Category Archives: News

4th Amendment Champion Dies Under Uncertain Circumstances

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This past weekend United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died under uncertain circumstances at a resort in Texas. Initial reports suggested Scalia died of a heart attack and then later clarification came to instead describe the cause of his death as the cessation of continued heart beats. Scalia was found with a pillow over his head wearing unwrinkled pajamas (archived). It has not yet been determined if an autopsy will be ordered to rule out the very real possibility of foul play.

Antonin Scalia's most pertinent legacy was his staunch defense of 4th amendment privacy rights, frequently rejecting "law enforcement" abuses of the American people. As technology has pushed the ways "law enforcement" could abuse the constitutional restraints on their power, Scalia was often a dissenting voice on the court insisting that adding a computer to an abuse of due process doesn't make it any less of an abuse. With the criminal overreach of law and law enforcement in the United States, the fourth amendment restrictions on police action were one of the few legal means of recourse available against injustice by the law.

The departure of Antonin Scalia drastically weakens the opportunity for actual justice in the Ross Ulbricht case should its appellate journey take it to the Supreme Court.

Optical Disc Software Approaching International Crisis

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TorrentFreak reports that a substantial lobbying campaign is underway to push the United States Trade Representative to puntively place Antigua on the copyright Priority Watchlist (archived). The dispute centers around continued sales of Antigua based Slysoft's software for backing up the content of optical disc entertainment media. Adversarial legal proceedings are proceeding against Slysoft in Antigua, but through the wonders of this "Rule of Law" business Antigua is compelled to continue allowing Slysoft to continue sales as the courts make decisions according to Antiguan law. At the present Antigua has the blessing of the World Trade Organization to open an explicitly piracy related internet service as compensation for the United State's continued assaults on Antigua's online gaming industry. If the Trade Repesentative moves to sanction Antigua this would be yet another example of the United States refusal to accept that its jurisdiction ends where other state borders begin.

Government, Banks Assault Rural Indian Culture

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Evil itselfThe India Times reports that the government is calling on banks to assist an attack on thousands of years of cultural tradition by assualting the beloved practice of open defecation in rural India (archived). This call comes despite the fact that many toilets stand unused or abandoned as they are rejected by defenders of this cultural heritage (archived). A report released in 2014 by the World Health Organization and UNICEF states that India has a 50% open defecation rate.

Austrian Minister Seeks Constitutional Protection For Cash Payments

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With many governments and businesses in Europe moving to abandon physical cash in favor of trackable electronic payments, Austrian Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahrer has called for consitutional protection of the right to transact in cash for privacy reasons (archived). The European Union is currently debating restrictions on banknotes and coins in the name fighting of "terrorism" though central banks noise about negative interest rates suggests that European finance ministers advocating against physical cash may have ulterior motives.

As ClassicCoin Client Hits Release, Miners Formally Reject It

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With the client designed to fork ClassicCoin from Bitcoin hitting release, numerous outlets are reporting a group representing pools with a substantial amount of the Bitcoin network hashrate have signed a letter formally rejecting the Classic fork. Who could have forseen ClassicCoin enjoying the same failure mode as XTCoin:

For all the ways the manufactured crisis around the ClassicCoin hard fork push is made to seem more polished than the XTCoin manufactured crisis, the results of the effort somehow seem still more underwhelming.

Maybe it's the part where back in August fiat markets were just starting to show indicators of an impending downturn, but now things are solidly falling apart? Could it be the full depth of the wealthlust inspired in various fiat "law enforcement" agents upon their exposure to Bitcoin's promise coming to light? How about the months long game of good cop/bad cop various fiat backed start ups have been playing in an effort to see just how many forks they might be able to sell some Bitcoin holders on. Perhaps it is just the fact that Bitcoin absolutely trounced fiat in every way that matters over the course of 2015.

If it seems like various fiat interests, outlets, and agents are getting more desperate in their attempts to alternately dismiss or insert crises into Bitcoin, it is because they are. That line Satoshi inserted into the Genesis block:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

is still there seven years later. That bit about what awaits fiat attempts to hard fork Bitcoin into something else remains one year later. Actual Bitcoin interests have abided the turmoil presented by various fiat/Bitcoin interfaces. By contrast fiat interests are struggling to handle fiat/Reality interfaces and are coping, as is their custom, through various forms of theft (archived). In the moral contest between Bitcoin's indifference to the hungry mouths of the world and fiat's theft from the mouths it promises to feed, there seems to be a clear winner. Sorry for your loss.

– From "Fiat Market Slide, fiat/Bitcoin Interfaces Follow In Friday Trading" published on Qntra January 16th, 2016

Embattled Ferguson Defies United States Department Of "Justice"

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The embattled city of Ferguson in the frontier province of Missouri has refused to issue its consent to a "consent decree" sought by the United States Department of "Justice" which would end the troubled city as a going concern (archived). Since civil unrest struck Ferguson the small city north of St Louis has suffered financially with Moody's dropping Ferguson's credit rating seven steps, from a respectable Aa3 to Ba1 "junk" status all in one fell swoop this past September. The city with 21,000 residents and a roughly 12 million United States dollar annual budget if it consented to the decree would have been forced to, among other things, raise its level of "law enforcement" officer pay to the to 25th percentile for the region. The payroll bump alone is projected to generate approximately a million dollars worth of expenses for the city on its own. Other costs would include monitoring fees paid to the Department of "Justice" and an inevitable stand off with the firefighter's union over their salaries if a pay raise for police officers goes through. Ferguson's city government has resigned itself to Federal monitoring and other onerous provisions of the agreement, but they are taking a stand on the financial aspect as the numbers involved could lead to no outcome other than the dissolution of the city.

Bitcointalk Default Trust Member Escrow.ms Arrested For Debit Card Fraud

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Pankaj 'escrow.ms' Bhardwaj was arrested by police for participating in a fraud ring that used cloned debit cards to withdraw money from other people's accounts at automated teller machines (archived). Under his forum username escrow.ms, Bhardwaj was a member of the "Default Trust" list used to seed the reputation ratings system on Theymos's Bitcointalk forum. He enjoyed a stellar reputation on that forum as evidenced by a thread on that forum discussing recent developments in the life and times of escrow.ms forum escrow, default trust member, and apparent fiat payment card cloner. Escrow.ms is not the first member of Bitcointalk's default trust list to undergo a sudden transition from trustiness to ignominy. Shortly after the creation of the default trust list, inaugural member member TradeFortress operated node.js based webwallet service Inputs.io for only a few short months before 4,100 Bitcoins disappeared from the service on November 7th, 2013.

Clapper: "Internet Of Things" Offers Tempting Surveillance Opportunities

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In testimony presented to the United States Senate, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that the horrifically insecure "Internet of Things" presents a target for United States surveillance operations (archived). In the same testimony Clapper noted United States activities in the United States were boosting the recruiting and resolve of organizations adversarial to the United States.