Sadly, despite what major corporations and indie brands alike would have us believe, empowerment can neither be bottled nor sold. Commodification of feminism is not empowerment, and FCKH8 is not empowering girls or women through this video. Instead, they’re using girls as a means to a commercial end: to raise awareness of sexism to sell their t-shirts.

How ironic that a company that positions itself as feminist has no problem commodifying children in this way. Where is their sense of corporate responsibility? The ends don’t justify the means, and they never should have produced this ad.

I would feel differently if a video along these lines had been produced by girls as a way to find an audience for their authentic voices. If a group of young girls were passionate about combatting sexism in the U.S. and had decided to produce a video to raise awareness on the matter, and realized they could get their message out by swearing up a storm, more power to them—I’d applaud them for their creativity and media savvy.

But that’s not the case here. This video was scripted and slickly produced by a t-shirt company that evidently has no qualms about exploiting girls who are too young to understand the implications of the script they’re bringing to life.

The United Nations’ top official for counter-terrorism and human rights (known as the “Special Rapporteur”) issued a formal report to the U.N. General Assembly today that condemns mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. “The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether,” the report concluded.

Central to the Rapporteur’s findings is the distinction between “targeted surveillance” — which “depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization” — and “mass surveillance,” whereby “states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites.” In a system of “mass surveillance,” the report explained, “all of this is possible without any prior suspicion related to a specific individual or organization. The communications of literally every Internet user are potentially open for inspection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the States concerned.”

Mass surveillance thus “amounts to a systematic interference with the right to respect for the privacy of communications,” it declared. As a result, “it is incompatible with existing concepts of privacy for States to collect all communications or metadata all the time indiscriminately.”

In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the report was primarily focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in 1966, to which all of the members of the “Five Eyes” alliance are signatories. The U.S. ratified the treaty in 1992, albeit with various reservations that allowed for the continuation of the death penalty and which rendered its domestic law supreme. With the exception of the U.S.’s Persian Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), virtually every major country has signed the treaty.

Citizenfour must have been a maddening documentary to film. Its subject is pervasive global surveillance, an enveloping digital act that spreads without visibility, so its scenes unfold in courtrooms, hearing chambers and hotels. Yet the virtuosity of Laura Poitras, its director and architect, makes its 114 minutes crackle with the nervous energy of revelation.

Poitras, the first journalist contacted by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, mirrors her topic. She rarely appears on news programs or chat shows. She is a mysterious character in her own movie, heard more than she is seen.

But surreptitiously, Poitras has been a commander of a stream of disclosures for 16 months that have forced the NSA into a new and infamous era. Citizenfour demonstrates to the public the prowess that those of us who have worked with her on the NSA stories encountered. Her movie, the culmination of a post-9/11 trilogy that spans a dark horizon from Iraq to Guantánamo, is a triumph of journalism and a triumph for journalism.

We were all overjoyed with President Obama's election. He's had to endure so much crap since. In spite of that he's done many good things. BUT there are still two yrs left -- and there are big disappointments amongst all of us. What would my fellow Obama voters like to see happen in his final two years? To be remembered a hundred years from now as the first African American president -- that's great, but it's not enough. And I know Mr. Obama agrees with that.

In Washington D.C., Sarah Palin delivered the keynote address to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.

She literally read a children’s book to adults to raucous applause. It was a modified Dr. Seuss book that she got from an email chain letter.

In that other movement, there are meetings like the one today at SXSW. They talked about the complexities of data collection — and how to synthesize it, transparently, for good. It was about exposing data collection programs to scrutiny — to uncover abuse — so it can only be used for people, not against them. It was about, as Snowden said today, “how do you interpret (these communications), how do you understand them.”

All this tech talk is, invariably, filled with compassion.

It’s no longer a question of if we will or will not have a better America. It’s a question of how long it will take the younger and brighter and better to drown out the institution that is impeding American progress with grade school debate, bullying and pettiness. It’s a question of when they will be able to communicate to America that they are the only chance at a productive future.

Those communicators are just starting to surface now. Bill Nye is viewed as a cult hero because we allowed him into our classrooms with VHS tapes, then he refined and strengthened and sharpened his message as we refined and strengthened and sharpened along with him. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of the world’s first pop-astrophysicists, debuted a show last night solely about how our world was created. That show was the third-highest rated show on television last night.

Greenwald was not named specifically during the hearing, but Rogers pressed agency chiefs to say that reporters “selling the access of material that was stolen from the United States government … for personal gain and profit” was a criminal act.

FBI director James Comey said that a reporter “hawking stolen jewelry” was a crime, but it was “harder to say” journalism based off the Snowden leaks was criminal, since such a determination had “first amendment implications.”

“It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering or a news promulgation function,” Comey said.
Rogers asked: “Entering into a commercial enterprise to sell stolen material is acceptable to a legitimate news organization?”

Corney replied: “I’m not sure I’m comfortable answering that in the abstract."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/us-congressman-mike-rogers-glenn-greenwald-thief-snowden-nsa?CMP=twt_fd&CMP=SOCxx2I2

An analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.”

In the majority of cases, traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case, according to the study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group.

The study, to be released Monday, corroborates the findings of a White House-appointed review group, which said last month that the NSA counterterrorism program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and that much of the evidence it did turn up “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”

Under the program, the NSA amasses the metadata — records of phone numbers dialed and call lengths and times — of virtually every American. Analysts may search the data only with reasonable suspicion that a number is linked to a terrorist group. The content of calls is not collected.