Wow.

When ex-KGB commander Vladimir Putin is saying that the current administration is doing bad things with the phone records, and invading citizens' privacy a bit too much...you know there's a real problem. 

Poor idiot.

I admire Edward Snowdon's courage, but not his intelligence, in shining a spotlight on what the government is doing in ass-plowing the fourth amendment.  He's going to wind up dead.  Whether it's by assassination when they can't haul him back through extradition, or murdered by an inmate (who then immediately gets turned loose as a reward) will depend on which country he manages to flee to. 

I honestly can't see a way for him to survive, since he came out publicly, rather than handing over the information anonymously.  Not with the regime administration tyrants government we currently have in power.

Uh-huh. Felons, all of them.

Who?  Why, the federal government, of course.  They break the laws set down to restrict their actions against us daily.  Remember this?

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.--Amendment IV, United States Constitution

I do believe this violates both the spirit and the letter of that particular law restricting government from looking for things to convict us of, without any suspicion that we're actually breaking the law to begin with. 

And I also believe the government and government goons that are trampling on the citizens (as in: equals who hire government to run the country, NOT subjects controlled by a government) may go fuck themselves.  Go ahead and get my phone records.  I rarely talk to anyone other than my mom, or a couple of friends.  I don't give a damn if they've got them, and I will not comply with anything they demand while insinuating that they've got my phone records. 

After all--I receive a copy every month.  In the mail.  I've never been under the impression that any form of communication other than face to face with NO cell phones, computers with microphones, or any other sort of sound recording capable device present.

Wow--this is a step forward.

Indiana has passed a law stating that people whose homes are invaded by public employees--like police with a no-knock warrant kicking in the wrong door--can shoot the jackbooted thugs kicking in their doors.

Of course, the police are concerned, now, that they're going to get shot.

Here's a hint, guys: stop with the unconstitutional no-knock warrants.  Indiana is only the first state that's permitting people to defend themselves against uniformed thugs.  I'm certain that many more will follow.  The element of surprise isn't going to get cops anything but dead.

Disgusting intrusion into parental territory.

But what else are we to expect from the federal government? From a New York Post piece:

Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent?

Given that it's my opinion that the government is stepping all over parental territory every day: schools that take teenagers to Planned Parenthood for abortions without parental notification, much less consent; children taken from decent homes because they complained that their parents swatted their hands or rears or grounded them, while children that live in abusive homes keep their heads down and are left with their vicitmizers; schools watching your child's weight and trying to take over who gets to decide what your child eats--yeah, the government is majorly overstepping its boundaries on the local, state, and now federal level.

Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law.

And this surprises people...why? Every government is, at heart, a tyranny. Tyrannies work best if there is nowhere they cannot look into an individual's life, especially their personal life. And where best to start but in their childhood? Get 'em used to it young, and they won't notice the way their privacy is slowly stripped away (except in cases of murdering their unborn babies), and their rights infringed upon.

Assuming they understand what their rights are, given how crappy civic education is on nearly every level.

The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status. In its view, public schools offer a golden opportunity to mine reams of data from a captive audience. (emphasis mine)

Okay, here's the nub: the federal government assumes that you will use public schools to educate your child. Currently. So, if you care about this (and you should), one way to neatly sidestep the whole issue is to sacrifice some of your lifestyle to put your kids in private school. The government is right to assume that individuals in public school are, in a sense, a captive audience: they have total authority over public education. It's one of the only reasons I have issues with Ronald Regan and his policies.

Right now, they only feel safe invading your privacy through your kids' public school records. Right now, it's still legal to choose whether to put your kids in public school, private school, or take them out of school systems altogether and teach them yourself.

I have two little ones, the oldest of which is three years from public school age (born after the cutoff date), if I were planning on sending them in the first place. Thing is, I am an educator. I know what the quality of public school education isn't--I see the end results, and the average readiness for college is falling, year by year. There are a few individuals who've been to private school their whole lives (we have two good K-12 ones here--one is Catholic, the other costs more per year than the university does), and a few who have been home schooled who are better students than the private school kids. Guess which route I'm planning to take with my kids?

Right now, the federal government assumes that your kids are their property, and assume that you are a captive audience through their education. The federal government doesn't realize that their captive audience isn't as captive as they'd like to think.

Unfortunately, their "captive audience" isn't likely to shrink, as most parents are either uninformed, or just don't care.

It's really bad when the left's partisans are telling them they've gone too far.

The New York Times opinion pages--not generally known for Constitutionally-based opinion--is saying that the rape of the fourth amendment by the leftist regime that the ingnorati elected three years ago is (drum roll, please) more dangerous than any other rights violation.

via Random Acts of Patriotism

Saw this a couple days ago, didn’t have time to comment.

I love my kids, and I love my job, but I seriously wish I had more time to write. I would have beaten Vilmar to the punch.

This is a vicious violation of our fourth and fifth amendment rights. There's no way I'd a) own a smartphone to begin with, or b) hand it over to be searched without a warrant and probable cause, whether I'd been doing something wrong or not. No, I wouldn't cooperate any more than I'd cooperate if the government decided to place a GPS tracker in my car without a court order.

