iPhone Tracks Your Every Move!

Sharon Nissim, consumer privacy counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said it is possible Apple is violating the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act, which allows telecom carriers to provide call information only in emergency situations.



“By asking for permission to collect location data, Apple may be trying to get around its legal obligations, by asking people to give up privacy rights they don’t even know they have,” Nissim said.

Amplify’d from www.wired.com

iPhone Tracks Your Every Move, and There’s a Map for That

An unencrypted file stored in iPhones and iPads constantly records a user's location data. An open source application was used to plot the location data from an iPhone belonging to a Wired.com reporter.

Your iPhone or 3G-equipped iPad has been secretly recording your location for the past 10 months.

Wired.com can confirm that fact: The screengrab above shows a map containing drop pins of everywhere yours truly has been in the past year.

Software hackers Peter Warden and Alasdair Allen discovered an unencrypted file inside Apple’s iOS 4 software, storing a long list of locations accompanied with time stamps. The file is labeled “consolidated.db.”

“Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device has been storing a long list of locations and time stamps,” Warden and Allen wrote. “We’re not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it’s clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations.” Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic

"Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags," a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device's capabilities. "The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps."

Amplify’d from www.thenewspaper.com

Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops

ACLU seeks information on Michigan program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists.

The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program

ACLU learned that the police had acquired the cell phone scanning devices and in August 2008 filed an official request for records on the program, including logs of how the devices were used. The state police responded by saying they would provide the information only in return for a payment of $544,680. The ACLU found the charge outrageous.

See more at www.thenewspaper.com

 

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30,000 BP oil spill memos

"...Additional emails appear to show that BP were solely in charge with granting permits to scientists to access affected areas...."

Amplify’d from www.crikey.com.au

Leaked: 30,000 BP oil spill memos, emails and transcripts

In the middle of last year, Greenpeace started submitted a string of Freedom of Information requests to US government agencies in relation to last year’s disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

As a result the environmental group have obtained some 30,000 memos, emails and transcripts which document the worst oil spill in American history. Taking cues from WikiLeaks, Greenpeace has begun to leak its considerable cache online for all to see. Here’s what we pulled out of the document dump:

In one internal email, BP environmental expert Russell Putt asks his colleagues if the company can take control of the $500m research fund set up to investigate the impacts of the spill:

“Can we ‘direct’ GRI [Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative] funding to a specific study (as we now see the Governor’s offices trying to do)? What influence do we have over the vessels/equipment driving the studies vs the questions?”

Butt’s request came after BP officials discussed whether the company could influence the research program to studies that BP considered “useful”.

The emails also reveal that environmental groups were consistently expressing their concerns to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) over the effects of BP’s controlled oil burns on sea turtle populations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Around 250 pages of emails reveal animal welfare groups were constantly in contact with the NOAA during the controlled burning, with many asking for clarification of press reports of turtles being burnt alive.

Figures released in the emails show hundreds of turtles perished in the fires, with groups like PETA, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Center for Biological Diversity concernced that BP were not doing all they could to save the turtles. Another set of emails lays out the effects of the oil spill on threatened species, including dolphins.

Other emails obtained by Greenpeace appear to show the rush by university departments to be involved in the $500m BP research fund.

In one email a Texas A&M representative urges a group of Texan universities to set up a consortium like other states in case “funding comes this way”. Additional emails appear to show that BP were solely in charge with granting permits to scientists to access affected areas. Read more at www.crikey.com.au

 

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The New Corporate World Order

Big government, the devil that Republicans love to inveigh against, is big precisely because it is so active in so many costly ways in serving the interests of our biggest corporations. Corporate lobbyists attest with their every breath that big government and big business are bedmates in a bountiful venture that impoverishes the rest of us.

Amplify’d from www.truthdig.com

The New Corporate World Order

The debate over Republicans’ insistence on continued tax breaks for the superrich and the corporations they run should come to a screeching halt with the report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.” Those tax breaks over the past decade, leaving some corporations such as General Electric to pay no taxes at all, were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred. As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show.”

