February 27, 2013

ACLU: New Document Sheds Light on Government’s Ability to Search iPhones

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-law-reform-immigrants-rights/new-document-sheds-light

Cell phone searches are a common law enforcement tool, but up until now, the public has largely been in the dark regarding how much sensitive information the government can get with this invasive surveillance technique. A document submitted to court in connection with a drug investigation, which we recently discovered, provides a rare inventory of the types of data that federal agents are able to obtain from a seized iPhone using advanced forensic analysis tools. The list, available here, starkly demonstrates just how invasive cell phone searches are—and why law enforcement should be required to obtain a warrant before conducting them.

Last fall, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized an iPhone from the bedroom of a suspect in a drug investigation. In a single data extraction session, ICE collected a huge array of personal data from the phone. Among other information, ICE obtained:

call activity
phone book directory information
stored voicemails and text messages
photos and videos
apps
eight different passwords
659 geolocation points, including 227 cell towers and 403 WiFi networks with which the cell phone had previously connected.

Before the age of smartphones, it was impossible for police to gather this much private information about a person’s communications, historical movements, and private life during an arrest. Our pockets and bags simply aren’t big enough to carry paper records revealing that much data. We would have never carried around several years’ worth of correspondence, for example—but today, five-year-old emails are just a few clicks away using the smartphone in your pocket. The fact that we now carry this much private, sensitive information around with us means that the government is able to get this information, too.

(More at the link.)

February 27, 2013

Back-to-Back bank shutdown tomorrow, California!

https://www.facebook.com/events/543258929039253/


Wednesday

10:30am

Gathering Point: 7th & Figueroa St.

Occupy Fights Foreclosures invites you to join in solidarity with ACCE to shut down multiple branches of a major bank. This action will be a part of a state wide effort to shut down a specified target. Occupy Fights Foreclosures and homeowners who are victims of this bank's fraud will be there to make their voices heard and to bring national attention to the theft of their homes.

NOTE: Due to preventing sensitive information from reaching our target, we cannot disclose anymore details.

Please gather at 7th St. & Figueroa at 10:30 AM.

(I'll add livestream links as they are made available. Make 'em squirm, OFF!)

February 26, 2013

Anti-protest: Bahrain bans import of plastic Guy Fawkes masks

Hell☠Fawkin☠Bound ?@HellFawker

"Anyone caught importing the V for #Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask now faces arrest, as anti-government protesters in... http://fb.me/2OIco7nY3


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/antiprotest-bahrain-bans-import-of-plastic-guy-fawkes-masks-8510615.html

The Kingdom of Bahrain’s Industry and Commerce Minister, Hassan Fakhro, issued an unusual decree this week: he banned the importation of a plastic face mask. Anyone caught importing the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask now faces arrest, as anti-government protesters in the country have been using them to stay anonymous.

The stylised visage of Guy Fawkes became popular among protesters after the 2005 Hollywood film depicted thousands marching on Parliament wearing them.

Yet, while it has became an icon for protesters from members of the Occupy Wall Street movement to London demonstrators taking on the Church of Scientology, it has also been a key part of protests in the Arab Spring and Middle Eastern protests that have continued since the heady days of 2011.

Sadly, though, it is but a mask. And the thing about a masks is, you can print them, paint them or draw them yourself. Unless the minister plans to ban all such activity it seems an action as futile as the real Guy Fawkes’s.


(Aside from a photo, that is the entire article.)

February 26, 2013

Livestream for the Trayvon Martin candle-light vigil, beginning now, 6:30 Eastern time

http://www.ustream.tv/stopmotionsolo

NYPD forced them to stop using the sound system so they've been using Mic Check.

February 26, 2013

Noam Chomsky on "libertarian socialism"

Anarcho Anon ?@AnarchoAnon

Noam Chomsky on "libertarian socialism," really great discussion on what anarchism looks like, when instituted:

(For your consideration. I'm interested in positive aspects of Anarchism but Libertarianism turns me right off...I haven't watched this to do quality control prior to posting; will delete if it's inappropriate.)

February 26, 2013

Some Remarks On Consensus

OccupyEdmonton ?@OccupyYEG

David Graeber, anthropologist, author, and one of the initial organizers of Occupy Wall Street has written a new... http://fb.me/1LkUj2Atd


http://occupywallstreet.net/story/some-remarks-consensus

There has been a flurry of discussion around process in OWS of late. This can only be a good thing. Atrophy and complacency are the death of movements. Any viable experiment in freedom is pretty much going to have to constantly re-examine itself, see what's working and what isn't—partly because situations keep changing, partly because we're trying to invent a culture of democracy in a society where almost no one really has any experience in democratic decision-making, and most have been told for most of their lives that it would be impossible, and partly just because it's all an experiment, and it's in the nature of experiments that sometimes they don't work.

