The NSA Sucks More Than You Thought

The NSA Sucks More Than You Thought
The Guardian just exposed the NSA's "widest-reaching" surveillance program, "XKeyscore."
By Joey CarmichaelPosted 07.31.2013 at 12:15 pm1 Comment


*National Surveillance Agency Wikimedia Commons (seal and camera)/Joey Carmichael

While most of us keep going about our internet lives as if that pesky NSA thing never happened--demonstrating a "general giddy sense that privacy is kind of stupid," as Gary Shteyngart aptly describes it--the Guardian is making it harder and harder to uphold that complacency.

Today, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald exposed yet another NSA program called "XKeyscore." And it sounds bad. Really bad. Per Greenwald:
XKeyscore... is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Kinda makes PRISM seem like child's play.



Where Is XKeyscore?: Slide 6 The Guardian



The Guardian's report is based on an NSA Powerpoint detailing the surveillance program. Some of the lowlights:
no authorization required
real-time surveillance of any target's internet activity
capacity to target "US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant..." theGuardian reports
if an analyst wants to look back on a target's Google Maps search history, for example, he or she can: "XKEYSCORE extracts and databases these events including all web-based searches which can be retrospectively queried" (slide 20)
near-comprehensive access to a target's activity, from email to chat to accessed files to social media activity
open access for analysts to the databases
one powerpoint slide titled, "What Can Be Stored?" boasts "Anything you wish to extract"
In 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period," the Guardian reports



XKeyscore & HTTP: The Guardian



Flip through the Powerpoint to see more, and read the Guardian's full exposé.

Of course, surveillance in the United States is a long-standing tradition. But the extent to which the NSA's analysts appear to overstep the law--something at least one intelligence official acknowledges--is unnerving, to put it lightly. That's okay, though--privacy is stupid, right?
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The End of the Suburbs

The End of the Suburbs

The country is resettling along more urbanized lines, and the American Dream is moving with it
By Leigh Gallagher @leighgallagherJuly 31, 20136 Comments




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A major change is underway in where and how we are choosing to live. In 2011, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, the rate of urban population growth outpaced suburban growth, reversing a trend that held steady for every decade since the invention of the automobile. In several metropolitan areas, building activity that was once concentrated in the suburban fringe has now shifted to what planners call the “urban core,” while demand for large single-family homes that characterize our modern suburbs is dwindling. This isn’t just a result of the recession. Rather, the housing crisis of recent years has concealed something deeper and more profound happening to what we have come to know as American suburbia. Simply speaking, more and more Americans don’t want to live there anymore.

(MORE: Do The Suburbs Make You Selfish?)

The American suburb used to evoke a certain way of life, one of tranquil, tree-lined streets, soccer leagues and center hall colonials. Today’s suburb is more likely to evoke endless sprawl, a punishing commute, and McMansions. In the pre-automobile era, suburban residents had to walk once they disembarked from the train, so houses needed to be located within a reasonable distance to the station and homes were built close together. Shopkeepers set up storefronts around the station where pedestrian traffic was likely to be highest. The result was a village center with a grid shaped street pattern that emerged organically around the day-to-day needs and walking patterns of the people who lived there. Urban planners describe these neighborhoods, which you can still see in older suburbs, as having “vibrancy” or “experiential richness” because, without even trying, their design promoted activity, foot traffic, commerce and socializing. As sociologist Lewis Mumford wrote, “As long as the railroad stop and walking distances controlled suburban growth, the suburb had form.”

Then came World War Two, and the subsequent housing shortage. The Federal Housing Administration had already begun insuring long-term mortgage loans made by private lenders, and the GI Bill provided low-interest, zero-down-payment loans to millions of veterans. The widespread adoption of the car by the middle class untethered developers from the constraints of public transportation and they began to push further out geographically. Meanwhile, single-use zoning laws that carved land into buckets for residential, commercial and industrial use instead of having a single downtown core altered the look, feel and overall DNA of our modern suburbs. From then on, residential communities were built around a different model entirely, one that abandoned the urban grid pattern in favor of a circular, asymmetrical system made of curving subdivisions, looping streets and cul-de-sacs.

