a polling place, photos and video show him clearly greeting and talking up election workers inside.”

The statement continues:

“After being told to refrain from this activity, which is a 3rd degree Voter Violation Felony, for which Clinton indeed must have known the law and chose to violate it, Bill Clinton does not vote in Massachusetts, and would have no other business in a polling station on election day besides campaigning for his wife.”

A spokesman for Clinton directed inquiring CNBC reporters to the WCVB article, where McNiff asserted Bill had committed no wrongdoing.

Bernie Sanders supporters and others have raised concerns throughout the campaign cycle regarding the integrity of the process, and the Clintons’ most recent apparent transgression has attracted a great deal of scrutiny. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Change petition calling for Clinton’s arrest and prosecution had attracted over nearly 60,000 signatures.

Though the Clintons have recently been accused of even more serious criminal conduct — including rape and war crimes — they have not faced prosecution.

This article (Over 60,000 People Want Bill Clinton Arrested for Violating Election Laws on Super Tuesday) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Claire Bernish
March 2, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Connecticut — Police are now voicing their concerns about domestic drone use — specifically, they want the option to be able to employ weaponized drones in the future, should the need arise.

As if police brutality and aggression weren’t already an epidemic in the United States, police departments in Connecticut oppose a bill to outlaw the weaponization of drones. The bill also address unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with cameras, and their potential to violate the privacy rights of individuals. But law enforcement departments in the state appear far more concerned with being deprived of the possibility of arming them with weapons, rather than cameras.

As FOX 61 reported, bills currently being considered would both restrict drone use and classify arming them with any weapons — such as firearms or flamethrowers — as a Class C felony. Employing drones to set off explosives, deadly weapons, tear gas, and the like would be punishable by ten years in prison — and at the moment, that would include law enforcement. As written, the bill would require law enforcement to procure a warrant prior to using a drone for any reason.

Connecticut legislators seem to be taking practically the opposite route of those in North Dakota.

In 2015, North Dakota passed a law granting police the right to arm drones with “less than lethal” weaponry. Quietly slipping under the radar of the public and the media, the bill as originally written by its sponsor, Representative Rick Becker, banned all weapons on police drones — until a powerful police lobby had its way with the original draft.

“Bruce Burkett of the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association was allowed by the state house committee to amend HB 1328 and limit the prohibition only to lethal weapons. ‘Less than lethal’ weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are therefore permitted on police drones,” Justin Glawe reported for The Daily Beast in August.

Of course, ‘less than lethal’ is quite a misnomer. Besides maiming and seriously injuring people, many of those options can also be fatal — particularly Tasers.

“This is not one I’m in full agreement with. I wish it was any weapon,” Becker rued at a hearing in March. “In my opinion, there should be a nice, red line: Drones should not be weaponized. Period.”

He noted the potential for police to mimic U.S. use of drones abroad, as in fighting ISIL — particularly because, he added, “When you’re on the ground, and you’re making decisions, you’re sort of separate. Depersonalized.”

North Dakota may have succumbed to Big Drone’s wishes — as the Daily Beast described the booming industry and its lobbyists — but it’s almost inevitable privacy rights groups, legislators, concerned citizens, and law enforcement will point to its and Connecticut’s laws as reference precedents. Depending on which turn the bills before the Connecticut legislature take, that state could be added to what will likely be a growing list of laws for how to deal with weaponized drones.

Joining the battle to prevent police spying by drone, the ACLU was slated to testify about the Connecticut bill on Tuesday.

For now, the prospect of law enforcement arming drones remains a legal gray area — at least, in most areas of the U.S.

This article (So It Begins: American Police Start Pushing to Weaponize Domestic Drones) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Michaela Whitton
March 2, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Two years after Edward Snowden’s revelations, which included details about the U.K. government’s own blanket surveillance operations, authorities are champing at the bit to update laws on what data spies and police can access — and under what circumstances.

Hailed by the Home Secretary Teresa May as “world-leading“ legislation that balances security and privacy, the Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the “Snoopers Charter,”  has long-been rumoured to be a sinister mandate for mass surveillance that chills free speech.

The U.K. has rapidly expanded its surveillance capabilities over recent years. With the Investigatory Powers Bill, Britain has sought to legitimise surveillance that many governments conduct covertly.

In Tuesday’s publication of the re-drafted bill, May expanded the number of situations in which the powers can be used. The increase in powers came in spite of heavy scrutiny and criticism from pressure groups and parliamentary committees.

One of the new provisions allows police forces to access individuals’ internet history and hack into laptops and phones, under certain conditions. According to the Guardian, the bill dictates that U.K. security services will only extend remote computer hacking ‘privileges’ to major police forces in cases involving a threat to life, missing persons, or “damage to somebody’s mental health.”

Tweaks to the original draft include stronger protections for journalists and lawyers — codes of practice specifying how the powers will be used — and the use of a “double-lock” authorisation for use of the most intrusive surveillance methods.

In spite of these alleged safeguards, criticism of the bill remains widespread. Lord Strasburger, a Liberal Democrat and member of the scrutiny committee, rebuked Tuesday’s publication. “The Home Office just doesn’t do privacy. It does security and ever more intrusive powers they claim will make us safer, but not privacy,” he said. “The fact that they see simply changing the name of one section to include the word ‘privacy’ as addressing the fundamental concerns about privacy protections in this bill is breath-taking.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said:

“Minor Botox has not fixed this bill. Government must return to the drawing board and give this vital, complex task appropriate time. Anything else would show dangerous contempt for parliament, democracy and our country’s security.”

