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Pretty sure the ACLU is not ignoring civil asset forfeiture.

Most reasonable people could come up with a list of the types of content they feel should be banned; when governments get involved then it becomes censorship, even if we agree with what is banned.

You're wrong here. Censorship can also be carried out by private entities. References: ACLU, Oxford dictionary, Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia.

I simply disagree that is censorship. Private organization's can chose what they want to say and how, simply because they chose not to speak is not censorship since it is a personal choice; I only consider it censorship if a governmental body prevents them from speaking.

Most reasonable people could come up with a list of the types of content they feel should be banned; when governments get involved then it becomes censorship, even if we agree with what is banned.

You're wrong here. Censorship can also be carried out by private entities. References: ACLU, Oxford dictionary, Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia.

There's more information at Wyden's press release.

In addition to Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., the original cosponsors are Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Jon Tester, D-Mont. I would hope Bernie Sanders would support the bill but I don't personally know how much one can read into him not being an original cosponsor.

The above press release includes a link to a readable (warning, PDF) 1-page summary. The last sentence lists other supporters/commenters of the bill:

For more information, see comments by ACLU, Google, EFF/Access, OTI, CDT, NACDL, the security researchers Bellovin, Blaze, and Landau, and the Agenda Books from the U.S. Courts.

I have to say, if it is public posts, what's the problem?

The problem is that SnapTrends passes on the posts to school security, and school security passes on the posts to the police.

The problem is that school security, and the police, can interrogate students under coercion.

Students in a situation like that don't have a right to a lawyer, and they may not even have a right to remain silent.

Police are skilled at manipulating adults, to say nothing of children, into false confessions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and the school police have been prosecuting normal childhood behavior as crimes.

As Slashdot readers could guess, they prosecute minority children disproportionately http://njdc.info/wp-content/up...

Example in point: Lazy "undercover cop" has a secret drug sting and nabs an Autistic student who likely has no idea what's going on: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

Shit like this happens all the time - only in extreme cases like this (the school district tried to expel student after he graduated - only to ruin the student's life) where the situation is pretty clear, and the parents are super-engaged to fight does it come out in the light.

All part of the job for corrupt school administrators, cops, and even school district boardmembers who benefit and profit from the prison industry: https://www.aclu.org/fact-shee...

http://www.history.com/topics/...

And Ronald Regan closed all the insane asylums,
https://www.aclu.org/aclu-hist...

Child molesters ARE terrorists.

No. Just, no. People need to stop calling every crime an act of terrorism. It's because of people like you that we have FoxNews calling protesters terrorists and the Department of Defense calling protests "low-level terrorsim."

"The scale is heavily weighted towards letting guilty people go free, over convicting an innocent person."

Are you sure about that?

They're kind of correct. What I can suggest is that you start here and work your way out:
https://www.aclu.org/aclu-hist...

Look for unbiased sources and actual documents. The Left wanted (and keep in mind the political spectrum was a bit messier at that point with lots of Southern Democrats and Compassionate Republicans at the time) to, you know, stop fucking abusing the mentally ill. It's a just idea.

Except, the States were pretty broke. They couldn't really afford to house all of them AND give them the treatment they deserved. So, they kinda, sorta, basically let anyone go who was able to say they wanted to be free and showed they understood the concept of freedom. It really wasn't much more precise than that unless they were an obvious danger to themselves and the community and they sometimes let them go too.

This kept going until a bunch of suits throughout the 80s and even into the very early 1990s.

And yeah, you need to keep in mind that the spectrum was a bit more muddled then. When I was younger we had Democrats, elected ones, on television saying that the niggers didn't need belong in school with the whites. (I'm part black.) And, to make it more salient, the citizenry was largely cheering them on. No, it really wasn't the majority who were wanting equal rights, that's another myth. It was a very vocal minority who were tearing shit up and making the white people look bad. It should be noted that some of that minority (that was tearing things up) was also white.

I was not born a full-class citizen of your country.

President Reagan himself pretty much destroyed mental health facilities serving lower income populations in the United States.

This is a relatively common left-wing urban myth. The ACLU is still proud of ensuring the involuntarily committed were released out of the "institutions". That was in the 60s and 70s, before Reagan was President. You can't blame him for being governor of CA, either, as the number of patients in State mental hospitals went from 37,500 to 22,000 in the years before he took office.

