Internet 'is not working for women and girls', says Berners-Lee — Ian Sample

Inventor of world wide web calls for urgent action to make cyberspace safer for women and girls

The Guardian
Internet 'is not working for women and girls', says Berners-Lee

Ian Sample

David Weiner — The important question is, Can fascism create social stability?

As David Weiner says, "important."

The problem is that people prioritize security, good order and liberty in a descending order. When social dysfunction increases domestically in a liberal society, or an external threat is perceived as existential, then liberty cedes to order and, in extremis, to security.

The question is whether "the free world" is facing such an issue, as some argue, and tending in this direction — vide the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and the rise of the surveillance and security state. If so, what to do about it? David Weiner admits that he is not sure what his choice would be if push comes to shove in a divisive environment.

And just as the excess of "socialism" is totalitarian collectivism; so too, the excess of "capitalism" is totalitarian fascism. These are the extreme of political organization and both are reciprocal aspects of totalitarian statism in which an elite rules by diktat.

OpEdNews
The important question is, Can fascism create social stability?

David Weiner

Vesti — Putin calls for greater Internet security, without freedom barriers for users

Security versus privacy and censorship.

It is necessary to improve the security of the Russian Internet (known colloquially as Runet). This was stated by President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Russian Security Council . For this he proposed to adopt additional normative acts. At the same time, the head of state stressed that it is not about limiting access to the internet and not about "total barriers and filters" for citizens.

"We must fight against those and those who use the information space to propagate radical ideas, justify terrorism, extremism, resolutely stop attempts to post materials that threaten the security of our state, society and individual citizens," Putin said at the meeting.

Fort Russ
Putin calls for greater Internet security, without freedom barriers for users
Vesti - translated by Inessa Sinchougova

According to RBC, members of the Association of European Businesses (AEB) are concerned by the impact of the new law that may complicate or even ban the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) by international companies operating in Russia. As we have reported, according to this law any VPN services or anonymizers will have to restrict users’ access to the websites officially prohibited in Russia (which are currently accessible via these VPNs). As for VPNs and proxies that do not comply with the rules, Russian authorities plan to block their domains and remove their apps from App Store and Google Play....

Awara
Foreign Businesses Express Concern over the Upcoming VPN Ban in Russia

Steve Martinet — The “Fundamentalism” in Police Operations

Sociologists talk a lot about "culture" and "institutions." Institutions are social constructs that are created by societies and embedded in the culture of the society. Moreover, every institution is itself a social group that has its own subculture that reflects aspects of the culture of the society of which it is an institution. 

Societies and their cultures are not monolithic but rather amalgams of different groups that are united by the societies institutions, such as the political system, the legal system and so forth.

In a modern society a large and complex security apparatus underlies national security, that is, the military and paramilitary institutions such as the intelligence services, and domestic security, that is the national, regional and local police and surveillance forces.

For example, in the US the national security apparatus includes "the deep state" that provides continuity to US foreign and military policy and enforces it externally. The domestic security apparatus was unified for the first time in the history of the United States under a cabinet level department, the Department of Homeland Security that coordinates all branches of domestic security, national, state, and local.

All of these institutions are permeated by a "security culture" based on "law and order," which implies exerting control of the population in the interest of the welfare of the state, which is equated with government of the people, by the people and for the people in a liberal democracy. That is a fiction that is serves as justification for an apparatus designed to control elements and subgroups of a society. It also has the potential control the whole of society, especially when it is coordinated at the top level, that is, by the ruling elite that control the reins of power.

Security is both necessary for liberty and antithetical to liberty. A free society cannot be free without security that maintains order under the rule of law. However, individuals cannot be free if the security apparatus impinges on their freedom.

While laws are put in place to restrain the security apparatus from abusing its power, and rights enumerated to protect minorities, institutions are further controlled and determined by their cultures.

Furthermore, the nature of security as enforcement attracts people who are enforcers by disposition. This favors authoritarian personalities. The authoritarian personality is based on paternalism, control and punishment.

The natural tendency of security organizations is authoritarian and paternalistic rather than either nurturing or simply protective. The creates a paradox of liberalism and raises the challenge of controlling the controllers and enforcers.

