Freedomshift

Prosperity Requires Privacy Privacy is a prerequisite for a prosperous economy.    Even the White House admits : People must have confidence that data will travel to its destination without disruption. Assuring the free flow of information, the security and privacy of data, and the integrity of the interconnected networks themselves are all essential to American and global economic prosperity , security, and the promotion of universal rights. Here are four ways mass surveillance hurts our economy ... Read more: here

In a stunning upset, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost the GOP Virginia primary Tuesday night to Dave Brat, an economics professor and political novice.  The Associated Press called the race for Cantor about an hour after polls closed at 7 p.m. ET.  Cantor is the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House and was widely seen as the  next in line to succeed House Speaker John Boehner.  Cantor's loss to a political novice with little money marks a huge victory for the Tea Party movement, which supported Cantor just a few years ago. Read more: here

"You've got an organized crime syndicate" Emails and VA memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast provide what is among the most comprehensive accounts yet of how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system. It shows not only how they manipulated hospital wait lists but why—to cover up the weeks and months veterans spent waiting for needed medical care. If those lag times had been revealed, it would have threatened the executives’ bonus pay. Read more: here

Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities,” was issued Dec. 29, 2010, and states that U.S. commanders “are provided emergency authority under this directive.” “Federal military forces shall not be used to quell civil disturbances unless specifically authorized by the president in accordance with applicable law or permitted under emergency authority,” the directive states. “In these circumstances, those federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the president is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances” under two conditions. The conditions include military support needed “to prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property and are necessary to restore governmental function and public order.” A second ...

A new study released by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute finds that new technology development that has been encouraged through the use of federal grants has served to threaten children’s privacy by allowing the collection of data on every child. Authors of the study Emmett McGroarty, Joy Pullmann, and Jane Robbins make the case that by means of the nationalized Common Core standards, which states were lured into adopting through competitive grants in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top (RttT) stimulus program in 2009, the federal government has used grant funds to induce states to build identical, increasingly sophisticated student data systems. McGroarty, executive director of the Education Project at the American Principles Project (APP), said the study, entitled “ Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing ,” exposes “an idea that dates back to the Progressive era.” Read more: Here