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Careful What You Post, the FBI Has More of These
jamie writes "A comment posted to a website got its author's *friend's* car an unwanted aftermarket addon. The Orion Guardian ST820, a GPS tracking device, was attached to the underside of the car by the FBI. No warrant required. The bugged friend, a college student studying marketing, was apparently under suspicion because he's half-Egyptian. As Bruce Schneier says, 'If they're doing this to someone so tangentially connected to a vaguely bothersome post on an obscure blog, just how many of us have tracking devices on our cars right now ...' The ACLU is investigating." This follows up on our earlier mention of the same student, who turned the tracking device over to the FBI.
After making that comment you might want to check your car for a tracking device.
Here is one other advantage of using a motorcycle as your primary means of transportation. It's a lot harder to hide anything on a motorcycle than it is to hide something on a car.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Agreed, the only part that's troubling is that none of this required a warrant. If they had an issued warrant, I wouldn't care.
Actually this is the attitude of all religious nuts. Extremist Christians blew up a Planned Parenthood in California last month even though it is clearly illegal. Israeli Extremists are occupying the West Bank, because they think it was given to them by God. All religious extremism has this same type of stupidity.
You know what the retarded thing is? The friend's comment that supposedly aroused suspicion is completely innocuous. All he's doing is pointing out how easy it is to attack the 99% of targets we haven't tried to harden, rather than the 1% we have, and concluding terrorism isn't much of a threat as a result.
Agree with his conclusions or disagree, it's hard to shake the idea that the FBI is punishing him because he had the nerve to think rationally, and point out how retarded our whole "anti-terrorism" thing is. How dare he see through the farce?!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That is not how Castle Doctrine works, and you do a great disservice to all responsible gun owners by spreading such FUD, not to mention being a poor example of character. There would be insufficient evidence from somebody just walking up to your vehicle, stooping down, and then walking away for you to 'reasonably believe' that they were committing an act sufficient enough to warrant a response of deadly force. You would not *ever* get that to stand up in court.
People like you are an embarrassment to those of us who work hard to get things like Castle Doctrine in place, and then you interpret it, in complete ignorance, to mean that you can kill any person for any reason so long as they have a foot over your property line. I wouldn't be surprised if you were a false flag plant of gun control advocates out to make gun owners look bad.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
lawful execution by Castle Doctrine law.
Can you tell me the last time a citizen was able to successfully use weapons to defend his property from 'intrusion' by any determined authority, local or federal? Rambo fantasies are so lame.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Dan667 has already said what I was going to say. This is why people are afraid of Muslims and other religious fundamentalists. All you apparently need is to feel what you're doing is right and then you ignore everyone and everything else. It's a dangerous mindset that is divorced from reality and responsibility by design. It is the very mindset that has enabled and empowered all of the atrocities committed in the name of religion, and for that matter, ideologies in general.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
and most of my friends do not care about this. It's part of the religion to care less about possible adversities as a result of your good action.
Yeah. See, *sane* people fight for the fucking rights their government is supposed to guarantee them. Shrugging your shoulders, grinning, and bearing it because you feel it's some tribulation placed upon you by god is a brilliant way to ensure your continued persecution at the hands of those who would use you as a scapegoat in an ugly political climate (like, say, a period dominated by a weak economy, a couple of ugly wars, and a highly divided populace).
You help *no one* with your high-minded apathy. All you do is enable the bigots and the opportunists, implicitly validating their actions by refusing to fight against them.
if you stand for something right, do not be afraid of adversary consequences.
Actually this is the attitude of all religious nuts. Extremist Christians blew up a Planned Parenthood in California last month even though it is clearly illegal. Israeli Extremists are occupying the West Bank, because they think it was given to them by God. All religious extremism has this same type of stupidity.
You interpreted his statement 180degrees. He was saying "Don't be afraid of what others will do to you" (ie expect to be brutalized for what you believe because people will misunderstand) Of course, he chose one of the _worst_ possible examples since the FBI clearly understood correctly that the dude wanted to attack an army base.
From what I can tell, the FBI's only reason to place this bug on the guy's car is that he's "half Egyptian".
I suppose next is having your car bugged if you're half-Mexican (in Arizona) or half-a-fag, or half liberal, or have uTorrent installed on your computer, or don't go to church on Sunday or if you don't have a little metal fish attached to the back of your car.
What a second-rate nation the US has become in the past thirty years.
You are welcome on my lawn.
and get it to the supreme court. if they say this is legal, burn it down. simple really.
Too late. SCOTUS has already changed the meaning of the Second Amendment to something the Founders never intended. The purpose of the Second was so that those that carried arms could organize and could protect others from our own government. Now, it means self-defense. From selfless to selfish in just two, well-publicized cases.
