The announcement of Obama's recognition by the Nobel Peace Prize committee in 2009 seemed, to many, more like an 'Onion-worthy' headline than reality but now, as The Associated Press reports, it seems the officials face a formal inquiry over the selection criteria that could rescind the last three years' awards. The accusations at the root of the inquiry stem from persistent complain Read more.....

The announcement of Obama's recognition by the Nobel Peace Prize committee in 2009 seemed, to many, more like an 'Onion-worthy' headline than reality but now, as The Associated Press reports, it seems the officials face a formal inquiry over the selection criteria that could rescind the last three years' awards. The accusations at the root of the inquiry stem from persistent complaints by a Norwegian peace researcher that cites the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations, and if the Stockholm County Administrative Board, the overseer of such foundations, finds that the founder Alfred Noble's will is not being honored then (while unlikely) Obama (2009), Liu Xiaobo (2010), and last year's Liberians could face their awards suspended as 'champions of peace'. Fredrik Heffermehl, the inquiry's instigator, rhetorically asks when addressing the 2009 committee choice of Obama for "extraordinary efforts" to boost international diplomacy: "Do you see Obama as a promoter of abolishing the military as a tool of international affairs?" as he notes the 1895 will of Nobel to "work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

AP: Nobel Peace Prize Under Investigation

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize's original selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Barack Obama, as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday. The investigation comes after persistent complaints by a Norwegian peace researcher that the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations.

 

If the Stockholm County Administrative Board, which supervises foundations in Sweden's capital, finds that prize founder Alfred Nobel's will is not being honored, it has the authority to suspend award decisions going back three years — though that would be unlikely and unprecedented, said Mikael Wiman, a legal expert working for the county.

 

Obama won in 2009, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010, and last year the award was split between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

 

...
Fredrik Heffermehl, a prominent researcher and critic of the selection process, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that "Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace.""And it's indisputable that he had in mind the peace movement, i.e. the active development of international law and institutions, a new global order where nations safely can drop national armaments," he said

 

Especially after World War II, the prize committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, has widened the scope of the prize to include environmental, humanitarian and other efforts, he said. For example, in 2007 the prize went to climate activist Al Gore and the U.N.'s panel on climate change, and in 2009 the committee cited Obama for "extraordinary efforts" to boost international diplomacy.

 

"Do you see Obama as a promoter of abolishing the military as a tool of international affairs?" Heffermehl asked rhetorically.

 

Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and inventor, gave only vague guidelines for the peace prize in his 1895 will, saying it should honor "work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

 

Nobel said the peace prize should be awarded by a Norwegian committee, and the other Nobel Prizes by committees in Sweden. The two Scandinavian nations were in a union at the time. Geir Lundestad, the nonvoting secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dismissed Heffermehl's claims.

 

"Fighting climate change is definitely closely related to fraternity between nations. It even concerns the survival of some states," he told AP. Still, the County Administrative Board decided to sent a letter to the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation, which manages the prize assets, requesting a formal response to the allegations.

 

"We have no basis to suggest that they haven't managed it properly. But we want to investigate it," Wiman said. "The prize committee must always adjust its rules to today's society," he said. "But peace work has to be at the core — it can't deviate too much from that," Wiman said.

Failing a confiscation of that particular prize, the headhunter in chief can go for the repeat by fooling all of the Nobel committee member all of the time, in proving that the only solution to an excess debt problem is infinite debt.

With Greek politicians on the verge of selling out the population more than ever before only to preserve the country's ability to be an ECB toll stop, where it takes Troika money and promptly pays Greek creditor banks, the time to return to the Syntagma Square webcam has arrived especially since tonight is the night when the population learns if Greece will comply once again with Troika demands for record austerity or finally cut the cord. Because with the latest round of troika Read more.....

With Greek politicians on the verge of selling out the population more than ever before only to preserve the country's ability to be an ECB toll stop, where it takes Troika money and promptly pays Greek creditor banks, the time to return to the Syntagma Square webcam has arrived especially since tonight is the night when the population learns if Greece will comply once again with Troika demands for record austerity or finally cut the cord. Because with the latest round of troika demands being that "the minimum wage be cut to less than 600 euros ($790) a month and that at least one holiday allowance, the so-called 13th and 14th wages, be abolished, Mega TV said" and that "pensions paid by supplementary funds should be cut by 35 percent" it the local population believes that waving goodbye to one's retirement to fund a bank's bonus is worth it, then it deserves all the bending over it gets.

And for those wondering, here is a reminder how out of every euro in bialouts, only 19 cents actually goes toward the country (and of that we assume a big portion is to fund European military purchases).

As an ever greater portion of the world succumbs to authoritarian control (whether it is of military disposition, or as we first showed, a small room of economists defining the monetary fate of the future as central banks now hold nearly a third of world GDP within their balance sheets) we can't help but be amazed as the population simply sits idly by on the sidelines as the modern financial sys Read more.....

As an ever greater portion of the world succumbs to authoritarian control (whether it is of military disposition, or as we first showed, a small room of economists defining the monetary fate of the future as central banks now hold nearly a third of world GDP within their balance sheets) we can't help but be amazed as the population simply sits idly by on the sidelines as the modern financial system repeats every single mistake of the past century, only this time with stakes so high not even Mars could bail out the world. Unfortunately, with the world having operated under patently false economic models spread by hacks whose only credibility is being endorsed by the same system that created these models over the past century, the only temporary solution to all financial problem is to "try harder." Sadly, the final outcome is well known - a global systematic reset, in which the foundation of all modern democracies - the myth of the welfare state (which at last check, was about $200 trillion underfunded on an NPV basis globally and is thus the most insolvent of all going concern entities in existence) is vaporized (there's that word again) leading to global conflict, misery and war. Sadly that is the price we will end up paying for over a century of flawed economic models, of "borrowing from the future", of ever more encroaching central planning, and of an economic paradigm so flawed that as Bill Buckler puts it, "Keynes’ response to those who questioned the “longer-term” consequences of his advocacy of credit-creation as a basis for money was - “In the long run, we are all dead”. It is difficult to overemphasise the venal arrogance of this remark or the destructiveness of its legacy." Alas, the last thing the central planning "fools" (more on that shortly) will admit is their erroneous hubris, which in the years to come will claims millions of lives. In the meantime, we can merely comfort ourselves with ever more insightful analyses into the heart of the broken system under which we all labor, such as this one by SocGen's Dylan Grice, whose latest letter on Popular Delusions is a call for "honest fools" - "Frequently, when we make mistakes we try to correct them not by changing the flawed thinking which led to the mistake in the first place, but by reapplying the same flawed thinking with even more determination. Behavioural psychologists call it the “lost pilot” effect, after the lost pilot who tried to reassure his passenger: “I have no idea where we’re going, but we’re making good time!” Policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic are treating today’s malaise with the same flaky thinking which created it in the first place. How can that work?" Simple answer: it can't.

