Just wait, it gets worse

I wrote in August after the shooting of Mike Brown and protests in Ferguson about how the police cannot handle simple things--not hostages, terrorism, bank robberies, high tension situations that can go wrong and we could imagine giving police some slack if honest mistakes were made.

Besides the long list of unarmed black men killed by police (and vigilantes) I included jaywalkers, peaceful protesters, mentally ill and babies.

(I also wrote a few posts about police shooting statistics and grant programs that give military equipment to police, most famously the Department of Defense's 1033 program.)

And now comes the ridiculous and sad part.  When talking about the federal programs that give military equipment to police I argued for ending the failed war on drugs.  I just didn't realize it was so bad.

Can police even handle dead people correctly?!

This is an urn, for holding the remains of cremated ashes of beloved family members who have died. It is not for holding drugs.

(photo)



From Wikipedia

Besides the traditional funeral or cremation ashes urns, it is also possible to keep a part of the ashes of the loved one or beloved pet in keepsake urns or ash jewelry.

Now before today I had never heard of ash jewelry, that is true, and I'm sure many of us remember Sarah Michelle Gellar's drugs necklace from Cruel Intentions, but seriously? Come on!

YouTube



So urns, ashes, necklaces, drugs.

Cops Dump A Murder Victim’s Ashes Alleging They Were Drugs My latest- http://t.co/L2niqQEddJ
— Cassandra (@CassandraRules) October 7, 2014

Cops Dump A Murder Victim’s Ashes Alleging They Were Drugs

After he was cremated, his daughter, 25 year old Sarah Lewis, took a portion of the ashes and put them in a small cylinder on a necklace so that she could always have her father with her.

This is not even the only incident where law enforcement mistook ashes for drugs.  I will even admit that a necklace is not an ordinary storage container for ashes (again I just heard of it today).

We have 2 stories about ashes being dumped today. Wtf TSA Agents Dumped Ashes of Man’s Deceased Mother During Search http://t.co/KsVtdIaYAX
— Cassandra (@CassandraRules) October 7, 2014

This was not a necklace with questionable contents (father's murdered ashes) but an urn, a regular standard funeral urn--but wait the story gets "better," by which I mean more disturbing.

TSA Agents Unscrewed Urn Dumped Ashes of Man’s Deceased Mother In His Luggage During Search

Shannon Thomas....was intending to board a flight headed for San Juan, Puerto Rico, with a stop in Washington, D.C.

He was on his way to San Juan so he could spread his mother’s ashes, one of the final requests that she had made before her death.

When Thomas arrived in San Juan and recovered his luggage, he found the urn open and the ashes spilled all over the contents of his bag.  A TSA notice was place on top of the mess in his luggage, informing him that the contents of his bags were checked by agents.

This is comforting--TSA is ignoring their own guidelines on urns (emphasis mine)

According to the TSA’s own guidelines, agents are not permitted to open urns, but are instead required to use an X-Ray scanner too determine if there is a weapon or bomb hidden inside.  This same situation has actually occurred on multiple occasions, and sadly seems fairly common.  In 2012, it was reported that a man John Gross was traveling through Florida when TSA agents spilled the ashes of his grandfather.  In that case, the agent reportedly laughed as the man knelt down to clean up the ashes and bone fragments that they had spilled on the ground.

But wait, it gets worse

Sadly, police mistaking innocent items for drugs is extremely common. We adamantly recommend not consenting to searches or speaking to the police without a lawyer present, even if you’ve never done anything wrong.

On Saturday, we reported on a man who’s home was raided by a Georgia task force believing that the okra he was growing in his garden was marijuana.

Over the summer, an innocent woman was arrested and spent over one month in jail after dried Spagettio’s on a spoon were found in her car during a traffic stop.  The officer believed the tomato sauce residue to be drugs.

During the same month, we reported on rapper, Joe Mugga, had his rights violated when an officer mistook a french fry in the backseat of his car for marijuana, yes, you read that correctly.

