In the last few days, we’ve learned more about the National Security Agency. And believe me, it’s more than any of us want to know, yet it’s what we need to know.
According to certain news articles, they’ve put together a sophisticated graphing system that can identify who our friends are, where we’re traveling, who we’re traveling with, and other personal information. They use phone calls and emails to graph where the person and going and who they’re associating with in the name of foreign intelligence. They can get the info from social media sites, banking systems, GPS systems, even from voter registration rolls. Of course, The NSA declined to comment on how many Americans were spied on with this system. They didn’t say if anybody doing wrong was ever caught because of this graphing system.? Here’s something else I learned: as early as 1979, the US Supreme Court ruled Americans shouldn’t expect privacy when it came to phone calls and numbers.
But just when you think you have the right answers, the questions change again. If rulings against privacy were around in the ’70s, it makes me wonder how long this has been going on? Or did the current NSA see this ruling and take advantage of it? Are you aware due to RFID technology, you can be tracked anywhere? Remember the new passports that started being issued in the mid 2000s? Those passports have RFID tracking devices in them. That’s right! When you go overseas, they can find out where you are with a flip of a computer. I wish I could be naive and say, “They’re only doing this to the bad guys”. But when you think about what we’ve learned so far this year, can we really say that?
Over the past week, the United Nations had a huge assembly. One of the big issues was US/Iran tensions. Well, this revelation might put a small cramp in easing these tensions.
U.S. officials said Iran hacked into Navy computers. The most recent of these allegations came around September 15. Officials said the hacking was done by Iranian leaders or by rouge Iranian groups with the leaders’ approval. It’s believed nothing big was stolen, but just the mere fact they can and are hacking is concerning enough to the US. Also concerning is the aggression and rhetoric of Iran in recent years, now add their cyber abilities. The Pentagon hasn’t confirmed it and Tehran has denied it. But a former State Dept. official calls Iran ‘very active’ in the cyber hacking game. So I don’t expect this to go away anytime soon.
Now Iran has a new president named Hasan Rouhani. He’s said to be more moderate than the Iran’s last president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This past week, Rouhani and President Obama talked about negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Over the past years, Iran insists it’s for peaceful purposes, but many say the program has sinister intentions. Some say Rouhani isn’t as moderate as he appears. So I wonder what he says, if he says anything, about these hacking allegations. Both sides seem to be keeping hush, but I wonder what’s being said behind closed doors. But the two sides looked pretty good when addressing each other. What are these hacking allegations going to do to US/Iranian relations?
Some time ago, I wrote an article about Blackberry’s downfall. Now the downfall has turned into a spiral. And it looks like this once technical powerhouse has past the point of no return.
Friday, Blackberry stocks tanked to under $9 a share. They’re about to report a loss of almost one billion dollars. They’ll be lucky to make half the revenue they expected to in Q2 2013. They plan to cut 4,5oo jobs and nearly half it’s operations in the next several months. The company sold only 3.7 million smartphones this fiscal quarter(a three month period). How many iPhone 5Ss’ were sold yesterday?
No wonder Blackberry co-founder Mike Lazaridis stepped down last year. He doesn’t want to go down with the sinking ship. Plus, shareholders pressured him to leave, but if it were me, I wouldn’t even have waited that long.? But he is looking for bids and a buyout for his sinking ship. He talked to some equity companies, but they didn’t end in agreements. We don’t know if they will. And upset shareholders can’t seem to agree on anything. It makes me wonder if an equity firm or any company even want to take a chance. Well there has been previous incidents in the business world where a buyout literally saved the company. The question is can Blackberry be saved at all?
Did you have a Nintendo back in the 1980s and ?90s? Did you go to someone?s house and play their NES? I did. We have one man to thank for that.
Nintendo founder Hiroshi Yamauchi died in his native Japan early this morning of pneumonia complications. He was 85 years old. But did you know Nintendo has been around since the 1940s? No, not as an electronic gaming company, but as a card game maker. Mr. Yamauchi inherited it after his grandfather?s death in 1949. By the late 1970s, he saw the rise of the home video game, and put his innovative skills to work. ?By the mid-80s, Nintendo was the world leader in home gaming, and names like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, and Zelda became household names. In the early ?90s, Yamiuchi followed that with Game Boy and games like Tetris? Super Nintendo and games like Final Fight, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Yamauchi retired in 2002. In recent years, Xbox and Playstation have knocked Nintendo off the home gaming throne.
But nobody can deny the impact Hiroshi Yamachi?s Nintendo Entertainment System has had on our pop culture and psyche. Even today the Nintendo Wii is having moderate success. The more I learn about Mr. Yamauchi, the more I respect his ability to have success and keep a low profile about it. Okay, maybe it was a different time when he ran Nintendo, but I never saw him at a press conference displaying Nintendo?s new product. In fact, I don?t remember him being in the public eye much at all. But yet he created an empire, and according to Forbes, his worth is over $7 billion. So he did a lot of things right. What?s your favorite Nintendo memory?
Back in 2009, due to an uprising, Iran’s government blocked and censored social media sites in an attempt to slow down protests and demonstrations. They found software to hook up to networks outside the country to show their struggle to the world.
Isn’t that supposed to teach Iranian leaders about censorship? Apparently not. Their Facebook and Twitter rights have been taken away after some found they could get around the gov’t blockage they set up back in 2009. Iran has a new president, Hassan Rouhani. He’s considered a moderate by many people. He promises to reduce censorship. Some of Rouhani’s cabinet members even have Facebook and Twitter accounts. It’s believed many anti-censorship groups have tasseled with censors over blocked Web sites. And for a while, the anti-censorship groups opened glitches to expose Facebook and Twitter. But the Iranian censors took back Web control and the blocking went back on.
You know, with all the problems our nation has, we should consider ourselves blessed. We are fortunate to live in a country where we can log on social media sites without blockage or censorship. That’s why I’m so weay about the NSA surveillance scandals because I worry about what it could lead to. But yes, we should all be thankful our leaders will never have the power Iran does pull this injustice. I’d encourage those in Iran who are fighting censorship to keep fighting the good fight. They did back in 2009, and opened all our eyes to what goes on in that land. Now I’m nobody to tell people how to run their country. But I believe all should have an opportunity to have access through social media. Shouldn’t every peace loving peace loving person have that right?
Here we go again. Again we learn the National Security Agency is spying on people without the peoples’ knowledge or consent. We just learn of another tool they’re using.
According to Speigel, an independent International news brand, the NSA monitors international spending through credit card and online banking transactions. According to while blower Eric Snowden, an operation launch called ‘Follow the Money’ went out in 2011. Over 180 million records of transactions were kept, 84 percent from credit cards. VISA customers were an especially huge target. One document says they wanted transactions from customers in the Middle East and Africa. They insists it’s not about targets.
I can actually see a little logic to this. Let’s fact it, there are a lot of scams going on, especially from nations like Nigeria. I’ve learned the hard way then I see a Nigerian transaction on Ebay, to run the other direction. So there’s a part of me that wants to believe there is good these actions, like fighting fraud. Then I remind myself about the spying on law abiding citizens in this country. I’m reminded about all the spying that they did on our European allies, and even on the UN. So I guess what I’m asking is: Is NSA spying ever appropriate?