Grice explains why "Trying harder" is the only recourse of a status quo gripped in a confirmation bias so tense that even merely glancing outside the window at the Marriner Eccles building could be sufficient grounds for the whole house of cards to come tumbling down:

[This week I want to think about] the incorrect application of faulty models. In essence, that's all those studies on confirmation bias are really about. Subjects applied a faulty model - a mental algorithm saying "accept only supporting evidence" - which resulted in a biased assessment of the evidence. "Trying harder" didn't work because the problem was the faulty model, not the lack of effort, and applying that faulty model with more determination just caused an even bigger error. Psychologists have a name for this. They call it the "lost pilot effect" after the lost pilot trying to reassure his passengers by saying "I have no idea where we're going, but we're making good time!"

 

Flawed thinking got us into this mess. But rather than change that flawed thinking, our policy makers are applying it with even more rigour: we have more debt for insolvent borrowers, more financial engineering, more complicated banking regulations, more blaming speculators for everything, more monetary experimentation by central banks. Our policy makers have absolutely no idea what they're doing, but they're giving it a go!

"Lost pilot effect" exhibit A - Inflation Targeting, which failed miserably in the past, and will fail miserably again.

The latest from the Fed provides a wonderful example. Undeterred by the latest calamitous failure of CPI targeting regimes (a brief history of which will be presented below), it has announced an explicit 2% inflation target. But why? Would an explicit target have made any difference to the last crisis? Will it prevent the next one? And where did this 2% come from? We don't know. But we suspect that past uninformed capital market tinkering has failed to control the uncontrollable, and we're pretty sure these ones will too.

 

In fact, if such tinkering has in the past been the primary causes of crises, then why won't this latest attempt - the 2% inflation target - be the cause of the next one? There are certainly precedents. Targeting stable "prices" isn't a new idea. The first experiment was actually conducted in the US in the 1920s, apparently successfully. Indeed, so stable were consumer prices that the authorities assumed there was no inflationary threat. And, this brilliant new idea, that stable consumer prices were both a necessary and sufficient condition for economic stability, proved so appealing that the NY Fed adopted it as a policy objective. On January 11th 1925, then-governor Benjamin Strong wrote to a friend:

 

That it was my belief, and I thought it was shared by all others in the Federal Reserve System, that our whole policy in the future, as in the past, would be directed towards the stability of prices so far as it was possible for us to influence prices.”

 

During the 1927 Stabilization hearings before the Committee on Banking and Currency on a Bill to amend the Federal Reserve Act to provide for the "stabilization of the price level for commodities in general", the governor was asked if the Fed could stabilize prices more than it had done in the past. Strong replied “I personally think that the administration of the Federal Reserve System since the reaction of 1921 has been just as nearly directed as reasonable human wisdom could direct it toward that very object.”

 

Like a driver focused on the speedometer rather than the speed, oblivious to the risk that the speedometer might be faulty, they kept their foot on the gas until they crashed. So focused were they on the stability of the CPI (first chart below), and so convinced that it was the be all and end all of inflation, they missed what was going on in the credit markets (second chart below).

Oddly enough, nobody discussed "inflation targeting" as one of the potential causes leading to the Great Depression. Why? Simple. Because it would confirm that the status quo's very basic definition of inflation is fatally wrong; it also means that the entire premise of "economy" is a joke as it is impossible to rely on any of the most "sacred" indicators in existence, and all the so-called economists are literally pilots, flying blind. Grice on just this possibility:

We know that episode didn't end too well. Yet to this day, on the long list of explanations for what put the "Great" into the 1930s Great Depression, the prior credit bubble which was allowed to develop - and was possibly even caused by the monetary authorities'  undue attention to an arbitrary variable (consumer prices) - and the false sense of security the stability of that variable created, is barely a footnote. Amid the mountains of literature on the "lessons from the 1930s" there doesn't seem to be much on the danger posed to an economy of allowing a committee of economists to tamper with the natural functioning of the market for capital by letting them decide what interest rates should be.

Why would there be? It would be a confirmation by the same status quo it is based on a completely flawed premise. Yet the blind reliance on CPI did not prevent the Japanese bubble of the late '80s, when the Nikkey quadrupled in 5 years, yet Y/Y CPI was under 3% the entire time. Same thing with the Nasdaq bubble:

We've experienced the same thing with the tech bubble of the late 90s and the real estate bubble we're still recovering from (see charts below). On each occasion, the monetary authorities were blinded to the runaway inflation in the markets for equities (first chart below) and real estate (second chart below) by stable CPI inflation.

Inflation targeting, it seems, has a history of fostering asset bubbles because the notion that a stable CPI equates to a robust economy contains numerous false premises.

And here we reach the two main errata in all of modern economics.

The first is that inflation is measurable. Einstein once had the words “not everything which can be measured counts, and not everything which counts can be measured” on the desk in his office at Princeton. And although the world might be simpler if it wasn't so, I believe "inflation" happens to be one of the things which counts but can't be measured. The fact is that once money is created you don't know where it ends up. Maybe it will end up in the consumer goods market, maybe it won't. Or maybe it will be multiplied via the financial system into new credit which will inflate asset prices instead. Even then, we don't know which assets.

 

But suppose we did know where money would end up, how would you weight the assets together into one index? Should stock prices be included in the CPI? If so, what should the weight be? And if you're going to add stocks, why not add corporate bonds too? And what should their weight be? And if you're going to add bonds, why not add house prices, etc., etc.? Isn't it obvious that the rich concept of - inflation - is unobservable? So who said that proxying it with a narrow sub-category - consumer prices - was a good idea?

