Friday, June 21, 2013

Prometheus, Meet Thomas Jefferson: On Fire, Stealing And Sharing

from the an-xkcd-parable dept

Meet Prometheus:
Zeus... assigned Prometheus the task of forming man from water and earth, which Prometheus did, but in the process, became fonder of men than Zeus had anticipated. Zeus didn't share Prometheus' feelings and wanted to prevent men from having power, especially over fire. Prometheus cared more for man than for the wrath of the increasingly powerful and autocratic king of the gods, so he stole fire from Zeus' lightning, concealed it in a hollow stalk of fennel, and brought it to man.
Meet Thomas Jefferson:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
And... take it away xkcd:
Prometheus
You cannot steal that which cannot be stolen.

Ashley Holton Accused Of Masturbating On Florida Highway

Posted:
Ashley Holton Masturbating
Drivers pulled illegal U-turns just to catch a glimpse of Ashley Holton, witnesses said.
The 35-year-old woman was arrested on May 26 for masturbating on Highway 484 in Ocala, Fla.
A witness told authorities that Holton had slowed traffic for more than 30 minutes before deputies arrived, the report said. The witness also said that honking car horns only seemed to encourage her.
When a Marion County Sheriff's Deputy approached her, Holton pulled up her shirt and bra, "exposing her breasts and bra," according to the report.
Holton was arrested and taken to the Marion County Jail. When an officer attempted to put pants on her, the report said Holton kicked and bit her. Holton described her chomping as "a love tap," the report stated.
Holton's alleged antics didn't stop once she had entered the jail, where she "continued to resist the officers by spreading her legs, exposing her vagina and telling the officers to kiss her there and refusing verbal commands to cooperate," according to the report.
Holton, who the report said may have been under the influence of alcohol, was charged with exposure of sexual organs, battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting an officer and disorderly conduct.

Edward Snowden Charged With Espionage By US Government

from the and-off-we-go dept

This isn't a huge surprise, but the Washington Post is reporting that US federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden charging him with espionage under the Espionage Act, along with theft and conversion of government property -- and have asked Hong Kong authorities to detain him. Just this morning, we were discussing the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, prosecuting six different whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, twice the number of all other presidential administrations combined. Now we're up to number seven apparently.

Did Snowden break the law? Possibly -- but charging him with espionage is ridiculous, just as it has been ridiculous in many of these cases. Snowden wasn't doing this to "aid the enemy" but to alert the American public to the things that the administration itself had been publicly misleading to downright untruthful about. His actions have kicked off an important discussion and debate over surveillance society and how far it has gone today. That's not espionage. If he was doing espionage, he would have sold those secrets off to a foreign power and lived a nice life somewhere else. To charge him with espionage is insane.

In terms of process, the Washington Post explains:
By filing a criminal complaint, prosecutors have a legal basis to make the request of the authorities in Hong Kong. Prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment, probably also under seal, and can then move to have Snowden extradited from Hong Kong for trial in the United States.

Snowden, however, can fight the U.S. effort to have him extradited in the courts in Hong Kong. Any court battle is likely to reach Hong Kong's highest court and could last many months, lawyers in the United States and Hong Kong said.
It also notes that while the US and Hong Kong have an extradition treaty, there is an exception for "political offenses."

While this certainly was not unexpected, it's still a disappointing move from the administration. The crackdown on whistleblowers does not make the US look strong. It makes our government look weak, petty and vindictive in the face of actual transparency. It's shameful.

Latest Leak: UK Spies Tap Internet Cables, Collect Nearly Everything With Little Oversight, Then Shares It With NSA

from the and-another-thing dept

Another day, another leak released from the Ed Snowden files. The latest: evidence that the UK's equivalent of the NSA is tapping into fiber optic cables to hoover up all sorts of internet data, similar to the NSA. The UK group, GCHQ, literally has called these program: "Mastering the Internet (MTI)" and "Global Telecoms Exploitation (GTE)." They're not much for nuance or code names across the pond, I guess. Apparently, they're collecting a ton of data:
By 2010, two years after the project was first trialled, it was able to boast it had the "biggest internet access" of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

UK officials could also claim GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA". (Metadata describes basic information on who has been contacting whom, without detailing the content.)
And, GCHQ and the NSA are teaming up to go through it all:
By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data.
But that's not all who have access to the data. The article claims 850,000 NSA employees and contractors with top secret clearance can access the GCHQ database. The report also notes that the UK spooks admit that they "have a light oversight regime compared with the US." Considering how light US oversight already is... In the US, there are those very weak minimization rules. In the UK, the analysts (including the American analysts working on the data) are told "it's your call."

The close releationship between GCHQ and the NSA is pretty clear. NSA boss Keith Alexander apparently visited the NSA's own Menwith Hill intercept station in the UK a few years ago and said: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith."

The details in the report suggest that the data collection here is on a fairly epic scale. When discussing revealing how many people have had their data scooped up under the program, GCHQ's lawyers apparently said "this would be an infinite list which we couldn't manage." Think about that for a second.

As for how GCHQ is tapping directly into fiber optic cables? Apparently, they keep that under much tighter wraps than they do the information they're collecting on everyone:
This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as "intercept partners".

