Supreme Court Blocks Government Plan To Claim Ownership Of DNAIn a long running case, a Supreme Court has ruled to limit the use of blood samples collected from newborns by the government.
The case has exposed the fact that there is an ongoing semi-covert movement by state and federal governments to claim ownership of every newborn baby’s DNA for the purpose of genetic research without the consent of individual citizens.
The Minnesota Court ruled Wednesday that the Minnesota Department of Health is violating the law... (more)
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EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydrationEU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.
Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.
Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.... (more)
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RIAA Wants To Shutter Torrent Sites, And MoreThe RIAA has informed the U.S. government about the piracy-promoting websites it would like to be dealt with in the near future. The list includes all major torrent sites, but also Russia’s Facebook and Classmates equivalent. The submission is particularly sensitive because the House Judiciary Committee today discussed the pending Stop Online Piracy Act, which would grant copyright holders the power to put these sites out of business.
Leading up to today’s hearing ... (more)
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Green Fascism: Businesses Face $1.1Million Fine If They Blame Carbon Tax For Rate HikesTHE whitewash begins. Now that the carbon tax has passed through federal parliament, the government's clean-up brigade is getting into the swing by trying to erase any dissent against the jobs-destroying legislation.
On cue comes the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which this week issued warnings to businesses that they will face whopping fines of up to $1.1m if they blame the carbon tax for price rises.
It says it has been "directed by the Australia... (more)
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Obama Praises Australia's Draconian Carbon TaxPresident Barack Obama has ominously praised Australia’s draconian carbon tax, even as details emerge over how the government plans to fine businesses up to $1.1 million dollars merely for suggesting the fact that the new tax will cause prices to rise.
During a press conference yesterday, Obama praised Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard for pursuing "a bold strategy" in passing the highly c... (more)
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TSA Backtracks On Body Scanner Radiation Study PromiseIn a move we predicted the moment the words left his mouth, TSA head John Pistole has reneged on a promise to the Senate to instigate further studies into the safety of radiation firing body scanners.
A fortnight ago, Pistole told a Senate homeland security committee hearing that the agency will commission further independent research into the safety risks associated with full body scanners currently in use in almost all major airports in the U.S.
"I am concern... (more)
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Ron Paul Comes Out Against SOPA; Joins Other Elected Officials Saying No To The Great Firewall Of AmericaIt appears that more and more members of the House are realizing just how bad SOPA is. Joining Reps. Issa and Bachmann, who had previously spoken out about SOPA, a group of ten House members have signed a letter opposing SOPA. The letter wa... (more)
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SOPA And Its Broad Regulation Of VPNs, Proxies And Other Important ToolsThere are so many scary parts to SOPA, it's taking some time to pull out all the pieces. One of the scarier parts of SOPA that isn't found in PROTECT IP, is the addition of a form of an "anti-circumvention" rule, which makes it illegal to try to get around any blockade on the US government's blacklist. Like the DMCA's dreadful anti-circumvention clause, this one is also vague and overly broad -- and would create problems for all sorts of legal services. The EFF is listing out some perfectly l... (more)
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New Study Shows Majority Of Americans Against SOPA; Believe Extreme Copyright Enforcement Is UnreasonableOne of the talking points we've been hearing about SOPA from the lobbyists pushing to get it approved is that the majority of Americans are in favor of the bill, because they want to "protect" intellectual property or jobs. This has never made much sense, since SOPA doesn't protect jobs at all. It destroys them, by hindering one of the few parts of our economy that has been creating jobs -- new and small businesses, particularly in the tech community. Now, the same folks who brought you that ... (more)
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DOJ: Lying on Match.com needs to be a crimeThe U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com.
In a statement obtained by CNET that's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies.
The law must allow "prosecutions based upon... (more)
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House Judiciary Committee SOPA Hearings Stacked 5 To 1 In Favor Of Censoring The InternetApparently the folks behind SOPA are really scared to hear from the opposition. We all expected that the Judiciary Committee hearings wouldn't be a fair fight. In Congress, they rarely are fair fights. But most people expected the typical "three in favor, one against" weighted hearings. That's already childish, but it seems that the Judiciary Committee has decided to take the ridiculousness to new heights. We'd already mentioned last week that the Committee had rejected the request o... (more)
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TSA Says They'll Rip Open Your Christmas PresentsThe Grinch who stole Christmas this year is the federal government. First, the Feds were going to institute a Christmas tree tax, now, the TSA will be tearing open your Christmas presents "for your security."