Of course it will be argued that multinational corporations have the right to arrange their business as they see fit in order to maximize profit. But if that is the case, do beleaguered American taxpayers have to foot the bill? When those corporations run into trouble overseas because of financial hustles or hostile locals and need the diplomatic and military might of the U.S. government to protect their interests abroad, it is again the U.S. taxpayer who must pay to maintain this new world order. It is an order, as we see with three current wars and a military budget that rivals Cold War highs, that is contributing mightily to the U.S. government debt. More than half of all discretionary spending, the dollars that the Republicans in Congress now want to take out of needed domestic programs, is accounted for by defense spending. That defense spending to support a massive network of military bases and deployed weapons and troops is key to establishing an order in which the interests of American corporations are attended to. If the companies don’t feel that way, let them operate under the flag of Liberia or the Cayman Islands.

No less important than U.S. military muscle is the power of the American government to construct and enforce a worldwide trade and finance structure to the advantage of U.S.-based multinational corporations. That is why the companies spend so much money lobbying Congress on matters ranging from regional trade agreements to international banking regulations. It is precisely the impact of trade agreements like NAFTA that has facilitated the erosion of well-paying jobs. And it was the deregulation of international banking standards, led by the U.S. Treasury Department under the past five presidents, that created the conditions for the recent disastrous housing and banking meltdown. Read more at www.truthdig.com

 

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Secret memos expose link ...

WOW! who woulda thought?!!

Amplify’d from www.independent.co.uk

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture. Read more at www.independent.co.uk

 

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Celebrate the Drug War

Get the point?

Amplify’d from stopthedrugwar.org

Drug Lords Celebrate the Drug War at the UN

This video is typical of the clever work I've come to expect from the HCLU. It deserves more exposure, so whoever's in charge of making things go viral, I hereby nominate this for consideration: Read more at stopthedrugwar.org

 

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This is what welfare for the rich looks

OUTRAGEOUS!

Amplify’d from www.rollingstone.com

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the "other" budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. "Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous."

Wall Street's Big Win

But if you want to get a true sense of what the "shadow budget" is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall's haul doesn't seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn't seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income. Read more at www.rollingstone.com

 

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Oops! FBI Confirms Roswell UFO Incident

WRITTEN by the Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office to the FBI Director on March 22, 1950 that confirms the Roswell UFO incident in 1947:

Amplify’d from furiousfanboys.com

This week the FBI launched an online document archive that they’re calling The Vault. The site is an electronic reading room that has over 2,000 documents scanned that cover many different subjects. Unfortunately, it seems as if they didn’t censor the UFO documents well enough as within those is a memo written by the Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office to the FBI Director on March 22, 1950 that confirms the Roswell UFO incident in 1947:

An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots. According to Mr. (redacted) informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanism of the saucers. No further evaluation was attempted by SA (redacted) concerning the above.

See more at furiousfanboys.com

 

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Interview with Scientist Richard Dawkins

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, born on March 26, 1941 in Nairobi, was a professor at Oxford University until 2008 and is a fellow of the Royal Society. He is considered one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of our time and he has broadened our understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution. His ability to explain complex scientific concepts have made him one of the most widely read scientific authors in the world.

Amplify’d from www.spiegel.de

'Religion? Reality Has a Grander Magic of its Own'

Evolution is fact. That, at least, is what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins argues, making his case in his new book "The Greatest Show on Earth," which has just been published in German. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with Dawkins about the shortcomings of religion, the grandeur of reality and the God Gene. Read more at www.spiegel.de

 

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BP Whistleblowers; Where are they?

DEAD, MISSING, or JAILED!!!! -There is like 13 of them on the site, please read!

Amplify’d from bpwhistleblowers.blogspot.com

Dead-Missing-Jailed BP WHISTLEBLOWERS

Read more at bpwhistleblowers.blogspot.com

 

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Color Images of the 1906 San Francisco E

cool, sort of..

