15 Signs That We Live During A Time Of Rampant Government Paranoia

15 Signs That We Live During A Time Of Rampant Government Paranoia

Can the War on Terror ever be won?

US and British troops end combat operations in Afghanistan even as conflicts elsewhere escalate.

The US-led military coalition has officially ended combat operations in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province. US marines and British troops handed over their joint bases of Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion to Afghan security forces as the protracted mission winded down. The operation began in October 2001. US and British forces were dispatched to Afghanistan less than a month after the September 11 attack on New York's World Trade Centre. The beginning of then US President George Bush's so-called War on Terror. The supposed aims at that time: To defeat the Taliban, deprive Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda a safe haven, and to cut opium production. The success or otherwise of that campaign is still the subject of much debate. And 13 years on, the War on Terror is still being waged on multiple fronts. But what is the underlying justification, the rationale behind a largely military strategy, and is it a fight that can ever be won?

Payment Wars: How Merchants And Carriers Are Trying To Block Payment Systems They Can't Track

Over the weekend, it came out that two giant pharmacy chains, Rite Aid and CVS, had started blocking Apple Pay, the massively hyped new payment system from Apple that has received much praise for its ease of use. The product had worked for about a week before the two companies started blocking such near field communication (NFC) payments (which also takes out other NFC payment options like Google Wallet). While Rite Aid gave a vague and slightly ridiculous explanation -- that it is "still in the process of evaluating our mobile payment options" -- pretty much everyone knows the truth. A bunch of retailers, led by Walmart, have been creating their own mobile payment system called CurrentC, which cuts out the credit card companies. But, it also builds in all the tracking and spying features of store loyalty cards, expanded across all merchant partners. Apple Pay lets people remain anonymous.

In short: CurrentC lets merchants (1) cut out credit card transaction fees and (2) get more and more data on shoppers. No wonder they want to block out other options.

But this isn't the start of such fights. Last year, mobile carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T sought to block Google Wallet in favor of a similar consortium of mobile operators, looking to create their own NFC payment system, which was unfortunately named ISIS until world events led the consortium to change its name to Softcard.

All of these moves should be concerning. They're clearly not being done with the consumer in mind. Nearly everyone who's played with Apple Pay has agreed that the system is a huge leap ahead for mobile payments in terms of ease of use. Instead, we're seeing giant organizations looking to team up to keep competitors out of the market. At the very least, this should raise serious antitrust issues. But it also demonstrates, in a different sphere, why net neutrality is such a concern. When you have large companies that can effectively collude to block or kill certain powerful and useful apps and services, it hinders and blocks important innovations, leaving consumers significantly worse off. Not only are they left with fewer choices and lower quality apps and services, but it also pushes consumers into services -- like CurrentC -- that take away their privacy.

SOURCE: TECH DIRT

25 EU banks fail stress test

SOURCE: RT

Nearly one in five leading European banks have failed the stress test conducted by the European Central Bank, which revealed a $31.2 billion (€24.6 billion) capital gap in 25 banks showing they’re not ready to withstand a three-year recession.The results of the EU-wide stress test were reported on Sunday by the European Banking Authority (EAB) and the European Central Bank (ECB).

With nine banks failing the test, Italy represented more than €10 billion of the capital shortfall. Other balance sheets that weren’t up to snuff were three banks in Greece, three in Cyprus, two in Slovenia, two in Belgium, and one each in Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

Of the total 25 banks that failed the test, 12 have since come up with the necessary additional capital to pass.

The other 13 have two weeks to submit a blueprint of how they plan to boost their capital, to be presented to the ECB for approval in early November. Approved banks will then have nine months to fix their capital holes.

The main goal of the stress test was to identify which banks need to boost core equity capital out of the 123 top lenders. The assessment weight a lender’s key risks, including liquidity, leverage and funding, as well as asset quality and the ability of banks’ balance sheet to resist stress scenarios.

“The Comprehensive Assessment allowed us to compare banks across borders and business models,” ECB Supervisory Board Chair Daniele Nouy said in a statement. “The findings will enable us to draw insights and conclusions for supervision going forward.”

Ten banks have taken measures to brush up their finances from their balance sheets at the end of 2013. The worst affected was the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi, which had a capital shortfall of €2.1billion.