History shows that law and rights are insufficient to the task. Culture and subculture are capable of thwarting the expressed will of the people and violating liberties and rights with impunity.

Counterpunch
The “Fundamentalism” in Police Operations

Steve Martinet

Reddit Hudson — I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with….

That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.

It is not only white officers who abuse their authority. The effect of institutional racism is such that no matter what color the officer abusing the citizen is, in the vast majority of those cases of abuse that citizen will be black or brown. That is what is allowed.…

This hits the nail on the head of the policing issue. It's chiefly attributable to lack of professionalism at the top that trickles down the chain of command and pollutes the force. 

The other issue I saw brought up by a police officer in this regard is policing by quotas. He said that with a quota system of performance, those at the bottom of the social scale on the one's that get to fill the quotas, which is generally the poor and minorities.

However, this is just the policing aspect of the social problems leading to societal dysfunction and social unrest. Law and order and security are not the chief issues, although they are often the most visible in the news. But the issues are broader and deeper, and often go unnoticed by people up the social scale and undiagnosed by "experts" living in bubbles.

The underlying issues are social, political, and economic, and also psychological. Getting a grip on this is going to take commitment on the part of the electorate, since it cannot be solved without participation of government and the courts. Putting more police on the beat, arming them to the teeth and providing them with military hardware, and building more and bigger prisons is not going to do it. It takes getting granular and dealing with people as individuals — the way cops on the beat who knew their neighborhoods used to do. That ended with patrol cars.

It also means revisiting education, including what students do after school. Letting kids just grow up doesn't work in toxic environments. The environments just get replicated from generation to generation and grow even more toxic and therefore more difficult to fix.

In a liberal democracy, the tyranny of the majority is avoided by instituting rights that protect the interests of minorities and guaranteeing through enforcement.

VOX
I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
Reddit Hudson
ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

James Allworth — How the Apple/FBI Fight Risks the Whole U.S. Tech Industry

Trust.

Harvard Business Review — HBR Blog Network
How the Apple/FBI Fight Risks the Whole U.S. Tech Industry

James Allworth | Director of Strategy for Medallia, Inc

Neil Bhatiya — Climate Change as a Development & Security Threat

In his first answer at Saturday’s Democratic presidential primary debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders reiterated his belief, even in light of Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, that climate change was the principal threat facing the United States:
In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say, you're going to see counties all over the world...they're going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops, and you're going to see all kinds of international conflict.

As someone who has written about the connection between the effects of climate change and its impact on human security, I am of two minds when politicians raise this issue. On the one hand, my hope would be that the more attention paid to potential climate change-conflict links the better, especially if it leads to more attention and political will to fight climate change in the first place. On the other hand, these links are highly complex, and it is easy to over-simplify the issue. Vox's Brad Plumer summarized this best when he wrote: “The truth about climate change and conflict is more complex and nuanced than a short soundbite can allow, but it's foolish to dismiss the entire topic out of hand.”

Bhatiya does the nuance.

The bottom line is that climate change as a “threat multiplier” can make a lot of pre-existing security issues worse, especially in states with weak governance, long-standing ethnic or sectarian tensions, or resource-dependent economies (in other words, states that were susceptible to conflict risk even outside of climate concerns).…

As important as climate change is as a security threat, it is much more immediately serious as a development problem.…

The Century Foundation
Climate Change as a Development & Security Threat
Neil Bhatiya

Nadia Prupis — Snowden's Plea to Top Technologists: Build an Internet for the People

"Everybody should be safe all the time, else we let others choose who will be safe or not," whistleblower tells meeting of independent internet engineers

Common Dreams
Snowden's Plea to Top Technologists: Build an Internet for the People
Nadia Prupis, staff writer

teleSUR — Climate Change Poses 'Enormous' Security Threat

Climate change is a global threat to security in the 21st century, according to a new report commissioned by the G-7. 

Climate change presents “security risks (that) are potentially enormous,” Dan Smith, secretary general of International Alert warned Tuesday. Smith is the author of a new G-7 report, “A new climate for peace.” 

The study says climate change poses such a significant threat to global security that world leaders should make it a core part of their foreign policy agendas....

In the agreement, the G-7 leaders supported a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions within a range recommended by the United Nations climate change panel, and backed a global target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (36 Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial levels. 

