Blowing the whistle on war crimes is a crime, but committing war crimes is fine

by Cenk Uygur and N.Y. Times CHARLIE SAVAGE on Jan 23, 2012
February 2, 2012

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Ex-C.I.A. Officer Charged in Information Leak

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Monday charged a former Central Intelligence Agency officer with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and brutal interrogation of a suspected member of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah — adding another chapter to the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks.

In a criminal complaint filed on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused John Kiriakou, the former C.I.A. officer, of disclosing the identity of a C.I.A. analyst who worked on a 2002 operation that located and interrogated Abu Zubaydah. The journalists included a New York Times reporter, it alleged.

“Safeguarding classified information, including the identities of C.I.A. officers involved in sensitive operations, is critical to keeping our intelligence officers safe and protecting our national security,” said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., in a statement.

At the same time, the department on Monday cleared of wrongdoing a legal defense team for inmates at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for its efforts to identify officials involved in the coercive interrogations of “high value” suspects. The effort was a project by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to bolster the representation of detainees facing death sentences in military commissions.

Mr. Kiriakou, who was released on a $250,000 bond after appearing in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Monday, was a leader of the team that captured Abu Zubaydah, and he came to public attention in late 2007 when he gave an interview to ABC News portraying the suffocation technique called waterboarding as torture, but calling it necessary. (It later emerged that he significantly understated the C.I.A.’s use of the technique.) His lawyer did not return a call for comment on Monday.

The prosecution of Mr. Kiriakou is the sixth criminal case brought under President Obama against current or former government officials accused of providing classified information to the media, more such cases than all previous presidents combined. The crackdown, long sought by the C.I.A. and other agencies, has won the administration some credit with security officials angered by the president’s earlier decision to release classified legal opinions on the agency’s interrogation program.

Officials have said the administration’s campaign against leaks has resulted from a belief among the intelligence agencies and members of both parties in Congress that unauthorized disclosures by government employees holding security clearances were out of control. But Mr. Obama entered office pledging unprecedented transparency for government operations, and his record has drawn fire from civil libertarians and groups supporting whistle-blowers and press freedoms.

Among other things, the F.B.I. complaint accuses Mr. Kiriakou of being a source for a June 2008 front-page Times article, written by reporter Scott Shane. It identified a C.I.A. employee, Deuce Martinez, who played a major role interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, believed to have handled logistics for Al Qaeda, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Robert Christie, a spokesman for The Times, declined to comment.

The case is the second against a former C.I.A. officer for allegedly disclosing classified information to reporters within the past year. In 2011, Jeffrey Sterling, a former agency employee, was charged with leaking information allegedly used by James Risen, a Times reporter, in his 2006 book, “State of War.” (That case may be collapsing due to a judge’s ruling barring two witnesses from testifying; the prosecution has appealed.)

In a statement on Monday warning C.I.A. employees not to leak information, the C.I.A. director, David H. Petraeus, took note of both cases, saying that the agency “fully supported the investigation from the beginning and will continue to do so.”

The agency had initially pressed for an investigation of the Guantánamo detainee lawyers — not of its own former employee. The inquiry traces back to the spring of 2009, after government officials learned that Guantánamo defense lawyers were trying to identify C.I.A. interrogators — including the discovery of 32 pages of photographs in the cells of several Guantánamo detainees. The photos were a line-up of random people and suspected interrogators; the attorneys were trying to identify potential witnesses who could testify about abusive treatment, as mitigating evidence against death sentences.

That discovery led to an uproar within the C.I.A., where critics feared the move could put officials involved in the interrogation program at risk. The agency pressed for a criminal investigation, and Mr. Holder eventually appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a United States attorney who led a high-profile C.I.A. leak investigation during the Bush administration, to handle it.

The investigation, in turn, led to Mr. Kiriakou. Citing e-mails, the complaint said he had disclosed the name of a different C.I.A. officer involved in the Zubaydah operation to another journalist, who in turn had supplied it to the a defense team investigator; it ended up in a classified court filing by defense attorneys in January 2009. (The investigator did not photograph the officer because his identity was covert, the complaint said, and no one has published his name.)

The F.B.I. also discovered other messages that it claimed showed Mr. Kiriakou was a source for The New York Times article about the interrogator. While his identity was not covert, The Times was criticized for publishing his name — including by Mr. Kiriakou.

Investigators, the complaint said, also found e-mails in which Mr. Kiriakou allegedly bragged to the co-author of his 2010 memoir, “The Reluctant Spy,” about misleading a C.I.A. review board about a classified technique for tracking cellphones, used in hunting Abu Zubaydah, so that they would not censor it. A reference to such a device also appeared in The Times article.

But, F.B.I. agent Joseph Capitano wrote in court documents, investigators cleared the defense team representing the detainees: “No law or military commission order expressly prohibited defense counsel from providing their clients with the photographic spreads in question under these circumstances.”

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the A.C.L.U., said the organization was “relieved” but criticized the opening of the investigation, saying it — and the Obama-era leak investigations more broadly — had had a “chilling effect on defense counsel, government whistle-blowers, and journalists.”

Sources: http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/war-crimes/blowing-the-whistle-on-war-crimes-is-a-crime-but-committing-war-crimes-is-fine.html
             http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/
             http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/featured
             http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/us/ex-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-accused-in-leak.html

images: file

Administrative Note: There so so many points about this that are just flat facts that need to be pointed out. Obama DID campaign and promise a more open government but as can seen from his ACTIONS he has been even MORE secretive than any President previously in history. He went and killed Osama Bin-Laden claiming they got the “mastermind” of 911 when the OFFICIAL government version tells us that it was "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks" who had the idea and only went to Osama for 'blessing' yet after the raid everyone was shouting they killed the 911 master mind. Really? What about Building 7? That was NEVER discussed in the official 911 “meme” and story and has yet to shown on National TV again since that day in September 11, 2001 eleven years ago. Today there are STILL unanswered questions about 911 the Obama does NOT want to look “backward” at … except as Cenk Uygur points out in the video above if it to save some Bush administration personnel. Arresting and trying to jail people outing spies, when the Vice-President Cheney and his Secretary outed Valarie Flame and got off scat free for the VP Cheney and a small fine and discarded jail time for Scooter. That's Equal Justice? All three buildings that fell in New York City that day fell at free-fall acceleration in violation of the known laws of physics and the Obama Administration is NOT going to look BACK at any of that … unless it is to PROTECT THE LIE !   Do ANY of the 911 "truthers" NOW think Obama is our friend for Flat Fact Real Brutal Truths about 911, nano-thermite exlosives, no plane at the Pentagon, PA field and where is the Pentagon video? Hunfreds of cameras surround the most watched building on the planet and we have only 1 fuzzy pieced together 3 second clip of an explosion...but no plane.  Also if the fire was so so HOT to MELT AN AIRPLANE and its TiTanium parts in Engines ... why isn't paper, books, chairs, compter terminals, and other everyday office debris NOT "burnt" ... but only barely singed.