The papers seen by the Guardian suggest some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned "sensitive relationship teams" and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of "special source" material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause "high-level political fallout".

The source with knowledge of intelligence said on Friday the companies were obliged to co-operate in this operation. They are forbidden from revealing the existence of warrants compelling them to allow GCHQ access to the cables.
The tapping is done on transatlantic cables. If you want a sense of just who's likely to be playing along, why not check out this amazing interactive map of all 244 submarine cables around the globe. You can look up the names of the various cables to see who owns them, and you can pretty quickly get a fairly good sense of the companies who are likely "intercept partners." Here's a snippet...
Yet again, it appears that all the assurances that the NSA and the government have been giving us are not fully forthcoming about the extent of surveillance operations and what the NSA has access to. The NSA claims it gets rid of US persons from its own data, but says nothing about US persons' data collected by this data in the UK. And while the UK claims that it gets rid of UK data (though, with little oversight), assuming the NSA provides similar access back... that's all kind of meaningless, isn't it?

Another Judge Figures Out What Prenda Is Up To, Reopens Closed Case, Demands Information On Settlements

from the well,-look-at-that dept       http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130621/12065423558/another-judge-figures-out-what-prenda-is-up-to-reopens-closed-case-demands-information-settlements.shtml

It would appear that yet another federal judge has taken an interest in what Prenda Law was up to for the past few years. Over in Minnesota, US Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel has reopened a case that Prenda had dismissed and ordered Prenda's local counsel, Michael Dugas, to supply an awful lot of information about the settlements they collected from people during the shakedown. The court points out:
In light of Mr.Cooper's letter and Judge Wright's order, it appears to the Court that the plaintiff has relied on forged documents in securing multiple court orders authorizing the discovery of information that, in turn, led to settlements in the above-captioned cases.
Because of that, it's reopening the case:
The Court agrees with the reasoning of Pino and concludes--based on its own interpretation of Rule 60(b)(3) and Rule 60(d)(3)--that it has jurisdiction to strike a plaintiff's notice of voluntary dismissal, reopen the case, and award appropriate relief when allegations of a possible fraud on the court come to its attention. This interpretation of Rule 60 is necessary to preserve the integrity the of judicial system.

All three elements of the Pino test are met here: (1) the plaintiff attached a fraudulent document to the complaint; (2) the Court relied upon that document in authorizing the discovery of internet subscriber information--information the plaintiff was not entitled to receive absent a court order; and (3) after obtaining the discovery (which--at least as far as the Court is aware--is the only relief the plaintiff ever seeks in these cases), the plaintiff settled and voluntarily dismissed all of these cases.
Given that, the court has ordered Dugas to supply the details of everyone in the case who settled, including their contact info, their attorneys' contact info, the exact terms of the settlement agreements, "including to whom any money was paid and the manner of payment" while also saying that Dugas needs to supply all of those who settled (and their attorneys) with Judge Wright's order in California describing Prenda's scheme. Given the identifying info, this will be filed under seal, but Dugas has only five days to do so. Either way, it seems that more and more judges are aware of what happened, and they're even going back into old cases to explore...

We Want to Hear You Say It

                                                
                                

We Want to Hear You Say It

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Keep it civil. Keep it relevant. Keep it clear. Keep it short. Keep it intelligent. Identify your assertions as fact or speculation. No typing in ALL-CAPS. And please read the article in its entirety before commenting. Note: We reserve the right to remove any post at any time.

Genetically-modified Eggplant Found to be Unsafe for Human Consumption, Environment

Region:

Field trials of genetically-modified (GM) Bt eggplant, also known as Bt talong, have officially ceased in the Philippines following a major ruling by the nation’s Court of Appeals. Representing a massive victory for food sovereignty, the Court found that Bt talong is a monumental threat to both environmental and human health, and has subsequently ordered that all existing plantings of Bt talong in test fields be immediately destroyed and blocked from further propagation.
Like in many other nations across the globe, the biotechnology industry has been craftily trying to sneak its genetic poisons into the Philippines under the guise of improving crop yields, reducing chemical use, and yada yada ad nauseum – all the typical industry propaganda and lies used to convince the more gullible among us that GMOs are some kind of food production miracle. But the Philippines is not buying all the hype. And unlike the U.S., the southeast Asian country is taking a bold stand against a technology that has never been proven safe or beneficial in any way.
According to the non-profit advocacy group Greenpeace, which has been working on behalf of humanity to stem the tide of GMO onslaught all around the world, the Court recently issued a “Write of Kalikasan,” which basically means that all field trials of Bt eggplant in the Philippines must stop. The Court also ordered that the biotechnology aggressors “permanently cease and desist” from conducting further trials, as well as “protect, preserve, rehabilitate and restore” all the land they have destroyed in the process.
“The field trials of Bt talong involve the willful and deliberate alteration of the genetic traits of a living element of the ecosystem and the relationship of living organisms that depend on each other for their survival,” states the ruling. “Consequently, the field trials … could not be declared by this Court as safe [for] human health and our ecology, [since they are] an alteration of an otherwise natural state of affairs in our ecology.”
Everything about this common-sense decision by the Filipino justice system makes perfect sense – GMOs definitively spread their poisonous traits throughout the entire ecosystem, contaminating other crops along the way, and thus have no place in agriculture, period. But sadly, such common sense no longer exists in the U.S., where corporate greed and fundamental corruption have essentially placed profits before people in every aspect of life.
“We commend the Court of Appeals for living up to its constitutionally-mandated role as protector of constitutional rights,” said Greenpeace Southeast Asia Sustainable Agriculture Campaigner Daniel Ocampo about the Philippines rejecting GMOs. “This landmark decision reflects that there are indeed flaws and lapses in the current regulatory process for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) such as Bt eggplant which exposes our environment and health to unknown long-term consequences and does not establish their safety in any way.”
Meanwhile, millions of acres of uncontested GMO crops in the U.S. continue to ravage both human and environmental health while the hordes of mindless puppets in the U.S. Congress ignore the issue or even pretend that GMOs are not an issue. But this new American pastime of greed and denial about reality will not last forever, as nature will eventually catch up and extinguish this agricultural scourge with “superweeds,” “superbugs,” and disease – that is if the American people do not take action first to forcibly cleanse their nation of GMOs. The question is, what will it take for the people to wake up and take action?
Sources for this article include:
http://www.greenpeace.org
http://www.businessmirror.com.ph
http://www.greenpeace.org