So go complain to the left-wing ACLU and the academic psychiatrists who influenced the courts and the bureaucracy in the 60s and 70s to get them all out of mental hospitals, rather than simply assigning blame to people you don't like something they weren't responsible for.

Next you'll be telling us about how the right-wing is governing San Francisco into the group, despite Democrat-led City, County, State and Federal administrations....

Or what has become increasingly popular: charge the person's possessions with a crime and take them to increase yearly revenue. In some years, the police have taken more from people than burglars.

This is awesome news, but there is a threat here:

may someday allow roadways to charge vehicles while they are being driven

I'm fairly certain, that future technology will not allow anonymous charging. It could, but it will not — for the same gratuitous reasons you can't use and recharge a toll-paying transponder anonymously (the way you could use a phone-calling card, for example), but must associate it with both yourself and your car. (Well, New Hampshire, sort of, makes it possible to avoid providing your name, but the cars must still be listed in advance.)

And it is increasingly impossible to drive in certain places without such a transponder, which is, of course, routinely used for surveillance.

As happened with electronic toll-paying, the on-the-road charging too will go from optional to mandatory. Manufacturers will reduce the battery-sizes in many models to save weight and space — and how much of a charge do you need to get from the powered highway to your home (over unpowered streets), right? Effective tracking of your car will become possible. Worse, it may also become possible to remotely disable your car by revoking your access to these chargers.

Today's concerns over license-plate readers may then appear naively quaint...

This is awesome news, but there is a threat here:

may someday allow roadways to charge vehicles while they are being driven

I'm fairly certain, that future technology will not allow anonymous charging. It could, but it will not — for the same gratuitous reasons you can't use and recharge a toll-paying transponder anonymously (the way you could use a phone-calling card, for example), but must associate it with both yourself and your car. (Well, New Hampshire, sort of, makes it possible to avoid providing your name, but the cars must still be listed in advance.)

And it is increasingly impossible to drive in certain places without such a transponder, which is, of course, routinely used for surveillance.

As happened with electronic toll-paying, the on-the-road charging too will go from optional to mandatory. Manufacturers will reduce the battery-sizes in many models to save weight and space — and how much of a charge do you need to get from the powered highway to your home (over unpowered streets), right? Effective tracking of your car will become possible. Worse, it may also become possible to remotely disable your car by revoking your access to these chargers.

Today's concerns over license-plate readers may then appear naively quaint...

Why would the ACLU waste resources when it knows the NRA has 2nd amendment issues covered?

The ACLU is actually against the 2nd Amendment. Here it is in their own words: https://www.aclu.org/second-amendment

They view it as a "collective right" whereas all the rest of the amendments are individual rights. Basically, _someone_ can own a gun, but just not _you_ for arbitrary and whatever reasons they want.

And, begrudgingly admit they don't like the Heller decision.

This speaks volumes for what and why they fight for things. They are not straight up "for the constitution" or "for rights" they are for "a certain brand of leftist rights" This is also why they will never get any money, nor any positive words from me.

Breaking into a 5c iphone:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free...

or went here

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free...

(possible because its a 5c not a 5s)

given unlimited time and money

No, the device would wipe itself after a few tries.

Says who? This is not a default option, so you can only claim that to be the absolute truth if you already have full access to the phone, or have already erased it by trying. In either case Apple couldn't help you.

Anyway An ACLU expert says the FBI wouldn't need Apple to get past the auto-erase

What makes folks think he's privy to this information or knows their full capacity?
What makes everyone believe he's telling us this of his own volition?
How is he an authority on this particular issue, it seems likely to be beyond his scope?

We can read.

This isn't really coming from Snowden, he just happened to be a high profile person who tweeted about it. His statement is based on legal filings by the ACLU and others who point out methods that the FBI could use to crack the PIN code on their own.

For example, they could back up the flash memory, make 10 attempts, the phone wipes it and they restore it and try the next 10 numbers. The link is right in the summary.

The ACLU's site explains it quite well. It has nothing to do with the firmware, it's the idea of copying the Toshiba NAND chip first. Install a test socket onto the board, then start running the password attempts. Get locked out, or the chip erased, pop another NAND chip in with the same image written on it. Repeat until you get in. This would probably take a long time, copying and swapping a chip for every ten attempts. But a process that is annoying is still a long ways from a process that is technically "impossible" as the FBI is claiming.

There's a good ACLU piece this week talking tech about why the FBI is lying.

"mob rule"

A bit rich coming from a typical SJW who hides in the flock of outraged people who aren't even concerned by the legal matter.

