First, let me say that when I brought Meets The Weird back online, I had no idea how amazing an experience it would be. This site has helped me to open my eyes to all sorts of wonderful weirdness that I otherwise may have passed right by without noticing. Unfortunately, my job and personal life have been leaving me with less and less time to devote to the site. It was a hard choice, but I have decided to bring Meets The Weird to an end. The site itself will remain online for the foreseeable future, but there will be no new posts.

I would like to thank everyone that has taken the time to read Meets The Weird. I means a lot to me that will all of the amazing content on the net that you chose to devote any of your personal time to my site. I will definitely miss getting to write for you.

Thank you again

John

image courtesy of the EFF  

Today the Wall Street Journal announced that it uncovered a new government program ominously dubbed “Perfect Citizen”. The project will bring NSA monitoring equipment to corporate computer networks that the government deems to be “critical infrastructure” with the stated goal of detecting cyber-attacks. Sources familiar with “Perfect Citizen” told the Wall Street Journal that “[the NSA] wouldn’t persistently monitor the whole system”, which is troubling since that statement indicates that the system can be persistently monitored. Since the NSA had no qualms about illegally tapping every phone in America, how can they be trusted not to abuse the “Perfect Citizen” system? In my mind, trusting the NSA with this power is akin to leaving a junkie locked in a room with their drug of choice and telling them not to touch it. For now at least, companies will have to opt-in to allowing the NSA to install sensors onto their networks. However, with the recent Chinese attack on Google held up as an example, what company would choose not to participate in program to “protect national security”, especially if there was any chance of it being leaked that they declined to participate in something called “Perfect Citizen” (ever notice that the more onerous the program or law the more patriotic sounding the name – PATRIOT Act anyone?).

This of course brings me to the obvious poster child for “Perfect Citizen”, Google. At the beginning of this year it came to light that a number of systems belonging to Google, as well as systems of several other large corporations were penetrated by hackers. According to Google (and later persons within the US government as high ranking as Secretary of State Clinton) the attacks originated from China. From the onset the attack was represented to the public as a state sponsored cyber-attack. In fact, the phrase “act of war” was bandied about in some circles. As Google’s investigation progressed (aided by the NSA), however, little supporting evidence was presented despite strong accusations against the Chinese Government. For the world at large the die had been cast, China had attacked US computers. Admittedly, even I accepted Google’s story as fact. At least until this morning when the Wall Street Journal released the details of “Perfect Citizen”. I started thinking, why would China risk such a widespread attack that was certain to be uncovered and could possibly be considered an act of war. Especially in the case of Google where (according to what we were told) the attacks targeted uncovering dissidents, whose identities are almost certainly not worth going to war to uncover.

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Unfortunately, we don’t have much information about this video other than it was supposedly filmed somewhere in the UK. According to Youtube user evpman, he was out filming chemtrails when he spotted this strange object overhead, which he reports was red in color. While even the witness thinks there is a possibility that this may just be a balloon, I am not ready to say that it is with any certainty. This is primarily because the object appears to be very stable in flight, which is not something that you would expect a balloon carried aloft to exhibit. What do you think, did evpman capture a UFO on film or is what he saw a simple balloon?

Strange Object in the Sky [via Latest UFO Sightings]