DOJ Argues No One Has Standing To Challenge Metadata Collection Even As It Says Govt Can Legally Collect Everyone's

DOJ Argues No One Has Standing To Challenge Metadata Collection Even As It Says Govt Can Legally Collect Everyone's

How The Government Blocked An Expert From Attending Its Own Cryptology Symposium

from the government-induced-xenophobia dept

One of the three crafters of the RSA algorithm, Adi Shamir (who is Israeli), has been effectively locked out of attending the NSA-sponsored Cryptologic History Symposium, thanks to a combination of bureaucratic inefficiency and the US government's ongoing paranoia about all things terrorism.

Shamir has written a long apology for his inability to attend which details the multiple events that led to his unavailability despite having a paper of his formally accepted by the Symposium. It begins with a series of delays centered around acquiring a visa for his visit to the US.

I needed a new J1 visa, and I filed the visa application at the beginning of June, two and a half months before my planned departure to the Crypto conference in mid August. I applied so early since it was really important for me to attend the Crypto conference – I was one of the founders of this flagship annual academic event (I actually gave the opening talk in the first session of the first meeting of this conference in 1981) and I did my best to attend all its meetings in the last 32 years.

Despite this early start, it took four months before his visa was finally stamped on his passport -- September 30th, to be exact, narrowly avoiding the government shutdown that would have likely prevented his visit entirely.

And it wasn't just Shamir who had difficulty securing a visa. It appears the US government's reticence and reluctance to approve visas for certain people has had a deleterious effect on other foreign scientists. Shamir quotes a letter from the head of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science stating that more scientists are choosing to "opt out" rather than deal with the laborious approval process.

“I’m allowing myself to write you again, on the same topic, and related to the major difficulties the scientists of the Weizmann Institute of Science are experiencing in order to get Visa to the US. In my humble opinion, we are heading toward a disaster, and I have heard many people, among them our top scientists, saying that they are not willing anymore to visit the US, and collaborate with American scientists, because of the difficulties. It is clear that scientists have been singled out, since I hear that other ‘simple citizen’, do get their visa in a short time.”

After Shamir's paper was accepted by the symposium, he contacted the NSA, hoping that it could intervene to get his visa approved in time to make the conference.

In July 2013 I told the NSA-affiliated conference organizers that I was having some problems in getting my visa, and gently asked whether they could do something about it. Always eager to help, the NSA people leaped into action, and immediately sent me a short email written with a lot of tact:

“The trouble you are having is regrettable…Sorry you won’t be able to come to our conference. We have submitted our program and did not include you on it.”

Such helpful folks at the NSA. "That sucks for you. We'll just cross your name off the list." Shamir says he's never seen one of his accepted papers treated so cavalierly in his 35 years of attending conferences. (I would imagine he himself hasn't been treated that cavalierly either.) Perceiving this to be a dead end (and not feeling like attending an event where it seemed he "wasn't wanted"), Shamir scheduled an appearance at MIT -- only to be contacted far too late to change plans with a "reinvitation" to the NSA-sponsored event.

Shamir is clearly irritated by this lumbering bureaucracy and a visa process that has succumbed to intelligence agency/administration paranoia that clearly perceives foreigners, especially those in scientific fields, to be a "threat," rather than the non-harmful, non-dangerous human beings they are. If active terrorists only make up a very slim percentage of the world's population, why does the government continue to treat a large percentage of certain non-US citizens as potential threats?

Shamir's final paragraph takes aim at the painful visa process and adds a hilarious slam against the "dangerous foreigners" mentality that overrides logic and common sense in certain government agencies.

Clearly, no one in the US is trying to see the big picture, and the heavy handed visa bureaucracy you have created seems to be collapsing under its own weight. This is not a security issue – I have been to the US close to a hundred times so far (including some multi-year visits), and had never overstayed my visas. In addition, the number of terrorists among the members of the US National Academy of Science is rather small. As a friend of the US I am deeply worried that if you continue to delay visas in such a way, the only thing you will achieve is to alienate many world-famous foreign scientists, forcing them to increase their cooperation with European or Chinese scientists whose countries roll the red carpet for such visits. Is this really in the US best interest?

Shamir's criticism is dead-on. The overriding mentality post-9/11 throws everything out and starts at square one, even if it's someone like Shamir, who has visited the country hundreds of times. Apparently, every time someone visiting on a visa exits the country and returns to their homeland, they're opening themselves up to radicalization by our nation's unquantifiable and unverifiable "enemies." The post-9/11 climate of fear doesn't allow anyone to build up a track record of successful, peaceful, non-terrorist-related visits to the US. It's a blank slate every time.

As Shamir points out, the long-term repercussions of this mindset will be a reduction in cooperation and shared knowledge which will likely result in the US falling behind other countries in terms of technological and scientific advancement. Just as certainly as we view certain bigot-heavy areas of our country as "backwards," our country's xenophobic, supposedly "anti-terrorist" policies will soon see our country viewed as the world's Birmingham, Alabama.

US Losing the World’s Respect Due to its Hypocrisy in the Middle East

“Only the world’s international pressure is going to bring about a resolution, which would have to be favorable to Iran since Iran has done nothing wrong.”–James Fetzer

by James Fetzer and Press TV

 http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/10/15/us-losing-the-worlds-respect-due-to-its-hypocrisy-in-the-middle-east/

Press TV has conducted an interview with James Fetzer, professor at University of Minnesota, about talks over Iran’s nuclear program and the statement made by US Secretary of State John Kerry that Israel’s interests will always be kept in mind in this regard.

To view, click here: “US losing the world’s respect due to its hypocrisy in Middle East”

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: What do you make of Kerry’s remarks in the sense of how will it be translated when the time for talks come? He is making these comments to AIPAC, as we mentioned the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US – and also trying to placate Israel’s fears. What do you make of that? Fetzer: John F. Kennedy thought that AIPAC should be qualified as a foreign agent – that it should be registered as a foreign agent.I’m afraid that all the NSA information this massive surveillance is acquiring is being sent directly to Israel, which means Israel knows exactly what weaknesses it can use to exploit, to extort, to blackmail members of the American Congress up to and including the president, alas.John Kerry’s remarks clearly appear to be intended to dissuade Israeli concerns, but they’re ill-founded in the first place. Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming that Iran was about to get the bomb for the last 30 years.American intelligence agencies concluded in 2007 that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program, a conclusion it reaffirmed in 2011.