Really? That's the best you can do? You can't defend your fascist position, so now you accuse me of being an SJW? You don't know who or what you'r talking about.

Much of the world is watching this case, because of the incredible "argument from fear" that is, again, being raised to circumvent the constitution and people's rights. The FBI and NY police have already admitted they lied when they said it was "just one phone" - that they had over 1,000 phones they wanted to crack. Americans are looking more like scared chickensh*ts every day. "Terrorists terrorists think of the children and screw your civil rights!"

There are plenty of good honest people who pay extra so that they don't have to pass through an American airport because of your useless security theatre and the arbitrary nature and total screw-up of the no-fly list.

And let's not forget the fact that there's a 100-miles-within-the-border no-constitutional-rights zone that affects 200 million americans. Fascisim - it;s a state most americans live in.

One already exists.

1) Have a look at http://law.shu.edu/publication...

Key points for me:
a) Only 5% of gitmo detainees were actually captured by the US. 86% were handed in by' bounty hunters' during a dubious bounty program that offered the public a nice way to get rich while getting rid of anyone you really didn't like :

Get wealth and power beyond your dreams....You can receive millions of
dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al-Qaida and Taliban murders.
This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for
the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and
housing for all your people.

b) Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.

2) Terror laws are being used against US citizens...on US soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Since then[9/11], the Justice Department's Inspector General found that the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of national security letters, a majority against U.S. persons, and many without any connection to terrorism at all."
https://www.aclu.org/top-ten-a...

Americans can be accused of terrorism, with no basis, and be thrown in a hole indefinitely with no right to legal defense or trail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, for me...I'd rather say "Stop" to the government who I feel is out of control. You fight a war, you fight a war - you don't use it as a justification to take away constitutional protections of the citizens who put you in power.

As far as actual fear of terror...I am more afraid or (and statistically much more likely to actually die from) getting hit by a car crossing the street.

So yes, I want the government to obey the law and the constitution. I do not want the government to have more and more power over me because of media inspired fear of something that is not actually a real threat.

I don't have numbers to back it up but I suspect that I am more likely to be hurt by the government, in some way, than I am to be hurt by a terrorist.

Vigalent cameras (and one major competitor plus a host of smaller members of the scanned license plate database industry) are placed in fixed locations as well as attached to damn near every tow truck in the country. This is why tow trucks keep taking quick jaunts through parking lots, going too fast for a human to read plates and check lists. The cameras are reading every plate. It's a bonus reason for them to stage their trucks along congested expressways. These companies compile and keep the data for decades.

https://www.aclu.org/feature/y...

This fool thinks that it's horrible that a detailed database of every license plate that Vigalent cameras ever saw, and the place and time it was seen, is now in the hands of law enforcement and probably soon in available for a small fee. Spouse abusers, kidnappers and hitmen take note. NSA/FBI, whoever can't collect this legally themselves, can now fetch a outline of anyone's life and create a profit for the private industry supplier.

The U.S. government has killed, or caused the death of, an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war.

War is extremely profitable for some corporations: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war that was profitable for them.

In some ways, the U.S. government is the most violent government on earth. For example, the U.S. has the largest percentage of its citizens in prison, of any country, in any century. The prison system is hugely profitable for prison corporations.

ACLU: With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of the world's prison population.

ThinkProgress: The United States Has The Largest Prison Population In The World -- And It's Growing.

Bank statements, ie where I got the money from.

They don't care.
"Morrow, who is black, was taken to jail, where he pleaded with authorities to call his bank to see proof of his recent cash withdrawal. They declined."

As for buying a car - a bank statement is not evidence that you're intending to use the cash to buy a car. They'll say you're intending to use it to buy drugs.

So I go to court with my bank statement and get my money back. That's what courts are for.

“Don’t even bother getting a lawyer. The money always stays here.” - The officer that seized Morrow's money.

BTW, Morrow filed suit in 2008. He finally got his money back in 2013, of which he ended up only getting back $400 after paying most of the recovery towards attorney's fees. Mind you, I support his action because I think that departments shouldn't profit from this stuff. So I'd sue even if it was going to cost me more money.

Just follow the links. The stories are written there.

Where do you grab it from?

ATM withdrawal, generally. But if I wasn't an older white male(yes, they're racist), they wouldn't give a shit. Remember what I said: If you can't prove where it came from, it's from the sale of drugs, they seize it. If you can't prove where it's going, it's to BUY drugs, and they seize it.

