To Secure Liberty: privacy

Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts

13 March, 2012

Yet another case of overreaction

The governor of Virginia recently signed legislation which required an ultrasound--in almost all cases by vaginal probe (although the text of the legislation is careful to obscure that)--for any woman who has a abortion. This is in spite of her desires, or those of her doctor. Whatever you think of abortion, this is a clear violation of any principle of self-ownership. So I suppose we shouldn't be surprised when (a) people protested, and (b) a state which has no regard for people in any case called out the storm troopers.

At least it made for some visuals, courtesy of http://militantlibertarian.org and Style Weekly.

Now all they need is a tank.

27 January, 2012

It's for your own good

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

Yeah, right.

A recent Freedom of Information Act suit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center reveals some of the fun the Department of Homeland Security has been having in the name of "protecting" us--or whoever they think they're protecting. According to the findings

...the DHS has hired and instructed General Dynamics to monitor political dissent and the dissenters. The range of websites listed as being monitored is quite impressive...

***

Some of the more high profile and highly trafficked sites being monitored include the comments sections of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, Wired, and ABC News. In addition, social networking sites Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are being monitored. For the first time, the public not only has an idea who the DHS is pursuing with their surveillance and where, but what they are looking for as well. General Dynamics contract requires them to “[identify] media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond government activities.” The DHS also instructed General Dynamics to generate “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS.” In other words, the DHS wants to know who you are if you say anything critical about the government.

You better watch out, you better not cry. They know when you've been sleeping, they know when you're awake. They know if you've been "bad" or "good" (by their definition), so be good for goodness sake.

14 July, 2011

A question I'd like to see answered

From Danger Room:

In a letter that Sens. Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon will send later on Thursday, obtained by Danger Room, the senators ask Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Do government agencies have the authority to collect the geolocation information of American citizens for intelligence purposes?”

Both senators are members of the panel overseeing the 16 intelligence agencies. In May, they sounded warnings that the Obama administration was secretly reinterpreting the Patriot Act to allow a broader amount of domestic surveillance than it had publicly disclosed.
“[R]ecent advances in geolocation technology have made it increasingly easy to secretly track the movements and whereabouts of individual Americans on an ongoing, 24/7 basis,” they write. “Law enforcement agencies have relied on a variety of different methods to conduct this sort of electronic surveillance, including the acquisition of cell phone mobility data from communications companies as well as the use of tracking devices covertly installed by the law enforcement agencies themselves.”
Geolocation is a particular interest of Wyden’s. Technically, there are few obstacles to clandestine geodata collection, since most mobile phones feature built-in GPS. So along with a House Republican, Jason Chaffetz, Wyden introduced a bill that would require warrants for law enforcement to collect geodata. As our sister blog Threat Level has reported, a patchwork of inconsistent recent court rulings has yet to resolve whether geolocation data is protected by the Fourth Amendment.

What do all the rest of you think? As a practical matter, can we say there is a reasonable expectation of privacy?

Hell--can we assume a reasonable expectation of privacy anywhere?

22 March, 2011

Good news on the rule of law

The Bush administration had considerable success in stopping review of its actions by claiming that those who couldn't prove they had been under surveillance, or otherwise affected by secret executive actions, had no standing to bring a case before the court. The Obama administration, despite the candidate's pledge to stop this practice, has taken it and run with it.

At least in the area of warrantless eavesdropping there is some good news. A unanimous three-judge appellate court has ruled, in a case involving political activists, that there is a reasonable fear of surveillance, and real harm. They ruled that the plaintiffs' fear is reasonable given the sweeping powers the FISA law vests gives the president, and this allows them to challenge the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments
Act:

This is a note of sanity in response to an otherwise insane doctrine. Just because you do something in secret shouldn't mean that nobody can sue you over it.

For a more detailed analysis, see Glenn Greenwald in Salon.

06 December, 2009

Evasion

If you want to drop out of sight for a week or two, here are some hints. If you want to do more than that, you'll have to make some major life changes.