Eric King, director of Don’t Spy On Us, a coalition of organisations that defend privacy, free expression, and digital rights in the U.K. and Europe, also raised pointed concerns about the latest version of the bill.

“Rather than a full redraft, we’ve been given cosmetic tweaks to a heavily criticised, deeply intrusive bill,” he said.

“Reshuffling safeguards without meaningfully improving protections, authorisations or oversight does nothing to address widespread concerns about mass surveillance. The unsettling absence of a robust, technical, detailed evaluation of those bulk powers means the case still hasn’t been made, and parliament won’t have the information it needs to do its job.”

He said more than 100 experts have raised concerns about the bill, and “the government must think again.”

Don’t Spy On Us is calling for new legislation that meaningfully seeks to hold elected representatives accountable — as well as the government at large. Find out more about the campaign here.

This article (UK Spying Laws Give Government Access to Your Entire Internet History) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org

From theantimedia.org Team

Jake Anderson
March 1 , 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) — Recently, Anti-Media covered the revelation that Samsung transmits audio commands recorded by their Smart TVs to a third party company, which raises all sorts of red flags regarding encryption standards and, more importantly, people’s privacy in their own homes.

Last year, Anti-Media posted a list of surprising objects endowed with surveillance or data extraction capabilities — including the Statue of Liberty, mannequins, billboards, and more. The company Immersive Labs, for instance, creates software for digital billboards that allows them to watch your face and then tailor a specific ad based on your facial features.

On Monday, the next generation of corporate surveillance was deployed — a new kind of billboard that utilizes surveillance triangulation the likes of which we’ve never seen.

According to the article entitled “See That Billboard? It May See You,” Clear Channel Outdoor Americas has partnered with a bevy of tech and data companies, including AT&T, to combine billboard surveillance and location-based mobile data in order to study people’s travel patterns and shopping behaviors. The program, called Radar, will hit 11 major markets this coming Monday. Clear Channel plans on expanding Radar to the entire nation within a year.

Billboards equipped with cameras that track consumers is not new, but tracking drivers by aggregating data from both billboards and mobile phones simultaneously is an evolution in data mining.

Information gleaned from these new billboards will include the average age and gender of people who pass by, as well as the time and what stores they subsequently visit. The info collected from the billboards will then be paired with data from the third party companies for a one-two punch that will be very valuable to advertisers.

In essence, there is a tag-team effect: the billboards identify you, then the third party companies use your mobile phone to follow and track your consumer behavior.

For instance, PlaceIQ will use mobile apps to determine location data and consumer behavior. In an article for Adweek entitled “The Future of Auto Marketing Could Be a Little Creepy – Get ready for brands to follow you everywhere,” PlaceIQ CEO and co-founder Duncan McCall discussed another campaign “designed to target in-market car buyers, one that tracks people from the moment they begin contemplating making a purchase to the moment they leave their house and head to the dealer.”

Another third party company involved in Clear Channel Outdoor’s Radar billboard campaign, Placed, will use the tracked movements of the consumer to craft customized in-store ads. Placed uses mobile phones to verify shopper movements; they sell this data to stores, online retailers, and app developers.

Between the billboards and third party companies, it sounds as if the Radar program seeks to create a consumer environment where citizens can be publicly tracked — whether in their cars or after they have parked and are shopping (or simply taking a walk) — synchronously and in perpetuity.

Both PlaceIQ and Placed claim all the data they collect is anonymized.

Clear Channel Outdoor tested the new Radar system in Orlando, Florida recently, using a billboard advertisement for Toms Shoes.

Unsurprisingly, privacy advocates condemn the new campaign as yet another violation of consumer trust.

“People have no idea that they’re being tracked and targeted,” says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It is incredibly creepy, and it’s the most recent intrusion into our privacy.”

According to Amie Stepanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, corporate surveillance is especially troubling because in many cases, it paves the way for government surveillance. As the top secret military agency DARPA advances complex new war weapons, many times it relies on private contractors to move the needle. The same goes for surveillance: in creating their consumer profiles, corporations essentially run a kind of societal beta test of surveillance programs from which the government can pick and choose.

Stepanovich describes it like this:

“None of the information in question would be sharable if Internet and telecommunications companies encrypted it to protect privacy. In other words, it’s not a given that corporations must collect vast amounts of information from and about us. But failing to do so wouldn’t be good for business.”

Here she is referring to metadata gathered online, but the same applies to analytics collected on the street. We’re entering an era in which surveillance is essentially ubiquitous. Concurrently, privacy advocates say new guidelines and ethical contracts need to be considered.

Already, judicial actions have made an impact. Last year the Federal Trade Commission settled charges against retail-tracking company Nomi Technologies, which was found to have misled consumers regarding their practice of gathering signals from shoppers’ mobile phones.

In the meantime, besides moving to Antarctica and relinquishing all technology, what can consumers and citizens do to protect themselves from intrusive data mining and surveillance?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a comprehensive suite of free encryption tools and tutorials for protecting your online data, including information stored on mobile phones.

There are also techniques available for camouflaging yourself from surveillance cameras. Using makeup patterns called ‘computer vision dazzle’ (or CV dazzle), it is possible to fool the facial recognition algorithms of many surveillance systems.

This article (New Billboards Film You, Then Use Your Mobile Phone To Follow You) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team