A casual text message to work colleagues encouraging them to "blow away" the competition at a trade show allegedly plunged a Muslim man into a terrorism probe.Telecommunications sales manager Saad Allami says the innocent message, aimed at pumping up his staff, has had devastating consequences on his life.The Quebec man says he was arrested by provincial police while picking up his seven-year-old son at school. A team of police officers stormed into his home, telling his wife she was married to a terrorist. And his work colleagues were detained for hours at the U.S. border because of their connection to him.

It’s getting safer in Canada, too.

And Kunkel, the University of Arizona professor, says that scientific studies have shown that children under eight cannot understand the persuasive intent of advertising. At a fundamental level, then, advertising to children is simply unfair.

In an inadvertent slip, the European Commission reveals that ACTA will indeed bring censorship to the Internet. As usual, they say this in the calmest soothing tone of voice.

Tech writer MG Siegler just noted a remarkable fact:

Apple’s iPhone business alone is now bigger than Microsoft.

Not Windows. Not Office. Microsoft.

Think about that.

Remember when Balmer said the iPhone would never amount to anything? Good times…

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

Aren’t super-PACs terrific?

The Obama administration has decided to remove two of the four U.S. Army brigades remaining in Europe as part of a broader effort to cut $487 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade, said senior U.S. officials.

[..]

“In the briefing we’ve been giving the Europeans, we have made clear that there is going to be this rotational presence there that will be conducting exercises,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in an interview.

“As a matter of fact, they will probably see more of the Americans under the new strategy because the brigades that were there were actually fighting in Afghanistan and weren’t even there. . . . What you are going to have is two [brigades] plus this large rotational presence that is going to be there.”

So… to cut costs they are going to station MORE troops? How does that work, exactly?

Orly Taitz represented one of four plaintiffs challenging President Obama’s eligibility for placement on the Democratic ballot in Georgia. The President and his counsel were subpoenaed to appear in court to defend against these challenges, but the President’s attorney issued a nice letter to the judge stating that the Court had no business or jurisdiction even hearing the case and therefore the defense would not be in attendance.

So Taitz and her fellow attorneys presented their best arguments without challenge from the defense, and requested a summary judgment on the merits.

And the Court’s judgment: the plaintiffs have no case and no credible evidence, and there is no law to support their claims. Judgment for the defendant, represented only by an empty table, on the merits. Or in this case, utter lack thereof.

From the ruling: “Ordinarily, the Court would enter a default order against a party that fails to participate in any stage of a proceeding. Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 616-1-2-.30(1) and (5). Nonetheless, despite the Defendant’s failure to appear, Plaintiffs asked this Court to decide the case on the merits of their arguments and evidence. The Court granted Plaintiffs’ request.”

These birthers are dumber than a bag of bricks. 95+ cases brought, 0 won.

But he later refused after another FBI employee tried to get him to sign a paper without reading it, his daughter said. When he finally saw it, she said, it appeared to be a waiver of his constitutional rights, which angered him.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. were sued by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over the use of a mortgage database that the state said led to improper foreclosures.

The banks’ use of the database, known as MERS, misled homeowners, undermined foreclosure proceedings and created uncertainty about ownership interests in properties, the state said in the complaint filed yesterday in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

“The banks created the MERS system as an end-run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitization and sale of mortgages,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions.”

The purpose of MERS is to cheat your county government out of money for recording fees. Think about this the next time your county doesn’t have enough money for roads or parks or whatever.

If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

Here are a few of the countries that, according to watchdog Reporters Without Borders, currently enjoy greater press freedom than the United States: Ghana, South Africa, El Salvador, Niger, Mali, Jamaica, Slovakia, Uruguay, and virtually all of the developed world, from Western Europe to East Asia. Out of 179 countries, the U.S., which found independence and democracy on the back of the printing press, is now the 47th most free. Fortunately, we are still ranked ahead of Latvia and Haiti, though just barely.