Just sold a car? Obviously you sold it to buy drugs. They're seizing the money. Spend $3-5k in attorney fees to get it back.

How did they earn it? That entity, by law must keep records.

I repeat: THE COPS DON'T GIVE A SHIT. Try to go to court to get your $1k back, it's going to cost $5k in fees.

With their native Pesos? Or did they exchange their local currency, at a bank or money changer who is required by law to give a receipt for USD?

What the hell are you talking about? I'm talking about people who immigrated here years ago, often from places like China and Vietnam, who worked hard in the USA to earn USD in the first place.

I'm still struggling to see any scenario when a normal person would be affected by this, but I can see how a lot of dealers get caught out

Sorry, I can't find the bank deposit bag seizure - drowned out by the IRS seizing accounts for 'suspicious' deposit patterns. As for ordinary people, well, think of it as the latest version of setting up a speed trap for out of towners.

The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt in some areas. A few areas of corruption:

Finance: in 2008, banks were allowed to steal from taxpayers. Bank managers were rewarded with extremely high pay: The Divide. "New York Times bestseller -- Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews".

Health care: The new health care system will further bankrupt the country. The ACA, Affordable Care Act, is NOT affordable. #1 Best Seller: America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.

Prison system: The U.S. has the largest percentage of its citizens in prison, of any country, in any century. The prison system is hugely profitable for prison corporations. ACLU: With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of the world's prison population. ThinkProgress: The United States Has The Largest Prison Population In The World -- And It's Growing.

Violence: The U.S. government has killed, or caused the death of, an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. War is extremely profitable for some corporations: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war that was profitable for them.

This is exactly the position of the ACLU. You can't count count on police video to be unbiased. You need to take your own video.

So if I owned property within 30 miles, I can't fly my little RC plane or Quadcopter in my backyard?

The FAA apparently feels it is entitled to make any law it wants by decree even though FAA modernization act specifically bans FAA from imposing regulations specifically targeting model aircraft. They obviously don't care they'll do it anyway as much as *WE* allow them to get away with it.

See also:
https://www.aclu.org/constitut...

But if you want to drive coast to coast anonymously, you can do that. Stay within the speed limit and don't have any malfunctioning vehicle parts, and you have given no one Probable Cause to see you and your license. Avoid those particular toll roads where your license plate is photographed for billing purposes.

License plate scanners are everywhere.

Twitter is private, not a government so it technically can't be censoring. They have a right to delete whatever they want from their site.

Whoever told you that, make sure you never trust anything they say ever again. When it comes to the Bill of Rights, the ACLU has a blindspot a whole amendment wide, but even it knows better than to say what you just did:
https://www.aclu.org/what-cens...

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

In contrast, when private individuals or groups organize boycotts against stores that sell magazines of which they disapprove, their actions are protected by the First Amendment, although they can become dangerous in the extreme. Private pressure groups, not the government, promulgated and enforced the infamous Hollywood blacklists during the McCarthy period. But these private censorship campaigns are best countered by groups and individuals speaking out and organizing in defense of the threatened expression.

Remember when Reddit (and Google and most of the internet) stood up and actively, officially, and effectively opposed SOPA and PIPA? Well, CISA just passed without a peep from them, while they instead actively censor discussion of similar things like the TPP.

Do you see yet why private censorship shouldn't be ignored?

How many more of our rights will our leaders call to sacrifice because of this boogy man ISIS? We already had our president call for the suspension of the second amendment based on some extrajudicial watch list. And now we have Eric Posner arguing to suspend the First amendment right of freedom of association and speech. The fourth has long since been ignored with the NSA blanket surveillance, so what is left for them to sacrifice?

Will we sacrifice the sixth and suspend trial by jury for those on the no fly list? After all they are on the list so they must be guilty.
How about tossing the eighth and throwing those newly convicted terrorists into the Iron maiden, bring back a little old school punishment.
Perhaps we should toss the third and start placing NSA agents inside peoples homes, to make sure ISIS doesn't get in.
Or we could ignore the fifth and give the people on the watch list a nice round of waterboarding so they confess and forgo the bother of a trial.

I mean when will it stop for these people? Throw up ISIS or Al Queda and our leaders seem to climb all over each other to rip up our bill of rights. When did we elect a bunch of gutless cowards who would gladly sacrifice our constitution to help them sleep at night? This has to stop, we should face tragedies head on while holding on to our beliefs, not throw away our rights at the earliest convenience.