(MORE: Viewpoint: Air-Conditioning Will Be the End of Us)

But in solving one problem—the severe postwar housing shortage—we unwittingly created some others: isolated, single-class communities. A lack of cultural amenities. Miles and miles of chain stores and Ruby Tuesdays. These are the negative qualities so often highlighted in popular culture, in TV shows like Desperate Housewives, Weeds and Suburgatory, to name just a few. In 2011, the indie rock band Arcade Fire took home a Grammy for The Suburbs, an entire album dedicated to teen angst and isolation inspired by band members’ Win and William Butler’s upbringing in Houston’s master-planned community The Woodlands. Although many still love and defend the suburbs, they have also become the constant target of angst by the likes of Kate Taylor, a stay-at-home mom who lives in a suburb of Charlotte and uses the Twitter name @culdesacked. “If the only invites I get from you are at-home direct sales ‘parties,’ please lose my number, then choke yourself. #suburbs.”

There is still a tremendous amount of appeal in suburban life: space, a yard of one’s own, less-crowded schools. I don’t have anything against the suburbs personally—although I currently live in Manhattan’s West Village, I had a pretty idyllic childhood growing up in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb twelve miles west of Philadelphia. We are a nation that values privacy and individualism down to our very core, and the suburbs give us that. But somewhere between leafy neighborhoods built around lively railroad villages and the shiny new subdivisions in cornfields on the way to Iowa that bill themselves as suburbs of Chicago, we took our wish for privacy too far. The suburbs overshot their mandate.

(MORE: Whatever Happened to the Big, Bad “Shadow Inventory” of Homes?)

Many older suburbs are still going strong, and real estate developers are beginning to build new suburban neighborhoods that are mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly, a movement loosely known as New Urbanism. Even though almost no one walks everywhere in these new communities, residents can drive a mile or two instead of ten or twenty, own one car instead of two. “We are moving from location, location, location in terms of the most important factor to access, access, access,” says Shyam Kannan, formerly a principal at real estate consultancy Robert Charles Lesser and now managing director of planning at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA.)

(MORE: Selling Your House? Choose Your Words Carefully)

As the country resettles along more urbanized lines, some suggest the future may look more like a patchwork of nodes—mini urban areas all over the country connected to one another with a range of public transit options. It’s not unlike the dense settlements of the Northeast already, where city-suburbs like Stamford, Greenwich, West Hartford and others exist in relatively close proximity. “The differences between cities and suburbs are diminishing,” says Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program director Bruce Katz, noting that cities and suburbs are also becoming more alike racially, ethically, and socio-economically.

Whatever things look like in ten years—or twenty, or fifty, or more—there’s one thing everyone agrees on: there will be more options. The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two or more children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore; there are multiple American Dreams, and multiple American Dreamers. The good news is that the entrepreneurs, academics, planners, home builders and thinkers who plan and build the places we live in are hard at work trying to find space for all of them.

Adapted from The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving by Leigh Gallagher, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright (c) Leigh Gallagher, 2013.



Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/07/31/the-end-of-the-suburbs/#ixzz2ae0yDYsB

6 Questions You Should Never Ask in an Interview

This is so common sense, but you would be surprised.

1. “May I borrow a pen?”


This screams unorganized and perhaps not interested. I cannot stress how important it is to BE PREPARED!
Try this instead: “May I take notes while we talk?”



This is good interview etiquette. Invest in a neat portfolio from your local office supply store and stock it with paper, several copies of your resume and two pens. Check your portfolio the night before to make sure you have everything needed.



2. “What does your company do?”



With these answers so easily accessible online, there’s no reason anyone should ever ask this question! Candidates who don’t research the company beforehand, often come across as unprepared, technologically impaired or just plain lazy.
Try this instead: In preparing for our conversation, I learned that your company specializes in this… but I had a few specific questions.



Ask a question that relates the position or department to the company, such as “I read the most recent press release or earnings report posted online and wanted to know, what are the financial goals for this department in the upcoming quarter?”


3. “Can I come in early or leave late as long as I get my hours in or hit my goals?”




While work-life balance is a very legitimate aspect in making a career decision, the hiring manager likely isn’t thinking about that right now. He or she is more interested in learning if you are the right match for their need.
Try this instead: Could you share with me what a normal workday is like?




This shows you’re interested in the work that needs to be done. Always remember the company’s point of view – they’re looking for someone to fill a need. They’re typically not looking to fit into your schedule. That said, by asking this question, more often than not, you’ll be able to determine if the hours work for you. If it’s a flexible environment, it will likely come out through these conversations, but keep any concerns about the schedule until after you’ve received an offer.


4. “Do you monitor employees’ social networking profiles?”



Ask this question and the first response you may get from your interviewer will likely be, “why, what did you do?” Many recruiters these days are looking up candidates on social media and if you raise this red flag, the first thing the interviewer will likely do is start searching your background on social media.
Try this instead: Say nothing!