Why Ben Bernanke of course, that's who.

The second is the premise that consumer prices themselves should be as 'stable' as possible. But is that correct? Isn't the natural tendency of our species to do more with less, to lower the cost of a given good or service, to "increase productivity"? In other words, isn't "deflation" a part of the human condition? Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon famously said there were two types of company in the world, those that work to charge more and those that like to charge less. His company, he said, would belong to the second group.

 

Shouldn't someone warn him of the folly of pursuing deflation? Of the untold havoc he's set to unleash by trying to undercut Apples iPad? And how about those guys at Walmart? Surely they deserve a stern ticking off oblivious, it seems, to the downright irresponsibility of their "Everyday Low Prices" strategy? Maybe all the clever economists and Ivy League Nobel Prize winners should make going to Arkansas to explain to the Waltons that they're playing with fire a matter of urgency?

Some more on the self-deception of hubris:

Or maybe the clever economists aren't so clever. Maybe they have it all wrong. Maybe deflation is most painful when there is an excess of debt, and so maybe they shouldn't be encouraging excessive debt accumulation in the first place, by distorting the interest rate market in the pursuit of aims whose consequences they don't fully understand?

 

This brings us to a third false premise, that there is some "optimal" rate of consumer price inflation. Judging by the targets of most central banks which have them, that rate is around 2%. But why is it 2%? Why not 3%, or 4%, or 6.78384%? What's so magical about 2%? Where did that number come from?

Grice on exposing faux experts (virtually all of them) using the methodology of one Richard Feynman:

One of my favourite people of the 20th century is Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who, among other things, pioneered the study of quantum electrodynamics. In a fantastic documentary about him for BBC's Horizon show called "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" he said something I found moving and profound. He was talking about the "experts" he saw on TV and how although he didn't have any expertise in the area they claimed to have expertise in, he felt quite sure that they didn't know what they were talking about. He said this:

 

"There are myths and pseudo-science all over the place. I might be quite wrong, maybe they do know all this ... but I don't think I'm wrong, you see I have the advantage of having found out how difficult it is to really know something. How careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something. And therefore, I see how they get their information and I can't believe that they know it. They haven't done the work necessary, they haven't done the checks necessary, they haven't taken the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don't know and that they're intimidating people."

 

So if I apply Feynman's test and ask myself how hard most economists worked for their knowledge, I can't help thinking they haven't worked hard for it at all. I don't think they've worked hard to know what inflation is, or whether it can or should be targeted. I think they've just assumed it, and anyone can do that. As Feynman warned, they've fallen into the trap of fooling themselves. They've assumed that inflation can be proxied by the CPI because it's easier to do that, they've assumed that 2% is somehow the right rate for it, and they've assumed they're capable of setting interest rates at the 'appropriate' level.

And the biggest blasphemy of all: everything economists have been taught, and have taught, was wrong from the very beginning.

But what if those assumptions are wrong? What if, for example, the 'natural' rate of consumer price inflation was 0% and so by trying to keep it at the unnaturally high rate of 2% they've had to artificially goose up the rest of the economy by setting interest rates at an inappropriately low level? And what if, like force-feeding steroids to a horse because you assume it should be running faster, in doing so you kill it, distorting the credit system so grotesquely as to crash the rest of the economy?

 

They've assumed that wouldn't be a problem, and they assumed that if there was one they'd be able to fix it (Ben Bernanke supposedly promised Milton Friedman that there would never be another great depression because the "lessons" had been learned from the 1930s). But, assuming you know how the animal behaves isn't the correct way to go about attaining knowledge about how the animal actually behaves. So they don't attain knowledge about how the animal behaves. So the animal keeps mauling them.

 

But they keep doing it. Now a 2% CPI inflation target is going to make all the difference. And I find it a very strange thing. I just don't understand why they're so sure they know all this stuff despite all the evidence to the contrary. I feel like McCarthy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “That’s right Mr. Martini, there is an Easter Bunny.”

Finally, we get to the bottom line: economists, and all those others who are "in charge" really are just a bunch of idiots, or, as Grice puts it far more politely, fools.

Mr. Feynman said something else which I like. He said:

 

“Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools - guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus – that I cannot stand! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!”

 

I think he's right. Dishonest fools are terrible. It's a shame they're in charge.

Yet we keep on giving them Ivy League tenure, and voting them into power...

It's is probably a bigger shame that the general public continues to refuse to call them out for their endless barrage of lies. Because the time has come to unmask the emperor as not only being naked, but being full of, well, shit.

Yesterday we presented why when it comes to Syria, the UN Security Council can forget any attempt at "overhauling" a regime that is a cornerstone for Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean and the middle east. Today, in the aftermath of the UN reminder that it is the world's biggest collection of post-facto hypocrites, not to mention, the world's most irrelevant an Read more.....

Yesterday we presented why when it comes to Syria, the UN Security Council can forget any attempt at "overhauling" a regime that is a cornerstone for Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean and the middle east. Today, in the aftermath of the UN reminder that it is the world's biggest collection of post-facto hypocrites, not to mention, the world's most irrelevant and ineffectual organization, anger at the Russian and Chinese veto has already manifested itself, as protesters have attacked the Russian embassy in Tripoli and tore down the Russian flag, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday. As Itar-Tass reports, "According to Al Jazeera, the riots staged by the Syria opposition involved Libyans as well. No further details are available so far. None of the Russian diplomats has been hurt in an rally stage by the Syrian opposition in front of the Russian embassy in Tripoli on Sunday, an officer from the Russian embassy told Itar-Tass over the phone. “No one has managed to break into the territory of the Russian diplomatic mission, no one of the personnel has been hurt. All are safe and sound. Although the protesters have managed to tear down the Russian flag,” the diplomat said." Still, the wily occupiers of the Kremlin preempted what they perceived as potential 'displeasure' with Russian tactics to protect its own national interests. Because as Zero Hedge has been reminding readers on occasion, Russia has something that is far more valuable to Europe than the Goldman-alum controlled printing press: it has the world's largest natural gas reserves. Which for a continent gripped in one the coldest winters on record, whose heating infrastructure is based primarily on natgas, and where Russian imports account for 25% of total nat gas, Russia has the upper hand in, well, everything. Which it gladly reminded the world of yesterday. According to the AP: Russia's state-controlled Gazprom natural gas giant acknowledged for the first time Saturday that it "had briefly reduced gas supplies to Europe amid a spell of extreme cold."  Oops... Just a fat finger there, nothing to worry about. Oh, and if anyone forgets that in the Eurasian continent it is Russia who increasingly holds all the cards, Gazprom may "briefly" cut all supplies to Europe, -40 C degree temperatures be damned. Briefly...