(And yes, I regularly look under the car for things like this. I may be paranoid, but I absolutely do not trust the government or law enforcement not to violate my rights. If I find one, it's getting tucked down in the seat of a taxi in one of the two major cities in Missouri.)

I think this is way beyond "self-incrimination."

There is no way I think this should be permitted. Yes, it's interesting; however, it's so far beyond a violation of individual freedoms--specifically those guaranteed by the fourth and fifth amendments--that it sounds a lot more like Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" than anything rational.

Big Brother is watching us.

This ought to be illegal. It's an imposition on our God-given rights, guaranteed against government intrusion by the fourth amendment.

Big Brother really is watching our children. Probably naked.

Big Brother is obviously a pervert. Remember that lawsuit about the school district that were taking web cam pictures of students and screen captures of whatever they were working on? Yeah, more and more and more is coming out that makes the school and their admin look worse.

I'm just waiting for the admin and faculty to be charged with creating, distributing, and viewing child porn. Faculty and admin have admitted to enjoying abusing the software, after all. If they've caught even one of their students naked (which is likely, given the volume of infractions), that's child porn.

(via Joanne Jacobs)

If anyone ever asks me why I've got the simplest cell phone I can find...

...I can answer with this attempt on our God-given, Constitutionally-guaranteed safe from government bureaucrats rights.

Blackberries, iPhones, and other really fancy communications devices have edged away from being mere 'phones into being small computers, containing much of their owners' lives through correspondence, paperwork, appointment books, and the like.

Law enforcement agencies are pushing for the legal ability to thumb through peoples' lives through their cell phones without the need for a warrant. That, as I said, is like picking through their computers, or through hard-copy filing cabinets, without said warrant. It is not necessarily protected within the wording of the laws, Constitutionally or otherwise, but it is by God protected by the intent behind those laws.

I don't know if law enforcement will get what they want regarding warrantless searches of arrested perps' cell phones; however, I do know that, if this is permitted, none of us are safe from the same.

Again, too far.

A school in Pennsylvania has provided laptops to their students. That, in and of itself, isn't too bad. No, what I have a problem with is that these laptops have integrated webcams which can be remotely operated by the school.

Naturally, the school's administration uses (and abuses) this ability: they've activated the webcams and spied on the students while the students are at home with their families. And students and families know this because...the school has sent home notes with some students warning families of "unacceptable behavior" that the school has pictures of. Taken with the remotely operated webcams.

Um. No. That is not legal. That is not legal any more than it's legal for police to fully wiretap your home and plant video cameras. Schools are currently government entities, and as such, are just as bound by Constitutional law as law enforcement. And this is infringing upon the rights of not just students, but also their parents.

And, ironically, at least one class has just finished 1984.

I think, were I one of the students at that school, I'd've refused the school's laptop and purchased my own netbook (mine cost a bit under $300). And if the school had forced one on me, it would remain unpowered in the top of my locker--or dropped on the floor in the principles office as soon as I'd received it. Most of the kids have started covering the webcams and microphones with masking tape.

Yeah, I'm definitely homeschooling my kid(s). This is total bullshit.

In the words of Alastor Moody: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!

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.

No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, or be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…

The fourth and fifth amendments to the United States Constitution forbid our federal government, and all of its branches, from infringing upon our individual freedoms. The fact that these prohibitions against government and legal harassment are laid out in the federal constitution means that they trump state constitutionality.

In other words, no government or law enforcement official is permitted to scrutinize your home, your person, your business, your papers, or your correspondence, with the full power of Constitutional law set against them.

That makes the proposed encrypted, law-enforcement-only, backdoor into private data unconstitutional. Illegal, in other words.

According to Declan McCullagh, law enforcement agencies want the process by which warrants are served to access private data streamlined, and want ISPs to be forced to archive data for much longer than they otherwise do. Of course, the agencies would protest that it’s only to streamline the warrant request process; however, the FBI has been known to fabricate emergencies to gain access to private data—phone numbers, IP addresses, you name it.

See, the thing is that, once a branch of government (which is what law enforcement is) gets a “back door” into all of the electronically stored, private data, like who pays for what private organization’s website, who donates to them, and (quite probably) who frequents them—all in the name of Law and Order and National Security, doncha know—even if it’s only allowed with so-called proper paperwork, there’s no way it won’t be abused by every branch of government. Everyone, from congresscritters looking for dirt on opposition to law enforcement looking for anyone breaking any kind of law so they can make names for themselves to the IRS looking for people’s TurboTax data (hoping to find somebody who’s cheated that isn’t in a Presidential cabinet, or in congress), will be illegally sifting through everyone’s data.

Not long after that, they’ll be looking at the private data of free sites, like Blogger and Hotmail and Yahoo! and Gmail, keeping an eye peeled for domestic terrorists—er, dissenters from the accepted politically correct opinion.

So, this infringement upon the fourth and fifth amendments will probably lead to infringements upon the first. It really is up to us to prevent the government from abusing us—using the second amendment, if need be.

This isn’t a big news story—but it is out there. We need to keep an eye on our employees, so that they don’t become our masters, and we their slaves.