BluegrassBulletin.com

Bloggers Get "Institutional Media" Status In Court

From POLITICO:

A federal appellate court ruled Friday that the author of a blog post deserves the same treatment in a defamation case as "institutional media."

The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held unanimously that there is no difference between a journalist for a media outlet and another speaker when it comes to First Amendment protections.

On Friday, Judge Andrew Hurwitz wrote for the unanimous court that, especially in the age of the Internet, the distinction between traditional journalist and other speakers doesn't matter in this case (opinion here).

"The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others’ writings, or tried to get both sides of a story. As the Supreme Court has accurately warned, a First Amendment distinction between the institutional press and other speakers is unworkable," Hurwitz wrote.

Cases are sometimes "case specific" but this ruling seems to paint with a fairly broad brush.

For those of you who like me believe that free speech must never be squelched, this is good news.

Amazing Video Shows How Man Drew Picture Of Morgan Freeman

Do you recognize this as Morgan Freeman?  Does it look like a photo to you?  Well, it's not.  It was created on an I-pad with one finger, drawing the picture using an APP called "Procreate".

Here's the video of how he did it.

 

Obama's Chess Game: How Snowden's Leaks Could Spell More Government Secrecy

If anything happens in politics you can bet somebody planned it that way.  When Edward Snowden leaked to the British Press that the US was spying on everybody the reaction was predictable and swift.  From all parts of the political spectrum came calls for tightening security coupled with calls for less spying.

But as the dust around the initial revelation settled more and more information about the extent of government spying became available which of course sent everybody scrambling to put an end to such abuses.  Now however the other shoe has dropped.

The Obama administration has ordered a government-wide reassessment of how almost 5 million Americans have been granted classified information security clearances and whether each person currently approved to see sensitive national security secrets truly has a need for such access.

Clapper asked agencies to perform a top-to-bottom scrub of the teeming rolls of people authorized to access classified information and to remove anyone deemed not to have a so-called need to know. [POLITICO]

At first this may seem like a perfectly good step to take, considering that nobody really knows who is among those 5 million folks.  But consider this.

The Obama administration has been accused of "purging" the military of leaders they don't trust.  While the top to bottom scrub of "people authorized to access classified information" sounds good, might it also eliminate those who are in a position to warn America about further abuses yet to come?

I for one do not thing Snowden is a hero.  I believe he is a criminal.  But what part in a larger chess game might he have played?  Is it possible that Snowden's revelations about the extent of government spying created a "crisis" too good to waste?  Might the outrage over his revelations have provided the Obama administration with exactly the kind of atmosphere they needed in order to put blinders on others who could report on abuses yet to come? 

Many people today say that they do not trust "government".  This is a common expression and one that reveals a core of ignorance.  There is no entity operating on its own called "the government". We are a nation of self governed, a representative republic which functions through the actions of human beings.  Saying that you do not trust "our government" suggests that you do not trust people to govern themselves.

What is I believe a more correct statement would be for these people to say "I don't trust those people who are now in charge of our government".  So in the context of the news that the Obama administration is going to "purge" people from the list of those entitled to know what is going on behind the scenes, might it not be appropriate to ask: "Do you trust Obama to determine who gets to see what he is up to?"

Granted, national security does indeed require some things be kept secret, but since liberty likewise extends at least the same amount of privacy to the rest of us which should be our greater concern, that our privacy is being violated, or that the private actions of those who run our government is protected from view?

In Obama's world it's all a big chess game.  What moves will the King authorize for his own protection?  That's the real question.

NSA Is Spying On Everyone, Everything

Day by day the world is learning that the United States Government is spying on everyone and every little morsel of information no matter how insignificant you might consider it to be.  In otherwords, nothing you do, at all, is private anymore and probably hasn't been for a long, long time.

When Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, sat down with President Obama at the White House in April to discuss Syrian chemical weapons, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and climate change, it was a cordial, routine exchange.

The National Security Agency nonetheless went to work in advance and intercepted Mr. Ban’s talking points for the meeting, a feat the agency later reported as an “operational highlight” in a weekly internal brag sheet. It is hard to imagine what edge this could have given Mr. Obama in a friendly chat, if he even saw the N.S.A.’s modest scoop. [NY Times]

Even the president is not exempted from spying.

Weeks before he was sworn in, President-elect Obama was given an extensive briefing on the secret operations of the nation’s spy agencies, as well as a warning.

“You need to give up your BlackBerry,” Obama was told, according to former officials familiar with the meeting. “If you use that phone, you are not just subject to monitoring, you will be monitored.” [Washington Post]

But what about the Fourth Amendment requirement that such searches and spying only be conducted under a judge approved warrant?  The government is clearly ignoring all claims that the Constitution created any "right to privacy".  And that isn't something you should take lightly.

Considering all of the data the government could be collecting and the immense power it has through various agencies the people of the USA are increasingly living in fear, and of course fear is the tool of tyrants.

So why is the NSA spying issue of such critical importance?  Because it is causing widespread fear and fear is itself a powerful force that destroys liberty.

Congress Tackles Patent Trolls

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Thank you, patent trolls. Today, we are one giant step closer to real patent reform in the United States. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), along with a broad bipartisan coalition, has introduced the Innovation Act of 2013, comprehensive legislation that, if passed, would severely limit trolls' ability to continue their trolly behavior.

What changed? Well, the tech community learned how to better make its voice heard in D.C. (Remember SOPA?) This American Life focused two full hours (here and here) on patent trolls. And brave members of Congress, like Rep. Peter Defazio, got in front of the issue by introducing bills like the SHIELD Act.