More:

Gazprom deputy chief Andrey Kruglov reported to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the cuts lasted for several days and reached up to 10 percent, but supplies are currently back to normal. Officials in Austria and France, however, have reported cuts of as much as 30 percent, and Italy said supplies were down by 24 percent Thursday.

Naturally, there is a scapegoat:

Russia previously had blamed Ukraine for the shortages, saying Kiev is siphoning off more than its share. Authorities in Ukraine have denied the accusations.

 

The mutual rebukes echoed the previous gas crises, when Gazprom supplies to Europe were cut over price arguments between Russia and Ukraine, the conduit for the biggest export pipeline for Russian gas to reach Europe.

The response chain has been activated => committees have been formed and what not.

The European Commission put its gas coordination committee on alert Friday, but insisted the situation had not yet reached an emergency level as nations have pledged to help each other if needed and storage facilities have been upgraded.

 

Putin on Saturday tried to use the situation to emphasize the need for alternative supply routes bypassing Ukraine, including the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea, the first line of which was inaugurated in November.

Unfortunately for Europe, Russia's monopolistic control of its warmth will only increase with time.

Another Russian pipeline, the South Stream, is expected to go online in 2015 to transport Russian gas to Europe under the Black Sea.

 

Putin said the current high demand for Russian gas underscores the need for the new pipelines. Europe gets about 25 percent of its natural gas from Russia, which has the world's largest reserves.

 

"It's obvious today that there is a strong demand for these projects, which both we and our partners," Putin said.

 

He ordered Gazprom to try to meet an increased demand for the Russian gas in Europe, but added that the company's priority should be to satisfy the local demand.

But, but, can't Saudi Arabia supply the missing gas (obviously this is a joke). After all the Saudis are confident they can be the source of all crude supply even if all the members of OPEC and Russia go offline, or so the joke goes. Apparently, the answer is no:

Putin scoffed at the EU's hopes to fill a higher demand for gas

Oh, and before we forget, Russia is also the world's largest oil producer in the world having recently overtaken Saudi Arabia, and second (possibly the) largest exporter. Any questions now who has not only all the trump cards, but all the cards, period?

From Bill Buckler of The Privateer

The Great Falsification

On February 4, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with the title: Investors Place Their Money On Fed.

The gist of the article is that the markets in the US - and everywhere else to a greater or lesser degree - are still willing to bet on two things. One is that the Fed will come out with a new round of stimulus spending or “quantitative easi Read more.....

From Bill Buckler of The Privateer

The Great Falsification

On February 4, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with the title: Investors Place Their Money On Fed.

The gist of the article is that the markets in the US - and everywhere else to a greater or lesser degree - are still willing to bet on two things. One is that the Fed will come out with a new round of stimulus spending or “quantitative easing” sometime between now and the end of June this year. The focus of this reliance at present is on the mortgage paper backed by the US Government Sponsored Agencies (GSEs). They are certainly betting on “help” here. In the month since January 3, the rate on 30-year Fannie May mortgage “securities” has plummeted from 2.96 to 2.66 percent. Meanwhile, the various “guesses” for the size of the next tranche of QE range from $US 400 Billion to $US 1 TRILLION or more.

The great blow-out in the Fed’s balance sheet which began in September/October 2008 was largely driven by their actions to monetise the mortgage-backed securities which had fed the real estate bubble. Now, the markets expect the Fed to come “full circle” and start that all over again. Why? According to one US investment firm, the answer is simple: “We know they’re not going to take their foot off the accelerator. We know that they’re not going to want to purchase more Treasuries because they’re running out of Treasuries to purchase. So that leaves mortgages.”

With $US 1 TRILLION plus annual deficits stretching out into the indefinite future, the Fed is certainly not going to “run out of Treasuries to purchase”. On top of that, there is the $US 2.8 TRILLION of maturing Treasury debt which must be rolled over this year. The simple truth of the matter is that ever since they were rescued by QE1 back in March 2009, the markets have become used to the idea that the financial “powers that be” will not let the concept of “risk” return to sully the rewards they now expect.

The “Greenspan put” has turned into a “Bernanke guarantee”. Ben Bernanke reminded the world that the government does have such a thing as a “printing press” way back in 2002. Since he became Fed Chairman, he has left world markets in no doubt of that fact. And that is what they are relying on.

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INTRODUCING LIEBEROMNEY

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 HOPEY HEAD SMIFF

The widespread protests against the anti-democracy bill ACTA by the Polish people have forced Poland’s prime minister to stall – or perhaps even back out – of the treaty. As TechDirt Read more.....

The widespread protests against the anti-democracy bill ACTA by the Polish people have forced Poland’s prime minister to stall – or perhaps even back out – of the treaty. As TechDirt notes:

Following the growing protests about ACTA in Europe, as well as signs of US meddling, Poland’s prime minister is making it clear that Poland will not ratify ACTA for the time being, leading to speculation that the EU may not actually join ACTA.

 

Tusk’s backtracking could spell the end of ACTA for the entire European Union. If Poland or any other EU member state, or the European Parliament itself, fails to ratify the document, it becomes null and void across the union. As it stands, there are already five member countries that have not even signed ACTA.

“I share the opinions of those who from the beginning said that consultations were not complete,” Tusk said, according to a report in Wirtualna Polska. The 54-year-old prime minister added that a Polish rejection of ACTA is now on the table, and admitted that he had previously approached the agreement from a “20th century” perspective, due to his age.

The Slovenian ambassador to Japan has apologized to her country and her children for signing ACTA, saying she signed it because her government told her to, and “out of civic carelessness” in not bothering to understand what ACTA meant before signing it.

