Slashdot Mirror

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...

Or from 2008

https://www.politifact.com/fac...

Or last year

https://www.11alive.com/articl...

Or just in general

https://www.globalresearch.ca/...

Don't need islam for that.

Every time a some one kills their kid because they might be gay, that's an honor killing.
Every time a husband kills his wife because he thinks she cheated on him, that's an honor killing.

You are an idiot. Sorry to burst bubble with respect to your bigoted view of the South, but both Georgia Tech and Emory University are located in Fulton County.

Fulton Country was also the location of a historically large meth raid.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/o...

http://www.11alive.com/story/n...

Then you can bring the AR-15 to an airport for safety, just like a loving father.

wow, first Anthem BCBS, and now Premera BCBS.

iPhones go to drug cartels
iPhone theft leads to seizure of drugs/guns.

Also, if you can bust the "criminal of opportunity" perhaps it'll stop before reaching the "career criminal" point.

What about any detail at all about this? What "weak" encryption do they use? How was it broken? What was the value of the fraud? Can these cards be used for anything else, or cashed out, or does this fraud require very extensive MARTA ridership?

Seven people have been charged with fairly serious crimes, but I can't see the value of the fraud being more than a few hundred or few thousand dollars. It's like counterfeiting $1 bills, what's the point?

It appears that MARTA is just discovering the extend of the fraud, based upon the information in this article by the NBC affiliate in Atlanta: Atlanta Channel 11 TV News: 7 arrested for MARTA Breeze Card fraudl

Some detail:

MARTA says the thieves spent $1 to buy the Breeze card, then reprogrammed the data on it to turn it into a 30-day pass. They then sold it to riders for $40, a deep discount of the real price of $96. That meant the thieves got to pocket $39, and the buyers got a cheap ride.

and

MARTA police chief Wanda Dunham says the cards were sold at MARTA stations and on Craigslist. But it was a suspicious buyer who purchased one at an area mall that contacted police. "He knew that wasn't the right fare so he called us, asked us to check into it," said Dunham.

As they investigated, the agency's Revenue Department noticed in November, a large number of cards were sold at its Chamblee and Lenox stations for only a dollar. Police started reviewing surveillance video to create a list of suspects.

MARTA won't say how many counterfeit cards the group sold, but says during the arrests it confiscated 400 fraudulent cards. Had the thieves sold them, their $400 initial investment, would have earned them $16,000.

MARTA says it's never had something like this happen before, but security expert Gregory Evans says MARTA needs to act fast, if wants to keep it from happening again. He says the hackers likely got away with their scheme using a simple card writer that costs just a few hundred dollars. "The crazy part, the scary part about this? MARTA would have never known if some had not gone back and told them what was happening. That's it," said Evans. Evans says the data on the card could be encrypted and an alert built into their software system. "If I go to use this card somewhere and all the sudden there's $100 on this card, their system should have caught that and said hold up," Evans said.

Not if you could get arrested just for parking your EV in a local school parking lot.

He was there to pick up his son (a student at the school) from tennis practice.

This is not so, according to the police:

Ultimately, Sgt. Ford did make the decision to pursue the theft charges, but the decision was based on Mr. Kamooneh having been advised that he was not allowed on the property without permission. Had he complied with that notice none of this would have occurred. Mr. Kamooneh's son is not a student at the middle school and he was not the one playing tennis. Mr. Kamooneh was taking lessons himself.

In other words, he stopped at someone else's tennis courts to play, and decided to plug his car into someone else's outlet. He had no particular right to be there; furthermore, he was previously denied the right to be there by the property managers - and he ignored that.

That is how this story should have gone down.

The police in this case agrees with you. However the subject refused to say "oh, sorry":

Wednesday evening, Chamblee City Manager and Police Chief Marc Johnson issued the following statement:

We received a 911 call advising that someone was plugged into the power outlet behind the middle school. The responding officer located the vehicle in the rear of the building at the kitchen loading dock up against the wall with a cord run to an outlet. The officer spent some time trying to determine whose vehicle it was. It was unlocked and he eventually began looking through the interior after verifying it did not belong to the school system.

