NSA: The Involuntary Social Network

The latest Edward Snowden leak revealed that everyone’s favorite government agency has been mapping out our social connections. They’ve been identifying our friends and associates, detecting our locations at certain times, gaining clues regarding our political and religious affiliations, and gathering information about our personal calls and emails.

Since 2010, the NSA has been gathering that social networking data on Americans and compiling it into intricate graphs like this one:

According to James Risen and Laura Poitras of The New York Times:

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

There doesn’t seem to be any restriction on the types of data collected – or from whom it is collected. This network is supposed to be used to track the data of foreign nationals, but Americans can get tangled in the web if they are linked to a suspect’s social connections.

An NSA spokeswoman explained how this can happen:

The legal underpinning of the policy change was a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that Americans could have no expectation of privacy about what numbers they had called. Based on that ruling, the Justice Department and the Pentagon decided that it was permissible to create contact chains using Americans’ “metadata,” which includes the timing, location and other details of calls and e-mails, but not their content. The agency is not required to seek warrants for the analyses from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

PowerPoint presentations and memos from the agency detail how the NSA has been able to develop software and other tools to reveal as much information about individuals as possible. One document cited a new generation of programs that “revolutionize” data collection and analysis.

Some facts about this newly-revealed spying program:

1) The NSA is developing a “metadata repository” that can take in 20 BILLION “record events” every DAY – and this information will be available to analysts within an hour, according to a 2013 budget document disclosed by Snowden.

There are multiple collection programs and databases, and they rely on both domestic and international metadata.

3) One of the main tools used for “chaining” phone and email records is called Mainway. Significant amounts of data originating in the United States goes into this system.

4) An internal NSA bulletin stated that Mainway was taking in 700 million phone records per day. In August 2011, it began receiving an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records daily from an unnamed American service provider under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which allows for the collection of the data of Americans if at least one end of the communication is believed to be foreign.

5) Budget documents revealed by Snowden show that the NSA is putting a lot of effort and money into “creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion “record events” daily and making them available to NSA analysts within 60 minutes.”

6) The budget includes $394 million for an “Enterprise Knowledge System,” which is designed to “rapidly discover and correlate complex relationships and patterns across diverse data sources on a massive scale,” according to a 2008 document. This data is automatically computed to hasten queries and discover new targets for surveillance.

7) “Better Person Centric Analysis” is a top-secret document that describes how the agency searches for 94 “entity types,” including phone numbers, e-mail addresses and IP addresses. In addition, the NSA correlates 164 “relationship types” to build social networks and what the agency calls “community of interest” profiles, using queries like “travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs.”

8) An internal briefing paper from the NSA Office of Legal Counsel showed that the agency was allowed to collect and retain metadata and content about “U.S. persons” for up to five years online and for an additional 10 years offline for “historical searches.”

Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, told the New York Times:

Metadata can be very revealing. Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location of the person’s cellphone is going to allow to assemble a picture of what someone is up to. It’s the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect.

In essence, the government is building a detailed database of our daily lives.

But they are just looking out for our best interests, right?

Source: Activist Post

Experiments Show How Light Bulbs Can Spy on You

After NSA Court Hearing, Government Must Unseal Documents by December 20

Electronic Frontier Foundation

A federal judge ordered the government to unseal more documents concerning the NSA spying programs by December 20, 2013. The judge issued the ruling in EFF's lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, which began in 2008 over the NSA spying program initiated by the Bush Administration, which continues to this day.

In light of the declassifications inspired by the June leaks, Judge Jeffrey White ordered the government to unseal any declassified material, like exhibits, declarations, and other ex parte submissions that the government had previously submitted to the court under seal.

In response, the government asked that it only release a new declaration.

The Department of Justice lawyers reasoned that reviewing the material submitted since the case began in 2008 would be a heavy burden. We objected, noting that recently declassified documents have shown that the government had submitted misleading material to the court overseeing the spying, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court).

Judge White denied the government's request, noting that the government had the resources to carry out such a review. He also noted that there should be a "fulsome" record for the court, the public, and the plaintiffs to draw from. The judge also set a briefing schedule on the procedural issues that it wanted resolved before turning to the critical question—whether the spying program is legal and constitutional.

We look forward to the government's submissions and will be reporting on them when they are released.

Source: EFF

Genetically Modified Society -- Full Movie

Not ONE word of official account of raid that killed Bin Laden is true, claims award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh

• The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist says that raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is ‘one big lie’
• He says the US media is too 'afraid' to pick on Obama
• Hersh, 76, says the solution is to shut down news networks like NBC and ABC
  
• He also suggested the firing of 90 per cent of mainstream editors

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist says that the official account of the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is ‘one big lie’.

Seymour Hersh, 76, said that ‘not one word’ of the Obama administration’s narrative on what happened is true.

In an interview with The Guardian published today, Hersh savages the US media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues, from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.

'Not true': Journalist Seymour Hersh says the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 was all a fabrication

Sucking up: Hersh said the American press spends 'so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would'

'Lying': Hersh says 'not one word' of the Obama administration's account of the raid that supposedly killed Osama Bin Laden is true. The government has never released pictures of Bin Laden's dead body to the public

The compound: The Pakistan home of the al Qaeda leader was in flames after it was attacked by Navy Seals

He said the Navy Seal raid that supposedly resulted in the death of the Al-Qaeda terror leader, Hersh said, ‘not one word of it is true’.

According to Hersh - who first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting - the problem is that the US media is allowing the Obama administration to get away with lying.

‘It’s pathetic. They are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama].’

The White House has refused to publicly release images of Bin Laden’s body, fuelling suspicion they are withholding information.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the national security team watch the raid live from the White House's Situation Room on May 1, 2011

Aftermath: Part of a damaged helicopter is seen lying near the compound after US Navy SEAL commandos supposedly killed bin Laden

Destroyed: The grounds of the Bin Laden's compound after the raid

Although the White House said the corpse was immediately ‘buried at sea’ within 24 hours of his death in line with Islamic tradition, it quickly emerged that this was not standard practice.

It has also been suggested that the White House has changed its story multiple times, according to infowars.com.

They initially claimed that pictures from the ‘situation room’ show Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton and the rest of the security team watching the raid live, when in fact there was a blackout on the feed.

Neighbours close to the Pakistani compound in Abbottabad also said they had never seen Bin Laden in the area.

'Afraid': Hersh claims the US media is too scared of challenging Obama

'Shut them down': Hersh says the solution is to close ABC and NBC and fire 90 per cent of editors

Hersh said the American press spends ‘so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would’.

In his opinion, the solution would be to shut down news networks like NBC and ABC and fire 90 per cent of mainstream editors and replace them with ‘real’ journalists who are not afraid to speak truth to power.

‘The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple,’ he said.

Source: The Daily Mail

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Lap Dog for Surveillance State

Peer-to-Peer Economy Thrives as Activists Vacate the System

The Occupy Movement recently celebrated its second anniversary with very little fanfare leaving many to wonder where all the activists went. It seems they, and many anti-establishment activists, are vacating the system rather than occupying it.

