Marc Faber, who authors the Gloom Boom & Doom newsletter, is usually pretty bearish on stocks and bullish on gold.
Lately, though, gold doesn't seem like it can catch a bid.
"Despite the continued reverberations regarding the Cyprus bailout and its involvement of bank deposits, gold struggled to maintain the positive momentum created in the first two weeks of March and instead now looks very likely to move lower, towards $1580/oz," wrote Deutsche Bank commodities analyst Xiao Fu in a note this morning.
So, what does Faber have to say about it?
This morning, on Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene and Alix Steel, Dr. Doom was asked why gold wasn't holding up.
Here's his explanation:
When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker. I just mentioned that it doesn't flow evenly into the system.
Now from time to time it will lift the NASDAQ like between 1997 and March 2000. Then it lifted home prices in the U.S. until 2007. Then it lifted the commodity prices in 2008 until July 2008 when the global economy was already in recession. More recently it has lifted selected emerging economies, stock markets in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, up four times from 2009 lows and now the U.S.
So we are creating bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. This bubble will come to an end. My concern is that we are going to have a systemic crisis where it is going to be very difficult to hide. Even in gold, it will be difficult to hide.
Faber is, of course, still bearish on U.S. stocks. He told Bloomberg that he sees "considerable downside risk" in the market.http://www.businessinsider.com/faber-gold-wont-be-a-place-to-hide-2013-3#ixzz2OpiibTJQ
FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as “Top Priority” for 2013
Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital
communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google
Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau
says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet
conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.
Last week, during a talk for the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., FBI general
counsel Andrew Weissmann discussed some of the pressing surveillance and
national security issues facing the bureau. He gave a few updates on the FBI’s
efforts to address what it calls the “going dark” problem—how the rise in popularity of email and
social networks has stifled its ability to monitor communications as they are
being transmitted. It’s no secret that under the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act, the feds can easily
obtain archive copies of emails. When it comes to spying on emails or Gchat
in real time, however, it’s a different story.
That’s because a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance
for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet
providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their
networks. But it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers
like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time
surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in
Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for
criminal conversations,” he said.
While it is true that CALEA can only be used to compel Internet and phone
providers to build in surveillance capabilities into their networks, the feds do
have some existing powers to request surveillance of other services. Authorities
can use a “Title III” order under the “Wiretap Act” to ask email and
online chat providers furnish the government with “technical assistance
necessary to accomplish the interception.” However, the FBI claims this is not
sufficient because mandating that providers help with “technical assistance” is
not the same thing as forcing them to “effectuate” a wiretap. In 2011, then-FBI
general counsel Valerie Caproni—Weissmann’s predecessor—stated that Title III orders did not provide the bureau with
an "effective lever" to "encourage providers" to set up live surveillance
quickly and efficiently. In other words, the FBI believes it doesn’t have enough
power under current legislation to strong-arm companies into providing real-time
wiretaps of communications.
Because Gmail is sent between a user’s computer and Google’s servers using SSL
encryption, for instance, the FBI can’t intercept it as it is flowing across
networks and relies on the company to provide it with access. Google spokesman
Chris Gaither hinted that it is already possible for the company to set up live
surveillance under some circumstances. “CALEA doesn't apply to Gmail but an
order under the Wiretap Act may,” Gaither told me in an email. “At some point we
may expand our transparency
report to cover this topic in more depth, but until then I'm not able to
provide additional information.”
Either way, the FBI is not happy with the current arrangement and is on a
crusade for more surveillance authority. According to Weissmann, the bureau is
working with “members of intelligence community” to craft a proposal for new
Internet spy powers as “a top priority this year.” Citing security concerns, he
declined to reveal any specifics. “It's a very hard thing to talk about
publicly,” he said, though acknowledged that “it's something that there should
be a public debate about.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html
Little-known surveillance tool raises concerns by judges, privacy activists
Federal investigators in Northern California routinely used a sophisticated surveillance system to scoop up data from cellphones and other wireless devices in an effort to track criminal suspects — but failed to detail the practice to judges authorizing the probes.
