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Hooray for freedom and our right to vote in people to help eliminate our freedoms! Next up on our agenda, an amendment to eliminate the 22nd amendment so we can keep Bush in the WhiteHouse forever because he has sure made us all feel safer now that we pay $2.00+ per gallon of gasoline and line his pockets even more.

Hooray for freedom and our right to vote in people to help eliminate our freedoms! Next up on our agenda, an amendment to eliminate the 22nd amendment so we can keep Bush in the WhiteHouse forever because he has sure made us all feel safer now that we pay $2.00+ per gallon of gasoline and line his pockets even more.

Heck -- They [the USSC] might even be able to finally, officially get rid of [or, at least, severely cripple] those pesky first ten Constitutional 'Amendments' that those whining left-wing Liberals keep bringing up.

-anon_ex_pat

I found this really cool site about Social Security Numbers and who you have to give them to. I can't vouch for the site or anything (and this is not a plug), but there is a lot of good information about how the system was set up and how it's changed into this monster unique identifier (which it really isn't -- the SSN system contains dupes) today.

For further in-depth reading check it out:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/ssn/

But critics charge the database will subject the homeless "to a level of tracking that is normally used against criminals," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina.

As for the rest of your idiocy, not all sex offenders are pedophiles, released felons have always had to deal with discrimination and longer jail terms will not solve the problem.

A large part of the pedophile problem is tracking them. When these registered sex offenders slip through the cracks, they end up working as ice cream truck drivers, carnies, in schools etc.

Direct Marketing Is not an Appropriate Government Function

Although labeled a "Joint Advertising" database, the level of personal information proposed to be collected by DOD suggests a massive direct marketing campaign. As we noted above, the Privacy Act mandated that each agency "shall maintain in its records only such information about an individual as is relevant and necessary to accomplish a purpose of the agency."[12] But this proposal goes far beyond traditional government uses of personal information into activities that are only appropriate for the private sector. Direct marketing to individuals who have expressed no interest in recruitment simply is not an appropriate function for a government agency. The DOD should abandon this approach as it is inconsistent with the Privacy Act, and will lead to increasing demands for individuals' personal information.

This has been going on for decades. Its called the Selective Service.

From the EPIC letter:

Despite the risk of identity theft, DOD proposes to collect SSNs on all high school students aged 16 - 18, all college students, all Selective Service System registrants, all Active Duty and Reserve members of the Armed Forces as well as several other large categories. While the size of any database is not an inherent flaw, any breach of security or change in policy will impact an enormous number of Americans. The size of the database also makes it an attractive target for identity thieves.

Just when I think our society can't get any more Orwellian, we see this:

1. The Defense Department will compile and maintain a database of students, which will include such personal information as birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and school subjects.
   
2. Anyone who wants to opt out of this database will be kept in another database instead (most probably named something like 'potential dissidents').
   
3. The Defense Department will share all this personal info with non-military organizations, such as law enforcement and state tax authorities.
   

It is real. http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

to digitize their documents, when they are so busy removing, reclassifying, and denying access to current government information.

So i guess now in slashdot you can post a bunch of links to wikipedia spout of stuff with no factual basis and get mod points ... gee goly let me try! Sorry to let you know but it wasnt freedom fighting americans that exclaimed we need the United nations.... infact it was many countrys and pervious agremments like oh i dont know the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. But no it was our free spirit that made the united nations.... Sorry to let you down but back when wwII started communism throughout the world was thought to be the next form of goverment because nothing else was working. you can find that in any college history book or even on the history channel. What stopped that from happening was our president and a war bringing us our of the current depression of the time. However thats just semantics Lets just take a look at your id system point http://www.epic.org/privacy/id_cards/ Quote from the site: Americans have rejected the idea of a national ID card. When the Social Security Number (SSN) was created in 1936, it was meant to be used only as an account number associated with the administration of the Social Security system. Though use of the SSN has expanded considerably, it is not a universal identifier and efforts to make it one have been consistently rejected. In 1971, the Social Security Administration task force on the SSN rejected the extension of the Social Security Number to the status of an ID card. In 1973, the Health, Education and Welfare Secretary's Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems concluded that a national identifier was not desirable. In 1976, the Federal Advisory Committee on False Identification rejected the idea of an identifier. Hmm thats odd in all my books i cant find any places where bills were proposed that were like the real id act that got shot down. Unless you are saying any of the previous laws are like an ID act.. which is just plain silly Then you pose all these big brother arguments like the goverment has now just started lying to us.. I got big news they have been lying to us before world war II But the terrorists win when goverment takes civil liberties away!!!!!!! Such a stupid friggin argument Like youve been hanging out with Osama planning on how to demean amercia to help you. PFFT

It seem incredulous to me that after hearing some of the major breaches or loss of customer data within the past 60 days or so (Wachovia, Bank of America, DSW, Lexis-Nexis) I have the right to be a bit concerned about giving my social security number to any financial institution. If these large financial institutions and data warehouses can't keep my information secure, why should I give it to them?