So it is ridiculous for America to be pursuing policies that are based on the presumption that Iran is pursuing a program it is not pursuing and that its own intelligence agencies have confirmed.

Press TV: What do you see in the coming days when the talks do happen? The Iranian side has said that they don’t want to hold talks for just talk’s sake – they want a win-win solution to this stand-off between Iran and the five permanent members of UN Security Council plus Germany? Fetzer: Well, Iran could agree to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to allow inspectors, except it’s already done that. It would be very appropriate to have Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to allow inspectors, which it has not done. Iran has no nuclear weapons. The policy of the nation is ‘nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none’.

Israel, however, has a massive stockpile of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons it has never declared. American hypocrisy in the Middle East has never been more conspicuous and it is causing the United States to lose the respect of the world.

Press TV: So you would say that the US doesn’t really intend to have this stand-off resolved? Fetzer: Well, it would be very desirable. I certainly do believe that the phone call between Obama and Rouhani was a move in the right direction. But what could they expect to have from Iran that Iran hasn’t already given. It seems to me this is window dressing – a staged performance. It would be very nice if something were to come out of it, but I myself have no confidence in either John Kerry or Barack Obama at this point in time. Only the world’s international pressure is going to bring about a resolution, which would have to be favorable to Iran since Iran has done nothing wrong.

---

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Mainstream media turns on Obamacare, liberals suddenly screaming mad about rate shock, Healthcare.gov disaster

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh did that "tingly"  feeling move ?       yep right up your ass !    ...fucking dummmycocks :0  oh lets not  fer~get ...you's republipubes   to   :O     

naturalnews.com

Originally published October 16 2013

Mainstream media turns on Obamacare, liberals suddenly screaming mad about rate shock, Healthcare.gov disaster

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) The mainstream media loves Obamacare. They love it so much that when the disastrous launch of the healthcare.gov system was evident to anyone with an IQ above room temperature, the media tried to cover it up for over a week, repeating the ridiculous White House spin that claimed the site was only crashing "because it was so popular." (Yes, people who call themselves "journalists" actually bought into this hoax.)

When that excuse crashed and burned, the media tried to say the glitches and error messages were no big deal because the site had a "new deadline" of mid-November, and it would probably be fixed by then.

Immediately after the site launch, I went public with an analysis of the website, concluding that Healthcare.gov was nothing short of an IT disaster with zero chance of functioning by January 1. Since then, other programmers and IT project managers have independently confirmed what I found, and the consensus among programmers is now quite clear: Healthcare.gov won't work in a week, a month or even three months. It may actually take years to get working correctly, if ever.

This fact is finally starting to sink into the minds of mainstream media journalists. Now, two weeks after attempting to deny reality, the mainstream media is reversing course and actually beginning to scream about the disastrous launch of Obamacare by HHS / Kathleen Sebelius. They are only attacking this, of course, because the disaster makes democrats look incompetent and stupid, and they hate it when that happens because the entire paradigm of centralized government elitism is based on the assumption that democrats are smarter than everyone else (and government is more capable than any other institution).

Here are just a few examples of mainstream media websites going off on Healthcare.gov:

Forbes.com: Obamacare's Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn't Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are

CNN: After Two Weeks CNN Reporter Still Hasn't Been Able To Sign Up For ObamaCare

Ezra Klein: "Obamacare is a big failure"

Anderson Cooper: White House is lying about enrollment numbers

Daily Kos (a hard-left liberal site): "Now, because of Obamacare, my wife's rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284. I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any f##king penalty. What the hell kind of reform is this?" The author goes on to say, "I realize I will probably get screamed at for posting this, but I can't imagine I am the only Californian who just received a rate increase from Kaiser based on these new laws."

Washington Post: "The Affordable Care Act's launch has been a failure" -- "disaster" -- "Is anybody going to be fired?"

Republicans made huge tactical error by focusing the nation's news cycles on the GOP instead of Healthcare.gov

On that last article above, Ezra Klein makes one point that's frighteningly accurate: the GOP made a huge tactical error in the timing of the government shutdown debacle vs. the Healthcare.gov launch. Instead of the mainstream media focusing on all the failures of Healthcare.gov and the "rate shock" now greeting Americans who try to enroll, they spent the last two weeks bashing Republicans and Tea Party members, thereby distracting the nation from the absolutely disastrous failure of the Obama administration's milestone launch of Obamacare.

The GOP has utterly failed to communicate the real story on this disastrous launch to the American people. Instead of news stories talking about all the people who have wasted hundreds of hours trying to sign up via a broken IT system, the media has spent most of that time denigrating Ted Cruz and other members of the GOP, all while John Boehner displayed what might go down in history as the worst example of House leadership in history.

Thanks to the disastrously disorganized Republicans, the public is hearing only one story right now: Everything is the GOP's fault! And the catastrophic launch of Healthcare.gov is getting a free pass. Somehow, this monumental failure of an incompetent administration is being sidelined in favor of a GOP bash-fest.

The real Obamacare disaster is yet to come

The media, you see, would rather deliver a beating to the GOP than discuss the far more serious issue of how Obama's flagship legislation is actually supposed to work come January 1. Because the real story here -- the story the media is totally missing -- is the unprecedented disaster that's going to unfold across this nation when the Obamacare system utterly fails to function by January 1.

What then? How will doctors, clinics and hospitals function when millions of people start showing up and demanding health care services even though they aren't actually enrolled in the system? When hospitals are being overrun with people who "thought" they signed up -- will Obama find yet another twisted way to blame Republicans?

The real issue here is that Democrats tend to be great communicators and Republicans tend to be terrible communicators. Democrats, however, are terrible economists while Republicans tend to be far better economists. What this means is that on any given issue, Democrats are far better able to tell their side of the story even though their approach is often the worst when it comes to real-world solutions.

The Obamacare fairy tale will soon evaporate

That's how we ended up with a president who is actually little more than a salesperson... a weaver of tall tales. Obamacare, we now know, was a fairy tale, yet it was sold so expertly that many Americans still somehow believe they are about to receive "free" health care just as soon as those little "glitches" get ironed out on Healthcare.gov.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It's also the cornerstone philosophy of politics in America. We can't fix the real problems facing this nation until we first concede that problems exist (infinite debt spending, out-of-control government, the erosion of civil liberties, etc). The very people who dare admit to having any connection with reality -- people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz -- are viciously attacked by everyone, including their own party members.