However, scientists warn that the world is currently heading for a catastrophic 5 degrees Celsius of warming.

teleSUR
Climate Change Poses 'Enormous' Security Threat

It's Amazing How Close People Can Get To Simplicity, Before Irrationality Returns

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf

For example, take our dimwit reporters ... please! In an otherwise incredibly useful article, this fateful comment was still found lurking.

"How would government pay for prolonged 'deficits?' It would get the money by selling securities to the central bank in exchange for cash."

BMHOTK! Whatever! [That dull throbbing you hear is the sound of logicians pounding their heads on tables in frustration.]

If we "get" money by selling securities, how do we pay off the securities? Let me guess. We "get" securities back by selling money? So why bother?

What do YOU do when you have a prolonged deficit in fiat? Nothing? :( 

(Does anyone bother speaking intelligible language anymore, or only sophism?)

As an alternative to "buying" fiat, a public could just track & monitor currency issuance, as north american colonies did, starting from ~1680 onwards. If not for our revolution, we might still be using someone else's currency, and in the same position as Greece today.

Today, issuing & tracking our own currency supply could be done with cell phone apps. As MRW notes, we don't need a semi-independent, supposedly private Central Bank to pretend to independently "own" or even administer our currency supply. We only need a Central Bank by any other name, without all the mystical baggage. As has been noted in past MMT discussions, all CB functions could easily be run out of a basement room in the Treasury Dept, maybe one called the "Ministry of Money."

Since we let Central Bankers simply mark up bank accounts by striking a key on a keypad, then we can also just get rid of our Central Bankers, and instead automate the process of denominating transactions between ALL debtors and creditors! Fiat by fiat. Wotta concept! Sovereign currency could be just another Automatic Stabilizer (instead of an Automatic Destabilizer).

That way we could bail out regulators instead of bailing out banksters. :( Ya think?

Wake me if this electorate ever wakes up (to logic-101).

However, until then, it's full head of steam towards convenient wall.

Ankit Pandit — Beijing Strikes Back in US-China Tech Wars

The draft anti-terror law fits into broader plans by the Chinese government to evacuate “key sectors” of foreign software. Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the government to use more domestic technology as early as a year ago, at the first meeting of the Internet security and informatization group. In Xi’s view, for China to become a more secure cyber power, it needs to know how its critical software was developed and minimize opportunities for foreign cyber infiltration. This means by 2020, China will look to entirely wean itself off Microsoft operating systems and IBM software solutions to homegrown alternatives (China released its ”people’s OS” in August 2014).... 

[U.S. Trade Representative Michael] Froman has already said that the new law “[isn't] about security,” alleging instead that it is “about protectionism and favoring Chinese companies.” The United States will have a tough time convincing Beijing of the same. Given the confluence of cybersecurity and anti-terrorism issues in this law — two incredibly sensitive topics for China — negotiations will not be easy, if they are possible at all...

The CIA calls this "blowback."

Now that China is developing the soon-to-be largest consumer and business market place it is no longer going to give it away without conditions.

Pandit concludes:

India can lead the way in this new understanding at the global level, since this understanding is necessary to reconcile different viewpoints on the issue of religion. Indians of all faiths and non-religious Indians generally share an understanding of pluralism in the spiritual sphere that is quite different than the understanding found in countries like China or the United States. Whether or not true, religion is here to stay and will not be fading away anytime soon, though its form and organization may change. It is likely that just as religion, or ritual and belief in something metaphysical was around 10,000 years ago, something will be around 10,000 years from now. The tendencies to worship (whether a god or a celebrity in modern times), to create rituals, to attribute meaning to events, and to organize beliefs into systems are all deeply rooted in human nature, and could very likely be evolutionarily built into human psychology. Therefore, religion is a reality of the human experience, and one that needs to be approached with nuance and understanding. In this, the traditions and experience of India can lead the way.

The Diplomat
Beijing Strikes Back in US-China Tech Wars

Ankit Pandit

Sectoral Balances In Culture, Not Just Currency. Cheney on Torture, Shame, Disgrace & National Ruin: "I Would Do It Again in a Minute"

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Cheney channels his inner Nero, and Ariel Sharon.

