Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans.

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans.STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today. It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said. That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies. The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke. The Obama administration is currently drafting what it's calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said. Details about the "trusted identity" project are unusually scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.Hmmm....The original idea of the card came from Microsoft boss Bill Gates after seeing years ago the new Belgium micro chipped identity card!With such a card logging on a public computer would still tell the Gov who's on that computer.Big Brother in overdrive?Read the full story here.

Pakistan: With Salmaan Taseer out of way, Sherry Rehman next target of Taliban.

HT:AhmadiyyaTimes.Pakistan: With Salmaan Taseer out of way, Sherry Rehman next target of Taliban.Praising the commando of Pakistan's elite force Mumtaz Qadri for assassinating Punjab Governor Salaam Taseer, the Taliban warned that all those who opposed the blasphemy law would meet a similar fate.Angered by the governor's opposition to a controversial blasphemy law, Qadri shot him in a market as Islamabad on Tuesday. The blasphemy law was introduced by Pakistani military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul Haq in 1980s.Under the law, anyone who speaks ill of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad commits a crime and faces the death penalty but activists say the vague terminology has led to its misuse.Only recently, Pakistan People's Party leader and former information minister Sherry Rehman submitted a bill in the national assembly to amend the blasphemy law.Talking about amendment in the law TTP spokesperson Ihsanullah Ihsan said, "Our next target is Sherry Rehman who introduced the bill to the Parliament She wants to make amendments in religion. Other politicians who supported this move are also on our radar. All secular lawmakers and politicians should know that we monitor their activities and we can target them any time."Ihsan added, "Mumtaz Qadri, the killer of Salman Taseer is hero for all the Muslims. He has encouraged Muslims around the world and Taliban appreciates his efforts. He gave a message to the world that whoever insulted the Prophet would not be spared."The Taliban spokesperson criticised those who attended Taseer's funeral. "Under Islamic law no one should offer prayers at a funeral." Allama Afzal Chisti of Ulema Wing of PPP led the funeral prayers on Wednesday.Interior Minister Rehman Malik also advised Rehman, a former journalist, to leave the country for her own safety. Malik told her on phone to leave the country at the earliest because “fanatics are hell bent to take her life due to her views on blasphemy laws.”Malik cited intelligence reports that extremists were after her and advised her to go abroad for the time being. Rehman, however, refused to leave the country. She told Malik that she would not be attending the National Assembly session due to inadequate security in the federal capital. She also told Malik that she felt more secure in Karachi than in Islamabad.Pakistan's anti-blasphemy law has been in the spotlight since November when a court sentenced a Christian mother of four to death, in a case that has exposed deep rifts in the troubled Muslim nation.Hmmmm....."The Religion of Peace".Read the full story here.More here.

WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas

WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas.Call comes after it emerges that US has tried to force Twitter to release WikiLeaks members' private details.WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook unseal any US court subpoenas they have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter secretly to hand over details of accounts and use of the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wideranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure."Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain," WikiLeaks said in a statement today.The writ, approved by a court in Virginia in December, demands that the San Franscisco based micro-blogging site hand over all details of accounts and private messaging on Twitter – including the computers and networks – used by five individuals.Those include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Manning, Icelandic MP Brigitta Jonsdottir and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. Three of those – Gonggrijp, Assange and Jonsdottir – were named as "producers" of the first significant leak from the US cables cache, a video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and journalist in Baghdad.The broad-reaching legal document also targets an account held by Jacob Applebaum, a US computer programmer whose computer and phones were examined by US officials in July after he was stopped returning from Holland to the US.The court issuing the subpoena said it believed that it believed that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe Twitter held information "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."It also ordered Twitter not to notify the targets of the subpoena, which the company successfully challenged.The court order crucially demands that Twitter hand over details of source and destination Internet Protocol addresses used to access the accounts, which would help investigators identify how the named individuals communicated with each other, as well as email addresses used.The emergence of the subpoena appears to confirm for the first time the existence of a secret grand jury empanelled to investigate whether individuals associated with WikiLeaks, and Assange in particular, can be prosecuted for alleged conspiracy with Manning to steal the classified documents."I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone," Jonsdottir said in a Twitter message.Twitter has declined comment on the claim, saying only that its policy is to notify its users, where possible, of government requests for information.
The subpoena itself is an unusual one known as a 2703(d) which a recent Federal appeals court ruled was insufficient to order the disclosure of the contents of communication. Significantly, however, that ruling is binding in neither Virginia – where it was issued – or in San Francisco where Twitter is based.Assange has promised to fight the order, as has Jonsdottir, who said in a Twitter message that she had "no intention to hand my information over willingly".Gonggrijp praised Twitter for notifying him and others that the US had subpoenaed his details. "It appears that Twitter, as a matter of policy, does the right thing in wanting to inform their users when one of these comes in," Gonggrijp said. "Heaven knows how many places have received similar subpoenas and just quietly submitted all they had on me."Read the full story here.

