Google Announces Privacy Changes Across Products; Users Can’t Opt Out

Source: Washington Post
Cecilia Kang

Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web.

The Web giant announced Tuesday that it plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine.

Google has already been collecting some of this information. But for the first time, it is combining data across its Web sites to stitch together a fuller portrait of users.

Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the changes, which take effect March 1. And experts say the policy shift will invite greater scrutiny from federal regulators of the company’s privacy and competitive practices.

FAQ: What exactly will Google be able to collect and integrate? How does this affect me?

The move will help Google better tailor its ads to people’s tastes. If someone watches an NBA clip online and lives in Washington, the firm could advertise Washington Wizards tickets in that person’s Gmail account.

Consumers could also benefit, the company said. When someone is searching for the word “jaguar,” Google would have a better idea of whether the person was interested in the animal or the car. Or the firm might suggest e-mailing contacts in New York when it learns you are planning a trip there.

But consumer advocates say the new policy might upset people who never expected their information would be shared across so many different Web sites.

A user signing up for Gmail, for instance, might never have imagined that the content of his or her messages could affect the experience on seemingly unrelated Web sites such as YouTube. 

“Google’s new privacy announcement is frustrating and a little frightening,” said Common Sense Media chief executive James Steyer. “Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out — especially the kids and teens who are avid users of YouTube, Gmail and Google Search.”

Bogus Tales of Iran's Nukes Used to Feed US Militarism

Source: Global Research
Ben Schreiner

With seemingly each passing day, the tensions between the US and Iran over the latter’s nascent nuclear program mount.  And with the voices clamoring for conflict growing ever louder, the clouds of war darken.  

As Mark Helprin warns in a January 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed, the Iranian nuclear program poses “a mortal threat” to the US.  As he explains, “we cannot dismiss the possibility of Iranian nuclear charges of 500 pounds or less ending up in Manhattan or Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Jamie Fly and Gary Schmitt, meanwhile, argue in a January 17 Foreign Affairs piece for outright regime change.  As they state: “After all, Iran’s nuclear program is a symptom of a larger illness—the revolutionary fundamentalist regime in Tehran.”  (An anonymous US official was quoted in the Washington Post on January 10 to hold regime change aspirations as well, before the paper later "clarified" the official’s remarks.)

Such frenzied and war hungry rhetoric, however, has not been limited to the standard purveyors of neoconservative drivel.  In fact, dramatically escalating the tensions and sense of fear amongst the American public has been the nation’s mainstream press corps, which has readily abandoned any and all pretensions of journalistic integrity in the service of propaganda.  

Indicative of this is the fact that it is now a common occurrence to have dire warnings of an Iranian nuclear weapons program splashed across the pages of the nation’s preeminent newspapers.  This endless chorus, though, comes despite the fact that an Iranian nuclear weapons program—as does its purported desire to even develop such a program—currently exists only in one’s imagination.  This much we know from the latest US National Intelligence Estimate.  

Nonetheless, the sheer and utter invention of an Iranian nuclear weapons program has increasingly come to be held by the American press as fact.  For as Joseph Goebbels would have it: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Illustrative of this dark axiom at work, we read in a January 12 Los Angeles Times editorial that: “Iran’s development of nuclear weapons [emphasis added] poses a grave threat to world stability and possibly an existential threat to this country’s Middle Eastern ally, Israel.”  In a January 10 Washington Post editorial we read that, “Iran may be feeling some economic pain, and it may be isolated.  But its drive for nuclear weapons continues [emphasis added].”  And in a January 4 New York Times piece we learn that, “The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective [emphasis added], is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign.”

Of course, the hysteria over a hypothetical Iranian nuclear weapons program has by no means been limited to US print media.  The cable broadcast network CNN (i.e., “the most trusted name in news”) has also reported the fictitious claim that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective as fact. 

Big Media's Double Standards on Iran

Source: ConsortiumNews.com
Robert Parry

The mainstream U.S. press corps is again pounding the propaganda war drums, this time over dubious accusations of Iran’s secret work on a nuclear bomb. It is a pattern of bias that Robert Parry calls the U.S. media’s worst — and most dangerous – ethical violation.

Arguably, the most serious ethical crisis in U.S. journalism is the deep-seated bias about the Middle East that is displayed by major American news outlets, particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times.

When it comes to reporting on “designated enemies” in the Muslim world, the Post and the Times routinely jettison all sense of objectivity even when the stakes are as serious as war and peace, life and death. Propaganda wins out over balanced journalism.

We have seen this pattern with Iraq and its non-existent stockpiles of WMD; with the rush to judgment about Syria’s supposed guilt in the killing of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri; with the false certainty about Libya’s role in the Lockerbie bombing; and many other examples of what everyone just “knows to be true” but often turns out isn’t. [For more on these cases, click here.]

The latest example of this ethical failing relates to reporting about Iran on such topics as the buffoonish plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington and a new set of dubious allegations about Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

In these cases, U.S. mainstream news media happily marshals sources with histories of credibility problems; treats implausible scenarios with utmost respect; jettisons crucial context; and transforms the grays of ambiguity into black-and-white morality tales of good versus evil.

Then, behind these war drums of the U.S. press corps, the American people are marched toward confrontation and violence, while anyone who dares question the perceived wisdom of the Post, the Times and many other esteemed outlets is fair game for marginalization and ridicule.

An example of this propaganda passing as journalism has been the recent writings of Joby Warrick of the Washington Post about a vague but alarmist report produced by the new leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On Monday, the Post put on its front page a story about Russian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko, a leading expert in the formation of nanodiamonds who spent several years assisting Iranians develop a domestic industry in these micro-diamonds that have many commercial uses.

But Warrick’s story is fraught with spooky shadows and scary music that suggest Danilenko is really part of an ongoing drive by Iranian authorities to overcome technological obstacles for a nuclear bomb. Just like in that spy thriller “Sum of All Fears,” a greedy ex-Soviet nuclear scientist is helping to build a rogue nuclear bomb.

Nationwide 'Presidential Emergency Alerts' to be Tested on 11/9

Source: The Washington Post
Ed O'Keefe

"This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This is only a test.”
 
The familiar strains of the Emergency Alert System are heard at various times on television and radio stations across the country every week, usually to alert Americans of impending weather danger or missing children.

But the White House has the authority to activate the system at the national level in the event of a major emergency including terrorist attacks or earthquakes.

In anticipation of future emergencies, television and radio stations and cable and satellite TV providers plan to broadcast the same emergency test message at the same time next Wednesday as part of the government’s first-ever nationwide test of the alert system.