Eideard

 
Many internet users in the United States have watched with horror as countries like France and Britain have proposed or instituted so-called “three strikes” laws, which cut off internet access to those accused of repeated acts of copyright infringement. Now the U.S. has its own version of this kind of law, and it is arguably much worse: the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the House this week, would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers to remove websites from the internet on the flimsiest of grounds, and would force internet service providers to play the role of copyright police.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes in a post on the proposed legislation, the law would not only require ISPs to remove websites from the global network at the request of the government or the courts (by blocking any requests to the central domain-name system that directs internet traffic), but would also be forced to monitor their users’ behavior in order to police acts of copyright infringement. Providers who do not comply with these requests and requirements would be subject to sanctions. And in many cases, legal hearings would not be required…

In addition to using what some are calling the “internet death penalty” of removing infringing websites from the DNS system so they can’t be found, the proposed bill would also allow copyright holders to push for websites and services to be removed from search engine results and to have their supply of advertising cut off — and would require that payment companies like PayPal and ad networks comply with these orders. If you liked what PayPal and others did when they shut off donations to WikiLeaks, you’re going to love the new Stop Online Piracy Act…

The bottom line is that if it passes and becomes law, the new act would give the government and copyright holders a giant stick — if not an automatic weapon — with which to pursue websites and services they believe are infringing on their content. With little or no requirement for a court hearing, they could remove websites from the internet and shut down their ability to be found by search engines or to process payments from users. DMCA takedown notices would effectively be replaced by this nuclear option, and innocent websites would have to fight to prove that they deserved to be restored to the internet — a reversal of the traditional American judicial approach of being assumed innocent until proven guilty — at which point any business they had would be destroyed.

Just as our Congress has become the kind of legislative body that would make any corporation happy and content, this bill would make for the kind of internet that would increase smiles and profits for media conglomerates — regardless of the stifling blanket dropped on the whole Web.

From next year, new phones and other hand-held devices will be required to be fitted with special chips to receive the alerts, which will also be sent by state and local authorities. Users will be able to opt out of every type of alert except those from the president, said the Federal Communications Commission.

The system will include alerts about missing children and will supersede all other phone traffic to avoid delays.

Mr Obama, who has been dubbed the “texter-in-chief” thanks to his devotion to his BlackBerry and heavy use of text messages during his 2008 campaign, may face criticism from libertarians for the compulsory nature of the presidential alerts. But, most of our politicians will welcome yet another advance beyond the technological limits of Cold War panic-mongers.

But officials see the system, known as Personal Localized Alerting Network, or PLAN, as a logical progression from alerting the public via radio and television.

“The lesson that was reinforced on 9/11 was the importance of getting clear and accurate information to the public during a crisis,” said Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, where the scheme will be deployed first next year. It will then move to Washington and most other large cities.

He called the alerts a “quantum leap forward in using technology to help keep people safe”.

The warnings will have a unique signal and vibration, said officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Depending on where you carry your cell phone you may receive a truly thrilling message from the White House.

On a more rational note – though Republican nanny state advocates will disagree – think of what a boon this would be for the NSA. Instead of current procedures involving a chipset in a listening device which has to work at sorting individual conversations, they probably could use the mandatory chip inside your phone [required by the proposal] to identify an individual conversation at their request.

Police have said that a 500lb bomb left in a van under the main Belfast to Dublin road near Newry may have been destined for a town centre.

Chief Superintendent Alasdair Robinson said the device, which was stored inside a wheelie bin, was “sophisticated and substantial”. He said that it could have caused huge devastation and loss of life.

The major alert was less than a week since the murder of PSNI constable Ronan Kerr in Omagh, County Tyrone.

Police believe that the van containing the bomb was abandoned in the underpass because of increased police activity in the wake of the murder last Saturday…

Police have refused to be drawn on which organisation was responsible…

Acting NI Policing Board chairman Brian Rea said the “pure purpose” of the bomb was “death and destruction”.

“The public and political revulsion at the murder of Constable Kerr clearly shows that the people of Northern Ireland do not want any more devastation inflicted on our community and our police service…”

Meanwhile Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has reiterated his call for dissidents to meet his party for talks. Writing on his blog, he said that republican heartlands were “seething with anger” following the recent murder of Constable Kerr.

“The people of this island demand that you stop,” he wrote, addressing dissident republicans. “I am prepared to meet you anywhere at any time to listen to what you have to say and to tell you that there is now a democratic peaceful way to unite our people and our country on the basis of equality.”

Cynic that I can be – I consider that a possibility still exists that these expressly violent tactics may be a red herring from rightwingers trying to sabotage the peace.

Yes, I’m aware that anarchy is still the road of choice of nutballs either side of the road. Dimwits who care more about the thrill they get from making big noises – instead of actually accomplishing any sort of change.

Funeral parlor uses a pickup truck to haul away bodies in Acapulco
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The launch this week of a comprehensive official database of drug-related killings around Mexico provides a new insight into the complexity of the conflict with criminal groups that traffic drugs into the United States.

Until now, the public relied mostly on tallies elaborated by national media outlets or on sporadic – and sometimes confusing – figures released by different government institutions.

Many in Mexico have therefore welcomed the publication of a unified set of data that for the first time includes not only fallen gang members, but also police, soldiers and innocent civilians killed in the fight against the cartels.

