News Summaries from the WantToKnow.info Archive
Mainstream media often buries important news stories. PEERS is a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit that finds and summarizes these stories for WantToKnow.info's free weekly email newsletter and website. Explore below key excerpts of revealing news articles from our archive that were published on today's date in previous years. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. The most important sentences are highlighted. If you find a link that no longer works, please tell us about it in a comment. And if you find this material overwhelming or upsetting, here's a message just for you. By educating ourselves and spreading the word, we can and will build a brighter future.
OnStar's 'brazen' data tracking comes under fire
Published on this day in 2011, by CNN
Original Article Source, Dated 2011-09-26
Your OnStar-equipped car can share an awful lot about your driving habits -- even if you're no longer an OnStar customer. A senator from New York has asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into vehicle tracking by General Motors' OnStar division. Two other senators issued calls for the company to explain and reconsider its tracking policies. OnStar, which provides a variety of services including vehicle diagnostics, driving directions and automated 911 calls to owners of mostly GM vehicles, recently announced that it reserves the right to track and sell information about vehicles' location and speed even after the driver has stopped subscribing to the service. OnStar, which has around 6 million subscribers, relies on GPS tracking and other systems built into the car. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York,... called the tracking "one of the most brazen invasions of privacy in recent memory." Senators Al Franken and Christopher Coons, both Democrats, sent a letter to OnStar last week saying that the company's actions "appear to violate basic principles of privacy and fairness." OnStar reserves the right to sell "anonymized" information collected from vehicles to outside companies. "Anonymized" data is aggregated on cannot be traced back to any individual vehicle or person. But hackers have been able to tease out individual user information from supposedly anonymized data, Schumer noted in his announcement.
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4 NCAA Basketball Coaches, Adidas Executive Charged in Bribe Scheme
Published on this day in 2017, by NBC News
Original Article Source, Dated 2017-09-26
A federal investigation into the "dark underbelly" of college basketball exposed bribery schemes in which coaches at top programs took cash to steer star athletes to certain managers and helped funnel payoffs to players' families to ensure they signed with particular schools, prosecutors said Tuesday. Some of the biggest names in college sports - from Adidas to the University of Louisville - were caught up in the probe, which began in 2015 with the help of a fallen financial adviser. Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said the FBI and prosecutors ... found a pay-to-play culture flourishing in some corners of the NCAA. "The picture of college basketball painted by the charges is not a pretty one - coaches at some of the nation’s top programs taking cash bribes, managers and advisers circling blue-chip prospects like coyotes, and employees of a global sportswear company funneling cash to families of high school recruits," he said. On Tuesday, federal agents executed search warrants at the offices of ASM Sports, which represents 30 current NBA players but which was not charged in the three criminal complaints filed in Manhattan. Those documents detail a web of corruption. "If we take care of everybody and everything is done, we control everything," Christian Dawkins, a former recruiter for ASM who was reportedly fired for using a player’s credit card, told an undercover agent, according to one complaint. ”You can make millions off one kid."
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As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm
Published on this day in 2017, by New York Times
Original Article Source, Dated 2017-09-26
When David North, the editorial chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, noticed a drop in the site’s traffic in April, he initially chalked it up to news fatigue. But when he dug into the numbers, Mr. North said, he found a clearer explanation: Google had stopped redirecting search queries to the site. He discovered that the top search terms that once brought people to the World Socialist Web Site were now coming up empty. Accusations that Google has tampered with search results are not uncommon. But they are taking on new life amid concerns that technology behemoths are directly - or indirectly - censoring controversial subjects in their response to concerns over so-called fake news. In April, Google announced an initiative called Project Owl to provide “algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content” and stamp out fake news stories from its search results. To some, that was an uncomfortable step toward Google becoming an arbiter of what is and is not a trustworthy news source. “They’re really skating on thin ice,” said Michael Bertini, a search strategist at iQuanti, a digital marketing agency. “They’re controlling what users see." In an open letter to Google last month, Mr. North traced his site’s traffic decline to Project Owl. Mr. North said he believed that Google was blacklisting the site, using concerns over fake news as a cover to suppress opinions from socialist, antiwar or left-wing websites and block news that Google doesn’t want covered.