Progressives may call it the "sharing economy" while Libertarians may refer to it as Agorism -  a "society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution."

Whatever it's called, together, they're opting out of the current socioeconomic matrix and creating a new alternative economy where trading occurs peer-to-peer and increasingly without government-issued currency.

It's a space where mutual trade occurs without burdensome taxes, regulations, or licenses. Simply put, it's an underground black market enabled by the Internet and regulated by social feedback mechanisms -- and it's growing exponentially.

Websites like Ebay and Craigslist first made it possible for individuals to sell things or offer services online. Then there was Elance to sell our skills and Freecycle to recycle unused items. And now there are new services that allow users to sublet their stuff; like AirBnB which allows you to rent out a room in your house, Lyft for car pooling or Relay Rides to rent out your car for an hour, or Snap Goods to rent out idle tools or anything else.

In addition to "sharing" stuff, people are shunning banks by using crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending platforms for raising capital, and digital currencies like Bitcoin are enabling the under-the-table sale of a swelling number of goods and services.

It's also important to acknowledge the growth of passionate silver barterers and the explosion of local food co-ops, which should be considered part of the same movement to opt out of the broken corporate-government system and they're similarly expanding due to the internet. Local Harvest allows small farmers to sell blueberry pies nationwide or pair up with local customers for cowshares or farmshares.

The Economist describes this movement as follows:

Just as peer-to-peer businesses like eBay allow anyone to become a retailer, sharing sites let individuals act as an ad hoc taxi service, car-hire firm or boutique hotel as and when it suits them. Just go online or download an app. The model works for items that are expensive to buy and are widely owned by people who do not make full use of them.

Tarun Wadhwa of the Singularity Hub writes "The growth of the "sharing economy," a loosely defined term generally referring to the internet-enabled peer-to-peer exchanges of goods, has brought with it a shift in the way we think about consumption. Its rise has been fast, and loud. What started with a few enterprising individuals willing to let complete strangers sleep in their homes and use their possessions has now developed into a formidable economic force that threatens to upend several different industries."

This new decentralized economic model is an obvious threat to the command-and-control economy.  It's shifting billions of dollars out from traditional industries undermining government regulation and tax collection. As such, governments are clamoring to regulate voluntary person-to-person barter.

Authorities claim that these services are in some way unsafe and must be regulated. Yet as the Economist video above explains, surprisingly few cases of fraud are reported.

What's more, Wired points out that reputation is replacing regulation in the peer-to-peer economy and is proving to be much more effective:

By making both product and trader quality instantly transparent, this approach reduces the risks that often lead to market failure. It also provides a first digital safeguard against much of what regulators aim to protect consumers from. 

After all, profit is a much more powerful driver for quality than regulatory compliance. If your last customer – one who has been vetted by others and has built reputation credibility – complains about the hygiene levels of your shared lodging, your future business prospects on Airbnb are pretty bleak.

The technology for transaction-by-transaction feedback from buyers and sellers provides more than enough trust for participants to be comfortable without oversight by government regulators. This fact makes any attempt by authorities to disturb this market seem protectionist or extortionist.

Sharing economy leaders are forming a lobby group called PEERS in an attempt to combat potential regulations:


The PEERS video above does a nice job explaining this new economy from a personal perspective, however the organization was founded by some establishment figures who are calling for "smart regulations".

Why do we need any regulations for volunteering at a garden cooperative or choosing the best childcare provider as recommended by our peers? Surely any possible dispute could be handled within the community or a civil court, right? Additionally AirBnB and Relay Rides offer insurance to mitigate foreseeable problems. As such, this market is rendering government regulations obsolete.

There may be many different motivations for those participating in this marketplace, but activists seem to all agree, as Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Source: Activist Post

News Anchor Completely Loses It For The Best Possible Reason

'Occupy' affiliate claims Intel bakes SECRET 3G radio into vPro CPUs

Intel has apparently turned up one of the holiest of holy grails in the tech sector, accidentally creating an zero-power-consumption on-chip 3G communications platform as an NSA backdoor.

The scoop comes courtesy of tinfoil socialist site Popular Resistance, in this piece written by freelance truther Jim Stone, who has just discovered the wake-on-LAN capabilities in vPro processors. He writes:

“The new Intel Core vPro processors contain a new remote access feature which allows 100 percent remote access to a PC 100 percent of the time, even if the computer is turned off. Core vPro processors contain a second physical processor embedded within the main processor which has it’s own operating system embedded on the chip itself. As long as the power supply is available and and in working condition, it can be woken up by the Core vPro processor, which runs on the system’s phantom power and is able to quietly turn individual hardware components on and access anything on them.”

A little background: Popular Resistance was formed in 2011 and was part of the 'Occupy' movement, having done its bit in Washington DC. It now promotes an anti-capitalist agenda.

Back to Stone, who says Intel can do all the stuff vPro enables thanks to an undocumented 3G radio buried on its chips apparently extends wake-on-LAN to wake-on-mobile:

“Core vPro processors work in conjunction with Intel’s new Anti Theft 3.0, which put 3g connectivity into every Intel CPU after the Sandy Bridge version of the I3/5/7 processors. Users do not get to know about that 3g connection, but it IS there,” he writes, “anti theft 3.0 always has that 3G connection on also, even if the computer is turned off” (emphasis added).

No evidence is offered for the assertions detailed above.

And with that, El Reg will now happily open the floor to the commentards … ®

Source: The Register

Cannabis Cures Cancer with Rick Simpson

The People Triumph Over Biotech: Monsanto Protection Act Defeated in Senate

Finally, it seems like we have the attention of some of the members of Congress. As the result of an enormous outcry, the Senate voted down the rider that was recently approved by the House of Representatives. The rider would have continued Big Biotech’s immunity against prosecution resulting from their toxic farming practices and questionable crops.

As of September 30th, the so-called Monsanto Protection Act will be dead. This is a major victory for anti-GMO activists as it is the first time that Congress has decided in favor of the constituents as opposed to companies like Monsanto, Sygenta, Bayer, and Dow.

“That provision will be gone,” said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), confirming the change to POLITICO. The Center for Food Safety, a Washington-based non-profit, welcomed the decision as “a major victory for the food movement” and “sea change in a political climate that all too often allows corporate earmarks to slide through must-pass legislation.” 

“Short-term appropriations bills are not an excuse for Congress to grandfather in bad policy,” said Colin O’Neil, director of government affairs for the Center. (source)

The Monsanto Protection Act was passed last spring as a rider sneakily put into place by Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri (Monsanto’s home base, incidentally.) It was passed by both the House and the Senate (see who voted for it HERE), and then signed into law in a final act of betrayal by President Barack Obama, despite public outcry that the rider made the biotech industry untouchable and not subject to legal action regardless of the damage caused.