Digital Interface Tattoo Melds Skin and Circuitry

 

Jason Schreier, InnovationNewsDaily Contributor
12 August 2011

You've never seen a tattoo like this before, not on any sailor nor any Suicide Girl... It's not a new tribal pattern or a clever way to say "mom." This tattoo will change what you think of tattoos in general, because this is the first tattoo that lets you talk directly to a computer. The temporary digital tattoo, which was developed by researchers at the University of Illinois and resembles a small computer chip, attaches directly to your skin. The embedded electrodes can simplify medical diagnostics, act as a computer input device and control computers through speech if implanted on the throat.

Originally designed for medical use , researchers say one major advantage of this tattoo is its convenience. The device can come in customizable colors, is extraordinarily small and extremely flexible, making it a breeze to keep on your forehead or arm while going through medical diagnostics.

"Our goal is to fashion electronics to enable an intimate and new level of integration with the skin for purposes of physiological status monitoring, stimulation and other kinds of applications relevant for human health care ,"," said John Rogers, a professor in the materials science and engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Other potential uses for the tattoo, Rogers said, include monitoring of previously tricky areas of the body, like the throat. While it's tough to attach standard sensors to the larynx, this tattoo can monitor its functions without a hitch.

The next step in the team's research will be figuring out an optimal way to power the device. Rogers said they have been exploring two current options, though they are open to new possibilities.

The first option is wireless delivery. Rogers said that thanks to the inductive coils on the tattoo, it can absorb a substantial amount of power from an external device. However, you'd have to be in proximity to that power device for it to function, so Rogers said this process might be best for somebody who only needs the tattoo on an intermittent basis. The team is exploring ways to wirelessly transfer power from storage devices, like batteries.

The second option is photovoltaics – or solar power. Solar cells will be able to generate power for the tattoo, Roger said, though they won't be as effective as the inductive coils. However, if it they are coupled with a storage device, solar cells could be a plausible route.

The team has already explored potential commercial viability for the tattoo, and Rogers said the goal is to get it up and running as a commercial product. Startup company mc10, which Rogers co-founded, is currently working on ways to produce and distribute the device. 

Sources: http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/503-tattoo-digital-interface-circuitry.html

image: A newly developed stick-on tattoo with integrated sensor technology, prior to application (from reverse). Credit: J. Rogers, University of Illinois

U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq

By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: January 29, 2012

BAGHDAD — A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering to field unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.

The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles.

When embassy personnel move throughout the country, small helicopters buzz over the convoys to provide support in case of an attack. Often, two contractors armed with machine guns are tethered to the outside of the helicopters. The State Department began operating some drones in Iraq last year on a trial basis, and stepped up their use after the last American troops left Iraq in December, taking the military drones with them.

The United States, which will soon begin taking bids to manage drone operations in Iraq over the next five years, needs formal approval from the Iraqi government to use such aircraft here, Iraqi officials said. Such approval may be untenable given the political tensions between the two countries. Now that the troops are gone, Iraqi politicians often denounce the United States in an effort to rally support from their followers.

A senior American official said that negotiations were under way to obtain authorization for the current drone operations, but Ali al-Mosawi, a top adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; Iraq’s national security adviser, Falih al-Fayadh; and the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, all said in interviews that they had not been consulted by the Americans.

Mr. Asadi said that he opposed the drone program: “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky.”

The Pentagon and C.I.A. have been stepping up their use of armed Predator and Reaper drones to conduct strikes against militants in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. More recently, the United States has expanded drone bases in Ethiopia, the Seychelles and a secret location in the Arabian Peninsula.

The State Department drones, by contrast, carry no weapons and are meant to provide data and images of possible hazards, like public protests or roadblocks, to security personnel on the ground, American officials said. They are much smaller than armed drones, with wingspans as short as 18 inches, compared with 55 feet for the Predators.

The State Department has about two dozen drones in Iraq, but many are used only for spare parts, the officials said.

The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred all questions about the drones to the State Department in Washington.

The State Department confirmed the existence of the program, calling the devices unmanned aerial vehicles, but it declined to provide details. “The department does have a U.A.V. program,” it said in a statement without referring specifically to Iraq. “The U.A.V.’s being utilized by the State Department are not armed, nor are they capable of being armed.”

When the American military was still in Iraq, white blimps equipped with sensors hovered over many cities, providing the Americans with surveillance abilities beyond the dozens of armed and unarmed drones used by the military. But the blimps came down at the end of last year as the military completed its withdrawal. Anticipating this, the State Department began developing its own drone operations.

According to the most recent annual report of the department’s diplomatic security branch, issued last June, the branch worked with the Pentagon and other agencies in 2010 to research the use of low-altitude, long-endurance unmanned drones “in high-threat locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The document said that the program was tested in Iraq in December 2010. “The program will watch over State Department facilities and personnel and assist regional security officers with high-threat mission planning and execution,” the document said.

In the online prospectus, called a “presolicitation notice,” the State Department last September outlined a broad requirement to provide “worldwide Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U.A.V.) support services.” American officials said this was to formalize the initial program.

The program’s goal is “to provide real-time surveillance of fixed installations, proposed movement routes and movement operations,” referring to American convoy movements. In addition, the program’s mission is “improving security in high-threat or potentially high-threat environments.”

The document does not identify specific countries, but contracting specialists familiar with the program say that it focuses initially on operations in Iraq. That is “where the need is greatest,” said one contracting official who spoke on condition of anonymity, because the contract is still in its early phase.

In the next few weeks, the department is expected to issue a more detailed proposal, requesting bids from private contractors to operate the drones. That document, the department said Friday, will describe the scope of the program, including the overall cost and other specifics.

While the preliminary proposal has drawn interest from more than a dozen companies, some independent specialists who are familiar with drone operations expressed skepticism about the State Department’s ability to manage such a complicated and potentially risky enterprise.

“The State Department needs to get through its head that it is not an agency adept at running military-style operations,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Wired for War,” a book about military robotics.

The American plans to use drones in the air over Iraq have also created yet another tricky issue for the two countries, as Iraq continues to assert its sovereignty after the nearly nine-year occupation. Many Iraqis remain deeply skeptical of the United States, feelings that were reinforced last week when the Marine who was the so-called ringleader of the 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqis in the village of Haditha avoided prison time and was sentenced to a reduction in rank.

“If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country,” said Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, 57, an engineer from the northern city of Mosul.

Hisham Mohammed Salah, 37, an Internet cafe owner in Mosul, said he did not differentiate between surveillance drones and the ones that fire missiles. “We hear from time to time that drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists,” Mr. Salah said. “Our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext.”