I want to see someone in Washington who has some guts. I don't care if they're Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent. We need men and women with backbone to stand up and resist this mad hurling of the nation into the fiscal abyss. Where has sanity gone? Why does the president refer to people who want to pull us back from the edge of financial collapse as "arsonists?" If we do not stop the unlimited debt spending now, when will it ever stop?

Obama has doubled our national debt. We are at $17 trillion and climbing, plus another $125 trillion in unfunded liabilities. These numbers will crush America's economic future, yet the only thing these kleptocrats in Washington seem to care about is whether their "gang" (party) ends up on top after the fallout settles.

What you are watching unfold in America today is pure madness. The ending chapter of this saga will not be pretty, and it will not be something you want to ride out with anything less than a full supply of storable food, non-hybrid seeds, spare cash, emergency medicine, self defense items and all the usual preparedness gear.

---

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Obamacare and the Assault on Workers’ Health Benefits

By Kate Randall and Barry Grey

Global Research, October 16, 2013

World Socialist Web Site

Region: USA

Theme: Poverty & Social Inequality

Developments in two major US cities underscore the anti-working class agenda underlying the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare.
On Monday, Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr announced that health insurance is being eliminated for retired city workers under age 65 and replaced with a $125 monthly stipend to use toward purchasing coverage on the insurance exchanges set up under the ACA. Retirees over 65 will be moved to Medicare.
In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the city will go forward with a plan to eliminate health insurance subsidies for retired city workers by the end of 2016.
Orr and Emanuel wasted no time in seizing on the launch of the Obamacare exchanges, which opened for business October 1, to announce their assault on retirees’ health care. In both Detroit and Chicago, workers who labored for decades with the promise that health care would be provided for them and their families in retirement are being robbed of their benefits and forced to purchase individual plans from private insurers on the Obamacare exchanges.
The essential aim of the ACA is rapidly emerging. Behind the talk of providing coverage for the uninsured, Obamacare was devised from the outset as a means of dismantling the employer-based system of health insurance that for decades guaranteed a basic level of health care for tens of millions of workers in the US. While Obama’s counter-reform will still leave some 31 million people uninsured, it will dramatically reduce health care costs for private and public employers by hiking workers’ out-of-pocket costs and slashing their benefits.
Health care coverage for their employees will cease to be the accepted norm for large and medium-sized businesses. Instead, workers will be left to their own devices, forced to confront gigantic health insurance corporations as individuals, with minimal subsidies from the government or their private employers that will do little to offset huge increases in premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
In essence, a voucher-type system is being instituted, and the principle will inevitably be extended to Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run health programs for retirees and poor people, respectively. This will provide the means for privatizing and dismantling these basic social programs.
In contrast to Western Europe, Canada, Australia and other industrialized capitalist countries, where health care was sponsored by the state, in the US employer-sponsored insurance became the norm in the years after World War II. The years 1940 to 1960 saw a seven-fold increase in the number of people enrolled in such health plans. By 1958, three-quarters of all Americans had some form of health coverage.
The extension of health coverage by employers was a gain won by the working class in the course of bitter struggles. The fact that it is being gutted is yet another expression of the betrayal of the working class by the trade unions and the transformation of these organizations into de facto arms of the corporations and the government.
Cities and states across the US are considering moving their retirees, and in some cases their active employees, off of city-funded benefits. Neil Bomberg, program director at the National League of Cities, said in an interview with Bloomberg News, “Cities and towns will be looking at ways to reduce those costs, and the exchanges may provide a very viable mechanism.” The state of Washington is considering dumping its entire active workforce onto the Obamacare exchanges.
Bankrupt Stockton, California ended subsidized coverage for its retirees on June 30. The Association of Retired Employees of the City of Stockton estimates that as many as 300 of these retired workers will not purchase coverage through the ACA because they will not qualify for subsidies or will be unable to afford the premiums.
Major companies including IBM, Time Warner, Caterpillar and DuPont have already shifted their retirees off of company-administered health care plans and into privately run health care exchanges. Such exchanges, managed by private companies such as Extend Health, are basically the same as those set up under the ACA—but with a company stipend instead of a government subsidy.
Companies such as Sears Holding Corp. and Darden Restaurants have moved their active employees to these private exchanges. Health consultant Accenture predicts that this private insurance exchange market will undergo an astronomical growth in the not-to-distant future, rising from about 1 million this year to 40 million by 2018. This means that nearly a quarter of the 170 million people presently enrolled in company-sponsored plans will be dumped by their employer onto these private exchanges over the next five years.
The changes being imposed on retirees’ health benefits in Chicago and Detroit serve as a warning that the political establishment is seizing on the economic crisis, and the claims of underfunded and unsecured pension and health care obligations, to implement deep-going changes that threaten to plunge large numbers of workers and retirees into poverty. It is no coincidence that these attacks are being carried out in major cities run by Democrats with long-standing connections to Obama.
Rahm Emanuel was White House chief of staff for most of Obama’s first term. Orr campaigned for Obama and played a major role in Obama’s 2009 forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, which was used to slash the wages of newly hired auto workers in half.
The unions are complicit in these attacks. They are allied with Obama and the Democrats and support Obamacare. Their only concern is that the union officials maintain their huge salaries and perks, sustained by the inflow of union dues.
The concerted attack on health care in the US demonstrates the incompatibility of private ownership of the health system and the basic social rights of the working class, including health care and a secure retirement.
True reform of the health care system can be carried out only on the basis of the socialist reorganization of society, placing the entire health care industry—the insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and health care chains—under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class.
Kate Randall and Barry Grey

Global Wealth and Inequality: Towards a World of Super Rich “Trillionaires” Amidst Mounting Poverty

The Credit Suisse Wealth Report

By Paul B. Farrell

Global Research, October 16, 2013

Market Watch

Theme: Global Economy, Poverty & Social Inequality

 America’s new ‘economic guillotine’ is dead ahead. 