The top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant

          

Fisa court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA's surveillance of Americans' communication

Document one: procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons
Document two: procedures used by NSA to minimise data collected from US persons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant
Computer keyboard
The documents show that discretion as to who is actually targeted lies directly with the NSA's analysts. Photograph: Martin Rogers/Workbook Stock/Getty
Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.
The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target "non-US persons" under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.
The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.
The procedures cover only part of the NSA's surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The Fisa court's oversight role has been referenced many times by Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials as they have sought to reassure the public about surveillance, but the procedures approved by the court have never before been publicly disclosed.
The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.
However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:
• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;
• Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;
• Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications;
• Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.
The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or email information without warrants.
The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA's foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.
Since the Guardian first revealed the extent of the NSA's collection of US communications, there have been repeated calls for the legal basis of the programs to be released. On Thursday, two US congressmen introduced a bill compelling the Obama administration to declassify the secret legal justifications for NSA surveillance.
The disclosure bill, sponsored by Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican, is a complement to one proposed in the Senate last week. It would "increase the transparency of the Fisa Court and the state of the law in this area," Schiff told the Guardian. "It would give the public a better understanding of the safeguards, as well as the scope of these programs."
Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which was renewed for five years last December, is the authority under which the NSA is allowed to collect large-scale data, including foreign communications and also communications between the US and other countries, provided the target is overseas.
FAA warrants are issued by the Fisa court for up to 12 months at a time, and authorise the collection of bulk information – some of which can include communications of US citizens, or people inside the US. To intentionally target either of those groups requires an individual warrant.

One-paragraph order

One such warrant seen by the Guardian shows that they do not contain detailed legal rulings or explanation. Instead, the one-paragraph order, signed by a Fisa court judge in 2010, declares that the procedures submitted by the attorney general on behalf of the NSA are consistent with US law and the fourth amendment.
Those procedures state that the "NSA determines whether a person is a non-United States person reasonably believed to be outside the United States in light of the totality of the circumstances based on the information available with respect to that person, including information concerning the communications facility or facilities used by that person".
It includes information that the NSA analyst uses to make this determination – including IP addresses, statements made by the potential target, and other information in the NSA databases, which can include public information and data collected by other agencies.
Where the NSA has no specific information on a person's location, analysts are free to presume they are overseas, the document continues.
"In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person," it states "a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person."
If it later appears that a target is in fact located in the US, analysts are permitted to look at the content of messages, or listen to phone calls, to establish if this is indeed the case.
Referring to steps taken to prevent intentional collection of telephone content of those inside the US, the document states: "NSA analysts may analyze content for indications that a foreign target has entered or intends to enter the United States. Such content analysis will be conducted according to analytic and intelligence requirements and priorities."
Details set out in the "minimization procedures", regularly referred to in House and Senate hearings, as well as public statements in recent weeks, also raise questions as to the extent of monitoring of US citizens and residents.
NSA minimization procedures signed by Holder in 2009 set out that once a target is confirmed to be within the US, interception must stop immediately. However, these circumstances do not apply to large-scale data where the NSA claims it is unable to filter US communications from non-US ones.
The NSA is empowered to retain data for up to five years and the policy states "communications which may be retained include electronic communications acquired because of limitations on the NSA's ability to filter communications".
Even if upon examination a communication is found to be domestic – entirely within the US – the NSA can appeal to its director to keep what it has found if it contains "significant foreign intelligence information", "evidence of a crime", "technical data base information" (such as encrypted communications), or "information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property".
Domestic communications containing none of the above must be destroyed. Communications in which one party was outside the US, but the other is a US-person, are permitted for retention under FAA rules.
The minimization procedure adds that these can be disseminated to other agencies or friendly governments if the US person is anonymised, or including the US person's identity under certain criteria.
holder nsa legislation Holder's 'minimization procedure' says once a target is confirmed to be in the US, interception of communication must stop. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images A separate section of the same document notes that as soon as any intercepted communications are determined to have been between someone under US criminal indictment and their attorney, surveillance must stop. However, the material collected can be retained, if it is useful, though in a segregated database:
"The relevant portion of the communication containing that conversation will be segregated and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice will be notified so that appropriate procedures may be established to protect such communications from review or use in any criminal prosecution, while preserving foreign intelligence information contained therein," the document states.
In practice, much of the decision-making appears to lie with NSA analysts, rather than the Fisa court or senior officials.
A transcript of a 2008 briefing on FAA from the NSA's general counsel sets out how much discretion NSA analysts possess when it comes to the specifics of targeting, and making decisions on who they believe is a non-US person. Referring to a situation where there has been a suggestion a target is within the US.
"Once again, the standard here is a reasonable belief that your target is outside the United States. What does that mean when you get information that might lead you to believe the contrary? It means you can't ignore it. You can't turn a blind eye to somebody saying: 'Hey, I think so and so is in the United States.' You can't ignore that. Does it mean you have to completely turn off collection the minute you hear that? No, it means you have to do some sort of investigation: 'Is that guy right? Is my target here?" he says.
"But, if everything else you have says 'no' (he talked yesterday, I saw him on TV yesterday, even, depending on the target, he was in Baghdad) you can still continue targeting but you have to keep that in mind. You can't put it aside. You have to investigate it and, once again, with that new information in mind, what is your reasonable belief about your target's location?"
The broad nature of the court's oversight role, and the discretion given to NSA analysts, sheds light on responses from the administration and internet companies to the Guardian's disclosure of the PRISM program. They have stated that the content of online communications is turned over to the NSA only pursuant to a court order. But except when a US citizen is specifically targeted, the court orders used by the NSA to obtain that information as part of Prism are these general FAA orders, not individualized warrants specific to any individual.
Once armed with these general orders, the NSA is empowered to compel telephone and internet companies to turn over to it the communications of any individual identified by the NSA. The Fisa court plays no role in the selection of those individuals, nor does it monitor who is selected by the NSA.
The NSA's ability to collect and retain the communications of people in the US, even without a warrant, has fuelled congressional demands for an estimate of how many Americans have been caught up in surveillance.
Two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall – both members of the Senate intelligence committee – have been seeking this information since 2011, but senior White House and intelligence officials have repeatedly insisted that the agency is unable to gather such statistics.