Let’s also never forget the cop who mistook a Jolly Rancher candy for crystal meth.

For more information check out our Top 10 Reasons Not to Talk to Police and learn why consenting to searches and answering questions from police can never help you.

 Let's help the cops out shall we?

Not marijuana
photo



Not drug residue
photo



Not meth, crystal or otherwise
photo

Cremated Ashes, French fries, Jolly Ranchers--3 more things cops cannot handle correctly @cassandrarules http://t.co/PQyrBuIrmc
— Arrest Darren Wilson (@biasedreporter) October 8, 2014

This however, was a nice moment
YouTube


Justice for Mike Brown

Which side are you on?

Ferguson

Plane attacked at Peshawar Airport

Pakistan has been fighting it's own war against the Taliban in Pakistan, besides the US war in Afghanistan.

PIA plane ‘fired’ upon at Peshawar airport

Pakistan International Airline (PIA) flight PK-376 form Riyadh was fired upon by unknown miscreants between Sulemankhel and Mashokhel of Peshawar’s Badhber area tonight.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) officials said that they have reports of firing but the flight landed safely without any injuries to the passengers. They said that they cannot officially confirm the attack.

Badhber Police said that they have heard and seen the gunfire and were investigating if the plane was attacked or it was a routine celebratory fire, common in the area. 

continued

It may be mentioned that Dara Adamkhel Taliban were planning to target military helicopters and war planes besides passenger aircrafts in Peshawar, according to a report by DawnNews.

Security was put on high alert on Friday night after the threat alert and besides FC and police, army troops also patrolled the area near the tribal areas specially Adezai, Badhber and Mattani.

Hindustan Times

According to witnesses, four attackers were seen escaping from the scene. They also said that the attackers were armed with hand grenades and sub machine guns (SMG), Geo News quoted police as saying.

continued

This is the fourth such attack in Peshawar in the last few months.

On September 27, a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) aircraft was fired upon during landing in Peshawar. However, there were no casualties.

On September 1, a Russian cargo plane came under fire in the Sheikh Muhammadi area of Badhaber, while in June this year, a PIA flight PK-756 was fired upon in a similar fashion in the same area. One woman was killed and two persons were injured in the attack.

Same wording from the Express Tribune (could be several reasons why though)

This is the fourth such attack in Peshawar in the last few months.

On September 27, a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) aircraft was fired upon during landing at Bacha Khan International  Airport in Peshawar. However, there were no casualties.

On September 1, a Russian cargo plane came under fire in the Sheikh Muhammadi area of Badhaber, while in June this year, a PIA flight PK-756 was fired upon in a similar fashion in the same area. One woman was killed and two persons were injured in the attack. 

Drone Wars

from Last Week Tonight






Pakistan sees America as #1 threat, and everyone hates drones except America and Israel





This is the second attack of the day and fourth such strike in last three days.

(photo from Dawn News)

About the iPhone Encryption

There have been lots of news stories about the iPhone 6 encryption, and lots of headlines claiming that it "locks out the NSA." It doesn't.

First, the bad journalism.

Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A.

Devoted customers of Apple products these days worry about whether the new iPhone 6 will bend in their jean pockets. The National Security Agency and the nation’s law enforcement agencies have a different concern: that the smartphone is the first of a post-Snowden generation of equipment that will disrupt their investigative abilities.

The phone encrypts emails, photos and contacts based on a complex mathematical algorithm that uses a code created by, and unique to, the phone’s user — and that Apple says it will not possess.

The result, the company is essentially saying, is that if Apple is sent a court order demanding that the contents of an iPhone 6 be provided to intelligence agencies or law enforcement, it will turn over gibberish, along with a note saying that to decode the phone’s emails, contacts and photos, investigators will have to break the code or get the code from the phone’s owner.

of course this is how the article ends instead of begins

Mr. Zdziarski said that concerns about Apple’s new encryption to hinder law enforcement seemed overblown. He said there were still plenty of ways for the police to get customer data for investigations. In the example of a kidnapping victim, the police can still request information on call records and geolocation information from phone carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

“Eliminating the iPhone as one source I don’t think is going to wreck a lot of cases,” he said. “There is such a mountain of other evidence from call logs, email logs, iCloud, Gmail logs. They’re tapping the whole Internet.”