From CBS:
Security screeners at LAX will apparently have zero tolerance for holiday cheer this Christmas.
KNX 1070′s Bob Brill reports authorities on Friday are on the lookout for people who try to smuggle illegal items disguised as ho ... (more)
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Remember the "borderless" Internet? It's officially dead"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there," wrote L.P. Hartley in his terrific novel The Go-Between. But Hartley knew nothing of the Internet when he wrote his novel of adolescent sexual awakening; if he had, he might have been shocked at just how quickly the past became a foreign place. Indeed, from the perspective of the recently introduced Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would set up US website blacklisting, require search engine censorship, and divide the Inte... (more)
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The Stop Online Piracy Act: A Blacklist by Any Other Name Is Still a BlacklistDuring the past week, momentum against the House's draconian copyright bill has gained steam, as venture capitalists, Internet giants and major artists have denounced it for handing corporations unprecedented power to censor countless websites and stifle free speech. In response, the bill's big-pocketed supporters have ... (more)
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Supreme Court Considers Constitutionality Of Having People Tracked By GPS All The TimeLast year, we wrote about a (somewhat surprising, given similar rulings elsewhere) ruling by the appeals court for DC, saying that, while law enforcement could use a GPS device to track where you go on a trip, doing long-term, always-on monitoring went beyond the "reasonable expectation" of privacy, and was a 4th Amendment violation. This week, the Supreme Court heard the appeal on that case, and wondered whether or n... (more)
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Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make -- 14 New Ways That The Government Is Watching YouIf you live in the United States today, you need to understand that your privacy is being constantly eroded. Our world is going crazy, government paranoia is off the charts and law enforcement authorities have become absolutely obsessed with watching us, listening to us, tracking us, recording us, compiling information on all of us and getting us all to spy on one another. If you doubt that we are rapidly getting to the point where the government will monitor every breath you take an... (more) Correction: headline should read '14 new ways the government is *serving* you.' - Chris |
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Big Sis Brings 'See Something, Say Something' To Hotel RoomsGuests checking in at big hotels like the Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, and Holiday Inn will now be met with the face of Janet Napolitano when they turn on their televisions, as Homeland Security’s ‘See Something, Say Something’ snitch campaign continues to expand.
“The Department of Homeland Security is turning to television and public service announcements to urge U.S. hotel guests to fight terrorism,” reports UPI, adding that PSAs encouraging Ame... (more)
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Federally-Funded Street Lights Capable of "Recording Conversations"Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.
In the days after we first brought attention to the privacy concerns surrounding the new street lights, with our sto... (more)
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Big Sis To Monitor Twitter For Signs Of Social UnrestThe wave of civil unrest that has swept the globe over the past year has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to step up its monitoring of Twitter and other social networks in a bid to pre-empt any sign of social dislocation within the United States.
“Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U... (more)
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Porno Scanners Are Health Hazards? Hoodathunitt?Yes, I know that LRC readers will be shocked, SHOCKED to read the following: Ever since the original Porno Scanners were shown to "experts" in 1998, there have been concerns about the X-rays causing cancer.
Oh, but it gets better:
One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine ... (more)
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Do The Authors Of The Felony Streaming Bills Even Know What The Details Of Their Own Bills Mean?After Justin Bieber himself pointed out how silly the various bills in both the Senate and the House (S.978 and SOPA, respectively) concerning making streaming a felony were, the office of the key sponsor behind S.978, Senator Amy Klobuchar's, insisted that Justin Bieber didn't understand the bill. We've been hearing the same thing from a few others... (more) "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it!" |
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Looks like Congress has declared war on the internetMany internet users in the United States have watched with horror as countries like France and Britain have proposed or instituted so-called “three strikes” laws, which cut off internet access to those accused of repeated acts of copyright infringement. Now the U.S. has its own version of this kind of law, and it is arguably much worse: the Stop Online Piracy Act, intr... (more)
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