The lady at the local bank started looking at me funny after I asked her if my SS# was required to open an account, and started giving me some "post 9/11" corporate response. (Meanwhile, I'm thinking 'yeah, exactly. that's why you shouldn't have it.') And who cares about "128-bit SSL/DES encryption/armed-guard data centers" when you ship unencrypted records via public-class shipping services?

Where's that bit of legislation about returning the social security number to an SSA-only internal identifier when you need it... Maybe we can get some support for some of that now..

Microsoft already proposed the plan with Palladium years ago. palladium 2002
EPIC article on Palladium
I ran into thousands of people who knew about the "Palladium Scare" - Microsoft being able to control what you had on your computer. Microsoft finally had to stop active work on Palladium because too many people were scared of it.

Now that is the exact same technique that should be used here. Its interesting in my American Heritage and Economics class in college, my teacher is using this episode with the backlash at the recording industries as proof that we don't listen to history.

He points out that the in general the reasons people pirate music and copy programs is the same reasons in general that led to the American Revolution, also that if someone doesn't wake up the recording and film companies they are going to find that no one will listen to them.

Everyone pretty much will ignore them and download as much as they like, just like the early americans did to england. Now there are a few hardcore "pirates" but in general when the teenager logs onto napster or morpheus and downloads a mp3 its not cause they are a pirate, but its cause they dont' like being manhandled by huge prices etc.

Uniform Driver's License Standards vs. The Mark of the Beast

The Social Security card was never meant to be used for identification purposes. When the system was created in 1935, to assuage the concerns of American citizens, Congress insisted that the card would never and should never be used for purposes of identification. Its sole purpose was to ensure that workers were paying the required payroll tax. Individual workers were assigned numbers so that the proper governing authority could easily account for the contributions made to the Social Security fund. Nonetheless, the use of the number grew steadily over the years. Starting in 1961, the Civil Service Commission began using the number to identify all federal employees. In 1962, the IRS started requiring the number to appear on all completed tax returns.

This document explores the ways the SSN does not qualify as a violation of the warning of Revelation Chapter 13 concerning the mark of the beast. And why there is a new system coming soon that will come far too close. And given the drifting useage of the SSN, this new system is guaranteed, by design, to be in full violation of the warning, once the technology takes its logical course.

This new system of nationally uniform drivers license standards are standards written by the federal government that change licensing entirely. In fact it's a nice bit of newspeak to call it anything BUT a National ID card. It makes this turkey an easier sell. I, however, will call it what it is.

Since 9-11, many countries are working on National ID cards, including the United States. The plan is actually harder sell in liberal Europe than the US because Europe still has memories of how Nazi Germany used travel documentation in WWII as a means of control.

Tony Blair has opted for a voluntary cards. "However, it will be virtually impossible for anyone to live a normal life without the new ID card in England - possession of a valid card will be necessary for boarding an aircraft, buying gas, opening a bank account, starting a job or claiming government benefits." So much for "voluntary", unless you don't need to go anywhere. Like out of Germany in the late 1930's.

In the US, the voices against the National ID plan are almost exclusively pro-immigration groups. Seeing the majority of the population, including the church, relatively unsympathetic towards immigrants, and often downright hostile, is unfortunate. Especially considering the balance of the church's time is spent preaching, in a sense, what comes around, goes around. It reminds me of the poetic account of the rise of Nazi Germany.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out
because I was not a communist.

When they came for the social democrats,
I did not speak out
because I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists
I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews
I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew;

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
-Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)

To think that these IDs are someone else's problem is a falsehood in the first place. Such an ID card, if put into place, will be a gift to identity thieves, who will now be able to get all the information they need from multiple sources as seemingly innocuous as your video rental store. State DMVs have alrea

You'd think that would be the case. Unfortunately, the answer is no.