The officer, his marked patrol vehicle and the electric vehicle were all in clear view of the tennis courts. Eventually, a man on the courts told the officer that the man playing tennis with him owned the vehicle. The officer went to the courts and interviewed the vehicle owner. The officer's initial incident report gives a good indication of how difficult and argumentative the individual was to deal with. He made no attempt to apologize or simply say oops and he wouldn't do it again. Instead he continued being argumentative, acknowledged he did not have permission and then accused the officer of having damaged his car door. The officer told him that was not true and that the vehicle and existing damage was already on his vehicles video camera from when he drove up.

Given the uncooperative attitude and accusations of damage to his vehicle, the officer chose to document the incident on an incident report. The report was listed as misdemeanor theft by taking. The officer had no way of knowing how much power had been consumed, how much it cost nor how long it had been charging.

The report made its way to Sgt Ford's desk for a follow up investigation. He contacted the middle school and inquired of several administrative personnel whether the individual had permission to use power. He was advised no. Sgt. Ford showed a photo to the school resource officer who recognized Mr. Kamooneh. Sgt Ford was further advised that Mr. Kamooneh had previously been advised he was not allowed on the school tennis courts without permission from the school . This was apparently due to his interfering with the use of the tennis courts previously during school hours.

Based upon the totality of these circumstances and without any expert advice on the amount of electricity that may have been used, Sgt Ford signed a theft warrant. The warrant was turned over to the DeKalb Sheriffs Dept for service because the individual lived in Decatur, not Chamblee. This is why he was arrested at a later time.

I am sure that Sgt. Ford was feeling defensive when he said a theft is a theft and he would do it again. Ultimately, Sgt. Ford did make the decision to pursue the theft charges, but the decision was based on Mr. Kamooneh having been advised that he was not allowed on the property without permission. Had he complied with that notice none of this would have occurred. Mr. Kamooneh's son is not a student at the middle school and he was not the one playing tennis. Mr. Kamooneh was taking lessons himself.

Unlikely. There is no evidence that the cop saw the defendant before entering his car and preparing the paperwork to fine/arrest him.

You might want to read about what happened. There's a convenient link near the top of this page. There's even an original source linked from there, if you want to hear the story from the people involved.

Kaveh Kamooneh parked his car, left, and shortly after that an officer came by to search his vehicle. When Kamooneh returned to the vehicle the officer confronted him, informed him that he should be charged with theft by taking, and then left to file a police report.

A week and a half later Sergeant Ernesto Ford, who was not the same officer, got an arrest warrant and sent two deputies to Kamooneh's home at 8 PM, a time which conveniently meant that Kamooneh could be booked and placed in a cell, but unable to be released until fifteen hours later.

Are you trying to tell me that in the eleven days between the original police report being filed and Sgt. Ford preparing the paperwork to send Georgia's Finest around to put him in jail, that he didn't have tje time to look at the name "Kaveh Kamooneh" and compare it to "John Smith"? Even in Georgia it doesn't take that long to sound out the letters and figure out what they say.

Considering the wonderfully tolerant history of small-town Georgia, where people of all origins and colours are universally welcomed with open arms and considered part of the family by one and all, it's more likely that some members of the Chamblee police department simply don't like electric cars, but there is always the small possibility that one unusual American just might dislike people of Iranian descent and be looking for an excuse to act on that.

Stranger things have happened.

Chamblee Middle School (http://www.chambleems.dekalb.k12.ga.us/) is part of the Dekalb County (Georgia) School System. DCSS is the most fucked-up school district in the USA. The former Superintendent was arrested for theft by taking, the replacement Superintendent abandoned her job and the current Superintendent is a political hack who lacks the qualifications required to hold a teacher's license. The former COO was just found guilty of racketeering. The DCSS school board was removed by the state Governor and the school system is currently on "Accredited Probation", the only school system in the country with that status.