The Monte dei Paschi bank headquarters is pictured in Siena August 16, 2013.

“This unprecedented in-depth review of the largest banks’ positions will boost public confidence in the banking sector,”said ECB Vice-President Vitor Constancio, adding that “this should facilitate more lending in Europe, which will help economic growth.”

The asset quality review was conducted is the European Central Bank prepares to become the official supervisor of Europe’s top 130 lenders in a banking union, due to begin in on November 4.

Eight banks failed a similar stress test examination in 2011 with a combined deficit of €2.5 billion ($3.2 billion).

NV Cops In Black Ski-Masks Swarm Uber Driver For 'Transporting People Without A License'

SOURCE: INFORMATION LIBERATION

Hours after Uber launched their hugely popular and beloved ride-sharing service in Nevada, black ski-masked police responded by hunting down new Uber drivers and impounding their vehicles.

Five unmarked white Nevada Taxicab Authority vehicles surrounded his blue Ford Focus as he was driving east on Fashion Show Drive about 3:30 p.m. He was pulled over while trying to drop off two passengers. Two undercover officers wore black ski masks.

Government regulators accused the Uber drivers of "transporting people without a license," though Uber says they don't need a license as they're not operating a transportation company but merely facilitating ride sharing.

Of course, it shouldn't matter what they're technically offering, people want their services and are willing to pay for them.

It's the taxi-state racketeers who are against them providing a superior service as it would cause them to actually compete in the market rather than continue their protectionist extortionist racket.

California Cops Passed Around Explicit Photos Harvested From Arrestees' Phones

SOURCE: TECH DIRT

Another argument for default phone encryption: to keep criminals from accessing your personal photos and sharing them with others.

CHP Officer Sean Harrington, 35, of Martinez… confessed to stealing explicit photos from the cellphone of a second Contra Costa County DUI suspect in August and forwarding those images to at least two CHP colleagues. The five-year CHP veteran called it a "game" among officers, according to an Oct. 14 search warrant affidavit.

That this criminal (and his criminal cohorts) happened to wear a uniform makes him no less of a criminal. The difference here is that the phone containing the photos wasn't stolen by a criminal but rather seized during a DUI arrest and accessed during booking.

[T]he investigation began with a single incident: Harrington's conduct during the Aug. 29 arrest of the San Ramon woman. The woman discovered that photos had been stolen from her phone five days after her release, when she noticed on her iPad that the photos had been sent to an unknown number. A record of the messages had been deleted from her iPhone, but the phone had been synced to the iPad.

In his investigation, Holcombe compared video surveillance and time-stamped text messages from the woman's phone and determined Harrington was in possession of the woman's phone at the moment the photos were forwarded. The woman -- who registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit -- was being processed in the Martinez County Jail when the photos were stolen, according to court records.

Not an isolated incident. Officer Shawn Harrington called it a "game." Harrington says other officers at the Dublin precinct routinely distributed pictures from phones of female arrestees. Images were forwarded to other officers and "non-CHP individuals." Court documents also describe a second incident in which Harrington forwarded images from a DUI arrestee's phone while she was being x-rayed.

Encryption by default keeps criminals out of people's phones, even the criminals that hide behind uniforms and the color of law. The same goes for the warrant requirement recently ordered by the US Supreme Court. In a typical DUI arrest, there's really no reason for a cop to be going through the suspect's phone. Evidence of drunk driving is usually contained within the arrestees themselves, not their phones. At best, any time a cop does this, it's a fishing expedition for bigger charges. At worst, it's Harrington and his complicit bro cops, passing around nudie pics just because they can. Access and ability are the worst enablers.

When cops complain about falling behind in the tech race while arguing against warrant requirements and encryption, one wonders whether this isn't part of the "problem." It's not so much that the criminals have gotten smarter than the cops. It's that the phones have. The incidents leading to Officer Harrington's arrest both created digital paper trails leading back to the California Highway Patrol. The minimal effort made to cover his tracks wasn't enough. Maybe this is why some cops fear the relentless forward march of technology: covering up misconduct has never been harder.

Going beyond the relation of these incidents to both search warrants and encryption-by-default, this episode of casual power abuse also implicates another hot button topic located at the intersection of policework and technology: revenge porn.

