U.S. Copyright Surveillance Machine About To Be Switched On, Promises of Transparency Already BrokenThe "Copyright Alert System" -- an elaborate combination of surveillance, warnings, punishments, and "education" directed at customers of most major U.S. Internet service providers -- is poised to launch in the next few weeks, as has been widely reported. The problems with it are legion. Big media companies are launching a massive peer-to-peer surveillance scheme to snoop on subscribers. Based on the re... (more)
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The DHS And FBI Present: You Might Be A Terrorist If... (Hotel Guest Edition)As we seem to be told repeatedly, seeing something and saying something is perhaps the greatest duty an American citizen can perform in service to this country. It's simply not enough anymore to install an American flag in the front yard and purchase domestic vehicles. Now, every citizen should be keeping his eye out for (and on) his fellow citizens. The price of freedom may be eternal vigilance, but the price of security is endless paranoia.
To that end, the DHS and the FBI have ... (more)
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Homeland Security Spent $430-Million To Tune Its Radios To A New Frequency, And FailedThe incompetence of Homeland Security when it comes to actually doing things is well documented -- though, they're often so clueless that they take credit for successfully misleading Congress about their own failings. So I guess it should come as little surprise that a new report shows that DHS... (more)
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When Will our Email Betray Us? An Email Privacy Primer in Light of the Petraeus SagaThe unfolding scandal that led to the resignation of Gen. David Petraeus, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, started with some purportedly harassing emails sent from pseudonymous email accounts to Jill Kelley. After the FBI kicked its investigation into high gear, it identified the sender as Paula Broadwell and, ultimately, read massive amounts of private email messages that uncovered an a... (more)
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President Obama Signs 'Secret Directive' On CybersecurityWhile we're hearing that the Senate is likely to take up (though not pass) the Cybersecurity Act yet again either today or tomorrow, and the White House is still sitting on a cybersecurity "executive order," in the meantime it's being reported that President Obama has signed a "secret directive" to allow the military to "act more aggress... (more)
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San Diego Residents Face 6 Years In Prison For Washing Their CarSan Diegans could face 6 years in prison and fines of $100,000 dollars a day for washing their car in the driveway or failing to pick up dog poop under new EPA-mandated environmental regulations related to water quality.
Although residents of the city are forced to drink toxic waste in their water supply in the form of sodium fluoride, measures imposed as a consequence of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act would turn the most mundane of activities into a c... (more)
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If You Eat Something, Say Something: DHS Sounds The Alarm On The 'Terrorist Implications' Of Food TrucksIt's interesting (or maybe just kind of sad) that various government agencies see possible terrorists everywhere but rarely, if ever, catch one. Despite the large number of personnel being thrown at the problem (along with lots of money), actual terrorists seem to be in limited supply.
... (more)
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Draconian Downloading Law In Japan Goes Into Effect... Music Sales DropFor years, we've pointed out that some in the music industry get so obsessed with "stopping piracy" that they miss the fact that their main job should be to increase revenue. They make the huge mistake of assuming that the two things are the same -- and that "stopping piracy" automatically leads to "increased revenue." Yet, almost every time that issue is explored empirically (over time), it doesn't seem to hold up. The latest example was sent in by Techdirt reader edinjapan, and it... (more)
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Egyptian Prosecutor Orders a Ban on Internet PornCensorship circumvention software is about to become very popular in Egypt. On Wednesday, the country's Prosecutor General, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, ordered government ministries to enforce a ban on pornographic websites, based on a three-year old ruling by Egypt's administrative court, which declared that "freedom of expression and public rights should be restricted by maintaining the fundamentals of religion, morality and patriotism... (more)
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California Proposition Outlawing Anonymous Internet Usage For Broadly Defined 'Sex Offenders' PassesYesterday, we wrote about a questionable ballot measure in California that, in an attempt to create harsher penalties for human trafficking, also included numerous problematic components, including banning anonymous speech for anyone on the sex offenders list -- which you can get on for a very broad list of offenses, many of wh... (more)
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Megaupload and the Government's Attack on Cloud ComputingYesterday, EFF, on behalf of its client Kyle Goodwin, filed a brief proposing a process for the Court in the Megaupload case to hold the government accountable for the actions it took (and failed to take) when it shut down Megaupload's service and denied third parties like Mr. Goodwin access to their property. The government also fi... (more)
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BitTorrent Pirate Ordered to Pay $1.5 Million Damages For Sharing 10 MoviesA federal court in Illinois has handed down the largest ever damages award in a BitTorrent case. In a default judgment defendant Kywan Fisher from Hampton, Virginia is ordered to pay $1,500,000 to adult entertainment company Flava Works for sharing 10 of their movies on BitTorrent. The huge total was reached through penalties of $150,000 per movie, the maximum possible statutory damages under U.S. copyright law. It’s expected that the verdict will be used to motivate other BitTorrent defen... (more) There is absolutely no requirement to rule against him for not defending himself, the judge 100% could have ruled against it, ruled to delay the case until a defense is mounted, etc., the judge had many many options, he sided with the copyright fascists. - Chris, InfoLib |
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TSA Screener Arrested For Alleged Raping BoyA TSA agent from Cleveland has been arrested for allegedly raping a young boy, just the latest example of an employee of the federal agency being accused of child molestation while carrying out pat downs of children on the job.
