New sanctions bill against Iran stalls

While talks continue between the P5+1 countries and Iran, there have been determined efforts to try and disrupt the talks and thus increase the threat of war, and the main vehicle for doing has been to push for more sanctions against Iran while talks are going on.. This push has been strongly supported by Israel’s main lobbying group in the US known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. The new sanctions have been vigorously opposed by the Obama administration, which is seeking to make improved relations with Iran the centerpiece of its second term foreign policy. [Read more…]

US government’s no-fly list gets a setback

The US government is notorious for its abuse of the so-called no-fly list. People find that they are suddenly refused to be boarded on to planes and are not told why. The government refuses to state who is on the list and what criteria are used to put people on it or even confirm to people denied boarding that it is because they are on the list. And once you are on it, it is almost impossible to get off it. [Read more…]

What it’s like to be a drone operator

Heather Linebaugh is someone who operated killer drones in Afghanistan and she writes about what it was like.

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?” [Read more…]

NSA trying to crack encryption using quantum computers

NSA insideWhile the US and British governments undoubtedly have the resources to obtain the best computers and cryptographers that money can buy, they cannot (at far as I know) break really good encryption systems. This is why they have achieved much of their success the old-fashioned way and resorted to cheating, such as getting computer and chip makers and communication companies to collaborate with them to install back doors. News reports based on leaked documents by (who else?) Edward Snowden show that the NSA may have bribed RSA, one of the most important companies in the security industry, to get them to provide a loophole that the NSA could exploit. [Read more…]

And now, for something a little bit different

A lot of attention has been focused on the Republican race to be the party’s nominee for the 2016 presidential election. Less attention has been paid to the events on the Democratic side because of what seems to be a media consensus that that nomination is Hillary Clinton’s for the taking and until such time as she announces that she is not interested in running, there is no point talking about it. [Read more…]

Pew News IQ Quiz

I am bit of a sucker for these little quizzes that pop up on the internet from time to time, as long as they do not take more than a couple of minutes to complete and are not totally idiotic. Since I am a news junkie, I was tempted to do this short 13-question Pew News IQ quiz to assess whether you know more about the news than the average American. This is an admittedly low bar so this is one of those quizzes where doing well does not bring any credit at all. [Read more…]

Blacklists then and now

In his keynote talk at the 30th Chaos Communications Congress (30C3) conference last month to an audience that consisted to a large extent of computer professionals and systems administrators, Glenn Greenwald talked about one encouraging sign that he has observed, and that is the increased resistance he has observed among ordinary people, especially those in the tech industry. [Read more…]

So predictable

Every year we have the same sequence of events. There will be a few days in succession when temperatures fall far below average values, combined with fairly heavy snowfall. This is what we who live in the northeast call ‘winter’. And sure enough, this will be followed by amusement among some members of the media that this conclusively proves that global warming is some gigantic hoax being perpetrated on the US by a conspiracy of scientists, liberals, and the rest of the world. [Read more…]

Why not recruit normal human beings instead?

In the service sector where employees have to interact with the general public, it has long been recognized that it is much easier to teach employees the skills they need to actually carry out their jobs than to teach them the kind of good attitude that will make a positive impact on customers. So “hire for attitude and teach the skills” has been a useful aphorism for them. [Read more…]