Be smart. Check your social media profiles and Google your own name to see what’s out there regarding your background that may raise a red flag with a potential employer. Remember, marking something “private” doesn’t always mean someone can’t see it.



5. “How quickly will I have an opportunity to move ahead?”




While most employers may appreciate a driven professional who’s always ready to improve, they'll want to ensure you can do the job you were hired for first.
Try this instead: “What kind of career development programs does your company offer employees that have proven themselves worthy of progression?"




This shows the hiring manager that you want to excel in the role they’re looking to fill. You’re demonstrating that you understand you have to prove yourself first, while at the same time indicating you’re interested in expanding your knowledge base and improving your skills.



6. "What's the salary for this position?”



Asking about salary (or benefits, for that matter) in the first interview is a big turn off for many hiring managers. While these are important things to consider in your next opportunity, the hiring manager likely sees it from a totally different perspective. They’re more focused on whether or not you’re going to be able to get the job done, and if you are the best fit for the team and organization.
Try this instead: Focus on selling yourself during the first interview.



If they like you and you like them, there may be an offer in your future. That’s the time to get a better understanding of what perks the company has to offer.

Virtual Piloting

Watch A Real-Life Drone Get Piloted Through The Oculus Rift

The virtual reality headset goes in for real-reality instead.

By Colin LecherPosted 07.25.2013 at 10:45 am0 Comments

The Oculus Rift is a virtual-reality headset that makes for a crazy-immersive experience. (Example: you can feel what it's like to get your head lopped off without actually getting it lopped off!) Turns out, it's a pretty cool gadget for real-reality experiences, too.

The engineers at Intuitive Aerial, a company that makes aerial camera rigs, hooked the Rift up to a drone's cameras, feeding a video stream through a Wi-Fi-connected laptop. That means the pilot can see what the drone sees, almost in real-time. (The latency's slight: just 120 milliseconds between the drone's cameras and the pilot.) But there's at least one problem with the rig: since the drone needs a Wi-Fi connection, it doesn't work past, at most, 100 meters. But still, the real world has pretty great resolution.

[Intuitive Aerial via Polygon]

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Millennials Invest Early, Think Long-Term

Millennials Invest Early, Think Long-Term
by News

Millennials are starting to invest for the future at a much younger age than their parents' generation, undeterred by higher tuition costs, reports of shrinking job prospects and higher housing prices. According to the TD Investor Insights Index, the average Gen Y investor reported making their first investment at age 20. In contrast, previous generations waited to make their first investment until closer to 30, with Baby Boomers holding off until the age of 27.


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Turn Prospects into Buyers with Persuasive Questions

Turn Prospects into Buyers with Persuasive Questions







Asking the wrong questions is one of the biggest reasons salespeople fail to close more deals. To make matters worse, it's a mistake that persists from proposal to proposal, creating a constant barrier to sales.

Top sales pros have a clear plan to maximize the persuasive power of questions to qualify and engage prospects, build rapport, and identify and solve problems. The result: more business. How do they do it?

Read the executive report:


"Get Salespeople to Ask the Right Questions"

Inside This Fast-Read Report You and Your Team Will Discover:
4 questions to ask yourself before every sales call
How to move the sale forward and get the "yes" – quicker
5 questioning strategies that lead to bigger deals
How to overcome objections with proven probing techniques
The most powerful question every salesperson should ask – repeatedly
20 ways to improve listening and retention ability right now
Closing questions that win over the toughest prospects

Learn More

Executive Business Briefings help time-pressed executives and managers hone and polish critical business skills in under an hour.

Fast–read, actionable, and packed with invaluable strategies, these timely reports help executives and managers improve the performance of their organizations.

Best regards,

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1-800-764-0680

How to Release a Press Release

Release a Press Release: It's as easy as 1-2-3!

With PRWeb, you can create and send your own press release in three easy steps.
Paste your news into the easy PRWeb press release template
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P.S. Never released a press release before? How to Write a Press Release is yours, free of charge, and available when you register for your free PRWeb account.
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Motivate Or Terminate

Motivate Or Terminate

Some employees engage in conduct or performance that, in isolation, may not warrant immediate termination, but his or her marginal performance leads to morale problems for others and often consumes an inordinate amount of the manager's time in managing workplace conflicts, poor quality of work, and complaints from co-workers to outside customers.

Yet managing employees that perform on a marginal level is one of the most challenging - if not dreaded - experiences for a manager.