Bulgarian and Polish MPs wore Guy Fawkes masks to protest ACTA. Again, from TechDirt:

We recently pointed out that a bunch of Polish politicians wore Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in Parliament to protest ACTA:

 

 

It appears that some politicians in Bulgaria thought that was a good idea, and have done the same thing:

 

Indeed, even the elderly are wearing Guy Fawkes masks in protest of ACTA:

European Parliamentarian Marietje Schaake writes:

As a Member of the European Parliament, I very much welcome the increased attention the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has received in the past weeks. It has taken a while for massive outcry to emerge, but we are seeing protest voices getting louder and louder.

ARS Technica reports that the Greek Ministry of Justice was hacked by anonymous:

The Greek Ministry of Justice had its Web site defaced by Greek and Cypriot Anonymous-affiliated hackers (a mirror of the defaced site is available here). The hackers included a video message (now removed) complaining that the Greek government had abandoned the democratic will of its people and was instead bending to the will of the IMF and the EU.

 

Greece is expected to accept IMF funds in an effort to allow its government to bring some semblance of sustainability to its finances, but Anonymous believes that this move will “introduce a new dictatorship upon [the Greek] people’s shoulders and allow the bankers and the monarchs of the EU to enslave them both economically and politically.”

 

The defaced site itself focused on an anti-ACTA message. It warned that Greece had two weeks to “stop ACTA,” and that if it failed to do so, some 300 sites would be defaced. The next targets will include both media and ministry sites, with the hackers announcing that they already had passwords for most sites and that this was “JUST the BEGINING [sic].”

Swedes are out in force protesting ACTA. As The Local reports:

Over 10,000 Swedes had pledged to take part in demonstrations in Stockholm and other cities on Saturday to protest against the ACTA anti-piracy legislation which is set to go before the Riksdag later this year.

 

The demonstration, held at midday on Sergels Torg in the centre of Stockholm, featured speeches from MEPs Christian Engström of the Pirate Party, Carl Schlyter of the Green Party and Mikael Gustavsson of the Left Party.

 

Over eleven thousand people had signed up to attend the Stockholm demonstration on Facebook by 10am on Saturday.

 

Christian Engström told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily that with indications that Poland’s parliament is set to reject the controversial international anti-piracy legislation, the pirate movement had wind in its sails.

 

“1.4 million signatures have been collected through an online petition and there have been riots in Poland. There now seems to be a commitment among citizens so I feel very hopeful,” he told DN.

By all accounts, the number of ACTA protests in Europe is overwhelming:

But that only tells half of the story.

As Pirate Party found Rick Falvinge reports:

 

Just look at this map. I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of people all across Europe demanding their freedom of speech and being angry against backroom corporativist deals that steals their most basic civil liberties.

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This is not Hollywood versus Silicon Valley, as oldmedia likes to frame it. This is Hollywood versus The People. For decades, they have trained us to think in black and white, in good versus evil fighting for domination of the free world. And now, they’ve gone and put themselves in the role of evil villain.

The copyright cartel thought they were battling Google.

They’re not.

They’re waging war against the people, with the help of the politicians.

And we’re not standing for it. We can’t change the copyright cartel, but we can send a clear message to the politicians that 250 million Europeans sharing and preserving contemporary culture is not a problem. It is a power base of 250 million voters that will kick you out of office if you dare so much as touch the net.

And there are visible cracks in the façade, especially seeing Poland falter and the copyright cartels visibly shaken from the SOPA defeat in the US, with the politicians having started to pay attention to what the Internet wants. We can win this.

Today, Sweden rallies. List of rallies below (via Christian Engström, Member of European Parliament):

• Stockholm: Sergels Torg, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Göteborg: Götaplatsen, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Malmö: Stortorget, at the Karl X Gustav statue, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Helsingborg: at the Magnus Stenbock statue, 13:00. [Facebook]
• Umeå : Apberget, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Kalmar: Giraffens Köpcentrum, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Sundsvall: Torget, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Karlstad: Stora Torget, 12 noon. [Facebook]
• Borlänge: Jussi Björlings torg, 12 noon. [Facebook]

(The observant will note that less than half of these rallies are marked on the already-impressive map of European rallies. Makes me wonder what the map would look like if all rallies were included.)

Most of Europe will rally next Saturday, on February 11. That’s going to be something, too. Let’s give Europe the best of precursor to those rallies from Sweden that they could possibly get!

As of early morning on February 4, 11,000 people have committed to coming to the Stockholm rally, with another 3,500 maybes. Those are numbers that would overfill the Plattan plaza by a wide margin. I’ll be at the rally in Stockholm, Sweden, and will be taking plenty of imagery and will follow up here.

UPDATE AT 1500: ***

 

Rally at the Sergels Torg plaza in Stockholm, Sweden. Anna Troberg, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, speaking (at left) and maybe 1/3 of the crowd.

 

The turnout was like nothing I’ve seen for a February rally in Sweden. In -20°C, there were well over a thousand people protesting corporate rights over their freedom of speech; normally, you’re lucky getting 50.

 

Also, there was a very clear recurring theme among the Members of European Parliament speaking, MEPs from three different parties. They all told the story of how software patents had been defeated in Europe, followed by the crucial “amendment 138? in the Telecoms Package, which aimed to shut people off en masse from the Net. Well, thanks to diligent activists and people on the inside, we managed to get as strong safeguards in place as possible against shutting people off. But the monopoly lobbyists never quit. Now they’re at it again, this time saying that if authorities can’t shut people off en masse due to that “amendment 138?, maybe they can get private corporations – the ISPs – to do it instead through third-party liability forcing certain terms of service and wiretapping. Hence, ACTA.

 

Fortunately, and this was a consistent message from all Members of European Parliament, we have the blueprint for defeating ACTA. We need to repeat what we did with the software patents and with the Telecoms Package. It takes hard work, it takes tons of activism, but we know exactly what to do and how to do it, and most importantly: we know that we can win.

 

As the rally concluded, everybody was determined to win this fight, having heard the clear message that it takes work but is perfectly doable.

 

UPDATE 2: There are more photos from Christian Engström, Member of European Parliament here. Free for any use (CC0 / Public Domain). Here’s one of his photos, showing the protester crowd:

 

Instead of defaulting a long time ago (when we first suggested it should) when it could have pulled an Iceland, taken a bitter pill, hyperinflated the drachma and in the pr Read more.....

Instead of defaulting a long time ago (when we first suggested it should) when it could have pulled an Iceland, taken a bitter pill, hyperinflated the drachma and in the process delevered overnight, if at a big social cost of losing its welfare safety net (which it is about to lose anyway courtesy of the PSI and OSI), and not be held captive to bigger geopolitical interests, and hostage to the banker superclass, Greece very likely could have been on the road to recovery now, granted with a totally different political regime. Instead, the political regime is the same, Greece is more in debt than ever before, the economy is in shambles, the banks have seen two straight years of bank runs, and most importantly the people now are poorer and more disenchanted than ever, and as the following story indicates, about to get far angrier than any Syntagma square riot cam (which is about to come back with a PayPerView vengeance) has shown to date. According to Kathimerini, late on Saturday evening, "A group of between 30 and 50 youngsters attacked the house of President Karolos Papoulias."

"The result of the attack was some minor damage to the entrance of the house at Asklipiou Street in central Athens and to the car that Papoulias uses. The hooded youngsters, who arrived by motorbike and on foot just after 8 p.m, hurled a Molotov cocktail, rocks and paint at the house but stopped short of attacking the two guards at the President’s house. Papoulias was inside at the time of the attack. Police is searching for those responsible for the unexpected attack." And while the fact that discontented Greeks are willing to attack the most porminent political figure is in itself not shocking, the fact that it is being publicly announced is quite disturbing, as it opens up the population to the realization that one can express anger and hostility at one's rulers - an oppressive regime that has been benefitting the banking oligarchical superclass at the expense of the general population. Consider it yet another "Sparatcus" moment. How many more of these before the Athens parliament is overrun? Or how much longer before the people realize they have notthing to lose?

Because it's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything...

Submitted by Doug Hornig of Casey Research

The State of US Surveillance

Lovers of liberty have seemingly had a good bit to celebrate recently.

First, there was an unprecedented outpouring of negative public sentiment about the Congressional bills SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate); they are legislation that would have thrown a large governmental monkey wr Read more.....

Submitted by Doug Hornig of Casey Research

The State of US Surveillance

Lovers of liberty have seemingly had a good bit to celebrate recently.

First, there was an unprecedented outpouring of negative public sentiment about the Congressional bills SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate); they are legislation that would have thrown a large governmental monkey wrench into the relatively smooth-running cogs of the Internet. Millions of Americans signed online petitions against the bills after seeing websites' various protests. Google shrouded its search page in black; Wikipedia and Reddit went dark entirely (although Wikipedia could be accessed if one read the information available via clicking the sole link on its protest page); Facebook and Twitter urged users to contact their representatives; and many other core Internet businesses also raised their voices in opposition.

Such was the outpouring of dissent that even Washington, D.C. had to listen. The bills, which a week earlier had seem assured of swift passage, suddenly turned to poison. Supporters, forced to concede that the public really was pissed off this time, fled. Leadership in both houses tabled the legislation, pending further review and revision.

But before we get too self-congratulatory, however, it's wise to note that this victory dish is probably best enjoyed with a serving of caution. As Casey Extraordinary Technology editor Alex Daley summed up the situation for us here at Casey Research: "Be sure this will come back again, likely post-election, and snuck through as part of a bigger package. It arrests power from the judiciary, and the legislature likes nothing more than to thumb its nose at those ridiculous judges and all their due process this and Constitution that. It will eventually pass, just not like this." We can't now go to sleep on this one.

Second, the Supreme Court recently ruled 9-0 that police may not attach a GPS tracking device to a suspect's car without a search warrant. This is a landmark decision to be sure, but one that was carefully circumscribed by the justices. The placing of the device constituted a physical intrusion on the suspect, they wrote, and thus was impermissible. Left unruled upon was the larger question of tracking someone's movements when there was no physical violation, as would be the case when, say, police access signals from a GPS-enabled smartphone. Though it wasn't directly addressed, the concurring opinions strongly suggest that the justices might be more sharply divided on that issue.

A lapse of vigilance in these matters would be a mistake.

This is probably a good time to review how individual freedom fared over the past year vis à vis the technology of surveillance in general.

But before I do, I need to make a couple of things clear.

Where We Stand

We are not technophobes at Casey Research. We don't think that it would be a good thing to retreat to the woods and live out our days spearing game and cooking it over fires. Quite the contrary. We're technophiles who appreciate what tech has done to improve human living conditions, and we believe that it holds the key to the solution of many, if not all, of our present problems. We like to err on the side of hope.

In addition, we understand that society has a powerful interest in maintaining a certain level of order. It's intolerable that personal disputes should be settled by gun battles in the streets or that serious infringements on the rights of others – whether it be physical crimes such as robbery, rape, or murder, or non-physical ones like fraud – should be ignored. The most ardent libertarian would generally agree that a government ought to have the authority to prevent or punish the aggression of one individual upon another and to enforce contracts freely entered into. Thus tradeoffs with our basic right to do as we see fit must be made if man's worst impulses are to be deterred.

That said, the tricky part is deciding where to draw the line between reasonable and overzealous laws and enforcements. Surveillance technology is at the center of this debate. It's good and getting ever better. Even the most law-abiding of citizens have been subjected to steadily increasing levels of governmental – as well as private sector – watchfulness over their daily lives. That has occurred with no indication that the public is yet prepared to say, "Enough. This is where we draw that line in the sand."

The past year was no exception. I won't go into developments I've already written about, such as the growth of the TSA's VIPR operations, last summer's lemonade-stand busts, the ghastly E-Verify proposal , and the Fed's Social Listening Program. But the sad truth is that there are plenty more from which to choose. Space considerations permit a close examination of only a few.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's…

… a drone.

Remote-controlled drone aircraft, like the famed Predator, have become a staple of the nightly news. We see them launching missiles against terrorists, conducting spy missions over Pakistan, patrolling the borders looking for drug smugglers and alien infiltrators. Now we're going to have to get used to seeing them in the skies over, well, all of us.