When President Obama criticized Citizens United two years ago in his State of the Union address, at least three justices came back at him with pitchforks and shovels. In the end, most court watchers scored it a draw. But when a comedian with a huge national platform started ridiculing the court last summer, the stakes changed completely. This is no pointy-headed deconstruction unspooling on the legal blogs. Colbert has spent the past few months making every part of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizen United look utterly ridiculous. And the court, which has no access to cameras (by its own choosing), no press arm, and no discernible comedic powers, has had to stand by and take it on the chin.

It all started when Colbert announced that, as permitted by Citizens United, he planned to form a super PAC (“Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow”). As he explained to his viewers, his hope was that “Colbert Nation could have a voice, in the form of my voice, shouted through a megaphone made of cash … the American dream. And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections.”

Then last June, like a winking, eyebrow-wagging Mr. Smith, Colbert went to Washington and testified before the FEC, which granted him permission to launch his super PAC (over the objections of his parent company Viacom) and accept unlimited contributions from his fans so he might sway elections. (He tweeted before his FEC appearance that PAC stands for “Plastic And/Or Cash.”) In recent weeks, Colbert has run several truly insane attack ads (including one accusing Mitt Romney of being a serial killer). Then, with perfect comedic pitch, Colbert handed off control of his super PAC to Jon Stewart (lampooning the FEC rules about coordination between “independent PACS” and candidates with a one-page legal document and a Vulcan mind meld). Colbert then managed to throw his support to non-candidate Herman Cain in the South Carolina primary, placing higher on the ballot than Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and Michele Bachmann.

The line between entertainment and the court blurred even further late last month when Colbert had former Justice John Paul Stevens on his show to discuss his dissent in Citizens United. When a 91-year-old former justice is patiently explaining to a comedian that corporations are not people, it’s clear that everything about the majority opinion has been reduced to a punch line.

A Christian group has been banned from claiming that God can heal illnesses on its website and in leaflets.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had concluded that the adverts by Healing on the Streets (HOTS) – Bath, were misleading.

It said a leaflet available to download from the group’s website said: “Need Healing? God can heal today!”

It turns out Jesus never finished medical school…

Our tax dollars are being used to put our friends and neighbors in prison. Our money is used to turn 14-year-old boys into sexual offenders and incarcerate large numbers of minorities. It’s extracted complicity and as long as those in power continue to see no reprisal for these actions, it will continue until it’s truly too late.

Late last year, the Central Intelligence Agency explained to Judge Kessler of the US District Court in Washington DC that releasing the final volume of its three-decade-old history of the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle would “confuse the public,” and should be withheld because it is a “predecisional” document.

A French court has slapped a fraud sentence on the Church of Scientology, saying it targets vulnerable people for commercial gain. The ruling is a major setback for Scientologists in France, and it marks the first time here that the Church of Scientology has been convicted of organized fraud.

While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.

The candidate also said that the parent and child unjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate

After Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia’s ambassador to Japan, signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, she was deluged with emails from Slovenians criticizing her for signing onto the agreement, which encourages widespread network censorship and creates criminal penalties for copyright infringement. The ambassador read the agreement more closely and decided she agreed with the critics, and wrote an open letter of apology to her country for signing them up to the treaty.

Please note that the use of any recording equipment to capture this film is strictly forbidden, including: camcorders, cameras, cell phones, charcoal, ink, paint (oil or water-based), and the human brain. On leaving the theatre, you will be assaulted by baseball-bat-wielding ushers, who will pummel your skull until you forget what you have seen.

Any remaining memories are yours to keep and enjoy, provided you do not discuss them with others or make them available via mankind’s collective unconscious. In addition, your experience of this film may not be remixed in any form; dreams involving any of its characters must adhere strictly to the film’s actual plotline and running time, and must also comply with copyright laws in your state or territory. Any sexual fantasies based on it may not exceed the film’s M.P.A.A. rating.

