"But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism." -- Sherwin Smith, deputy director, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's Division of Water Resources. Well, that's one way to deal with complaints about government services: threaten to send the complainant to Gitmo.

Official: Water complaints could be 'act of terrorism' (The Tennessean)

A Tennessee Department of Environment and Conversation deputy director warned a group of Maury County residents that unfounded complaints about water quality could be considered an 'act of terrorism.'Listen to TDEC official's warning to Maury County residents

Passer-by: "I don't really care for other people to just be taking a random video of me." Surveillance Camera Man: "Didn't you just come out the drugstore?" Passer-by: "Yeah." Surveillance Camera Man: "They have cameras in there." Passer-by: "So?" (pushes Surveillance Camera Man).

If you're ready to assault this guy, why are you not out wrecking the surveillance state, spraypainting cameras and calling for better privacy laws? The cognitive dissonance is amazing.

Also remarkable are the people sitting in public yakking on cell phones who want to label it a "private conversation". Not when you're inflicting it on everyone at the other tables, folks.

He's back: Creepy Cameraman pushes the limits in new public surveillance video - GeekWire (GeekWire)

He calls himself Surveillance Camera Man, but we prefer the name Creepy Cameraman because of the effect he has on his subjects.

However, in this latest video, he meets his match in the form of a woman who sets aside her initial exasperation, pushes back by asking the cameraman about himself, poking at him and grabbing his sunglasses. Ultimately she deals with the situation by inviting him to follow along with her and continue recording. It looks like he decided not to take her up on it. It’s a refreshing contrast to the violent responses he gets from others.

Way back, in the long long ago when I was in high school, one of my first hacks was using the game controller inputs on our physics lab's Apple IIe's to read various sensors. One experiment/demonstration involved shooting a BB through two strips of foil in order to time its flight. Yes, we had a BB gun in the science lab. (I didn't witness this, but I was told that one evening BCPS's Superintendent visited and was shown this demonstration. He shot the BB himself, hit the alligator holding the foil, and barely missed hitting himself in the eye on the ricochet. So have I heard.)

So it's with an extra helping of WTF that I read about this:

Free Range Kids » Disqualified from Science Fair for Experiment Using Airsoft Gun

Dear Free-Range Kids: As a result of Sandy Hook, my 7th grader and 3 of his friends got disqualified from the school’s science fair because he and his partner used an airsoft gun and the other two used a real gun. Luckily, my child had no real interest in winning the science fair and going on to regionals and the disqualification did not affect his grade, but still…. IT WAS AN AIRSOFT GUN and a study on the pellet weight vs. backspin.

Because embarrassing the government (local or federal) is a far, far worse crime than rape.

Exclusive: Leader of Anonymous Steubenville Op on Being Raided by the FBI (Mother Jones)

Lostutter may deserve more credit than anyone for turning Steubenville into a national outrage. After a 16-year-old girl was raped by two members of the Steubenville High football team last year, he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim....

According to the search warrant (at least they had one), the FBI was seeking evidence related to the hacking of the team's fan page. But Lostutter says he played no role in that -- and another person has publicly taken credit for it.

Lostutter believes that the FBI investigation was motivated by local officials in Steubenville. "They want to make an example of me, saying, 'You don't fucking come after us. Don't question us."

If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists. Defending himself could end up costing a fortune—he's soliciting donations here. Still, he thinks getting involved was worth it. "I'd do it again," he says

Unfortunately, the excuse that "at least Obama isn't Bush!" wears thinner and thinner with each passing week. As deputy legal director of the ACLU Jameel Jaffer says, "It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies."

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily (the Guardian)

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

...

The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.

The idea of secret court orders is antithetical to democracy and a egregious violation of the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

While this has wonderful applications in prosthetics, all I can think about is the cheesy 80s movie Firefox, where Clint Eastwood plays a pilot/spy who steals a Soviet stealth fighter that's controlled by thought.