Still, Ghanem Owaid Nizar Qaisi, 45, a teacher from Diyala, said that he doubted that the Iraqi government would stop the United States from using the drones. “I believe that Iraqi politicians will accept it, because they are weak,” he said.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html
image: file

The Haditha Massacre No Justice for Iraqis

by: Marjorie Cohn, Truthout  News Analysis
Tuesday 31 January 2012

They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart.
-Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones in a Los Angeles Times interview

Sources: http://www.truth-out.org/haditha-massacre-no-justice-iraqis/1328030635
image: Khalid Salman, whose sister and children were killed in a 2005 incident with US Marines, at his family's cemetery where they are buried in Haditha, Iraq, on November 13, 2011. (Photo: Andrea Bruce / The New York Times)

Administrative Note: I applaud St Louis and it's parade for at least finally honoring and all the American people who blindly followed our superior's orders to invade Iraq and fight that bogus war there.  But we MUST realize Iraq was a lie ... pure and simple.  Hussein never had WMD's other than the one's WE sold him through a visit by Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam just before getting Iraq to start a war with Iran.  This is how the "elite policy wonks" are actually just wanking-off the American Public ... but even MORE insidious ... is the Pentacon going along with an invasion they knew to be false and that they were not prepared to fight.  No body or vehicle armour nor anywhere near the amount of soldiers we would need, so we called on "Citizen Soldiers" who were gone from their family and communities in their OWN time of need.  The Military Command failed its own oath to protect the Constitution and their soldiers by refusing to engage in this war, or serving generals coming out, as some retired ones did, saying this Iraq War was a BIG mistake.  Also why did the Pentacon give out several different versions of the event? "Fog of War" be dammed, like Pat Tiiman the Pentacon was worried about Public Relations more than the flat fact real brutal truths.  Did this soldier really, I mean was this 'mission' that important since we found NO WMDs and we KNEW this in advance, HAVE to loose his leg for "American Security"?  What do we tell the Iraqi's we committed War Crimes upon?  I hold no love for dictators around the world, or at home.  The crimes we did in Iraq WERE War Crimes and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfld et al SHOULD be charged, Pres Obama will NOT do this as he is guilty of his OWN War Crimes and outright murder of Americans and their Children without any legal right.

MegaUpload

by Jonathan Coulton
January 21st, 2012

Uh oh, he’s blogging. What happened?

I wrote this thing on Twitter this morning about the MegaUpload shutdown, and it’s gotten some crazy traction on the old internet. In addition, I’ve just done a couple of interviews for NPR on the subject, and I think I may have said some crazy, provocative things. There are many comments and questions out there already with more to come, and rather than have a bunch of separate discussions on a bunch of different social media platforms, I thought I would put some of my thoughts here.

First of all, I was being sarcastic. I did not see an uptick in sales because one piracy site got shut down, nor do I expect to.

Second, this was a tweet, so it was <=140 characters of ha ha, and not designed to be a thorough discussion of all the issues. I recognize these things are complicated.

Obviously none of us knows the complete truth, but I'm guessing that the people who ran MegaUpload were knowingly profiting from the unauthorized download of other people's intellectual property (including mine). Probably they were making a lot of money that way. That's certainly illegal, and it doesn't exactly give them the moral high ground either. In fact, it's kind of a dick move. Essentially, they did bad things and they got in trouble for it. Here are the issues that, for me, make this complicated.

Along with all the illegal stuff happening on MegaUpload was some amount of completely legal stuff. People used MegaUpload to send large files around. Some number of those files were personal files owned by the people sending them. I have no idea what the ratio was, and probably it would be impossible to figure that out with any certainty, but let's stipulate that it was a very large percentage of illegal activity, and only a very tiny percentage of the users were there for anything other than downloading content that they didn't buy. Still, today that tiny percentage had something taken away from them, without warning, maybe just a service they liked using, but maybe a piece of digital media that belonged to them - if they uploaded something and didn't keep a copy, that thing is now gone. Them's the breaks I guess, but in evaluating whether this shutdown was a net positive for us humans, you have to take that into account.

Even some of the illegal usage was likely the kind of activity that approaches what I consider to be victimless piracy: people downloading stuff they already bought but lost, people downloading stuff they missed on TV and couldn't find on Netflix or iTunes, people downloading stuff they didn't like and regretted watching or hearing and never would have bought anyway, people downloading a Jonathan Coulton album (oh let's say, Artificial Heart, the new Jonathan Coulton album, which is an awesome Jonathan Coulton album called Artificial Heart) and loving it so much that in a year they decide to buy a ticket to a Jonathan Coulton show and walk up to the merch table and hand me $20. I know not everyone will think all of those things are victimless crimes, and even I can admit that some of them maybe kinda sorta have victims, but my point is that you can’t easily say that every illegal download is a lost sale, because it’s a lot more complicated than that. So when you evaluate the “damage” that a site like MegaUpload is causing, you have to think about these things too. The grand jury indictment against them says they’ve caused $500 million in damages to copyright owners. Given the complexity of actual usage on a site like MegaUpload, how can they possibly know that?

The real question in my mind these days, and what I was trying to get at with my little tweet, is: how much does piracy really hurt content creators (specifically, me)? Professional smart person Tim O’Reilly posted something that made me think about this question again in regards to SOPA/PIPA. He points out that any proponent of SOPA/PIPA starts with the assumption that all this piracy is causing great harm to lots of people and companies. Here’s his pull quote, taken from a recent statement about SOPA issued by the White House:

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders.

Is it really as dire as all that? It’s an emergency is it? Tim points out that he and a lot of other content creators have been happily coexisting with piracy all this time, and I’m certainly one of them. Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan. The big content companies are TERRIBLE at doing both of these things, so it’s no wonder they’re not doing so well in the current environment. And right now everyone’s fighting to control distribution channels, which is why I can’t watch Star Wars on Netflix or iTunes. It’s fine if you want to have that fight, but don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. A lot of us have figured out how to do this.

So if you can stand me sounding a little crazy, listen: where is the proof that piracy causes economic harm to anyone? Looking at the music business, yes profits have gone down ever since Napster, but has anyone effectively demonstrated the causal link between that and piracy? There are many alternate theories (people buying songs and not whole albums, music sucking more, niches and indie acts becoming more viable, etc.). The Swiss government did a study and determined that unauthorized downloading (which 1/3 of their citizens do) does not create any loss in revenue for the entertainment industry. I remember but am now too lazy to find links to other studies that say the same thing. I can’t think of any study I’ve seen that demonstrates the opposite. If there is one, please point me to it. So I have a lot of trouble with the idea that the federal government is directing resources toward an ultimately ineffective game of piracy whack-a-mole (with some unknown amount of collateral damage to law-abiding citizens), when we are not even sure that piracy is a problem.

And if you can stand me sounding even crazier, here is this: making money from art is not a human right. It so happens that technological and societal blahbity bloos have conspired to create a situation where selling songs about monkeys and robots is a viable business, but for most of human history people have NOT paid for art. I don’t want this to happen again, and I would be very sad if this came to pass, but it’s not up to me to decide. We are constantly demonstrating through our actions what we believe to be the norms for acquiring and consuming content. Right now a lot of us think that it’s OK to download stuff through illegal sites under certain circumstances, and a lot of us think it’s totally fine to use those things to make videos and put them on YouTube even though YouTube profits from it. That’s not ME saying that, that’s US saying that – we’re a nation of pirates and infringers. Based on our behavior, you would not be wrong to deduce that some of us think funny videos on YouTube are more important than honoring intellectual property rights. This kind of thing has happened before. Entire industries rise and fall as the world changes and our priorities shift. Sorry.

