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Civil Rights

This Snack Food Corporation Has a Creepy Plan to Spy on You in the Grocery Store

October 19, 2013 Brian Fung, www.washingtonpost.com ,
Mondelez International, whose properties include Chips Ahoy, Nabisco, Ritz and other high-profile snack brands, says it's planning to debut a grocery shelf in 2015 that comes equipped with sensors to determine the age and sex of passing customers. The shelf, which is hooked up to Microsoft's Kinect controller, will be able to use basic facial features like bone structure to build a profile of a potential snacker, Mondelez chief information officer Mark Dajani told the Wall Street Journal. While pictures of your actual face won't be stored, aggregate demographic data from thousands of transactions will be.

Stop-And-Frisk in Public Housing

September 24, 2013 NY Times Editorial Board, www.nytimes.com
Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan made the right decision last week when she granted class-action status to a lawsuit brought by public housing residents and visitors who say they were illegally stopped or arrested by the police in their buildings. The ruling in Davis v. the City of New York clears the way for a trial in one of three federal class-action suits challenging different aspects of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, under which hundreds of thousands of times a year people are detained, often while doing nothing wrong.

Path to Autocracy: Could America Become a Police State?

September 24, 2013 L Michael Hager, www.truth-out.org , ,
In the name of post-9/11 security, the Patriot and FISA acts have severely compromised the civil liberties of all Americans. Yet it's not just a matter of individual privacy. Daniel Ellsberg observed that when people know that their every comment on phones or emails "is being recorded and can be retrieved," they won't feel free to speak their minds. That's especially true when what they want to say contradicts official policy or can be seen as political protest. "We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," said Ellsberg.

NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell’s imagination – Guardian Editor

September 24, 2013 Dominic Rushe, www.theguardian.com ,
The potential of the surveillance state goes way beyond anything in George Orwell's 1984, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, told an audience in New York on Monday. Speaking in the wake of a series of revelations in the Guardian about the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance operations, Rusbridger said: "Orwell could never have imagined anything as complete as this, this concept of scooping up everything all the time. "This is something potentially astonishing about how life could be lived and the limitations on human freedom," he said.

Egyptian Arrested for Naming Donkey After General

September 24, 2013 Mariam Rizk, www.freedetainees.org , ,
The state news agency says a farmer in southern Egypt has been arrested after putting the military chief’s name and an army-style cap on his donkey while riding it through town. MENA news agency said that Omar Abul-Magd was arrested late Friday in Qena province for allegedly insulting Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who led the popularly-backed coup against President Mohammed Morsi. Since Morsi’s ouster, authorities have cracked down on critics of the powerful military. Earlier this week, a military court ordered five pro-Morsi protesters to serve up to three years in prison for chanting against the army. Three were tried in absentia.

Obama-Appointed Review Panel Set to Whitewash Illegal NSA Surveillance

September 22, 2013 Kevin Gosztola, www.firedoglake.com ,
A group of experts appointed to review the surveillance engaged in by the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies is working under the control Office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and is not focused on investigating surveillance abuses that former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden has exposed. Revelations around top secret surveillance programs and the critical debate spurred was what drove President Barack Obama to appoint the review group in the first place.

California College Tells Student He Can’t Hand Out Copies Of Constitution

September 20, 2013 Techdirt.com, www.techdirt.com , ,
The latest example of confined and controlled speech comes to us courtesy of Modesto Junior College. As FIRE.org reports, a student found his exercise of free speech shut down on one of the worst days of the year for a college to assert its negative attitude towards the First Amendment. In a stunning illustration of the attitude taken towards free speech by too many colleges across the United States, Modesto Junior College in California told a student that he could not pass out copies of the United States Constitution outside the student center on September 17, 2013—Constitution Day. Captured on video, college police and administrators demanded that Robert Van Tuinen stop passing out Constitution pamphlets and told him that he would only be allowed to pass them out in the college’s tiny free speech zone, and only after scheduling it several days or weeks ahead of time.

New Intel Chips Contain Back-Door Processor, Hackable Even When Computer is Turned Off

September 19, 2013 Jim Stone, jimstonefreelance.com ,
The new Intel Core vPro processors contain a new remote access feature which allows 100 percent remote access to a PC 100 percent of the time, even if the computer is turned off. Core vPro processors contain a second physical processor embedded within the main processor which has it's own operating system embedded on the chip itself. As long as the power supply is available and and in working condition, it can be woken up by the Core vPro processor, which runs on the system's phantom power and is able to quietly turn individual hardware components on and access anything on them.

Masked DEA Agents Raid Innocent Women, Refuse to Reveal Identities

September 19, 2013 Radley Balko, huffingtonpost.com , ,
Over a three-day period in June 2007, heavily armed SWAT teams, supported by tanks and helicopters, descended on Detroit's Eight Mile Road. The massive operation involved police and agents from 21 different local, state and federal branches of law enforcement, and was intended to rid the notoriously crime-ridden area of drug houses, prostitutes and wanted fugitives.

Angela Davis On 16th Street Church Bombings 50 Years Ago

September 15, 2013 Davey D. www.hiphopandpolitics.com , ,
In fact the day of the bombing Angela’s mother drove Carole’s mother to the church to pick up her daughter. They had heard about the church being bombed, but sadly didn’t know Carole was one of those killed. Davis talked at length during our Hard Knock Radio show about how and why this incident was a key turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. It was a wake up call that moved everyone to get more involved. Davis also noted that on that day two other Black teens, both boys Virgil Ware and Johnny Robertson were also killed. One by the Klan sympathizers and the other by police who sadly had a working relationship with the KKK. 16th street Baptist churchShe also noted that there was a rebellion , the largest of its kind in Birmingham, which has been erased from the history books.

#mow2013 Why We Need a New Civil Rights and Labor Movement

August 10, 2013 Mark Vorpahl, www.occupy.com ,
The Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin have served as bitter reminders of not only how far we still are from realizing the vision for jobs and freedom that brought over 250,000 to Washington, DC, in 1963. They have also underlined how ephemeral the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement currently are. In this context, no 50th anniversary event can remain a celebration of days gone by. It will inevitably be seen as a test of commitment towards regenerating a movement that can steer this country in a direction towards economic justice and equality.

NSA Loophole Allows Warrantless Search of Americans’ Emails and Phone Calls

August 9, 2013 James Ball and Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com , ,
The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden. The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".

Dream Defenders Launching Massive Voter Registration Drive

August 9, 2013 Rochelle Koff, www.tampabay.com ,
The Dream Defenders, who are marking Day 24 of their Capitol sit-in outside Gov. Rick Scott's office, announced they are launching a massive drive to register 61,550 voters by 2014 -- the margin Scott won by in the 2010 election. "We intend to register the people that are forgotten - the black, the brown, the indigent, the poor, the LGBT community and we will meet them where they are, in the classrooms, in the mall, at the club, on the corner, at the bus stop" said the Dream Defenders Executive Director Philip Agnew at a press conference Thursday.

Zimmerman’s Acquittal, The Call For New Civil Rights Movement

July 16, 2013 Mark Vorpahl, www.occupy.com , ,
On the other hand, Trayvon has been found guilty. In dropping all charges against Zimmerman, the jury concluded that Trayvon had thrown the first punch in response to Zimmerman's threatening behavior, and therefore Zimmerman was justified in shooting him in self-defense. If only it could be said that a more perverse and twisted miscarriage of justice by our legal system was hard to find. Agonizingly, it is not. For millions of people this tragic affair was never simply about a confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin. It was the United States justice system that was on trial under charges of institutional racism -- and it has proven itself guilty. To begin to appreciate the significance of this, some context is necessary.
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