Leaked “Top Secret Documents”: NSA Monitoring US Communications without a Warrant


nsa                                                        nazi symbol photo: Reich's Eagle Hoheitszeichen Nazieagle.jpg
According to the Guardian, the documents—presumably obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—“show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.”
In their defense of the NSA surveillance programs, Obama administration officials—including Obama himself—have frequently and insistently declared that no communications of people in the US are monitored without a warrant. The documents released by The Guardian reveal these claims to be outright lies.
The FISA Court, the administration has claimed, provides oversight and “transparency” over the process. The actual procedures that the secret court has authorized have, until now, remained concealed from the population of the United States and the world.
Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) authorizes the NSA to engage in bulk data collection. Under this authorization, the NSA is supposedly only allowed to obtain communications without a warrant from “non-US persons.” This includes any communications between people outside the US, and any communications from someone outside the US to someone within the US—if it is the “non-US person” who is the target of the snooping.
As previous revelations have shown, the US government has sucked up billions of communications from all over the world under this authorization, rubber stamped by the FISA Court. This global spying operation is separate from another program that collects virtually all phone records on anyone living in the United States through secret subpoenas to telecommunications companies.
The official limitations on NSA communications monitoring, however, have so many loopholes that they effectively allow for the agency and its analysts to spy on anyone, including those in the US, without a warrant—precisely as claimed by Snowden.
According to the documents, NSA personnel, using their “reasonable judgment,” can keep and use “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if (a) the data contain “significant foreign intelligence information,” (b) the data are encrypted or “reasonably believed to contain secret meaning,” (c) the data contain “evidence of a crime,” or (d) the data contain information related to cyber security.
The court specifically states that encrypted emails can be kept for as long as needed to decrypt them.
According to the Guardian, moreover, while the procedures approved by the court require that interception stop if a communication is determined to involve only US persons, “these circumstances do not apply to large-scale data where the NSA claims it is unable to filter US communications from non-US ones.” These communications can be retained, and presumably accessed, for five years.
In collecting communications, the NSA is allowed to examine a range of data on telephone and internet usage to determine whether a target is located in the US or not. To collect the communication, the individual analyst must have a “reasonable belief” that the target is outside the US.
When the NSA analyst is not able to determine definitively the location of a target, he can simply assume that the target is overseas. “In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person,” the FISA Court document states “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person.”
In other words, the presumption is that a communication can be collected and monitored. If the NSA wants to wiretap anyone, anywhere, without a warrant, it merely has to declare—to itself—that it either does not know where the person is or has a reasonable belief that that person is outside the US.
Decisions about whether a person is considered US or non-US are made, according to the documents, on the basis of the “totality of circumstances,” specifically whether “the nature and circumstances of the person’s communications rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person.”
One example of a condition which can be used to assert that someone is a not US person, and therefore all of his communications can be monitored, is if he is in contact with members of a “foreign-based political organization.”
Moreover, in ambiguous cases, NSA analysts are authorized to examine the content of communications in order to determine whether that content qualifies for surveillance: “NSA analysts may analyze content for indications that a target has entered or intends to enter the United States. Such content analysis will be conducted according to analytic and intelligence requirements and priorities.”
US persons are thus “protected” from surveillance by having the content of their communications surveilled, supposedly to determine whether they are US persons.
In its final section, “Departure from Procedures,” the document on procedures for targeting non-US persons includes an escape clause, allowing the NSA to ignore all legal protections under exceptional circumstances, “If, in order to protect against an immediate threat to the national security, NSA determines that it must take action, on a temporary basis, in apparent departure from these procedures and that it is not feasible to obtain a timely modification of these procedures from the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence, NSA may take such action.”
This is a blueprint for universal accumulation and indefinite retention of all communications of everyone in the world.