Scott Greenfield points out a couple of flaws in the plan to criminalize revenge porn, both highlighted by Officer Harrington and his coworkers' abuse of arrested citizens.

An aspect of the push for new laws criminalizing intimate conduct that hasn’t been given much attention is the underlying assumption that if such laws are enacted, they will not only be enforced, but they will be enforced by law enforcement with a level of trust and respect for the delicate subject matter and the sensibilities of the victims.

Well, these CHP officers sort of ruined that.

Not to paint cops with too broad a brush, but, ahem, some of them aren’t a whole lot better than those “frat boys” or MRAs you think so poorly of. In fact, some are pretty awful when it comes to respecting the physical integrity of female suspects, trading off sex acts for arrest because they can.

And so your grand scheme to save the internet from angry males bent on revealing the private, intimate images of women, is to turn to the guys who steal private, intimate images of women and share them amongst themselves?

So, there's that. And that's on top of the nearly-universal complaint that police officers don't take sexual assualt complaints seriously enough. Incidents like these aren't going to encourage more victims to step forward or give them the confidence needed to pursue wrongdoers. At his point, the local PD look like just another place to be victimized.

Going beyond the misconduct and abuse, there's the blind spot advocates of criminalizing revenge porn continue to induldge: the assumption that turning something into a crime will be a massive deterrent.

The idea that creating a crime will serve as a disincentive for people to post intimate images on the internet may make a lot more sense in theory than it does in practice. Of course, maybe you trust that the “new professionalism” will protect you from the ravages of improper distribution of images. But then again, it didn’t stop the California Highway Patrol cops from doing so, even though it was clearly illegal for them to steal the images off suspects’ cellphones to pass around as part of their game.

If those on the inside are not appreciably "better" than those on the outside, then incentives and deterrents mean nothing. This abuse may be limited to a few California peace officers, or it may be far more common that any law enforcement agency would like to admit. (The CHP has already issued a statement basically declaring this to be completely isolated to its Dublic precinct, rather than the more widespread "game" Officer Harrington alleges it to be.) The underlying number of abusive incidents doesn't matter (much). This incident -- isolated or not -- just provides more ammo for those pushing encryption and warrant requirements. Law enforcement should need to make an effort before obtaining access, preferably an effort that creates a paper trail.

For those pushing revenge porn laws, this incident should temper expectations. Chances are it won't, not because it may not be indicative of the general law enforcement mentality, but because many of those advocating this sort of legislation tend to value emotional arguments over pragmatic reasoning. A deterrent is only as solid as those enforcing it. And if the enforcers are willing to casually violate existing laws as part of a "game," there can be little hope that they're the best equipped to pursue revenge porn law violators.

Payment Wars: How Merchants And Carriers Are Trying To Block Payment Systems They Can't Track

SOURCE: TECH DIRT

Over the weekend, it came out that two giant pharmacy chains, Rite Aid and CVS, had started blocking Apple Pay, the massively hyped new payment system from Apple that has received much praise for its ease of use. The product had worked for about a week before the two companies started blocking such near field communication (NFC) payments (which also takes out other NFC payment options like Google Wallet). While Rite Aid gave a vague and slightly ridiculous explanation -- that it is "still in the process of evaluating our mobile payment options" -- pretty much everyone knows the truth. A bunch of retailers, led by Walmart, have been creating their own mobile payment system called CurrentC, which cuts out the credit card companies. But, it also builds in all the tracking and spying features of store loyalty cards, expanded across all merchant partners. Apple Pay lets people remain anonymous.

In short: CurrentC lets merchants (1) cut out credit card transaction fees and (2) get more and more data on shoppers. No wonder they want to block out other options.

But this isn't the start of such fights. Last year, mobile carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T sought to block Google Wallet in favor of a similar consortium of mobile operators, looking to create their own NFC payment system, which was unfortunately named ISIS until world events led the consortium to change its name to Softcard.