Some recent news coverage of Dekalb County School System:

Court upholds law used to suspend DeKalb school board members: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/court-upholds-law-used-to-suspend-dekalb-school-bo/nb4Cx/

Ex-DeKalb school official found guilty of racketeering: http://www.11alive.com/news/article/313666/40/Verdict-reached-in-DeKalb-corruption-trial

DeKalb teacher accused of beating special needs elementary student with stick: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/dekalb-teacher-accused-beating-special-needs-eleme/nb26M/

School superintendent negotiates settlement in expensive legal battle: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/school-superintendent-negotiates-settlement-in-exp/nb89X/

DeKalb Schools placed on probation: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/dekalb-schools-placed-probation/nTYSp/

DeKalb’s graduation rate under the new state formula: 58.65% (Meaning that 42% of Dekalb Students DO NOT GRADUATE!) http://dekalbschoolwatch.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/dekalbs-graduation-rate-under-the-new-state-formula-58-65/

2 - If anybody actually thought that the eqyptian government was going to be all good now because of the uprising clearly has not been paying attention. Id love to visit but not until there is another revolution there.

There's a few things about Egypt you should probably know. For one thing, the poverty rate there isn't much worse there than the United States (15% versus 20%) despite the radically different size of the economy and median income ($6k versus $40k). And before you jump down my throat on "proving that", I sourced that information from the CIA World Factbook. They have a significantly lower violent crime rate than here as well -- almost four times less (and yes, I can back that up too from a reliable source, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime. And when it comes to jailing people, the United States ranks #1. Egypt? #165. (Oh yes, sourced that too).

So when you get all uppity about how they're jailing a blogger for three years for publishing something anti-muslim, I want you to remember the terror watch lists. I want you to remember Guantanamo Bay. I want you to think of the hundreds of political prisoners (Citation? Got you covered. I assume Harvard Law School is prestigious enough?) we ignore. You talk about media control and manipulation in other countries like Egypt like they're somehow worse than those of the west.

The truth is... they're better. Three years for pissing off the government here is a comparatively light sentence: We put people in jail for at least a year for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't ask for a revolution before considering visiting Egypt. Chances are good, your country needs one more.

Businesses have never talked about "holding back until the elections" and even today the only ones saying this are republican talking heads.

Never say never: There is at least one disgruntled small businessment that has spoken out. Of course few businesses are going to publicize their fears of the future, that would be bad for investors. Personally I've met with enough C-level people to claim a decent statistical sample. They and many they've talked to expresses the same exact concerns, and about 50% of that sample have admitted to taking at least some small action on those concerns. The only notable exception are left on the political spectrum, although the feeling there tends to be less positive and more neutral and dismissive. Sounds like its not a big deal on the surface, but it is similar to how a 1 degree change in the Earth's average temperature works. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but the impact is huge.

Since the attitude is so prevalent, I understand why it looks like some kind of Republican talking point, and that may be part of it. Some Tea Partiers are encouraging the practice of hampering the economy by avoiding hiring until November. Yet, I've never heard of anyone who matters taking the Tea Party in general seriously other than a few specific candidates who are simply trying to court that particular vote... so I doubt that is the cause.

But, it doesn't matter now, because now the idea has taken hold, and there is nobody credible (aka without a political agenda) saying "hey! everything is A-OK! start spending!"

Easy, just use my patented DPUTFP method.

Don't Pick Up The Fucking Phone.

Right. And it's no surprise that that is what the NTSB is recommending. From the article:

The National Transportation Safety Board hasn’t weighed in on any apps. Its recommendation is a human solution: Just don’t use your phone at all while driving, even if you’re using a hands-free device.

I'm glad to see that their prosecution efforts are coming to fruition. Now we just need to get the word out that, like drinking and driving, this is socially unacceptable and a harsh negative stigma should be associated with it. If you do it, fuck you, you're endangering people's lives. They're finally looking at cell phone records for the time periods surrounding crashes, just like BAC and sobriety checks although most people are probably lying to escape any ability of police checking those records.