Obama Administration Has Declared War On Whistleblowers, Describes Leaks As 'Aiding The Enemy'

              ~transparency~  don't u see ?             Rare Color Photos of Nazi Germany                                                                      

Obama Administration Has Declared War On Whistleblowers, Describes Leaks As 'Aiding The Enemy'

from the going-a-bit-far dept

In 2008, now President Obama ran with the following as a key plank in his campaign:
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
None of that has happened. Instead, as we've discussed repeatedly, President Obama has been the most aggressive President ever in attacking whistleblowers and bringing the full weight of the law down on them. In fact, in 2012, rather than promote protecting whistleblowers in his campaign, the campaign bragged about how it cracked down on whistleblowers:
President Obama has done more than any other administration to forcefully pursue and address leaks of classified national security information.... The Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many cases under the Espionage Act as all other administrations combined. Under the President, the Justice Department has prosecuted six cases regarding national security leaks. Before he took office, federal prosecutors had used the Espionage Act in only three cases.
The above paragraph is true -- and we've pointed it out in the past as well -- but we thought it was shameful, not something worth bragging about. Furthermore, since he was elected, President Obama has never praised a single federal employee who was a whistleblower. When asked by a reporter from the Huffington Post for an example of President Obama supporting a whistleblower, the White House refused to respond.

Given all of that, it will come as little surprise to read a piece by reporters Marisa Taylor and Jonathan Landay of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, in which they reveal that the White House has a special attack program to deal with whistleblowers called Insider Threat Program (ITP). And, no, contrary to what the administration has claimed, it's not just about "national security" issues. It goes way beyond that:
President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments.
And, as the reporters note, the program may emphasize classified material, but actually goes way beyond that to cover leaks of just about anything. Furthermore, it encourages the ridiculous view that leaks which expose questionable behavior to the public are the same as aiding the enemy.
“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.
Yes, informing the American public of misdeeds by the US government is considered "aiding the enemies of the United States." The reality, of course, is what they're saying is that they really mean "the current government" when they refer to "the United States," and "the enemies" are the American public.

And, part of the program seems to be to put pressure on anyone to snitch on their colleagues if they suspect potential leakers. Government employees who fail to report colleagues who exhibit "high risk" behaviors may be subject to criminal charges. Basically, snitch on anyone who acts suspiciously, or else... And, of course, it's not just the Defense Department. The Agriculture Department has an online tutorial teaching people how to spot potential whistleblowers, entitled "Treason 101."

As becomes obvious, this massively discourages whistleblowing. It massively discourages anyone raising any alarm about programs that might be out of control, for fear that they might be declared a "high risk" person or even guilty of espionage for trying to blow the whistle. President Obama not only has not supported the "courageous" whistleblowers he praised, he's made it so scary to report any malfeasance that when it eventually does come out, it takes the dramatic form of someone like Edward Snowden, rather than someone willing to go through all the "official channels." It's a complete failure and does little to promote good government.

Accessing A Public Website Is Not A Crime, And Craigslist Should Back Away From Its Lawsuit Claiming Such

from the bad-legacy dept              http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130619/16523823537/accessing-public-website-is-not-crime-craigslist-should-back-away-its-lawsuit-claiming-such.shtml

We've written a few times about Craigslist's unfortunate and misguided lawsuit against 3taps and Padmapper, companies which aggregated Craigslist data, allowing others to build useful services on top of Craigslist, driving additional traffic and usage back to Craigslist. It's upsetting on the basic level that Craigslist is attacking companies that make its data more useful, and it's doubly upsetting given that Craigslist itself is generally such a big supporter of basic internet freedoms and good policy online. To see it so aggressively attack some other innovators -- with very broad and dangerous interpretations of both copyright law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is immensely troubling. Perhaps more troubling is that the district court initially bought some of Craigslist's expansive arguments on both fronts (while pushing back on the most extreme arguments). Still, the ruling was dangerous on many levels, and now the EFF (which often works with Craigslist on things) has filed an amicus brief arguing against this dangerous interpretation.

