“Report: Obama Officials Authorized New ‘Cybersecurity’ Warrantless Surveillance Program, Fresh Immunity Given to ISPs | Electronic Frontier Foundation”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/report-obama-officials-authorized-new-cybersecurity-warrantless-surveillance

APRIL 24, 2013 | BY TREVOR TIMM

Report: Obama Officials Authorized New ‘Cybersecurity’ Warrantless Surveillance Program, Fresh Immunity Given to ISPs

Yesterday, in a disturbing report published on CNET, new documents obtained by EPIC reveal that Obama administration officials have authorized a new government program involving the interception of communications on Internet service providers, including AT&T —one of the key players in the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.Under long-standing federal law, the government needs to use legal process to compel service providers to hand over customer communications, yet reportedly, the government is promising these companies they will not to prosecute them for violating US wiretapping laws if they hand over the information voluntarily. And the secret surveillance authorization seems quite broad, touching on huge swaths of private, domestic activity:The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors’ Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.CNET reported also that the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Defense were “deeply involved in press for the secret legal authorization” further underscoring widespread worries that the military may be given access to Americans’ personal information through cybersecurity operations. The report comes as Congress is debating CISPA, a dangerous bill that carves a “cybersecurity” loophole in all our privacy laws.While we are still sifting through the more than thousand pages of documents—obtained by EPIC Privacy through the Freedom of Information Act and posted to their website—the most controversial aspect of this program seems to be that the government has not used legal process to obtain Internet traffic from AT&T and other ISPs involved in the program. Instead, the Justice Department has handed them what the Justice Department calls a “2511 letter”—named after a section of the Wiretap Act—which purports to immunize them from prosecution.Section 2511 makes it a crime to wiretap—intercept electronic communications—with some exceptions, like a properly issued warranted. It provides no exception for a letter from the Justice Department. CNET reported an industry representative told them “the 2511 letters provided legal immunity to the providers by agreeing not to prosecute for criminal violations of the Wiretap Act. It’s not clear how many 2511 letters were issued by the Justice Department.”Beyond what CNET reported, we still need to analyze these new documents to determine how pervasive this surveillance is and its impact on the American public. We are currently reading them over and will have a more detailed analysis soon.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/report-obama-officials-authorized-new-cybersecurity-warrantless-surveillance

We Deviate (by dEfyant)

Do you believe in parallel realities?
Have you ever speculated whether it just may be possible for each of us to exist within multiple, slightly varying, universes -all at once?
Have you ever found yourself wondering what it might be like to walk a day (perhaps a week, or maybe a month) in one of your “alternate’s” shoes …doing any, or all, of the things you currently wish you were doing, feel that you need to be doing, or even think that you should be doing, now –during this life, in this specific reality?

If you were able to live out your life as a different version of yourself…
1) What is at least one goal or accomplishment you’d aim to achieve?
2) Is there anything you can think of that you would consciously do differently?

RE: SOPA/PIPA – Please Join The Censorship Protest

[New post on WordPress.com News] –

Help defend our right to freedom of speech…

Join Our Censorship Protest! by Jane Wells

Have you been paying attention to all the hubbub online about the proposed U.S. legislation (SOPA/PIPA) that threatens internet freedom? I wrote about it last week over on WordPress.org, but the gist is this: there’s a bill in the U.S. Senate that if passed would put publishing freedom severely at risk, and could shut down entire sites at the whim of media companies. Fight for the Future created this nifty video to sum it up better than I can.

http://vimeo.com/31100268

On January 18, 2012, sites all over the internet will be blacking out to protest and try to mobilize more people to speak out against this bill coming up in the Senate next week, S. 968: the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in an attempt to let U.S. lawmakers know how much opposition there is. WordPress.org, Wikipedia, and even WordPress.com VIP I Can Has Cheezburger? will be participating in the blackout to raise awareness and spur you to action.

Here on WordPress.com, we want to participate as well. Freshly Pressed will be blacked out during the strike. Sorry to take away your daily fix of yummy web content, but this bill threatens to do that on a much wider scale. You don’t want that, do you?

More importantly, we are making it possible for you to participate in the protest. There are two options: a “Stop Censorship” ribbon and a full blackout. The blackout portion will be in effect January 18 from 8am to 8pm EST, while the ribbon will be displayed until January 24. Here’s how to join in:

1. Go to Settings → Protest SOPA/PIPA in your dashboard. 2. Select if you want to join the blackout or show a ribbon. 3. If you choose to join the blackout, you can edit the message that will be shown on your site during the blackout. 4. Preview what your protest will look like. 5. Click “Save Changes” button to activate your protest. That’s it! Easy-peasy activism right at your fingertips.

The “Stop Censorship” ribbon will display in the upper corner of your site and links to americancensorship.org. It will display until January 24, 2012 (the Senate vote date).

If you choose to do the blackout in addition to the ribbon, then we will black out your site from 8am to 8pm EST along with the official strike. You can customize the message that will appear on your blacked-out site to tell people why this issue is important to you. Your site will return to just displaying the ribbon after the strike is over.

