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Archive for 2017
April 4, 2017
WHY “HILLBILLIES” DON’T DO NETWORKING.
See, this sort of inequality is just another reason why we should abolish the Ivy League!
CHARLIE MARTIN: FISA and the Insider Attack.
Before FISA, there really were no limits on what could be intercepted by intelligence agencies. This was abused over and over again, usually by the FBI, which used national security as a reason to intercept phone conversations of pretty much anyone who was thought to present some kind of a threat.
Even at the time FISA passed, though, civil libertarians were warning that there was little real protection against the Government using the information they collect maliciously. The problem goes back to the basics: you need to make sure that the people with access to the collected data were thoroughly checked and could be trusted.
In the United States, though, there’s a significant loophole, called “an election.”
Necessarily, when we elect a president, the president has complete access to any data — the president is the authority who decides what data is to be protected, and with what rigor. The president’s political appointees, just as necessarily, must have the same access. Our only real protection from illicit disclosure by these insiders is the degree to which they can be trusted. An unscrupulous political appointee on the president’s national security staff can obtain anything and leak anything.
In the Obama administration, scruples about information security were notably lacking. We saw it with the Clinton emails, where information security procedures were openly flouted, and where, frankly, multiple felonious violations of the espionage went unpunished.
And we’re seeing it now: Susan Rice, and probably a number of others, violated the provisions of FISA, and certainly, with no reasonable doubt violated the privacy of at least one U.S. Person.
FISA is coming up for renewal not too long from now, and FISA’s opponents have got a new and very strong argument that the government cannot be trusted with the power to intercept U.S. Persons communications.
If FISA were eliminated, the U.S. would lose a valuable tool — we really do need to be able to intercept communications within the U.S., for both state and non-state (read “terrorist”) actors. But for Americans to be able to trust their government with these surveillance powers, we have got to be able to trust that unscrupulous political appointees are deterred, and that illicit actions will be punished.
Yes, political abuse is always the threat, and when it’s not punished it becomes a much greater threat. And Charlie’s right that if there’s no accountability here, it’s going to be much harder to muster support for keeping FISA.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Trump’s Drop In Poll Is Nothing To Ignore. Yeah, it’s a poll. But it’s the IBD/TIPP poll, which was accurate on this past election.
INTERNET BUSYBODIES ARE THE WORST: Dad’s post supporting wife co-sleeping with baby goes viral, sparks debate.
TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1426: Obama’s IRS Chief Who Dodged Impeachment Continues Under Trump.
Maybe he’s a cooperating witness to the criminal investigation. . . .
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Google Is Teaching Their Ad Bots to Recognize ‘Objectionable’ Content.
FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists begin mid-stage trial of Zika vaccine for first time.
OLD SCHOOL: Using a Single-Action Revolver for Self-Defense.
PRICE, MEET DEMAND: Gillette, Bleeding Market Share, Cuts Prices of Razors.
Refills for Gillette men’s razors range from around $2 to $6 per cartridge, depending on the features, when not bought in bulk. That compares with Schick’s $2 to $2.75 per cartridge, when not bought in bulk. The cheapest Dollar Shave Club option features refills for 20-cents a cartridge.
Even as lower-cost shave clubs entered the scene, P&G continued to roll out new, pricier products, such as a razor featuring a swiveling-ball hinge that allows the blade to pivot. Last month, the company filed a patent application for a razor cartridge that heats up.
Among the items getting a price cut: cartridges for the Fusion razor that features five blades in a single head and a special trimmer on the back for hard-to-reach areas. A four-pack that was selling for around $19.50 will now go for closer to $15. On average, prices will fall by 12%, P&G says.
The best disposable shave you can get is from old-fashioned double-edge safety razors, which run from about 10¢ to 25¢ apiece and last all week.
THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GO NAKED IN PUBLIC ARE NEVER THE PEOPLE I WANT TO SEE NAKED: Daimler Meeting Derailed By Shareholder Angry He Couldn’t Attend in the Nude.
SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Anti-Semitism at the ‘Jewish’ Forward.
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S WATERGATE-LEVEL SCANDAL?: Peter J. Wallison at RealClearPolitics examines that question.
The smoking gun in Watergate was President Nixon’s effort to use the CIA to impede an FBI investigation. What kind of “gate” is the misuse of the intelligence community to get inside information on an opposing presidential candidate?
It may turn out that the Democrats, so eager to prove that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians, have unknowingly blundered into a matter that will come back to damage both their party and the Obama administration.
Read the whole thing.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: The World Just Got a SECOND Doomsday Vault, Because of Course We Did.
FASTER, PLEASE: Carbon-based filter which turns seawater into drinking water could help millions.
Reporting their findings in the Nature Nanotechnology journal, researchers from the University of Manchester have claimed that the process of desalination – filtering salt-water to produce fresh water – could lead to cheaper filtration systems in the developing world.
They explained that by controlling the size of the pores in the membranes the team was able to filter out common salts passing through the material.
“Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology,” Rahul Nair, professor of material physics at the University of Manchester, said in a statement.
If I’m understanding this technology correctly, it has far wider purification applications than just desalinating seawater.
VIDEO: Bernie Sanders Says You’re Not ‘Deplorable’
Unless you’re rich or sell too many kinds of deodorant, I guess.
TAPPING THE SOVIETS’ PHONES IN THE COLD WAR: “They had no idea we could get that close…that we could send divers walking on the bottom that deep…or that we had the technology to tap it. No one had conceived anything like this before.” This article, however, seems to confuse nitrogen narcosis, which results from the neurological impact of too much dissolved nitrogen in the blood, with the bends, which are embolisms that occur when some of the nitrogen stops being dissolved and forms bubbles.
UPDATE: Yes, I know, technically it wasn’t a tap, because it used induction rather than a parallel connection to the wires. Expect to hear CNN raising that objection to this headline any minute. . . .
WHAT CHANGED? Suddenly, Media No Longer Interested in Obama Spy Story.
LEADERSHIP ADVICE: No Details, No Paper, And No Regrets.
MIKE DORAN: Susan Rice Has No Defense.