The practice was disclosed Wednesday in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California — in a glimpse into a technology that federal agents rarely discuss publicly.
The investigations used a device known as a StingRay, which simulates a cellphone tower and enables agents to collect the serial numbers of individual cellphones and then locate them. Although law enforcement officials can employ StingRays and similar devices to locate suspects, privacy groups and some judges have raised concerns that the technology is so invasive — in some cases effectively penetrating the walls of homes — that its use should require a warrant.
The issues, judges and activists say, are twofold: whether federal agents are informing courts when seeking permission to monitor suspects, and whether they are providing enough evidence to justify the use of a tool that sweeps up data not only from a suspect’s wireless device but also from those of bystanders in the vicinity.
In Northern California, according to the newly disclosed documents, judges expressed concerns about the invasive nature of the technology.
“It has recently come to my attention that many agents are still using [StingRay] technology in the field although the [surveillance] application does not make that explicit,” Miranda Kane, then chief of the criminal division of the Northern California U.S. attorney’s office, said in a May 2011 e-mail obtained by the ACLU.
As a result of that, she wrote, “effective immediately, all . . . applications and proposed orders must be reviewed by your line supervisor before they are submitted to a magistrate judge.”
The Justice Department has generally maintained that a warrant based on probable cause is not needed to use a “cell-site simulator” because the government is not employing them to intercept conversations, former officials said. But some judges around the country have disagreed and have insisted investigators first obtain a warrant.
“It’s unsettled territory,” said one U.S. law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the record.
In a statement, Christopher Allen, a spokesman for the FBI, said the bureau advises field offices to “work closely with the relevant U.S. Attorney’s Office to adhere to the legal requirements” of their respective districts.
One of the problems is there is “scant law” addressing the issue of cell-site simulators, said Brian L. Owsley, a federal magistrate judge in the Southern District of Texas, who in June wrote a rare public ruling on the issue. He denied an application to use a StingRay, in large part because he felt the investigating agent failed to explain the technology or how it would be used to gather the target’s cellphone number.
“Neither the special agent nor the assistant United States attorney appeared to understand the technology very well,” Owsley wrote. “At a minimum, they seemed to have some discomfort in trying to explain it.”
At a recent conference on cellphone tracking issues at Yale University, Owsley said he thought that “there are magistrate judges around the country that are getting these requests and not realizing what these requests are,” in some cases perhaps because the agents are not clear about their intent to use the technology.
“By withholding information about this technology from courts in applications for electronic surveillance orders, the federal government is essentially seeking to write its own search warrants,” said Linda Lye, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.
Judges “need the opportunity to require privacy safeguards, such as rules on how to handle the data of innocent people that may be captured by the devices as well,” she said.Lye will be arguing the issue on Thursday in a federal case in Arizona, in support of a defendant charged with tax fraud and identity theft. Daniel Rigmaiden, known as “the Hacker” to acquaintances and federal agents, was tracked in part with the use of a StingRay. He has alleged that investigators did not seek a court’s approval to use the technology.
“The main concern we have in Rigmaiden is the government was not being forthright with the magistrate when it was seeking to use this device,” said Lye, whose organization is one of several that have filed an amicus brief in the case.
The newly disclosed documents suggest that “Rigmaiden was not an isolated case,” she said.
The government said it obtained a warrant to track Rigmaiden, but the ACLU is arguing that the government did not present key information about the surveillance device to the magistrate, rendering the warrant invalid.
Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s principal technologist, said cell-site simulators are being used by local, state and federal authorities.
“No matter how the StingRay is used — to identify, locate or intercept — they always send signals through the walls of homes,” which should trigger a warrant requirement, Soghoian said. “The signals always penetrate a space protected by the Fourth Amendment.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/little-known-surveillance-tool-raises-concerns-by-judges-privacy-activists/2013/03/27/8b60e906-9712-11e2-97cd-3d8c1afe4f0f_story.html
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