Specifically, the EFF is (quite reasonably) concerned about the court's ruling that said because Craigslist sent a cease and desist letter to 3taps, and 3taps changed its IP address and continued visiting Craigslist's site, that it had violated the CFAA -- even though the website was freely available to the public.
The CFAA does not and should not impose liability on anyone who accesses information publicly available on the Internet. Because the CFAA and Penal Code § 502 imposes both civil and criminal liability, it must be interpreted narrowly. That means information on a publicly accessible website can be accessed by anyone on the Internet without running afoul of criminal computer hacking laws. In the absence of access, as opposed to use, restrictions, Craigslist cannot use these anti-hacking laws to complain when the information it voluntarily broadcasts to the world is accessed, even if it is upset about a competing or complementary business.
EFF points out, both in its blog post and in its filing, how much Craigslist itself benefits from an open internet, and why it's not good that it's now fighting against that very principle.
But benefits to this openness remain and Craigslist itself is a notable example of these benefits. Craigslist provides a popular and wide reaching classified advertising service, allowing people to post mostly free classified ads that can be seen by anyone anywhere in the world without charge. Craigslist claims that 60 million people use Craigslist in the United States each month, that 100 million classified ads are posted each month and that the site receives 50 billion page views per month. It receives 2 million new job postings a month, supports advertisements posted in 13 different languages and has more than 700 local sites in 70 countries. It is one of the 25 most visited websites in the United States.

Craigslist’s enormous success is a result of its openness: anyone anywhere can access any of its websites and obtain information about apartments for rent, new jobs or cars for sale. Its openness means that Craigslist is the go to place on the web for classified ads; it users post on Craigslist because they know their ads will reach the largest audience.

But what Craigslist is trying to do here is to use the CFAA’s provisions to enforce the unilateral determinations it has made concerning access to its website, an Internet site that it has already chosen to open up to the general public, attempting to turn a law against computer hacking into a new tool. But prohibiting access to an otherwise publicly available website is not the type of harm that Congress intended to be proscribed in the CFAA, and nowhere in the legislative history is there any suggestion that the CFAA was drafted to grant website owners such unbridled discretion.
Hopefully the court recognizes the troubles of its earlier ruling, and Craigslist also recognizes the folly of this approach.

Stu Seagall Strategic Operations Video Business Card

Stu Seagall Strategic Operations Video Business Card                   

The Waste List: 66 Crazy Ways That The U.S. Government Is Wasting Your Hard-Earned Money

we pay for them !!!       how that make you feel America ?       we got no  $$$ ..they got plenty of $$$    were going goodddddddddddddd  huh we we we weeeeeeeeeee we we weeeeee :o            

The Waste List: 66 Crazy Ways That The U.S. Government Is Wasting Your Hard-Earned Money