My partner's card got skimmed by a rig on a Bank of America ATM. I've been to ATM's before and noticed skimmers. I've seen handheld skimmers and attachments for portable terminals when I interned with fraud investigations at a major card processor. It happens more than you think, since the information is easily used to commit fraud with card not present transactions.

In my entire life, I've been in exactly one restaurant with portable readers. They are extremely rare in the United States. This is mostly because every time the regulators try to up the security enforcement, the processors complain about the cost and turn around and tell merchants that everyone must buy new terminals. The merchants pitch such a hissy fit, nothing ever gets done.

Unfortunately, the "terminal replacement" problem is so wide spread, it's impossible to vote with your wallet. Fortunately, big players like Visa and Master Card have gotten fed up with the merchants and have simply said, "Buy a new EMV contact and contactless (NFC, mobile wallets, etc.) terminal between 2013 and 2015. As of 2015, if a fraudulent transaction occurs that could've been prevented by EMV, then you are liable for it.

The net effect will be similar to the UK where suddenly everyone has chipped cards and/or NFC wallets and merchants won't accept anything else. It's very sad that it's taken this long and the advent of NFC to get anything done.

Also, for reference: Here's a local news report of the bust here in Atlanta.

I know this has more to do with kids and the lash back from the Columbine thing, but even toy guns have gotten people in trouble at some points in time. Here is one and and this one more extreme that ended up with a child getting shot by police. (I don't really know about these news sources, but I seem to remember stories like these and I didn't want to spend too much time looking.

I think there are a good deal of cases like this. The second story is tragic but sadly, I can see where the police were coming from. If you tell someone to drop something you believe is a gun and they point it at you...well...you don't have much time to make a decision.

My point is, the treat of a gun will probably be treated as a gun even if there was not one present.

Dissent isn't un-American. What Pelosi said was that drowning out the other side so that there cannot be any debate is un-American. I agree. The town hall protesters are not interested in a debate. They are showing up, and walking up within a few feet of the speaker to yell at them in a physically-threatening manner.

Mr. Gingrinch opines that Obama's health care plan has spectres of Nazism. Protesters promptly paint swastikas onto the door of politicians who support the plan and waive signs calling Obama a Nazi. A black politician received death threats, and references to himself and Obama as "niggers". They are standing outside of town hall meetings with guns strapped to their legs with a sign saying it's time to water the tree of liberty.

The protesters don't even have anything intelligent to say other than, "YOU'RE LYING TO ME!" and "YOU'RE A BUNCH OF SOCIALISTS." That's not debate. That's a hateful mob trying to rule by intimidation. Look up videos of these confrontations. It's freaking terrifying. Tell me that's American.

For more fun, look up how Republicans and conservatives freely called Democrats un-American or anti-American. For fuck's sake, a few months ago, Republican Senator Inhofe called Obama "un-American" for opposing the war in Iraq. A speech is un-American but showing up threatening physical force and painting swastikas is not?

So they are back!

The [main hybrid battery] has no user-serviceable parts and can kill you if you're careless.

Do you really think that will stop people trying?

On a side note, the "normal 12V car battery" can kill you just as easily. If not easier (700+A vs 6.5A). Volts don't kill you, amps do.

I was going to mod in the thread, but had to post a response to this.

This is video of Georgia cops tasering a man to death.

The guy was having a problem with his epilepsy medication, so his wife called the cops for help. They proceeded to medicate him - first with billy clubs, then with tasers - repeatedly.

Because the wife also called the FBI afterwards, the local DA got pissy and softballed the case before the grand jury, which didn't even bother to watch this video before finding the police blameless.

The man's last words?

"Don't kill me."

Here's the link to the video

The link to the (minimal) media coverage

And the link to the discussion over at Digg

When you're the guy in this video, then you can whine about people "screeching about tasers being overused."



P.S. When one's POV is that everyone is a person "who would kill or maime them in the blink of an eye," then naturally one "wouldn't hesitate to tase someone who i thought was going to turn violent on me."

