Pretty much unique among nations, the United States asserts that its laws apply to the rest of the world, including to foreign nationals. How on earth can Julian Assange, a citizen of Australia who has never been a resident of the United States, face sedition charges in the U.S.?
Shhh! The Samsung TV is Listening! Or is It?
Originally published at Breaking Modern:
This week it came out that Samsung was warning users of its new smart televisions to not discuss personal information around their TVs because it could be transmitted to a third party.
“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition,” said the company’s privacy policy. A day after the so-called revelation, though, Samsung said it was removing the warning and that the Samsung TV doesn’t eavesdrop on or store conversations at all.
TALE Podcast: Ted Rall and Lynn Bixenspan
TALE is an awesome The Moth-like storytelling live show in New York City. If you know me personally, and you’ve seen me with beer inside me, you know I like telling stories. So anyway, TALE has launched storytelling podcasts! I’m in the first one, along with comedian Lynn Bixenspan and cohosts Harmon Leon and Alex Schmidt.
It’s about my personal experience as the target of post-9/11 government surveillance.
Tricky Dick Meets the NSA
Even if you trust the Obama Administration with NSA programs that see everything we do online, drones that can blow us up and an executive order that allows the President to maintain a kill list of anyone he wants, anywhere he wants, they won’t always be in charge. How will you feel about those powers when someone like the paranoid Dick Nixon is in charge?