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Ecuador Spent $5 Million Protecting and Spying On Julian Assange, Says Report (theverge.com)
Citing reports from The Guardian and Focus Ecuador, The Verge reports that Ecuador's intelligence program spent at least $5 million "on an elaborate security and surveillance network around WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange." The intelligence program was known as "Operator Hotel," which began as "Operation Guest" when Assange took refuge in Ecuador's UK embassy in 2012. From the report: Operation Hotel has allegedly covered expenses like installing CCTV cameras and hiring a security team to "secretly film and monitor all activity in the embassy," including Assange's daily activities, moods, and interactions with staff and visitors. The Guardian estimates Ecuadorian intelligence agency Senain has spent at least $5 million on Assange-related operations, based on documents they reviewed. The report details attempts to improve Assange's public image and potentially smuggle him out of the embassy if he was threatened. But it also writes that relations between Assange and Ecuador have badly deteriorated over the past several years. In 2014, Assange allegedly breached the embassy's network security, reading confidential diplomatic material and setting up his own secret communications network.
This kind of jackasses always make excuses and cry that people are just bad with them without reason.
I had it in Canada of all fucking places.
I think it's really just a symptom of the universal truth that the role of customs officer across the globe is the sort of role that has a high likelihood of attracting the odd dickhead who failed at everything they wanted to do in life (like becoming a police officer) and so had to settle for what little power tripping they could do at a checkpoint on a national border instead.
I've always found US customs officers decent, and UK customs officers nice on my return (albeit a little fucking dense), I've found Canadian customs officers to be universally complete arseholes in Ottawa and Montreal, but usually pretty nice in Toronto and Vancouver. Across the rest of the globe it's always been a mixed bag - nice and laid back in the Caribbean, corrupt and dodgy in Egypt for example.
Personally I wouldn't judge a country by it's customs officers because the high likelihood of down and out power trippers is bound to be at odds with the norm.
Easy. Government regulation. Healthcare in the US would be affordable if not for sky high costs of regulation and litigation. The fact that it takes a medical billing specialist an average of 5.5 hours to recover a payment from an insurance company (8 hours for medicare/medicaid), solely due to Byzantine government-mandated billing practices, already adds a minimum of about $100 to a bill, just for walking in the door.
You want to know why an Aspirin costs $50 at a hospital? it is because 12% of all ER visits in the United States involve cardiovascular episodes where aspirin is given as an emergency anticoagulant. Of those 12% of ER visits, 74% result in a lawsuit of some kind. The way jurisprudence works in civil law, a plaintiff must sue EVERYONE and ANYONE that had anything to do with the ER visit, including the makers of any and all medications administered. That means that in roughly 9% of all ER visits, Bayer (or somebody) is getting sued over aspirin.
This is also why a $300 GPS/NAV system costs $8000 the second you put it in an airplane.
Sorry, but why give him any more credit than we do for any of the other Russian Trolls in their propaganda machine?
Hahahaha - Canadians don't even know how to be assholes properly, though I've seen them try a few times. I live in Minnesota and am a dual citizen and have family in Canada so I cross the border a lot. I sometimes get a few curt questions from the Canadian customs, one sent me to immigration (lol) because I had forgotten my Canadian passport and didn't let me explain I was a citizen. But in perhaps 50 crossings I was treated rudely maybe 3-5 times and it was at best a 3/10. When I filed for my social insurance number the lady behind the desk at service Canada rudely said "and why do you think you need one?" Going off my American accent she probably thought I was a medical refugee. After saying "umm, because I'm a citizen..." she absolutely couldn't stop apologizing and directed me straight to an open agent lmao, here in America they would have called the cops over and doubled down and never, absolutely never apologized.
At the border coming back the customs agents are assholes about 40% of the time, one asked why I was in Canada and part of my answer involved being a citizen at which point he interrupted me "Son, we don't recognize dual citizenship (lol a lie), just what kind of American are you? Son, If we went to war with Canada what side would you fight for??!?" Then he went off the goddamn handle and started to make racially charged comments about my family member names and asked me insane questions for another 5 minutes. Then I got sent to be searched. I felt lucky to have made it across alive and until I see it, Canada just dosent have the culture to put assholes like that in authority and approve of thier treatment of citizens.
... allegedly breached the embassy's network security, reading confidential diplomatic material and setting up his own secret communications network. ...
Rough translation: Assange found that little placard with the WiFi password written on it for all to freely use, discovered an open share on one of the embassy's network-connected computers (but probably didn't find anything particularly interesting on it) and then he casually turned on his VPN to tunnel through the embassy firewall and log into Wikileaks.
It feels to me like certain high profile personalities in the media (like Assange, but certainly not limited to him) are all-too-often treated like they possess some sort of super-intelligence, and can do shockingly amazing things with computers. The reality is likely to be underwhelming most of the time, when you break down the colorful but vague terminology into layman's terms.