PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting "creativity". The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites-- they just have to ... (more)
The newly introduced ‘rogue websites’ bill that has attracted bi-partisan support in the House will force Internet Service Providers to create a list of banned websites and prevent their users from accessing the sites, creating a Chinese-style ‘ban list’ that could easily be abused to silence free speech.
“US lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday that would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites accused of piracy of movies, telev... (more)
New street lights that include “Homeland Security” applications including speaker systems, motion sensors and video surveillance are now being rolled out with the aid of government funding.
The Intellistreets system comprises of a wireless digital infrastructure that allows street lights to be controlled remotely by means of a ubiquitous wi-fi link and a miniature computer housed inside each street light, allowing for “security, energy management, data harvesting... (more)
Trials of invasive full body scanning machines in Australia have revealed that the technology has a huge error rate of up to 40%, yet government officials want to roll out the technology in airports anyway.
The Australian Office of Transport Security announced this week that of 23,500 scans carried ... (more)
The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the TSA, has asserted that the release of a classified report on TSA security failures will renew calls for the replacement of the agency with private airport security personnel.
“The failure rate (for body scanning equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock your socks off,” Florida Republican, Rep. John L. Mica told reporters during a briefing Monday.
Twenty-five years ago Friday, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that for the first time provided Americans with sweeping digital-privacy protections.
The law came at a time when e-mail was used mostly by nerdy scientists, when phones without wires hardly worked as you stepped out into the backyard, and when the World Wide Web didn’t exist. Four presidencies later, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act has aged dramatically, providing little protecti... (more)
Not satisfied with fumbling through Americans’ private possessions, one TSA screener saw fit to make a humiliating joke about the contents, writing a personal message on a TSA inspection note after finding a sex toy in writer Jill Filipovic’s luggage.
After arriving at her hotel, Filipovic was unpacking when she discovered her bag had been individually searched by a TSA screener who, having seen the “personal item,” saw fit to comment, writing “GET Y... (more)
The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d'etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time, until suddenly you find yourself being subjected to random patdowns and security sweeps during your morning commute to work or quick trip to the shopping mall. — John W. Whitehead
The headline read, “Tennessee Becomes First State ... (more)
STATE Parliament is set to pass new legislation making it a criminal offence to "insult" Gaming Minister Michael O'Brien.
Fines of up to $11,945 will be given to anyone found guilty of upsetting the minister and his staff under the extraordinary new offence.
The Baillieu Government is seeking changes to the Gaming Regulation Act which it says are "reasonably necessary to respect the rights and reputation of the minister and authorised persons". If passed, the ruling... (more)
That Anonymous Coward alerts us to the news that DC federal appeals court has issued a ruling (pdf) in the case of Gitmo detainee Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif, but the entire ruling is classified, so the public has no idea what it says.
... (more)
The administrators of two file-sharing sites have been sentenced to fines and a year in jail for linking to copyright works. Breaking a long run of operators being acquitted for similar activities, a Spanish court decided that the act of linking constituted a for-profit “public communication”. The lawyer for one of the defendants has denounced the decision, saying that it can only be understood in “political terms”.
In common with many similar sites, FenixP... (more)
This parody may soon be illegal. On September 22, 2011, H.R. 3011 was introduced in the House. It is entitled the “Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act of 2011” and it contains some curious language.
Two thirds of the way through the ponderous bill, in Sec. 295, we find the following:
Whoever, except with the written permission of the Assi
Subscribers to four of the UK's biggest internet service providers will have to "opt in" if they want to view sexually explicit websites, as part of government-sponsored curbs on online pornography.
The measures will be unveiled on Tuesday as David Cameron hosts No 10 meeting with the Mothers' Union, which earlier this year produced a raft of proposals to shield children from sexualised imagery.
The prime minister is expected to announce other moves in line with the... (more)
The global authority over all .com domain names, VeriSign, is demanding the power to terminate websites deemed “abusive” when ordered to by government without a court order or any kind of oversight whatsoever.
“The company said today it wants to be able to enforce the “denial, cancellation or transfer of any registration” in any of a laundry list of scenarios where a domain is deemed to be “abusive,” reports the UK Regist... (more)
I'm curious if Thailand is purposely trying to kill off its rather lucrative tourism business. We've discussed in the past that Thailand has strict laws against "insulting" the king. These lèse majesté laws are used widely in Thailand to stop any sort of political criticism. They've been used to block entire sites including YouTube, and to arrest website owners for the comments on their site.
Lately, Thailand has been trying to use those laws against US ci... (more)
A DAD says he was threatened by police under anti-terror laws – for taking a picture of his wee girl eating ice cream.
Chris White was pulled up by a security guard and police were called after he snapped his four-year-old daughter Hazel on his phone in Braehead shopping centre, near Glasgow.
Chris was asked to delete the photos and banned from the mall.
Police also warned him they could confiscate his phone under the Prevention of Terrorism Act... (more)
The EU toy safety directive, agreed and implemented by Government, states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.
Despite having been popular favourites for generations of children, party games including whistles and magnetic fishing games are to be banned because their small parts or chemicals used in making them are decreed to be too risky.
A county in Florida has installed fingerprint scanners in school buses. Described as "one of the most monumental things that Washington County has ever done" by an education bureaucrat, the machines have been used since the beginning of the school year.
School officials decided moving the scanners to the buses was a more effective way to monitor students. They plan to have a scanner and laptop installed on every bus in the district.
The TSA has long threatened to install its porno-scanners in those airports yet innocent of them; here's a list of 29 more places where these deviant devices will strip you of your modesty and Constitutional rights. Yes, the TSA ballyhoos its new "automated target recognition software" and the "chalk outline" that supposedly replaces the picture of our naked body (remember: the TSA lies about every... (more)
AURORA - A man says he got much more than a large pizza when he called Papa John's for delivery - he got a visit from Aurora Police.
The man was smoking medical marijuana just before the pizza arrived on Friday evening. The delivery driver smelled the marijuana and called the cops. The Papa John's employee, who was not identified, was concerned because the customer's 9-year-old daughter was in the house.
Officers performed a child welfare check and left without fili... (more)
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
Reid Nottoli was pulled over on December 6, 2009 just before 2am as he was taking a female friend home. Santa Cruz County Deputy Sheriff Steven Ryan said Nottoli's silver Acura TL had been speeding on Highway 1. After speaking with Nottoli on the side of the road, Ryan suspected the 25-year-old was und... (more)
According to CNBC, the Federal Reserve "is planning on monitoring what you say about it on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook". Apparently we are not supposed to be alarmed though, because as the CNBC headline states, the Federal Reserve just "wants to be your Facebook friend". In fact, the CNBC article says that anyone that feels threatened by the fact that the Federal Reserve will be monitoring what we say on Facebook ... (more)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”—C.S. Lewis