Ah, I see you support criminals who steal from innocent people. Well done.

No, I think he is opposed to the police in this matter.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/cr...

These online auctions are designed to generate proceeds from ill-gotten gains to give back to victims, he stated.

Assets seized under asset forfeiture generally don't go "back to victims", they mostly go back to police departments. It is a corrupt system that is urgently in need of reform.

http://www.forfeiturereform.co...

https://www.aclu.org/issues/cr...

Police should never benefit from asset forfeiture because it creates a perverse set of incentives; either it should go into the state or federal general fund, or proceeds should go to a pool of charities. The burden of proof for asset forfeiture should be on the government, and the standard should be "beyond a reasonable doubt", just like any other criminal conviction.

The concept that a person of some given behavior is more likely to be locked up if he/she is of some ethnic origin other than white European, say, a black person, in America is incorrect.

That's just incorrect. There is plenty of evidence, shown in study after study, that shows there is a disparity in sentencing between white people and various ethnic and racial groups.
http://www.sentencingproject.o...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... http://www.theguardian.com/law...
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live...
https://www.aclu.org/sites/def...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles...
So maybe you want to start your reply again, armed with this new information?

Your position seems to be that unjust sentencing disparity caused by the race of the defendant is prevalent, that your numerous links contain statements that support that conclusion, and thus my position regarding preferential treatment is wrong. If, by posting all of those links, you mean to advance some idea beyond unjust racial sentencing disparity, you didn't say so.

But sentencing is only one element or the criminal process. Who is chosen to arrest is important as well, and that's what I just pointed out. The focus of law enforcement is the first element in the criminal justice process. I gave the example of leniency given to a peaceful crowd sitting on a porch selling crack. Sentencing, however unjust, has nothing to do with that.

It would be unrealistically unwieldy for me to rebutt all the contents of all those links. It wouldn't even make sense to read them. However, the studies I'm familiar with that express your conclusion (racial sentencing disparity in general) are flawed. Please pick one, or one concept from one, that you like, and I will address it.

The concept that a person of some given behavior is more likely to be locked up if he/she is of some ethnic origin other than white European, say, a black person, in America is incorrect.

That's just incorrect. There is plenty of evidence, shown in study after study, that shows there is a disparity in sentencing between white people and various ethnic and racial groups.

http://www.sentencingproject.o...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

http://www.theguardian.com/law...

https://www.law.upenn.edu/live...

https://www.aclu.org/sites/def...

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles...

So maybe you want to start your reply again, armed with this new information?

What watchlists exist- that's the real question.

Remember, all repression begins with *keeping lists of people* and all repressive regimes begin to look and act alike past a certain point. In China, the government assigns you an ongoing *credit score* according to your activism and political statements.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free...

Think about it. There must be watchlists in the US other than the ones we know about. Watchlists for people who can't be permitted to say, succeed at starting a defense contracting firm... or a biotech firm.. a computer security firm... where does it stop? Think about people who are known to express sympathies and maintain personal associations with terrorists. There are some things which are *inalienable rights* under the Constitution which the intelligence community is going to want to deny them, in this case freedom of association and the pursuit of happiness (in their chosen field of work).

Does the intelligence community think is has the right to decide who will fail and to cause that failure? You have to think that they do.

So how is that done, exactly? When the person goes for funding pf their company, or starts one and recruits people, are there informal channels where potential investors communicate with the intelligence community? Or does the intelligence community proactively communicate with them? Does either party do that before any big investment in any technology firm?

What about hires? There are tons of positions that could be damaging to the security of the United States is the *wrong* people started jobs in them. I am not just talking about the obvious ones. I am talking about non-obvious ones, like computer programmer, chip fabricator, biotech executive. There are not SCI positions, and yet....

And what properties other than consorting with known terrorists might get you on a list? Known strong civil libertarian? Known big government hater?

When Jesselyn Raddack went to get another job as a lawyer, the government called her employer and made sure the employer fierd her, without cause. They did it to her we know, sowho else do they do that to and how many of those people are there and what exactly are the properties which will get non-criminals in the crosshairs?

Private entities which are free from government oversight and Constitutional constraints on their behvaior engage in profiling and list making.This is how organizations like Perverted Justice basically operate. They engage in all kinds of luring behaviors online, in chatrooms and elsewhere, to flush out and ensnare people in criminal behaviors, then when a certain threshold of culpability and intent is reached, the whole exchange gets turned over to the police in real time.

