The grassroots group “Get FISA Right” is fighting back. They are airing the following ad on as many tv stations as possible (check out your town. It can actually get pretty inexpensive.)
The wiretap protest movement started life as a group on Barack Obama’s social networking site My.BarackObama.com. The group was dedicated to deterring Obama from voting for a measure that legalized President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program and granted retroactive legal immunity to the phone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was illegal. Membership swelled to more than 24,000 ahead of the July vote, but it still failed to deter Obama from supporting the unprecedented expansion of U.S. domestic spying powers.
So lets see some action out there. Get to work…since stupid Chicago is not allowed to air it. Not that I think political ads should be aired in candidates hometowns….
In my extended family, I have something of a reputation for being a privacy Nazi. This is due to my penchant for not giving out addresses and phone numbers to stores that seem to think my buying something from them is a good enough reason to ask for it, but it turns out I’m only playing in the minor leagues. The American Library Association is raising more than a million dollars to fund a new “Right to Information Privacy Campaign” with a goal of nothing less than getting Americans “to recommit to information privacy.”
Librarians might not be the group you’d first imagine out in the streets, manning the barricades, but they can get pretty agitated about both censorship and privacy. (Note: never tell a librarian that you’d like to ban a particular book unless the two of you are separated by an inch of plexiglass.) In this case, the 64,000 librarians of the ALA believe that their work remains vital to a vibrant democracy, since “the right to read and search for information is the foundation of individual liberty.”
The ALA’s new campaign wants to 1) educate people, and then 2) turn them into activists. The education component of the three-year program will make people aware, for instance, that “checking out a biography of Osama Bin Laden could prompt seizure of their library records” or that “online searches create traceable records that make them vulnerable to questioning by the FBI.” The ALA also worries about provisions in the law that “gag” the people who are on the receiving end of government orders to turn over these records.
“Law enforcement agencies at every level are exploiting fears about terrorism and child safety to encourage lawmakers to strip away statutory privacy protections for library records,” says the ALA. “This eliminates anonymity in the library, and encourages the mind set that ‘good’ people should have nothing to hide.”
But, as Cory Doctorow wittily points out in a talk he gave to the group last month, people have all sorts of behaviors for which they want “privacy,” even if these behaviors aren’t “secret.” When someone heads off to the bathroom, for instance, and closes the door, their behavior isn’t a “secret,” but it is “private.” And everyone’s parents engaged in at least one nonsecret but private activity to produce a child.
The librarians are well suited to mount such a campaign. By nature, they’re guardians of anonymity and free access to information, and they also have access to a huge variety of outlets for their message. US public libraries have more locations than McDonalds, and 62 percent of American adults hold library cards. That gives ALA members a natural place to educate the public about these issues and channel that education into public discourse and, hopefully, a new consensus on privacy and its importance.
Blogs are for tattling. Yes, you can get more creative, politically correct and all that junk. But let’s be honest here; blogs are for tattling on people that annoy you. Which is exactly what the MPD Enforcer 2.0 blog did in Tennessee.
Well, needless to say the Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin was not happy at being named in the blog, much less with the other corruption being exposed. So he did the ever-so-trendy thing and sued AOL to find out the name of the anonymous bloggers. Oh yeah-and he did it on taxpayer dollars too.
AOL has vowed to fight it. The blog has hired lawyers. ACLU is “closely watching this development.” All I can hope for is our right to free speech, reporting on a corrupt government AND our right to privacy is preserved.
To quote th article, a “vulnerable” man who refused to leave his flat in the United Kingdom cut off his own head with a chain saw rather than leave his home.
David Phyall’s, 58 years old, severed head was found beside the power tool inside his housing association flat shortly after receiving his eviction notice.
Below are the quoted reactions by the city council:
Lib Dem Bishopstoke Parish Council chairman Anne Winstanley said: ‘The last I heard they were still negotiating with him to try to provide what he required to move into as an alternative. It sounds very tragic for whatever the reason he met his death.’
While other councilmen were just eager to prove the reasoning for the use of eminent domain:
Councillor Winstanley added that Bodmin Road had become a target for vandalism and nuisance behaviour in recent months.
