Eideard

German data watchdogs on Friday ordered state agencies to shut down their Facebook pages and remove “like” buttons from their Web sites, suggesting that anyone who uses Facebook will have their online activity tracked.

“All institutions in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany [must] shut down their fan pages on Facebook and remove social plug-ins such as the ‘like’-button from their Web sites,” the German Data Protection Commissioner’s Office said in a statement. “Whoever visits facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years.”

After “thorough and legal analysis,” the commission said it concluded that Facebook and its “like” button violates Germany’s Telemedia Act and its Federal Data Protection Act because data is transferred to the U.S. and Web analytics are sent to Web site owners…

German agencies have until the end of September to stop using Facebook for official business. Failure to do so could result in fines. Commissioner Thilo Weichert said in a statement that those agencies “cannot shift their responsibility for data privacy” to Facebook or the user.

Facebook, however, denied that its activity was in violation of any EU laws…

The commission said today’s ban is “only the beginning of a continuing privacy impact analysis of Facebook applications.” It also advised people to “keep their fingers from clicking on social plug-ins such as the ‘like’-button and not to set up a Facebook account if they wish to avoid a comprehensive profiling by this company.”

There are solid historic reasons for Germans to prefer to have a nanny state protect their rights to privacy. There also are pretty good reasons to classify the heavy-handed approach as total crap equally reminiscent of a totalitarian past.

Not especially different from conservatives who blather against political correctness – unless the topic is one of their ongoing campaigns to legislate morality, sex, music and thought that might displease someone with their brain still stuck into the 19th Century. Or the 14th Century.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab training in Yemen
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

US intelligence failed to collect, analyze, and share key information that could have helped stop the failed Christmas Day bomber before he boarded a US-bound airliner.

Nearly a decade after the September 11, 2001 strikes led lawmakers to enact the most sweeping reorganization of the US spy community in a half-century, human and technical flaws abounded in the bombing plot, a Senate report said.

In an unclassified 12-page summary [.pdf] of its investigation into the attack, the US Senate Intelligence Committee said “systemic failures” enabled accused plotter Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, to get as far as he did…

The panel laid much of the blame on the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), created by the US Congress as the lead agency to organize and share intelligence about suspected extremists across the intelligence community.

“Specifically, the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions,” according to the summary, which noted that no single agency considered itself responsible for identifying and tracking all terror threats. “In addition, technology across the IC (intelligence community) is not adequate to provide search enhancing tools for analysts, which contributed to the failure of the IC to identify Abdulmutallab as a potential threat…”

The committee, which launched its investigation on December 31, noted failures to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa, place him on the “no-fly list,” connect and correlate different pieces of information, as well as the CIA’s failure to share information about suspicions he was plotting an attack…

Previous probes revealed that US analysts knew Abdulmutallab was an extremist and that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was plotting an attack, but did not connect the information.

Someday, the administrative functions of intelligence agencies just may be coordinated by professional standards instead of professional politicians. Killer Klowns who have made the career choice to be re-elected by any means necessary aren’t especially useful at much – least of all protecting a nation from gangsters.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether the gangsters are trafficking religion, drugs or derivative, we’re still the targets, we still get screwed.

Beef containing harmful pesticides, veterinary antibiotics and heavy metals is being sold to the public because federal agencies have failed to set limits for the contaminants or adequately test for them, a federal audit finds…

The health effects on people who eat such meat are a “growing concern,” the audit adds.

The testing program for cattle is run by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which also tests meat for such pathogens as salmonella and certain dangerous strains of E. coli. But the residue program relies on assistance from the Environmental Protection Agency, which sets tolerance levels for human exposure to pesticides and other pollutants, and the Food and Drug Administration, which does the same for antibiotics and other medicines.

Limits have not been set by the EPA and FDA “for many potentially harmful substances, which can impair FSIS’ enforcement activities,” the audit found…

Even when the inspection service does identify a lot of beef with high levels of pesticide or antibiotics, it often is powerless to stop the distribution of that meat because there is no legal limit for those contaminants.

In 2008, for example, Mexican authorities rejected a U.S. beef shipment because its copper levels exceeded Mexican standards, the audit says. But because there is no U.S. limit, the FSIS had no grounds for blocking the beef’s producer from reselling the rejected meat in the United States.

Terrific. Just another reminder why it took an election just to begin the process of turning federal agencies into something that must be responsible to the electorate – instead of corporate rubber stamps.

Iraq will not renew the licence of US security firm Blackwater, which was involved in an 2007 incident in which at least 14 civilians were killed. An interior ministry spokesman said the US embassy had been told it will have to use another security company.

Five former Blackwater guards have gone on trial in the United States over the killings in Baghdad. They have pleaded not guilty to killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others by gunfire and grenades…

After the incident, the Iraqi government pressed Washington to withdraw Blackwater from the country, but the security firm’s contract was renewed in 2008.

A new US-Iraqi security agreement gives Baghdad the authority to determine which Western security companies operate in the country.

A US embassy official confirmed it had received the Iraqi decision, and said US officials were working with the Iraqi government and its contractors to address the “implications of this decision”.

Heavens to Murgatroyd. The Iraqi government not only wants to make decisions without approval from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department, they think they have the right to disagree with our policies.

What is this? Sovereignty?

Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama
Daylife/AP Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast

The head of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team said Sunday that the incoming administration is conducting an extensive review of President Bush’s executive orders.

Asked about reports that the transition team already has identified a number of areas where Obama could issue executive orders as soon as he takes office, John Podesta said he would not “preview decisions that [Obama] has yet to make.”

“I would say that as a candidate, Sen. Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders reviewed and decide which ones should be kept and which ones should be repealed and which ones should be amended, and that process is going on. It’s been undertaken,” Podesta said Sunday.

Podesta pointed out that there is a lot the president can do without waiting for Congress, and voters can expect to see Obama do so to try and restore “a sense that the country is working on behalf of the common good.”

“I think that we’re looking at — again, in virtually every agency to see where we can move forward, whether that’s on energy transformation, on improving health care, on stem cell research,” he said.

Bush and his neocon army had eight years to foul their nest. Confronting agencies and institutions often turned against their chartered purpose must be a daunting task.

Parallel to these efforts, the rightwingers battling to retain control of the Republican Party have already launched the sort of divisive PR campaign that brought America’s former center for conservative thought and politics – to crashing defeat.