I believe in copyright. I benefit from it. I don’t want it to go away. I love that we have laws and people to enforce them. But if I had to give up one thing, if I had to choose between copyright and the wild west, semi-lawless, innovation-fest that is the internet? I’ll take the internet every time.

Now you may comment. I’m going to watch this thread and respond when I can, and we’re going to have a nice discussion. We’re not going to have fights and call each other names, and if you’re a jerk, I’m going to delete the jerky things you say. (And if you infringe on my copyright I’m going to send federal agents to your home and throw your computers IN THE GARBAGE.)

Sources: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/
             http://www.jonathancoulton.com/
             https://www.eff.org/
images: file

Administrative Note: I found this story through https://www.eff.org/ and hope people realize our internet liberties are being taken away and for people and sites like mine that charge nothing, ask for nothing, and sole purpose is archive, show and tell history as it really brutal flat facts happens and shows how hagiographers have distorted our own political and legal system is controlling the American Populace and ripping apart our constitution. Life and Debt is a documentary about how the Democrat administration and Republicans, meaning our country long-term policy towards Jamaica and the Bonita Bannana Corp and wholesale stealing of their land through debt and the American controlled IMF.  So, censorship is already here in "free American".  I hope the musician won't come after me, I have my music on YouTube rhw007 and since it's not professional or copyrighted...I don't plan on making a living on it since I'm already disabled from four open heart surgeries.  The government is already censoring in the USA and elsewhere...no NEW laws are needed.  They are looking for ways to derail to control all internal and international communication at the say-so of a lobbyist and the consumer and site owners gets no time to fight before being attacked.  Why are they doing this? Check Bldg 7, on 911 it was the third skyscrapper to fall in 8.7 seconds and NIST admits that 2.3 seconds were in "free-fall acceleration". 

Only in a FREE internet can a FREE human be teachable in flat fact truths and decide themselves.

Origin of Ancient Jade Tool Baffles Scientists

 by Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
26 January 2012

The discovery of a 3,300-year-old tool has led researchers to the rediscovery of a "lost" 20th-century manuscript and a "geochemically extraordinary" bit of earth.

Discovered on Emirau Island in the Bismark Archipelago (a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea), the 2-inch (5-centimeters) stone tool was probably used to carve, or gouge, wood. It seems to have fallen from a stilted house, landing in a tangle of coral reef that was eventually covered over by shifting sands.

The jade gouge may have been crafted by the Lapita people, who appeared in the western Pacific around 3,300 years ago, then spread across the Pacific to Samoa over a couple hundred years, and from there formed the ancestral population of the people we know as Polynesians, according to the researchers.

The jade gouge may have been crafted by the Lapita people, who appeared in the western Pacific around 3,300 years ago, then spread across the Pacific to Samoa over a couple hundred years, and from there formed the ancestral population of the people we know as Polynesians, according to the researchers.

Jade gouges and axes have been found before in these areas, but what's interesting about the object is the type of jade it's made of: it seems to have come from a distant region. Perhaps these Lapita brought it from wherever they originated.

Green rocks

Map of the area around eastern New Guinea showing the location of Emirau Island, where the jade artifact was found, and Torare River, the possible source of the rock.

Jade is a general term for two types of tough rock — those made of jadeite jade and another group of nephrite jade. The stones are both greenish in color, but nephrite jade is slightly softer, while jadeite jade is scarcer, mostly found in cultures from Central America and Mexico before Europeans arrived.

"In the Pacific, jadeite jade as ancient as this artifact is only known from Japan and its usage in Korea," study researcher George Harlow, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in a statement. "It's never been described in the archaeological record of New Guinea."

Researchers from American Museum of Natural History studied the artifact with X-ray micro-diffraction, which bounces a small beam of X-rays off the specimen in order to find its atomic structure, and in turn, the minerals within the rock. A rock's mineral composition varies depending on what chemicals are in the ground when it forms. The signatures are so specific researchers can sometimes pinpoint the origin of rocks.

 Surveying stone

A photo of a rock sample collected by C.E.A. Wichmann in 1898 from the Torare River in the Papua province of Indonesia. On loan from Utrecht University, the rock is thought to be a match to the Emirau Island jade artifact.
CREDIT: R.L.M. Vissers, Utrecht University

"When we first looked at this artifact, it was very clear that it didn't match much of anything that anyone knew about jadeite jade," Harlow said. The artifact's chemical composition "makes very little sense based on how we know these rocks form."

The jadeite in the rock is different from the jadeite jades found in Japan and Korea at the time. It's missing certain elements and has more-than-expected amounts of others; the stone came from another geological source, but the researchers aren't sure where. The only chemical match the researchers knew of was a site in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The researchers don't think it's likely that Neolithic people of thousands of years ago could have transported it across the Pacific, but they couldn't find any other explanations for its composition. That is, until they came across an unpublished 20th-century German manuscript. 

The manuscript's author, C. E. A. Wichmann, collected some curious rocks from Indonesia in 1903 — about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the site where the jade tool was found — and the chemical properties he reported seem very similar to that of the artifact. Researchers are now investigating those samples to see if modern techniques can prove that the tool came from Indonesia.

The jadeite jade source, if found, would be "something geochemically extraordinary," the authors write in the paper, to be published in an upcoming issue of the European Journal of Mineralogy.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Sources: http://www.livescience.com/18153-ancient-jade-tool-mystery.html

top image:A composite photograph of the front and back of the jade gouge shown with a centimeter scale. CREDIT: Les O’Neil, University of Otago

Bank of America Settlements Impede Fraud Probe, Arizona Says

By Karen Gullo
January 26, 2012

(Adds Arizona’s participation in multistate settlement in 13th paragraph.)

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. is impeding an investigation of its loan modification practices by negotiating settlements with borrowers who must agree to keep them secret and not criticize the bank in exchange for cash payments and loan relief, Arizona officials say.

The Arizona Attorney General’s office is asking a court to block those aspects of the settlements and require the bank to turn over all the agreements. The bank denies any wrongdoing.

One 2011 accord involving a borrower facing foreclosure who defaulted on a $253,142 mortgage included a $5,000 payment, plus $7,500 for legal fees, and the defaulted payments were waived and the loan was modified to a 40-year term with a 2 percent interest rate, court documents show. The terms of the original loan and the borrower’s complaint about the lender weren’t described in the documents.

The borrower “will remove and delete any online statements regarding this dispute, including, without limitation, postings on Facebook, Twitter and similar websites,” and not make any statements “that defame, disparage or in any way criticize” the bank’s reputation, practices or conduct, according to documents filed in state court in Phoenix. The borrower’s name and address were redacted.