However, that positive development has been overshadowed by the grim scenario that the figures depict – and some complain that they only show one, even if the most tragic, aspect of the conflict.

According to the new database, the total number of people killed in the conflict between December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon came into power, and the end of 2010, stands at 34,612…

Total number of victims in drug-related violence in Mexico, per year

December 2006: 62
2007: 2,826
2008: 6,837
2009: 9,614
2010: 15,273

At least 89% of the fatalities are suspected gang members killed in turf wars between the different organisations that compete for control of trafficking routes into the US.

RTFA. Investigate the arguments for and against Calderon’s policies.

And I don’t know – do you think there will ever be a positive outcome?

BP, TransOcean, Halliburton
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

BP was aware of equipment problems aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig hours before the explosion pumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, a congressional hearing was told yesterday .

In a second day of hearings, the House of Representatives’s energy and commerce committee said documents and company briefings suggested that BP, which owned the well; Transocean, which owned the rig; and Halliburton, which made the cement casing for the well, ignored tests in the hours before the 20 April explosion that indicated faulty safety equipment.

“Yet it appears the companies did not suspend operations, and now 11 workers are dead and the gulf faces an environmental catastrophe,” Henry Waxman, the chair of the energy and commerce committee, said, demanding to know why work was not stopped.

The committee heard testimony from oil executives suggesting multiple failures of safety systems that should have given advance warning of a blowout, or should have promptly cut off the flow of oil.

The failures included a dead battery in the blowout preventer, suggestions of a breach in the well casing, and failure in the shear ram, a device of last resort that was supposed to cut through and seal the drill pipe in the event of a blowout.

Nothing has changed since I worked in the offshore oil drilling industry, decades ago. Preventive technology has improved. The willingness of corporate bosses to take a position on the side of safety – still appears to be non-existent.

The earthquake which rocked Padang, western Sumatra in September last year killing more than 1000 people was not the ‘great earthquake’ which earth scientists are waiting for. In fact, it may have made the next massive earthquake more likely, according to Ulster expert Professor John McCloskey…

Professor McCloskey and his group rapidly analysed the M9.2 earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and alerted the world to the threat of another large quake in the Sumatra region of the Indian Ocean 10 days before it struck. He is head of the Geophysics Research Group at Ulster’s Environmental Sciences Research Institute…

“For some years now scientists have been warning of the build up of stress on one of the earth’s great plate boundaries to the west of Sumatra in Indonesia. For more than 200 years the collision between the Indian ocean plate and the Asian plate has stored an enormous amount of energy.

“It’s just like slowly drawing a bow. For hundreds of years the energy is stored as the two tectonic plates bend and deform. Then, in just a few seconds all this energy is released generating a massive earthquake and sometimes flexing the seafloor to create a tsunami.

“Off western Sumatra the bow is drawn tight. The last shock happened more than 200 years ago and the stresses are probably larger now than they were then; the earthquake must happen soon…

“Science and scientists do not have all the answers. We don’t know where or when the next big earthquake will happen. We disagree on a lot of the details about how earthquakes work, how they start and how they stop but there are many things about which there is no disagreement.

“All the indicators are pointing in the same direction for western Sumatra. Another massive earthquake is due there and could happen literally any day.

The question returns – what might nations do to prepare for global-scale natural disasters? If we still believe that “peace has broken out” with the end of the Cold War – one obvious proposal would be to constitute large sections of armies and navies to be trained for disaster response as an essential portion of their mandate.

Necessary wars and other delights of partisan politics always seem to get in the way, though.

I guess Dutch researchers need warning signs, too

A triumph for Dutch police quickly turned out to be an embarrassing mistake after they destroyed what they thought was a field of cannabis plants.

Police announced they had discovered a plantation of some 47,000 illicit cannabis plants with a street value of $6.3 million.

They had destroyed much of the crop when they were told the plants belonged to a respected school of agriculture. They were a type of hemp, being grown as a fibre for use in textiles.

They were being grown in the field near Lelystad, Flevoland province under licence by researchers from Wageningen University who were studying the hemp variety as a potential sustainable source of textiles.

“The street value from a drug point of view is less than zero,” the university’s Simon Vink told AP news agency.

A bit more than an Oops! when you think about it.

Photo from KOMO news video

A group cited by U.S. officials as a domestic terrorism threat claimed responsibility Friday for knocking down two radio station towers in Snohomish County, Washington.

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) issued a statement about “AM radio waves causing adverse health effects including a higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and that the signals have been interfering with home phone and intercom lines.”

Then, the usual rationales for anarchy and “direct action” were offered by these egregious cowards.

The towers belong to radio station KRKO. “There’s quite a bit of destruction to the antenna system and it will probably take at least three months to get it back up and operational again,” station manager Andy Skotdal told CNN affiliate KIRO, adding that much of it was “flattened like a pancake…”

KRKO is working with authorities to find those responsible, Skotdal said, adding, “We’ll use our own airwaves to do it.”

The perpetrators stole an excavating machine out of a yard in order to knock down the towers, Skotdal said.

Anarchy as a political philosophy has been proven useless for decades, if not centuries. There is always some middle-class twit who can’t stand the stress and strain of democratic political struggle and “takes it upon himself” to right the wrongs of the world.

We have cross-pollination from the tinfoil hat-brigade and their fear of radio wave aliens.