Dick Cheney Promotes Torture As An American Principle (video)

Text version here.

How did we get to this point? Are NeoLiberals the ONLY humans that think that Sectoral Balances apply only to currency - and even then, only when they want them to, for personal gain?
My own son asked me a question about the culture that we want for the USA. As answer, I have to tell him that I am ashamed of Dick Cheney, not proud.

Jerrit: "The short version is that he was questioned about the innocent victims of the CIA rendition program, some of whom died, and said he was more concerned with the guilty ones who we mistakenly let free. 

I was stunned. Isn't there an opposite quote from either Jefferson or Franklin? I was thinking it's one thing to have such a thought if you're a bitter, spiteful person, but another level of brazen, insensitive sociopathy to say it on national TV."

An honest answer isn't long in coming, if we actually are honest.

"Yup."

People that knew Cheney personally have said that he was always that way.

There's an immediate, follow-up question. What has gone horribly wrong with our policy-staff selection process, that sociopaths like Cheney even get into politics, let alone promoted to the highest levels of our government?

Yes, we do have a few countering quotes. Quotes that previously led our destiny in an adaptive direction which we could always build upon, and be proud of.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. 

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”
― John Adams, The Portable John Adams

...

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Wasn't security what Dick Cheney SAID he wanted all along?

You have to wonder whose security he was really looking out for. Certainly not our security, in aggregate.

If we can't select people guiding us to a better/faster/leaner cultural Adaptive Rate than our recent policy actions, then there are some pieces missing from our culture's current adaptive processes. George Washington had it right.

Dick Cheney can't procure security by practicing treason.

People like Cheney showing up in our history are a sure sign of cultural decline and cultural death. He'll be linked in our history the same way Nero & the fall of Rome were.

When it comes to an argument between Dick Cheney, versus George Washington AND John Adams, I'll go with the Founders, every time.

While Cheney pontificates on his personal, faux morality, his own immorality is plain to see.

Would YOU elect Cheney again, in a minute?

Is Economics, As Well As Most Other Policy Management Theory, Tragically, Comically Overrated?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Ya think? :(




Is there a recipe cookbook for cultural and economic policy evolution? :)

Just Do The Little Things That Make It Harder For All Citizens, Everywhere, To Work At Cross-Purposes?

John McDuling — Investors predict more cops in the US will soon be wearing cameras

Because Ferguson

Quartz
Investors predict more cops in the US will soon be wearing cameras

John McDuling

According to Taser’s marketing materials, a Cambridge University study of the technology found an 88% reduction in citizen complaints and a 60% reduction in use of force when its wearable camera system is implemented. So weirdly, Taser could actually help reduce violence.

But police are resistant.

Why Isn't There A Committee Reporting That Our "Corporate Welfare Trust Fund" Is Insolvent?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson - in memory of the writings of Robert Eisner.)





[Committee for Frozen Fiat] REPORT:

ANALYSIS OF THE 2014 SOCIAL SECURITY TRUSTEES' REPORT

According to these geniuses, the Trustees show that The Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund is (as they already pre-decided):

* on the brink of insolvency (it wouldn't have mattered WHAT the report said)  

* projected to be exhausted in 2033 (assuming borrowing of more fiat - don't ask how, or why, that occurs either). 

* "Imbalanced" over 75 years -  to the tune of 2.88 percent of taxable payroll, or 1.02 percent of GDP.  (Heck - it's probably out of balance with Ayn Rand and the cosmic background radiation too, and a great many other anomalies, but who's counting?)

* facing a gap between Social Security spending and revenues that will grow from 1.3 percent of payroll (0.45 percent of GDP) this year to 3.9 percent of payroll (1.4 percent of GDP) by 2035 and 4.9 percent of payroll (1.7 percent of GDP) by the end of the 75-year window.

Oh ... my ... gosh! Liars & Innocent Frauds and Perma-DTs, Oh My! Can you visualize these dweebs trying to generate some fiat, and then imagine the semantic difficulties they're saddling future generations with?

They just drone on & on, with endless, invented data irrelevant to context.

How can fiat be exhausted? Don't ask. They have no answer, so they conveniently avoid asking themselves to face reality. They're lost in a crusade to balance what must evolve.