The biotech rider “could override any court-mandated caution and could instead allow continued planting. Further, it forces USDA to approve permits for such continued planting immediately, putting industry completely in charge by allowing for a ‘back door approval’ mechanism,” the Center for Food Safety said earlier this month upon news the House was reviving the measure. (source)

As the rider is due to expire at the end of this month, a renewal of the policy was written in and passed by the House last week, slipped into an important bill related to the federal budget, the FY14 Continuing Resolution (CR) spending bill.

Monsanto and its allies have argued that what the company sought was no more than what some federal courts have done themselves in the past: Allow farmers to continue to use GMO seed –under environmental guidelines—while the court review continues. 

Monsanto successfully expanded support among farm groups also interested in some such stewardship program. But the language itself was unusually strong in that it directed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in no uncertain terms about how he should respond in future court cases impacting GMO seeds. 

The secretary “shall, notwithstanding any other provision of law… immediately grant” temporary permits to continue using the seed at the request of a farmer or producer wanting such a stewardship program, the provision reads. And while Vilsack has been a big champion of the biotech industry, he was uncomfortable with what he saw as an effort to “pre-empt judicial review.” 

“We have all known this rider’s days were numbered,” O’Neil told POLITICO. “But given the recent GMO contamination episodes of wheat and alfalfa in Oregon and Washington it is clear that our nation’s safeguards, in particular those of the federal courts, should not be under attack from policy riders like this.” (source)

Source: Activist Post

2,000 Foxconn Workers Riot in China

Activist Post

About 2,000 Chinese workers levied a riot at the notorious Foxconn Factory in Taiyuan. This is the factory that produces iPhones, as well as other electronics for the world's electronic companies. Foxconn employs over 79,000 people, and has been exposed of its poor working conditions and suicide nets, due to 9 workers committing suicide in one month back in 2010.

The authorities sent over 5,000 police, in full riot gear and batons, using orders from loud speakers to quell the ensuing riots. Officials from the Foxconn Taiwanese Headquarters said preliminary investigations point to a dispute among workers that erupted into a mass brawl.

However, many tweets and posts online point to the contrary, with workers saying guards in the factory incited violence, and started beating up the workers.

So far, reports say that about 40 people have been injured, with 3 of those injuries being critical. There were also a number of people arrested.

This incident is a testament to inequality that exists among much of the world's population, and a testament to multinational corporations exploiting the labor of impoverished nations. While Americans enjoy their freedom, even as they may be losing them, the people that assemble the First World's toys, gizmos and gadgets enjoy none of these benefits and do it to barely provide for their families.

The Foxconn Plant could be closed for several days while the investigation is under way, and damages are repaired.

Reuters - Foxconn China plant closed after 2,000 riot

First Study on 4G/LTE Cell Phone Radiation Shows It Affects Brain Activity

New peer-reviewed research finds that 30 minutes’ exposure to LTE [4G] cellphone radiation affects brain activity on both sides of the brain.

Brain images pre- and post-LTE (4G) exposure

Activist Post

The first study on the short-term effects of Long Term Evolution (LTE), the fourth generation cell phone technology, has been published online in the peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Neurophysiology. (1)

In a controlled experiment, researchers exposed the right ear of 18 participants to LTE cellphone radiation for 30 minutes. The source of the radiation was 1 centimeter from the ear, and the absorbed amount of radiation in the brain was well within international (ICNIRP) cell phone legal limits. The researchers employed a double-blind, crossover, randomized and counter-balanced design to eliminate any possible study biases.The resting state brain activity of each participant was measured by magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at two times — after exposure to LTE microwave radiation, and after a sham exposure.

The results demonstrated that LTE exposure affected brain neural activity not only in the closer brain region but also in the remote region, including the left hemisphere of the brain. The study helps explain the underlying neural mechanism for the remote effects of microwave radiation in the brain.

In 2011, Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, published a similar study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that received worldwide news coverage. Dr. Volkow reported that a 50 minute exposure to CDMA, a second generation cell phone technology, increased brain activity in the region of the brain closest to the cell phone. (2)

The current study establishes that short-term exposure to LTE microwave radiation affects the users’ brain activity. Although LTE is too new for the long-term health consequences to have been studied, we have considerable evidence that long-term cell phone use is associated with various health risks including increased risk of head and neck cancers, sperm damage, and reproductive health consequences for offspring (i.e., ADHD).

Cell phone users, especially pregnant women and children, should limit their cell phone use. Moreover, cell phone users should not keep their phones near their head, breasts or reproductive organs when using the phone or whenever the phone is turned on unless it is in airplane mode.

For more information about the health effects of cell phone radiation see my Electromagnetic Radiation Safety Web site at http://www.saferemr.com/.

Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.
School of Public Health Health
University of California, Berkeley

Electromagnetic Radiation Safety

Website: http://www.saferemr.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SaferEMR
Twitter: @berkeleyprc

References

(1) Bin Lv, Zhiye Chen, Tongning Wu, Qing Shao, Duo Yan, Lin Ma, Ke Lu, Yi Xie. The alteration of spontaneous low frequency oscillations caused by acute electromagnetic fields exposure. Clinical Neurophysiology. Published online 4 September 2013.

Abstract

Objective The motivation of this study is to evaluate the possible alteration of regional resting state brain activity induced by the acute radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposure (30 min) of Long Term Evolution (LTE) signal.

Methods We designed a controllable near-field LTE RF-EMF exposure environment. Eighteen subjects participated in a double-blind, crossover, randomized and counterbalanced experiment including two sessions (real and sham exposure). The radiation source was close to the right ear. Then the resting state fMRI signals of human brain were collected before and after the exposure in both sessions. We measured the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and fractional ALFF (fALFF) to characterize the spontaneous brain activity.

Results We found the decreased ALFF value around in left superior temporal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus and right paracentral lobule after the real exposure. And the decreased fALFF value was also detected in right medial frontal gyrus and right paracentral lobule.

Conclusions The study provided the evidences that 30 min LTE RF-EMF exposure modulated the spontaneous low frequency fluctuations in some brain regions.

Significance With resting state fMRI, we found the alteration of spontaneous low frequency fluctuations induced by the acute LTE RF-EMF exposure.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24012322

(2) Volkow ND, Tomasi D, Wang GJ, Vaska P, Fowler JS, Telang F, Alexoff D, Logan J, Wong C. Effects of cell phone radiofrequency signal exposure on brain glucose metabolism. JAMA. 2011 Feb 23;305(8):808-13. doi: 10.1001/jama.2011.186.

Abstract

CONTEXT: The dramatic increase in use of cellular telephones has generated concern about possible negative effects of radiofrequency signals delivered to the brain. However, whether acute cell phone exposure affects the human brain is unclear.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate if acute cell phone exposure affects brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain activity.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Randomized crossover study conducted between January 1 and December 31, 2009, at a single US laboratory among 47 healthy participants recruited from the community. Cell phones were placed on the left and right ears and positron emission tomography with ((18)F) fluorodeoxyglucose injection was used to measure brain glucose metabolism twice, once with the right cell phone activated (sound muted) for 50 minutes (“on” condition) and once with both cell phones deactivated (“off” condition). Statistical parametric mapping was used to compare metabolism between on and off conditions using paired t tests, and Pearson linear correlations were used to verify the association of metabolism and estimated amplitude of radiofrequency-modulated electromagnetic waves emitted by the cell phone. Clusters with at least 1000 voxels (volume >8 cm(3)) and P < .05 (corrected for multiple comparisons) were considered significant.

