By Julie Bort Microsoft is doing something on Reddit that is a big no-no, according to an anonymous Redditor that goes by the name “mistysilver.” Representatives of Microsoft may be hanging out on the social news site voting up positive comments about the Xbox One, voting down negative comments and adding pro-Xbox comments of their own, Misty Silver says.
Author: mediahitman
by Dr. Susan Berry As dissatisfaction with the U.S. public school system grows, apparently so has the appeal of homeschooling. Educational researchers, in fact, are expecting a surge in the number of students educated at home by their parents over the next ten years, as more parents reject public schools. A recent report in Education News states that, since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75%.
Police have confirmed that five people, including the gunman, were killed Friday in a series of incidents around the Santa Monica, California area. Two people killed in a related fire are said to be the assailant’s relatives. Investigators said the gunman acted alone. Identified only as a white man in his late 20s, the suspect wore body armor and a helmet, and carried a semiautomatic rifle, shotgun and ammunition belt. He also wore a black sweatshirt that read “Life is a gamble” on the back.
“I live in a country generally assumed to be a dictatorship. One of the Arab spring countries. I have lived through curfews and have seen the outcomes of the sort of surveillance now being revealed in the US. People here talking about curfews aren’t realizing what that actually FEELS like. It isn’t about having to go inside, and the practicality of that. It’s about creating the feeling that everyone, everything is watching. A few points:
Houston resident Cheryl Strain’s inexperience with guns was apparent as she struggled to load shells into a 20-gauge shotgun. Over the piercing blasts of gunfire in the shooting range, Strain’s instructor, Dan Blackford, patiently directed her on how to use her thumb to shove a shell all the way inside the barrel and feel it click.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Sunday was on the air to declare his legal opposition to the NSA’s surveillance programs, calling the spying an astounding assault on The Constitution.
Classified information obtained by the Washington Post and The Guardian has revealed a massive, warrantless online surveillance system in use by a US military intelligence agency, giving access to Americans’ search history, emails, live chats and more. The 41-page PowerPoint presentation, which has been verified by both papers and published almost concurrently on Thursday evening, outlines details of a previously undisclosed program known as PRISM, which allows the fabled military intelligence agency to harvest massive amounts of data on everything from electronic correspondence to file transfers.
By Glenn Greenwald Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals. The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging”.
By PETER BAKER President Obama offered a robust defense of newly revealed surveillance programs on Friday as more classified secrets spilled into public, complicating a summit meeting with China’s new president focused partly on human rights and cybersecurity. Mr. Obama departed from his script at a health care event in California to try to reassure Americans that he had not abused government authority by collecting telephone call logs and foreigners’ e-mail messages.
Anonymous released a statement about the recent info found on the PRISM spying operation by the NSA. Now if you tried to post this on Facebook you would be a notice saying this post contains blocked content, as seen in this image:
The New York State Senate passed a controversial bill on Wednesday that aims to classify ‘aggravated harassment of a police officer’ as a crime, but will it give the authorities the green light for strong-arm tactics if passed? Sponsored by Senator Joe Griffo, Bill S.2402 would make it a felony to “harass, annoy, or threaten a police officer while on duty.”
A 26-year-old Kentucky man says the FBI raided his home earlier this year in an attempt to investigate two hacker groups and the role they played in exposing the players linked to a high-profile rape case in Steubenville, Ohio. An aspiring rapper from Winchester, KY named Deric Lostutter revealed Thursday that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a search of his home two months ago and seized computers, electronics and other items pursuant to a warrant signed April 15 by a federal judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
A student who said on Twitter that people wearing Help for Heroes T-shirts “deserved to be beheaded” was arrested after complaining to police about threatening replies, a court has heard. Deyka Ayan Hassan, from Harrow, sent the tweet in the aftermath of Drummer Lee Rigby’s death in Woolwich, south-east London.
Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Several people in the Spanish village of Brunete may have been surprised to receive a foul-smelling package of dog poop in the mail. However, the putrid presents were no prank. In order to combat its considerable pet feces problem, the town mails dog poop back to the pet owners who left it behind, Europa Press reports.
Alex Newman The New American The infamous annual Bilderberg meetings, which bring together global power-brokers from government, business, finance, intelligence, royalty, media, central banking, academia, and more, are set to begin this week in the United Kingdom. In line with an apparent trenddeveloping in recent years, the veil of secrecy surrounding the mere existence of the controversial confab has slowly been pierced as more and more major media outlets report on the gathering. Taxpayers will be picking up much of the tab, but the growing numbers of protesters and reporters seeking answers will not be allowed in.