From the very first installation of full body scanners at the nation’s airports there have been questions about their legality as well as their effectiveness. An unclassified report, which can be found on the US government’s website, now concedes that the scanners probably don’t work.
Read the rest of my article at The Daily Censored.
Rick Berg voted against raising the minimum wage three times. When asked what the current minimum wage is didn’t know, but he did vote to raise the pay of lawmakers.
On MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Ed Shultz reports Rick Berg – the 14th richest member of Congress – and his campaign staff did not know what the current minimum wage is in North Dakota, when asked at a campaign event. Berg has voted at least three times against raising the minimum wage but voted eleven times to raise his own pay.
The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
In addition to all the garbage we already have to sit through to get to our movies on DVD and Blu-Ray, ICE and the FBI have come up with new logos that you will be forced to sit through every time you want to watch your legally purchased movie.
The US government yesterday rolled out not one but two copyright notices, one to “warn” and one to “educate.” Six major movie studios will begin using the new notices this week.
The main change is that Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has, in the last several years, made itself a key player in the copyright wars. The FBI has shown extremely limited interest in going after individual websites, but ICE has done so with gusto; it has so far seized more than 750 domain names after rightsholder complaints. This new prominence is reflected in the broader logos used.
ICE now appears on both notices. The first notice shows the traditional FBI seal and a warning that “the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by federal law enforcement agencies and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.” The logo for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit now appears beside the FBI’s.
The second notice shows the logo for the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, which involves 20 different US government agencies. It features one extremely angry eagle who would probably pluck your eyeballs from your sockets if he could get those talons near you. “Piracy is not a victimless crime,” says the notice. “For more information on how digital theft harms the economy, please visit www.iprcenter.gov.”
The order of forced watching ridiculousness is as follows:
As ICE Director John Morton announced in a statement yesterday, “Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity; public awareness and education are a critical part of that effort.”
And pissing off paying customers is, apparently, how they’ve decided is the best way to combat criminal activity. Meanwhile, anyone who knows how to will either make a rip of the movie themselves without the warnings or rely on their favorite pirating site to get the movie sans repetitive garbage tacked onto their movie.
As usual, the pirates will get more “customers” because they don’t annoy customers and have a better product than the DRM-laden offerings of the MPAA.
Spirit Airlines plans to boost carry on bag fees, sparking anger. CNN‘s Mary Snow has more.