Now some explanation.

The iPhone will automatically encrypt data stored on the device.

On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode.

Now Apple has said that they cannot decrypt data, even when asked by law enforcement or a court, but is not the end of the story.  Depending on the case the courts can force you to unlock it yourself. (See for example this court order)

In many cases, the American judicial system doesn’t view an encrypted phone as an insurmountable privacy protection for those accused of a crime. Instead, it’s seen as an obstruction of the evidence-gathering process, and a stubborn defendant or witness can be held in contempt of court and jailed for failing to unlock a phone to provide that evidence.

continued

In some cases, the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination may block such demands

continued

but the few cases where suspects have pleaded the Fifth to avoid decrypting a PC—the legal equivalent of a smartphone—have had messy, sometimes contradictory outcomes.

 In some cases you can plead the Fifth 

The court ruled that forcing him to surrender his password and decryption keys would be the same as making him provide self-incriminating testimony, and let him off the hook.

But in other cases 

He refused, pleading the Fifth. A judge ruled against him, calling the contents of the computer a “foregone conclusion.” The police didn’t need Boucher’s “testimony” to get the files, in other words—they only needed him to stop obstructing access to them. 

In some situations other evidence can be considered

enough to nullify her Fifth amendment argument. As with Boucher, the judge ruled that she give police access to the files or be held in contempt.

NIST Encryption Standards

A really important, overlooked part seems to be NIST's weakened encryption standards. (Many thanks to Rayne)

**Update (November 21, 2014 EFF Joins calls for NIST reform) 


A reality check on encryption standards based on NIST

Let’s reset all the hype:

There is no smartphone security available on the market we can trust absolutely to keep out the National Security Agency. No password or biometric security can assure the encryption contained in today’s smartphones as long as they are built on current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards and/or the Trusted Computing Platform. The NSA has compromised these standards and TCP in several ways, weakening their effectiveness and ultimately allowing a backdoor through them for NSA use, bypassing any superficial security system.

There is nothing keeping the NSA from sharing whatever information they are gleaning from smartphones with other government agencies. Citizens may believe that information gleaned by the NSA ostensibly for counterterrorism may not be legally shared with other government agencies, but legality/illegality of such sharing does not mean it hasn’t and isn’t done. (Remember fusion centers, where government agencies were supposed to be able to share antiterrorism information? Perhaps these are merely window dressing on much broader sharing.)
There is no exception across the best known mobile operating systems to the vulnerability of smartphones to NSA’s domestic spying.

More on NIST from Rayne

On NSA’s Subversion of NIST’s Algorithm

Our security is only as good as the tools we use to protect it, and compromising a widely used cryptography algorithm makes many Internet communications insecure.

continued

Improving the security of cryptographic standards is an issue where the equities overwhelmingly lie on one side of the equation. By increasing the funding for—and thus capabilities in—NIST’s Computer Security Division, Congress can help restore confidence in NIST’s cryptographic standards efforts. This is a win for all.

The NSA, NIST and the AMS

Among the many disturbing aspects of the behavior of the NSA revealed by the Snowden documents, the most controversial one directly relevant to mathematicians was the story of the NSA’s involvement in a flawed NIST cryptography standard.

continued

this is a clearly identifiable case where mathematicians seem to have been involved in using their expertise to subvert the group tasked with producing high quality cryptography.