Wealth report on inequality calls to mind French Revolution
Credit Suisse’s new Global Wealth Report reminds us of the 1790s when inequality ignited the French Revolution and 40,000 met the guillotine. Today, Credit Suisse data reveal that just 1% own 46% of the world, while two-thirds of the world’s people have less than $10,000 wealth.
Credit Suisse predicts a world with 11 trillionaires in a couple generations, as the rich get richer and the gap widens.
Can this trend continue? Or will it trigger an “economic guillotine?” Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, author of “The Price of Inequality,” is not as optimistic as Credit Suisse: “America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity.” But today the “numbers show that the American dream is a myth … the gap’s widening … the clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.”
History is warning us: Inequality is a recipe for disaster, rebellions, revolutions and wars. Not in two generations. Much, much sooner, a reminder of the Pentagon’s famous 2003 prediction: “As the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies will emerge … warfare will define human life on the planet by 2020.” Yes, much sooner than two generations.
Revolutions catch us off-guard, ignite suddenly, spreading like fire
The French Revolution is a powerful history lesson, easily denied. Angry masses. Their treasury bankrupt. High interest on nation debt consumed half their tax revenues. Why? Earlier wars, a decedent aristocracy, an incompetent King Louis XVI. The anger so intense that during the 1792-93 Reign of Terror the king was guillotined, along with as many as 40,000 others, many of whom were innocent, as inequality ripped apart their nation.
Why? The aristocracy, intellectuals and the rich were oblivious of the needs of the masses, much like our leaders today. As Adbusters magazine put it: “Even in the seconds before their heads were about to roll away from their bodies underneath the blade of the guillotine, it still puzzled the opulent Paris elite how this could be happening.”
The truth is, they were in denial, not listening to the masses for years. Yes, revolutions catch whole nations by surprise: “Just months before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, everything was peachy. The social order ran smooth. The poor paid their dues. The middle class kept their mouths shut. The aristocracy partied … and the next day they were being dragged through the streets by their frilly collars like common thieves.”
Inequality is accelerating rapidly to revolutionary levels
Are we near a new Bastille Day today? Barry Ritholtz’s the Big Picture recently posted “The Stunning Truth About Inequality In America,” a list of 14 reasons from “WashingtonsBlog,” warning us the inequality gap is accelerating rapidly, widening so fast that America may soon be at what you could call Bastille Day levels, an inequality gap so great it is the fuel and trigger that can ignite an angry people into revolution.
These 14 triggers are reinforced by the statistics in the Credit Suisse Wealth Report, Stiglitz’s challenge and the Pentagon prediction. Here’s a slightly edited version of the “Stunning Truth About Inequality,” a must-read for America’s 95 million of investors:

1. It’s worse than you imagine. Americans consistently underestimate the amount of inequality in our country. They would be shocked to learn the truth …

 2. Worse than history’s worst. Twice as bad as in ancient Rome, worse than in tsarist Russia, worse than in America’s Gilded Age, worse than in modern Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen, worse than in many banana republics in Latin America. Yes, today’s inequality is even worse than experienced by slaves in 1774 colonial America.

 3. America lagging other developed nations. Worse in America than any other developed nation.
4. Permanent inequality. Staggering inequality in America has become permanent.
5. America’s two economies. There are two economies: one for the rich, and the other for everyone else.

6. Top 1% rallys, while 99% in recession. The economy has only recovered for the richest 1% … the rest of the country is more or less stuck in a depression.

 7. Rich keep getting richer. The Super Rich are raking in more than ever before.
8. Poor getting poorer. While more and more people are sliding into poverty.
9. Middle class now dead. One of every five households in the America is on food stamps. The middle class has more or less been destroyed.
10. Causes market crashes. Who’s who of prominent economists and investors say that inequality causes crashes and hurts the economy.
11. Great Depression. Extreme inequality helped cause the Great Depression, the current financial crisis … and the fall of the Roman Empire.
12. Bad political policies. Inequality isn’t happening for mysterious or uncontrollable reasons. Bad government policy is responsible for runaway inequality.
13. And leadership. Bush was horrible, but income inequality has increased even more under Obama than under Bush.

14. Conservatives. It’s a myth that conservatives accept runaway inequality. Conservatives are as concerned as liberals regarding the stunning collapse of upward mobility.

 Even if the Super Rich do avoid the coming economic guillotine, what’s ahead? In “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” hedge fund manager Barton Biggs, former Morgan Stanley global strategist, warned of the “possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure,” a revolution of the disillusioned, angry masses. His solution? Buy a farm up in the mountains:

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food … well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson.”

 For further details: 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-new-economic-guillotine-is-dead-ahead-2013-10-16?link=MW_home_latest_news

Aaron Swartz’s unfinished whistleblowing platform finally launches

SecureDrop was heavily audited by Bruce Schneier, Jacob Appelbaum, and others.

by Cyrus Farivar - Oct 15 2013

• Media Innovation

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/aaron-swartzs-unfinished-whistleblowing-platform-finally-launches/

About nine months ago, the Internet lost one of its most beloved activists in Aaron Swartz. But starting today, his legacy lives on through the formal launch of a project called SecureDrop.
The new online platform was originally coded by Swartz in collaboration with Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen. It has since been taken over by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a group founded by a handful of Electronic Frontier Foundation staffers. The group describes its SecureDrop in this way:

SecureDrop is a Python application that accepts messages and documents from the Web and encrypts them for secure storage. Each source who uses the platform is assigned a unique codename that lets the source establish a relationship with the news organization without having to reveal her real identity or resort to e-mail.

The project’s code has gone through a “detailed security audit” (PDF) by a team from the University of Washington, which also included Bruce Schneier and Jacob Appelbaum (Tor developer and renowned security researcher).
“I think the [former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden] case showed that there are sources out there that really care about security and will only go to journalists who take it seriously,” Trevor Timm, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s executive director, told Ars.
“On the flip side of things, I don’t think your average source is as brilliant as Snowden. He may have been able to [leak information securely] through various methods because he was a trained expert in this type of way of communicating. For others it may not be so easy. What we hope to accomplish with this is to allow a source who does not have as much technical prowess as Snowden to feel much safer than using an open source communication like e-mail.”
Timm added that media organizations that want to participate in installing this software on their servers can do so for free, and the group also offers technical assistance. That would involve reimbursements of “travel and hardware costs” to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, probably totaling in the “single thousands of dollar” range.
SecureDrop is hardly the first online submission system to launch in the years since WikiLeaks’ debut. Many similar whistleblowing sites have come and gone (a few even had some limited success) since then, as Ars has previously documented.
Since May 2013, The New Yorker has been using this code to run its StrongBox project (like Ars, The New Yorker is a Condé Nast publication). At this time, it's unclear what, if any, impact the project has had so far. But Nicholas Thompson, editor of newyorker.com, told Nieman Reports in August 2013 that Strongbox has been useful.
"Not only is it a good tool for people we didn't know about to send us information we don't know, it's also a good tool for just communicating with sources who don't want to meet in a park,” he said.

MPAA Says Piracy Damages Can’t Be Measured

• Ernesto
• October 16, 2013
• isohunt,
  mpaa

In a new filing submitted to a California federal court, the MPAA says that actual piracy damages “are not capable of meaningful measurement.” The group fears that looking at actual damages in the isoHunt case would be “perverse” and “unfair.” What the MPAA can measure, however, is how much it will take to bankrupt the BitTorrent search engine isoHunt. According to the movie studios, two to five million dollars will be enough to put the Canadian company out of business.
As the trial date moves closer, the arguments between the MPAA and BitTorrent search engine isoHunt are heating up.
One of the issues the two parties are in disagreement over is whether isoHunt should be able to question the notion that piracy is actually hurting the movie industry.
To argue that piracy might not be as disastrous as it’s often portrayed, the torrent site has listed researcher and economics professor Koleman Strumpf as one of its witnesses. Strumpf’s research has previously shown that piracy is not hurting sales at all, and isoHunt is expected to use this in its favor during the trial.
The MPAA, however, prefers not to discuss the topic of actual damages during the trial. They argue that the issue is too complex and that it could mislead the jury. For example, isoHunt may be able to show that movie industry profits are increasing, but that doesn’t mean that piracy has had no effect.
The movie studios are therefore asking the court to exclude the issue, arguing that actual damages can’t be measured.
“To permit consideration of actual damages under these circumstances would be perverse – and particularly unfair – given that Plaintiffs elected statutory damages precisely because their actual damages are not capable of meaningful measurement,” the MPAA’s legal team writes.
The MPAA argues that since the court has decided to award statutory damages, it is irrelevant to what extent their revenues are negatively impacted by online piracy.
“Defendants should not be permitted to exploit the inherent difficulty of proving actual damages in a case such as this as a basis for lowering the statutory damages award, especially when the very purpose of statutory damages was to provide a remedy that is not dependent on proof of actual damages.”
While the MPAA admits that the effect of online piracy is nearly impossible to measure, the movie studios do have a very clear picture of what’s needed to bankrupt isoHunt. The transcript from a recent court meeting reveals that two to five million should exhaust the company.

Court: What do you estimate to be the resources of [Defendants]? . . . What do you suspect?
MPAA’s counsel: Based on our estimate, Your Honor, we believe a couple to a few million dollars would exhaust Mr. Fung’s or defendants’ ability to pay…
MPAA’s counsel: A couple to a few million dollars would exhaust defendants’–
Court: Does that mean, like $2 million
MPAA’s counsel: Two million dollars to $4 million, $5 million at the most.

When the court asked the MPAA’s counsel why it was going for nearly $600 million in damages when a few million would be enough to put the company out of business, the MPAA argued that the high amount is needed to deter others from starting their own torrent search engines.

Court: So why are you making such a fetish about 2,000 or 3,000 or 10,000 or 100 copyrights?
MPAA’s Mr. Fabrizio: Your Honor, the purpose of statutory damages is not only to seek compensation from the defendants, the extraordinarily important purpose is to create — send a message to other would-be infringers like defendants, and there are thousands of them…
Court: But if you strip him of all his assets — and you’re suggesting that a much lesser number of copyright infringements would accomplish that, where is the deterrence by telling the world that you took someone’s resources away because of illegal conduct entirely or 50 times over?

In a reply to the MPAA’s opposition, isoHunt argues that actual damages are important information for the jury to have, so a more balanced sum can be reached. If there is no proof of piracy hurting the movie industry, a $3 million fine might be more appropriate than $600 million.
“Evidence on Plaintiffs’ overall and specific revenues relating to the works at issue will allow the jury to infer that Plaintiffs have not suffered any actual damages, which can be contrasted with the financial condition of Defendants in the jury fashioning an appropriate award,” isoHunt’s counsel argues.
“For example, if Plaintiffs enjoyed uninterrupted profits, and their overall revenues did not decline during the time that isoHunt was launched and Defendants began complying with the Injunction, the jury could conclude that it would be unjust and a windfall to award Plaintiffs anything more than the near $3 million statutory minimum.”
The court will now have to decide whether the issue of actual damages can be brought up in court. If that’s the case, then the trial is going to be a numbers game with experts from all sides trying to prove whether or not piracy is hurting Hollywood, and if so to what extent.

Piracy is Disgusting! No, it’s Promotion! Artists Disagree as Links Get Removed

• Andy
• October 15, 2013
• bpi,
  piracy

Several artists including the award-winning Jessie J have been telling the BBC what piracy means to them. Perhaps surprisingly they aren’t all in favor of stamping it out, in fact one star views the phenomenon as having its uses. With views ranging from “disgusting” to “promotional”, the artists’ opinions differ wildly, but nevertheless the BPI is working hard to take links down, whether the artists agree or not.
The issue of Internet piracy is certainly a polarizing one, with different camps setting out their stances over whether the practice is generally a good or bad thing.
Just last month a report from the London School of Economics reignited the debate after coming to the conclusion that rather than hurting the entertainment industries, piracy is actually helping matters.
Needless to say, the MPAA and IFPI were less than impressed with that conclusion and quickly moved to counter the study. But while scholars and music businessmen fight it out, what about the opinions of those who are supposed to really matter – the artists.
The BBC has spoken to several British artists to get their views on piracy and their responses are quite a mixed bag.
Pop icon Jessie J didn’t deviate from the opinions she’s expressed in the past. Perhaps cleverly addressing the “nothing was stolen” response to the piracy-is-theft mantra, the 10 million album selling star said downloading is akin to taking someone’s time.
“It’s like going to the hairdressers, having your hair cut and running out,” she said.
“You can’t make music for free, you can’t live for free. If people illegally download your album it’s very likely that you won’t make another one.”
Of course, plenty of people downloaded Jessie J’s first album and she’s just released another, so her argument doesn’t quite stand up. However, she was nowhere near as aggressive as singer John Newman.
“I think it’s disgusting. Get some respect for the artist. It’s not fair at all,” he said. “[Downloaders are] ruining the music industry, they really are and it’s really not fair.”
Interestingly, Grammy-winning artist Sean Paul sees things quite differently.
“Before there was the internet, there was people selling mix tapes and CDs with your music on it – they sell it, they benefit from it,” he said. “I get promotion out of it, which is a good thing for me, because people like my song and put on a stage show.”
Producer Naughty Boy, who has deals with Sony and Virgin EMI, says that there’s plenty of money to be made, even in the face of piracy.
“I don’t like the idea of people thinking you’re never going to get rich from music. You can, even with illegal downloading,” he told the BBC. “You’ve just got to make great music that people want to buy. You’ve just got to give them more of a reason to buy it than before.”
Of course, while the artists have their differing opinions, the major labels are singing with one harmonious voice – piracy is bad and it costs them money. Together they finance the BPI whose anti-piracy department takes down millions of links from file-sharing sites and search engines such as Google. Whether Sean Paul likes it or not, links to his music get taken down too.
The BBC were invited to the secretive operation where they spoke with John Hodge, the BPI’s head of internet investigation who suggested that people at home – the actual downloaders – aren’t a BPI target.
“Our focus is on the people who want to make profit,” Hodge said. “Whether it’s streaming or downloading, there’s somebody there facilitating this and making money out of it.”
Like the FACT operatives who visited the home of a file-sharing site admin earlier this month, the remainder of the BPI’s five man anti-piracy team asked to remain anonymous. Taking down links must be a dangerous game these days.

…AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE REICHSICHERHEITHAUPTAMT…

October 16, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell 

Yesterday I blogged about the strange fires at the NSA-RSHA’s Utah Data Facility, and about the suggestive idea that there may be more to the story than meets the eye, perhaps, sabotage, whether from foreign agents slipped into the construction crews (BRICSA, you’ll recall, came to my mind, but I also suggested that one could not dismiss factional infighting within the Anglopshere). Well, strangely, no sooner had I completed the blog and scheduled it, than I heard an interesting thing.
You see, as I schedule blogs for the coming week, or weeks (depending on my mood and energy), I make an exception to my normal “no lamestream media” rule, and I listen to American talk radio. Now, for those of you not in the USSA, American talk radio tends to be almost uniformly right wing, or, in a few cases, centrist-Libertarian, in nature. You may ask why I do this, and the reason is relatively simple: listening to this dreck forces me to work faster, so I can turn it off. Occasionally I vary this routine, and listen to one of the twenty-four hour television news channels, which, again for our foreign readers, tend to be almost uniformly left-wing, and “liberal”, or, I would prefer to say, socialist. The effect is the same: listening to left-wing or right-wing dreck makes me work faster, so I can turn it off.
But on the day I was composing and scheduling all these blogs, it was right wing dreck day, and I had just completed the blog, when I heard the talk show host complaining about how bad the IRS’s new website for Obama’”care” was, and how – and I’m paraphrasing him here – one would almost have to try to design something so badly.
That made me think: perhaps it was. Or, perhaps, playing off the NSA-construction crew infiltration scenario, perhaps some faction managed to infiltrate the people tasked with designing it, and deliberately hashed it up. Frankly, nothing would surprise me any more.
With that in mind, consider this article from the Sydney Morning Herald:
Gmail extension aims to drown NSA in nonsense
It does, in a way, bring a smile and twinkle to one’s eyes, and all the better that reporting on the idea in this case comes from Australia, a country that the corrupt Anglosphere oligarchs consider more or less a satrapy of the USSA. But not so fast.
Consider the idea of  millions, billions, of earthlings flooding their everyday emails with words like “bomb”, “assassin,” “terror”, or even more fun things like “tritium”, “lithium deuteride,” or “neutron deflectors” and “event” and “device” (which, in the context, would simply be a typo for “devise”) and so on. Ladies:  ”Oh my hairdresser is such a hair-assassin he made a do that’s just the bomb” or (guys) “last night’s (insert football, soccer, rugby, baseball, cricket) game was a real nuclear event, dude, it was like seven megatons of lithium deuteride, I couldn’t possibly device a better ending; it was totally apocalyptic“…. One might even develop whole Echelon-like lists of phrases and words to use in everyday emails, sinister phrases that would be code for innocent things: “I need you stop by the warehouse and get the yellow cake for the centrifuges” could be code for “Go to the grocery store and get a yellow cake mix, some milk, and some eggs and I”ll mix it up with the egg-beater.” Multiply that millions of times over and perhaps you’d cause electrical fires and explosions.
Oh well, it was just a thought.

Read more: ...AND WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF THE REICHSICHERHEITHAUPTAMT...

Controversial Post: Why I Won’t Be Charitable When The SHTF

Chris Carrington October 14th, 2013 The Daily Sheeple

SHTF Plan Editor’s Note: The following article from Chris Carrington of The Daily Sheeple poses an interesting scenario and one that every prepper has likely discussed with friends and family in their preparedness group. When the system fails how far are you willing to go to help your fellow man? We know what happens when resources run out and panic grips the populace. There will be riots, looting and violence. And despite the inherent good I’d like to believe exists in every human being, when people are at their wits end, hungry, and tired, they will do things they’d never have imagined during a time of peace and stability. 

This is why the following topic should be of interest. It is one covered by many survival and preparedness authors. My wife Tess has provided some tips and strategies for charitable giving in a post-collapse world in her 52 Weeks to Preparedness series. It’s easy for all of us to say “If a family with kids shows up looking for help I will gladly give them food.” But when it hits the fan and your life is really on the line, will you still be so generous? Will you risk your family’s safety just to be charitable? As with everything else preparedness, if you are adamant about charitable giving in an SHTF environment, consider the risks and weigh your options. James Rawles of Survival Blog, for example, suggests going through a local church or organization to make donations rather then providing it directly to people in need as an operational security measure. 