Twitter Subpoenaed by U.S. Government for Wikileaks Accounts.

Twitter Subpoenaed by U.S. Government for Wikileaks Accounts.The U.S. government has asked Twitter to hand over private messages sent to and from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers. In all likelihood, it's also contacting other web services Assange may have used to get contact details and personal information about Assage's activities and supporters.
According to a report just filed by The New York Times, Twitter has been subpoenaed by the U.S. government in connection to the ongoing WikiLeaks investigation.Twitter, like most web companies, has a "spy guide," documents pertaining to compliance with request from governments and law enforcement into criminal investigations. These requests are supposed to be accompanied by subpoenas or warrants.According to Twitter's specific guide [PDF], "In accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, non-public information about Twitter users is not released unless we have received a subpoena, court order or other legal process document." Such requests would only be valid if sent by law enforcement.In this particular case, every indication would point to the speedy release of Assange's direct messages and other data to the U.S. government.The court ordered Twitter to surrender the above information for accounts belonging to Assange, WikiLeaks, Pfc. Bradley Manning (widely suspected to be the original source responsible for transfering cables to WikiLeaks), and several WikiLeaks associates and volunteers, including Birgitta Jonsdottir, Rop Gongrijp, and San Francisco-based programmer Jacob Appelbaum.Google and other web and social media services all have the same kinds of spy guide documents governing compliance; we'd be shocked if Twitter was the only company that got a WikiLeaks-related court order to surrender information. And we're pretty sure other services have much more sensitive information on Assange et al.Hmmmmm......"A Tweet to far"?Read the full story here.

Unfortunately, Obamacare Is Not Going To Be Repealed In 2010.

HT:TheAmericanDream.Unfortunately, Obamacare Is Not Going To Be Repealed In 2010, It Is Not Going To Be Repealed In 2011 And There Is A Good Chance That It May Never Be Repealed.Right now the mainstream media is paying a lot of attention to the effort by Republicans in the House of Representatives to repeal the health care reform law that Barack Obama and the Democrats crammed down the throats of the American people during the last session of Congress. House Republicans are calling their legislation the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act", and the House of Representatives is expected to pass the legislation on January 12th. However, there are two huge problems. One is that Democrats control the U.S. Senate and they have declared that there is not a chance in the world that a repeal of the health care reform law will get through them. Secondly, even if a repeal of the health care law did somehow magically get to Barack Obama's desk, he has sworn that he would veto it. So unfortunately, Obamacare is not going to be repealed any time soon.So what do the American people think about all of this?Well, according to a Gallup Poll released this week, 46 percent of Americans are in favor of repealing Obamacare while 40 percent of Americans do not want it repealed.The numbers are pretty close. Republicans overwhelmingly want it repealed while Democrats overwhelmingly want to keep the new health care law.But perhaps someone should be paying attention to what doctors are saying about this new legislation. This new health care law is driving thousands upon thousands of American doctors out of the profession. In fact, according to one absolutely stunning new poll, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to bail out of the profession over the next three years.Considering the fact that the U.S. was already facing a very serious shortage of doctors over the next several decades, this has the potential to be a national crisis of mammoth proportions.Today, there are nearly a million practicing physicians in the United States. So what in the world is going to happen if several hundred thousand of them actually do throw up their hands and head for the exits?Yes, this is really happening. The U.S. health care system is actually starting to come apart at the seams.Sadly, there is absolutely no chance that the new health care law is going to be repealed in the next two years. If Barack Obama wins in 2012, that will mean that we are facing at least six years until it has any chance of being repealed.Meanwhile, this new health care law is going to be savagely ripping apart our health care system and our entire economy.But this is the new Amerika - where "The American Dream" is rapidly becoming "The American Nightmare".Hmmmm......"Change you can see"?And once America is completely disintegrating who will "Controll" what is left?Read the full story here.