Photo: http://www.prlog.org/12215083/1

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Brain glucose metabolism computed as absolute metabolism (μmol/100 g per minute) and as normalized metabolism (region/whole brain).

RESULTS: Whole-brain metabolism did not differ between on and off conditions. In contrast, metabolism in the region closest to the antenna (orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole) was significantly higher for on than off conditions (35.7 vs 33.3 μmol/100 g per minute; mean difference, 2.4 [95% confidence interval, 0.67-4.2]; P = .004). The increases were significantly correlated with the estimated electromagnetic field amplitudes both for absolute metabolism (R = 0.95, P < .001) and normalized metabolism (R = 0.89; P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS: In healthy participants and compared with no exposure, 50-minute cell phone exposure was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism in the region closest to the antenna. This finding is of unknown clinical significance.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3184892/

PRLog (Press Release) – Sep. 23, 2013 – BERKELEY, Calif.  

USAF Enviromental Specialist Kristen Meghan | Blows Whistle On Air Force | Chemtrail Chemicals

A Warning Against Biometric Security: Apple’s iPhone 5 Already Hacked

The new iPhone 5′s fingerprint ID security feature lasted all of what amounts to not even five minutes in the tech world — Chaos Computer Club is already reporting that they were able to hack the new phone:

The biometrics hacking team of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has successfully bypassed the biometric security of Apple’s TouchID using easy everyday means. A fingerprint of the phone user, photographed from a glass surface, was enough to create a fake finger that could unlock an iPhone 5s secured with TouchID. This demonstrates – again – that fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as access control method and should be avoided. [emphasis added]

Essentially, using the same kind of basic tricks you’d find in an old Mission: Impossible episode, these trendy new biometric systems can be easily thwarted. And don’t forget, as security measures get more and more sophisticated (read: more and more personally invasive), criminals will simply get more and more sophisticated to keep up with the times as has been the case since time immemorial.

If all the new security coming in the high-tech control grid currently building built up all around us is truly warranted because non-invasive features like passwords are so simple and passé, how come biometrics are just as easy (if not easier) to beat?

And easy-to-beat they are. At the 2012 Black Hat hackers conference, hackers were able to successfully demonstrate a program that could easily fool iris scan security systems using recreated irises from images stored in existing iris scan databases. Guess that’s a lot better than in Hollywood movies where people steal an actual person’s eyeball or other body part to get past security, although that future may be on our horizon also as biometrics takes over.

While it starts with some trendy new technology to get everyone really jazzed about biometrics, the iPhone is only the beginning. Pretty soon these kinds of security measures will be everywhere in a Big Brother dream come true. Schools across the country are already acclimating children to grow up thinking such systems are a normal part of their everyday lives, with palm scanners or fingerprint IDs as payment systems in school cafeterias; the Department of Homeland Security is even testing their new facial recognition software at a junior ice hockey game this weekend.

Here’s a video of the iPhone 5 hack:

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

Source: The Daily Sheeple

Facebook wants to use artificial intelligence to better understand what you post, predict online actions

Facebook is reportedly now conducting research on “deep learning” artificial intelligence technology to allow better analysis of the data captured from the social network’s 1 billion users, though details of the experiments remain secret.

This new project is just one of many ways Facebook is on the cutting edge of technology, including a massive facial recognition database. Facebook has also most recently come under fire for privacy violations and their role in NSA spying, especially in Europe.

Ultimately, the goal of the project is to predict your actions online, show you content that is more relevant to your interests and target advertisements more accurately, according to a report published by the MIT Technology Review.

Technology Review reports that the research has only recently begun and the actual experiments being conducted behind the scenes remain secret.

The project will reportedly run by an eight-person group known only as the “AI team,” and will attempt to use deep learning to uncover the true meaning behind what people say and share on Facebook.

In other contexts, deep learning has shown potential in giving software the ability to recognize emotions behind text or events described in text, even if they’re not referred to explicitly.

Deep learning has also shown the ability to analyze photos and recognize objects and make complex predictions about the likely future behavior of individuals.

One of the likely applications of the technology in the case of Facebook will be in improving their news feed by only showing what the social network deems most relevant to the users. The technology could also help people organize photographs or help choose the best one to post online.

Google has also been delving into deep learning with Ray Kurzweil and has used the technology to recognize cats in videos without the software being told that cats exist.

The Verge points out that deep learning relies on using “a multi-layered approach to data, parsing information to build up a body of knowledge that can then be used to figure out concepts, or understand what objects sound and look like.”

Machine learning – though not nearly as complex as the type being researched by Facebook and others – is also used in facial recognition.

However, applying deep learning can offer significant improvements over the more established techniques.

“In tasks like vision or speech, we’re seeing 30 percent-plus improvements with deep learning,” Elliot Turner, founder and CEO of AlchemyAPI, said to MIT Technology Review.

The team is reportedly going to involve deep learning expert Marc’Aurelio Ranzato, who they hired away from Google, and Yaniv Taigman, the co-founder of facial recognition company Face.com. Others include vision expert Lubomir Bourdev and long-time Facebook engineer Keith Adams, according to the Technology Review.

Facebook will reportedly use some of their research, in more general machine learning areas, public. For now, all of their experiments remain secret.

Source: End the Lie

Wrongnado – Why CNN is a JOKE

Attention Deodorant Users: New Studies Link Aluminum To Breast Cancer

If you really take the time to look into it, it can be extremely overwhelming to find out just how many ingredients in cosmetic and personal care products shouldn’t be in there. We have surrounded ourselves with an extremely toxic environment, with approximately one in every eight of the 82,000 ingredients used in cosmetic and personal care products being hazardous toxic industrial chemicals. This means that 10,500 industrial toxic chemicals are used as cosmetic ingredients, many of which are carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, endocrine disruptors and more. It doesn’t take long for your bloodstream to absorb whatever toxic chemicals you decide to put on your body. So why do we continue to use these products given the fact that they pose such a high risk to human health?

Despite the fact that new research indicates that Aluminum has cancer-causing properties, it’s still considered by most health authorities as perfectly acceptable to eat, inject into your body as a vaccine adjuvant and to wear as an antiperspirant. This is clearly a problem, and it’s hard to understand how and why they are so heavily mass marketed. At the end of the day, you still have a choice. The days in which the human mind is so susceptible to programming from major corporations that do not have our best interests at hand are slipping away.

A recent study published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry found increased levels of aluminum in non-invasively collected nipple aspirate fluids from 19 breast cancer patients(1). These patients were compared with 16 healthy control subjects.