But, really, the trolls have done all the hard work for us. They targeted app developers for using generally available technology. They sued small city governments for using bus tracking software. They went after businesses for using scan-to-email technology and the kind of WiFi routers you would buy off the shelf at Best Buy.

Thank you, trolls. You didn't only get our attention, you got the attention of Rep. Goodlatte, along with other congressional leaders, the FTC, and even the President. We're going to be working hard to make sure that not only is your 15 minutes of fame over, but so too is your entire business model.

I'd say addressing these kinds of abuses could make Congress' rating go up a bit, that is of course unless the patent trolls sue the polling companies over their polling software.

Related articles

Anti-'Patent Troll' Bill Introduced In Congress

Bipartisan bill could mean the end of patent trolling

New bill targets the patent trolls that hold us hostage

Finally, a bill to end patent trolling

Finally, a win against patent trolls

More Americans Turning To Internet For News

I am very happy to have been recognized as the top Conservative website in Kentucky by the Washington Post and to have the growing number of readers which we enjoy. 

With so many other sources of news out there, thank you for reading the BluegrassBulletin.

Obama Blows $634 Million On Website That Doesn't Work

From DigitalTrends:

It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.

The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post.

The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal.  The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/obamacare-healthcare-gov-website-cost/#ixzz2hK7ziYt4  Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter | digitaltrendsftw on Facebook

 

Many other major websites that cost far, far less to develop and deploy don't have these problems.

Hmmmm....Twitter Let's Muslim Brotherhood Organize, Not US Truckers

Do you recall the "Arab Spring" protests?  Remember the news accounts touting how Twitter was being used to organize the eventual overthrow of the Egyptian government by what turned out to be the Muslim Brotherhood?  Well, Twitter has shutdown the account of US truckers trying to organize a protest in Washington DC.

“The Truckers For The Constitution” plan to shut down the Washington, D.C. beltway on October 11th.  The truckers sponsoring the three day rally are demanding the police detain politicians who are an “accessory” to “treason,” including the President himself.  Now their twitter account has been suspended https://twitter.com/T2SDA. [Gateway Pundit]

While Twitter is a privately owned and operated service, nevertheless this action seems to discriminate against the non-violent protest plans of the Truckers.  The Twitter account was suspended almost immediately after an article about the protest appeared in U.S. News and World Report.

“The Truckers For The Constitution” plan to shut down the Washington, D.C. beltway on October 11th.  The truckers sponsoring the three day rally are demanding the police detain politicians who are an “accessory” to “treason,” including the President himself.  Now their twitter account has been suspended https://twitter.com/T2SDA :

- See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/#sthash.0IIP7MjR.dpuf

How Blogs, Facebook, And Twitter Are Making Us Smarter

Here's an interesting read, and one I encourage you to ponder.  The time you spend making the case for a position you hold somewhere on the Internet, whether on a blog, in a blog comment, on Twitter or Facebook helps to exercise your brain.  As this author concludes, this use of the Internet is making us smarter.

The argument is this: Writing in public, whether it's in the form of blogs or microblogs, like a Twitter stream, is forcing us to be clearer, more convincing and smarter. A big audience isn't required. Knowing you write for an audience of just a few people will force you to stretch and grow:

"Having an audience can clarify thinking. It's easy to win an argument inside your head. But when you face a real audience, you have to be truly convincing.

"Social scientists have identified something called the audience effect — the shift in our performance when we know people are watching. It isn't always positive. In live, face-to-face situations, like sports or concerts, the audience effect can make athletes or musicians perform better — but it can sometimes psych them out and make them choke, too.

"Yet studies have found that the effort of communicating to someone else forces you to pay more attention and learn more."

That network effect is nurturing. And not only is it great for grown-ups to write so much more, it's also fantastic for students, who can show cognitive gains because of all their short-message composition.Thompson write in The Globe and Mail:

"Students not only write more, they write more quickly. ..."

"And when it comes to writing and thinking, speed matters. It's what's called transcription fluency: 'If you can't write fast enough, you can lose an idea or a way of phrasing something, and it never comes back,' Steven Graham, a literacy scholar at Arizona State University, told me. In contrast, when you can write and edit more swiftly, you can include more ideas and flesh them out more deeply. The emergence of the cheap ballpoint pen, the typewriter — and now the computer and smartphones and tablets — precisely match the cognitive curve of our students' performance." [NPR]

 

Big Brother Has Siblings

I'm just going to post this article without comment other than this one: as we begin to accept the Internet as a habit forming convenience, we need to accept responsibility for our own privacy and security.  That is not a job we can trust anybody else to take care of for us.

There is a new trend in technology called "the Internet of things."

All your household electronics and appliances are getting connected to the Internet, everything from your lights to your thermostats.

In the long-run, connecting these things to the Internet will provide all sorts of conveniences and efficiencies.

But there is a dark side to the Internet of Things.

Forbes, for example, just published a story by Kashmir Hill about a man named Marc Gilbert who woke up on the night of his 34th birthday to hear a sound coming from his 2-year-old daughter's bedroom. 

Gilbert says he heard a man saying to his daughter: "Wake up, you little slut."

Awful.

The voice was coming through her Internet-connected baby monitor.

Hill says the hacker probably found the baby monitor through a search engine called Shodan, which indexes the "Internet of Things" the way Google indexes the regular Internet.

Shodan can find all kinds of stuff: webcams, traffic lights, glucose meters.

Scary.

Hill says the key to protecting yourself against invasions like the one Gilbert went through is to never buy an Internet-connected gadget that is not password protected. Also, if you buy one that comes with a default password and user name, change it immediately. [Business Insider]

Related articles

The Terrifying Search Engine That Finds Internet-Connected Cameras, Traffic Lights, Medical Devices, and Power Plants