Toy helicopter guided by power of thought (Nature News & Comment)

A model helicopter can now be steered through an obstacle course by thought alone, researchers report today in the Journal of Neural Engineering. The aircraft's pilot operates it remotely using a cap of electrodes to detect brainwaves that are translated into commands.1

Ultimately, the developers of the mind-controlled copter hope to adapt their technology for directing artificial robotic limbs and other medical devices. Today's best neural prosthetics require electrodes to be implanted in the body and are thus reserved for quadriplegics and others with disabilities severe enough justify invasive surgery.

We'll probably never know whether this was fatal incompetence (there was a fracking sword in the room where they were questioning him?!) or a summary execution of Todashev.

Man Linked to Boston Bombing Suspect Was Unarmed When Shot by FBI (ABC News)

Ibragim Todashev, an Orlando, Fla., associate of one of the Boston bombing suspects, was not armed when he was involved an alleged violent confrontation with an FBI agent that resulted in Todashev being shot to death in his apartment, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Officials initially told ABC News and other news outlets that a knife was involved in the confrontation.

However, by the day after the shooting, officials noted there was confusion about whether a weapon was involved.

The investigation so far is showing there was an abrupt change in Todashev's demeanor and a physical confrontation ensued, sources said.

A samurai sword was in the room, which may have accounted for some of the initial confusion over whether a weapon was involved, sources added.

Even as politicians and pundits slander Islam, some soldiers exposed to it during their tours of duty are actually becoming converts. (I don't mean to endorse Islam, any more than I would endorse Christianity or Judaism, but it sure is interesting.)

Guantanamo Bay prison guard converts to Islam because of the living faith of Muslim detainees (al.com)

Terry Holdbrooks Jr., 29, wears the beard of a bald Amish guy, the tattoos of a punk kid, and the twitchy alertness of a military policeman. Take him to a restaurant, and he’ll choose the chair with its back against the wall. Take his photo, and he'll prefer to look away from the camera.

Part of that wariness Holdbrooks learned while guarding detainees from 2003 to 2004 at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. holding tank for military prisoners on the southeastern point of Cuba.

And part of that wariness he developed after he converted to Islam while stationed at Guantanamo....

...

So Holdbrooks arrived at the hot, seared base expecting hulking killers in every cell. What he found were doctors, taxi drivers, professors. One scary “terrorist” was 12. Another was in his 70s and dying of tuberculosis. Holdbrooks identifies himself as antagonistic, questioning, independent person. He is naturally suspicious – and found his suspicions turning in a surprising direction.

“You start thinking, ‘Was I lied to?’” Holdbrooks said.

Oh, it's one thing to poison our drinking water, but when it interferes with beer production, maybe people will pay attention.

Fracking could ruin German beer industry, brewers tell Angela Merkel - Telegraph (Telegraph.co.uk)

German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country's cherished beer industry.

...

Under the "Reinheitsgebot", or German purity law, brewers have to produce beer using only malt, hops, yeast and water.

"The water has to be pure and more than half Germany's brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government's current planned legislation on fracking," said a Brauer-Bund spokesman.

A stunning over-prosecution of peace activists -- perhaps because they exposed shameful security lapses at the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility. Trespassers convicted of "terrorism", their minor vandalism called "crimes of violence" by the state, they now face sentences of up to thirty-five years.

How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into 'Multiple Felony Saboteurs' (Alternet)

In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.

...

On October 4, 2012, the defendants announced that they had been advised that, unless they pled guilty to at least one felony and the misdemeanor trespass charge, the U.S. would also charge them with sabotage against the U.S. government, a much more serious charge. Over 3000 people signed a petition to U.S. Attorney General Holder asking him not to charge them with sabotage.

But on December 4, 2012, the U.S. filed a new indictment of the protestors. Count one was the promised new charge of sabotage. Defendants were charged with intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison. Counts two and three were the previous felony property damage charges, with potential prison terms of up to fifteen more years in prison.

Gone entirely was the original misdemeanor charge of trespass. Now Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli faced up to thirty-five years in prison.

In a mere five months, government charges transformed them from misdemeanor trespassers to multiple felony saboteurs.