Some destructive oil spills: 1979-2010. From the Ixtoc I oil well blowout to the explosion and sinking of British Petroleumâs âDeepwater Horizonâ oil rig.
As more Indians pack into already crowded cities, developers are wooing wealthy urbanites with private towns boasting amenities like gardens, pools, walkable streets, schools, and a golf academy.
Urbanization. Separation of wealthy from others. Relying on labor of those who are not allowed to live in the community, âoften the farmers who once owned the land.â Allegations of fraudulent appropriation of land and inadequate consideration of environmental impact.
Contrast with another township. âIn the outskirts of Pune, some 120 farmers pooled 430 acres of land and became shareholders in their own development company.â
The Christian Science Monitor is an international news organization that delivers thoughtful, global coverage via its website, weekly magazine, online daily edition, and email newsletters.
The EPA and Homeland Security Department have ordered BP to produce all the data it's collected on the Gulf oil spill since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last month. BP has yet to comply.
British Petroleumâs non-compliance to Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Homeland Security orders to produce all data relevant to the oil spill after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, as of a month after the April 20, 2010 explosion. It also refused to comply an EPA order to use a less toxic oil dispersant. BPâs estimate of 5,000 barrels a day of oil leaking into the Gulf conflicted with independent analystsâ, one of whom estimated 70,000 barrels a day.
The mass shooting in El Paso has led many to look more deeply at a troubling white supremacist subculture that has grown more violent and visible.
American white extremist violence against minorities is terrorism.
From former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:
Killing random civilians to spread a political message is terrorism. FBI classifies it as domestic terrorism, but âwhite terrorismâ is more precise. Many of the killers are lone-wolf losers indoctrinated to hate through the internet, just like Islamic terrorists.
While terrorists attacks globally, including in the Middle East, white supremacy terrorist acts have risen.
There were 65 terror-related incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up from 6 in 2006. Of these, 37 were tied to anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, or other racist, xenophobic motivations, according to an analysis by Quartz.
Charles Strozier, founding director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College in New York:
The problem is that, politically, the way in which right-wing terrorism has been dealt with at the top, by Trump, is with ambivalence, which legitimizes the spread of hate and then generates on the margins the reality â not the possibility â of real violence by people who turn that political ideology into action.
Every person given a government background check for the last 15 years was probably affected, the Office of Personnel Management said.
This 2015 hack federal government personnel records was the second in a month.
The breaches constitute what is apparently the largest cyber attack into the systems of the United States government, providing a frightening glimpse of the technological vulnerabilities of federal agencies that handle sensitive information. They also seemed certain to intensify debate in Washington over what the government must do to address its substantial weaknesses in cybersecurity, long the subject of dire warnings but seldom acted upon by agencies, Congress or the White House.
The revelations quickly prompted calls for the ouster of Ms. Archuleta, whose agency had been warned in a series of reports since 2007 about the many vulnerabilities on its antiquated computer systems.
A shadowy operation involving big data, billionaire friends of Trump and the disparate forces of the Leave campaign heavily influenced the result of the EU referendum. Is our electoral process still fit for purpose?
A look at Cambridge Analyticaâs efforts to influence the Brexit vote.
There are three strands to this story. How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the US. How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a US billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.
This is not just a story about social psychology and data analytics. It has to be understood in terms of a military contractor using military strategies on a civilian population. Us.
The company that helped Trump achieve power in the first place has now been awarded contracts in the Pentagon and the US state department. Its former vice-president Steve Bannon now sits in the White House. It is also reported to be in discussions for âmilitary and homeland security workâ.
See my August 29, 2019 post for a link to how Cambridge Analytica sought to influence the 2016 United States presidential elections.
Baltimore law enforcement is increasing its use of the latest surveillance technology. It doesnât always tell the public what technology it uses. Its use of âstingraysâ, fake cell phone towers that allow tracking of cell phone locations, was ruled unconstitutional in 2016. It piloted an aerial surveillance program to monitor people and cars that shocked residents once the program was revealed.
Congress never intended to authorize the massive collection of Americansâ call data, the judges said.
Story about 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals 2015 ruling that NSAâs phone metatdata collection program âstretched the meaning of the [USA Patriot Act] to enable âsweeping surveillanceâ of Americansâ data in âstaggeringâ volumes. The goverment had âargued that huge volumes of records â being collected from U.S. phone companies each day and stored in a database â are relevant to counterterrorism investigations because any record could later prove critical in identifying terrorism suspects.â
Newly released documents reveal a US Defense Department policy that appears to authorize warrantless monitoring of US citizens and green-card holders whom the executive branch regards as âhomegrown violent extremists.â
Human Rights Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents from the Department of Defense. These documents point to the departmentâs policy that seems to authorize warrantless surveillance of United States citizens and permanent residents presumed to be extremists and the accumulation, again without a warrant, of data about US citizens and others. This policy complies with a 1982 executive order updated by subsequent presidential administrations.