But that's not seeing the truth of each situation, that's being caught in one's own psychosis and fear.

(Since consciousness is self-similar, of course we'll see this same behavior at the level of the person (in this case the poster, it seems, and the police) as well as the level of the nation (for example, our war in Iraq) ).

We don't get to hurt or kill other people just because we're afraid.

And the solution isn't to keep hurting or killing people until we're not afraid. Since the fear is an internal condition, and one that blinds us to the external reality, no amount of external violence and killing will ever stop it.

The solution is to stop, admit that we're afraid, breathe, and then notice we're still OK. And that takes a lot more balls than just beating or shooting or tasering or bombing everything that scares us.

Help the police or the person?
What did you see happenning? Only what was in the video? How about the 5 minutes before this video was shot where he was apperantly being a complete and deliberat deliquent and refusing to comply with even a basic function of showing his school ID and what he was doing wrong even before the police arrived. It's not like this person was sitting in the back of the room quietly reading a book and doing work and 4 police officers walked up and started harrassing him.

I work in an office building, I'd hope someone would be questioned and taken care of if they were doing something wrong and then refused to show a building ID. Do you remember the Cynthia McKinney Capitol police incident?

This is only partly true.

I watched a history channel special on this ;-)

The 911 hijackers, notable filled out some portions of their Visa applications with incredibly suspicious answers. They traveled on a student visas, and were studying at a school called things like, "In the West U.S.". They left their permanent address, both abroad and in the U.S. blank, or listed things like "hotel" as their permanent address abroad.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray10090 2.asp

Yeah, I know, its the national review, which is a crap site, but they actually have links to scans of the Visa applications.

IIRC, Mohammad Atma, the chief "hijacker", was also stopped at a security checkpoint when boarding the airplane on 9/11. The security screen could not figure out why Mr. Atma was setting off the metal detector, wanded him, and then after determing that it was his "chest" that was "beeping", passed him through.

Rather than monitoring all of our phone calls, perhaps we should spend money on processing Visa applications better and faster. These errors should not have happened, and it is probably a result of the turn around time of Visa applications being so long; the few examiners that are out there churn through them as fast as possible.

As an Iranian American, this is a big issue for me; my family is trying to immigrate, and has spent a ridiculous amount of time (on the order of 5-10 years) trying to get in. Tons of paperwork, too. That the fucking hijackers should have no problem getting student visas with such shoddy applications makes me furious.

"Legal Means" only affords you protection if the regulations are followed. Most of the hijackers student visa applications should have been denied, and the U.S. already has mechanisms to pursue proper security checks on people applying for visas. We don't need a new data mining net; we need the existing mechanisms to be applied properly.

Let me give you another article:
http://www.11alive.com/news/usnews_article.aspx?st oryid=42069

Let me highlight to particularly salient points in that article. They speak for themselves:

"U.S. authorities missed some obvious signs that might have prevented some of the Sept. 11 hijackers from entering the country, the federal commission investigating the attacks said Monday.

Government officials have said the 19 hijackers entered the country legally, but the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said its investigation found at least two and as many as eight had fraudulent visas. The commission also found examples where U.S. officials had contact with the hijackers but failed to adequately investigate suspicious behavior. ...
At the start of a two-day hearing on border and aviation security, the commission staff issued a statement saying FBI Director Robert Mueller had testified that all of the hijackers came "lawfully from abroad," while CIA Director George Tenet described 17 of the 19 hijackers as "clean."

We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to reevaluate those statements," the commission staff said."

AND

The panel said part of the problem was a lack of coordination among immigration officials and a focus on keeping out illegal immigrants rather than potential terrorists.


I have a feeling this last point is only getting worse; People think that illegal immigrants = Terrorist, and it couldn't be further from the truth.

Hey - Lawmakers are making highway lanes open for people who pay more, for GM cars only if GM is willing to sponsor it, read the news moron -

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?stor yid=44777

Wow! I bet they have a lot of terrorists to show for all that work. Right...?