Yes, those same Predator drones are being used increasingly by local law enforcement in the US.

That was unknown to most Americans before late last year, when the great North Dakota cattle-rustling incident hit the press. It seems that back in June, six neighbors' cows had the misfortune to wander onto a 3,000-acre farm in eastern North Dakota owned by the Brossart family, whose members allegedly belong to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an anti-government group that the FBI considers extremist and violent.

When the sheriff attempted to reclaim the cows, the family refused to give them up, ordering him off its property at gunpoint. A 16-hour standoff ensued, with the sheriff requesting the usual reinforcements: state highway patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. But he also called nearby Grand Forks Air Force Base and asked for help from a $154 million MQ-9 Predator B drone, normally used to secure the Canadian border for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Long story short, the drone silently surveilled the farm from two miles up, relaying information from its sophisticated sensors as to what the Brossarts were doing. When the surveillance showed that the family members had put their weapons down (yes, it can see that well at that distance), the authorities moved in, neutralizing the Brossarts and making the first known, drone-assisted arrests of US citizens.

Law enforcement was pleased, perhaps rightly so. No blood was spilled. Another Ruby Ridge was avoided. The cows – street value $6,000, but now rather a bit more costly – were recovered.

But that was just the beginning. Local North Dakota police say they have used the Grand Forks Predators to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have also used Predators for domestic investigations, officials admit. And Michael Kostelnik, a retired Air Force general who heads the office that supervises the drones, says that Predators are flown "in many areas around the country, not only for federal operators, but also for state and local law enforcement and emergency responders in times of crisis." [emphasis mine]

Who knew?

Apparently not Congress, for one. Spokespersons for Customs, which owns the drones, claim there is legal authorization for this usage because it was clearly indicated in the purchase request for the Predators that one purpose was "interior law enforcement support." But those four words sailed right by Congresswoman Jane Harman – Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee at the time the drone purchases were approved – who insists that "no one ever discussed using Predators to help local police." So this expanded civilian use of military surveillance hardware came about with no new law, no public discussion, not even a written regulation… just a few words buried in a budget request that no one in charge of approving it noticed.

There will be mission creep here, as there always is. Expect drones to gather data on any large political demonstration, for example – only, to be fully accurate, you won't be noticing them above you. They fly too high and are too silent for that.

Internet Surveillance

In addition to SOPA/PIPA, there is PCIP. SOPA/PIPA were about shutting down Internet sites that the federal government deems offensive. PCIP is about gathering information.

As is so often the case with "well-meaning" legislation, the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (H.R. 1981, or PCIP) is allegedly aimed at something about which all agree. Nobody argues against shielding kids from pornographers.

Not that the problem addressed isn't real. The Internet has proven to be a fertile stalking ground for sexual predators. As a society, we have already agreed to a certain level of cyber-entrapment, allowing police to run online sting operations against those who are actively targeting kids. If that catches some innocent people in the net, so be it. The public majority is willing to accept such collateral damage so long as the real bad guys are found and put away.

And yes, H.R. 1981 also contains some non-controversial provisions. Stricter punishment for interstate commerce transactions that promote child porn? Sure. Bolstering laws to protect child witnesses? No problem.

But, as always, the details are alive with devils. PCIP is also about pre-crimes – i.e., it entails gathering evidence before any crime is committed… perhaps even before said crime is contemplated. The goal is that, in the event of an arrest, supporting online records can quickly and easily be subpoenaed.

In order to accomplish that, everyone must be considered a potential criminal. Everyone.

What PCIP will mandate is that Internet providers keep detailed records about each one of us, including: name, address, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, all Internet activity for the previous 12 months (something sure to be extended after the first successful busts), and any IP addresses assigned to you – without a search warrant, court order, or even the slightest suspicion of criminal activity.

In other words, the government is proposing to expand the ranks of de facto private-sector cops, the same way that banks are now forced to report any "suspicious financial activity." The legislation would enlist – nay, require – ISPs to compile detailed dossiers on every citizen, and to have them readily accessible for whatever "crime-fighting" or other purposes authorities want them. This thereby saves federal government officials the trouble and expense of doing it themselves. It's breathtaking. You almost have to admire the elegance of their solution to the universal 'Net surveillance problem that's vexed them for some time.

No wonder the Electronic Frontier Foundation has scornfully tabbed this the "Data Retention Bill," warning that the stored data "could become available to civil litigants in private lawsuits – whether it's the RIAA trying to identify downloaders, a company trying to uncover and retaliate against an anonymous critic, or a divorce lawyer looking for dirty laundry." And in a grotesque illustration of the law of unintended consequences, the EFF adds: "These databases would also be a new and valuable target for black hat hackers, be they criminals trying to steal identities or foreign governments trying to unmask anonymous dissidents."

H.R. 1981 sailed through the House Judiciary Committee in late July of last year but is yet to be voted on (although it was slated for "expedited consideration" in mid-December). Will it provoke the kind of public outcry directed against SOPA? Don't count on it. What politician in his or her right mind would dare oppose legislation that "protects kids from pornographers?"

Reverse Surveillance

Meaning: when we turn the cameras on the government.

In a sense, we are all now street journalists. Most famously, the name "Rodney King" would mean nothing to anyone today but for a bystander with a cell phone camera. As these devices have become all but ubiquitous, we ordinary citizens now have an unprecedented ability to record crimes in progress, regardless of what side of the law the perpetrators are on.

Or do we?

While police understandably have welcomed citizen recordings that help them with their cases, they are again understandably not so sanguine when they themselves are the potential lawbreakers. And they're hitting back. People filming unfolding events are routinely ordered away from the scene by the police, even if they happen to be standing on their own private property – and threatened with arrest if they don't put the camera away.

Considering the First Amendment to the Constitution, that's been a bluff… at least until recently.

Now authorities are asserting their right to charge video- or audiographers of police events with crimes ranging from obstruction of justice to eavesdropping to illegal wiretapping.