I know Chris Carrington. And I know Chris is the kind of person who will stop to render you medical aid if you are seriously injured and dying on a street while most others would simply walk on by. This is why I take this article seriously. I am certain Chris thought long and hard about this, as many of you have, and it wasn’t just slapped together. 

We welcome community discussion on this topic, because it is an important one, and because you will no doubt be faced with making this decision should the worst come to pass. 

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Why I Won’t Be Charitable When The SHTF
By Chris Carrington
I have learned a great deal since I came on board here at The Daily Sheeple. I have read and listened to the opinions of many who are far further down the line of preparedness than I am, and although it may make me unpopular, I disagree with a some of what they say.
Of course agreeing or disagreeing with someone is purely personal choice. I am not saying they are wrong, just that I disagree with them.
Take for instance the charity aspect of prepping.
Many of the big names in prepping advocate that we should show solid Christian values in times of crisis and lay aside some essential items to give away to those that pass through who are less fortunate that ourselves.
NOT A CHANCE.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I have prepared, that I have scrimped and saved, and they possibly have not. It has nothing to do with greed on my part and to hell with all others. It has to do with the survival of my family.
A great deal is made on all prepping sites about OPSEC. Keeping low and not attracting attention, and this is where the trouble starts.
I know for a fact that if I had been given food, water and maybe a few other essential items by someone I passed along the way I would remember them.
I know that if the survival of my children was at stake and I couldn’t provide for them I would revisit the person that had assisted me in the hope of getting more supplies.
I know I would do anything I had to do to feed my kids, to keep them alive. Now if I could trade something, work for the food I would certainly do so. What happens though if the answer is no, we’re fine thanks, off you go?
Think about this. Put yourself in the position of the people you helped. You know this family had enough food to give some away. It’s unlikely you are the only people who have happened by. To a desperate man with starving children the logical conclusion would be that the family who helped you out had food to spare.
This is a situation that’s going to get ugly very fast.
Moving a little further into our imagined scenario. You helped the passers by as best you could. You are well armed and willing to defend your family and your supplies. The passers by you assisted know this, they know they couldn’t take you alone. So they come back with a mob. A mob of cold, hungry and armed people who want what you have got.
Once again it will get ugly very fast.
So, I will learn from those who know more than me, and I’m extremely grateful that they share their knowledge, but for me, charity really does begin at home if we are in a SHTF situation.
I will not risk blowing my OPSEC. I will not risk the lives of myself and my family in order to be charitable, it just isn’t going to happen. Every morsel of food I give away could keep my kids going for another day. Every item of clothing I give away could have kept my kids warm in the winter, could have wrapped my future grandchildren, could get passed on to the next generation who may have no access to new clothing.
We all know it’s not a case of if the SHTF, it’s a case of when. Be it a natural or man made disaster, there’s no reason to think we are the immune generation, that it won’t happen to us. We are not special in the grand scheme of things, we are no different to other generations that have faced war or famine or pandemic. The list of what can and does go wrong on this planet of ours is long, very long. Should one of these events occur, all of us, no matter how well prepared, are going to struggle to survive. Many of us won’t make it for one reason or another.
To attempt to survive, and even thrive after a catastrophic event is normal, it’s human nature, and while I pity those who have nothing I will not assist them with food, water or material items that could hasten the demise of me and mine.
There are many who will read this and decide I have no Christian values, I accept that , and I won’t argue with them, they are fully entitled to their opinion. What I will say is God gave me a brain and the ability to use it and that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Opening my door and handing out charity parcels when the grid is down or the food supply chain has snapped, when people are cold, hungry and desperate is to me akin to going to an ATM in a rough part of town and announcing loudly that you are taking out $1000 from an account that has $1,000,000 in it.
You just wouldn’t do it would you? You wouldn’t announce to every mugger in the neighborhood that you had a $1000 on you and there was plenty more where that came from.
In a collapse scenario your preps are worth more than that $1000. They are worth more than $1,000,000 in a situation where no amount of money can buy you what you need.
Think about this…how far would you go to protect you and yours?
I know for a fact I would do whatever I had to, including stealing from others. It’s not something I like to admit to, but it is the truth. Thinking this way also makes you realize you may not survive the encounter of taking from others and where would your family be then?
This is why I prep. To provide for myself and my family in times of trouble. To make sure they have enough water, food and clothing to see them through for as long as possible. To have enough seeds stored, and enough gardening knowhow that we can supplement our diets making our canned and dehydrated supplies last longer, far longer than they would have done otherwise.
It’s why we’ve opened up fireplaces and brought dynamo flashlights. It’s why the nieces and nephews join our own kids for ‘craft’ sessions where they are taught to knit, sew and fix things up with hammers and nails. they think this is so cool as none of their friends get to do it.
They make bread and pick produce they have grown. They are learning what they can and cannot eat from the hedgerows.
All of this is why I prep and I’ll be damned if I am going to risk all that because I give a bottle of water and a couple of cans of beans to passing strangers.
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

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Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up!

ALERT: Government Freezes EBT Funds: Orders States to Withhold Transfers to Food Stamp Recipients

Mac Slavo October 15th, 2013 SHTFplan.com

ALERT: Government Freezes EBT Funds: Orders States to Withhold Transfers to Food Stamp Recipients

This weekend America witnessed a limited crash in the computer systems that manage electronic benefit transfers across the country. Within hours of the crash panicked food stamp recipients who were left with no way to feed their families rushed grocery store shelves to obtain everything they could while the system was down.
The outage lasted less than a day, but it proved what many already knew, that America had become a nation so dependent on government subsidies that any glitch in the system could lead to total pandemonium.
But if you thought that isolated incident was bad, imagine what could happen next month.
We say next month because the USDA, which oversees the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), has just issued an order to SNAP agency directors calling for their respective States to implement an emergency contingency program because of government funding issues. In a letter obtained by the Crossroads Urban Center food pantry, the USDA is directing state agencies to, “delay their November issuance files and delay transmission to State Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) vendors until further notice.”
What this means is that should Congress fail to increase the debt ceiling this week, come November there will literally be millions of people in the United States who will have exactly zero dollars transferred to their EBT cards.
What will happen to the nearly 50 million people who depend on these benefits to survive?
Think this past weekend and multiply it across the entirety of the United States of America.
In the State of Utah the immediate effect of the USDA’s contingency plan will be a freeze in benefits for 100,000 people. Richard Phillips, a homeless man who depends on the government’s monthly distributions, warned what would happen next:

It’s going to cause problems… because then you’re going to come to find out that you’re going to have people starting to steal and do what they have to do to survive. 