Matt Green on NIST

In this post I'm going to try to explain the curious story of Dual-EC. While I'll do my best to keep this discussion at a high and non-mathematical level, be forewarned that I'm probably going to fail at least at a couple of points. I you're not the mood for all that, here's a short summary:

• In 2005-2006 NIST and NSA released a pseudorandom number generator based on elliptic curve cryptography. They released this standard -- with very little explanation -- both in the US and abroad. 
• This RNG has some serious issues with just being a good RNG. The presence of such obvious bugs was mysterious to cryptographers.
• In 2007 a pair of Microsoft researchers pointed out that these vulnerabilities combined to produce a perfect storm, which -- together with some knowledge that only NIST/NSA might have -- opened a perfect backdoor into the random number generator itself.
• This backdoor may allow the NSA to break nearly any cryptographic system that uses it. 

While encrypting data stored on the device is great, this is different from encrypting data like phone calls and internet activity.  Thankfully a new app called Signal from hacker security researcher Moxie Marlinspike is now available for iPhone (it's been on Android for four years already).

If you’re making a phone call with your iPhone, you used to have two options: Accept the notion that any wiretapper, hacker or spook can listen in on your conversations, or pay for pricey voice encryption software.

continued

Like any new and relatively untested crypto app, users shouldn’t entirely trust Signal’s security until other researchers have had a chance to examine it. Marlinspike admits “there are always unknowns,” such as vulnerabilities in the software of the iPhone that could allow snooping. But in terms of preventing an eavesdropper on the phone’s network from intercepting calls, Signal’s security protections are “probably pretty great,” he says.

After all, the technology behind Signal isn’t exactly new. Marlinspike first took on the problem of smartphone voice encryption four years ago with Redphone, an Android app designed to foil all wiretaps.

Another interesting question I have is what if any effect June's Supreme Court decision in Riley v California will have on iPhone, but I assume for now that the answer is the same--5th Amendment depends on the situation.  I will try to get some more answers.  For now see below.

NYT Major Ruling Shields Privacy of Cellphones: Supreme Court Says Phones Can’t Be Searched Without a Warrant

“Cellphones have become important tools in facilitating coordination and communication among members of criminal enterprises, and can provide valuable incriminating information about dangerous criminals,” he wrote. “Privacy comes at a cost.”

But other technologies, he said, can make it easier for the police to obtain warrants. Using email and iPads, the chief justice wrote, officers can sometimes have a warrant in hand in 15 minutes.

continued

What must the police do when they want to search a cellphone in connection with an arrest?

“Get a warrant,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. 

Marcy Wheeler explains that

In real life, it’s likely that cops will integrate cellphone search warrants into their arrest warrant process. And Roberts’ opinion allows police to invoke exigent circumstances to search a phone. But at a minimum, this ruling will prohibit suspicion-less searches of cellphones.

continued

A different part of Sotomayor’s concurrence, arguing that the existing precedent holding that you don’t have a privacy interest in data you’ve given to a third party “is ill suited to the digital age,” has been invoked repeatedly in privacy debates since she wrote it. That’s especially true since the beginning of Edward Snowden’s leaks. Lawsuits against the phone dragnet often cite that passage, arguing that the phone dragnet is precisely the kind of intrusion that far exceeds the intent of old precedent. And the courts have – with the exception of one decision finding the phone dragnet unconstitutional – ruled that until a majority on the Supreme Court endorses this notion, the old precedents hold.

continued

Roberts cited from a different part of Sotomayor’s opinion, discussing how much GPS data on our movements reveals about our personal lives. That appears amid a discussion in which he cites things that make cellphones different: the multiple functions they serve, the different kinds of data we store in the same place, our Web search terms, location and apps that might betray political affiliation, health data or religion. That is, in an opinion joined by all his colleagues, the chief justice repeats Sotomayor’s argument that the sheer volume of this information makes it different.

That by no means says that those challenging the government’s national security surveillance will prevail by pointing to this opinion. Roberts includes an incredibly pregnant footnote, clarifying that “these cases do not implicate the question whether the collection or inspection of aggregated digital information amounts to a search under other circumstances.” Without naming the third-party doctrine explicitly, with his invocation of “search” Roberts makes it clear that’s what he’s discussing.

Here Marcy says Roberts kept it vague on purpose.

