Posts Tagged ‘article



05
Oct
11

at your service

First lady Michelle Obama walks onstage to greet employees to thank them for their public service at US Secret Service headquarters in Washington

… with US Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan

Turns out everyone’s dickering over who gets which Secret Service agent.

Michelle Obama revealed the tongue-in-cheek family feud as she paid a visit to Secret Service headquarters on Wednesday to thank workers at the agency that, among its many duties, protects the first family.

“You all have really made us feel at home and safe, and there is no amount of thanks that I could convey that would give you a sense of how important you all are to us,” Mrs. Obama told hundreds of Secret Service employees….

“The work you do here is pretty scary,” she said. “All I can say, after my little tour, is ignorance is bliss. I just don’t want to know. You all can handle that. Just tell me where to run.”

The first lady said the Obamas have a special affinity for the agents assigned to protect them.

“People always ask what it is like to have Secret Service around,” Mrs. Obama said. “It’s like having family around …. We have a fight among our family over who’s getting which people.

“Sasha will come in, it’s like, ‘You took Scott!’” Mrs. Obama said. “Malia’s like, ‘You took Scott? That’s not fair!’ And then I’ll say the same thing to Barack. It’s like, ‘Why did you get Beth?’ It’s dinner table conversation.”

…. greeting Secret Service employees after delivering remarks

02
Oct
11

koch industries, iran, bribes, corruption ….

Politicalgates: …. In a bold and spectacular move, Bloomberg Markets Magazine wrote a story titled “The secret sins of Koch Industries” which does not only focus on several new revelations, but also provides a comprehensive overview about scandals of Koch Industries which happened during the last decades. The story also explicitly puts the well known political activities of the Koch Brothers in context with their highly questionable behaviour in business.

…. No less than 15 Bloomberg-journalists in several countries have worked on it … This is Pulitzer-Prize territory….

…the article reveals, for example, that:

- Koch Industries used the European offices of their subsidiary Koch-Glitsch to sell millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran in an apparent violation of the US-Iran trade embargo, as recently as 2007

- Koch Industries paid bribes in six countries from 2002 to 2008 to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East, comparable to similar behaviour of German technology giant Siemens (Siemens subsequently had to pay a $ 1.6 billion fine!)

Read the full post here

Thanks desertflower

28
Sep
11

‘voting machines can be hacked by remote control’

Brad Friedman (Salon): ….. Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education …. experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

The new findings echo long-ignored concerns about e-voting vulnerabilities ….. “This is a national security issue,” says Roger Johnston, leader of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. “It should really be handled by the Department of Homeland Security.”

…. Almost all voters in states like Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Nevada, and the majority of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Texas, will vote on DREs on Election Day in 2012 … Voters in major municipalities such as Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh will also use DREs of the type hacked by the Argonne National Lab.

…. In what John Warner (VAT) describes as “probably the most relevant attack for vote tampering,” the intruder would allow the voter to make his or her selections but when the voter actually attempts to push the Vote Now button, which records the voter’s final selections to the system’s memory card, he says, “we will simply intercept that attempt …. change a few of the votes,” and the changed votes would then be registered in the machine…..

Full article here

Thanks Tally - this is scary as hell.




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