In addition to emerging evidence, our results support the possible involvement of aluminum ions in oxidative and inflammatory status perturbations of breast cancer microenvironment, suggesting aluminum accumulation in breast microenvironment as a possible risk factor for oxidative/inflammatory phenotype of breast cells (1)

The study also found that Aluminium content and carbonyl levels showed a significant positive linear correlation(1). Studies have already confirmed that plasma levels of protein carbonyls greatly increase the risk of breast cancer (2). It doesn’t stop there, the study also found a significantly increased level of pro-inflammatory cytokines(1), many studies have also confirmed that this type of inflammation correlates with increased invasiveness and poor prognosis in many types of cancer, including breast cancer (3).

In 12 invasive cancer nipple aspirate fluid samples we found a significant positive linear correlation among aluminum, carbonyls and pro-inflammatory monocyte chemoattractant cytokine(1).

The main point to take away from this research is the fact that common food ingestion (food additive), injection (as a vaccine adjuvant) and topical application (antiperspirant) and other forms of aluminum intake may be contributing to the increased cancer epidemic in the exposed population on the planet today. It doesn’t sound right does it? Most peoples intuition, heart and soul will not resonate with aluminum intake into their bodies, regardless if any studies have been done or not.

Another recent study conducted last year determined that aluminum salts used as antiperspirants have been incriminated as contributing to breast cancer incidence in Western societies (4).  Another study conducted the year before that outlined how aluminum is not a physiological component of the breast but has been measured recently in human breast tissues and breast cyst fluids at levels above those found in blood serum or milk (5).

I could go on and continue citing study after study on the damaging affects of antiperspirants, if you’re interested you can find more studies here. I think most who read this will not need a study to know that aluminum can be very hazardous to human health, it’s one of those things our intuition knows immediately, but it’s always good to get the information out there.

You might also be interested to know that a new study released by the University of California, Berkeley (UBC) School of Public Health has found many conventional lipstick products to contain dangerously high levels of aluminum, cadmium, lead and other toxins. Researchers tested over 30 popular lipstick products and found this to be the case. The study was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Even women using minimal amounts of product still increase their risk of developing harmful health conditions like nerve damage and cancer by an alarming amount. It is important to note that there is no oversight or limit on chemical additives into cosmetic care products.

What Can You Do?

I am a big believer that consciousness plays a large role in cancer and other ailments. I believe we can alter our biological environment by using our heart and mind, and science is slowly catching on to these facts. At the same time, that does not mean completely ignoring the chemical environment that surrounds daily. It’s nothing to be fearful of at all, but it is nice to be aware so that you can make the best possible choice for yourself and your health.  At the end of the day, the choice is yours. Cancer and increasing cancer rates is not a mystery like we are told it is, the cause is known and it is heavily linked to a toxic environment that includes a multitude of products we choose to use. You can look for antiperspirants that are Paraben (more specifically aluminum) free. You could also do your research on natural antiperspirants, there are a number of alternative options out there, you could even make your own. Unfortunately you never hear about them, most mainstream cosmetic products are heavily marketed and advertised. It’s time to start questioning things!

Much love.

Click here to find a list of hazardous chemicals to avoid in cosmetic and personal care products.

Source: Collective Evolution

Google Wants to be Your Doctor; And its Director of Engineering Wants You to Have a Brain Chip

Google is launching a health care company called Calico. In partnership with Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech – the first genetic engineering company founded in 1976 – Google will strive to “significantly expand the human life span.”

Are we headed to a Rollerball like future in which corporations have replaced countries and their governments? According to Parag and Ayesha Khanna we are indeed headed in that direction. In the Hybrid Age, mega coporations will provide advanced technology to their constituents and thus gain loyalty. As we stray away from broken governments to provide security and prosperity, these entities will fill the gap.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt – who expects to be swallowing nanobots in the not too distant future – envisions life in this technological age as a streamlined and convenient existence.

Up until now, radical life extension has been a subject discussed by niche groups, think tanks and tech executives far out of reach for the general public.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense published a 2006 report titled The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036. The report outlined possible scenarios surrounding life extension. The report states, “The divide between those that could afford to ‘buy longevity’ and those that could not, could aggravate perceived global inequality. Dictatorial or despotic rulers could potentially also ‘buy longevity’, prolonging their regimes and international security risks.”

Calico, working with Genentech, will likely utilize genetic engineering and synthetic DNA in its quest to extend human life. The Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year ruled against the patenting of natural human genes. However, there was a vital part of the ruling that allows for the patenting of synthetically engineered DNA.

A Genetic Social Network

In 2005 it was revealed in a book called The Google Story that Dr. Craig Venter, known for his creation of synthetic lifeforms, was in discussions with Larry Page and Sergey Brin [founders of Google] to:

“…generate a gene catalogue to characterize all the genes on the planet and understand their evolutionary development. Geneticists have wanted to do this for generations… Google will build up a genetic database, analyze it, and find meaningful correlations for individuals and populations.”

Google has been funding a program to do just that called 23 and me. In 2006 the organization was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. Personalized medicine, using patients genetic information, is the sweet spot for the organization. After submitting your genetic information, the 23 and me social network allows you to connect with other “genetic matches.” It will also provide information on risk factors of disease.

Will the general public be acclimated to share their genetic information online as they were with Facebook to share personal information? Recent NSA spying revelations make the prospect of supplying genetic information to a known NSA collaborator slightly unnerving.

A recent article from Discover magazine pointed out that:

“Many researchers believe that personal genomics will really not hit the biomedical sweet spot until you have on the order of a million people sequenced. But even then in the American system how to get a hold of all that information is going to be problematic, since it will likely be decentralized.”

The Yale Scientific Magazine announced that with the 23 and me genetic social network, “…it is easier than ever for people to find out their genetic risks for diseases, as well as connect with others who share parts of their genome.” It remains to be seen whether 23 and me will become a widespread success like Facebook, but it certainly has a powerful backing. As of last year, 23 and me reached 125,000 users who have submitted gene samples.

Google founder Larry Page met with Craig Venter in California at the Edge billionaires meeting in 2010. Also present were representatives from the State department, Bill Gates, Anne Wojcicki, Bill Joy and dozens of other tech company CEO’s and scientists.

The Edge billionaire meetings have discussed the future of genetic engineering, biocomputation and re-designing humanity in a Transhumanist era. Physicist Freeman Dyson described the individuals leading this group as having god-like power to create entirely new species on earth in a “New Age of Wonder”. He describes them as:

“…a new generation of artists, writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses, might create an abundance of new flowers and fruit and trees and birds to enrich the ecology of our planet.”

Will Google’s Calico be the first to implement brain chips on a mass scale?

Google’s director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, says that by 2030 Google Glass will be out-dated by devices “…the size of blood cells… we’ll be able to send them inside our brain through the capillaries, and basically connect up brain to the cloud.”

Google’s choice to hire Kurzweil, the figurehead of the Transhumanist movement, symbolizes the company’s anticipation that it will be the first to capitalize on “singularity” technologies. Google’s partner, Singularity University, is dedicated to producing students with knowledge about human augmentation, synthetic life, robotics and other technologies.

