Infinite Unknown

- Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis’ (Wired, Jan. 31, 2012):

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.

Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.

Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.

Yet Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday.

Continue reading »

Tags: Blogger, Bloggers, Dictatorship, Fascism, Google, Internet, New World Order

- For Bloggers at Risk: Creating a Contingency Plan (Electronic frontier Foundation, Dec. 21, 2011):

In 2011, we have witnessed the incredible power of bloggers and social media users capturing the world’s attention through their activism. At the same time, regimes appear to be quickening the pace of their cat-and-mouse game with netizens, cracking down on speech through the use of surveillance, censorship, and the persecution and detention of bloggers. The increasingly the tech-savvy Syrian regime has been reported to demand login credentials from detainees, for example, while the use of torture in some of the region’s prisons continues.

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Tags: Bloggers, Blogs, Global News, Internet, Society

- China cracks down on microblogging rumours that are ‘worse than cocaine’ (Guardian, Dec. 6, 2011):

Official Chinese media say that rumours spread on popular microblogging sites are damaging to society

Tags: Bloggers, Blogs, China, Global News, Government, Internet, Politics, Society

- Mexican Blog Wars: Fourth Blogger Murdered for Reporting on Cartel (Yahoo News/Mashable, Nov. 10, 2011):

Gang members in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, killed and beheaded the moderator of a social network, the Houston Chronicle reported Wednesday.

“Hi, I’m Rascatripas,” read the note on a blood-stained blanket left with the body. “This happened to me for not understanding that I shouldn’t report on the social networks.”

The victim, known by his nickname “Rascatripas (Belly Scratcher),” was the moderator of a site called Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, which had posted information about the local drug cartel. Continue reading »

Tags: Bloggers, Blogs, Drug Cartels, Drugs, Mexico, Society

I’ve already posted the article from ZeroHedge…

- Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben ‘Big Brother’ Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed

… but this issue needs more attention.

- The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs (The Economic Collapse, Sep. 25, 2011):

The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it.  In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify “key bloggers” and to monitor “billions of conversations” about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs.  This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact.  As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a “Request for Proposal” to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a “Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution”.  In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are.  Obviously, any “positive” feelings about the Fed would not be a problem.  What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively.  It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.

You can read this “Request for Proposal” right here.  Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes….

“The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal (“RFP”) was created in an effort to support FRBNY’s Social Media Listening Platforms initiative.”

A system like this is not cheap.  Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important.  In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet.  It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it.

“Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.  They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.  They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on “billions of conversations” and to actually determine the “sentiment” of those that are participating in those conversations.

Of course it will be those conversations that are “negative” about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells.

“Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers”

Uh oh.  So they plan to “identify” key bloggers and influencers?

What exactly do they plan to do once they “identify” them?

“The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Big Brother, Bloggers, Blogs, Dictatorship, Facebook, Fascism, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Surveillance, Twitter, U.S., YouTube

- Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben “Big Brother” Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed (ZeroHedge, Sep. 25, 2011):

Two weeks ago, the media’s heart went aflutter when it learned that the president had borrowed a page right out of ole’ Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt book with the launch of Attack Watch. The response by everyone, even fans of Obama, was immediate and brutal. Yet where Obama took about 24 hours to crash and burn, someone else has stepped in with a far stealthier method of ferreting out the traitors amongst us: none other than our old friends, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, which in a Request for Proposals filed to companies that are Fed vendors, is requesting the creation of a “Social Listening Platform” whose function is to “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.” It will “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment [ED:LOL] of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.“ Said otherwise, the Fed has just entered the counterespionage era and will be monitoring everything written about it anywhere in the world. After all, why ask others to snitch for you and anger everyone as Obama found out the hard way, when you can pay others to create the supreme FIATtack Watch^TM using money you yourself can print in unlimited amounts. And once the Internet is completely “transparent”, the Fed will next focus on telephone conversations, and finally will simply bug each and every otherwise “private” location in the world. Because very soon saying that “printing money is treason” will be treason, and such terrorist thoughts must be pre-crimed before they even occur.

All we can say is we welcome our new Chairsatan Voldemort overlord. For it is truly he who must not be named henceforth.

From the key section of the RFP, presented in its entirety below: Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Big Brother, Bloggers, Blogs, Dictatorship, Facebook, Fascism, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Surveillance, Twitter, U.S., YouTube

- Because The First Amendment Does Not Reach Across The Atlantic… (ZeroHedge, Sep. 13, 2011):

The idiocy just hit record highs:

• BNP PARIBAS SAYS IT ASKED AMF TO INVESTIGATE WSJ OPINION PIECE – BLOOMBERG
  

What next: the AMF dispatches black choppers to round up all those trop-beaucoup criminal bloggers?