All of these moves should be concerning. They're clearly not being done with the consumer in mind. Nearly everyone who's played with Apple Pay has agreed that the system is a huge leap ahead for mobile payments in terms of ease of use. Instead, we're seeing giant organizations looking to team up to keep competitors out of the market. At the very least, this should raise serious antitrust issues. But it also demonstrates, in a different sphere, why net neutrality is such a concern. When you have large companies that can effectively collude to block or kill certain powerful and useful apps and services, it hinders and blocks important innovations, leaving consumers significantly worse off. Not only are they left with fewer choices and lower quality apps and services, but it also pushes consumers into services -- like CurrentC -- that take away their privacy.

BITCOIN Is it real money?

When money doesn't develop as a commodity, it gives one pause to wonder why.  Is it real money?  Is it viable in a free market?  How did it come into existence if it didn't develop as a good with uses other than money?  Today we observe persistent thievery of goods (e.g. land, cars, gold, and silver) by the state.  Individuals are often on the lookout for mechanisms that reduce the chance that their property will be forcefully appropriated.   The possible reduction of state theft risk is one of the main selling points of Bitcoin.

Money has historically been a tangible good that was desired by people on its own merits as a good.   Salt had uses and could be traded and divided and lasts longer than a chicken. Eventually, the link to a good was lost as pieces of paper with no connection to anything prevailed when the state had its way – via legal tender laws – at concocting new and improved methods of theft via inflation and banking cronyism.  But, paper is still tangible and is seized frequently as well.

In the 1990s, I remember seeing little deed certificates for micro-acres of ranch land that could be traded like money.  That concept seems like it might be a workable idea for money if you don’t consider the state factor.  What if the state doesn’t like the idea of mini paper titles to ownership of micro-acres of a large Texas ranch?   The state can steal the whole ranch.  Or, the state can add a new confiscatory tax to the land that varies vastly from the original agricultural tax scheme thereby reducing the exchange value of the asset-connected paper deeds.  The state can proclaim the whole idea to be a money-laundering operation.  The state can see the link to something tangible and seize all the assets pertaining to the persons who implemented the idea as was done with the Liberty Dollar which had a connection to real precious metals redeemable on demand.

Those real acres can be confiscated by the state just as gold and silver are; just as “real” paper and virtual fractional reserve computer digits can and are confiscated by the state.

So, if Bitcoin didn’t follow the normal route for money origination as a good in the market, why did it develop and can it survive in a free market?

The principle marketed features of Bitcoin are its limited supply and its resistance to state predation when being held and transferred.  The limited supply is a mathematical reality.  That, plus the hoped-for resistance to state thievery supposedly overcome the fact that it didn’t originate as a good on the market.  It has no link to something real that can be taxed, seized, or plundered.  But does this benefit really overcome its non-good status?

Prison Economics

Thin cylindrically-shaped food packages may develop so that food may be passed to an inmate through a rat-hole in the wall of a concentration camp, but such a device – devised and utilized to get around a state-caused hardship – would probably not survive with its original state-caused value intact when, and if, the economy reverts to a free market because of the extra cost involved in shaping food into thin cylindrical packages.  The exchanged value of an item whose primary beneficial feature is state avoidance would be lower in a freer society than an innovation whose primary value is to serve the other preferences of a freer people.  Such a weird-shaped food is not an outgrowth of an entrepreneur’s efforts to satisfy the free market preferences of people outside of state confines.  It is an innovation to circumvent state predation.  If the suffering imposed by the state is ever lifted or escaped from, the anti-state innovation has less utility and less desirability than an innovation inspired by the desire to enhance the exchanges of value and the lifestyle of a freer people.

Medical tourism to foreign countries may be a booming business during a time – like our present time – when the state is restricting the free market for medical services in the U.S., but would that mechanism be a big success if you lived in an area and in a time that had an unhindered free market for medical services?  I advise people on medical options in foreign countries, but if I created a medical tourism business and shuttled people around for that purpose, that business may suffer if medicine reverted to free market principles in the U.S.

Some things develop in a time and place because of horrendous state intrusions into or restrictions on the free market.  But if liberty prevails in the future in that area, will the state- circumventing innovations survive if that is one of their primary claims to value?  Would they be needed and desired and valued if there was more freedom?