Source: Old Thinker News

iPhone 5nSa

Flying eagle point of view

American Dependency: A Frightening, Eye Opening Micro-Doc About Wealth Redistribution Via ‘Food Stamps’

Yale Professor: Fukushima Unit 4 pool in perilous condition — “All of humanity will be threatened for thousands of years” if not able to be kept cool — Danger of collapse during storm or while attempting removal of fuel rods

[...] Much more serious is the danger that the spent fuel rod pool at the top of the nuclear plant number four will collapse in a storm or an earthquake, or in a failed attempt to carefully remove each of the 1,535 rods and safely transport them to the common storage pool 50 meters away. Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years. [...]

Source: Enenews.com

Hamburger Chef Jamie Oliver Proves McDonald’s Burgers “Unfit for human consumption”

Hamburger chef Jamie Oliver has won his long-fought battle against one of the largest fast food chains in the world – McDonalds. After Oliver showed how McDonald’s hamburgers are made, the franchise finally announced that it will change its recipe.

Oliver repeatedly explained to the public, over several years – in documentaries, television shows and interviews – that the fatty parts of beef are “washed” in ammonium hydroxide and used in the filling of the burger. Before this process, according to the presenter, the food is deemed unfit for human consumption. According to the chef and hamburger enthusiast, Jamie Oliver, who has undertaken a war against the fast food industry, “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest way for dogs, and after this process, is being given to human beings.”

Besides the low quality of the meat, the ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health. Oliver famously coined this the “the pink slime process.”

“Why would any sensible human being put meat filled with ammonia in the mouths of their children?” Oliver asked.

In one of his colorful demonstrations, Oliver demonstrates to children how nuggets are made. After selecting the best parts of the chicken, the remains (fat, skin and internal organs) are processed for these fried foods.

In reply to all of the bad press this process has received from Oliver, the company Arcos Dorados, the franchise manager for McDonalds in Latin America, said such a procedure is not practiced in their region. The same, it should  be noted, applies to the product in Ireland and the UK, where they use meat from local suppliers.

In the United States, however, Burger King and Taco Bell had already abandoned the use of ammonia in their products. The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which has allowed McDonald’s to use otherwise “inedible meat.”

Most disturbing of all is the horrifying fact that because ammonium hydroxide is considered part of the “component in a production procedure” by the USDA, consumers may not know when the chemical is in their food.

On the official website of McDonald’s, the company claims that their meat is cheap because, while serving many people every day, they are able to buy from their suppliers at a lower price, and offer the best quality products. But if “pink slime” was really the “best quality” that McDonalds can muster in the US, then why were they able do better in Latin America and Europe? More to the point, why can they apparently do better now in the United States?

These questions remains unanswered by the franchise which has denied that the decision to change the recipe is related to Jamie Oliver’s campaign. On the site, McDonald’s has admitted that they have abandoned the beef filler from its burger patties.

Source: Wake Up Call

The innovation of loneliness VOSTFR

Map of Europe: 1000 AD to present day

This Ingredient Is Found In Most Cereals, Breads, But It’s Also Found In Foamed Plastics and Rubber Too

Why would it be necessary for the food industry to use the same additive in breads and cereals as what the chemical industry uses in the production of foamed plastics, synthetic leathers and rubber? We have been assured by our health regulatory agencies that azodicarbonamide is safe for use in our foods. If that’s the case, then why has it been banned in Europe, Australia and the United Kingdom?

Azodicarbonamide is manufactured by the reaction of dihydrazine sulfate and urea under high temperature and pressure. The product of this reaction is then oxidized using sodium chlorate and centrifuged to yield a slurry containing azodicarbonamide. The slurry is washed to remove impurities and dried to obtain the azodicarbonamide powder. This is then micronized to a fine powder before packaging.

Azodicarbonamide is used in the production of foam plastics like the gaskets around windows, shoe soles, and exercise mats. There are two different types of Azodicarbonamide – industrial quality and food grade quality. The industrial quality azodicarbonamide isn’t used in food, however the food grade quality is chemically identical.

According to the FDA, azodicarbonamide may be used in food in accordance with the following prescribed conditions:

(1) As an aging and bleaching ingredient in cereal flour.

(2) As a dough conditioner in bread baking.

How Safe is Azodicarbonamide?

Azodicarbonamide is readily converted to biurea. In studies spanning over 1-2 years, rats and dogs received diets containing various amounts of biurea. In the 1-year study, rats and dogs ate diets containing 5 or 10% biurea (Oser et al., 1965 in Toxicology and applied pharmacology, 7:445-472). Most dogs from both dose groups died. Necropsy revealed massive, multiple renal calculi, bladder calculi, and chronic pyelonephritis. The main constituent (comprising 80-100%) of the calculi was identified as biurea.

Toxicity studies conducted in experimental mammals demonstrate acute toxicity. Azodicarbonamide was also found to be a mutagen in bacterial systems. No adequate studies of carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity, in animals or in humans, have been identified (yet), but case reports and epidemiological studies in humans have produced abundant evidence that azodicarbonamide can induce asthma, other respiratory symptoms, and skin sensitization in exposed workers.

The main toxic effect of azodicarbonamide in humans is asthmagenicity. Evidence of this effect has been found from bronchial challenge studies and workplace health evaluations.

There is also information to indicate that azodicarbonamide can cause skin sensitization in humans.

The occurrence of semicarbazide (SEM) in foods including baby foods, packaged in glass jars and bottles, was first discovered by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and industry through tracing the breakdown of azodicarbonamide. Due to this finding, the EFSA at that time in 2003 advised that SEM should be removed from baby foods as swiftly as technological progress allowed.

This advice was based on findings that SEM is a weak carcinogen in mice and has weak genotoxic activity (i.e. potential to damage genetic material or DNA) in vitro. The implementation of an EC Directive banning the use of azodicarbonamide in plastics used as food contact materials went into force in 2005.

In the U.K., the Health and Safety Executive body of regulation has identified azodicarbonamide as a respiratory sensitiser (a possible cause of asthma) and determined that products should be labeled as such.

Both The United States and Canada permit the use of azodicarbonamide at levels up to 45 ppm which is simply an arbitrary number that studies have not been able to confirm or deny correlation dosage to disease in humans.

Why Add This Ingredient To Bread and Cereals?

Simply put, it keeps bread fresher, longer. That means more bread and cereals can stay on the grocery shelf for extended periods.

But from my perspective, it is definitely another ingredient to be wary of. If any food additive is able to kill any decent size mammal (like a dog), that’s probably not an ingredient I would want to consume.

Even a chemical that produces a disease such as asthma in its raw concentrated form is not tuned to the natural state of the human metabolism and does not belong in our food at any ANY dosage.

The food industry has made it their business to remove all living components from natural foods, essentially creating foods that no longer have any active microbials, enzymes or even absorable vitamins and minerals. Processed foods are dead and that’s why they have no nutrient density.