Non-Disparagement

Bank of America attorneys argue that borrowers don’t have to sign the agreements to get a loan modification and deny that settlements hinder the state’s probe. Borrowers can be subpoenaed to disclose the accords, and the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank won’t enforce the non-disparagement provision if they talk to investigators, the bank’s lawyers have said in court filings.

A hearing is set for Feb. 1 on the dispute.

Arizona Attorney General Thomas Horne, a Republican who took office last January, is investigating Bank of America as part of a 2010 lawsuit alleging customers of its Countrywide Financial mortgage unit were misled about requirements for loan modifications. The bank, which acquired Calabasas, California- based Countrywide in 2008, provided inaccurate and deceptive reasons for denying modification applications, according to the the complaint. A similar suit was filed by Nevada.

The settlement agreements came to light as state investigators followed up on borrower complaints filed with the attorney general’s office. The office learned of 12 settlements while examining 1,900 complaints and when it attempted to contact the borrowers, Assistant Attorney General Carolyn Matthews said in Jan. 11 court filing.

Frequent Contact

Only four returned phone calls and none would provide a copy of the settlement, Matthews said. Some who signed the settlements had previously been in frequent contact with the attorney general’s office, according to court records.

Matthews contends that under the terms of the settlements, even if subpoenaed, borrowers can’t reveal any unflattering information about the bank. They couldn’t talk about misrepresentations the bank made about loan modifications, which is what the state is investigating, she said.

“These agreements have completely silenced even the most communicative consumers,” Matthews said in the filing. “The settlement agreement purposefully makes it impossible, legally and practically, for a consumer signing it to come forward, voluntarily and promptly, to provide evidence in this case.”

She asked a state judge to order Bank of America to notify borrowers who signed the agreements that they don’t have to adhere to the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions.

Settlement Talks

Arizona has been participating in settlement negotiations between the five biggest U.S. mortgage servicers, including Bank of America, and state and federal officials to resolve a nationwide prove of foreclosure practices, Matthews said in an e-mail yesterday.

If Arizona joins any final settlement reached, that would affect the state’s lawsuit against Bank of America, she said.

“While Arizona is evaluating and is interested in the multistate settlement, Arizona will not join it unless we are able to simultaneously resolve our claims against Bank of America set forth in our separate lawsuit,” Matthews said.

Inappropriate Practices

Settlements with borrowers are more likely in cases in which the bank engaged in inappropriate practices, such as steering customers away from more affordable loans, or canceling a mortgage modification after a single payment went missing from a borrower who otherwise kept up with payments, said Patricia Garcia Duarte, chief executive officer of Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix Inc., which works with families facing foreclosure. Bank of America is a contributor to the organization, according to the group’s website.

Patricia Lee Refo, a Bank of America attorney, said in court filings that the confidentiality provisions are common in settlement agreements, which the bank uses on a “limited” basis to resolve disputes and avoid a costly lawsuit. There’s no policy to ask borrowers to sign settlement agreements in exchange for loan modifications, David Thornton, senior vice president for social media and urgent customer relations, said in a filing.

‘Extremely Serious’

“Plaintiff cannot ask this court enter the extremely serious finding that defendants have interfered with law enforcement based on one settlement agreement, or even 12, containing plain vanilla terms litigants use every day to resolve disputes,” Refo said in a court filing.

The bank can’t say how many settlements have been reached with Arizona customers because the agreements aren’t centrally stored on computers, Thornton said.

“We look at each situation on a case-by-case basis and decide what to do based on the specific situation,” Shirley Norton, a Bank of America spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by market value and the largest mortgage lender, has a similar practice, said James Hines, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based bank.

“Each case is unique and for a variety of reasons we may elect to include a confidentiality and/or a non-disparagement agreement as part of the settlement,” Hines said in an e-mail. He said he didn’t know how many settlements had been reached.

Borrowers’ Boon

Loan modification settlements are a boon for borrowers struggling to keep their homes, Duarte said in a phone interview. Duarte said she doesn’t see many such settlements and that borrowers who sign one can’t talk about them.

“That shouldn’t apply to investigators like the attorney general,” she said.

Lump sum payments of thousands of dollars and provisions blocking borrowers from criticizing banks aren’t common, she said.

“Clearly the banks are freaking out, they are paranoid,” Duarte said. Bank of America “has the worst reputation because it’s so large. A lot of it isn’t their fault, it was Countrywide.”

The case is Arizona v. Countrywide Financial Corp. CV2010-033580, Arizona Superior Court, Maricopa County (Phoenix).

--Editors: Peter Blumberg, Glenn Holdcraft

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sources: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-26/bank-of-america-settlements-impede-fraud-probe-arizona-says.html
image: file

Staring at Empty Pages

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout  Op-Ed
Thursday 26 January 2012

Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park in October 2011. The movement was not directly mentioned in President Obama's State of the Union address, but many themes were. (Photo: Ed Yourdan / flickr)

Staring at empty pages,
 Centered 'round the same old plot,
 Staring at empty pages,
 Flowing along the ages...

 - Traffic

The Occupy Wall Street movement should spend today doing a nice little victory lap, because it seemed for all the world like its members were ghost-writers on President Obama's State of the Union speechwriting staff. Though he never directly mentioned the movement itself, Mr. Obama spent a great deal of time on Tuesday night underscoring many of Occupy's most central themes: income inequality, tax fairness, and the need to rein in the illegal and immoral behavior of the nation's largest financial institutions.

Talk is cheap, of course; despite all of Mr. Obama's high-flown rhetoric, his administration is reportedly prepared to cut a disgracefully easy deal with the five banks most directly responsible for the financial meltdown, giving his so-pretty words a hollow ring:

Five banks - Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) -would pay the federal government $25 billion. About $17 billion would be used to reduce the principal that some struggling homeowners owe, $5 billion more would be used for future federal and state programs and $3 billion would be used to help homeowners refinance at 5.25 percent. Civil immunity would be granted to the banks for any role in foreclosure fraud, and there would be no investigations.

There are several reasons why this is could be a terrible deal. For one, the dollar amount is inadequate in relation to both the tremendous loss of wealth via mortgage fraud and the hefty balance sheets of these massive companies. Furthermore, the banks might be allowed to use investor money instead of their own funds - this makes the penalty even lower. Beyond all that: it's extremely hard to justify the absence of investigations and punishment for mortgage fraud that was so widespread and so damaging to people's lives.

There are also many other, more serious problems besides a lack of punitive action. The small amount of money - and the federal government's recent inability to truly help underwater mortgage holders, of which there are currently 11 million - means that the victims of mortgage fraud might not see enough relief. And perhaps most importantly, with no real punishment for widespread damaging fraud, what are the incentives on Wall Street not to engage in similarly destructive practices once again?

Yeah, kind of makes Mr. Obama's proposed Financial Crimes Unit seem like drovers sent out to catch the horses three years after the barn door was left open, doesn't it? The hope of getting justice for the crimes that brought down the economy has been feeling more remote with each passing day - if there ever was any real hope to begin with - and the soft plea about to be copped by the worst offenders appears to sound the death knell for any such action. Funny how that part didn't find its way into the speech. "We'll get 'em from now on," seems to be the theme.

