Free Republic

The following calculations and graphics are based on information on national CO2 emission levels worldwide published by BP[1]in June 2014 for the period from 1965 up until 2013. The data is well corroborated by previous similar datasets published by the CDIAC, Guardian [2] and Google up until 2009 [3]. These notes and figures provide a short commentary on that CO2 emissions history. The contrast between the developed and developing worlds is stark in terms of their history of CO2 emissions and the likely prognosis for their future CO2 output. Since 1980 CO2 emissions from the developed world have shown virtually...

The IRS declared under oath and penalty of perjury on Friday that Lois Lerner’s hard drive is irrecoverable after being wiped clean by tech staff and recycled with an outside contractor, according to a court filing.

The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act is waiting in the US Senate for a vote. Last week, before the House voted on it, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann went to the floor of the House and said parent consent should be required. But it passed without consent requirements. Now, the U.S. Senate is planning to vote on the Houseʼs newborn screening bill and send it to the President. The Senate wants to hotline it, but we want to stop it unless it has written informed parent consent for the government storage, use, analysis, and sharing of newborn DNA. Call your Senators...

There's triple trouble with electronic health records: patient safety, medical privacy, and data security. And there are at least eight hazards. But much taxpayer money has been thrown at the highly speculative, untested EHR for political and profit purposes. And there are at least eight hazards. But much taxpayer money has been thrown at the highly speculative, untested EHR for political and profit purposes. England has already tried and failed. The National Health Service, which serves a population of 53 million, began building a national EHR system in 2002. By 2007, it missed key deadlines. In 2011, the $20 billion...

e U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear an appeal by Google over whether it violated federal wiretapping law when its Street View mapping cars collected consumers' personal data. That leaves intact a federal appeals court ruling that the U.S. Wiretap Act protects the privacy of information on unencrypted in-home Wi-Fi networks and means Google can face lawsuits over the matter, according to a Bloomberg report. The issue stems from Google's Street View, a comprehensive mapping program that provides images of areas around the world. Google has admitted that its camera-equipped Street View cars inadvertently captured emails, passwords and...

Is it time for you to delete your Facebook account permanently? This guy thinks so, and his arguments may just convince you. You should take a moment to hear what he has to say and then decide for yourself.

Fugitive Edward Snowden on Friday challenged the NSA’s insistence that it has no evidence he tried to raise concerns about the agency’s surveillance activity before he began leaking government documents to reporters, calling the response a “clearly tailored and incomplete leak ... for a political advantage.” “The NSA's new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers -- after more than a year of denying any such contact existed - raises serious concerns,” Snowden said in an email Friday to NBC News. “It reveals as false the NSA's claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of...

This is why I hate Obamacare. I knew this was coming. This is why I railed against using the IRS to enforce Obamacare. I knew insinuating the IRS into your health care was just the beginning. I knew going to electronic health records was going to send this country down the rabbit hole. And here it is. The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council...

The low level griping about law enforcement subpoenas requesting user information and instructing companies to not tell the subjects of the subpoenas has burst into full fledged rebellion. From the Washington Post: "This increasingly defiant industry stand is giving some of the tens of thousands of Americans whose Internet data gets swept into criminal investigations each year the opportunity to fight in court to prevent disclosures. Prosecutors, however, warn that tech companies may undermine cases by tipping off criminals, giving them time to destroy vital electronic evidence before it can be gathered." Now Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have joined...

On Monday, at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a trio of scholars alternately claimed that there is a gender pay gap and insisted that we need to pass laws to get data to prove that there is. “How do we find out if there is any discrimination without pay data?,” Georgetown’s Ed Montgomery asked on a panel at CAP. Montgomery, who also worked in the Clinton Administration, asserted that there are ways to collect such data while maintaining privacy. Only at CAP would such an assurance not be met with skepticism in the wake of scandals involving violations of...