Video Report via The Daily Sheeple:

Radio-beam device can disable car and boat engines from 50m

Source: The Engineer

E2V has developed a non-lethal weapon that can disable the engines of motor vehicles and small boats at a distance of up to 50m in under three seconds.

Dubbed RF Safe-Stop, the unit, which weighs approximately 350kg, has so far been integrated into Nissan Nevara and Toyota Land Cruisers and is designed to temporarily disable a vehicle’s electronic systems and bring it to a halt. Such systems are said to be particularly suited to stopping vehicles suspected as being used as car bombs.
Andy Wood, product manager at e2v, told The Engineer that RF Safe-Stop can be fitted also into ground, fixed base installations, rib-type boats and that there are ‘blueprint’ ideas to integrate it into a helicopter.
Such non-lethal systems generate intense RF (radio frequency) pulses and Wood euphemistically said these pulses ‘confuse’ a vehicle’s electronics, rendering them temporarily inoperable.
RF Safe-Stop works differently on different vehicles although the principle of coupling electromagnetic waves into the target’s wiring looms remain the same.
‘At the weight of frequencies we’re taking about – L and S-Band – the wiring loom of, say a metre…is almost the perfect aerial,’ said Wood.
The electromagnetic blast travels through the wiring loom as a series of pulses, arriving at the vehicle’s engine management system or immobiliser to halt it.
‘Basically the ECU (engine control unit) or immobiliser…once affected, will try and reset. As long as you keep it ‘confused’ the engine won’t restart.’
The RF generator is driven by a solid state modulator designed and built at Chelmsford-based e2v and Wood explained that a UPS unit has been added to systems designed for use on vehicles.
‘What we’re assuming at the moment is if, for instance, you had a fully charged set of batteries you’d get about two hours of operation, use about a 10 per cent RF energy burst from it …So [with] two hours stand-by, you get 12 minutes of RF operation,’ he said.
‘If you’ve got it on a vehicle, or a boat…you could be trickle charging that all the time. Unless you exceed the 10 per cent duty cycle with something like a 100A (amp) alternator at 24V you should…not run out of power.’
Operators of RF Safe-Stop won’t need specialist training as e2v is aiming for a system that that allows the user to do nothing more complicated than push a red button when the target is in range.
‘So long as he’s got a green light on his display he knows he can push the red button and typically, in one operation, get a five second burst,’ said Wood. ‘Normally, the effect happens in three seconds. You should be pretty certain that with one shot you’re going stop whatever engine it is you’re trying to stop. Then you repeat as and when – if you see the person in the vehicle is trying to restart it you just give it another shot and demobilise the vehicle again.’
The company recently demonstrated RF Safe-Stop at DSEi and Wood said the technology has stimulated interest from 17 nations and five UK government bodies.
Wood believes orders for the system will be taken in the coming weeks, adding that e2v’s dedicated applications team can tailor RF Safe-Stop according to requirements.

New Video Highlights How The Government Tracks You

New Video Highlights How The Government Tracks You

FISA Court Argues To Senate That It's Not A Rubber Stamp

FISA Court Argues To Senate That It's Not A Rubber Stamp

dude ..what the hell ? 

Incredible moment death-defying surfer jumps off cliff to join competition after turning up late

• The unnamed man was spotted by an amateur photographer running along the cliff
• The anxious sportsman was late for his heat so decided to jump off the cliff to save time
• The cliff, Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz, is a famous surf spot where Jack O'Neill developed the modern wetsuit

By Chris Pleasance
PUBLISHED: 05:02 EST, 14 October 2013 | UPDATED: 05:53 EST, 14 October 2013

Known for their chilled-out demeanor and slow pace of life, it will come as no surprise to most people to learn that surfers have poor timekeeping.
What is more surprising though is how one sportsman made up for his lack of punctuality - by jumping 30 feet off a cliff and into a raging sea after he was late for a compeition.
This unnamed surfer was spotted by photographer and graphic designer Allen Hughes as he was capturing images of a surfing competition off of Lighthouse Point, in Santa Cruz, California.

This is the moment a surfer who was late for a competition off of Lighthouse Point, Santa Cruz, jumped 30 feet off a cliff just in time to catch his heat

Hughes, 65, said: 'Everyone else was watching the surfers out at sea, but then I noticed this guy running along Lighthouse Point. I watched for quite a while and before each heat the surfers would climb down to the end of Lighthouse Point and make a smaller 10 foot jump.

 

'I noticed this guy run down to the end, he was late for his heat. I could tell he was anxious so I focused my camera on him and before anyone knew it, he ran and jumped off the cliff.
'He timed it perfectly and landed just behind the white water and paddled out. I never did find out who he was. The cliff itself must be 30 foot high and the waves were maybe higher.'

The unnamed athlete ran along the rocky cliff clutching his board before making the impressive leap, watched by photographer Allen Hughes

He added: 'In my youth I jumped from this rock all the time, but never when the sea was like this.'
Lighthouse Point is located at the northern point of Monterey Bay just south of Santa Cruz as is a world renowned surfing spot.
The waters are known as Steamer Lane and it was here that Jack O'Neill developed the modern-day wetsuit and the 'leash' which attaches a surfer's board to their leg so it doesn't get lost if they fall off.

The waters off of Lighthouse Point are known as Steamer Lane and are where Jack O'Neill developed the modern wetsuit and where he lost his eye

The bearded businessman also lost his eye while surfing the waters, which lead to him wearing his famous eye patch.
It is the home of O'Neill Wetsuits and every year for the last three decades it hosts the O'Neill Coldwater Classic competition in November.
The lighthouse itself is home to the Santa Cruz surfing museum which features a collection of rare and vintage surf boards.
Surfing has been present in Santa Cruz for over 100 years and was introduced by Hawaiians who used wooden planks to ride waves, a far cry from today's carbon fiber boards.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2458552/Incredible-moment-death-defying-surfer-jumps-cliff-join-competition-turning-late.html#ixzz2htUJWbCz