Sure you will.

Still, I suppose fluffy rhetoric has its place in any speech, especially a straight-up campaign speech like this one. It certainly did Mitt Romney no favors. His campaign has all the timing skills of a bad comic on open-mike night; by releasing his tax returns on the doorstep of the State of the Union, thus revealing his extravagant income, off-shore financial havens and amazingly low tax rate, Romney became the poster-child for everything the president was talking about on Tuesday night. This will serve the president's re-election campaign well in the general election, but Mr. Romney still has a Gingrich problem to solve before he gets there. The Florida GOP primary is five days away, Romney's once-epic lead there has dwindled to practically nil...and if he loses that one, the stench of panic emanating from RNC headquarters will be palpable.

So, sure, words have their place, especially in politics.

Not everyone out there is talking without doing, however.

A few nights ago, Jacob Burris, the campaign manager for Arkansas Democratic Congressional candidate Ken Aden, came home to find the family cat dead in front of his house, its skull crushed, its eyes hanging out of their sockets, with the word "LIBERAL" scrawled on its body. Mr. Burris' four children were with him when he made the grisly discovery.

Kermit Womack, a talk show host for radio station KURM in Arkansas, has been releasing the addresses of political opponents he doesn't like over the air. While no firm, direct link has been established, it can be assumed that someone decided to take violent action after the location of Mr. Burris' home went out over the air. It was a cat, this time...but given the gruesome nature of the act, Mr. Burris must correctly be wondering if it could have been one of his children.

Not everyone out there is talking without doing, you see. The best lack all integrity, the poet said, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity. It will take more than empty pages to counteract the hatred, violence and extremism that is sweeping across this nation.

Take note, Mr. President. Note it well.

Sources: http://www.truth-out.org/staring-empty-pages/1327583022

Who Really Stopped SOPA, and Why?

By Larry Downes, Contributor
January 25, 2012

I split my time these days between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill, and last week was a very good week to be in Washington.  In the fall, I witnessed the beginnings of a unique revolt over proposed legislation that would have dramatically changed the Internet’s business landscape.  Last week, that revolt achieved a stunning victory, sending Congress into a tailspin of retreat from bills that seemed certain, only months ago, to pass with little notice or resistance.

The two bills were the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act, or #PIPA and #SOPA as they became known on Twitter, where millions of Tweets condemned them and their supporters in and out of Congress.  Heavily backed by D.C. favorites including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the music and motion picture industries, the legislation was superficially aimed at combating the scourge of foreign websites selling unlicensed or counterfeit American goods to U.S. consumers outside the legal reach of criminal and civil enforcement.

But to Internet users, the proposed legislation and the process by which it was steamrolled through a supine Congress took on mythic attributes.  By the end of last week the firefight had morphed into a battle of old economy vs. new, of business as usual in Washington vs. the organized chaos of online life, of K Street lobbyists vs. ordinary users.

The Internet was having its Howard Beale moment—users were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it anymore. The legislation needed to be stopped, by any means necessary. PIPA and SOPA became nothing less than a referendum on who controlled the evolution of digital life. And amidst the smoke on noise on the field, it was hard to tell who was really directing the troops.

One thing is now entirely clear. The Internet won–at least for now. Two weeks ago, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, lawmakers and industry representatives were clearly in retreat, calling at last—but with panic in their eyes—for constructive dialogue. Sandra Aistars, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, even complained that the technology community had failed to propose concrete “tweaks” to fix the bills. “A lot of the response has been amped up rhetoric that misstates the bills and the intentions of its proponents,” Aistars said. “It is not directed to particular fixes.”

But the time for constructive dialogue, which Congress and industry groups had overtly snubbed all year, was over. As CES attendees made their way home over the holiday weekend, the Obama administration, which had been notably silent, weighed in against the bills in their current form. “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response,” administration officials said, “we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” Another nail.

By the time the Congressional Internet Caucus convened its annual “State of the Net” meeting a few days later, it was clear that something dramatic was happening. Defections accelerated to an unprecedented rate as advocacy groups opposed to the bills shuttled between Congressional offices. Co-sponsors were now condemning the legislation. By Tuesday, it was no longer clear if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) even had enough votes to stop a promised filibuster from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Jan. 24^th, when Reid intended to force a floor vote on PIPA.

On Wednesday, the rebels detonated their nuclear option. Wikipedia and Reddit, along with other popular websites, went black, generating thousands of calls and millions of emails, many from constituents who had likely never heard of the legislation the day before. Online petitions picked up 10,000,000 signatures, members of Congress received 3,000,000 emails and a still-unknown number of phone calls. Thirty-four Senators felt obliged to come out publicly against the legislation. That night, all four Republican candidates condemned the bills during a televised debate.

The State of the Net, as I said at one of several events that week, was very very annoyed.

By Friday, what had long been seen even by opponents as a done deal had become a deal undone. Both Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tx.), chief sponsors of PIPA and SOPA respectively, threw in the towel. Scheduled votes were off, planned markups were canceled; the legislation was dead. The war was over, at least for now, and perhaps until after the 2012 elections.

After sixteen successful efforts to extend or enhance copyright law over the last thirty-five years, the content industry’s perfect winning streak had finally ended. There was only now to cart off the dead and count up the wounded, and the battle would be over. At least until the next time.

Who Were Those Masked Men?

Meanwhile, now seems as good a time as any to ask what last week’s uprising really meant. Who was behind the remarkable campaign to stop the bills? How did they turn a bi-partisan majority against the legislation? Why did they care?

These are not merely academic questions. A new and profoundly different political force has emerged in the last few months, a constituency that identifies itself not by local interests but as citizens of the Internet. Understanding who they are and what they want is essential for both the winners and losers in last week’s slugfest. Ignore the lessons of the great uprising—of the dramatic introduction of “bitroots” politics—at your peril.

While there was plenty of traditional interest group politics at work here, the big story of last week (largely missed by traditional media) was the great awakening of Internet users. To be sure, the Consumer Electronics Association and advocacy organizations including NetCoalition were early in sounding the alarm about the proposed legislation early last year.

And a joint letter to Congress in mid-November from leading technology companies including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and EBay expressing concern over PIPA and SOPA was clearly one of many key events in turning momentum against the proposed laws. Visits from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists played a role as well.

But to imagine that the millions of Internet users who took to the virtual streets over the last few months were simply responding to the clarion call of technology companies misses the real point–dangerously so.

Rather, it was the users who urged and sometimes pressured technology companies to oppose the bills, not the other way around. While the big companies eventually came on board, the push for them to do so came largely from activists using social networking and social news sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit, to build momentum and exert leverage, sometimes on the very companies whose tools they were using.

If there is a first mover in this creation story, it would start with the influential blog Techdirt and its founder Mike Masnick. When PIPA passed out of a Senate committee in May without any debate, Masnick started writing every day (sometimes many times a day) about the potential danger of the bill and the disingenuous process by which it was being railroaded through Congress.