You mean like these recent convictions, arrests, or indictments? Hamid Hayat, Abu Ali, and Sayed Ahmed, Shahawar Matin Siraj, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, and these 19?

Maybe your memory is fading, or you don't pay attention, but there have been plenty of others over the last few years.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus. And you've got to make it stop.

For example, more than two dozen government surveillance photographs show 22-year-old Caitlin Childs of Atlanta, a strict vegetarian, and other vegans picketing against meat eating, in December 2003. They staged their protest outside a HoneyBaked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County.

An undercover DeKalb County Homeland Security detective was assigned to conduct surveillance of the protest and the protestors, and take the photographs. The detective arrested Childs and another protester after he saw Childs approach him and write down, on a piece of paper, the license plate number of his unmarked government car.

It's an open question as to whether any purely domestic conversations have been tapped; the administration has claimed not, but there have been leaks to the opposite.

There are also serious questions as to whether results from the warrantless wiretaps were used to seek later FISA warrants without informing the judges [...]

Given that this administration seems to be treating vegans as terrorists [...] skepticism is warranted.

Given the hysterics of some of the government-bashers, "the scepticism is warranted". Hopefully, the ACLU lawsuit will clear things out.

It's an open question as to whether any purely domestic conversations have been tapped; the administration has claimed not, but there have been leaks to the opposite. There are also serious questions as to whether results from the warrantless wiretaps were used to seek later FISA warrants without informing the judges - causing one FISA judge to resign in protest. The program also seems to have changed at least once based on questions about its legality, so that even if warrants are sought for domestic wiretaps now it doesn't mean this was the case throughout the program. IMO, only an independent investigation by someone with a very high security clearance can sort it out for certain.

Given that this administration seems to be treating vegans as terrorists and this warrantless wiretap program may have been the mother of all dead ends, skepticism is warranted. There are reasons why one branch of government isn't allowed to go off wandering on its own.

try thief and thief 2.
In the first game you take on a bunch of hardcore religious types called the hammers. You discover in the game that they don't have any problems with locking people up in their own prisons , torturing them , even removing body parts. (hands, genitals, etc)

In the second game the hammers have morphed into another religon called the mechanists (but still bow to the same god). These guys are worse then the hammers. They are turning "street scum" into robots, for use as servants for the richer people in the city. At the end of the game , you discover the whole point behind the excercise , and just how nuts the leader of the order (karras) is.

There's a game called "theocracy" too , never played it.

Take a look at this page (Spcifically the quote at the top). So is the US a theocracy yet?

absolutely amazing that there is no mention of that part of the bill in the AP stories,
for example (caution, wacky javascript)

this jackass who calls himself a conservative, actually supports it. hey dumb fuck, the federal govt does not have the authority to institute REAL-ID. Daneen G. Peterson, Ph.D., you are not a conservative, you fascist asshole. mailto:Daneen@frontiernet.net It doesnt matter how much you agree with the legislation or if it supports your racist views, it violates the CONSTI fucking TUTION you treasonous bitch.
one more fake "conservative" who is really just a pathetic scared jerk face willing to exchange freedom for so called security

and holy cow, What the hell has become of our lawmakers ?

I agree with the poster above, the experiment is over. our government disgusts me.

I can't help but wonder about the "fake" Bush service records too. They were created in such a way as to appear genuine until closely scrutinized. What if the content of the documents were generally correct but forged versions were prepared by Republicans to discredit the real ones that they feared were about to turn up.

The forged memos that you are refering to were pathetic forgeries prepared by someone with more Anti-Bush venom than brains. CBS's own experts warned them about the documents, but 60 Minutes went ahead with the story anyway. Maybe that was because Mary Mapes, the producer of the story who is also known as a liberal activist, had been after the story for five years and this was one of the last chances to get the story out before the election. Well, at least she had the decency to put her source for the documents, Bill Burkett, an ardent Bush hater and Democrat activist, in touch with the Kerry campaign as he requested.

You can read more of this pathetic story here, here, and here.

Hopefully this will put some of your fears to rest.