Mother accuses school of forcing 13 year old girl to give Facebook password

Besides being an obvious violation of privacy, it just sounds creepy not to mention wrong. School officials are claiming no such thing happened, that it would open the school up to legal problems. Hopefully there's a big mistake with this story because there is no way this should be tolerated. MSNBC.com:

Pam Broviak, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Geneva, Ill., says her daughter was traumatized when the principal of Geneva Middle School South forced the child to log in to her Facebook account, then rummaged through the girl's private information.

"What a violation of my daughter's privacy this whole episode was," Broviak said. The incident took "a huge toll on my daughter, who ended up crying through most of the rest of the day and therefore missed most of her classes. She was embarrassed and very upset."

There have been several descriptions lately of Facebook prying by schools – and one lawsuit was filed recently by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff against a school district that allegedly demanded a student’s social media passwords. But Broviak may be the first parent to go public with concerns about what she sees as serious violations of student privacy.

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François Hollande pledges support for gay marriage in France

The new French government is planning to make a number of changes on the economy, but they're also looking at many other changes from the past including support for gay marriage. Read the story at AMERICAblogGay. Read the rest of this post...

Facebook sued for tracking users, even after they logged out

Hundreds of millions of people use Facebook and like (and love) it, but the regular stream of privacy problems encouraged me to delete my account years ago. As the financial pressure on Facebook to hit quarterly and annual numbers increases, this is likely to get worse than it already is today.

Privacy matters:

Facebook is being sued for $15 billion for tracking users, even after they have logged out of the social network, and violating federal wiretap laws. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is: Facebook faces nationwide class action tracking cookie lawsuit.

Today’s lawsuit, filed in Federal Court in San Jose, California, combines 21 separate cases across the U.S. in 2011 and early 2012. It’s an amended consolidated class-action complaint that claims the company is invading the privacy of its users by tracking them across the Internet. If the claimants are successful in their case against Facebook, they could prevent Menlo Park from collecting the huge amount of data it collects about its users to serve ads back to them.

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ECB official: EU banks "very close to having a collapse" last autumn

It has been clear for a while that this banking crisis was not going away any time soon. We now know for certain that the European banks were in bad condition last autumn and this week, we're seeing the downgrade of 16 banks in Spain including the global behemoth Santander. There remains plenty of uncertainty due to the ongoing issues in Greece, Spain and the Eurozone in general.

We're four years on from the crash, so when will the banking crisis end? So far it's been mostly about pain for the general population and too little change for the banks. More on the crisis from The Guardian:

A senior executive at the European Central Bank has admitted eurozone banks were on the brink of collapse last autumn.

In an interview with the BBC to be broadcast on Thursday, Benoît Coeuré, executive director of the ECB, said: "In the autumn of 2011 the conditions were very dangerous … European banks were facing severe difficulties to fund themselves, to access finance, and we were very close to having a collapse in the banking system in the euro area, which would have also led to a collapse in the economy and to deflation. And this is something that the ECB could not accept."

The concern about the state of the banking system led to €1tn being lent to banks through three-year loans and came as UK banks were told to make preparations for a potential exit of countries from the single currency.

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"Catfood Clinton" rides again—at a Pete Peterson summit to kill Social Security

Wealth inequity is not a by-product — it's the goal.

If you read here regularly, you know that Pete Peterson, the crazed billionaire who lives, breathes, eats and ... well ... to take down Social Security — a man who has spent a half billion dollars on that soulless psychopathic project — just held a Washington DC "summit" aimed at killing what he loves to hate.

Your safety net.

Granny needs some catfood in her diet, because U.S. income inequity hasn't topped out yet. There's still room on the upside.

The news — at that "summit" spoke the Big Dog himself, "Catfood Bill" Clinton (h/t Digby for the quote and for leaning on this hard):

“Our party’s problem is, we are always reluctant to give up the gains of the past to create the future,” Bill Clinton told the audience at the Pete Peterson’s fiscal summit. “Democrats are reluctant to commit to longer-term health-care savings; they don’t want to touch Social Security.”

That's all you need to know. What Digby said: "I think it's going to happen this time."

Who's helping make it happen? How about Nancy Pelosi? How about "your" Progressive Congressional Caucus?

Yes, these loveable madcaps are rumoring it about (I have grapevine ears) that they're really playing some super-smart chess of their own — acing the Republicans at their own game (wink wink).

I agree — this is what they want us to think they're doing. This may even be what they do think they're doing. But that doesn't make it what they really are doing.

What they really are doing is adding their voices to the roar for "entitlement reform." And doing it rather well, thank you.

How's this for entitlement reform:

You're not entitled to the name "progressive" unless you act like one.

Is that wrong? Prove it wrong. With deeds.