From this article:

The SSN and Identity Theft

The widespread use of the SSN as an identifier and authenticator has lead to an increase in identity theft. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, identity theft now affects between 500,000 and 700,000 people annually. Victims often do not discover the crime until many months after its occurrence. Victims spend hundreds of hours and substantial amounts of money attempting to fix ruined credit or expunge a criminal record that another committed in their name.

Identity theft litigation also shows that the SSN is central to committing fraud. In fact, the SSN plays such a central role in identification that there are numerous cases where impostors were able to obtain credit with their own name but a victim's SSN, and as a result, only the victim's credit was affected. In June 2004, the Salt Lake Tribune reported: "Making purchases on credit using your own name and someone else's Social Security number may sound difficult -- even impossible -- given the level of sophistication of the nation's financial services industry...But investigators say it is happening with alarming frequency because businesses granting credit do little to ensure names and Social Security numbers match and credit bureaus allow perpetrators to establish credit files using other people's Social Security numbers." The same article reports that Ron Ingleby, resident agent in charge of Utah, Montana and Wyoming for the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General, as stating that SSN-only fraud makes up the majority of cases of identity theft.

What I find interesting that no one seems to be questioning why a high school needs to have the students SSN in the first place. Personally, I think that the administrator that made the decision to put SSN's into a (now proven) vulnerable database should get at least the same punishment as the students who cracked it. And if they are using products that are known to have weak security, they should get double. Why was this database even connected to the net, anyhow? Honestly, the real crime here is the lackadaisical handling of such sensitive information, when there is no good reason for them to have students SSN's in the first place.

Anyway, how can Real-ID be "controversial"? Nobody but slashdot readers and "bloggers" even know it exists.

See EPIC's National ID Cards and REAL ID Act.

So if I follow the logic if a BSOD is a 'guarded' error and a RSOD is a 'severe' error then a green SOD is a 'low' error, a yellow SOD is an 'elevated' error, and an orange SOD is a 'high' error.

http://www.epic.org/graphics/threat_levels.gif

Oh hell, I can't remember if we're talking about windows errors or terrorist threats. Though, TBH, there are probably times when they are one and the same.

I certainly don't think it's quite as onerous, but it's not too far from it. I did read the article and here's the second paragraph:

Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.

Further, with the Supremes recently ruling that's it's OK to arrest someone who fails to produce an ID upon demand, this just puts us one step closer.

Perhaps instead Al Gore should be awarded for pioneering the idea that the government should have almost unlimited monitoring power of the populace - being the main backer of the Clipper Chip and all.

It never fails to amaze me what support the guy gets on Slashdot when he was instrumental in coming so close to having a single, government controlled form of encryption be th eonly one allowed. If anything shows a guy who Does Not Get The Internet, that is it.

Perhaps instead Al Gore should be awarded for pioneering the idea that the government should have almost unlimited monitoring power of the populace - being the main backer of the Clipper Chip and all.

It never fails to amaze me what support the guy gets on Slashdot when he was instrumental in coming so close to having a single, government controlled form of encryption be th eonly one allowed. If anything shows a guy who Does Not Get The Internet, that is it.

Now why would the guy who strongly backed standard encryption with government mandated back doors (Clipper chip) do anything to try and slow the DMCA at all?

All switching equipment (at least in the US) is required to be designed for wiretapping according to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). I don't recall the timeline for phase in, but I'm guessing that by now all the big names like Ericsson make only CALEA-compliant products. I'm also guessing that the same models are sold to the rest of the world.

In short, the phone network is now designed to be tapped.

I agree with most of your points, but please read this and this before concluding that Google actually adheres to its "don't be evil" policy.

I mean, it's probably more likely that some law got passed in the past few years that's forcing companies to highlight all these incidents of compromised data, but it seems pretty spooky that we just recently hear about all these stories...

Gmail is a bad example. Thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend it. Also see EPIC's Gmail privacy FAQ.

This has to be the worst dupe ever. How often has slashdot covered this?

The *entire European union* will require biometrics stored in contactless chips (RFID) in a passport. The EU didn`t think of this all by itself, the US forced it. If the EU doesn`t go along fast with this billion dollar hype it`s citizens will have to get a visa to visit the US. (How are US plans for this coming along?)

The biometrics are two fingerprints and a digital portrait. The last one will be to low resolution for camera surveilance but ofcourse this wont stop people from trying. Face it(no phun), the words "false positive" sound complicated and no politician is going to bother to look like caring about these words. Ofcourse you can translate them to "huge lines at the airport", "tens of innocent people questioned on ever major airport every day" (So mister Bin Laden, how did you turn into an asian twelve year old?).

Want to hear some of the argumentation behind this? Yes you do! Implementing passports with biometric identifiers will be a great business opertunity, especially for the business that get to build the hardware for this stuff... Boy do I wish I was making this up.

Of course the people who sell biometrics are alway happy to tell how many people on this planet have the same fingerprint and face. wanna guess? Its always a very low number, like zero. In fact they keep saying this over and over. They never have any time left to mention that:
a. biometric comparisons always allows for lots of differences because no one want`s to hold up a line at the airport because of a mismatch due to some sweat.... every time someone sweats one these occasions.
b. cheap fingerprint scanners are fooled by gummy bear taste gelatine prints, pressing bags of water on the scanner.... or just blowing on it. Can you blame these vendors for not mentioning this? Maybe not, they are afterall, very busy in this "post 911 world". Or so they keep saying.

Ofcourse it doesn`t stop here. Other bright ideas going on the the EU:

• Giving US three leter ancronym agencies read access to all airline booking systems. If airlines refused they couldn`t land in the US, now they comply they might be send back midair from time to time. But hey, what are the chances of someone matching a name on a list of 70,000 names? (If you think this list sounds to short, don`t worry adding names is easy, no evidence of anything is required)
• Storing traffic data for every telephone or Internet connection in the EU... Depending on the phase of the moon this data consists of telephone call data, GSM location data and ofcourse URL`s of every site visited and headers for send and/or received mail. Yes I mean storing everything about the communication of everyone....

Meanwhile Italy, Germany and Sweden are investigating what heaponed to a some of their citizens. They where kidnapped by the CIA and sent to places that make abu graib look like the holiday in... Ofcourse these investigations arent about getting justice for these people, they are just about making things difficult for the national goverment for allowing these kidnap operations.

Anyway, it seamed like the right time for an European update on these things.

I just have to say that this is a bigger problem than a simple "I told you so".

When you outsource certain operations you are giving people who have no connection with your customers their private information. Banking account numbers? Some people still don't use online banking because it scares them and we don't see this as a huge liability?

Really, what if a few thousand credit card and bank account numbers got into the hands of suspected terrorists? If they made a one time shot at getting items to fence or cash withdraws (wire transfers) and split, they suddenly have resources that was taken right from the American people.

I'm by no means saying that you should be suspect of *any* foreign person or enterprise. I'm thinking of the type of people who *might* get their hands on my/our information. What good is it to give to the people like EPIC when we give our information to people we can't necessarily track down? Can anyone guarantee that we will be able to bring someone to justice, under our laws (and equally for their benefit the Constitution)? I've worked on the phone making sales, and the problem we had was we were banned from taking credit cards because a few people screwed it up for everyone.

Of course, if someone wants the information they can get it. It just makes me wonder why we give our sensitive information to a foreigner when we need parts for our Dell (and by extension everyone else I don't care to list).

As a foreigner commenting on American politics, I assume you're addressing foreign policy. Do you realize how much shit would have to go down for a revolution to occur over foreign policy?

From an outsider point of view, I must say I find this whole discussion about the USAPATRIOT ACT (and someday, people will understand that it's never been called the PATRIOT act, it's the USAPATRIOT ACT, because it means Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, but you all know that right? I mean... you wouldn't dare argue against something if you don't know what it means, right?)

On the night of the 2004 election, when I heard that you re-elected George W. Bush to be your leader, after four years of what he had done, I thought to myself "The american citizens deserve everything that happens to them."

The 2000 election can be excused, because you didn't know the guy and he made all sorts of crazy promises to get your vote. In 2004 though, you knew who you were voting for, and still, you wanted more of it.

In the 2000-2004 period, American people were telling me "You're not anti-american, you're anti-Bush, we hate him too". Now that you've given him four more years, no one can say that anti-Bush and anti-american aren't the same.

And don't go telling me that the Americans also hate Bush as much as the rest of the world. Don't tell me that the Americans didn't elect Bush and that he stole the election. I mean, he might have stolen a state, but he got 62 million votes! The majority of Americans elected Bush, therefore the majority of Americans agree to his politics, and the majority of Americans agree to the USAPATRIOT ACT.