A lot of this debate has centered around the role of consensus. This is healthy too, because there seem to be a lot of misconceptions floating around about what consensus is and is supposed to be about. Some of these misconceptions are so basic, though, I must admit I find them a bit startling.

ust one telling example. Justine Tunney recently wrote a piece called "Occupiers: Stop Using Consensus!" that begins by describing it as "the idea that a group must strictly adhere to a protocol where all decisions are unanimous"—and then goes on to claim that OWS used such a process, with disastrous results. This is bizarre. OWS never used absolute consensus. On the very first meeting on August 2, 2011 we established we'd use a form of modified consensus with a fallback to a two-thirds vote. Anyway, the description is wrong even if we had been using absolute consensus (an approach nowadays rarely used in groups of over 20 or 30 people), since consensus is not a system of unanimous voting, it's a system where any participant has the right to veto a proposal which they consider either to violate some fundamental principle, or which they object to so fundamentally that proceeding would cause them to quit the group. If we can have people who have been involved with OWS from the very beginning who still don't know that much, but think consensus is some kind of "strict" unanimous voting system, we've got a major problem. How could anyone have worked with OWS that long and still remained apparently completely unaware of the basic principles under which we were supposed to be operating?

Granted, this seems to be an extreme case. But it reflects a more general confusion. And it exists on both sides of the argument: both some of the consensus' greatest supporters, and its greatest detractors, seem to think "consensus" is a formal set of rules, analogous to Roberts' Rules of Order, which must be strictly observed, or thrown away. This certainly was not what people who first developed formal process thought that they were doing! They saw consensus as a set of principles, a commitment to making decisions in a spirit of problem-solving, mutual respect, and above all, a refusal of coercion. It was an attempt to create processes that could work in a truly free society. None of them, even the most legalistic, were so presumptuous to claim those were the only procedures that could ever work in a free society. That would have been ridiculous.

(More at the link.)

February 26, 2013

Denver: Community Response to Officer Reinstatement in DeHererra Case

Anarcho Anon ?@AnarchoAnon

wow the @denverpolice just rehired the violent pig that beat the fuck out of DeHerrera. Protest on March 1st:
https://www.facebook.com/events/487855347942481/ … #ftp


Friday, March 1, 2013

12:00pm in MST

On Wednesday, February 20th, hearing officers at the Civil Service Commission reinstated Randy Murr, the police officer involved in the assault on Shawn Johnson and Michael DeHerrera. Randy Murr was also involved in the assault on Alex Landau less than 90 days prior.

Colorado Progressive Coalition is working with the DeHerrera family, Alex Landau, Patsy Hathaway (Alex's mother), our members who have experienced police violence, and ally members to call for JUSTICE. Please join us!!!

Please note that this is a nonviolent and peaceful action. We ask that all attendees be respectful of the fact that we are not planning any civil disobedience at this time. Please contact Mu Son at [email protected] with any questions.

Check out the most recent article in Westword for more information:

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2013/02/michael_deherrera_beating_devin_sparks_fired_randy_murr_reinstated.php

February 26, 2013

Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed

Cross-posted from Occupy Underground.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/26/billionaires_for_austerity_with_cuts_looming

With $85 billion across-the-board spending cuts, known as "the sequestration," set to take effect this Friday, a new investigation reveals how billionaire investors, such as Peter Peterson, have helped reshaped the national debate on the economy, the debt and social spending. Between 2007 and 2011, Peterson personally contributed nearly $500 million to his Peter G. Peterson Foundation to push Congress to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — while providing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. Peterson’s main platform has been the Campaign to Fix the Debt. While the campaign is portrayed as a citizen-led effort, critics say the campaign is a front for business groups. The campaign has direct ties to GE, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Peterson is the former chair and CEO of Lehman Brothers and co-founder of the private equity firm, The Blackstone Group. For more, we speak to John Nichols of The Nation and Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy.

(Video at the link.)

February 26, 2013

Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed

Democracy Now! ?@democracynow

Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed
http://owl.li/i3Y5v
Retweeted by Foreclosure Nation


http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/26/billionaires_for_austerity_with_cuts_looming

With $85 billion across-the-board spending cuts, known as "the sequestration," set to take effect this Friday, a new investigation reveals how billionaire investors, such as Peter Peterson, have helped reshaped the national debate on the economy, the debt and social spending. Between 2007 and 2011, Peterson personally contributed nearly $500 million to his Peter G. Peterson Foundation to push Congress to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — while providing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. Peterson’s main platform has been the Campaign to Fix the Debt. While the campaign is portrayed as a citizen-led effort, critics say the campaign is a front for business groups. The campaign has direct ties to GE, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Peterson is the former chair and CEO of Lehman Brothers and co-founder of the private equity firm, The Blackstone Group. For more, we speak to John Nichols of The Nation and Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy.

(Video at the link.)

February 26, 2013

Top DHS checkpoint refusals

via Vermin Supreme!