But Pingel, along with more than three million of his fellow truckers in the United States, is facing a regulatory upheaval which will cost his industry an estimated $2 billion and fundamentally change the way he does his job. Over the next few years, it will become mandatory, by law, for all American truckers to carry a tracking device, an electronic on-board recorder (EOBR), in their vehicle. And Pingel isn’t happy about it.
No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.
Mr. Binney said that without new leadership, new laws and top-to-bottom reform, the agency will represent a threat of “turnkey totalitarianism” — the capability to turn its awesome power, now directed mainly against other countries, on the American public
(9 page article)
N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens
The budget document, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, shows that the agency is pouring money and manpower into creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion “record events” daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes.
.. A year earlier, an internal briefing paper from the N.S.A. Office of Legal Counsel showed that the agency was allowed to collect and retain raw traffic, which includes both metadata and content, about “U.S. persons” for up to five years online and for an additional 10 years offline for “historical searches.”
Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones
a Taiwan Defense Ministry report said that as of mid-2011, the Chinese Air Force alone had more than 280 drone units, and analysts say the other branches have thousands, which means China’s fleet count is second only to the 7,000 or so of the United States.
.. American drones “are not designed to enter into contested or denied air space,” Mr. Easton said. “So they would be unable to fight in any conflict with China.”
China, on the other hand, is building drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles, precisely to operate in contested spaces.