So for now, these cases about data on a smartphone or GPS collection are not being used to end NSA collection, which is still being reauthorized every 90 days.

The bill currently getting all the attention to reform the NSA is Senator Leahy's USA Freedom Act, but as Marcy has well documented, the proposed reforms are actually making some problems worse.

The ACLU and EFF normally do great work defending the Fourth Amendment. Both have fought the government’s expansive spying for years. Both have fought hard to require the government obtain a warrant before accessing your computer, cell phone, and location data.

continued

by outsourcing to telecoms, NSA will actually increase the total percentage of Americans’ telephone records that get chained on; sources say it will be more “comprehensive” than the current dragnet and Deputy NSA Director Richard Ledgett agrees the “the actual universe of potential calls that could be queried against is [potentially] dramatically larger.” In addition, the telecoms are unlikely to be able to remove all the noisy numbers like pizza joints — as NSA currently claims to – meaning more people with completely accidental phone ties to suspects will get sucked in. And USA Freedom adopts a standard for data retention — foreign intelligence purpose — that has proven meaningless in the past

But earlier this week, they may have taken action that directly undermines that good work.

So data on the iPhone is now automatically encrypted, but that won't stop police from issuing warrants or courts forcing you to unlock the data yourself.  Phone calls can now be encrypted for free using the Signal app.  All of these are great improvements, but it is still not the end of the story.

Many security experts have focused on iCloud storage.  Micah Lee writes at The Intercept that

despite these nods to privacy-conscious consumers, Apple still strongly encourages all its users to sign up for and use iCloud, the internet syncing and storage service where Apple has the capability to unlock key data like backups, documents, contacts, and calendar information in response to a government demand. iCloud is also used to sync photos, as a slew of celebrities learned in recent weeks when hackers reaped nude photos from the Apple service. (Celebrity iCloud accounts were compromised when hackers answered security questions correctly or tricked victims into giving up their credentials via “phishing” links, Cook has said.)

 continued

The most prominent privacy improvement Apple made to its products last week is a new encryption feature built-in to iOS 8.

Since the iPhone 3GS, all iOS devices have supported encrypting personal data such as text messages, photos, emails, contacts, and call history. If you set a passcode it would be used to encrypt some, but not all, of the data on your device. Apple was still able to decrypt some of the data without knowing your passcode.

If law enforcement confiscated your phone and wanted to snoop at its data, all they would have to do is serve Apple a warrant and to get a copy of the plaintext data.

continued

The improved encryption in iOS 8 is a great move towards protecting consumer privacy and security. But users should be aware that in most cases it doesn’t protect your iOS device from government snoops.

While Apple does not have the crypto keys that can unlock the data on iOS 8 devices, they do have access to your iCloud backup data.

this is not the first time 

This isn’t the first time that Apple has oversold the security of its products. Shortly after the PRISM revelations were published in The Washington Postand The Guardian, Apple denied that it was part of the program and issued a statement claiming that “conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.” But security researchers showed that Apple could indeed eavesdrop on iMessage conversations without the user knowing.

ArsTechnica notes that

Apple executives never mentioned the words "iCloud security" during the unveiling of the iPhone 6

continued

In the name of security, we did a little testing using family members as guinea pigs. To demonstrate just how much private information on an iPhone can be currently pulled from iCloud and other sources, we enlisted the help of a pair of software tools from Elcomsoft. These tools are essentially professional-level, forensic software used by law enforcement and other organizations to collect data. But to show that an attacker wouldn’t necessarily need that to gain access to phone data, we also used a pair of simpler “hacks,” attacking a family member’s account (again, with permission) by using only an iPhone and iTunes running on a Windows machine.

As things stand right now, a determined attacker will still find plenty of ways to get to iPhone data. They need to gain physical access to the device, or harvest or crack credentials to do so. But there are ways to do this that won't alert the victim. The weakest links are components of the iCloud service.

passwords are essential but not impossible

We also went after a password-encrypted version of the backup on a local drive using EPPB’s dictionary and brute-force password attacks, cracking the seven-letter password after about two days

continued

since the iCloud backup is only protected by the iCloud password right now, once someone has obtained that password, everything in that backup is wide open.