Amplify’d from www.time.com

Found: Color Images of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

Market Street, Flood Building In the latter half of 1906, a few months after the disastrous 1906 earthquake hit the city of San Francisco, a photography innovator named Frederick Eugene Ives came to the city to record the tragedy. He saw the event as an opportunity to work with his new invention, the Ives Photochromoscope system, a device which produced an image its creator christened the Krömogram, a series of single-color plates which, when combined together and seen through a stereoscopic viewer (the Krömoscop!), created a 3-D color image. Read more at www.time.com

 

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Ice Dream?

So the answers to addiction may lie not in the substances themselves, but in the relationship people have with them and the settings in which they are consumed.



Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/04/heroin-vs-haagen-dazs-what-food-addiction-looks-like-in-the-brain/#ixzz1IkRbAeo0

Amplify’d from healthland.time.com

Heroin vs. Häagen-Dazs: What Food Addiction Looks Like in the Brain

Is Häagen-Dazs ice cream as addictive as heroin? Or, put another way, is heroin as addictive as Häagen-Dazs?

The study, published Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry, involved 39 healthy women, who ranged in weight from lean to overweight or obese. The participants were asked to complete the Yale Food Addiction Scale, which tests for signs of food addiction. Women with full-fledged eating disorders of any type were not included in the study.

Then, using fMRI, researchers led by Yale's Ashley Gearhardt and Kelly Brownell looked at the women's brain activity in response to food. In one task, the women were asked to look at pictures of either a luscious chocolate shake or a bland, no-calorie solution. For another brain-scan task, women actually drank the shake — made with four scoops of vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice cream, 2% milk and 2 tablespoons of Hershey's chocolate syrup — or the no-calorie control solution, which was designed to be as flavorless as possible (water couldn't be used because it actually activates taste receptors).

The scientists found that when viewing images of ice cream, the women who had three or more symptoms of food addiction — things like frequently worrying about overeating, eating to the point of feeling sick and difficulty functioning due to attempts to control overeating or overeating itself — showed more brain activity in regions involved with pleasure and craving than women who had one or no such symptoms.

Similar to people suffering from substance abuse, the food-addicted participants also showed reduced activity in brain regions involved with self-control (the lateral orbitofrontal cortex), when they actually ate the ice cream. Read more at healthland.time.com

 

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Cost of Labor....

ha ha

Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com

Uncle Sam Tells Maine Governor to Repay Cost of Removed Mural of Labor History

Maine Gov. Paul LePage is removing a 36-foot mural that includes images of worker strikes from the Labor Department's lobby. (Courtesy: Artist Judy Taylor)

Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who ignited a storm of protest by removing a labor-themed mural from a state office building last month, is now facing demands from the U.S. Department of Labor to restore the artwork or repay the $60,000 federal grant used to create it.

In a letter to LePage on Monday and obtained by FoxNews.com, the department said the Republican governor violated the terms of federal laws governing money used to pay for most of the mural's price tag when he removed it over concerns about the message it sent.

Gay Gilbert, administrator of the U.S. Labor Department's office of unemployment insurance, said LePage would have to return the money to the unemployment trust fund states use to pay jobless benefits. The federal government manages the funds, which are financed through unemployment insurance taxes that employers pay.

Under federal law, states have limited discretion on how to spend that money, which includes paying for furnishing public employment offices.

About 63 percent of the mural's cost came from money in Maine's account in the federal unemployment trust fund. Gilbert's letter said the state would have to return 63 percent of the fair market value of the mural to that account. Read more at www.foxnews.com

 

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A High paid Hoax person

the usual: "GRRRRR!!!"

Amplify’d from thinkprogress.org

Bristol Palin’s Nonprofit Paid Her Seven Times What It Spent On Actual Teen Pregnancy Prevention

Spent On Actual Teen Pregnancy Prevention In 2009, Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol joined a teen pregnancy prevention nonprofit called the Candie’s Foundation. Today, the Associated Press reported that the Candie’s Foundation released its 2009 tax information, revealing that Bristol was paid a salary of $262,500.

