Smartphone > Google glasses > Augmented reality contact lenses

^{_{Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer.}}

Is there something in the White House water?

How can a President who vowed to strive for “an unprecedented level of openness in Government” and ordered the CIA to make sure it followed the Army Field Manual interrogation guidelines on his first day in office become so totally obsessed with stopping leaks at the expense of achieving transparency and accountability?

Your daily reminder to be very, very afraid

Watch the video here. (The flash was making things buggy so we removed the embed. Sorry.)

The degradation of justice

By now you will have read that self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged plotters will shortly have their day in court. Well, in a sort of a court, the kind where the rules have been made up on the fly (by Congress, no less!) and where convictions are all but guaranteed. 

Double standards distort the judicial process

It is a frightening scenario. Nine heavily armed men conduct military-style training in preparation for a terrorist attack involving the bombing of a funeral for the police officer they had killed three days earlier. 

“Less Distance from War”: the US “street” on drone warfare

^{_{Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer.}}

From YouTube: "Nick Mottern, journalist and director of KnowDrones.com, displays a replica of a "Reaper" drone and has sidewalk conversations about drone warfare outside New York's Museum of Modern Art."

More on drones.

NDAA: Government lawyers “can’t rule out” throwing us all in jail indefinitely for speech “crimes”

A number of prominent activists and writers are suing the US government, alleging that the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is unconstitutional because it grants the feds the authority to lock up anyone without charge or trial and throw away the key. Sounds about right.

The trial began on March 29 in the Southern District of New York, with Judge Forrest presiding. Some alarming insights were revealed in the court room that day.

UK privacy flap: what does it really mean?

_{Demonstrators outside the NSA's Menwith Hill spy base in the rural UK. Credit: Phil Champion}

Cops want your mobile phone data. Here’s what they can get.

As the ACLU made clear this week via its records dump on police mobile phone tracking nationwide, law enforcement has a keen interest in spying on us by way of our cellular phones. And it's no wonder: as this NTI Law Enforcement Systems and Services cellular phone investigations manual says, 

Don’t say anything in digital form that you don’t want to answer for publicly, says Birgitta Jónsdóttir

^{_{Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer.}}

Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir and Free Bradley Manning activist Mike Gogulski discuss data retention and the dangers digital information gathering presents to democracies.