Bitcoin is Anti-State Money and State-Caused Money

Bitcoin’s coming into prominence was mainly due to a desire to avoid confiscation, tracking, and inflation; all things that are hallmarks of the state’s dedication to the principle of stealing value from you.   It has the benefit of being something with no link to something real that can be confiscated.  So, Bitcoin has the ironic dual honor of being anti-state money and state-caused money.  The anti-state aspect is one of its main claims to fame.  The innovations that may possibly circumvent the state’s main methods of taking value are considered to be its main features.  The fact that it is devoid of any tangible value is portrayed as a good thing in a statist environment.  Gold’s primary claim to fame isn’t a claimed ability to avoid theft, tracking, or inflation although its high value-to-size ratio and relative scarcity assist with those things.

Without state predations, adaptations to avoid those predations possess less utility, less desirability, and possibly no value at all; especially, as in the case of Bitcoin, when there never was any tangible value.

Will There Never be Freedom?

So, could Bitcoin survive in an unhindered free market even if it is largely a state-caused medium of exchange that has no status as a commodity good?  Would an alternative that was related to a good be preferred by users if there was no state predation or reduced state predation?  And, is it logical to assume that the level of state predation will never go down?  Will state theft risk be so pervasive in most every transaction or savings action from now into eternity that the lack of connection to anything seizable in a purely virtual money will be the paramount consideration from now on over actual value offered by a tradable money that is also a saleable, usable, tangible commodity?

Virtual currencies are an interesting idea.  But, if they lack an inherent connection to the tangible world, a doubt is created about their value and there will be similar assumed-value pitfalls as exist with supposed “intellectual property” which also has no claim on anything tangible.  One or more currencies with a “virtual” aspect may persist and survive.  Only the market will determine that.  The real long-term test, however, may be their ability to pass over into a freer society without a big loss of value.

I am optimistic that freedom will prevail, if not universally, then at least in pockets competing against the state to which people will migrate so as to preserve their wealth and personal freedom.  In those pockets of relatively higher freedom, the thin, cylindrical, labor-intensive prison food packages would probably fetch a lower price than real ham sandwiches or real pizzas.  They would likely be competed out of existence.  People would probably eat normal food and rarely invest resources into squishing it into odd, thin, narrow, “state-caused” tubes that would be required when passing it through a secretive conduit in a state-imposed wall.  Innovations that get around state-imposed harms are good things, but would they be preferred and exist otherwise without other features?

To go a bit further, is Bitcoin really the equivalent of a squished-up ham sandwich?  Bitcoins don’t actually contain any ham.  They are claims that a person hopes to trade – though they represent nothing tangible – for a ham sandwich.  The hope is that the ham sandwich trader will perceive the risk of state theft also and agree to hold value in nothingness, so that his value can’t be stolen by vigilant Leviathan during the process of storing and transferring wealth used to buy and sell ham sandwiches.  So, there needs to be a universally accepted disconnect of tangible value during transactions and between transactions (savings) in order for bitcoin to be viable in the long term.  An understood suspension of real goods-for-goods must happen every time a money transaction occurs, with pretty much the sole intent being of avoiding state predations that may intervene in those transactions.  And this doesn’t even address the issue of whether Bitcoin is really immune to state plunder.

So, can real capital be moved in a stable manner between people and across generations this way?  Real ham sandwiches cannot be received by a starving inmate through a hole in a prison wall in this manner.  Can a secret number passed through the hole in the wall be traded inside the concentration camp to other prisoners for ham sandwiches?  Possibly, for a while, if everyone agrees in that context that secret numbers not originating with any otherwise usable traits equate to ham sandwiches, but a prisoner that has access to a friend on the outside who can smuggle in real things, for example eggs, will probably get more ham sandwiches in exchange for his real contraband items since the real things meet tangible preferences and represent the free market breaking into the restricted statist market.

So, if state seizure action is partly or completely negated in a freer society – thereby degrading the value of Bitcoin – the only other value left to Bitcoin is the limitation on its supply.

Robinson and Friday Try a Trendy Limited Supply Virtual Money

On that point, here is a little thought experiment involving Robinson Crusoe and Friday on an island.  Assume that the two live in a voluntary society with each other and, consequently, all exchanges are mutually agreed upon and maximize value from the viewpoint of each party.  They decide to use a trendy virtual currency instead of salt which they previously used.  They choose an agreed-upon finite number of planets as their currency.  They agree that no new planets can ever be added to the money supply even if more are detected.   They decide that their money supply will consist of eight planets.  They both like Pluto as a planet, but they decide to not use it so that they can each start out with an even number of planets; four and four.  They like the idea that their medium of exchange has a limited supply and that a state, if one should ever descend upon them, would not be able to pluck the virtual planets out of their brains.