Even education insiders are beginning to acknowledge that the data mining the federal government is now engaged in under Common Core produces little in the way of education achievement. “The evidence that the collection of data has led to improvements in education, we really don’t have it,” Philip Piely, author of Assessing the Educational Data Movement, said recently at an Educational Policy Forum. Piely, a faculty affiliate at Johns Hopkins, spoke at a forum sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) on March 14, 2014. “The number of times that data has been collected where it is not to...

Over the past six months or so, a huge amount of attention has been paid to government snooping, and the bulk collection and storage of vast amounts of raw data in the name of national security. What most of you don't know, or are just beginning to realize, is that a much greater and more immediate threat to your privacy is coming from thousands of companies you've probably never heard of, in the name of commerce. They're called data brokers, and they are collecting, analyzing and packaging some of our most sensitive personal information and selling it as a commodity...to...

He who holds the data makes the rules. If you haven't figured this out, it's almost too late. Obama knows it. In 2009, his team mandated electronic medical records and $27 billion to make it happen as a "foundation" for health care reform. If you wonder whether medical privacy is important, check out Minnesota, where the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and the Democrat-controlled legislature plan to eliminate all medical privacy rights. Bills being fast-tracked include: GENETIC GRAB: Repeal of hard-won parent consent requirements for government storage, use, and sharing of Baby DNA and newborn (genetic) screening test results for...

Giant Eagle won't say much about the information it collects on people who enroll in its rewards program to earn savings on food and fuel, but it knows who has a weakness for Goldfish crackers. GNC can see when your New Year's resolution ended. And Dick's Sporting Goods has a pretty good idea who will return to its stores this spring to gear up for baseball or softball season. Consumers willingly — if unwittingly — provide trillions of “data points” to companies about their purchases, intimate habits and even where a computer mouse hovers on a computer screen without clicking....

The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency's controversial collection of Americans' phone records...

In the wake of the NSA scandal, American citizens demand Congress take a hard look at government surveillance practices. While only the federal government has the power to halt NSA activities, the states will likely be the real battleground for privacy issues. In fact, state legislators are actively moving legislation aimed at protecting citizens’ civil liberties in the digital age. Digitally connected devices are an integral part of Americans’ daily lives. More than 90 percent of Americans deem essential one device in particular: the smartphone. For many, the buzz of a smartphone alarm is the first thing heard each morning,...

A western Pennsylvania heating and refrigeration contractor said it was the victim of a "sophisticated cyberattack operation" that is being investigated by the Secret Service and possibly linked to the data breach that enabled hackers to access millions of credit card numbers belonging to Target store customers. Fazio Mechanical Services Inc., of Sharpsburg, issued the statement after Internet security bloggers identified it as the third-party vendor through which hackers accessed Target's customer information. Target had previously told reporters the store believed hackers accessed 40 million of its customers' card numbers through a vendor's system.

Target shoppers can now sign up for free credit monitoring and identity theft assistance, which the discount chain is offering to all customers affected by its security breach. Target will pay for the services for 12 months, provided by Experian through its ProtectMyID alert system. After a year, consumers must pay for the service themselves if they choose to continue. To enroll, first visit CreditMonitoring.Target.com to request an activation code. You'll need to provide your name and email address. The activation code will be sent by email, arriving in one to five days, Target said. Once you have your unique...

WASHINGTON – Insurers have raised concerns that too few young people are signing up for heath insurance through the ObamaCare exchanges after newly released statistics showed that less than a quarter of people who have enrolled are between the ages of 18 and 34. According to the numbers released Monday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, only 24 percent – or 489,460 – of the 2.2 million people who signed up for ACA were in the coveted 18-to-34 age range. That means the government has hit only 18 percent of its stated goal of registering 2.7 million...

Federal auditors said Friday the Social Security Administration still struggles with a basic problem — figuring out who is dead and who is not. The question is a crucial one, since federal agencies rely on the administration to cross-match data on deceased persons and avoid paying out federally funded benefits to people who aren’t alive, or to establish accurate benefits for survivors. The administration also maintains a “Death Master File” that is available to the public. “SSA’s methods for processing death reports may result in inaccurate, incomplete or untimely information for users of its death data,” the Government Accountability Office,...