Free Republic

The primetime airing of remarks of billionaire technology entrepreneur Peter Thiel at the Republican National Convention was no accident. Thiel was given a starring role at the convention to make some things clear. That although lip service may be paid in the party platform to traditional, biblical values and opposition to gay marriage, this is really no longer what the GOP is about. Thiel brought his credentials as a high-tech billionaire to the stage to announce to the world that he is gay. In this, those organizing the convention told the world that, despite what the platform says, Thiel represents...

The final night of the Republican National Convention was as confusing and incoherent as it was disturbing. Before Donald Trump brought forward his chilling imitation of history’s greatest fascists, Ivanka Trump and Peter Thiel made bizarre plays for the votes of women and LGBT people. Ivanka Trump riffed on issues like equal pay and affordable childcare, which are typically Democratic issues. Thiel announced that he’s “proud to be gay” to wild applause from a roomful of people who are the very base that voted against the rights and dignity of LGBT people, over and over again. “This is a distraction...

A bigger problem than Mr. Trump’s policy ideas was his tone. Though Silicon Valley has well-known problems with diversity in its work force, people here pride themselves on a kind of militant open-mindedness. It is the kind of place that will severely punish any deviations from accepted schools of thought...

Facebook Inc is considering incorporating most of its 1 billion-plus members’ profile photos into its growing facial recognition database, expanding the scope of the social network’s controversial technology. The possible move, which Facebook revealed in an update to its data use policy on Thursday, is intended to improve the performance of its “Tag Suggest” feature. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling or “tagging” friends and acquaintances who appear in photos posted on the network. … The changes would come at a time when Facebook and other Internet companies’ privacy practices are under scrutiny,...

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian. The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court. The October 2011 judgment, which was declassified on Wednesday by the Obama administration, found that the NSA's inability to separate purely domestic communications from...

“PRISM” is the government’s name for a program that uses technology from Palantir. Palantir is a Silicon Valley start-up that’s now valued at well over $1B, that focuses on data analysis for the government. Here’s how Palantir describes themselves: “We build software that allows organizations to make sense of massive amounts of disparate data. We solve the technical problems, so they can solve the human ones. Combating terrorism. Prosecuting crimes. Fighting fraud. Eliminating waste. From Silicon Valley to your doorstep, we deploy our data fusion platforms against the hardest problems we can find, wherever we are needed most.” http://www.palantir.com/what-we-do/

Since rumors began to spread that a startup called Palantir helped to kill Osama bin Laden, Alex Karp hasn’t had much time to himself. On one sun-baked July morning in Silicon Valley Palantir’s lean 45-year-old chief executive, with a top-heavy mop of frazzled hair, hikes the grassy hills around Stanford University’s massive satellite antennae known as the Dish, a favorite meditative pastime. But his solitude is disturbed somewhat by “Mike,” an ex-Marine–silent, 6 foot 1, 270 pounds of mostly pectoral muscle–who trails him everywhere he goes. Even on the suburban streets of Palo Alto, steps from Palantir’s headquarters, the bodyguard...

And guess where they’re located? That’s right: Facebook’s former building.I couldn’t make it up if I tried.Via: Bloomberg:An organization like the CIA or FBI can have thousands of different databases, each with its own quirks: financial records, DNA samples, sound samples, video clips, maps, floor plans, human intelligence reports from all over the world. Gluing all that into a coherent whole can take years. Even if that system comes together, it will struggle to handle different types of data—sales records on a spreadsheet, say, plus video surveillance images. What Palantir (pronounced Pal-an-TEER) does, says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner...

Posted in ubiwar Tagged intelligence, terrorism SNIPPET: "Friends of this blog and others, Palantir Technologies, are profiled in a new article by Siobhan Gorman in the Wall Street Journal, How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade: From a Silicon Valley office strewn with bean-bag chairs, a group of twenty-something software engineers is building an unlikely following of terrorist hunters at US spy agencies."

The bottom feeders at Gawker are going under. Arrivederci, a- -holes! News of the slime Web site’s bankruptcy filing is schadenfreude-licious for those of us who, like wrestler Hulk Hogan and Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel, were victimized by these Internet thugs but didn’t have the resources to fight back in court.