And there’s a lot in that backup.

There are a number of things some people might be surprised to find in the iCloud backups. Among the data found were:

• SQLite databases containing phone call history, SMS and iMessage messages, and voicemail message data (with the number they were from and timestamps for when they were trashed) dating back to the phone's original purchase. So much for deleting call history.
• A file called “recents” that contained e-mail, Messenger, and SMS addresses with message header data and other information.
• An “accounts” database with all the e-mail, Twitter, and Apple-associated identity accounts we've ever held. Some details synced over from accounts closed before the target phone was purchased.
• A file with all “known” Wi-Fi hotspots, with the SSIDs and MAC addresses of every hotspot the phone ever connected to.
• Images, many believed to be long deleted, in three separate photo folders on each backup. All of the images carried the default EXIF data that Apple’s camera app attaches to them: dates taken, GPS latitude, longitude, and altitude. These images, in our oldest iCloud backup, were part of a much older incremental backup that had not been cleared from the cloud, and were found in a duplicate image folder within the DCIM folder of the backup image.
• A file containing Apple Maps addresses searched for.
• Mailbox files for the e-mail accounts used with Apple’s Mail app.
• An address book database with over 1,000 e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Facebook profile links, and other contact data.

That is just what we found sifting around for a few hours aimlessly. It’s clear that anyone targeted by an iCloud account hack hasn’t just had pictures exposed; their entire digital lives have been laid out on display.

and real-time tracking via "Find my iPhone"

Even creepier, the iCloud access also gives the attacker the ability to stalk the victim in real-time by using the Find My iPhone feature. If the phone is turned on and Find My iPhone was configured, the attacker can use the feature just as the owner would (of course, odds are that it’s on the owner’s person). We were able to identify the location of family members in this way as soon as the target phone was turned on. None of this is particularly high-tech. And it’s well within the threshold of pain for a mildly technically literate, very obsessed attacker.

continued

Apple could go a long way toward protecting customer privacy just by adding a second credential to encrypt stored iCloud data. An encryption password could be used to decrypt the backup when downloaded to iTunes or to the device, or it could be used to decrypt the data as it is read by iCloud to stream down to the device. That would at least give backups the same level of protection that they get when stored locally with encryption (already an option in iTunes).

this still won't stop NSA or police

These measures will not mean that the police, the FBI, or the NSA couldn’t get to your iPhone data if they had a need to. The fixes won't stop a determined attacker from finding other ways to compromise a user’s devices to gain access to information. But these tweaks raise the level of effort required enough to deter casual attacks, and they will hopefully raise people’s awareness to attacks in progress early enough to react.

Mashable has a good selection of security researches showing how police can still get your data, then there is a list of reasons not to trust Apple,

For the NSA, Four-hundred-thousand apps means 400,000 possibilities for attacks.  Apps can be used to spy on what users do elsewhere on the phone.  The NSA can replay phone calls, and is as I noted earlier still collecting phone metadata every 90 days.

all call detail records or "telephony metadata" created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries. Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information, including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating and
terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call.

Update--Clinton finally admits role in Honduras Coup aftermath

Since the migrant children immigration crisis broke in June, I have written about the 2009 coup in Honduras as a key cause of the violence kids are now fleeing, see here and here.

Now finally we have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's side of the story that conflicts with the Administration's official account.

Center for Constitutional Rights

Hillary Clinton admits role in #Honduras coup aftermath. Not surprisingly, contrary to official storyline

Al Jazeera America
Hard choices: Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath:
           Clinton’s embrace of far-right narrative on Latin America is part of electoral strategy

In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a review of Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order,” to lay out her vision for “sustaining America’s leadership in the world.”