Returning from Germany, the TSA screener, who remains unnamed until he is charged, was arrested on a warrant at Newark Airport in New Jersey.
The man was arrested on suspicion of sexually molesting a young boy from Northeast Ohio.
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Federal Court Approves Use of Hidden Surveillance Cameras on Private Property Without WarrantsYet again, a federal judge undermined the Constitution in a wholly disturbing fashion, this time by allowing police to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant.
This is especially troubling since the federal government has conducted more warrantless surveillance over the past two years than the... (more)
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Another NYPD Terrorist 'Investigation' Turns Up Nothing But Privacy Invasions And Rights ErosionIt's no secret that the "War on Terror" has resulted in little more than steady paychecks for those in the loop and plenty of rights erosion everywhere else. As was detailed earlier this year, the New York Police Department has decided to follow in the clumsy footsteps of the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts, crafting its own "elite" agency (with the help of the CIA) to infiltrate the Muslim community and smoke out terrorists. The end result? Not a single lead generated.
Via Reaso... (more)
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Supermom vs. the Gutless Wonder That Is a Jury You may remember Andrea Abbott: she was Mother of the Year in 2011 when she protested the TSA’s ogling and groping of her teen-aged daughter at Nashville International Airport. "According to an affidavit, Abbott first refused to allow her daughter – then 14 – to go through a body scan machine, saying she didn't want ‘someone to see our bodies naked.’" Good for her! If Leviathan employed normal pe... (more)
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Naturally, the Thieves Are the Lowest of Lying Cowards, TooThe TSA strikes yet again: A woman hoping to fly from Boston's Logan Airport to Chicago for a christening reports that one of its thugs at the checkpoint "holds my backpack up, and um, says there's a water bottle in this backpack, I'm going to have to take that." Literally: The thug "left the area with [the] bag."
The passenger, Terri Ivester, "says she co... (more)
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Law Enforcement Looking To Create A Searchable Database Of Everywhere Your Vehicle Has BeenBack in August, Mike wrote about some questionable sharing of license plate information between the US Border Patrol and various insurance companies. While the stated aim of tracking stolen vehicles might seem to make this sharing justified, the fact that this is going on with no oversight or accountability is cause for alar... (more)
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Do bans on texting while driving actually increase accidents?SALT LAKE CITY — It's perplexing for both police and lawmakers throughout the U.S.: They want to do something about the danger of texting while driving, a major road hazard, but banning the practice seems to make it even more dangerous.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 3 of every 4 states that have enacted a ban on texting while driving have seen crashes actually go up rather than down.
It's hard to pin down exactly why this is the case, bu... (more) Of course, but they also increase revenue, therefor more people have to die. Same goes for the shortening of yellow lights to only 3 seconds from 5. See my article, "The Government Would Rather You Die If It Nets More Revenue" - Chris, InfoLib |
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Mom Found 'Guilty' By Court After Refusing TSA Pat Down On DaughterA woman who stood up to TSA screeners and refused to allow them to grope her or her 14 year old daughter has been found guilty of “disorderly conduct” and sentenced to one year of probation by a court in Tennessee.
... (more)
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Rulers to Serfs: 'It's ALWAYS Your Fault'Those bungling cretins at the TSA have now lost a cat: "Iris Yu left a lot behind when she left Queens to care for her ailing father in Taiwan 10 months ago. But she was finally set to reunite with her cat, Xiaohwa, courtesy of a friend who was leaving for Taiwan last Thursday and agreed to take the cat to her. When a Transportation Security Administration officer [sic for 'bu... (more)
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The TSA Gives Us the Finger AGAINThe Thieves and Sexual Assailants are playing musical chairs with their porno-scanners. They're shuffling carcinogenic backscatter X-ray machines out of larger airports, such as New York's LaGuardia and JFK International, into smaller ones -- but that doesn't mean they've renounced their voyeurism. Oh my, no. Rather, they're replacing backscatter with millimeter-wave technology. (Contrary t... (more)
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