Evidence: non-profit policing organization orchestrating nationwide anti-occupy crackdown

Demonstrators and press nationwide have been speculating for weeks about federal involvement in police crackdowns nationwide.

Thursday technology link round-up

• A 24 year-old Vienna law student has exposed some nasty truths about Facebook the company would prefer were kept in the dark. Under European privacy law, individuals are entitled to any records held about them, even if the records are held by a private company. Max Schrems requested all records Facebook had on him, and received over a thousand pages worth of material, including statuses and photos he had deleted. His finds are pretty shocking. 

Thursday technology link round-up

• The ACLU of PA is representing university professor Karen Piper in a suit against Pittsburgh police for allegedly damaging her hearing after blaring a crowd-dispersal weapon at protestors outside the 2009 G-20 meeting in that city. The weapon, called a "Long Range Acoustic Device," emits a sound that physically hurts people over long distances. Read more about so-called 'non-lethal' weapons.

Still going, despite the government shutdown: the DHS-funded trickle down of the national surveillance state

Shortly before the government went on extended shutdown/vacation, the Department of Homeland Security signaled that, despite criticism from members of congress and the public, it has no intention of slowing down the nationwide surveillance state trickle-down.

DHS northern border strategy — June 2012

DHS has released its new "northern border strategy" -- find it here. 

I don't have time to read through the whole thing and analyze it now, but here are a couple of interesting finds that strike me as relevant right off the bat: