Investments

Two anecdotes, separated by 52 years and a continent, converge to add a new twist to the heated District 17 California State Assembly race to fill the seat of San Francisco progressive stalwart Tom Ammiano. In one Ex-CIA agent, Phil Agee, who was the Edward Snowden of his day, talks of his direct influence in Latin American electoral politics. In another, a tech start-up dumps money into the campaign of a San Francisco board of Supervisors member running for state Assembly.

The Guardian recently ran a story, which was part of a series, on Wonga. Although the legalized loan shark has received buckets of flying mud from many quarters, the Guardian missed a spot. While the public dialogue has noted Wonga’s capital backers, a detail that had been missed is that Wonga is backed by a trio of companies with a history of investment in intelligence community projects.

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision stated clearly that in America corporations are people and have rights. It did not say whether or not corporations have souls. It is not clear if the Supreme Court can transcend it's normal temporal level of power and grant a corporation a soul. If so such a thing were to happen, would said corporate soul transcend national boundaries or would the corporation still be soulless across the Rio Grande at a maquiladora?

Free Press readers may be familiar with Scytl, the promoter of online and mobile voting, and their apparent connections to the intelligence community. Renewed research into Scytl has revealed new connections to the intelligence community, new market positioning, and new opportunities for both personalized surveillance and electronic election fraud.

Neighborhoods are small communities. Communities have bonds. They also have rivalries. They also have gossip and intrigue, albeit on a petty scale. Through the efforts of Mayor Jean Quan and NextDoor.com, the intelligence community and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) are now privy to these tiny pieces of personal information and the larger patters they reveal. Under the auspices of community building and public safety, the public's participation is can now be freely enlisted in the creation of a database of that information.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, seems very cheery in recent interviews. His new business plan has excited not only Bezos, but the speculative corporate press. The new plan is simple, efficient, and oddly alienating: drone delivery.

Far from the centers of worldwide financial trading, Ohio State University gave an award to an intelligence industry academic, while he called for more secrecy. Less than 24 hours earlier, the intelligence community ensured itself a tighter grasp on one of the key tools that we, the global public, use communicate amongst ourselves – Twitter.

On October 15 in partnership with USA Today The Ohio State University (OSU) sponsored the third in a series of panels by the Bipartisan Policy Center's Commission on Political Reform. The Center intends to hold a series of town hall style meetings to build the appearance of national consensus around policy recommendations they intend to offer Congress and the President in 2014. The event took place on the same day that the Center and USA Today released a joint poll claiming that most Americans support the Center's conclusions.