I hope that a significant number of you on WordPress.com will join in this protest. Publishing freedom is a right we must protect.

And one last pitch: whatever you decide to do about your site, please take a few minutes to head over to americancensorship.org and take action. It only takes a few moments of your time to be an agent of change!

Jane Wells | January 18, 2012 at 1:25 am | Tags: Censorship, laws, PIPA, Senate, SOPA | Categories: Community, Features, Freshly Pressed | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2vn

Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser:

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/join-our-censorship-protest/

Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

Thirty Seconds To Mars – Hurricane (Uncensored Director’s Cut) | Video

 

WARNING: EXPLICIT!
Video contains themes and imagery intended for a mature audience, as well as that which may offend some viewers.
STRICTLY OVER 18 ONLY!

The video will begin at 1 min 23 sec in.

“Hurricane”

 

[woman speaking foreign language]
 

CHAPTER 1 – BIRTH

[Jared:]
Time to escape the clutches of a name,
No, this is not a game;
It’s just a new beginning.

I don’t believe in fate,
But the bottom line: It’s time to pay;
You know you’ve got it coming.

[Fans:]
THIS… IS… WAR…

No matter how many times that you told me
You wanted to leave
No matter how many breaths that you took
You still couldn’t breathe
No matter how many nights that you’d lie wide awake to the sound of the poison rain
Where did you go?
Where did you go?
Where did you go?
As days go by
The night’s on fire
Tell me would you kill to save a life?
Tell me would you kill to prove you’re right?
Crash Crash Burn… Let it all burn
This hurricane’s chasing us all underground

[woman speaking foreign language]
 

CHAPTER 2 – LIFE

No matter how many deaths that I die
I will never forget
No matter how many lives that I live
I will never regret
There is a fire inside of this heart and a riot about to explode into flames
Where is your God?
Where is your God?
Where is your God?

(There is a fire inside of this heart… and a riot… about to explode into flames.)

Do you really want..
Do you really want me?
Do you really want me dead
Or alive to torture for my sins?
Do you really want..
Do you really want me?
Do you really want me dead
Or alive to live a lie?
Tell me would you kill to save a life?
Tell me would you kill to prove you’re right?
Crash Crash Burn… Let it all burn
This hurricane’s chasing us all underground

[woman speaking foreign language]

{rhythmic drumming}
(“These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder …which as they kiss, they consume.”)
[-Shakespeare Quote, from Romeo and Juliet]

[man speaking foreign language]
 

CHAPTER 3 – DEATH

The promises we made were not enough
The prayers that we had prayed were like a drug
The secrets that we sold were never known
The love we had.. The love we had.. We had to let it go…
Tell me would you kill to save a life?
Tell me would you kill to prove you’re right?
Crash Crash Burn… Let it all burn
This hurricane’s chasing us all underground
Ohhh-Woahh-Ohh… This hurricane
Ohhh-Woahh-Ohh… This hurricane
Ohhh-Woahh-Ohh… This hurricane
Ohhh-Woahh-Ohhhhh…
Do you really want..
Do you really want me?
Do you really want me dead
Or alive to torture for my sins?
Do you really want..
Do you really want me?
Do you really want me dead
Or alive to live a lie?

(“Deep into that darkness… peering, long I stood there -wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”)
[-Quote from “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe]

 

 

.: AcyydReign’s Archive of Favorite Quotes :.

~•☼•~ Ain Soph Aur ~•☼•~

• “Go beyond the illusion of your apparent reality.”
-Roxana Jones

• “Kill all my demons, and my angels might die, too.”
-movie, Transsiberian (Misquote of original by Tennessee Williams)

• “The kingdom of god is inside you …and all around you, not in buildings/mansions of wood and stone; split a piece of wood and I am there, lift a stone and you will find me.”
-The Gospel of St. Thomas (1945)

• “Aliens out in space were looking down on Earth. One said, “It seems the dominant life forms have developed satellite-based weapons.” The second asked, “Are they an emerging intelligence?” “I don’t think so,” the first responded, “They have the weapons pointed at themselves.”
-Unknown

• “I’m neither a leader nor a follower… I don’t hide in the shadows nor bask in the sun… I won’t require your attention, nor will I seek it… I march to the beat of my own drum —where you hear it’s music, that’s where I’ll be.”

• “Survival is the greatest revenge.”
-Unknown

• “Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real.”
-Sony

• “I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking OUTSIDE the box when there’s evidence of ANY thinking going on INSIDE it.”
-Terry Pratchett

• “Reality exists independently of us. It has no need for human beings, one way or another. But art, by it’s very definition, must be created.”

