March 2013 archive

Libya’s south teeters toward chaos – and militant extremists

Libya’s long-neglected, isolated southern region has grown more lawless since the fall of Moammar Kadafi. Only ill-trained tribal militias hold Islamist extremists at bay.

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

SABHA, Libya – Their fatigues don’t match and their pickup has no windshield. Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring light where the oasis succumbs to desert.

“If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a base. We can’t let that happen,” said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the Tabu warriors. “But the government hasn’t paid us in 14 months. They won’t even give us money to buy needles to mend our uniforms.”

As you know Chris Hayes will be hosting a new MSNBC show beginning April 1 at 8 PM EDT that he promises will be the same format as Up. Up’s new host Steve Carnacki takes over as the Saturday and Sunday host of the new “Up with Steve Carnacki” on April 13. This Sunday and next the best segments of the last two years will be aired.

Before his January suicide, Aaron Swartz was a leader in the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.  The groups with which Swartz worked-Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and many others-continue to fight for information transparency and reforms to the laws currently used to prosecute individuals for alleged crimes committed online.

Swartz’ death shifted debate from piracy and regulation to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the government’s attitude towards what it deems cybercrime, and hackers continue to be arrested and prosecuted. On March 26, the Justice Department announced that it had arrested a Wisconsin man for his alleged involvement in a Dedicated Denial of Service attack on two websites owned by Koch Industries. This arrest comes only a week after another hacker, Andrew Auernheimer, was sentenced to more than three years in prison for exposing a security hole in AT&T’s iPad user database.

Cases like these and actions like those of Operation KnightSec, the group of hackers who leaked information about the Steubenville rape investigation are sure to become more common, which means that over the issues SOPA raised will surface again.

Chris leads a debate on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) with NBC Universal Executive Vice President and General council Richard Cotton; Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian; former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA); and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

SOPA is gone but it’s ugly twin is back. Meet the “Patriot Act of the Internet“, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) which the House is expected to vote on in mid-April:

The House is expected to vote on a set of cybersecurity-focused bills in mid-April. One of those bills would include the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), which is aimed at removing the legal hurdles that prevent companies from sharing information about cyber threats with the government.

The bill boasts support from a broad swath of industry sectors – including the telecommunications, banking and tech industries – but has stoked criticism from privacy and civil liberties groups.

Privacy advocates charge that CISPA lacks sufficient privacy protections for people’s personal data and would increase the pool of Americans’ electronic communications that flow to the intelligence community, including the secretive National Security Agency.

The bill passed the House last spring but went untouched in the Senate, largely because it was working on its own comprehensive measure.

CISPA’s Problem Isn’t Bad PR, It’s Bad Privacy

by  Robyn Greene, Washington Legislative Office of the ACLU

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) made the argument last week that the privacy community’s significant concerns with CISPA, the privacy-busting cybersecurity bill, don’t stem from actual problems with the bill language, but rather from a misunderstanding of the bill itself. Speaking on behalf of himself and his co-sponsor, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), he told The Hill, “We feel that the bill clearly deals with privacy, that the checks and balances are there, but [we] know there’s still a perception and we’re still trying to deal with that.”  

The ACLU, along with a coalition of 41 privacy and civil liberties groups, are very concerned about the real-world impact that the authorities proposed in CISPA could have on Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. President Obama, along with top administration officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, have echoed many of our concerns. CISPA, in its current form (pdf):    

• Creates an exception to all privacy laws to allow companies to share our personal information, including internet records and the content of emails, with the government and other companies, for cybersecurity purposes;
• Permits our private information to be shared with any government agency, like the NSA or the Department of Defense ‘s Cyber Command;
• Fails to require the protection of Americans’ personally identifiable information (PII), despite repeated statements by the private sector that it doesn’t want or need to share PII;
• Once shared with the government, allows our information to be used for non-cybersecurity “national security” purposes – an overbroad “catch-all” phrase that can mean almost anything;
• Immunizes companies from criminal or civil liability, even after an egregious breach of privacy;
• Fails to implement adequate transparency and oversight mechanisms.

In a recent article in Wired, Chris Finan, former White House director for cybersecurity, urged Congress to fix CISPA by amending the bill so as to require companies to strip their customers’ PII before sharing it with the government; restrict information sharing to civilian agencies; restrict the further dissemination and use of information to cybersecurity purposes; place reasonable limits on companies’ liability protections; and establish a non-profit to act as an “independent ‘watchdog'”  over any information sharing program to enhance oversight and transparency.

It will would be great if Congress amended CISPA to address all of our privacy concerns, but it’s hard to hold out hope for sufficient changes so long as its chief sponsor thinks that it doesn’t have a privacy problem so much as a PR problem. Everyone, from the privacy community to the president, agrees that CISPA is bad on privacy – the problem isn’t our perception.

For Aaron and for us.

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Battle of Upsets.

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Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Sandwiches of all kinds are perfect vehicles for vegetables, and I am always perplexed when I stand at a refrigerator case in an airport looking at the selection of sandwiches and see little more than a thin slice of tomato or lettuce here and there amid layers of cheese, tuna or chicken salad, roast beef and sandwich meats. Vegetables can take the place of those salty sandwich meats and cheeses. They also provide one way to reduce sodium in a sandwich, which is more effective than trying to reduce sodium in breads, which require salt for all sorts of reasons, palatability being just one of them.

~Martha Rode Shulman~

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“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: [The Campaign to Outlaw Abortion]

Anti-abortion groups have been trying to re-impose restrictions on abortion rights for 40 years, but the Legislature and governor of North Dakota have taken this attack on women’s reproductive health and freedom to a shocking new low by passing a bill that they must know perfectly well is unconstitutional by any reading of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and others since.

Under those rulings, full abortion bans are allowable only after fetal viability, which the medical community generally considers to be around 24 weeks into pregnancy. But North Dakota joins a growing list of states trying to set that limit earlier, including Arkansas and its unconstitutional ban after 12 weeks, enacted just three weeks ago.

Kristen Breitweiser: Dear Mr Obama: You’re Just Like Dick

Mr. President, what a high bar you have set for yourself in assuring us that you are no Dick Cheney when it comes to drones.

Wow, the country must feel so comfortably numb with your glowing self-assessment.

But actually Mr. President, you are probably worse than Dick Cheney.

Because with Cheney, the Democrats screamed and yelled (ok, more like ineffectively grumbled and mumbled) about Cheney’s unconstitutional power grabs. Yes, with Cheney at least there was a modicum of pushback, a scintilla of oversight — even if it was only due to partisan politics.

With you Mr. Obama, indeed, the halls of Congress, the media, and the provocateurs of the prattle-sphere are mostly silent. And that’s what’s so dangerous.

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