Processed foods can last months or even years due to the removal of all microorganisms, enzymes, oxygen, and moisture in food. The more chemicals we add, inevitably the less nutrtion and the more risk with toxic overload.

See 20 Ingredients To Memorize and Avoid In ANY Food You Consume for an excellent overview of artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, emulsifiers and sweeteners you should be avoiding.

Our choices define our experience and we must all decide if we want a food supply that caters to convenience, packaging and shelf life, or one that caters to nutrition, health and wellness. Your body, your choice!

Source: Waking Times

3 GMO Foods Likely in Your Multi-Vitamins

Most of us have been told ‘take your vitamins’ on more than one occasion, and we listen because…well, because vitamins are good for you. Right? Plus, not everyone likes to eat their broccoli. The problem is that the vitamin industry has been tainted with Big Ag and Big Pharma, too. Consider the fact that Bayer is one of the largest makers of vitamins for children. This is a huge drug and chemical giant responsible for helping to develop many GMOs, all while creating health-boosting vitamins? Questionable. Can we really trust these companies with our health?

Here are 3 GMO foods you probably never expected to find in your vitamins:

1. GM Corn in the form of Ascorbic Acid or Vitamin C & Maltodextrin

Sourcing non-GMO vitamin C is almost impossible in the US since most plants that process ascorbic acid are contaminated with genetically modified corn. If that weren’t bad enough, maltodextrin, another key ingredient in vitamins used as a filler and food thickener has little to no nutritional value even when it is not genetically modified. However, most maltodextrin is sourced from GMO-corn. The makers of Now supplements openly admitted there were genetically modified soy and corn in their products:

“All of our C is derived from standard corn not certified to be non-GMO… Many products [in the industry at large] contain soy or corn derivatives which are generally GMO’d. We are motivated towards non-GMO-sourced products.

The Hungarians burned thousands of acres of GM corn in a no-nonsense policy to oust Monsanto seed crops from their country, yet we are putting the stuff in our ‘health’ food.

Read: 4 Common Dangers Lurking in Your ‘Health’ Supplements

2. GM Soy

This is another ‘filler’ in many vitamins used in the industry and another one of Big Ag’s top three GMO crops. Soybeans, along with rice and sugar beets, were one of the first crops genetically altered to be more resistant to pests. It is prevalent in our local food sources, but also in countries over seas. Soy is arguably the most common GM crop, with up to 75-85% of the soy grown in this country being GMO, as estimated by a McGill University study. The study also points out that GMO soy acts like an estrogen in the body and can cause our hormonal systems to malfunction. In the worst cases, it causes ovarian cancer and uterus swelling.

3. GM Sugar Beets 

Also used in sugar free cough drops, genetically modified sugar beets are in numerous brands of vitamins. Used to sweeten your vitamins, you can bet that many seemingly innocent brands of vitamins, including Flintstones for children, made by Bayer, are comprised of genetically altered sugar.

“Flintstones Complete Gummies are comprised of “glucose syrup, sucrose, gelatin, water, choline bitartrate; less than 2% of: artificial flavors, ascorbic acid, bees wax, carnauba wax, citric acid, d-biotin, d-calcium pantothenate, fd&c blue #1, fd&c red #40, fd&c yellow #6, folic acid, potassium iodide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vegetable oil (coconut or palm), vitamin A acetate, vitamin B12, vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), vitamin E acetate, zinc sulfate.” As you can surmise, the vitamins are largely comprised of sugar – either high fructose corn syrup or sucrose likely derived from GM sugar beets. Other brands like Gummy Kings and Disney have very similar ingredient lists.

The good news is that our ancestors didn’t have Flintstones vitamins, but they did eat non-GMO foods, like oranges to prevent scurvy and other diseases that are caused by a deficiency in Vitamin C.  Real, organic foods have all the nutrients we need, especially when we eat a rainbow of colors and include a variety of non-GMO fruits and vegetables in our diets.

Source: Natural Society

Monsanto Granted Immunity as Media Diverts Attention to Syria

Greg Palast: A Memo that Confirms Every Conspiracy Nightmare About International Bankster Collusion & Criminality

Definitive Proof the Media is Scripted

Fukushima Radiation Strong Enough To Kill A Human In FOUR HOURS!

JAPAN to spend $470 MILLION for a FROZEN ICE WALL around FUKUSKIMA

EU plans to fit all cars with speed limiters

All cars could be fitted with devices that stop them going over 70mph, under new EU road safety measures which aim to cut deaths from road accidents by a third.

Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs and automatically apply the brakes when this is exceeded.

Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, is said to be opposed to the plans, which could also mean existing cars are sent to garages to be fitted with the speed limiters, preventing them from going over 70mph.

The new measures have been announced by the European Commission’s Mobility and Transport Department as a measure to reduce the 30,000 people who die on the roads in Europe every year.

A Government source told the Mail on Sunday Mr McLoughlin had instructed officials to block the move because they ‘violated’ motorists’ freedom. They said: “This has Big Brother written all over it and is exactly the sort of thing that gets people's backs up about Brussels.

“The Commission wanted his views ahead of plans to publish the proposals this autumn. He made it very clear what those views were.”

The source claimed one of the reasons he was against the Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) scheme is that the UK has a better road safety record than other European countries – with 1,754 people dying in road accidents last year compared to 3,657 in Germany.

The scheme would work either using satellites, which would communicate limits to cars automatically, or using cameras to read road signs. Drivers can be given a warning of the speed limit, or their speed could be controlled automatically under the new measures.

A spokesman for the European Commission said: “There is a currently consultation focusing on speed-limiting technology already fitted to HGVs and buses.

“Taking account of the results, the Commission will publish in the autumn a document by its technical experts which will no doubt refer to ISA among many other things.”

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/10278702/EU-...

Cancer-Causing Chemical Found in 98 Shampoos and Soaps

Tests ordered by an environmental watchdog group revealed the presence of a cancer-causing chemical in dozens of personal care products that lack a warning label required by California law.

The compound, a chemically modified form of coconut oil—cocamide diethanolamine (cocamide DEA)—is used as a foaming agent or thickener in soaps, shampoos, conditioners, and similar products.

Carcinogenic Ingredients in Your Personal Care Products?

No Warning Labels

An independent laboratory commissioned by the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) tested the products to determine how much cocamide DEA was present. CEH purchased these products after June 2013 from online and local California retailers, such as Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Kohl’s, and Babies R Us.

Many of the products tested contained more than 10,000 parts per million (ppm) of cocamide DEA. In all, CEH identified 98 products with cocamide DEA among the ingredients, none of which carried the warning required by state law.

"The state has not set a [safety] level specific to cocamide DEA," says Charles Margulis, Communications Director and Food Program Director of CEH, "but the levels we found exceed levels typical for carcinogens."

What's in Your Beauty Products?

To comply with California’s Proposition 65, companies are still required to provide a "clear and reasonable" warning to consumers when products they sell or produce contain chemicals listed by the state as harmful. This includes compounds known to cause cancer or birth defects.