In this informative audio conference, you will learn how to utilize proven methods to motivate the marginal employee or - to prepare the paper trail for a bullet-proof termination that can withstand claims of discrimination, disparate treatment, or harassment.

Learning Objectives
The signs of the marginal employee - and how it affects the workplace
The potential liability the marginal employee poses in the workforce
How to set objective performance measures for a marginal employee
Encourage accountability for the marginal employee
How to engage in progressive discipline in order to withstand attacks of discrimination or harassment
How to properly set up good documentation to prepare for a termination
When to terminate a marginal employee

More Details/Order:

Go to http://www.HRTrainingCenter.com/showWCDetails.asp?TCID=1012193 or contact us at 770-410-1219.

Recon Jet: Worlds Most Advanced Wearable Computer

Recon Jet: Worlds Most Advanced Wearable Computer
Posted on July 19, 2013



Recon Jet is a new wearable computer being introduced by Recon Industries. Several companies are pushing this new wave of wearable technology including , Google Glass and a design by Takahito Iguchi called Telepathy One.

Recon jet is doing a limited presage event this week. Don't wait, you only have one more day to get "The Worlds Most Advanced Wearble Computer" at a discount. The Recon Jet is set to start shipping in December. Personally, I like the design of the Recon Jet much better than Google Glass. I looks much more balanced and robust. I would feel safe wearing the Recon Jet while hiking or running. I can't say the same for Google Glass.

According to the Recon Instruments website:

"Recon Jet is a heads-up display for sports that unobtrusively delivers relevant information at a quick glance. The Jet features a powerful microcomputer and a full-color widescreen display designed for active outdoor use, mounted on high-performance polarized sports eyewear.

Recon Jet is a flexible computing platform, with all the processing power of a modern smartphone. Its powerful suite of built-in sensors includes GPS, a HD video camera, a microphone, and speakers, and its full-color, widescreen display can be configured for different applications.

The Pilot Edition comes loaded with software catering to endurance athletes: cyclists, triathletes, and runners. They will be able to see their performance metrics (such as Speed/Pace, Distance, Duration, Ascent/Descent, Heart rate*, Power*, Cadence*), and by connecting their smartphone, see caller ID and SMS alerts on the fly.
With the addition of 3rd party apps, it will be easy to extend the range of sports and activities Jet can be used for."

Image: Recon

The Militarization of American Policing?

Rise of the Warrior Cop
Is it time to reconsider the militarization of American policing?

Comments (767)
MORE IN LIFE & CULTURE »

By
RADLEY BALKO

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

Photo illustration by Sean McCabe

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart's basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart's father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such police units are trained in methods similar to those used by the special forces in the military. They learn to break into homes with battering rams and to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are designed to blind and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

Daily Republic/Associated Press

Today the U.S. has thousands of SWAT teams. A team prepares to enter a house in Vallejo, Calif., on March 20, above.

The Saturday Essay
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The Middle-Class Revolution (6/29/13)
Why She Drinks: Women and Alcohol(6/22/13)
Think Inside the Box (6/15/13)
How America Lost Its Way (6/8/13)
A Message for the Class of 2013 (5/1/13)
Battle of the Beach (5/25/13)

The country's first official SWAT team started in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there were approximately 500 such units. Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted by the criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983. By 2005, the figure was up to 80%.

The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 (the last year for which Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.

A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.

The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a unit. None of these federal departments has responded to my requests for information about why they consider such high-powered military-style teams necessary.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and monarchs.

The idea for the first SWAT team in Los Angeles arose during the domestic strife and civil unrest of the mid-1960s. Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had grown frustrated with his department's inability to respond effectively to incidents like the 1965 Watts riots. So his thoughts turned to the military. He was drawn in particular to Marine Special Forces and began to envision an elite group of police officers who could respond in a similar manner to dangerous domestic disturbances.

Standard-Examiner/Associated Press

When A strike force raided the home of Matthew David Stewart, one officer was killed.

Mr. Gates initially had difficulty getting his idea accepted. Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker thought the concept risked a breach in the divide between the military and law enforcement. But with the arrival of a new chief, Thomas Reddin, in 1966, Mr. Gates got the green light to start training a unit. By 1969, his SWAT team was ready for its maiden raid against a holdout cell of the Black Panthers.

At about the same time, President Richard Nixon was declaring war on drugs. Among the new, tough-minded law-enforcement measures included in this campaign was the no-knock raid—a policy that allowed drug cops to break into homes without the traditional knock and announcement. After fierce debate, Congress passed a bill authorizing no-knock raids for federal narcotics agents in 1970.