In Cincinnati a coalition is opposing the installation of red-light cameras has collected over 10,000 signatures to put the issue before votes. Well over the required 6,100 signatures required.
WeDemandAVote.com plans to turn in the signatures to the Hamilton County Board of Elections next week. Mayor Mark Mallory had joined the coalition in opposing the revenue driven plot.
And across the Atlantic….
Residents of Britain are in a rage against Google’s “spy cars” which want to photograph every front door saying it would:
Google needlessly making it more efficient for bad guys, terrorists, burglars, stalkers, pedophiles, etc. to find your home/hearth and more easily do private citizens harm.
1. FISA passed. That joke of a bill passed. At least the ACLU is going to sue over it. Maybe Judge Walker will get to have a voice after all.
2. REAL ID continues to be a very real threat (pun intended. So you may laugh at the lame joke.) As Homeland Security probably knows State Governments aren’t in a tiff about their citizens privacy rights. They simply want to be paid for their inconvenience. Hence they are gathering $80 million in grants to “ease” the way. First testing states will include: Wisconsin, Nevada, Missouri, Indiana and Florida.
2.1 This does not mean that people aren’t still fighting the REAL ID. The latest exploit included an airplane flying a banner flying this past July 4th weekend. People are starting to get creative
3. The Communist Party USA doesn’t believe that Obama’s plan is “radical.” This is….hilarious.
4. Most “shocking” yet is the plan to give all airline passengers a identification bracelet. Yes it stores everything that the REAL ID would, and yes it was Homeland Security’s idea. Big surprise. Worse, if you “get out of line” this bracelet doubles as a taser and will shock you into cooperating. The Washington Times writes:
Clearly the Electronic ID Bracelet is a euphemism for the EMD Safety Bracelet, or at least it has a nefarious hidden ability (thus the term ID Bracelet is ambiguous at best). EMD stands for Electro-Musclar Disruption. Again, according to the promotional video, the bracelet can completely immobilize the wearer for several minutes.
Just released yesterday on Wikileaks yesterday is the World Customs Organization is working to search more than your bags at the border. That’s right, they want you to open up your laptops (something considered very personal by many) so that they can search the contents for stolen intellectual property. Ever downloaded an illegal song or movie? In the future you hold the risk of being detained or imprisoned for it.
Where is the border stopping the government from crossing my line for privacy rights?
Alright, so here is a video of Daniel Ellsberg (yeah that guy that released the Pentagon Papers) about FISA. I can’t say that I agree with his ideology overall, far from it in fact, but this is a great video that outlines the dangers of agreeing to telecom immunity.
I, ah-hem, called it months ago. Obama doesn’t care about privacy rights. Doesn’t even list it as an issue on his campaign website. Yet supporters are shocked, angered (make that royally enraged) that Obama changed his mind about his promise to filibuster the FISA deal.
His two arguments for changing his mind? Glad you asked.
It’s “better than the Protect America Act” which is FALSE. The Protect America Act was set to expire. This one is not. Nor did the first bill grant Telecom companies immunity.
The UT Documents Blog explained it best by saying that in the context of the “war on terror,” Obama believes some constitutional rights must be suspended or at least sidestepped, and key among them is warrantless state surveillance.
EXCUSE ME? When did it become alright to forsake the civil liberties granted to us by the freakin constitution for a war that has no end in sight? The whole point of this war is to protect our freedoms granted by our forefathers not take them aways in the name of protection! Gah.
Finally! Someone had the gall to call the President out on the FISA issue. Vaughn Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California said the constitutionally Bush has no legal right to just spy on citizens whenever he feels like…much less grant immunity to telecom companies doing it for him.
This provision and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future.
Unfortunately this had all impact of spilling a slurpee on someones pants. Embarressing for Congress, but not debilitating. Too recover from this slap on the wrist by Judge Walker, Congress is voting to keep Walker from examining whether the nation’s largest telecoms massively violated federal privacy laws by helping the government spy on Americans. They then are planning to retroactively “forgive” the telecom court cases.