Quit your whining, you voted for it in a democratic way.

Now go ahead and mod me as troll, but keep in mind that it won't change the facts.

The NAACP suit was not about restoring voting rights to those human defendants, it was attempt to mudsling at Harris and DBT/Choicepoint.

Not to defame hero Katherine Harris or the freedom lovers at ChoicePoint, but that comment on the NAACP suit is certainly groundless and defensive. Besides, these people sling mud on themselves.

Harris and the accountable administrators at ChoicePoint could elevate their status considerably in the conservative movement by serving the prison time they've earned. Too bad there are Republican majorities in every level of government above them, so they'll never be prosecuted.

No he's right and John Gilmore is just being an ass.

The "federal law" is in fact an FAA regulation. Federal law allows the FAA to keep regulations concerning the details of security precautions secret. I hope the valid reasons for this would be obvious.

It is very clear from the FAA's letter that the situation is more complex than a single line in a regulation saying "passengers must provide a photo ID" that the FAA could excerpt to show Gilmore. Quite likely the photo ID requirement is part of an internal airline policy designed to meet a whole host of FAA regulations, some very precise, some general and vague. The airlines' internal policy is probably subject to federal review and approval. Think of it as something like the combination of zoning and building safety laws that apply to construction in a city.

So, what is *techincally* the internal policy of the airline is probably at least partly written by lawyers to conform to a bunch of regulation... the airline is a little loose in it's language and says it's required by "federal law" (which to their thinking, it is). The government on the other hand doesn't have a neat, single line of legislation saying "passengers must present a photo ID" but some lines about that (with certain proviso's, exceptions, procedures to take in the event that an airline chooses not to require photo ID's etc. etc.) a whole mass of regulation that leads the airline to simply cut the gordian knot and flatly require photo ID's without exception. The FAA doesn't have a nice neat one line to show Gilmore and doesn't want to release the whole mess because to do so would provide those trying to circumvent security procedure too many details.

In the end requiring a photo ID is a reasonable request. I'm happy that Gilmore is riding a bus instead... his brand of pedantic blindly ideological asshattery should have inconvenient consequences.

Well your lengthy rant is pretty much completely wrong.

There isn't exactly a secret "law" but there is a set of secret regulations that have led to this requirement. EPIC made a set of FOIA requests to try to expose the same things Gilmore is pursuing. They got enough docs to prove its existence, and they have censored docs that concealed most of what they wanted to know about it, in particular who puts names on it, how do get them off and what names are on it.

Just because SFO let him fly proves nothing other than people at the airline in SFO probably weren't doing what the TSA/FBI ordered them to do. Chances are very low you will be able to fly without showing an ID so you wasted WAY to much time pretending that just because one counter work at an airline didn't check it, that this proves anything.

So its not exactly law that airlines have to ID every passenger and check them against the list, its more a regulation Homeland Security and the FBI is trying to shove down the airline's throats and I don't think Congress ever passed it as a law. It was done entirely withing the executive branch. I'm very confident airlines would be overjoyed if they weren't burdened with this law enforcement task, especially since the system is completely incompetent and is mostly nabbing innocent people who happen to have names the same as those on the list. Airline counter works are probably sick of the ugly scenes that ensue when a completely innocent person is pulled aside by the FBI/Homeland Security and harassed for no good reason than being unlucky enough to have the same name as someone on the list.

All in all you really ought'a be ashamed for defending such and insane and inept system.

If you thought Fair Credit Reporting Act protects your rights, think again.

My very brief search at EPIC didn't find this new issue at Amazon. My suggestion then is that we contact EPIC and alert them to this privacy issue:

Contact EPIC

EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.

EPIC publishes an award-winning e-mail and online newsletter on civil liberties in the information age - the EPIC Alert. We also publish reports and even books about privacy, open government, free speech, and other important topics related to civil liberties.

We have no clients, no customers, and no shareholders. We need your support.

Contact EPIC:

Electronic Privacy Information Center
1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Suite 200
Washington, DC 20009

tel: +1 202 483 1140
fax: +1 202 483 1248

So it's the "Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" (PATRIOT) act.

Smarmy, sickening, deceptive politics at it's best!
http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why?

(a) SHORT TITLE- This Act may be cited as the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001'. (b) TABLE OF CONTENTS- The table of contents for this Act is as follows:

As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?

It's actually an acronym, "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001."

does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?

