Category: Legislation

Electronics? I’ll take those. – KTHX, DHS

August 2nd, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics, Technology No comments - Tags: 4th, Act, Amendment, computer, constitution, DHS, government, homeland, illegal, ipod, laptop, law, news, operating, Patriot, post, search, Security, seizure, States, system, Technology, truecrypt, United, Washington

This writing was prompted by a short bit from the Washington Post.

Isn’t there this thing called the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution?

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

These acts by the Department of Homeland in-Security are blatant violations of the 4th Amendment.

For those of you unaware, if they take your iPod for example, and you cannot prove right then and there you legally own the albums the mp3s were ripped from or bought them from iTunes, you could be arrested for copyright infringement.

If they take your laptop away (they supposedly can), how do you know what they take off of your private effects? How do you know what they might plant?

Yes I know, all people are honest and wouldn’t do something bad like plant things. I’m just a conspiracy nut.

Also, “Just what do you have to hide?” To be honest, any damn thing I want. Everything from that hot night in STL (fictional) with my wife to the other one with me in a Speedo (ew).

I don’t commit crimes, unless you want to use the Patriot Act to accuse me of speaking out about how illegal it is according to the constitution. However, I am watching our liberties melt away, and the Prozac nation keeps letting it happen.

Thankfully, there are tools like Truecrypt that will allow you to encrypt files, operating systems, and even to have hidden operating systems that are un-detectable within a ‘dummy’ operating system.

Go check them out: www.truecrypt.org

There’s a great how-to here: http://cnettv.cnet.com/9742-1_53-50003244.html

We still need to fight the government’s tyranny, however this free product provides some great interim solutions.

Taxes from every angle…

July 16th, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics 2 comments - Tags: anger, gas, government, Haliburton, income, prison, property, sales, tax

Have you ever sat down and thought about how many taxes you pay?

Think about it: property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, bed (hotel) taxes, and on and on and on…

How do we survive? I mean, all levels of government keep taxing us from before we get paid, to yearly taxes on our homes, to taxes on our gas to get to our jobs, to sales tax on everything. I just keep thinking about how much money is given to the government by an average person and I am amazed.

Have you ever figured up the amount you pay yearly? It’s astounding. I did a guesstimate of what the government takes from us over the course of a year, and I was shocked. I won’t share the amount here for personal reasons, but we wound up at about 25%.

Can you belive I work 10 hours per week so our government can exist? So they can spy on me. So people can starve on the streets daily. So our borders can be wide open. So they can criminalize everything and keep Haliburton building prisons. So the prison-guard unions can keep influencing to make more laws to keep those prisons full. So we can invade other countries that have been at war for thousands of years and think we can solve it.

I’ll stop now before I really get upset.

Wednesday Show 2008-07-14

July 14th, 2008 · Daniel · Legislation, Podcast, School, Technology No comments - Tags: ACLU, Cali, CNN, Daniel, Entertainment, Fark, Kevin, Lewis, news, pop

A slow Wednesday show where Kevin and I cover a wiiiiiiiiide range of topics.

Surprisingly, our shirts got delivered whilst recording.

NGI Technology seems to back the government spying I mentioned…

July 1st, 2008 · Daniel · Legislation, Politics, Technology 2 comments - Tags: Crime, database, Enemy, Facebook, Generation, government, Identification, Lockheed, Martin, Mechanics, myspace, Next, NGI, Popular, spy, State

I mentioned in an item last week how easy it would be for the government to begin using widely available information to keep detailed information on the general populous. Then, I was talking about a bill that was before the Congress requiring detailed transaction information transferred to government storage for use as they see fit.

This time, I came across an article on Popular Mechanics site that discusses the pros and cons of NGI (Next Generation Identification) technology.

Lockheed Martin has been commissioned to develop this system that will presumably be used to maintain photos, retinal scans, and possibly other information about ‘criminals’. All of this information will be stored with our government as a grand database of people identifiers.

Since surveillance is easy, do it for us – US Government

June 27th, 2008 · Daniel · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, Politics, Technology One comment - Tags: Act, bill, camera, card, Columbia, credit, debit, domestic, Facebook, Freedom, government, illegal, Illinois, internet, IRS, Louis, Mount, myspace, Patriot, Saint, Senate, spy, STL, surveillance, TSA, Vernon

It seems that more and more the US government is surveilling (is that a word?) and controlling the public by ever increasing leaps and bounds. Traffic cameras, the Patriot Act, TSA, domestic wiretaps, internet tracking, etc.

There are more cameras watching you in a day than you know. Heck, if you are a member of MySpace or Facebook, you provide the government with more information about your life and networking than you realize. The best ‘feature’ added so far is the ‘tagging’ of photos. drag a square around friends’ faces and then put in their name. Facial recognition anyone?

Yes, that is pretty far out there, but so were electric cars.

Back to task – All of these things and more make surveillance extremely easy for anyone, especially a powerful and ominous force like the government. I don’t think things are as bad as the crazy conspiracy theorists do, but the opportunities are there.

Unfortunately, the government has realized that the opportunity is there as well, and now they are asking companies to help them right along. Here is a snippet from the Senate summary: