They seem a little bit too happy.

It must be fun viewing one’s self as a king among men.

The Problem – Smartphones, tablets, and video game consoles are powerful computers with lots of untapped potential. Yet many of these devices are set up to run only software that’s been approved by the manufacturer. Modifying a device to run independent software – known as jailbreaking – is important to programmers, enthusiasts, and users. But jailbreaking creates legal uncertainty. Some device manufacturers claim that jailbreaking violates Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which carries stiff penalties.

The Solution – EFF is asking the U.S. Copyright Office to declare that jailbreaking does not violate the DMCA, and we need your help. In 2010, the Copyright Office said jailbreaking smartphones doesn’t violate the DMCA. This year, we’re asking them to renew that exemption (otherwise it will expire) and expand it to cover tablets. We’re also asking for a new exemption to allow jailbreaking of video game consoles.

Personally I don’t give a shit what Apple or any other company things; if I purchase a device it is mine and I will do with it as I damn well please. On the other hand it would be nice not having the threat of prison looming over my head because I decided to modify my device.

By prohibiting all felons from owning firearms the state has created an effective means of enacting backdoor gun control. If the state can’t get the laws it wants passed it can just turn everything into a felony and disarm the populace that way. Perhaps this is the thought process being used by New York as they try to make cheating on SATs a felony:

New York would make felonies out of cheating on the SAT college entrance test under a bill released Tuesday as part of a legislative investigation into a scandal in an affluent New York City suburb.

The measure proposed by Sen. Kenneth LaValle of Suffolk County would create new felonies of facilitation of education testing fraud and of scheming to defraud educational testing and create a misdemeanor of forgery of a test. The felonies would apply to a test taker who impersonates someone else for pay.

The police state is best able to control those who are criminals and if you make everybody a criminal, well, you get the picture.

The economy is in the tank, we’re at war with a good deal of the world, we’re going to be at war with more nations soon, this country is turning into more of a police state as we speak, and the government can indefinitely detain your ass whenever it damn well pleases without charges.

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously restricted the police’s ability to use a GPS device to track criminal suspects in a first test of how privacy rights will be protected in the digital age.

The court rejected the government’s view that long-term surveillance of a suspect by GPS tracking is no different than traditional, low-tech forms of monitoring. But its decision was nuanced and incremental, leaving open the larger questions of how government may use the information generated by modern technology for surveillance purposes.

This ruling is one of those few speed bumps being encountered by the government as it speeds down the road to tyranny and I’m glad for it. Anybody with a couple of brain cells to rub together would be able to determine attaching a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s car without so much as a warrant is a complete violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The complete Supreme Court writeup can be found here [PDF].

The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they’re carried out. H.R. 313, the “Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act of 2011,” is sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and allows prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against anyone who discusses, plans or advises someone else to engage in any activity that violates the CSA, the massive federal law that prohibits drugs like marijuana and strictly regulates prescription medication.

Nice huh? What’s even better is the fact this has already passed a House vote. This is a wonderfully verbose and yet horrible piece of legislations:

‘(b) Whoever, within the United States, conspires with one or more persons, or aids or abets one or more persons, regardless of where such other persons are located, to engage in conduct at any place outside the United States that would constitute a violation of this title, other than a violation of section 404(a), if committed within the United States, shall be subject to the same penalties that would apply to such conduct if it were to occur within the United States.’.

The government’s fingers spread far and wide in an attempt to control the actions of the people it claims to rule over. Even fleeing to another country is no longer a safe harbor.

Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.” (PDF)

The top court was ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods.

This ruling has farther implications that some may realize. There is a huge amount of public domain works out there, many of which are made freely available by sites like Project Gutenberg. Unfortunately if Congress were to renew the copyright on some of these public domain works these sites would find themselves in violation of copyright law and therefore be subject to arrest.

Another possible problem with this ruling is the fact Congress may have the ability to copyright works that were never copyrighted previously. Many authors put out material as public domain from the start, allowing people to download these works and use them in any way they see fit.

When you combine this ruling with legislation like SOPA or PROTECT-IP things get very frightening indeed. For example we will take a hypothetical piece of dissenting literature made freely available under public domain. For the sake of this discussion let’s say somebody within Congress finds this piece of literature extremely unsavory and wants it removed. In order to get it removed he works with other members of Congress to re-copyright the work. Shortly after the work is re-copyrighted the domains of every provider are seized in an effort to enact censorship of the work.

While some will claim such thing couldn’t happen in the United States the truth is it can. We live in a police state where our government is working around the clock to eliminate the rights of free speech, trial by jury, and to be secure in our belongings. Legislation like the PATRIOT Act and the new section in the National Defense Authorization Act have ensured the latter two are entirely gone but the government still has work to do on eliminating the freedom of speech. This ruling combined with legislation like SOPA and PROTECT-IP are the endgame.

Mr. Speaker: I rise today to introduce a very simple piece of legislation to repeal the infamous Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, quietly signed into law by the president on New Year’s Day.

Section 1021 essentially codifies into law the very dubious claim of presidential authority under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force to indefinitely detain American citizens without access to legal representation or due process of law. Section 1021 provides for the possibility of the US military acting as a kind of police force on US soil, apprehending terror suspects – including Americans — and whisking them off to an undisclosed location indefinitely. No right to attorney, no right to trial, no day in court.

Dr. Paul once again demonstrates that he’s the only presidential candidate, hell perhaps one of the only politicians, who actually gives a shit about the people. While Nobel Peace Prize winner and war monger Obama signed legislation that gave himself the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without so much as due process Paul is working to reinstate some of our most fundamental freedoms.

When Jeff Carpenter heard gunfire outside his rural Forest Lake residence before sunrise Saturday morning, he raced outside to find a man holding a shotgun.

“I was just glad I didn’t go out there with my gun. This thing could have got deadly,” said Carpenter, who had been burglarized recently and at first didn’t realize that he was looking at a city police officer.

On the ground nearby, Carpenter said, were two fawns that he and his wife, LeeAnn, had been feeding.

Perhaps the police should have knocked on the man’s door before slaughtering his deer. I’m sorry but if I hear gunfire going on outside of my fucking home on my fucking property I’m going to be a bit on edge. Me on edge with my LR-308 is not something you want to see. In fact the police put themselves in a horrendously dangerous situation by pulling such a boneheaded maneuver.

So why did the police show up and start firing guns on private property without so much as giving the courtesy of an announcement? Well the deer had collars:

But to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), they were a potential danger. For weeks, the agency had been receiving reports of two deer with colorful collars — one pink, one orange — running in the vicinity of North Shore Trail near Forest Lake’s border with Scandia in northern Washington County.

“To have somebody put a collar on a wild deer, two of them in fact, I’ve never heard of it,” said Capt. Greg Salo of the DNR’s enforcement division.

My head hurts from slamming it against my desk. I was also unaware of the fact that the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had powers similar to our president, they can order the execution of wild animals:

The DNR, thinking the deer were escapees from a private game farm and could introduce disease among wild deer, ordered a hit on them. The agency notified Forest Lake police in early January that the deer must be shot on sight, Salo said.

The lesson to take away from this story is don’t put collars on deer. By doing so the deer were essentially made targets for police officer with guns who don’t even announce the fact that they’re shooting animals on private property.