This film is licensed only for public exhibition in first-run theatres, and is not to be screened in schools, on oil rigs, or in prisons. If you are watching it in a school, on an oil rig, or in a prison, you must immediately drop out, throw yourself off the edge and swim to safety, or plan an elaborate escape with the help of a ragtag team of charming criminals, most of whom were wrongly accused, and all of whom wish to become productive members of society. The rights to the story of your escape immediately become the property of the makers of this film, in any and all forms of expression now extant or to be invented in the future, throughout the universe and three feet beyond, just for good measure.

Google Inc has been quietly policing its online store for months now in an acknowledgement of malware’s growing threat to its increasingly popular Android mobile software.

The new sheriff in town is Bouncer: a security service Google put in place to scan new apps as developers load them onto Market, its applications store.

Bouncer sweeps apps for potentially malicious behavior and also analyzes new developer accounts to prevent “repeat-offenders” from distributing their wares, Google says. Those heightened efforts are paying off, it added.

The nation’s leading breast cancer advocacy organization confronted the growing furor Thursday over its decision to largely end its decades-long partnership with Planned Parenthood, with rising dissension in its own ranks and a roiling anger on the Internet showing the power of social media to harness protest.

All seven California affiliates of the organization, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, released a statement saying they opposed its decision. Twenty-six senators urged the foundation to reconsider its decision. And a pledge of $250,000 from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York helped Planned Parenthood, which provides family planning and abortion services in hundreds of clinics across the country, to more than make up the money it lost.

Public Intelligence

A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity.  The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity.  The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using “software to hide encrypted data in digital photos” or other media.  In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others” should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities.

Logging into an account associated with a residential internet service provider (such as Comcast or AOL), an activity that could simply indicate that you are on a trip, is also considered a suspicious activity.  Viewing any content related to “military tactics” including manuals or “revolutionary literature” is also considered a potential indicator of terrorist activity.  This would mean that viewing a number of websites, including the one you are on right now, could be construed by a hapless employee as an highly suspicious activity potentially linking you to terrorism.

The “Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities” contained in the flyer are not to be construed alone as a sign of terrorist activity and the document notes that “just because someone’s speech, actions, beliefs, appearance, or way of life is different; it does not mean that he or she is suspicious.”  However, many of the activities described in the document are basic practices of any individual concerned with security or privacy online.  The use of PGP, VPNs, Tor or any of the many other technologies for anonymity and privacy online are directly targeted by the flyer, which is distributed to businesses in an effort to promote the reporting of these activities.

Violet Blue describing the “saddest booth babe in the world” at Macworld:

Her shoulders were hunched and her hands sat limply in her lap beneath breasts that were packaged air-tight in a tight, branded t-shirt.

Except it wasn’t a booth babe, it was a developer at her booth. Perhaps Violet should have asked her about the product since she was only 15 feet away from her.

I love this from the comments on the story:

Violet Blue, that “saddest booth babe in the world” is in fact the developer and sole proprietor of NeoPlay Entertainment. Had you actually been doing your job, i.e. reporting, you would have known this, because your would have talked to her.
But no, being the pustulent wart that you are you stand around making up your own facts to fit the story that ‘you’ want to tell.

For someone that advocates female rights and empowerment to the extent that you do, you display a breathless ignorance of the issues.

Had you been doing your job you would be celebrating this woman, not sneering at her in order to make a factually incorrect point.

The only thing sad here is the reporting or lack of.

When voting closed on January 28th, marijuana related questions accounted for 105 out of the top 160 questions and received more than 72,000 votes in total. Individual reposts of NORML’s question netted well over 20,000 combined.

[..]

We waited with anticipation until last night when President Obama took to his webcam and began addressing the questions. After about an hour came and went with some unsubstantial discussion about jobs, a question from an internet comedian, talk of the Obama’s upcoming wedding anniversary, and the President offering to check out the resume of an attendee’s spouse, the “interview” ended, with not a single word spoken about marijuana prohibition. It seems they found silence to be more effective than censorship.

[..]

President Obama once stated that marijuana legalization is an entirely “legitimate topic for debate.” The American people are clearly ready for that debate, Mr. President. When will you be?