Same thing with list making. A private company can create attribute lists of people based on derogatory information for highly questionable sources, speculation, vicious gossip, total hearsay, even people intent on smearing an enemy. After all, it's not a crime to think and talk about your impressions of people and then write it down. It's not a crime to try to be more thorough than that and access information from all kinds of sources.

Then that information gets *shared*.

In this kind of scheme, the police never did anything but accept community input and tips. That's good policing, right?

With certainity, the terrorist watch list and no-fly lists are the tip of the people-list iceberg. In all likelihood, a long time ago, it careened into illegality and unconstituional surveillance and interference in people's lives, but like parallel construction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

it's probably now considered "bedrock" policing techniques, the Constitution be damned.

Here's the million dollar question. Do the police and the intelligence communities deliberately and s

No US citizen was murdered by a drone, they were killed, legally. The law of war permits that. When you fight with the enemy in an armed conflict against the US you are part of the enemy and can be killed just like any other enemy combatant. That is what those US citizens had done, and it cost them.

Wrong.

Some of the Americans killed were fighting with the enemy. "Some" is not the same as "all".

http://www.motherjones.com/kev...
http://content.time.com/time/w...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.aclu.org/video/acl...

about left/right????

I only mentioned "left" (not "right") because THEY are the ones currently pushing speech codes, complaining that any speech they dislike is "hate speech" that must be suppressed, showing up at speeches and rallies (by many different speakers of many different political stripes) to shout-down the speakers, hijack the microphones, etc.

As for it being "hypocritical" - well you seem to like to troll using that accusation but you seem not to know what the word means. I should not need to cite left wing suppression of speech when it's in the news on a nearly daily basis and is all over the web and is currently the subject of another active thread RIGHT HERE ON SLASHDOT. How about liberal rag Slate DEFENDING speech codes. Even the ACLU has had to recognize the plague of liberal speech suppression on the campus. Here's the left-leaning The Atlantic defending the suppression of free speech. It's happening in all the formerly Judeo-Christian nations as they become more secular and more left-wing as can be seen at The Telegraph

The following actual or publicly-thought-of-as right-of-center people have been attacked while speaking at public events by leftists wielding pies: William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy, Anita Bryant, Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz. While pie attacks have been used by leftists against other leftists for not being left enough, I have never heard of a right-winger attacking a left-winger with a pie on stage in an attempt to shut-down the speech of the left-winger.

Of course there are also the incidents where people like Condoleezza Rice, first black female Sec of State was disinvited to speak. How about this: list of stuff leftists have banned from various colleges? Here is a Harvard Crimson editorial in favor of junking free speech in favor of "social justice". If you are so inept that you cannot ferret-out even a tiny bit of evidence from the publicly-available tidal wave of evidence that the left is responsible for most of the speech suppression these days then you are the last person who should be labeling other people as trolls - apparently simply because they disagree with you (Making yourself an example of the phenomena)

Please cite the most recent 5 examples of a US College or University event where a left-of-center speaker was shut down (speech blocked/microphone seized/Pies thrown/etc) by a bunch or college Republicans or TEA Partiers. Please cite any occasions in the past 20 years when any right-leaning group has demanded a left-leaning speaker be shut up (and please exclude those very few cases where such a plea was made as part of a call for balance AFTER left-wingers successfully block right-leaning speakers) on a university campus. The university USED to be the place where all speech was welcome. This is no longer the case

Which covers 2/3 of the American people:
https://www.aclu.org/know-your...

The aclu disagrees with you. https://www.aclu.org/aclu-and-...

Yeah, and guess what?

Smith v Maryland (1979) says that phone call records, as "business records" provided to a third party, do not have an expectation of privacy, and are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. And the only data within that haystack that we care about are the foreign intelligence needles. I know that's difficult to comprehend, but it's the law of the land, unless and until SCOTUS reverses that ruling. And they very well may.

Until that happens, "We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, Iâ(TM)m troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law." -- General Michael Hayden

And when the full authority of the law is insufficient to do whatever they want, they will search until they find a creative lawyer to offer a legal opinion to redefine what the law really means and justify whatever they want to do. http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...

You might also want to update your sources, Mr. apologist. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law overseeing data collection could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a "staggering" amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations. Lucky for them, Congress amended the law, moving the goalposts in mid game.

https://www.aclu.org/legal-doc...