In other news:

- BNP Paribas seeks AMF enquiry on WSJ column (Reuters, Sep. 13, 2011):

(Reuters) – BNP Paribas said on Tuesday that it had asked French market regulator AMF to open an enquiry about a Wall Street Journal opinion piece claiming that France’s largest bank could face a dollar funding crunch.

BNP Paribas, whose shares slumped more than 10 percent in early trading but later rebounded to gain 7.2 percent, said it had requested the enquiry earlier in the day after what it called the “false” report.

- BNP Paribas Asks French Market Watchdog To Probe “Erroneous” News In WSJ (Wall Street Journal, Sep. 13, 2011):

PARIS (Dow Jones)–BNP Paribas SA (BNP.FR, BNPQY) on Tuesday said it had asked the French stock-market watchdog to open a probe following the publication of an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal that contained “erroneous information.”

The Autorite des Marches Financiers, or AMF, the stock-market watchdog, wasn’t immediately available to comment.

Tags: AMF, Banking, Bloggers, Blogs, BNP Paribas, Economy, Global News, Wall Street Journal

- Female Blogger Threatened With Defamation Suit For Writing About TSA ‘Rape’ (Forbes, Sep. 6, 2011):

Attacking the TSA for its privacy-invasive screening procedures has become a favorite activity for many journalists, especially Matt Drudge. TSA horror stories are often featured prominently on The Drudge Report and he has taken to calling Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (of which the TSA is a part) “Big Sis.”

Napolitano, who doesn’t think Drudge “means [the nickname] kindly” said at a recent Politico event that Drudge is wrong in describing DHS programs as Orwellian and that “the privacy impact of new airport screening technology and similar programs are thoroughly vetted before they are implemented,” in Josh Gerstein’s words.

“We want to be conscious of civil liberties and civil rights protections—and we are,” Napolitano said, as reported by Politico.

On the same day as this piece came out, TechDirt reports on a passenger who would likely disagree with the Secretary. After a particularly aggressive patdown in March that might be better termed a feel-up, advice blogger Amy Alkon graphically described how she sobbed loudly while a TSA agent put her hands “into” her — four times. She screamed “You raped me” after the LAX patdown and took the agent’s name with plans to file charges of sexual assault. Those plans fell through after consulting an attorney, but she did blog about it and included the agent’s name, thereby inflicting her own assault — on the agent’s Google search results.

The TSA agent then hired a lawyer who contacted Alkon asking her to remove the post, threatening her with a defamation lawsuit, and asking for a settlement of $500,000. “Rape is a very serious charge,” writes lawyer Vicki Roberts on Thedala Magee’s behalf. She also says that Alkon, on a return trip to the airport in May called her client “a bad person” who had “sexually molested” her.

Free speech lawyer Marc Randazza has stepped in to assert Alkon’s right to post about her patdown experience, and to defend both her definition of the patdown as rape and, regardless of that, her right to rhetorical hyperbole. Techdirt has a copy of the letter Randazza drafted in response to the defamation threat.

“After [the agent Thedala] Magee’s assault on Ms. Alkon’s vagina and dignity, Ms. Alkon exercised her First Amendment right to recount this incident to others in person and through her blog,” writes Randazza. “This was not only her right — it was her responsibility.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Bloggers, Blogs, Civil liberties, Civil rights, Constitution, DHS, Dictatorship, Fascism, First Amendment, Global News, Government, Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Law, New World Order, Politics, Society, TSA, U.S.

The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public (=Waking the people up).

“The agency said it is trying to “track down inaccurate information (=Truth) and to provide correct ones (=More disinformation, lies and cover-ups) instead.”

Nice!

‘Accurate’ information below the following article.

- Government’s move to monitor online sparks public outcry (Asahi, August 24, 2011):

While the government defends its new monitoring program of online postings concerning the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to stem the spread of “inaccurate” information, critics say it harkens back to Big Brother.

The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy said tweets on Twitter and postings to blogs will be monitored for groundless and inaccurate information that could inflame and mislead the public.

The agency said it is trying to “track down inaccurate information and to provide correct ones instead.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Big Brother, Bloggers, Blogs, Dictatorship, Fukushima, Global News, Government, Internet, Japan, New World Order, Politics, Surveillance, Twitter

Don’t miss:

- WAKE-UP CALL: Prof. Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University To Japan Government ‘Shaking With Anger’: ‘What Are You Doing?’ (Part 1, 2, 3)

Just in case you too asked yourself what the Japanese government is doing…

- New Japan Law ‘Cleanses’ Bad Nuclear News (UK Progressive, July 24, 2011):

Friday, July 15, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (METI) – Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, opened a call for bids (tender) regarding the “Nuclear Power Safety Regulation Publicity Project”, for contractors to monitor blogs and tweets posted about nuclear power and radiation.

Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Big Brother, Bloggers, Blogs, George Orwell, Global News, Government, Internet, New World Order, Nuclear, Politics, Radiation, Society, Solar Radiation, Surveillance, Twitter