Senate Intelligence Authorization Act, Would Allow Arrest of Journalists, Anti-war Activists, Academics and Students

The media goes back and forth discussing the pivotal moment of the first GOP debate. What orifice did Trump have in mind of the blood flowing from Megan Kelly. Meanwhile, the Congress once again lines up to take our freedom. This post follows yesterday’s FBI: Citizens Should Have No Secrets That The Government Can’t Access

S. Res. 1705: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016. 

If enacted, Section 603 will require online companies to inform Washington of any “actual knowledge” of “facts and circumstances” related to undefined “terrorist activity” – meaning warrantless searches and seizures of personal electronic content will be authorized, potentially subjecting countless numbers of innocent people to unjustifiable scrutiny.

Senate members overwhelmingly support S. 1705. Before recessing until September, they were set to pass it by voice vote until Senator Ron Wyden objected.

Vague language makes independent journalists, political, anti-war, and social justice activists, academics and students doing legitimate research, as well as others vulnerable to being called suspected terrorists.

The possibility could encourage self-censorship. Service providers may over-report to show compliance with the law. Online users could be flagged for using suspect words or phrases.

One definition of terrorist activity can be another’s way of describing freedom fighting. Legitimate government criticism could be misinterpreted and misused.

Anyone ideologically opposed to US policies could become vulnerable to arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisonment for expressing their views online. Police states operate this way.Full story over at Global Research

Meanwhile Phones are making Minority Report’s Precrime a reality – and other things we’ve learned.

Phillip K Dick predicted it, Steven Spielberg committed it to film and FOX is about to bring it to TV – but it looks like Precrime is already becoming a reality.

We’ve been reading through a new report released by EPJ Data Science called “a survey of results on mobile phone datasets analysis” which looks at what 15 years of mobile data has taught us.

For example, a study published by Bogomolov et al has used mobile phone traces to try and predict whether a certain area would become a crime hotspot within the next month. The study used the estimated number of people in each area, the age, gender as well as work, home and visitor group splits. All of the information was directly gained from mobile phone data.

That information was then pushed through the system and it found they could predict whether a certain area would be the scene of a crime in the next month with an accuracy of 70%.

In a separate study Bogomolov et al set out to find out if mobile phones could predict a person’s daily stress levels from non-invasive sensors, as well as mobile data.

Only using one lot of data provided a poor result but if the data was combined with personality traits and knowledge of the weather conditions they found a 72% accuracy in predicted whether people were stressed. Full story over at Tech Data

Here is a home grown movie ad, inserting facts with the regular ad.

Nestled in President Obama’s stirring speech reasserting America’s commitment to the Rule of Law was a stunning announcement of a plan for a new legal construct justifying the “prolonged detention” of people we think might misbehave in the future.

This is the change he promised. Swathes of the discontent rounded up and imprisoned indefinately. The persecution of the witches was nothing to what the schemers pulling his strings have laid plans for.

Of further interest: H/T: Gds44’sblog-

Facebook Monitors Your Private Messages and Photos For Criminal Activity, Reports them to Police