Another good reason that the representative fictional American citizen of our broken times is the zombie.

If there is one thing we can take away from the news of recent weeks it is this: the modern American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived.

An unusual groundswell of support from House Republicans for a Massachusetts liberal’s measure is a stark example of changing sentiments on Afghanistan.

Es ist schlimm genug, wenn die Bundesregierung uns bespitzelt. Muss sie aber darüber hinaus noch unsere Intelligenz beleidigen?

Die FDP-geführten Justiz- und Wirtschafts-Ministerien haben heute ein “Krisengespäch zur Sicherheit von Daten deutscher Nutzer in den USA” veranstaltet. Justizministerin Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger und Wirtschaftsminister Philipp Rösler wollten von Google, Microsoft, eco und Bitkom wissen, was PRISM ist und wer davon betroffen ist. Das wenig überraschende Ergebnis:

Ah, Congress.

ust consider what she‘s saying: as a member of Congress, she had no idea how invasive and vast the NSA‘s surveillance activities are. Sen. Jon Tester, who is a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the same thing, telling MSNBC about the disclosures that „I don‘t see how that compromises the security of this country whatsoever“ and adding: „quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn‘t aware of before because I don‘t sit on that Intelligence Committee.“

People ask the M5S what it has done in the last few months. It has put forward new laws for the SMEs, laws to abolish public financing of the newspapers and the parties. It has pushed forward the initiative to get rid of the „Porcellum” electoral law, the only voice in Parliament. It has also taken many other initiatives connected to our manifesto, like pushing for the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan. And it has refused to accept the reimbursement of election expenses for 42 million euro, and it has halved the income of the parliamentarians to bring it to about 350,000 euro a month. Any proposals for laws put forward by the M5S are ignored or turned down. The M5S is law-abiding, peaceful, inspired by Ghandi. What did they expect? That we would set fire to Parliament?

Die menschliche Erbsubstanz ist ein „Produkt der Natur“, auf das keine Patente erteilt werden können – so lautet die Grundsatzentscheidung des Obersten Gerichtshofs der USA. Anlass war der Versuch eines Pharmaunternehmens, sich Patente auf Brustkrebs-Gene zu sichern.

Der geplante Handelspakt zwischen den USA und der Europäischen Union sorgt schon vor Beginn der offiziellen Gespräche für Streit – innerhalb der EU-Staaten und in der Bundesregierung.

Paris, which is trying to shield French-language culture from Hollywood, has refused to join the 26 other EU governments that want talks to start in July, unless movies and digital media are left out of any deal.

The European Union will try to overcome French resistance to free-trade talks with the United States on Friday and keep alive plans for a deal that could boost their struggling economies by dramatically increasing transatlantic business.

In Südkorea steht ex-Geheimdienstleiter Won Sei-hoon unter der Anklage mittels im Internet operierender Agenten die Präsidentenwahl 2012 zugunsten der heutigen Präsidentin Park Geun-hye beeinflusst zu haben.

Pentagon lawyers said the AUMF might allow the U.S. to enter Syria, on the grounds that the extremist al-Nusra Front there is an “associated force” of al-Qaeda.

The sweeping law that allows the president to wage an unlimited global war on terror would be repealed under a bill set to be offered this week.

The repeal measure, crafted by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), would end the 2001 Authorization to Use MIlitary Force, or AUMF, in 2015, as the U.S. finally exits the war in Afghanistan.

A senior member of the House Intelligence committee announced on Monday that he plans to introduce a bill to repeal the Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) Congress passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

…

The government has been passing around some „talking points“ to politicians and the press trying to spin the NSA surveillance story. We‘ve got the talking points about scooping up business records (i.e., all data on all phone calls) and on the internet program known as PRISM. Both are embedded below. Let‘s dig in on a few of the points, starting with the business records/FISA issue:

The firm that formerly employed both the director of national intelligence and the NSA whistleblower merits closer scrutiny

Regling told Germany‘s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview to appear on Friday that the so-called troika of the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission, which has come to the rescue of several euro zone states, should be broken up eventually.

(23.05.) He was speaking at an event hosted by UCD and the Institute of Bankers in Dublin where he added that the ESM was feasible and workable and created the right incentives.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (MSFT) and other software or Internet security companies have been aware that this type of early alert allowed the U.S. to exploit vulnerabilities in software sold to foreign governments, according to two U.S. officials.

„This week‘s revelations have proven [the internet] … is very far from a civilian place,“ he said. „The internet is being transformed into a military-occupied state.“

Communications between husbands and wives, business partners and even the bureaucracy and the government are all under surveillance, according to Assange.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said lawmakers learned „significantly more“ about the spy programs at the National Security Agency (NSA) during a briefing on Tuesday with counterterrorism officials.

„What we learned in there,“ Sanchez said, „is significantly more than what is out in the media today.“

The Big Picture points out that the NSA was already installing backdoors in the Windows operating system back in 1999, and links to a story detailing a DEA/NSA collaboration, which supposedly installed a domestic „call tracing program“ at AT&T and Verizon in December of 2000 and which had been tracking calls from the US to various countries since the 1990‘s.