Over the next several years, stories emerged of federal agents breaking down the doors of private homes (often without a warrant) and terrorizing innocent citizens and families. Congress repealed the no-knock law in 1974, but the policy would soon make a comeback (without congressional authorization).

During the Reagan administration, SWAT-team methods converged with the drug war. By the end of the 1980s, joint task forces brought together police officers and soldiers for drug interdiction. National Guard helicopters and U-2 spy planes flew the California skies in search of marijuana plants. When suspects were identified, battle-clad troops from the National Guard, the DEA and other federal and local law enforcement agencies would swoop in to eradicate the plants and capture the people growing them.

Advocates of these tactics said that drug dealers were acquiring ever bigger weapons and the police needed to stay a step ahead in the arms race. There were indeed a few high-profile incidents in which police were outgunned, but no data exist suggesting that it was a widespread problem. A study done in 1991 by the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute found that less than one-eighth of 1% of homicides in the U.S. were committed with a military-grade weapon. Subsequent studies by the Justice Department in 1995 and the National Institute for Justice in 2004 came to similar conclusions: The overwhelming majority of serious crimes are committed with handguns, and not particularly powerful ones.

The new century brought the war on terror and, with it, new rationales and new resources for militarizing police forces. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Department of Homeland Security has handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much of the money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In 2011 alone, a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law enforcement gave away $500 million of equipment, an all-time high.

The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams. When the craze for poker kicked into high gear, a number of police departments responded by deploying SWAT teams to raid games in garages, basements and VFW halls where illegal gambling was suspected. According to news reports and conversations with poker organizations, there have been dozens of these raids, in cities such as Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and Dallas.

In 2006, 38-year-old optometrist Sal Culosi was shot and killed by a Fairfax County, Va., SWAT officer. The investigation began when an undercover detective overheard Mr. Culosi wagering on college football games with some buddies at a bar. The department sent a SWAT team after Mr. Culosi, who had no prior criminal record or any history of violence. As the SWAT team descended, one officer fired a single bullet that pierced Mr. Culosi's heart. The police say that the shot was an accident. Mr. Culosi's family suspects the officer saw Mr. Culosi reaching for his cellphone and thought he had a gun.

Assault-style raids have even been used in recent years to enforce regulatory law. Armed federal agents from the Fish & Wildlife Service raided the floor of the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville in 2009, on suspicion of using hardwoods that had been illegally harvested in Madagascar. Gibson settled in 2012, paying a $300,000 fine and admitting to violating the Lacey Act. In 2010, the police department in New Haven, Conn., sent its SWAT team to raid a bar where police believed there was underage drinking. For sheer absurdity, it is hard to beat the 2006 story about the Tibetan monks who had overstayed their visas while visiting America on a peace mission. In Iowa, the hapless holy men were apprehended by a SWAT team in full gear.

Unfortunately, the activities of aggressive, heavily armed SWAT units often result in needless bloodshed: Innocent bystanders have lost their lives and so, too, have police officers who were thought to be assailants and were fired on, as (allegedly) in the case of Matthew David Stewart.

In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in which innocent people were killed in raids to enforce warrants for crimes that are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such as drug use or gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily). These victims were bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the victim was being investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by an Atlanta narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old accidentally shot by a California SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps, killed in a 2011 raid on his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation.

What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures? The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in American law enforcement.

Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely available on YouTube), which often feature cops rappelling from helicopters, shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects. Such campaigns embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated, confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the wrong reasons.

If you browse online police discussion boards, or chat with younger cops today, you will often encounter some version of the phrase, "Whatever I need to do to get home safe." It is a sentiment that suggests that every interaction with a citizen may be the officer's last. Nor does it help when political leaders lend support to this militaristic self-image, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in 2011 by declaring, "I have my own army in the NYPD—the seventh largest army in the world."

The motivation of the average American cop should not focus on just making it to the end of his shift. The LAPD may have given us the first SWAT team, but its motto is still exactly the right ideal for American police officers: To protect and serve.

SWAT teams have their place, of course, but they should be saved for those relatively rare situations when police-initiated violence is the only hope to prevent the loss of life. They certainly have no place as modern-day vice squads.

Many longtime and retired law-enforcement officers have told me of their worry that the trend toward militarization is too far gone. Those who think there is still a chance at reform tend to embrace the idea of community policing, an approach that depends more on civil society than on brute force.

