The Surveillance State

FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation

The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment - monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series, reported: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." ...... And the Obama administration has spent the last four years aggressively seeking to expand that Surveillance State, including by agitating for Congressional action to amend the Patriot Act to include Internet and browsing data among the records obtainable by the FBI without court approval and demanding legislation requiring that all Internet communications contain a government "backdoor" of surveillance. ....... what is most disturbing about the whole Petraeus scandal is not the sexual activities that it revealed, but the wildly out-of-control government surveillance powers which enabled these revelations. What requires investigation here is not Petraeus and Allen and their various sexual partners but the FBI and the whole sprawling, unaccountable surveillance system that has been built.

THE DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE STATE: VAST, SECRET, AND DANGEROUS

Related articles

• Petraeus Affair Shows Dominant Power of Government Surveillance State
• FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation | Glenn Greenwald
• FBI Abuse Of The Surveillance State Is The Real Scandal Needing Investigation
• FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation
• FOCUS | FBI's Abuse of the Surveillance State Is the Real Scandal
• A Libertarian God
• Glenn Greenwald on the Massive Surveillance State
• FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation
• The real Petraeus scandal
• Can You Survive the Coming U.S. Police Surveillance State?

New York Times Paywall Sucks

Image via WikipediaSo yesterday the New York Times website kept bombarding me with pop ups saying I had only two more articles left for the month, two out of 20.

They should have warned me at 10 left. I would not have read all those travel articles I read: vicarious living.

Pop ups are bad. Period. Don't do pop ups. Firefox climbed up by simply helping you fight pop ups. What is the New York Times thinking?

Tear Down This Paywall

I thought I read somewhere that if you show up at a New York Times article from some social media destination like Twitter or Facebook, that does not count against your monthly limit. Well, I did.

Bill Gates On Education: Making Sense

Image via CrunchBaseBill Gates: The Washington Post: How teacher development could revolutionize our schools

Over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat. Meanwhile, other countries have raced ahead. ...... For more than 30 years, spending has risen while performance stayed relatively flat. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more. ....... When you need more achievement for less money, you have to change the way you spend. ....... the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching. It is astonishing what great teachers can do for their students. ...... we do very little to measure, develop and reward excellent teaching ....... The value of measuring effectiveness is clear when you compare teachers to members of other professions - farmers, engineers, computer programmers, even athletes. These professionals are more advanced than their predecessors - because they have clear indicators of excellence, their success depends on performance and they eagerly learn from the best. ....... t. The United States spends $50 billion a year on automatic salary increases based on teacher seniority. It's reasonable to suppose that teachers who have served longer are more effective, but the evidence says that's not true. ....... Perhaps the most expensive assumption embedded in school budgets - and one of the most unchallenged - is the view that reducing class size is the best way to improve student achievement. ...... get more students in front of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take on four or five more students. Part of the savings could then be used to give the top teachers a raise. ..... 83 percent of teachers said they would be happy to teach more students for more pay

In Defense Of Google Digitizing Books

It would be flat out wrong to get in the way of technological breakthroughs that bring the cost of books down. And make their reaches wider. It is just that a way has to be found to ensure the authors do make money in the process.

I think Google should consider becoming a publisher itself. So you publish your book on Google property. Revenue is generated through ads. You and Google split the money made. For the reader it is free books. For the author there is money.



The library concept hit the snag. Because the money part was not handled well. On the other hand, if it is okay to read a book at some library for free, why is it not okay to read that same book in digital format?

The publishing industry feels the threat, and rightly so. Because of the web, the barrier to entry to getting published is literally zero. As to whether or not you get read is another thing. As to whether or not you make money is another thing.

I think this free for consumer revenue through ads model would work also for other media, audio and video. Prices come down to zero, but volume goes up, way up. You could have consumers all over the planet.

This model preserves the copyright thing.

• Google's online library runs into trouble Sify, India
• Google Delays Book Scanning Washington Post, United States
• Google Print put on pause Register, UK
• Google's Plan Doesn't Scan BusinessWeek
• Google suspends effort to scan copyrighted content San Jose Mercury News, United States
• Google Suspends Copyright Copies InternetNews.com
• Google Alters Plan for Searchable Library Databases New York Times, United States
• Dispute forces Google rethink on book scans Financial Times, UK
• Schmidt's Google Puts Library Project On Ice Forbes
• Google Halts Scanning of Copyrighted Books San Francisco Chronicle, United States
• Google Makes Change to Google Print/Library Scanning Program Search Engine Watch
• Google pauses indexing of copyrighted books from libraries TechWhack, India
• Google Print on Hold for 3 Months 24x7updates, India
• Google Print Halted Amid Publisher Copyright Concerns Search Engine Journal
• Google Print: Latest Inovation From Search Engine Giant Blogcritics.org
• Google Suspends Copying Protected Books; Publishers Unimpressed InternetWeek.com, NY
• Google Print Takes a Break Softpedia