Progress seemed to be made. Over the summer, House leaders promised to fix the many problems in PIPA in their soon-to-be-introduced version of the bill. The technology community had been heard.

But when SOPA was unveiled in October, the seventy-page draft was worse—far worse—than PIPA, offering a virtual Christmas list of new legal powers and technical remedies for copyright and trademark holders, none of which would have done much to stop infringement even as they rewrote basic rules of digital life.

In the name of combating rogue foreign websites, SOPA would have allowed law enforcement agencies and private parties to force U.S. ISPs to reroute user requests, force search engines to remove valid links, and require ad networks and payment processors to cut ties with condemned sites.

Users who streamed a minimal amount of licensed content without permission, including through YouTube, would face felony charges. And most of the new powers made use of short-cut legal procedures that strained the limits of due process.

That’s when the activists, online and off, shifted into high gear. The crusade was picked up on the social news site Reddit, which in turn drove protests at Tumblr and Mozilla, among others. At one point, Reddit users organized a boycott of domain registrar GoDaddy, which was forced to beat a hasty retreat from its longstanding support for the bills in a very public and embarrassing about-face.

The rebels had learned the Death Star’s fatal design flaw, and were massing at the border to exploit it.

It was this groundswell of opposition—the first signs of a coherent and powerful bitroots movement–that pushed executives at these companies and later their more established peers to go public with what had been more discreet opposition to the bills. In particular, Google, which had hedged on PIPA earlier in the year, took up the anti-SOPA flag and ran it through anyone on Capitol Hill who got in the way. And they brought many of their competitors along for the fight.

What are they Fighting for?

In Washington, the accepted wisdom by year-end was that the technology industry had matured at last into a lobbying force commensurate with its size and pocketbook. But what everyone missed was that the users had opened a third front in this fight, and clearly the one that determined its outcome.

The bitroots movement wasn’t led by Google. It wasn’t led by anyone. Even to look for its leaders is to miss the point. Internet users didn’t lobby or buy their way into influence. They used the tools at their disposal—Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and the rest—to make their voices heard. They encouraged voluntary boycotts and blackouts, and organized awareness days. This was a revolt of, by and with social networks, turning the tools that organized them into groups in the first place into potent new weapons for political advocacy. The users had figured out how to hack politics.

Now that the prototype has proven effective, we can expect similar responses to proposed legislation and regulation affecting other aspects of digital life in the future. And Internet activists will continue to co-opt the latest technology in singular pursuit of their goals and agendas.

Which are what, exactly? The answer is easy to find. And necessary. Those who are serious about channeling the energies of the PIPA and SOPA revolt into productive uses need to understand not just the how but also the why of last week’s victory.

The political philosophy of the Internet, though still largely unformed, is by no means inarticulate. The aspirations of Internet users largely reflect the best features of the technology itself—open, meritocratic, non-proprietary and transparent. Its central belief is the power of innovation to make things better, and its major tenet is a ruthless economic principle that treats information as currency, and sees any obstacle to its free flow as inefficient friction to be engineered out of existence.

Those seeking to understand what kind of governance Internet users are willing to accept would do well to start by studying the engineering that establishes the network and how it is governed. The key protocols and standards that make the Internet work—that make the Internet the Internet–are developed and modified by voluntary committees of engineers, who meet virtually to debate the merits of new features, design changes, and other basic enhancements.

The engineering task forces are meritocratic and open. The best ideas win through vigorous debate and testing. No one has seniority or a veto. There’s no influence peddling or lobbyists. The engineers are allergic to hypocrisy and public relations rhetoric. It’s a pure a form of democracy as has ever been implemented. And it works amazingly well.

Today’s Internet activists have adopted those engineering principles as their political philosophy. In that sense, their core ideals have not changed much since 1996, when John Perry Barlow published his prophetic “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in response to an equally ill-considered law that banned “indecent” content from the then-primitive World Wide Web. (The U.S. Supreme Court quickly threw it out as unconstitutional.) “We have no elected government,” Barlow wrote, “nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks.”

Barlow went on to “declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.” Barlow explains both the good and the bad, the productive and destructive, of the spirit that brought Congress to its knees last week. And does so, as with Jefferson two hundred years before, in the language of a poet. (Seriously, just follow the link and read the whole thing.)

In their political youth, Internet users are still profoundly idealistic and even a little naïve. They believe in democracy, freedom of expression and transparent governance; they have little tolerance for draconian rules, for back-room deals, or for imposed legalistic “solutions” to poorly-defined problems that might be better solved with more technology. They are, if anything, more libertarian than anything else. But even that label implies a willingness to engage in traditional political theater, a willingness that doesn’t exist.

Like most online communities, this political activism is largely nonhierarchical, relying on consensus and open debate rather than delegation. Titles and resumes play little part in deliberations—each users and her point of view is evaluated on the strength or weakness of their argument.

And there are no permanent allegiances or mutual back-scratching. Google has been on both sides of similar, albeit smaller, outbursts, as has Apple, Facebook, and other leading technology companies. In their stampede for Internet freedom, users will trample anyone perceived to stand in the way – Republicans, Democrats, mainstream media, technology companies, industry groups, and governments from local to international.

In the bitroots community, engineers play a unique role as trusted and objective commentators on what is and is not good for the Internet’s underlying technology. They are the shamans who interpret the cryptic (and encrypted) messages of the gods, and they must be consulted before making any great or small change to the architecture that has delivered the users into the new world.

Engineers are trusted because they have proven themselves objective. They simply don’t have the capacity for double-talk. Ask them how the network will respond to a proposed alteration – whether of technology or law – and they will tell you. Their candor may be novel for those used to governments built on subterfuge, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable.

One of the unforgivable sins of the PIPA and SOPA process, consequently, was a complete failure to engage with anyone in the engineering community; what lawmakers on both sides of the issue regularly referred to as “bringing in the nerds.”

And engineers were essential to getting it right, assuming that’s what the bills’ supporters really wanted to do. Both bills would have required ISPs to make significant changes to key Internet design principles—notably the process for translating web addresses to actual servers. Yet lawmakers freely admitted that they understood nothing of how that technology worked. Indeed, many seemed to think it was cute to begin their comments by confessing they’d never used, let alone studied, the infrastructure with which they were casually tinkering.

The Next Internet Revolt

Internet users have revolted in the face of earlier efforts to regulate their activities, but never on this scale or with this kind of momentum. Perhaps that’s because PIPA and SOPA presented a perfect storm. The draft legislation was terrible, the legislative process was cynical and undemocratic, and the public relations efforts of supporters fell flat on every level.

Yet it’s already clear that the losers in the PIPA/SOPA fight have learned nothing from the profound activation of Internet users. Last week, Rep. Lamar Smith, SOPA’s chief sponsor, dismissed the Wikipedia blackout as a “publicity stunt,” while Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), PIPA’s author, blamed defecting Republicans (defections were bi-partisan, as was opposition to both bills from the beginning). And supporters are already looking for opportunities to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. “My hope is that after a brief delay, we will, together, confront this problem,” Leahy said yesterday.

