Ron Paul had little patience Tuesday morning for CNN host Carol Costello starting off an interview with Paul with questions regarding the supposed scandal of the day that presidential candidate Donald trump might be a fan of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Paul, who has run for president three times, called the scandal a media creation that is diverting attention away from important campaign issues on Super Tuesday, when voters across the nation are casting ballots that could be key in determining who wins the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations. read on...
College of William & Mary Professor Lawrence Wilkerson, a member of the Ron Paul Institute’s Academic Board since the institute’s 2013 founding, has provided some advice to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, according to an article by Michael Crowley in Politico on Thursday. read on...
Over at We Meant Well, always-interesting writer Peter Van Buren provides a funny rundown of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s blunders he suggests prevented it from accessing information on an iPhone connected to the December 2 San Bernardino, California killings. The FBI sure does look like the Keystone Cops with Van Buren’s tale of mistakes that put the FBI into a situation where, to uncover encrypted information from the iPhone, it has to depend on a US magistrate judge ordering Apple, the phone’s manufacturer, to create a means to breach the phone’s information security.
But, is there something more sinister taking place behind the scenes? Governments are renowned for incompetence, so you cannot rule out, barring more information, that a series of blunders did occur. At the same time, blunders in this instance would create a situation that sure is convenient for a US government intent on ensuring it can obtain access to everyone’s encrypted information. The blunders, after all, provided the FBI with a reason to seek the court order in a case where the facts are quite advantageous for the government. read on...
In the fall of 2015, American privacy supporters were relieved that draconian legislation requiring companies to create backdoors for the US government to overcome encryption of individuals’ private information did not make its way through Congress. In fact, the Obama administration then represented that it would both stop seeking such legislation and refrain from otherwise pressuring companies to provide the government with backdoor access to customers’ encryption-secured information
However, everything is not as the Obama administration desired the public to believe. It appears that the Tuesday court order demanding that Apple breach an iPhone’s built-in privacy protections so the government can access the secured information is a materialization of the executive branch’s stealth "plan B" effort to obtain its anti-privacy objectives via other means. read on...