But a closer examination of the tax form by ThinkProgress shows that the group disbursed only $35,000 in grants to actual teen pregnancy health and counseling clinics: $25,000 to the Mt. Sinai Adolescent Health Center and $10,000 to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. View a screenshot of Bristol’s exorbitant salary below:

See more at thinkprogress.org

 

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Marijuana Chemical Blocks Pain Without..

Amplify’d from www.wired.com

Modified Marijuana Chemical Blocks Pain Without Buzz

Marijuana contains a complex mix of chemicals, some with medicinal effects, others with an effect that, well, have led it to be classified as a controlled substance. The cannabinoid THC, the primary active ingredient, seems to do both. It’s responsible for many of the psychoactive qualities of marijuana, but is also a potent analgesic, blocking a variety of pain. A study that was released over the weekend, however, indicates that some of its painkilling effects are mediated via a receptor that wasn’t previously known to interact with the cannabinoids. In the process of characterizing this new receptor, the authors find a chemical that blocks pain, but has no apparent psychoactive effects. Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.allvoices.com

BP, Feds cover up dolphin deaths in Gulf

The oil giant BP and the US Federal Government seem to be collaborating to cover up a recent rash of dolphin deaths in the oil spill area.

The extent of environmental damage since the Gulf oil dispersal incident continues to grow, while government officials downplay the severity of the disaster. Over 200 dead dolphins, mostly young infants or premature calves, have recently appeared in the affected area. Yet BP’s role is being underplayed, as possibly fraudulent environmental studies are being undertaken by the Federal government to shift the spotlight away from any wrongdoing by the giant oil corporation.

Wildlife biologist and corporate corruption watchdog Jim Wiegand writes, “BP has an MO in dealing with the dead dolphins and all the other impacts from the oil spill. They will have their corrupt biologists and institutions of higher learning (dependent on corporate grants) stay silent or help to create bogus studies. It really is fraud, but there will never be any accountability.”

A little digging has, in fact, produced evidence of possible conflict of interest, as BP itself has provided funds to study the disaster (Huffington Post). As Mr. Wiegand observes, “There is no better way to rig the results than to fund the studies - 500 million to Cover-up the effects? 500 million invested to fund rigged studies could mean tens of billions less in fines for BP.”

Now our Federal government, rather than protecting our best interests, seems to be protecting the corporations, to the detriment of our living planet and even our own children. As with the ‘Wind Farm’ industry (a so-called ‘green’ energy source that is neither energy efficient nor wildlife or Earth-friendly), big business trumps human and environmental rights in favor of corporate profits for the greedy elite. Read more at www.allvoices.com

 

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Cocaine smugglers laundered billions thr

Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com

Cocaine smugglers laundered billions through Wachovia bank

Somehow, the major banks in the United States have gone from serving as the main bulwarks of credit and entrepreneurial pluck to the moral equivalent of a James Bond villain. There were, for instance, the jaw-dropping mortgage frauds detailed by "60 Minutes" just last night. There was last week's report on a group of Citibank-affiliated debt collectors actually killing a customer in Indonesia in a dispute over a credit card bill. And there's the long-running but demoralizing story of the unjustified efforts of large banks to foreclose on active-duty soldiers.

Now comes this: Wachovia Bank -- which merged with the West Coast banking giant Wells Fargo in 2009, in one of the many industry moves sparked by the 2008 mortgage meltdown -- seemingly looked the other way while some of the world's biggest drug lords funneled billions through the bank's holdings. As one federal prosecutor put it, the arrangement "gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations."

The Guardian reported on Sunday that an extensive investigation by the IRS, DEA and FBI uncovered the porous money-laundering system. The feds found that cocaine smugglers successfully moved tens of billions of dollars in funds through Wachovia accounts using wire transfers, traveler's checks and cash shipments. The paper notes that the flow of cash through the bank began in 2004 -- coinciding with the rise of Mexico's menacing drug gangs and the increased violence on the U.S.-Mexico border. The bank was quietly punished for its actions. Read more at news.yahoo.com

 

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