In this very different view of policing, cops walk beats, interact with citizens and consider themselves part of the neighborhoods they patrol—and therefore have a stake in those communities. It's all about a baton-twirling "Officer Friendly" rather than a Taser-toting RoboCop.

Corrections & Amplifications
The Consumer Products Safety Commission does not have a SWAT team. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that it does.

Mr. Balko is the author of "Rise of the Warrior Cop," published this month by PublicAffairs.

Unlocking your aura: The beautiful photographs that capture the colors of a person's soul and reflect how they feel

Unlocking your aura: The beautiful photographs that capture the colors of a person's soul and reflect how they feel

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2372171/Carlo-Van-Roers-Auracam-6000-photographs-capture-colors-persons-soul.html#ixzz2ZmPMtCxq
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BIG BROTHER: All cars to be equipped with black boxes by 2014

A Black Box for Car Crashes

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

Michael Merolli, center, an accident reconstructionist, removed the air bag control module from a car at a training session for New York State Police investigators.
By JACLYN TROP
Published: July 21, 2013

When Timothy P. Murray crashed his government-issued Ford Crown Victoria in 2011, he was fortunate, as car accidents go. Mr. Murray, then the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, was not seriously hurt, and he told the police he was wearing a seat belt and was not speeding.

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

Within the programming of the air bag control module is the capability to store crash data on an event data recorder.

But a different story soon emerged. Mr. Murray was driving over 100 miles an hour and was not wearing a seat belt, according to the computer in his car that tracks certain actions. He was given a $555 ticket; he later said he had fallen asleep.

The case put Mr. Murray at the center of a growing debate over a little-known but increasingly important piece of equipment buried deep inside a car: the event data recorder, more commonly known as the black box.

About 96 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States have the boxes, and in September 2014, if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has its way, all will have them.

The boxes have long been used by car companies to assess the performance of their vehicles. But data stored in the devices is increasingly being used to identify safety problems in cars and as evidence in traffic accidents and criminal cases. And the trove of data inside the boxes has raised privacy concerns, including questions about who owns the information, and what it can be used for, even as critics have raised questions about its reliability.

To federal regulators, law enforcement authorities and insurance companies, the data is an indispensable tool to investigate crashes.

The black boxes “provide critical safety information that might not otherwise be available to N.H.T.S.A. to evaluate what happened during a crash — and what future steps could be taken to save lives and prevent injuries,” David L. Strickland, the safety agency’s administrator, said in a statement.

But to consumer advocates, the data is only the latest example of governments and companies having too much access to private information. Once gathered, they say, the data can be used against car owners, to find fault in accidents or in criminal investigations.

“These cars are equipped with computers that collect massive amounts of data,” said Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based consumer group. “Without protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse.”

What’s more, consumer advocates say, government officials have yet to provide consistent guidelines on how the data should be used.

“There are no clear standards that say, this is a permissible use of the data and this is not,” Ms. Barnes said.

Fourteen states, including New York, have passed laws that say that, even though the data belongs to the vehicle’s owner, law enforcement officials and those involved in civil litigation can gain access to the black boxes with a court order.

In these states, lawyers may subpoena the data for criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, making the information accessible to third parties, including law enforcement or insurance companies that could cancel a driver’s policy or raise a driver’s premium based on the recorder’s data.

In Mr. Murray’s case, a court order was not required to release the data to investigators. Massachusetts is not among the states to pass a law governing access to the data. Asked about the case, Mr. Murray, who did not contest the ticket and who resigned as lieutenant governor in June to become head of the Chamber of Commerce in Worcester, Mass., declined to comment.

Current regulations require that the presence of the black box be disclosed in the owner’s manual. But the vast majority of drivers who do not read the manual thoroughly may not know that their vehicle can capture and record their speed, brake position, seat belt use and other data each time they get behind the wheel.

Unlike the black boxes on airplanes, which continually record data including audio and system performance, the cars’ recorders capture only the few seconds surrounding a crash or air bag deployment. A separate device extracts the data, which is then analyzed through computer software.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade association that represents 12 automakers including General Motors and Chrysler, said it supported the mandate because the recorders helped to monitor passenger safety.

“Event data recorders help our engineers and researchers understand how cars perform in the real world, and one of our priorities for E.D.R.’s continues to be preserving consumer privacy,” said Wade Newton, a spokesman for the trade association. “Automakers don’t access E.D.R. data without consumer permission, and we believe that any government requirements to install E.D.R.’s on all vehicles must include steps to protect consumer privacy.”