What does an "imbalance" in the fiat mean? Maybe only yodeling political Yoda's can sense that particular disturbance, since a politician's strength flows from the Farce? Curiously, there is no mention of what % of GDP goes to Corporate Welfare, aka "Policy."

Riddle me this Blather Man: why is Social Security the ONLY component of fiat that is [supposedly] funded by a tax on fiat?

So why AREN'T there formal Committees:

a) reporting that Our Corporate Welfare Trust Fund is insolvent?

b) reporting something equally implausible - that our nation's trusty Public Initiative Fund is insolvent?

c) reporting on the mythical gap between fiat "revenue" and fiat itself? [If you have to ask where fiat comes from ... you can't afford it? :( ]

d) explaining how, exactly, a nation generates the fiat revenue that fuels fiat? [Public Initiative?]

You'll never hear the Committee for Frozen Fiat (CFF) commenting on any of those basic sanity checks. Actual thinking does not seem to be in their repertoire, so it's no surprise that they display no sign of Logic-101 either. They have one campaign, and a one-track mind.

At this point any reasonable human should be wondering: "Why don't we just send clowns to Congress, and to staff all federal agencies too?" [Don't answer that unless you're ready to face the answer - it may not reflect well on the voters.]

Meanwhile, this CFF choir seems to have unstoppable momentum - irregardless of reality, or desired outcomes.

An old saying holds that "People will do anything in their power to avoid thinking."

Apparently, shameless politicians will do even more than that, and invoke negative-thinking or straw-concepts, not just lack of thinking. Worse, our foolish electorate will let them! The outcome? If we don't do anything about the real FUDeral Deficit, we might scare ourselves to death with complete nonsense.

Steven Rosenfeld — 10 Things Americans Underestimate About Our Massive Surveillance State

There are two relevant questions. The first is what is the optimal way to keep American safe while also protecting human, civl, and constitutional rights. The second is, what has the government been doing, what is it doing now and what does it plan to do — which are being guarded as state secrets known only to those "with a need to know."

What is the tradeoff between liberty and security? Is it possible to have both, or must one suffer. If the later, which one is most important? On what decision criteria?

AlterNet

10 Things Americans Underestimate About Our Massive Surveillance State

Steven Rosenfeld

Christopher Joye — Cyber-attackers penetrate Reserve Bank networks

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s computer networks have been repeatedly and successfully hacked in a series of cyber-attacks to infiltrate sensitive internal information, including by ­Chinese-developed malicious software.

The RBA is sufficiently concerned about these risks that it has had a private security firm carry out “penetration testing”, or authorised hacking, of its computer networks to assess the integrity of its digital defences.

After investigations by The Australian Financial Review, RBA officials disclosed that the central bank had been infiltrated by a Chinese-developed malicious software, or “malware”spy program that was seeking intelligence on sensitive G20 negotiations.Multiple computers within the RBA’s network were compromised. The RBA would not comment on what information was stolen, which executives within the bank were targeted, or over what period the assailants had access to its systems.

Financial Review
Cyber-attackers penetrate Reserve Bank networks
Christopher Joye

Police drones arrive in service in the USA

Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates.

Reporting from Washington— Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start.... 

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front

by Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

So what's the problem?

"Any time you have a tool like that in the hands of law enforcement that makes it easier to do surveillance, they will do more of it," said Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

"This could be a time when people are uncomfortable, and they want to place limits on that technology," he said. "It could make us question the doctrine that you do not have privacy in public."

The problem is compounded by creating a security industry whose economic incentive is to expand horizontally and vertically.

Double-speak in name change

In business news, the private security company once known as Blackwater has changed its name for the second time in less than three years. The company is officially changing its name from Xe to Academi.

At Democracy Now
Blackwater Private Security Company Changes Name For Second Time in Under Three Years

Entities like this hire out and train guns will always be "blackwater," with all that implies. The history exposes the dark underside of the security industry. You can call them what you want, but you can't glorify what amounts to mercenaries.

When so-called democracies hire mercenaries to replace a civilian-based military, they can no longer call themselves liberal democracies.

There are somethings that democracies should not privatize or outsource. Military is one of them, and domestic security is another.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
(Often attributed to Jefferson, no original source for this has been found in his writings) It's a good quote anyway.