***See here and here for more on the Mainstream Media's general obsession with Kissinger, ignoring his role in war crimes and coups.

See also Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice on 60 Minutes

As the president’s national security advisor, Susan Rice works in what some consider the second best office in the White House.

Lesley Stahl: This is the office, huh?
Susan Rice: This is Henry's office, as we call it.
Lesley Stahl: Henry's office, Henry Kissinger's office.
As Kissinger was, Rice is the quarterback of American foreign policy. She’s the one who wakes up the president when there’s a 3 a.m. international crisis.

and now back to the article

continued

The chapter on Latin America, particularly the section on Honduras, a major source of the child migrants currently pouring into the United States, has gone largely unnoticed.

continued

the State Department’s response to the violence and military and police impunity has largely been silence, along with continued U.S. aid to Honduran security forces. In “Hard Choices,” Clinton describes her role in the aftermath of the coup that brought about this dire situation. Her firsthand account is significant both for the confession of an important truth and for a crucial false testimony.

First, the confession: Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”

This may not come as a surprise to those who followed the post-coup drama closely. (See my commentary from 2009 on Washington’s role in helping the coup succeed here, here and here.) But the official storyline, which was dutifully accepted by most in the media, was that the Obama administration actually opposed the coup and wanted Zelaya to return to office. 

continued

In addition to her bold confession and Clinton’s embrace of the far-right narrative in the Honduran episode, the Latin America chapter is considerably to the right of even her own record on the region as secretary of state. This appears to be a political calculation. There is little risk of losing votes for admitting her role in making most of the hemisphere’s governments disgusted with the United States. On the other side of the equation, there are influential interest groups and significant campaign money to be raised from the right-wing Latin American lobby, including Floridian Cuban-Americans and their political fundraisers.

Like the 54-year-old failed embargo against Cuba, Clinton’s position on Latin America in her bid for the presidency is another example of how the far right exerts disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy in the hemisphere. 

Sources on Renewable Energy

Here is some information about our current energy use, compared to what it would cost to switch to renewable sources.

First let's look at what energy costs are now, as well as the sources and how much we use.

Currently we generate energy largely from Coal, Natural gas and Nuclear.

How much energy generated and consumed by the US was made by renewables? The EIA says

In 2013, renewable sources of energy accounted for about 10% of total U.S. energy consumption and 13% of electricity generation.

Additional Links and Sources

Cost of electricity by source--Wikipedia

Renewable energy use by country--Wikipedia

Renewable energy use by states, 2013 and 2012--Wikipedia

EIA cost of generating electricity by power plant--with many other questions at the bottom

Forbes--true cost of energy

http://www.renewable-energysources.com/

IER--levelized costs over next 20 years

PES--cents per KWH

Wind energy--AWEA

EPA renewable cost database

The Economist article with arguments about the article

NYT op-ed renewables are great but need land

Union of Concerned Scientists--see part on stable energy prices

100% Renewable Energy Wikipedia lots of good links at the bottom including

Providing Global Energy--costs, reliability and policies

Roadmap for US energy policy

EU Global Vision 2050

WWF Global Vision 2050

Added links
FAIR.org           IEER        Solutions Project          NYC Wind Solar         Mark Jacobson

Mark Jacobson CV        Securing Energy            SAFE        Sources: Energy



Cost of going green globally


World can hit 30% renewables at no extra cost



Graph on home energy use  Green infrastructure

Construction and Climate Change

In the EU, 40% of all energy is consumed in buildings.  In 2002 European Commision issued the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) that required all EU member states to upgrade their building regulations and to introduce energy certification schemes for buildings.  The EU mandated what are referred to as 20-20-20 objectives.  By 2020 the EU member states are legally bound to achieve the following objectives

• 20% reduction in emissions
• 20% renewable energies
• 20% improvement in energy efficiency

In June 2012 a progress report which assessed progress toward meeting these objectives found that while the EU was on track toward meeting the first two objectives, it was projected that with the current regulatory framework, the energy efficiency objective was not going to be met.