“Gawker Media has filed for bankruptcy.” Those words were the most positive assembly of pixels to have ever appeared on the smear site and are reason for all of us to celebrate. Gawker finally got theirs yesterday. After years of gossip-terrorism and vile internet bullying — all masquerading under the guise of journalism — someone finally put a knife in the wretched, pablum Orc once and for all.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Donald J. Trump would not be Silicon Valley’s first choice as president. Or its second. Or maybe even its third. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee wants to restrict immigration while bringing back manufacturing. He compulsively uses tech products like Twitter but is not in awe of the people who built them. He made his fortune the old-fashioned way, by going into the family business, in the old-fashioned industry of real estate. He’s not the valley’s kind of entrepreneur. Worst of all, Mr. Trump is revealing Silicon Valley’s vulnerability. In recent years, technology companies have extended their...

Tech entrepreneur Scott Banister has long been an ally to the liberty movement. The angel investor, IronPort founder, and PayPal board member donated $3 million to a Rand Paul supporting Super PAC, and has been a vocal supporter of the libertarian Republican. Now that Rand Paul is out of the presidential race, Banister has thrown his support behind Ted Cruz. Cruz is a self-described constitutional conservative who earned the endorsements of both Rand and Ron Paul in his 2012 Texas Senate race. Scott Banister Our best chance for a constitutional presidency is now @tedcruz. #LibertariansForCruz Cruz's relationship with the Pauls...

Tea Party-backed Senate candidate Ted Cruz points with pride to the army of small conservative donors supporting him. But his largest longtime contributor is a gay billionaire who supports same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, campaign finance filings show. Peter Thiel, a German-born hedge fund manager and founder of the online payment system PayPal, gave Cruz $251,000 in 2009 for his aborted run for attorney general. The money represented 19 percent of the total raised for that campaign, which Cruz ended after Attorney General Greg Abbott decided to run for re-election. Thiel’s political and financial support for gay rights and legal...

Pointing to the effects of "horrible" super-PACs, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday said America needs to come up with a solution to keep big money out of politics. "Well, I think you need it, because I think PACs are a horrible thing," Trump said on CNN's "State of the Union" when asked if he would pursue campaign finance reform. The billionaire businessman, who said he is self-financing his campaign, said the wall separating super-PACs and candidates running for public office is illusory. "First of all, everyone's dealing with their PAC. You know, it's supposed to be like this...

RUSH: Yesterday in Washington, the Christian Science Monitor breakfast -- (interruption) You know what's coming? Senator Trent Lott, former Senator Trent Lott, Republican, Mississippi, was the guest, and he was speaking about immigration reform and told a story about immigration reform and the Republicans' attempt to do it in 2007. LOTT: My phones were jammed for a week or two. Rush Limbaugh gave out my phone number. We lost that vote in 2007 on a procedural vote. I thought we were gonna be able to win that. But over the weekend Rush Limbaugh labeled it amnesty, and labor got a...

Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2013, 9:05 AM Today may be your last chance to make a difference in the Senate amnesty fight. Three votes are scheduled for today with the final cloture vote likely to come tomorrow morning. Call your Senators NOW toll-free at 888-995-8349. Tell them to vote NO on S.744. The bill grants amnesty first with only promises of future enforcement, and, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, it increases unemployment while decreasing wages.

This video was created for instruct members of NumbersUSA to help get a bill passed (E-Verify), but I can picture a more perfect lesson in civics for any grass-roots conservative movement. http://numbersusa.tv/ The bill being discussed would mandate E-Verify, a program which helps business detect identity fraud by illegal aliens, so that immigration laws can be enforced. NumbersUSA is *not* a conservative organization, per se; like the NRA, they focus on a single issue, which happens to be very popular among conservatives. Vast majorities of all Americans support NumbersUSA's goal of reducing illegal immigration (and certain types of "legal" immigration,...

Updated: 04/06/11 2012 Presidential Hopefuls' Immigration Stances Chart at link.

     From:   Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA Date:   Friday 22JUN07     4:30 p.m. EDT   Take a look at this list -- figure out what you should do with Senators from your state or neighbor   DEAR FRIENDS, We need 41 Senators to vote NO on cloture next Tuesday or to not show up for the vote. Sen. Johnson (D-S.D.) is still seriously ill and expected to be a no-show. We believe we have solid commitments from 32 other Senators that they will vote NO on cloture that would allow the Kennedy/Bush amnesty (S. 1639) to come to the Senate...