Action opportunity — I still like freeway blogging in Pelosi's district. It's cheap, and a determined, persistent bunch of self-enabling progressives can maybe make some noise. Besides, the "ex-liberal" slogans just write themselves. Here's a few:

"Ex-liberal Nancy Pelosi supports Catfood for Granny. Thanks, Nancy."

"Nancy stands with Steny — Let's reduce Social Security benefits just as soon as we're safely re-elected."

Or more playfully:

"Nancy & Steny, sitting in a tree
Killing Social Secur-i-ty"

I'd add a little picture to that last one. Might make the news.

How bad does gavel-ready Nancy need to keep her fundraising "brand" — the thing she wants you to think she is? You could find out. There are lots of ways to de-brand progressives who act badly.

Remember — you don't need permission to act. Just think it through first — find the leverage points (like branding), don't be violent, and press. (Joe Sudbay did just that at the 2010 Blogger Roundtable. All it takes is courage and action.)

And finally, a little video for your midnight freakout fun. Here's Catfood Clinton and BFF Paul Ryan, another "summit" featured speaker, fixing to fix you good. Hands across the aisle:



More from Clinton here.

And here's our "fierce defender" — winner of the 2008 presidential ad campaign — perhaps making plans for the looming lame duck session:



They don't want what you want, folks. They want what they want. "Catfood Bill" has his, and you can't have yours.

What Digby said: "I think it's going to happen this time." Ready to fight a tad more effectively? Me too. Hey, we might even win.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Led Zeppelin - Achilles Last Stand @ Knebworth '79

One of those involved in the now $3 billion loss at JPMorgan is named "Achilles" which reminded me of this Led Zeppelin classic. Although I didn't care for Led Zeppelin as a kid I've grown to appreciate just how good they were and really like this song. It also says a lot that the band didn't care about fitting songs into the normal radio friendly 2-3 minutes and instead chose to record what they wanted to record.

The JPMorgan "risk" officer Achilles Macris is supposed to be leaving the company though as of Friday, it sounded as though the negotiations were continuing. Despite what Americans think about Europe, it most definitely is possible to fire workers in Europe. The process takes longer and is more expensive but it's always possible. Read the rest of this post...

More signs of economic problems in China

Demand for raw materials from abroad has been slowing and real estate has been showing signs of cracking for a while. The next few months will be a difficult test for China, but with an economy as large as theirs that requires constant growth, it won't be easy. Any growth below 8% will be a sign of trouble, which means a high risk of social instability. At the moment, China is on a fine line and may fall below that growth level. Bloomberg:

China’s home prices fell in a record number of cities last month and car dealers posted inventory levels that foreshadowed deeper price cuts, adding to signs of slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

Prices of new homes fell from a year earlier in 46 of the 70 cities tracked by the National Bureau of Statistics, the agency said today. Dealerships for Honda Motor Co., Chery Automobile Co., BYD Co. (1211) and Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. had more than 45 days of inventory at the end of last month, according to an official from the government-backed China Automobile Dealers Association.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. today joined banks including Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG in lowering its estimate for China’s second-quarter growth after weaker-than-forecast economic data released last week. The nation’s expansion may drop to a 13-year low this year, a Bloomberg News survey this week showed, as Europe’s debt crisis crimps exports and a campaign to rein in property speculation curbs domestic demand.

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Comcast with a surprise price increase?

Surprise, surprise. Comcast is changing the terms again on their already outrageously expensive internet offering. For about the same price (even with the bad exchange rate) as Comcast internet alone, customers in France can have fiber optic 100MB internet, phone calls around the world at no additional cost and a bunch of TV channels. The same combination in the US will be considerably more expensive and probably slower than the French offering.

Instead of offering more for US customers or a faster product, Comcast is going against online trends and changing prices to punish users who use services such as Hulu or other streaming video. It's almost as though Comcast is admitting that they're lazy and haven't properly invested in modern technology for their customers. Why else would they create a new price list to punish customers who are using these services?

Just as the US needs serious competition for mobile phones, the US needs real competition for internet offerings. What's out there today is expensive and backwards and not in line with what American consumers deserve. If US internet providers can't match or beat what's offered in France, they need to clean house and start over.

CNNMoney:

Though Comcast, the country's largest broadband provider, said it hasn't reached a decision on how it will implement the tiers, it will be pilot-testing two possible solutions in yet-to-be-determined markets.

The first program will set different allotments for different tiers of service, starting at 300 GB per month, and charge customers for additional blocks of usage when they go over. The example the company gave was $10 more for 50 GB of additional data.

The second approach would give everyone 300 GB per month, and then charge for additional usage in blocks.

And for the Comcast workers who often jump into comments about how great the company is and how much they donate to Democratic candidates, please focus on when Comcast is going to start being competitive with First World countries. Comcast's prices are horrendous and the company would collapse if they had real competition. Read the rest of this post...