The NSA surveillance program has generated a great deal of controversy, but there are other intelligence gathering systems that are available to the state that are perhaps more insidious and have not been subjected to intense scrutiny. One of the more troubling surveillance techniques is crowd-sourcing, something which most regard as relatively benign. But it is widely used and very dangerous, largely because there is no attempt to verify the accuracy of the rumors flying around. We all need to be more careful about what we say on the web–we may think that no one is really listening. The truth is that most states now actively patrol that universe.
The military government in Egypt cracked down on the pro-Morsi supporters who have been protesting the coup. The bloodshed has been extreme, and ongoing. The number of dead in at least in the hundreds, and the Muslim Brotherhood claims that about 2,000 people have been killed. Egypt is now under a curfew in order to limit the violence, but such efforts were not effective in 2011 when Mubarak was toppled. Al Jazeera has a compendium of world reactions to the violence in Egypt. The US is in a very awkward situation since it failed to condemn the coup against Morsi.
After 18 months of negative economic growth, Europe finally registered positive economic activity–a 0.3% increase over the last three months. The rate is hardly something to celebrate, but for many in Europe it signals a turning of the corner. I personally doubt that we’ll see robust economic growth for many more years, but any economic activity is better than none.
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