The U.S. CapitolWhy did the U.S. government spend 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly?  Why did the U.S. government spend $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior"?  Why did the U.S. government spend nearly a million dollars on a new soccer field for detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay?  This week when I saw that the IRS was about to pay out 70 million dollars in bonuses to their employees and that the U.S. government was going to be leaving 7 billion dollars worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan, it caused me to reflect on all of the other crazy ways that the government has been wasting our money in recent years.  So I decided to go back through my previous articles and put together a list.  I call it "The Waste List".  Even though our politicians insist that there is very little that can still be cut out of the budget, the truth is that the federal budget is absolutely drowning in pork.  The following are 66 crazy ways that the U.S. government is wasting your hard-earned money...
#1 The IRS is about to pay out 70 million dollars in bonuses to employees even though discretionary bonuses are supposed to be cancelled due to the sequester.
#2 According to the Washington Post, the U.S. government is going to leave 7 billion dollars worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan.
#3 It is being projected that the trip that the Obamas will be making to Africa will cost U.S. taxpayers $100,000,000.
#4 The NIH plans to spend $509,840 on a study that "will send text messages in 'gay lingo' to methamphetamine addicts to try to persuade them to use fewer drugs and more condoms."
#5 The National Science Foundation has given $384,949 to Yale University to do a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”.  Try not to laugh, but much of this research involves examining and measuring the reproductive organs of male ducks.
#6 The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of “Star Trek” and a film parody of “Gilligan’s Island”.  Internal Revenue Service employees were the actors in the two parodies, so as you can imagine the acting was really bad.
#7 The NIH has given $1.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to study why “three-quarters” of lesbians in the United States are overweight and why most gay males are not.
#8 The NIH has also spent $2.7 million to study why lesbians have more “vulnerability to hazardous drinking”.
#9 The U.S. government is giving sixteen F-16s and 200 Abrams tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even though the new president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), constantly makes statements such as the following
“Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them”
#10 During 2012, the salaries of Barack Obama’s three climate change advisers combined came to a grand total of more than $370,000.
#11 Overall, 139 different White House staffers were making at least $100,000 during 2012, and there were 20 staffers that made the maximum of $172,200.
#12 Amazingly, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 1.4 billion dollars a year on the Obamas.  Meanwhile, British taxpayers only spend about 58 million dollars on the entire royal family.
#13 During 2012, $25,000 of federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.
#14 The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” in 2012.
#15 NASA spends close to a million dollars a year developing a menu of food for a manned mission to Mars even though it is being projected that a manned mission to Mars is still decades away.
#16 During 2012, the federal government spent 15 million dollars to help the Russians recruit nuclear scientists.
#17 Over the past 15 years, a total of approximately $5.25 million has been spent on hair care services for the U.S. Senate.
#18 The U.S. government spent 27 million dollars to teach Moroccans how to design and make pottery in 2012.
#19 At a time when we have an epidemic of unemployment in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education is spending $1.3 million to “reduce linguistic, academic, and employment barriers for skilled and low-skilled immigrants and refugees, and to integrate them into the U.S. workforce and professions.”
#20 The federal government still sends about 20 million dollars a year to the surviving family members of veterans of World War I, even though World War I ended 94 years ago.
#21 The U.S. government is spending approximately 3.6 million dollars a year to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
#22 During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000.  They used part of that money to help fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it will help them with their putting.
#23 The U.S. government is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority every single year.
#24 Federal agencies have purchased a total of approximately 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the past couple of years.  It is claimed that all of this ammunition is needed for “training purposes”.
#25 During 2012, the National Science Foundation spent $516,000 on the creation of a video game called “Prom Week” which apparently simulates “all the social interactions of the event.
#26 If you can believe it, $10,000 of U.S. taxpayer money was actually used to purchase talking urinal cakes up in Michigan.
#27 When Joe Biden and his staff took a trip to London, the hotel bill cost U.S. taxpayers $459,388.65.
#28 Joe Biden and his staff also stopped in Paris for one night.  The hotel bill for that one night came to $585,000.50.
#29 If you can believe it, close to 15,000 retired federal employees are currently collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually.  That list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.
#30 The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $300,000 to encourage Americans to eat caviar.
#31 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $666,905 to a group of researchers that is conducting a study on the benefits of watching reruns on television.
#32 The National Science Foundation has given 1.2 million dollars to a team of “scientists” that is spending part of that money on a study that is seeking to determine whether elderly Americans would benefit from playing World of Warcraft or not.
#33 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $548,731 to a team of researchers that concluded that those that drink heavily in their thirties also tend to feel more immature.
#34 The National Science Foundation recently spent $30,000 on a study to determine if “gaydar” actually exists.  This is the conclusion that the researchers reached at the end of the study….
“Gaydar is indeed real and… its accuracy is driven by sensitivity to individual facial features”
#35 In 2011, the National Institutes of Health spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.
#36 The National Institutes of Health has spent more than 5 million dollars on a website called Sexpulse that is targeted at “men who use the Internet to seek sex with men”.  According to Fox News, the website “includes pornographic images of homosexual sex as well as naked and scantily clad men” and features “a Space Invaders-style interactive game that uses a penis-shaped blaster to shoot down gay epithets.”
#37 The General Services Administration spent $822,751 on a “training conference” for 300 west coast employees at the M Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.  The following is how the Washington Post described some of the wasteful expenses that happened during this “conference”…
Among the “excessive, wasteful and in some cases impermissable” spending the inspector general documented: $5,600 for three semi-private catered in-room parties and $44 per person daily breakfasts; $75,000 for a “team-building” exercise — the goal was to build a bicycle; $146,000 on catered food and drinks; and $6,325 on commemorative coins in velvet boxes to reward all participants for their work on stimulus projects. The $31,208 “networking” reception featured a $19-per-person artisanal cheese display and $7,000 of sushi. At the conference’s closing-night dinner, employees received “yearbooks” with their pictures, at a cost of $8,130.
You can see some stunning pictures of GSA employees living the high life in Las Vegas right here.
#38 Do you remember when credit rating agency Egan Jones downgraded U.S. government debt from AA+ to AA?  Well, someone in the federal government apparently did not like that at all.  According to Zero Hedge, the SEC planned to file charges against Egan Jones for “misstatements” on a regulatory application with the SEC.
Normally, the SEC does not go after anyone.  After all, when is the last time a major banker went to prison?
No, the truth is that the SEC is usually just a huge waste of taxpayer money.  According to ABC News, one investigation found that 17 senior SEC officials had been regularly viewing pornography while at work.  While the American people were paying their salaries, this is what senior SEC officials were busy doing…
One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn, according to the report, which has yet to be released. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.
An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive.
Another SEC accountant used his SEC-issued computer to upload his own sexually explicit videos onto porn websites he joined.
And another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.
#39 According to InformationWeek, the federal government is spending “millions of dollars” to train Asian call center workers.
#40 If you can believe it, the federal government has actually spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
#41 The U.S. Agency for International Development spent 10 million dollars to create a version of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani television.
#42 The Obama administration has plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars to help students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.
#43 The National Science Foundation spent $198,000 on a University of California-Riverside study that explored “motivations, expectations and goal pursuit in social media.” One of the questions the study sought an answer to was the following: “Do unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?”
#44 In 2011, $147,138 was given to the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan.  Their best magic trick is making U.S. taxpayer dollars disappear.
#45 The federal government recently spent $74,000 to help Michigan “increase awareness about the role Michigan plays in the production of trees and poinsettias.”
#46 In 2011, the federal government gave $550,000 toward the making of a documentary about how rock and roll contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.
#47 The National Institutes of Health has contributed $55,382 toward a study of “hookah smoking habits” in the country of Jordan.
#48 The federal government gave $606,000 to researchers at Columbia University to study how heterosexuals use the Internet to find love.
#49 A total of $133,277 was recently given to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games for video game preservation.  The International Center for the History of Electronic Games says that it “collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and connect with each other, including across boundaries of culture and geography.”
#50 The federal government has given approximately $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their "research" into video games such as World of Warcraft.
#51 In 2011, the National Science Foundation gave one team of researchers $149,990 to create a video game called “RapidGuppy” for cell phones and other mobile devices.
#52 In 2011, $936,818 was spent developing an online soap opera entitled “Diary of a Single Mom”.  The show “chronicles the lives and challenges of three single mothers and their families trying to get ahead despite obstacles that all single mothers face, such as childcare, healthcare, education, and finances.”
#53 Last year, the federal government spent $96,000 to buy iPads for kindergarten students in Maine.
#54 The U.S. Postal Service once spent $13,500 for a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
#55 In 2011, the Air Force Academy completed work on an outdoor worship area for pagans and Wiccans.  The worship area consists of “a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with [a] propane fire pit” and it cost $51,474 to build.  The worship area is “for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of ‘Earth-based’, which includes Wiccans, druids and pagans.”  At this point, that only includes 3 current students at the Air Force Academy.
#56 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $400,000 to study why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
#57 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#58 The National Institutes of Health once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
#59 The National Science Foundation recently spent $200,000 on a study that examined how voters react when politicians change their stances on climate change.
#60 The federal government recently spent $484,000 to help build a Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in Arlington, Texas.
#61 At this point, China is holding over a trillion dollars of U.S. government debt.  But that didn’t stop the United States from sending 17.8 million dollars in foreign aid to China in 2011.
#62 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the largest snack food maker in the world (PepsiCo Inc.) a total of 1.3 million dollars in corporate welfare that was used to help build "a Greek yogurt factory in New York."
#63 The National Science Foundation recently gave a whopping $697,177 to a New York City-based theater company to produce a musical about climate change.
#64 The federal government once shelled out $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
#65 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once handed researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#66 The federal government has spent $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior".
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20 Signs That The Pharmaceutical Companies Are Running A 280 Billion Dollar Money Making Scam