Actually, its a convulted backronym that has lost its capitalization in common usage. The act is actually titled:

"... Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"

Much like now common vocabularly SCUBA, RADAR, and LASER, The USA PATRIOT act is now commonly referred to in lower case. Unlike the previous three however, the outrageous full name was just backwardsly applied to terms that already had meaning.

Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why?

I wasn't able to dig up "who" sponsored it, but regardless, it likely wasn't them, anyway. Some lobbying groups with an agenda to push, couldn't get the Anti Terrorism Act of 2001 to pass earlier, so right after 9/11, figured out that no one would read the bill if it was called USA PATRIOT, made a name change, tacked on a bunch of things that had routinely been shot down in the past, and now we're stuck with it.

For good information check out EPIC's site on the USA PATRIOT act.

~Rebecca

How did this happen when the Doctrine was in place? Do you have any specific examples?

Absolutely.

This is a famous case: Red Lion Broadcasting Co. employed a Christian Conservative and instructed him to go on the air and act as an apologist for the notorious Republican racist, Barry Goldwater. In doing so, he slandered the author of a book about Goldwater, Fred J. Cook.

Contrary to your breathless and completely absurd lies, the rules never called for this to be censored at all, at any time. They merely required Red Lion to send Cook a transcript and offer him time to appear so that he could defend himself in the same forum in which he was attacked.

Poor Red Lion claimed this was too much of a burden, so the FCC cited them. I believe the penalty is a fine; not 100% sure. They ended up in court, and the case went all the way. The Supreme Court ruled against them (incidentally, they explicitly declared the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional).

You have a gross misunderstanding of the cable franchising system. The "government monopoly" applies to the local wire-runner only. It does not apply to someone who decides to uplink a new cable station to the network.

No, my understanding is just fine. You're the one who doesn't get it.

The cable company decides who to "uplink" and who not to. They can choose to take any channel they like, or not.

So, for broadcast TV, the government decides directly who the lucky few dozen who get to broadcast are, and will jail anyone else who tries. For cable, they pick a company that does this for them, and will jail anyone else who tries to compete with them.

Every act is an expression of free speech, not "harmful".

In a newspaper. Not on TV, where bias can't be answered properly unless the TV itself does so.

Howard Stern is the King of All Censors.

So this is what it is like when you try to read and understand things. I am starting to understand how you have so many grossly bad ideas - you can't seem to understand what you read.

There is no problem here at all.

The protests against the FCC's latest attempt to relax diversity rules were the largest in the agency's history. "No, no problem at all."

They did not dislike him out of diversity

You truly are babbling at this point.

You don't "dislike him out of diversity." The issue is preventing a few (five, four, or even one) powerful or rich person from controlling the media.

This "censorship" could occur if this was anywhere near happening.

Consolidation is happening.

Conservative bureaucrats wanted to relax the rules even more, and like I said, they got the largest outcry in history over an FCC decision...

"Watch less TV and read some actual information - it will make you want to vote for people that are trying to streamline and minimize the government, not bloat it more and more to service interests that don't actually produce anything."

If you can cite some numbers showing how much the DOD actually spends on the FOIA maybe I'll subscribe to your arguement, I personally wager its a fly speck in their budget but I can't immediately find the figure in Google. Whatever it is its a really small price to pay to allow the public and watchdog groups to shine some light on the workings of the government. I am pretty confident the actual fraud, waste, abuse and pork in our government, which the FOIA is designed to help root out, far outstrips anything we spend on the FOIA.

I assure you it does produce priceless information especially in the hands of experienced watchdog groups like EPIC and the ACLU, that more than make up for all the frivolous requests. Here are EPIC's annual FOIA summaries.

Here are some recent gems uncovered by the ACLU. The only thing that suggests the FOIA is a waste of money is dynamite like this comes out, its in the news a day or two and then it disappears in to a black hole. These discoveries indicate our government is violating the most basic tenets of what our country and its Constitution stand for and we as citizens just don't care, neither we or elected representatives do anything about, and it just continues on unchecked. The DOD assembles a jury of biased soliders and hangs a few grunts for Abu Graib and we as citizens choose to ignore that the use of torture is OBVIOUSLY widespread and a matter of policy in the DOD and the FOIA shows this. It is no doubt endorsed at the highest levels and we do nothing about it.

