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One oil spill in his community was more than enough for Kalamazoo resident Christopher Wahmhoff.
To protest Enbridge’s replacement of the pipeline that burst along a Michigan riverbank in 2010, Wahmhoff spent 10 hours of his 35th birthday inside the new pipe, slowing construction for a single day in June.
Now Wahmhoff, a member of the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands, has been charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor, charges that could see him put behind bars for more than two years.
“It was worth it, without a doubt,” he told the Battle Creek Enquirer on Tuesday following a preliminary hearing before a district judge. “We got awareness out.”
The prosecutorial overreaction is all the more striking because of the peacefulness of Wahmhoff’s protest. Though he refused to come out of the pipeline until 5 p.m., Sheriff Department Detective Steve Hinkley told the court, “He was very cooperative.”
Wahmhoff’s wrongdoings certainly pale in comparison to Enbridge’s. When the company’s improperly maintained pipeline ruptured in 2010, it led to the nation’s largest-ever onshore oil spill. More than a million gallons of goopy, toxic tar-sands oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River and a tributary, and up to 180,000 gallons are still contaminating the river bottom today. So who’s the criminal here?
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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Mother Jones
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Today, disclosures about NSA surveillance programs leapfrogged the Atlantic to Germany:
“We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information, not just in the United States but in some cases here in Germany,” Mr. Obama said during the news conference. “So lives have been saved.”
He did not provide any details. But Mrs. Merkel, who acknowledged that Germany has received “very important information” from the United States, cited the so-called “Sauerland cell” as an example of such anti-terrorism intelligence cooperation.
Hmmm. So I guess the Sauerland cell is example #5 of terrorist plots broken up via NSA surveillance. This dates back to 2006, though. Of the 50 plots that Obama mentioned today (following Gen. Alexander’s testimony on Tuesday), I wonder how many of them have been broken up recently?
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Mother Jones
Among the revelations made last week by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, few were more jarring than the suggestion that private security contractors have the capability to monitor your every online communication seemingly on a whim, in real-time. As he told the Washington Post, “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type.”
Like most everything else Snowden disclosed, it seemed like something out of a spy movie. But with the caveat that no one outside the NSA truly knows the extent of the agency’s reach, cybersecurity experts say that Snowden’s charge rings true, at least in part. According to PowerPoint slides Snowden provided to the Post and the Guardian, PRISM collected stored communications information from sites such as Facebook, Skype, Google, and Yahoo, boasting of access to online social networking details, email, file transfers, photos and video and voice chats.
Barring direct access (physically installing some sort of keystroke capture, for example) analysts probably don’t have the capability to jump into a random Skype conversation and see what’s being typed—nor would they want to. “Are they probably actually doing that for like arbitrary people?,” asked Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in tech privacy. “Probably not because that would take a lot of time and not be very useful.”
See original article here –
Edward Snowden Said Contractors Can “Watch Your Ideas Form as You Type.” How Does That Work?
Mother Jones
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From the annals of stories you know you can’t resist reading:
The Prenda saga already had everything a red-blooded legal observer might treasure: Pornography. Intimations of offshore money laundering. Alleged forgery and identity theft.
Then it got even stranger.
Yes it did. Because this a story about some really creepy copyright trolling, and it stars a team of lawyers—not defendents, lawyers—eventually pleading the Fifth Amendment. Go ahead. I dare you not to click.
Originally posted here –
Today Brings Us a Tale of Sleazy Porn Trolls Pleading the Fifth Amendment