So far, to their credit, the courts have been mostly unsympathetic. In August, a jury acquitted a Chicago woman who used her cell phone to secretly record a conversation with police investigators about a sexual harassment complaint she was filing against the department. Also in August, the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled in favor of the defendant in a case involving a complaint filed by a Boston man who filmed the scene of an October 2007 arrest on his cell phone, only to be arrested himself and charged with a violation of Massachusetts wiretapping laws.

In Illinois in September, a judge threw out five eavesdropping indictments – which carried maximum penalties of 15 years in prison on each count – against a man who had recorded conversations with local police officers who he claimed were harassing him on his own property. In a stinging rebuke to the prosecution, the judge wrote, "A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen's privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties. Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather such information."

So far, so good. Still, these kinds of busts are on the rise nationwide. Even if they're all laughed out of court, the mere threat of arrest (and the potential concomitant bodily harm) is often enough to make most people think twice about the wisdom of challenging a police order.

And, truthfully, would you trust the current Supreme Court – a majority of which has consistently supported government rights over that of citizens – to rule correctly on this?

Target: Casey Research!

One of the most ominous developments for us personally crawled out from under its rock in November. Again without any public debate, DHS unleashed its National Operations Center's Media Monitoring Initiative. Yep, it's exactly what it sounds like: The NOC's Office of Operations Coordination and Planning is going to collect information from news anchors, journalists, reporters, or anyone who may use "traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed."

Thus Washington, D.C. unilaterally grants itself the right to monitor what you say. Doesn't matter if you're the New York Times, Brian Williams, a basement blogger, an online whistleblower, or known government critics like ourselves. They're gonna take note of your utterances and file them away for future use.

Journalists are not the only targets, by the way. Also included among those subject to this surveillance are government officials (domestic or not) who make public statements; private-sector employees who do the same; and "persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest," however large that umbrella might be.

At Casey Research, we're not about to engage in self-censorship just because some bureaucrat somewhere has nothing better to do than watch what we're saying. They're welcome to it, and we'll save them the trouble of archiving it; most of it's preserved on our website, anyway.

The larger speculation is: what's the endgame here?

Data Storage Capacity

Back in 1997, I wrote an article entitled Here's Looking at You, which examined the ways in which big government was encroaching upon our private lives. The piece was published in February 1998 in a very popular national men's magazine. (In my defense, I hasten to add that these glossy periodicals were among the very few public outlets, before Casey Research was born, for journalists who wrote about such "fringe" topics.)

As I was writing this piece you are now reading, I couldn't help but take a look back fourteen years. It seems almost like a prehistoric era… before 9/11, the PATRIOT Act, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drones, "free-speech zones" at political conventions, wall-penetrating radar, iPhones, and wholesale government monitoring of email and phone conversations, among a zillion other things. Heck, even the Internet was still more or less a novelty: I found that I had cautioned readers to be mindful of an insidious newfangled thing called "cookies."

The tech of today is light-years more advanced. But even back then, I was concerned. And I predicted where I saw the trend heading. Naturally enough, not all of my predictions came to pass – I was certain for instance that by now we'd have a national ID card – but unfortunately, most of them did.

The reason I bring this up here is not to tout myself as particularly prescient. It's to note something of actual importance. In 1998, I could still maintain that our saving grace was that data-storage capabilities were way insufficient for the total surveillance of hundreds of millions of Americans and probably would be for a long time to come.

How wrong I was.

It is already technologically feasible for governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders – every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.

Before long, it'll also be financially feasible to archive it, according to a sobering report published last December by the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation.

The report concludes that: "Plummeting digital storage costs will soon make it possible for authoritarian regimes to not only monitor known dissidents, but to also store the complete set of digital data associated with everyone within their borders. These enormous databases of captured information will create what amounts to a surveillance time machine, enabling state security services to retroactively eavesdrop on people in the months and years before they were designated as surveillance targets. This will fundamentally change the dynamics of dissent, insurgency and revolution."

Emphasis mine. Consider the implications.

The key, according to the Brookings report: "Over the past three decades, [data] storage costs have declined by a factor of 10 approximately every 4 years, reducing the per-gigabyte cost from approximately $85,000 (in 2011 dollars) in mid-1984 to about five cents today." Using GPS, mobile phone and WiFi inputs, "identifying the location of each of one million people to [a 15-foot] accuracy at 5-minute intervals, 24 hours a day for a full year could easily be stored in 1,000 gigabytes, which would cost slightly over $50 at today's prices." Fourteen cents a day to archive the collective movements of any selected million of us.

Phone calls? "The audio for all of the telephone calls made by a single person over the course of one year could be stored using roughly 3.3 gigabytes. On a per capita basis, the cost to store all phone calls will fall from about 17 cents per person per year today to under 2 cents in 2015."

Video storage takes far more space, of course, and there are also major logistical problems involved in managing such a huge amount of data. But the point is made. Technological innovation will provide the tools. And as soon as government can do something, they invariably will do it.

Investing

These few examples, winnowed from hundreds of others I could cite, testify to a mushrooming new industry in the US, what some have called the cyber-industrial complex.

It's big business. How big we don't know, because much of it is shrouded in either government or corporate secrecy. The Washington Post's Dana Priest, twice a Pulitzer winner and one of the few true investigative journalists in America still working inside the mainstream media, published some groundbreaking work on the subject in the summer of 2010. If you haven't read it already, you should. The website is dynamic, with regular updates posted on the subject and reader input invited.

Several other recent probes also have opened the shadowy surveillance world to a little more light. You can check out some of the latest techniques and which companies are implementing them at The Surveillance Catalog published by the Wall Street Journal and The State of Surveillance: The Data, published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Perhaps in your browsing you'll find some publicly traded companies that will attract your investment interest. For our part, at Casey Research we prefer to seek out companies that are engaged in changing our world for the better rather than the worse. Those are the ones you'll find in our portfolio.

In the end, we must acknowledge that technological advancement, especially at the rate we're experiencing it in the present era, is bound to spawn evil applications along with the good. But we're optimists here. We believe humanity is in a long-term uptrend, with technology setting torches on the path to a better life.

But that all depends on keeping people free. That's why we will continue to expose – and oppose – government efforts to stifle innovation, creativity, and personal liberty. I'm not holding my breath but perhaps eventually Washington, D.C. will get the point, and follow our lead.