Hopefully, you will find this as easy to comprehend as the Smith v Maryland case. And before you start wiping the brown off your nose and begin frothing at the mouth with another justification, I know it hasn't made it to the Supreme Court yet. Hopefully, you noticed Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act law yesterday. That should give you a clue that you are on the wrong side of this issue.

If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data. Sounds crazy and bizarre for foreign intelligence agencies to care about things like foreign intelligence, I know, but it's true.

You would think. And, if the government lived up to our ideals for it, that would be true. Why would a government want to spy on their own citizens?

But in the real world, history shows us that sometimes governments decide that they do want to spy on their own citizens. They decide that some citizens are "dissenters" and need to be spied on. They decide that court orders and civil rights don't apply to them. They make "enemy lists" and try to dig out dirt to discredit the enemies. They wiretap reformers and try to blackmail them.

What's really scary is that "the border" actually extends 100 into the US.

Yeah, but you only have to worry about a customs search as it applies to your electronic devices when you cross the border going from/to another country. Even if the border only extended 10 miles into the country and you lived within that area, you still wouldn't have to worry about searches unless you crossed, or are going to cross over into another country.

The 100 mile extension relates entirely to immigration enforcement and Customs are still limited to getting warrants and probable cause to search vehicles and dwellings.

Ask and you shall receive, about 200 Million people, including several entire states.

https://www.aclu.org/know-your...

What's really scary is that "the border" actually extends 100 into the US.

you don't need to cite commonly known facts of a topic. if you are unaware of how common extreme punishment for minor drug crimes is, you're only announcing how out of touch you are on the subject

google "years in jail marijuana possession"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/2...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

http://www.rense.com/general61...

https://www.aclu.org/marijuana...

american drug laws are stupid, pointless, and insane, and have achieved zero effect. it's easy as ever to get pot

a society that prescribes brutal punishment for various minor crimes does nothing but announce its brutality. it has no effect on the crime in question

http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug...

it is important to cite interesting and novel facts. it is not important to cite commonly understood and well-established facts. the stupidity and insanity of american drug laws is well-established. we're just waiting for enough nancy reagan era morons to die the fuck off so we can build a sensible drug policy: legalization of non-addictive drugs, treatment for addicts, inducements for dealers of addictive drugs to come clean. destroy the mafias by draining their income. drain their income by incentivizing healthcare for addicts and legalizing nonaddictive substances

look to portugal

I suppose one could argue that use of data collected by scanners still constitutes use of the scanner.

You could indeed, as if it were invasion of privacy by one organization, it would still constitute an invasion of privacy by another organization, and an even bigger invasion of privacy for the second to share back to the first.

However, let's be clear. Scanning license plates is NOT an invasion of privacy. Your license plate is sitting out in the open in full public view. I, myself, could walk down the street with clipboard in hand and write down every single license plate I find. I could do this every day and there is not a single thing wrong with it beyond how suspicious it looks (maybe I might get charged with prowling...maybe). If I replaced the clipboard with a camera, it's still the same situation. If I replace myself with the police it's still the same situation.

The only thing that makes it "bad" for the police to do it is because they have access to a database of said license plates and can look up owner information on any or all of them. Now, looking up the owner of a license plate when they've done no wrong and nothing to indicate that they may possibly do anything wrong may violate the 4th Amendment, but nothing I've found confirms that (I even found once case where they outright ignore the situation of a cop looking up a random license plate), so as far as I can find it's not illegal for police or anyone else to be scanning license plates. That's regardless of any privacy concerns that a given organization may have.

People with mental issues should be unemployable as police or security officers.
Timothy Loehmann, who shot Tamir Rice, simply joined police force in a different city after he resigned facing termination for "emotional instability".

The other thing that should not be allowed to happen is the militarization of police force.
Neither through pumping surplus military weapons and equipment through billion dollar "reutilization programs", nor through military tactics and training.

It's Special Weapons and Tactics, not POLICE weapons and tactics.
If all your cops act or look like SWAT teams do... That's not policing crime.
That's a country/state/county/city trying to control its citizens through "superior force".

And police will get BOTH military tactics and training AND mentally unstable police officers when it starts dipping into the pool of military veterans, coming home from a decade or so of war.

Opened this thread to find out this very answer myself. Leaving disappointed.

I suspect, however, that a Stingray is involved, and I don't mean the Chevy.