One day, on the verge of the short tropical winter, Robinson notices that Friday has accumulated a lot of macadamia nuts.  Robinson had been concentrating more on bananas.  Robinson proposes to Friday that he will exchange half of Jupiter for ten pounds of macadamia nuts.  Friday declines the offer.  Then Robinson offers all of Jupiter for ten pounds of macadamia nuts.  Friday declines again.  Then, Robinson offers all of his planets for any amount of macadamia nuts.  Friday declines, but proposes that he will exchange macadamia nuts to Robinson at the rate of three nuts for every banana that Robinson gives him.  Friday reminds Robinson that winter is around the corner and that Friday cannot eat virtual planets.  Friday also sees no imminent risk of a state stealing his possessions.

So in this case, both Robinson and Friday know that the planets as a medium of exchange are not deliverable to the other as a tangible good to satisfy the other’s real preferences because neither Friday nor Robinson has a spaceship or other means of obtaining possession of real tangible planets for physical delivery to satisfy the other’s wants.  The virtual planets are merely a mutually understood method of describing a finite amount of money in a non-good form that has the advantage that it cannot be stolen by the state.  The planet names used by Robinson and Friday only serve to specify an intellectually-defined scarcity of something imaginary.  So, in this example we can see that the whole virtual solar system cannot be exchanged for a handful of real macadamia nuts.  Even though the agreed-upon number of planets that are possessed in a virtual sense represents a finite supply, those virtual planets can never meet any physical needs or tangible preferences in the free market context where Robinson and Friday reside.

In this situation, real bananas and real macadamia nuts trump a completely virtual currency, even one that has a limited supply.

Moral Hazard of Bitcoin

Competing currencies are wonderful, but we still can speculate about how each one would function in a free society or a non-free society and which ones would out-compete the others under different circumstances.  Bitcoinesque currencies may or may not have a role in a surveilled, concentration camp society, where prisoners’ possessions and incoming care packages are continually plundered by the prison guards, but they may be lacking utility in a free economy.  Non-good virtual currencies have the “shortfall” that they don’t have legal tender laws to force their wide acceptance with guns as do imaginary state monies.  Modern man may have become used to these state plunder laws to the point that he may contemplate that non-good items can and do function as money, since he sees the state forcing this to happen around him.  But economic reality is different when people are allowed to function without the state mandates and threats, improving their lives in the process.

If society as a whole gets freer, or when pockets of freedom develop, there may also be a moral hazard that will affect Bitcoin holders.  They may begin to favor some level of statism that will preserve the value of Bitcoins by maintaining some of the perceived state plunder risk involved when dealing with real commodity exchanges in a free society.  The pressure of freedom on Bitcoin may reduce its value and motivate some intelligent holders to value state seizure actions that made this non-good currency so enticing in the first place.  There is a risk that Bitcoin holders may become tacit or vocal advocates of barriers to entry for commodity monies as those competing monies may reduce the value of their Bitcoin holdings in a freer or “opt-out” economy where people aren’t baring their souls to a plundering system.  Bitcoin holders – seeing their “wealth” dissipate in that context – may militate against the idea of real goods dominating as a medium of exchange.

State caused phenomena often have warped aspects to them because they are the outgrowths of, or response to, an evolving coercive or bubble-causing process.  But those things, which sometimes appear as a small previously unneeded detour around the state or as a larger widespread degradation in the human condition don’t always, or even usually, or possibly ever contribute to the long-term benefit of mankind when the specific state pressure ends or decreases.

And when the topic is money, it is one of utmost importance since money is one-half of most daily transactions and one of the primary means by which men express preferences and honor commitments during their lifetimes and across generations.  A temporary non-good mechanism that does not pass any real tangible value is a doubtful way to plan one’s future or to convey wealth to one’s heirs.

The doubts on long-term viability of Bitcoin become more relevant when more and more people opt out of state structures – as is common in Latin America – and begin to deal directly with each other without allowing a predatory third party to monitor and intervene in every transaction.