That order broadly governs the US intelligence agenciesâ activities, and includes provisions allowing the agencies to collect information on US persons â meaning US citizens and lawful permanent residents, as well as some corporations and associations â in a manner the government has never fully explained to the public.
One of the documentsâ most troubling aspects is the indication that the Defense Department has authorized its intelligence components to carry out at least some forms of monitoring of US persons without a warrant, based on designations that use unknown and potentially discriminatory criteria. Specifically, one of the training documents indicates that this monitoring is permitted for US persons whom the government regards as âhomegrown violent extremistsâ (referred to as âHVEsâ in the slides) â even when they have âno specific connection to foreign terrorist(s).â
Links to the original documents can be found in the Human Rights Watch story.
Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that the FBI surveilled Black Lives Matter activists â and that the Department of Homeland Security drafted a mysterious ârace paper.â
Story about FBI surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists based on FBI email messages and intelligence reports obtained from the FBI in compliance with the judgment of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the civil rights groups Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Also included in the documents produced are email messages exchanged within the Department of Homeland Security revealing a âRace Paperâ drafted by officials in the DHS Intelligence and Analysis office.
âWhat we have learned from history is that policies aimed at surveilling and harassing social movements among black people in the United States have never really ended,â said Anika Navaroli, a legal expert and researcher on civil rights and privacy in the U.S. âIt is important to recognize that the practices shown in these documents are not unprecedented. They are a continuation of policies that have systematically created an environment of fear for black people in America, while rendering their right to privacy nonexistent.â
[This is a guest post authored by Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice. It was originally published in The End of Trust (McSweeney's 54)]In December 2017, FBI agents forced Rakem Balogun and his fifteen-year-old son out of their Dallas home. They arrested Balogun on...
The bottom line is: âBlack Identity Extremistsâ do not exist. The FBIâs assessment is rooted in a history of anti-Black racism within and beyond the FBI, with the ugly addition of Islamophobia. Whatâs worse is that the designation, by linking constitutionally protected political protest with violence by a few people who happen to be Black, serves to discourage vital dissent. Given the FBIâs sordid history, this assessment could also be used to rationalize the harassment of Black protesters and an even more militant police response against them.
The BIE program doesnât just remind me of COINTELPRO; it represents its reemergence, this time in full view. Today, though, aided by the tech industry, this modern COINTELPRO has been digitized and upgraded for the twenty-first century.
Just as Black Lives Matter and a broader movement for Black lives organize to confront persistently brutal and unaccountable policing, programs like BIE are legalizing the extrajudicial surveillance of Black communities. Police access to social-media data is helping to fuel this surveillance. Big tech and data companies arenât just standing by and watching the show; they are selling tickets. And through targeted advertising and the direct sale of surveillance technologies, these companies are making a killing.
[Our] twenty-first-century digital environment offers Black communities a constant pendulum swing between promise and peril. On one hand, twenty-first-century technology is opening pathways to circumvent the traditional gatekeepers of power via a free and open internetâallowing marginalized communities of color to unite and build widespread movements for change. The growth of the movement for Black lives is just one example. On the other hand, high-tech profiling, policing, and punishment are supersizing racial discrimination and placing Black lives and dissent at even graver risk. Too often, the latter is disguised as the former.
CMJ [Center for Media Justice] partnered with the ACLU of Northern California and Color of Change to pressure Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stop allowing their platforms and data to be used for the purposes of government surveillance. We succeeded. All three social media platforms have since stopped allowing Geofeedia to mine user data.
In attempting to justify its surveillance, the government often points to national security. But if the FBI, Attorney General Sessions, and the Department of Justice truly cared for the safety of all people in this country, they would use their surveillance systems to target white nationalists. For years, the growing threat of white-supremacist violence has been clear and obvious. A 2017 Joint Intelligence Bulletin warned that white-supremacist groups âwere responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016... more than any other domestic extremist movementâ and that they âlikely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.â Yet little has been done to address this larger threat.
The FBIâs BIE designation is a blatant attempt to undermine this momentum. It seeks to criminalize and chill Black dissent and prevent alliances between Black, Muslim, immigrant, and other communities. While Black activists may be the targets of the BIE designation, we arenât the only ones impacted by this gaslighting approach. Resistance organizers working to oppose the detention, deportation, and separation of immigrant families; those fighting back against fascism and white supremacy; Muslim communities; and others are being surveilled and threatened alongside us.
At a time when violence by white supremacists is on the rise, the FBI appears to be targeting Black people in a secret intelligence program concerning so-called âBlack Identity Extremistsââ an inflammatory term for a group that doesnât even exist. The bureauâs practice echoes earlier, shameful government surveillance programs that sought to discredit civil rights and Black power activists who were critical to advancing racial equality â and it echoes modern-day spying that impacts immigrants and Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities.