Beyond the privacy concerns, though, critics have questioned the data’s reliability.

In 2009, Anthony Niemeyer died after crashing a rented Ford Focus in Las Vegas. His widow, Kathryn, sued both Ford Motor and Hertz, contending that the air bag system failed to deploy.

The black box, however, derailed Ms. Niemeyer’s assertion that her husband had been traveling fast enough for the air bag to deploy.

2 NEXT PAGE »


Bill Vlasic contributed reporting.

Guest blog posts drawing scrutiny from Google

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Guest blog posts drawing scrutiny from Google

Christopher Null@christophernull
Jul 19, 2013 11:31 AM


When it comes to blogging, the conventional wisdom says that you should get your name and material out there as liberally as possible. Any place you can stuff a backlink to your business’s website is great, particularly if it’s on a noteworthy or popular site. Guest posts have long been thought to be a great way to do that: You get to reach a broader audience and link back to your own website, improving your search engine rankings while sharing your expertise. Meanwhile, the website owner gets free content. It’s win-win.

But that conventional wisdom is changing, as many are questioning whether guest blogging may actually lead to penalties rather than better placement in search results.

For the website owner who’s hosting the guest posts, the problem is relatively easy to see. Because you have limited control over the content of the guest post, you’re taking a leap of faith that you’re going to get quality work. Any links embedded in that post are also potentially troublesome. A guest blogger (who is rarely someone you actually know) may embed what looks like an innocuous link in the post, only to redirect it later to a less than savory site. And if your website links to a spam site—whether you or a guest writer does the linking—you can be subject to Google penalties and see your search ranking plummet.

But what about the writer of the guest blog post? Well, there’s trouble emerging there, too. Posting your good work, name, and link on a questionable site can subject you to the exact same penalties as described above. And once Google starts to associate you with the gray areas of the Web, it can be hard to break that association. In fact, today, Google’s own advice is that if you do write a guest post for another site, you should include “nofollow” tags on your own backlinks in order to avoid penalties.

But wait, isn’t building followable backlinks the whole idea of guest posting? It sure is, and that’s why many are wondering if guest posting is a dying idea. If the guest post is well-written and relevant, and if the site it’s posted to is high-quality and authoritative, then there’s no problem. The trouble is that almost never happens. Either the guest post is low-grade or the site hosting it is. Rarely do both sides of that equation ever add up to anything you’d consider “quality.”

Guest posting can still be done successfully, as long as it’s done sparingly and intelligently. But doing the job right is more important than ever. If you want to host a guest post on your business’s blog—or write one for someone else—follow these key tips.
Guest posts need to be relevant for both sides. If you run an online shoe sales site, you shouldn’t be hosting guest posts about plumbing.
Quality is key. If you can’t ensure top-notch quality of a guest post, don’t accept it.
Check out who you’re dealing with? Good guest posts will come from those with authority on the subject matter they’re writing about. Check their social networking accounts to ensure that they promote material they write, including guest posts on other people’s websites.
Length is still important—300 words is widely considered the “minimum” word count for a webpage to be included in Google’s index.
Limit backlinks, and check them out thoroughly. One relevant backlink to a quality, relevant website, maximum.



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The Self-conscious Entrepreneur

The Self-conscious Entrepreneur
July 17, 2013

I founded Pandora along with two friends at the end of 1999. Within a couple months we had raised some seed financing and began building the Music Genome Project. It was a fantastically exciting time. We were packed into a small studio apartment, white-boarding a business plan, hiring musicians and engineers, inventing a new product, and jumping into the startup fray.

Then things got rough. We began running out of money and wound up in a long, grueling fight for survival. It took almost 4 years, a few business model changes, and 348 investor pitches before we were able to raise another venture capital round. By the time we got to the closing in March of 2004, we had deferred close to $2 million of salary, racked up massive credit card debt, battled lawsuits and eviction notices, and experienced just about every other imaginable challenge for a young business. It was a wild process that by all measures we should not have survived. As I enjoy the progress of Pandora, those days are never far from my mind.

When people talk about the challenges of starting a business most of the discussion focuses around the external challenges: raising money, finding great people, overcoming competition, creating awareness, etc. These are all of course critical obstacles that confront every startup. But for me, the biggest obstacle was internal; I struggled with the personal impact of having to constantly borrow time and money from others, and for something that had very little chance of success. I felt like a leech, and that feeling got harder to suppress with each passing year.