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A Look At JPMorgan Chase's 20 Years of Watching Madoff Commit Crimes
Published on this day in 2014, by Forbes
Original Article Source, Dated 2014-09-26
Helen Davis Chaitman, the lead attorney for Madoff’s victims and the author of The Law of Lender Liability, and Lance Gotthoffer, one of our nation’s premier litigators, are blowing the whistle on JPMorgan Chase big time. Their explosive ... book [is titled], “JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance Between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook.” This book is ... about the incestuous relationship between so-called U.S. federal prosecutors, politicians for whom they worked, and the flow of Wall Street money to those politicians. JPMC knew, for 20 years, that Madoff was conducting illegal transactions in his account at the Bank. JPMC had a unique window into Madoff’s crimes. And they said nothing to federal authorities ... in clear violation of our banking laws. In 1994 a JPMC officer wrote a memo analyzing the check kiting and calling it “outrageous.” But what he thought was outrageous was not that Madoff [was] violating the law, but that [he was] being paid interest by the Bank on uncleared funds. As a result, JPMC allowed the transactions to continue but required Levy and Madoff to pay back the interest the Bank had paid them on uncleared funds. In January 2014, JPMC paid over $3 billion to settle civil and criminal charges that it violated the law in its dealings with Madoff. They [had] waited until after Madoff confessed and was arrested to report to United States law enforcement that Madoff might have been operating illegally.
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Beijing secretly fires lasers to disable US satellites
Published on this day in 2006, by The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s top newspapers)
Original Article Source, Dated 2006-09-26
China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by "blinding" their sensitive surveillance devices. The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran. Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon's annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat. "After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line," Defense News said. The document said that China could blind American satellites with a ground-based laser firing a beam of light to prevent spy photography as they pass over China. According to senior American officials: "China not only has the capability, but has exercised it." American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under attack "several times" in recent years.
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Trader tells BBC 'millions of people's savings will vanish'
Published on this day in 2011, by The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Original Article Source, Dated 2011-09-26
An independent trader, appearing on BBC News, reveal[ed] that he thinks banks and hedge funds believe the stock market 'is toast'. Alessio Rastani said that Goldman Sachs rules the world, not governments, and that Goldman Sachs “don't care about this rescue package” because they know “the stock market is finished” and they “don't really care” about the Euro. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said over the weekend: "Sovereign and banking stresses in Europe are the most serious risk now confronting the world economy. Decisions cannot wait until the crisis gets more severe." He has proposed the so-called Geithner plan which will leverage the EU's €440bn bail-out fund (EFSF) from €440bn to €2 trillion to cope with Italy and Spain. But according to Mr Rastani it may already be too late as: “In less than twelve months, my prediction is, the savings of millions of people are going to vanish.”
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Spy cops: Chicago police routinely spied on protesters
Published on this day in 2015, by Chicago Sun-Times (One of Chicago's leading newspapers)
Original Article Source, Dated 2015-09-26
The Chicago Police Department has routinely spied on activist groups during the past six years, police records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show — including union members, anti-Olympics protesters, anarchists, the Occupy movement, NATO demonstrators and critics of the Chinese government. And it has continued to do so, according to the records ... which the police department fought to withhold. Under the department’s rules, cops aren’t allowed to purposely interfere with people exercising their free-speech rights. In recent years, though, department officials have repeatedly justified spying on protesters by saying they fear they might engage in “disorder” and “civil disobedience.” One investigation involving the surveillance of protest groups is still underway, 10 months after it was launched, the records show. The police won’t say who is being investigated or discuss the methods being used. “There’s something deeply disturbing about monitoring and documenting the exercise of First Amendment rights,” says Molly Armour, an attorney who has represented protesters investigated by the police. In July, the Illinois attorney general’s office issued an opinion saying “worksheets” — outlining the scope of these investigations — are public records under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The office ordered the police department to “promptly produce unredacted copies of the worksheets.” It took nearly two months for the department to comply with the ruling.
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Sibel Edmonds v. Department of Justice: A Patriot Silenced
Published on this day in 2005, by ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
Original Article Source, Dated 2005-09-26
The American Civil Liberties Union is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's dismissal of the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used "state secrets" privilege. An unclassified summary of a report by the DOJ's Inspector General, released in January 2005, corroborates Edmonds' allegations. The IG report concludes that the FBI had retaliated against Edmonds for reporting serious security breaches, stating that “...her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services.” Fourteen 9/11 family member advocacy groups and public interest organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Edmonds case before the District Court. Edmonds' ordeal is highlighted in a 10-page article in the September 2005 issue of Vanity Fair titled “An Inconvenient Patriot.” The article, which chronicles FBI wrongdoing and possible corruption charges involving a high-level member of Congress, further undercuts the government's claim that the case can't be litigated because certain information is secret.