The ACLU is suing the FBI for its surveillance records on Black activists. The FBI is targeting âBlack people involved in unrelated police killings ⊠It also focuses on Black people who, in the bureauâs own words, âperceive[] racism and injustice in American society.ââ
The ACLU is representing the Center for Media Justice, âa Black-led organization and the nationâs largest racial-justice network for media and technology rights, access, and representation.â
The fabrication of a âBlack Identity Extremistâ threat is the latest example in a sordid history of efforts to harass, discredit, and disrupt Black activists who dare to use their voices to call out white supremacy. At the turn of the 20th century, law enforcement targeted Ida B. Wells and Marcus Garvey as ârace agitators.â The FBIâs Counterintelligence Program (âCOINTELPROâ) deployed covert activities against Martin Luther King, Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (previously known as âMalcolm Xâ), and Ella Baker in the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the FBI surveilled and investigated Black-owned bookstores on the grounds of targeting purported centers of extremism.
Black activism was central to breaking the hold of chattel slavery and legalized racial segregation, and it paved the way for greater power and freedoms for immigrants, women, and AMEMSA and LGBTQ communities, as Black people are part of every one of these groups.
There has been no sign that the FBI has retracted its flawed âBlack Identity Extremistâ threat label despite calls to do so from the Congressional Black Caucus and some law enforcement. Meanwhile, violent white supremacists pose increasing threats as recognized by a 2017 joint intelligence bulletin and the tragic killings of Black people, Jews, Muslims, and anti-racist protestors across the country.
The New York Times published a blockbuster story about Facebook that exposed how the company used so-called âsmear merchantsâ to attack organizations critical of the platform. The story was shocking on a number of levels, revealing that Facebookâs hired guns stooped to dog-whistling, anti-...
Facebook plays âdown and dirtyâ to attack critics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation article references this New York Times article. In response to political pressure put on the company in the aftermath of revelations of Russian-originated Facebook accounts being used to influence the 2016 elections, Facebook increased posts and positive publicity about itself and published negative content about those who pointed out how Facebookâs platform was exploited or who criticized their privacy and ad policies. The purpose of the smear campaign is deflect public attention from any negative aspects of Facebook by discrediting its detractors.
One thing to remember. As Techdirt reminds us, Facebook is not the only large company to behave in this way.
While Facebookâs decision to smear critics instead of owning their own obvious dysfunction is clearly idiotic, much of the backlash has operated under the odd belief that Facebookâs behavior is some kind of exception, not the norm. Countless companies employ think tanks, consultants, bogus news ops, PR firms, academics, and countless other organizations to spread falsehoods, pollute the public discourse, and smear their critics on a daily basis.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organication promoting free speech, innovation, and privacy in cyberspace, agrees but notes why Facebookâs actions deserve even greater scrutiny.
Any organization that runs public campaigns in opposition to large, moneyed corporate interests has seen some version of this âslime your enemiesâ playbook. What is different here is that Facebook, the company seeking to undermine its critics, has a powerful role in shaping whether and how news and information is presented to billions of people around the world. Facebook controls the hidden algorithms and other systems that decide what comes up in Instagram and Facebook experiences. And it does so in a way that is almost completely beyond our view, much less our control.
This factâthat Facebook can secretly influence what we see (like, perhaps, criticism against it), both through what it promotes and what it allows to be posted by othersâis deeply disturbing.
According to the New York Times story, Facebook embedded itself in the Trump 2016 presidential campaign to help staffers shape and target their messages. The Clinton campaign refused Facebookâs offer to do the same for them.
In light of Facebookâs smear campaign against critics, EFF calls for neutral third-party investigatory access to âsee whether Facebook is misusing its position as our information purveyor to wage its own ugly propaganda war.â
Additionally, the non-profitâs article calls for more openness from Facebook about when it is using its platform for self-promotion and for more user control over their experience of Facebook and Instagram, owned by Facebook, platforms.
"All the army forces inside and outside the barracks, assemble," the Facebook post reads. "Read our commands carefully before the raid." A few lines later. "Don't comment. Don't curse. Just report...
There has been much talk about using Facebook to protest oppressive regimes. Hereâs a link to a story about how Viet Nam uses Facebookâs Report Abuse button to silence dissenters.
If you swarm a page or a person with enough abuse reports, you can kick them off Facebook. Pro-government forces in Vietnam have learned how to do it, and theyâre using it to devastating effect.
Trang still isn't angry at Facebook for the troubles. She says that "without Facebook there would be almost no dissident groups in Vietnam." But she also has a few specific changes in mind: add more review to the Report Abuse process, require more background on users who report, and institute penalties for anyone making a report that's found to be phony. They're simple changes, but spread across a billion users, they could have a huge effect. It would be a messier Facebook, with more freedom for activists and more freedom for hostile groups too. The bigger question is whether, three years after the Arab Spring, Facebook is willing to loosen its restrictions, and whether vulnerable bloggers can survive if it doesnât. "I just want Facebook to help these people," Trang says. "This is a fight for democracy in Vietnam."
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