The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is a story of democracy and its shortcomings. In this piece, Steve Inskeep — host of NPR's Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First — analyzes how the United States inadvertently took on a mission to democratize Afghanistan, and instead undermined democracy at home, as unpopular wars tend to do.
Good tips for protecting your privacy.
7/29/21 by NPR
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/126402377
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/npr-381444908/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2021/07/20210729_fa_fapodthurs.mp3
‘Washington Post’ reporter Craig Timberg explains how military-grade spyware licensed to governments and police departments has infiltrated the iPhones of journalists, activists and others. “It takes a story like this to help people understand how deeply enmeshed these tiny little computers have gotten into our lives,” Timberg says. “I still carry my iPhone everywhere I go … And the reality of that is that every time I do that, I’m exposing not just myself, but everyone I deal with to the possibility of spying by governments all over the world.”
I would post a comment on social media about mandatory emasculation rather than mandatory vaccination for government workers but such a comment would be rather tasteless these days.
That said, mandatory emasculation for government workers probably isn’t a bad idea if not somewhat unpopular with the unions. But it would mean much more level headed, well thought out public policy and a generally fairer and better society. Less police brutality, fewer crashes of transit vehicles, less war.
At that point, experts began taking a closer look at the document, now publicly available on the web. They discovered something else of interest: yellow dots in a roughly rectangular pattern repeated throughout the page. They were barely visible to the naked eye, but formed a coded design. After some quick analysis, they seemed to reveal the exact date and time that the pages in question were printed: 06:20 on 9 May, 2017 – at least, this is likely to be the time on the printer’s internal clock at that moment. The dots also encode a serial number for the printer.
These “microdots” are well known to security researchers and civil liberties campaigners. Many colour printers add them to documents without people ever knowing they’re there.
It’s dumb that the focus on the Capitol Insurrection Hearings so far has been about the failure to protect the building made of gold and marble and the disorderly environment the millionaires who dominate the halls of congress faced.
The real problem is why wasn’t there sufficient policing and crowd management to ensure Stop the Steal and other protestors could get out their message in an orderly, safe fashion that minimized harm to people and property. Arrests and violence by the police should be the last resort but also protestors shouldn’t be allowed to get into dangerous situations where they can harm themselves or others.
Hatred of the message makes it easy for law enforcement and politicians to abuse the protestors. But no matter how idiotic their message is, they have the right to be heard. Stop the Steal is dumb and conspiracy minded but they still have a message worth hearing but maybe not taken seriously. We the taxpayers pay cops to keep everyone safe – and keep protests relative orderly. Not just to guard the people in the house of gold, but the protestors too.
What happened at the US Capitol was very bad, but it’s not the fault of the protestors primarily but that of law enforcement and those who deprived them of the necessary resources to keep people safe. The trumped up charges against protestors is unjustified when the people ultimately responsible are those who work at the Capitol and failed to create a safe environment for people – many very unhappy with the election result – to get out and be heard.