The Admin and the Engineer
I don't think it's cops up their asses. I think it's the same old tired kneejerk "TERRIST!" reaction we've seen ever since 9/11. Any time someone wants to do something that's blatantly unethical or illegal (like, say, waterboarding people, or kidnapping them, chaining them to the floor of an airplane, flying them to Syria, and having them tortured with methods up to and including administering electric shocks to their genitals) (Yes, this actually happened, many times - research "extraordinary rendition") they just run to a judge who may not particularly like the cops, but who is terrified of the terrorists, and claim that what they're doing might prevent a terrorist attack.
Well. Yes. It might. Hell, nuking the whole planet would prevent them too, but no one's suggesting that. Why not?
And then after they've been doing the waterboarding or the extraordinary rendition or the illegal surveillance, they say "Well see, we haven't had any terrorist attacks and therefore it must be working!" which is a completely illogical train of thought. We haven't had any dragon attacks either, but that doesn't mean that the little boy 2 houses down from me who keeps waving a plastic sword around to drive the dragons away is actually having an effect.
Yes, terrorists are out there and yes, we need to do everything we can to prevent them from pulling off another attack like that, but it has to be both logical and consistent with the laws of the land. To suddenly declare private property as public-property-for-the-purposes-of-government-spying goes against every founding principle of this country. To follow people around because of something they said in a political discussion on a message forum, or because they're not white enough, is un-American, unpatriotic, and anyone doing it or authorizing it should be jailed.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
On the other hand the Holocaust was enabled by conformism.
Actually, you're probably wearing an even better FBI tracker on your belt right now. You even paid for it yourself, with two-year contract to a carrier who will gladly allow the FBI to follow you anytime they like. Hell, you've even given them a mic and video camera to use too. Think that sounds all tin-foil hat? Read all about it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Or do.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
In order to get a warrant, the cop has to swear to the judge that there's probable cause to believe there's some connection with a crime.
The 4th Amendment was written for situations like this and civil asset forfeiture. Our legal system has gotten turned completely upside down. Judges have forgotten that they're supposed to protect innocent victims, whether the perpetrators were other civilians or Congress.
Yes, there is the point about having a cop follow the suspect around all day. But cops are always short-handed, and technology like this lets them crack down tighter on the whole "Big Brother" thing. If they have to have an actual person dedicated to following the kid around, odds are they'll limit themselves to suspects who are actually worth investigating.
I don't believe that's true.
Yes, we are a nation made up of people who predominantly self-identify as "Christians" when asked in a poll question, that's not really the best way to count. I would bet that if you asked people if they were "moral people" or "ethical people" we'd probably get 95% of people saying that of course, they were. That would hardly mean that 95% of Americans were either moral or ethical. Just that we like to think of ourselves that way.
On the other hand, if you were to ask people if their neighbors were "Christian" you would get a much lower number than you get when people are self-identifying. It's because calling yourself a Christian or a "person of faith" is a long sight from actually being so.
If you were to observe the people who call themselves "people of faith" you'd find that only a fraction of them really are. Most would probably turn out to be people who say a little prayer when they're betting on red or when they're afraid their wives are going to find out they've been banging the neighbor or when they're running for office.
But I agree with you that to even suggest that "half-Egyptian" means you deserve to have surveillance put on you (even if your dad did die last year on a trip to Egypt) is to suggest that the American experiment is a complete failure, which it may well be.
I think the main takeaway from the past few decades is that the United States has turned into a second-rate nation. And not for the reasons that the Tea Party would have you believe. It's because we've turned over our society, our culture and our government to investors who have not turned out to have our best interests at heart. We knew going in that multinational corporations were going to put profits ahead of the best interests of the country, so we shouldn't be a bit surprised. We knew going in that "supply-side" economics was a scam to concentrate wealth in a very few people. But apparently, the siren song of cheap consumer goods and E-Z credit was much stronger than our desire to fulfill the promise of our Founding Fathers. So corporate governance needs fear of the "other" and a selfishness that masquerades as "Liberty" to stay in power, which has begotten "libertarians" and the "tea party", so we end up, paradoxically, with a country that's on lock-down both physically and intellectually, where everyone is more worried about the abstract "national debt" than the very real credit card balances they've been racking up. Misdirection. Promoting make-believe Liberty in order to enslave a people is not a new idea, but in the hands of big money and corporate media, it's effective beyond belief.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Of course, but at least most Americans until the '80s had a reasonable expectation that their kids would have a better life than they had, which for a parent is as much as one can hope. Whether you're talking about financially, or civil rights, or education, or however you measure "quality of life", things were getting a little bit better for each generation.
Starting in the early 90's, after supply-side economics really started to do it's dirty work, the realization set in that our kids would not have it nearly as well unless you were a member of the top few percent. The trend accelerates.
You are welcome on my lawn.