Cocamide DEA was added to the California list of harmful chemicals in 2012 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published its review of the chemical’s safety, which was based upon skin exposure tests in animals. "There is sufficient evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of coconut oil diethanolamine condensate," the agency writes.

Environmental Group Files Lawsuit

In response to the laboratory results, the CEH filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against four companies—Walgreens, Lake Consumer Products, Ultimark Products, and Todd Christopher International.

"Our demand is that companies reformulate their products, without cocamide DEA,” says Margulis. “There are many similar shampoos and soaps on the market made without the chemical, so it is obviously possible to make the products safer."

The CEH also sent legal letters advising more than 100 other companies producing or selling products containing the chemical that their products violate Proposition 65.

In the lawsuit, which was filed in California Superior Court in Alameda County, the CEH accuses the companies of "knowingly and intentionally exposing individuals to cocamide DEA without first giving clear and reasonable warnings to such individuals regarding the carcinogenicity of cocamide DEA."

Dangerous Ingredients to Watch Out For in Cosmetics

The lawsuit asks the court to fine the companies $2,500 a day for each violation and prevent them from selling products containing cocamide DEA in California without a clear warning label.

The CEH hopes these short-term actions, along with their continuing efforts, will have an even wider effect.

"Under the law, companies can simply label," says Margulis, "but we’ve had hundreds of Prop 65 cases over 17 years of doing this work, and in over 95 percent of these cases, we have won legally binding agreements that require companies to reformulate their products. We expect the same in these cases."

Source: Yahoo

Holistic Farming Hero Joel Salatin Gives Helluva Talk at TEDMED 2012

Insanity: new Google Glass app will read other people’s emotions

If you’ve ever studied infomercials, you know the whole business is based on back-end sales. It’s not the product you buy for $19.95, it’s the products they can hook you into after you spend the $19.95.

So it is with Google Glass. It’s all about the apps that’ll be attached. .

Glass gives the wearer short-hand reality as he taps in. That’s what it’s for. The user is “on the go.” If he’s driving his Lexus and suddenly thinks about Plato, he’s not going to download the full text of The Republic to mull while he’s crashing into big trucks on the Jersey Turnpike. He’s going to take a shorthand summary. A few lines.

People want boiled-down info while they’re on the move. Reduction. The “essentials.”

This is perfectly in line with the codes of the culture. Ads, quick-hitter seminars, headlines, two-sentence summaries, ratings for products, news with no context. Stripped-down, reduced.

Well, here is a look into right now. A student at Stanford is developing a Google app that “reads other people.”

From SFGate, 8/26, “Google Glass being designed to read emotions”: “The [emotion-recognition] tools can analyze facial expressions and vocal patterns for signs of specific emotions: Happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, and more.”

This is the work of Catalin Voss, an 18-year-old student at Stanford and his start-up company, Sension.

So you’re wearing Google Glass at a meeting and it checks out the guy across the table who has an empty expression on his mug and, above your right eye, you see the word “neutral.” Now he smiles, and the word “happy” appears.

I kid you not. This information is supposed to guide you in your communication. The number of things that can go wrong? Count the ways, if you’re able. I’m personally looking forward to that guy across the table saying, “Hey, you, schmuck with the Glass, what is your app saying about me now? Angry?” That should certainly enhance the communication.

Or a husband, just back from his 12-mile morning bike ride, enters his Palo Alto home, wearing Glass, of course, and as he looks at his wife, who is sitting at the kitchen table reading a book, sees the word “sad” appear above his eye. “Honey,” he says, recalling the skills he picked up in a 26- minute webinar, “have you been pursuing a negative line of thinking?”

She slowly gazes up at the goggle-eyed monster in his spandex and grasshopper helmet, rises from her chair and tosses a plate of hot eggs in his face. YouTube, please!

But wait. There’s more. The Glass app is also being heralded as a step forward in “machine-human relationships.” With recognition services like Google Now and Siri, when computers and human users talk to each other, the computers will be able to respond not only to the content of the user’s words, but also to his tone, his feelings.

This should be a real marvel. As you’ve no doubt already realized, the emotion-recognition tool is all about reduction. It shrinks human feelings to simplistic labels. Therefore, what machines say back to humans will be something to behold.

Machine version of NLP, anyone? I’m predicting a surge in destroyed computers.

The astonishing thing about this new app is that many tech people are so on-board with it. In other words, they believe that human feelings can be broken down and worked with on an androidal basis, with no loss incurred. These people are already boiled down, cartoonized.

You think you’ve observed predictive programing in movies? That’s nothing. The use of apps like this one will help bring about a greater willingness on the part of humans to reduce their own thoughts and feelings to…FIT THE SPECS OF THE MACHINES AND THE SOFTWARE.

Count on it.

This isn’t really about machines acting more like humans. It’s about humans acting like machines.

The potential range of human emotions is extraordinary. Our language, when used with imagination, actually extends that range. It’s something called art.

The counter-trend is in gear. No matter how subtle the emotion-recognition algorithms become, there will always be a wide, wide gap between what they produce and the expression of humans.

The most profound kind of mind control seeks to eliminate that gap by encouraging us to mimic technology. That means people will think and feel less, and what they think and feel will mean less.

The machines won’t say, “I’m sorry, I can’t identify that emotion, it’s too complex.” They’ll say “sad” or “happy” or “upset” or whatever they have to say to give the appearance that they’re on top of the human condition.

Eventually, significant numbers of people will tailor their self-awareness to what the machines point to, name, label, declare.

Thus, inventing reality.

The wolf becomes a lamb, the lamb becomes a flea.

And peace prevails. You can wear it and see with it.

Eventually, realizing that Glass is too obvious and obnoxious and bulky, companies will develop something they might call Third Eye, a chip the size of half a grain of rice, made flat, and inserted under the skin of the forehead.

Perfect. Invisible. Of course, cops will have them. And talk to them.

“I’m parked at the corner of Wilshire and Westwood. Suspicious male standing outside the Harmon Building.”

“I see him. Searching relevant data.”

Which means any past arrests, race, conditions noted in his medical records, tax status, questionable statements he’s made in public or private, significant known associates, group affiliations, etc. And present state of mind.

The cop: “Recommendation?”

“Passive-aggressive, right now he’s peaking at 3.2 on the Hoover Bipolar scale. Bring subject into custody for general questioning.”

“Will do.”

No one will wonder why, because such analysis resonates with the vastly reduced general perception of what reality is all about.

People mimic how machines see them and adjust their human thinking accordingly.

Hand and glove, key and lock. Wonderful.

As the cop is transporting the suspect to the station, Third Eye intercedes:

"Sorry, Officer Crane, it took me a minute to dig further. Suspect is business associate of REDACTED. This is a catch and release. Repeat, catch and release. Printing out four backstage passes to Third Memorial Rolling Stones concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Apologize profusely, give subject the tickets, and release him immediately.”

“I copy.”

“This arrest and attendant communication is being deleted…now.”

Source: Activist Post