• “Truth …is the first casualty of war.”
-Philip Snowden (In his introduction to Truth and the War, by E. D. Morel)

• “Life is a journey, not a destination.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.”
-Plato

• “When you turn a light on for someone else, you light your own path as well.”
(Variation of: “We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.” -Ben Sweetland)

• “It is bad luck to be superstitious.”
-Andrew W. Mathis

• “Just because your are paranoid, does not mean they are not out to get you.”
-Henry Kissinger

• “Always tell the truth – it’s the easiest thing to remember.”
-David Mamet

• “All relationships take time and effort, but wouldn’t it be heavenly to know that you are investing all of that effort into something that is destined to take root and grow?”
-Unknown

• “Being happy doesn’t mean everything’s perfect; it means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
-Gerard Way

• “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
-Scott Adams

• “Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it.”
-Joshua Foer

• “The search for passion, feeling, love …it’ll get you every time.”
-The Hunger (1997–2000)

• “The heart cannot heal…what the eye cannot see.”
-The Twilight Zone

• “Only love lets us see normal things in an extraordinary way.”
-Fortune Cookie

• “Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.”
-Samuel Goldwyn

• “I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.”
-Samuel Goldwyn

• Elizabeth (Liz): “How did you know? …How did you know I’d respond to you the way I have?” John: “I saw myself in you.”
-movie, Nine 1/2 Weeks

• “I learned a long time ago, …never question the Cosmic Law of French Toast.”
-Jim, The Ghost Whisperer

• “Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
-Thomas Edison

• “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
-Albert Einstein

• “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
-Albert Einstein

• “The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
-Albert Einstein

• “Whatever!”

• “I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.”
-Unknown

• “Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.”
-Mark Twain

• “There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.”
-Joke, by Unknown

• “Amor Vincit Omnia”

• “BE the change you wish to see in the world.”
-Gandhi

• “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
-Helen Keller

• “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”
-Henry David Thoreau

• “Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh, how I wish he’d go away.”
-William Hughes Mearns‎

• “I’ve seen you before …in a dream. Why, oh why, are you haunting me?”

• “..I don’t know if life is greater than death. But love was more than either.”
-Tristan, Tristan and Isolde

• “If raindrops were kisses, I could send you showers :: If hugs were seas, I’d want to send you oceans :: And if love were a person, I’d send you me!”
-Unknown

• “A friend may well be reckoned a masterpiece of nature.”
-Emerson, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Book of Essays”

• “The best thing about Me is You.”
-Unknown

• “I reject your reality and substitute my own!”
-Dr Who

• “I’LL try to be nicer, if YOU try to be smarter.”
-Unknown

• “Respect the Living. Honour the Dead. Follow Your Heart, But Refuse To Be Led. Be…
-dEfyan†”

• “Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit.”
-Chains

• “Before you, my life was like a moonless night
Very dark, but there were stars; points of light and reason
Then you shot across my sky like a meteor
Suddenly, everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty
When you were gone… When the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light
I couldn’t see the stars anymore
…And there was no more reason for anything”
-Edward, Twilight Saga (revised)

• [Quote:]
A girl asked a boy, “Do you think I’m pretty?”
The boy replied, “No.”
The girl asked, “Do you want to be with me forever?”
The boy replied, “No.”
Finally the girl asked, “Well, would you cry if I walked away?” Once again the boy said, “No.”
She’d heard enough; tears streaming down her face, she’d turned to leave when the boy suddenly grabbed her arm and said, “I don’t think you’re pretty, …I think you’re BEAUTIFUL. I wouldn’t want to be with you forever, …I NEED to be with you forever. And I wouldn’t cry if you walked away, …I would DIE!”
[Unquote]

• [Quote:]
Her: Okay, give me just a second…
Him: Just a second? …That’s all? That’s all ya want?!
Her: Give me a lifetime…
Him: Only a lifetime? …THAT’S all you want?
Her: Give me an eternity.
Him: That’s it? Only an eternity? That’s really all you want??
Her: Give me…..
Him: How about… I give you love incarnate.
[Unquote]
-WiccanWolf

The Origins and Historical Significance of Labor Day

Labor Day (aka. Labour Day) is a United States Federal Holiday, now annually observed on the first Monday of every September, celebrating the economic and social contributions of workers. It also symbolizes, for many, the final days of summer, and is widely celebrated as such through parties, parades, and other various events…

Labor Day originated during one of American labor history’s most dismal chapters, and was first celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union.
In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, even children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages. People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.
Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

Observation Dates:
Last year (2010) = Monday, September 6th
This year (2011) = Monday, September 5th
Next year (2012) = Monday, September 3rd

Sources:
• United States Department of Labor
• Wikipedia
• For more interesting facts and educational information about Labor Day… Go To: History.com | Labor Day

Nuclear Disaster in Japan

Concerned Citizens of the World,

The recent disaster unfolding in Fukushima, Japan is a devastating, and pivotal, reminder of the dangers of nuclear power.

Right now the President has $36 billion in taxpayer giveaways, going to the nuclear industry to build more plants here in the U.S., in his proposed budget. Please join me and tell the President and your members of Congress that there is no place for taxpayer giveaways for the nuclear industry in the budget. Just click on the link below…

GreenPeace.Org | Advocacy

Bright Blessings*
And thank you so much, in advance, for both your time and your support!