School allegedly used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

BoingBoing

By Cory Doctorow at 11:49 PM February 17, 2010

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students’ clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

But when schools take that personal information, indiscriminately invading privacy (and, of course, punishing students who use proxies and other privacy tools to avoid official surveillance), they send a much more powerful message: your privacy is worthless and you shouldn’t try to protect it.

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF) (Thanks, Roland!)

Defense Industry and Former High Level Spooks Plan Cyber-Attack Drill

The Bipartisan Policy Center has assembled a crack team of political ne’er-do-wells, script writers and production crew to stage a cyber attack drill today, dubbed “Cyber ShockWave.”

The event will take place in a mock White House Situation Room at the Washington DC Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Participants will presumably pretend to counter DDOS or hacking attacks, advising the president on what unilateral action he should take.

“… created by former CIA Director General Michael Hayden and the BPC’s National Security Preparedness Group, led by the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Governor Thomas Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton …”

If nothing else, this serves to drum up fear and reinforce the notion that the Feds need control over the internet.  Nevermind that private industry already does a pretty good job of handling its own network security.  We need the president and his gaggle of political non-experts to step in and command everything from the white house.

As we’ve seen in the past, what constitutes an emergency in the eyes of the federal government is not always what one might expect.

Seasoned veterans in whitewashing false flag terror, Governor Thomas Kean and Critter Lee Hamilton (9/11 Commission), along with former heads of intelligence including Michael Chertoff (DHS Domestic Gestapo) and Thomas Hayden (CIA Drug Cartel) will be directing the production.  It’s great to know we have patriots like these looking after our ‘tubes.

What could possibly go wrong?

The robot arms race continues…

Boeing airborne laser destroys missile

Robot UT-mu2 tech demo

RT piece

Detroit schools offer class in how to to work at Walmart

Proposed “Dietary Supplement ‘Safety’ Act” major threat to health freedom

A dangerous new piece legislation submitted by Critter John McCain threatens to restrict US citizens’ access to dietary supplements at the discretion of the FDA.  Where are the standards by which this is measured?  We already have laws on the books preventing adulteration of any consumable food with contaminants.  There is more to this.  The wording of this bill is purposefully vague and could effectively put an end to all medicinal herbs being sold in the US, when the big pharma lobbyist puppet-masters pay the FDA off to eliminate their competition.

(A) IN GENERAL- If the Secretary finds there is a reasonable probability that a dietary supplement or a product marketed or sold as a dietary supplement would cause serious, adverse health consequences or death, or is adulterated or misbranded, the Secretary shall issue a cease distribution and notification order requiring the person named in the order to immediately–

(i) cease distribution of such dietary supplement or a product marketed or sold as a dietary supplement;

(ii) notify distributors, importers, retailers, and consumers of the order; and

(iii) instruct those distributors, importers, retailers, and consumers to cease distributing, importing, selling, and using the dietary supplement.

Can the FDA be trusted to rule make an impartial ruling on whether a dietary supplement is misbranded or adulterated?  This is the same FDA that approved unlabeled Monsanto abominations like rBGH and pesticide-expressing, herbicide-resistant crops that now infect the gene pool; bacteriaphage virus spray for meats; ammonia treatment of beef for school lunches.  The FDA has just decided to allow the re-labeling of toxic Aspartame as a natural sweetner. Is this the same FDA we want deciding which vitamins and herbs we can use?

How much bribe money will it take to get my plant sterol prostate health supplement designated as “misbranded,” in an effort to get me on the teat of big pharma?  I could tell you that plant sterols can be very effective in treating benign prostatic hypertrophy in men, if making such a statement were legal.

Big pharma sees the threat that natural supplements pose to their profit margins and they’re moving to neutralize it.  In the coming months we’re likely to see a lot of manipulative news stories about how herbal supplements can contain toxic chemicals as the corporate media attempts to drum up support for this freedom-killing legislation.  But they dare not compare it to the > 200,000 yearly deaths in the US due to iatrogenic disease – medical errors and adverse reactions

Here’s a great video from Gary Null about that very issue …

Aspartame has been renamed and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener

Friday, February 12, 2010 by:
Ethan Huff, citizen journalist
NaturalNews

In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world’s most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.

G.D. Searle & Company first patented aspartame in 1970. An internal memo released in the same year urged company executives to work on getting the FDA into the “habit of saying yes” and of encouraging a “subconscious spirit of participation” in getting the chemical approved.

G.D. Searle & Company submitted its first petition to the FDA in 1973 and fought for years to gain FDA approval, submitting its own safety studies that many believed were inadequate and deceptive. Despite numerous objections, including one from its own scientists, the company was able to convince the FDA to approve aspartame for commercial use in a few products in 1974, igniting a blaze of controversy.

In 1976, then FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt wrote a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy expressing concern over the “questionable integrity of the basic safety data submitted for aspartame safety”. FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill believed that a grand jury should investigate G.D. Searle & Company for lying about the safety of aspartame in its reports and for concealing evidence proving the chemical is unsafe for consumption.

Despite the myriad of evidence gained over the years showing that aspartame is a dangerous toxin, it has remained on the global market with the exception of a few countries that have banned it. In fact, it continued to gain approval for use in new types of food despite evidence showing that it causes neurological brain damage, cancerous tumors, and endocrine disruption, among other things.

The details of aspartame’s history are lengthy, but the point remains that the carcinogen was illegitimately approved as a food additive through heavy-handed prodding by a powerful corporation with its own interests in mind. Practically all drugs and food additives are approved by the FDA not because science shows they are safe but because companies essentially lobby the FDA with monetary payoffs and complete the agency’s multi-million dollar approval process.

Changing aspartame’s name to something that is “appealing and memorable”, in Ajinomoto’s own words, may hoodwink some but hopefully most will reject this clever marketing tactic as nothing more than a desperate attempt to preserve the company’s multi-billion dollar cash cow. Do not be deceived.

Sources:

Ajinomoto brands aspartame ‘AminoSweet’ – FoodBev.com

Aspartame History Highlights – Janet Starr Hull

FDA’s approval of aspartame under scrutiny – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

An Overdue Ban On A Dangerous Sweetener – Huffington Post

Patriot Act reauthorized under cover of jobs bill

SEC. 645. EXTENSION OF INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITY SUNSETS. (a) USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005.—Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005

(Public Law 109–177; 50 U.S.C. 1805 note, 50 U.S.C. 1861 note, and 50 U.S.C. 1862 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’.

(b) INTELLIGENCE REFORM AND TERRORISM PREVENTION ACT OF 2004.—Section 6001(b)(1) of the Intel ligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Public Law 108–458; 118 Stat. 3742; 50 U.S.C. 1801 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’.

From Politico:

A draft of the roughly $80 billion bill, obtained by POLITICO, has a wide range of tax credits and job creation ideas, but it also includes provisions unrelated to jobs, including a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, infusion of new money to the Highway Trust Fund and extension of the so-called doc fix.

Terrorists Must Register With SC Secretary Of State

By FITSNews || Over the years, we’ve had plenty of fun at the expense of South Carolina’s bass-ackwards state government.

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We may have finally found the legal statute that takes the cake for sheer stupidity

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It’s called the “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” and it requires terrorists in South Carolina to … register with the S.C. Secretary of State’s office before they start plotting to violently overthrow the government.

From the law:

Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him

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God forbid you fail to register before you start planning your jihad, because that’s punishable by a $25,000 fine and/ or up to ten years imprisonment.

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The law from http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t23c029.htm

Code of Laws Title/Chapter List > Title 23