Pitching investors in the beginning is easy. You have an unabashed enthusiasm that comes from the overwhelming sense of possibility and the rush of invention. No doubt, just potential. Then, unless you're very lucky, your velocity slows as your idea collides with market realities. The ascent steepens, and you lost sight of the summit. This is when you are really tested as a leader. In the absence of evidence that warrants their continued support, can you sustain the faith of your backers?

Four years was a long time for me to wrestle with this. I figured out pretty quickly that the solution was not in pretending things weren't that bad, or finding periodic escapes from the experience to rejuvenate. Instead, the solution came from a simple, timely piece of advice. Someone told me one day to "stop being so self-conscious." The input really struck a chord. I had indeed become very self-conscious, and self-consciousness is a crippling feeling for an entrepreneur. Your currency is your enthusiasm and self-belief; It's what attracts investors and people to your cause, and it's the wellspring that keeps your own spirits high as you climb a daily wall of worry. If you lose that resoluteness, your will follows closely behind and you get overwhelmed by all the external pressure and the doubt that comes with it. For me, the perpetual reliance on friends, family and unpaid employees to keep the company going was creating a growing sense that I was failing, and "falling behind" in some larger professional way. The well-timed advice helped me break that connection. It reminded me that startups don't follow the same path of milestones and rewards that standard careers do, and that as long as I measured my progress on that same yardstick, I was destined to feel like a misfit. The truth is, startups are experiments and adventures. And they're full of absurdity. Heck, there was a time when we seriously considered a trip to Reno to put our last $25K on black!

Once I had internalized that perspective, it became much easier for me to manage the doubt and do all the things I had to do with conviction and enthusiasm. Ultimately, I think it was that confidence and sense of purpose that investors bought. It's a form of eternal optimism, but one that gets the odds. Over the last five years, I have had the chance to meet many successful entrepreneurs, and almost to a person they have described their own version of what I went through - in some cases more than once. Starting something new is hard. It rarely succeeds, and (unless you live in a startup hotspot) it's very different from what others around you are up to. Fully understanding the low probability of success, but embracing it nonetheless, can actually give you self-confidence instead of self-consciousness.

I regularly meet people who are living the tough stretch - I can feel their anxiety - but with the right perspective you can calm your mind and actually enjoy it for what it is, in all its quixotic chaos. I'm a big believer in pursuing your passion - the more quixotic the better. You live life once, and if you wind up hitting the wall... Hit it going 100 miles an hour and you just might break through!

(Photo credit: YanLev / Shutterstock.com)

Six Signs of Career Derailment

Six Signs of Career Derailment
By Barbara Reinhold, Monster Contributing Writer

Getting bumped off the track on your way to the top is every high achiever's recurring nightmare. How can you be sure it doesn't happen to you? Research by Michael Lombardo, principal of Lominger Limited, uncovered six indicators of career derailment. If any of them describe you, you'll know what areas you need to work on:

1. Disagreements with Higher Management

Obviously, this is a no-no, even if your point of view is correct. Those who would rather be right than promoted almost always get their wish.

2. Problems with Team Building

You need to be good at spotting talent. Building diversity, developing talent and helping your people work together effectively are also core capabilities that you can't do without for very long.

3. Problems Developing Working Relationships

If people don't want to be around you, your career is in trouble. Bullying, isolation and being out of the loop in various ways all torpedo corporate careers.

4. Lack of Follow-Through

When you consistently forget to follow up on promises and don't attend to important details, people notice and question the wisdom of handing you anything else to forget.

5. Problems Moving from a Technical to a Strategic Level

Here's where engineers and other highly technical people can stumble and find themselves unable to go beyond what they know in order to formulate more complex strategies. If you're on your way up the ladder from a highly technical role to a more managerial one, be sure to ask your boss for some feedback as to whether your strategic skills need honing.

6. Assuming Something Other Than Your Own Hard Work Will Take You Where You Want to Go

Being overly dependent on a powerful boss or some other advocate, or even on your natural talent, sometimes causes high-potential people to get a little lazy. "I know I'll make VP this spring, because all the important people are on my side," a rising young star once said. Wrong -- he was passed on the inside lane by somebody who had just made a great presentation to the senior VP. The only person who can get you noticed and promoted is you.

Anything on that list sound familiar? If not, take a second look or consult a friend. Psychologists tell us that self-evaluation is a terrible indicator of performance. To be on the safe side, ask somebody who knows you well (and will tell you the truth) to have a look at the list and give you some objective feedback.

When it comes to keeping your career on track, what you don't know about yourself could definitely hurt you.