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Big Pharma snared by net
Published on this day in 2004, by The Observer (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Original Article Source, Dated 2004-09-26
No one foresaw ... the shocking extent to which the internet would change the terms of trade between corporations and society. One of the world's largest drug companies [was] the first victim. Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest pharma, denied any wrongdoing, but agreed to pay $2.5m ... for concealing evidence of its antidepressant Seroxat's potential for harming children, while doing them no measurable good. Infinitely more frightening ... this pharma had the backing of institutions that we, the public, rely on to protect us from poisoning by prescription. The Royal College of Psychiatrists had insisted only a year earlier that 'there is no evidence that antidepressant drugs can cause dependence syndromes'. It was really the internet that allowed public health activists to do an end run around GSK's and the medical authorities' denials of the drug's risks. An explosion of websites dedicated to vivid accounts of antidepressant reactions told these campaigners about hundreds of thousands affected by a problem that officially did not exist. Health activists in Britain and America have uncovered the core of pharma might. In both countries, clinical drug tests are paid for by the pharmas, who tweak the trials' design for the best possible results. Until recently, only the most favourable findings got published in the 20,000-odd biomedical journals, many of them dependent on pharmas for funding. The drugs are approved for marketing by regulators, whose salaries are mostly financed by the subjects of their evaluations. The medicines are then prescribed by doctors routinely courted with pharma gifts ... meant to persuade them to change their prescribing habits.
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'Anyone can make money from a crash,' says market trader
Published on this day in 2011, by BBC News
Original Article Source, Dated 2011-09-26
Ministers from the world's richest nations are reportedly on the way to agreeing [to] a deal for troubled eurozone countries. But one independent market trader - Alessio Rastani - told the BBC the plan "won't work" and that people should be trying to make money from a market crash. Trader Alessio Rastani: I'm fairly confident the Euro is going to crash, and it's going to fall pretty hard because markets are ruled right now by fear. Investors and the big money, the smart money ... don't buy this rescue plan. They know the stock market is finished. They don't really care. They're moving their money away to safer assets like treasury bonds, 30-year bonds, and the U.S. dollar. For most traders, we don’t really care that much how they're going to fix the economy. Our job is to make money from it. And personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I go to bed every night [and] I dream of another recession. When the market crashes … if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this. Be prepared, and act now. The biggest risk people can take right now is not acting. This economic crisis is like a cancer. In less than 12 months, my prediction is that the savings of millions people is going to vanish, and this is just the beginning. This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out. The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.
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Bush Doctrine enters American vocabulary
Published on this day in 2008, by San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Original Article Source, Dated 2008-09-26
Thanks to the Sept. 11 interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson of ABC News, the Bush Doctrine has become part of the American vocabulary. Although it has been a fateful doctrine - it was used to justify the attack on Iraq - many Americans reported that they were as clueless about it as Gov. Palin. So what is the Bush Doctrine? According to international law as generally understood since the creation of the United Nations, a pre-emptive attack is legal only if a country has certain knowledge that an attack on it is imminent - too imminent for the matter to be taken to the U.N. Security Council. Pre-emptive war is different from preventive war, in which a country, fearing that another country may become strong enough to threaten it at some time in the future, attacks it to prevent this possibility. Preventive wars are illegal under international law. This distinction, however, creates a terminological problem: Although preventive war is worse than pre-emptive war, to most ears preemption sounds worse. Many people, therefore, speak of pre-emptive war when they mean preventive war. To avoid confusion, we can use the term pre-emptive-preventive war. Neoconservatives, the most powerful of whom is Vice President Dick Cheney, had long disliked the idea that America's use of military power could be constrained by the prohibition against preemptive-preventive war. In 1992, his last year as secretary of defense, Cheney produced a draft of the Defense Planning Guidance that said the United States should use force to "pre-empt" and "preclude threats." After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the neocons were able to turn their wish into U.S. policy.
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With best wishes for a transformed world,
Mark Bailey and Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