The content industry has proven equally tone deaf. Speaking this week at the Sundance Film Festival, MPAA President (and former Senator) Chris Dodd called last week’s protest “white noise” that “has made it impossible to have a conversation.” That is, now that the industry has deigned to lower itself to having a conversation at all.

John Fithian, CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners, unintentionally summed up everything that was wrong with the process from the beginning, “The backlash occurred,” he said, “Google made its point, they’re big and tough and we get it. Hopefully now reasonable minds will prevail.”

They don’t get it at all. It wasn’t Google who made “the point,” it was the company’s millions of users. The sponsors of SOPA and PIPA don’t even know who stopped them cold. But supporters of the proposed laws are retrenching anyway, preparing to launch a new assault on an enemy it hasn’t identified.

Given both their arrogance and ignorance, it goes without saying that the content industries are unlikely to avoid similar catastrophes in the future, let alone find a way to work collaboratively with a political force they don’t know—or believe–exists.

On the other side, it’s hardly time to declare victory and go home. Last week’s win aside, the future success of the bitroots movement is far from certain. Whether the next issue is rogue websites, electronic surveillance, FCC oversight or government censorship (foreign or domestic), it may not always be so easy to call the Internet faithful to put up a united front.

Right now, it takes little more than a few key phrases – “open,” “censorship,” “privacy,” “break the Internet” – to hook the outrage of the Internet masses. But maintaining momentum requires something more sophisticated. And the accusations have to prove true.

To become a permanent counterbalance to traditional governments, the bitroots movement will need to become more nuanced and more proactive. To avoid the very real possibility of mob rule, Internet activists must use their power responsibly. SOPA was a gimme. But legislators and regulators won’t go quietly from this or future efforts to exert their influence over the Internet.

As the information economy increasingly becomes the economy that matters, we’ll need to find ways to accommodate Internet values to traditional rulemaking, to bridge the expanding chasm between Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley. The stakes are high—the future of the economy as well as the technology depends on getting it right. We can’t afford to mess it up. And we can’t afford to dismiss the bitroots movement as a sporadic, random outburst.

It’s worth remembering that some legislative interference has been valuable to the infant digital economy. These include protections in the U.S. against holding websites responsible for third party content (hard to imagine Facebook or Twitter or Reddit existing without that) and laws that minimize the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to work its particular brand of poison against broadband providers (they still oversee dial-up Internet services, and look how healthy that is).

Those acts of happy foresight seem far from the minds of tomorrow’s would-be regulators, however. In an interview Thursday, former Senator Dodd called for a summit between “Internet companies” and content companies, in hopes of finding a compromise on PIPA and SOPA. “The perfect place to do it is a block away from here,” said Dodd, pointing to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

No, Mr. Dodd, the White House is not the “perfect place” to engage with Internet companies. And it isn’t the companies who matter the most. If you really want a “conversation,” you need to engage with Internet users, and you need to do so nearly anywhere except inside the beltway.

The only place to really engage your new adversaries is where they live—online, in chat rooms and user forums and social networks, on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Reddit and whatever comes next. If you want to understand what went so horribly wrong with your business-as-usual efforts, you’ll need to take up residence in the digital realm and learn its new rules of engagement.

And if you want to persuade Internet users to help you innovate solutions for your industry’s many problems, you’ll need to come without your handlers and spin doctors, and without any expectation that your credentials or past accomplishments will carry weight in a serious debate about the costs and benefits of changing the architecture of the Internet to reduce copyright infringement. Come armed with facts, not rhetoric. Bring an open mind. And some engineers.

Oh, and if you’re serious about making real progress, stop calling us nerds.

Do you think “bitroots” activism is here for the long haul, or was last week just a flash in the pan? Let us know. And follow me on Twitter @LarryDownes.

Sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2012/01/25/who-really-stopped-sopa-and-why/
images: file

Administrative Note: It is astonishing that Dem Sen Leahy is not only Sponsor of PIPA but since there is a Democratic Majority in the Senate, to ALLOW that bill to go forward WITHOUT ANY DEBATE ... is just one more example of prattling politicians of both ilk are imperious and out of touch with REAL people, much less the subject matter to which they are to oversee. and of course, as Chriss Dodd, an old Friend of Leahy ... I wonder how much help Dodd might have given Leahy on writing PIPA ? Is that against the law?  Lobbying in the pockets on the Billionaires while the PEOPLE are struggling. There are already laws as I and others pointed out that the government has to STOP "piracy" that is actually costing American Jobs, this was just a POWER grab to control something they don't even fully understand. So Sen Leahy ... get off your Righteous Hi Horse and put your face in that pile laying on the ground behind it. You are simply out to control sites like mine that bring real brutal truth flat facts without hagiographic spin and prancing prattling phony pious political pigeon poop. And one more thing I agree with the author and say here again because it NEEDS to be said:

Oh, and if you’re serious about making real progress, stop calling us nerds.

MPAA threat sparks White House petition for bribery probe
 

Politicians should remember who bought them, MPAA CEO warns
 

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco  Get more from this author
 
Posted in Music and Media, 23rd January 2012 18:04 GMT

Chris Dodd, ex–US senator and current CEO of the Motion Picture Ass. of America, may face a White House investigation after he made an extraordinary outburst that appeared to threaten politicians who had the audacity to take the entertainment industry’s money and then abandon SOPA/PIPA online-piracy legislation.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

The comments caused a huge stir, and prompted a petition, hosted on the White House's "We the People" opinion-seeking site, that calls for an investigation of the MPAA on bribery charges.

Once the number of signatures on the petition reaches 25,000, the White House has to issue a statement – and as of early afternoon Washington DC time, over 19,000 signatures had been attached. It was such a petition, by the way, that prompted the White House to express its initial disapproval of SOPA.

“This is an open admission of bribery,” the petition reads, "and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the 'above the law' status people of Dodd's position and wealth enjoy. We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”

Dodd may have thought he was among friends on Rupert Murdoch’s “Fair and Balanced” Fox network, or could just have been angry at the temporary hold put on the legislation, but it’s highly unusual for anyone in his position to openly acknowledge the way the US political system works. Companies and individuals who "donate" to US lawmakers usually express the convenient fiction that their financial contributions are expressions of support for a candidate, and not attempts to bribe them on specific issues.

“It was Hollywood’s arrogance in pushing bills through Congress without proper vetting that caused them to be withdrawn; these threats also are not helpful to figuring out what ails the industry and how to solve their issues,” said Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, which is fighting the legislation. “If the MPAA is truly concerned about the jobs of truck drivers and others in the industry, then it can bring its overseas filming back to the US and create more jobs.”

Sources: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/23/mpaa_bribery_petition_white_house/
image: file

 “This is an open admission of bribery,” the petition reads, "and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the 'above the law' status people of Dodd's position and wealth enjoy. We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”