All in all it sure would be interesting to find how much fraud, waste and abuse has been uncovered by the FOIA and whistelblower laws to see if they in fact pay for themselves, many times over, though much of it is intangible, if for example it stopped people from being tortured by our government and in our name, what price tag would you put on that.

So even if it is costing us a lot its a small price to pay to weed out corruption, abuse and incompetence in our government. On the other hand if the Bush administration in particular manages to completely frustrate legitimate FOIA requests as they are want to do then yes, it is a complete waste of money. If that becomes the case that is not the fault of the law but of the people whose legal duty it is to implement it, and those people are working against the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives in Congress and when that happens we don't live in the representative Democracy we've been led to believe we do.

Kidding aside, just the like alleged dismantling of the "Office of Strategic Influence" (i.e., intentionally lying to the press), things may go on [CNN] under different project names. cf. also the Total, er, Terrorism, Information Awareness program.

It's called "USA PATRIOT".

Tackhead: Privacy is dead. Get over it. But if you don't like it, don't look to the constitution for a right to it, because it ain't there.

Of course not. Here's the Supreme Court's words on it, for anyone who continues to disagree with you:

From Katz v. United States: The Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional "right to privacy." That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. Other provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion. But the protection of a person's general right to privacy - his right to be let alone by other people - is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.

We CAN look to is STATE law. NYS law states that electronic communication does NOT include any communication through a tracking device. This then limits any argument based on similarities to telecommunications (as tracking devices are specifically excluded). Other than VERY limited and focused rights of privacy, New York State doesn't have a general provision for privacy. So that's useless (again, IANAL)

However, let's revisit the federal privacy issue. In Katz (and later Kyollo) employ: the Court tried to discover what the expectation of privacy would have been absent the use of the technology in question. Therefore, to determine the reasonable expectation of privacy in the case of location-tracking technology, one can ask these three questions: (1) Would it have been possible to obtain the same information without using the technology?; (2) If so, would it have been possible to use the data without additional computer processing?; and (3) If the alternate means of obtaining this information had been employed, or if the additional data processing had been performed, would either have constituted unreasonable surveillance?

In fact, in a case involving Ralph Nader (yes, him) [quoting from the above epic link]: The court recognized that there is a difference between merely observing someone who happens to be in public and invading that person's privacy. Citing the example of someone who tailed Nader into a bank and watched him withdraw cash: A person does not automatically make public everything he does merely by being in a public place, and the mere fact that Nader was in a bank did not give anyone the right to try to discover the amount of money he was withdrawing. On the other hand, if [Nader] acted in such a way as to reveal that fact to any casual observer, then it may not be said that the appellant intruded into his private sphere. Clearly there is a pronounced difference between observing, even deliberately following, someone who happens to be in public and "intruding" into one's "private sphere." In Nader, the court recognized that an invasion of privacy can happen in public as well as in private.

So this is complicated. It might seem the government did a reasonable thing (tailing on a road); at the same time, the New York Court fails to account that "A person does not automatically make public everything he does merely by being in a public place". At the same time, the travel is more public than the bank transaction cited as an example. While I'm worried about this (I don't like the behavior), I also wonder what there really is to stop it (unless it gets widely used out of control - which some judges on the court then said changes the privacy issue - see Katz)

Based on the assumption that the information in the article at (http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/013115.shtml) is true, I think this kind of thing happening in the world should be a kick in the pants to democracies around the world; "Yes, look, it really does happen - some governments attempt to suppress the **FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION** between citizens and the rest of the world." Seeing this should make us ever vigilant with our own governments to make sure we never give them the power to censor us!

Canada recently concluded a supreme court case where the Little Sisters Bookstore fought the good fight and beat back the darkness http://www.littlesistersbookstore.com/court.asp

Americans, watch out for that Patriot Act! http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

Remember Jefferson: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!"

No, really. It is!

In retrospect, Microsoft made a bunch of mistakes:

4) There were many, including no capability to delete a Passport, and transferring private data via ordinary e-mail when you tried.

I wonder if EPIC has anything to do with this scary-yet-insightful video-flash movie.

Or perhaps it means that the Postmaster General is a brooding and dashingly mysterious rake who keeps an insane Condoleeza Rice chained up in his attic.

How about the Clipper chip? Does it look like McDonnell's Delta Clipper?

How about "any old cone-shaped thingy looks like McDonnell's Delta Clipper", and "Clipper is a generic word"?

So yes, I suppose it's coincidental. Duh...