Pharmaceutical Drugs - Photo by Tom VarcoIf you could get 70 percent of Americans addicted to your drugs and rake in $280 billion a year in the process, would you do it?  If you could come up with a “pill for every problem” and charge Americans twice as much for those pills as people in other countries pay, would you do it?  If you could make more money than you ever dreamed possible by turning the American people into the most doped up people in the history of the planet, would you do it?  In America today, the number of people hooked on legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people hooked on illegal drugs.  And sadly, the number of people killed by legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people killed by illegal drugs.  But most Americans assume that if a drug is “legal” that it must be safe.  After all, the big pharmaceutical companies and the federal government would never allow us to take anything that would hurt us, right?  Sadly, the truth is that they don’t really care about us.  They don’t really care that prescription painkillers are some of the most addictive drugs on the entire planet and that they kill more Americans each year than heroin and cocaine combined.  They don’t care that antidepressants are turning tens of millions of Americans into zombies and can significantly increase the chance of suicide (just look at the warning label).  All the big pharmaceutical companies really care about is making as much money as they possibly can.  The following are 20 signs that the pharmaceutical companies are running a $280 billion money making scam…
#1 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug.  An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#2 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years of age say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.
#3 The 11 largest pharmaceutical companies combined to rake in approximately $85,000,000,000 in profits in 2012.
#4 During 2013, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs.
#5 According to Alternet, last year “11 of the 12 new-to-market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration were priced above $100,000 per-patient per-year”.
#6 The CDC says that spending on prescription drugs more than doubled between 1999 and 2008.
#7 Many prescription drugs cost about twice as much in the United States as they do in other countries.
#8 One study found that more than 20 percent of all American adults are taking at least one drug for “psychiatric” or “behavioral” disorders.
#9 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#10 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#11 A shocking Government Accountability Office report discovered that approximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.  In fact, the report found that many states seem to be doping up foster children as a matter of course.  Just check out these stunning statistics
In Texas, foster children were 53 times more likely to be prescribed five or more psychiatric medications at the same time than non-foster children. In Massachusetts, they were 19 times more likely. In Michigan, the number was 15 times. It was 13 times in Oregon. And in Florida, foster children were nearly four times as likely to be given five or more psychotropic medications at the same time compared to non-foster children.
#12 In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs.  Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
#13 The total number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005.
#14 All of those antidepressants don’t seem to be working too well.  The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010.  The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents.
#15 According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 36 million Americans have abused prescription drugs at some point in their lives.
#16 A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.
#17 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#18 According to the Los Angeles Times, drug deaths (mostly caused by prescription drugs) are climbing at an astounding rate….
Drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, years for which more detailed data are available. Deaths more than tripled among people aged 50 to 69, the Times analysis found. In terms of sheer numbers, the death toll is highest among people in their 40s.
#19 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
#20 Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.
The American people deserve better than that.  Every year, the United States spends more on health care than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined.  In fact, if the U.S. health care system was a separate nation it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.
For all the money that we spend, we should be the healthiest people in the world by a wide margin.  Instead, life expectancy is higher in dozens of other countries and we have very high rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.  For much more on the colossal failure of our health care system, please see my previous article entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“.
So what do you think about the pharmaceutical companies that are making billions of dollars by getting the American people addicted to their super-expensive legal drugs?
Please feel free to express your opinion by posting a comment below…
Drugs - Photo by Sponge
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