Tag: Rights Dealing with Amendments Lower or Higher Than Two

Does this Mean More Warrantless Wiretapping

Apparently the Obamessiah is comparing the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico to the terrorist attack on 9/11:

“In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come,” he said in the Politico interview.

Does this mean the oil leak is going to be used an excuse to expand government power over the surfs citizenry? What am I saying, of course it is. I’m waiting for the next OIL LEAK Act (no idea what they’ll make that acronym mean but if they can come up with an acronym for PATRIOT they can do anything) which will expand government powers allowing even more warrantless wiretapping, harassment at airports, and detaining of citizens suspected of colluding with oil companies.

So a Police Officer Walks Into A Bar

Or in this case a cafe and is given the boot. This incident has been strumming up some controversy in some areas because a coffee shop booted a police officer out of their establishment. What few people seem to realize is the coffee house is called the Red and Black Cafe. Why is that significant? The colors represent anarcho-communism which is the political belief of the people who collectively own the cafe.

So the real story is a police officer walked into a cafe run by people who don’t like the police of any form of government at all. I’m not surprised he was shown the door in that case. What do I think about this? Well it’s their right to refuse service to anybody they want (in my opinion, not under the law’s opinion of course). If they don’t want to allow police officers into their establishment that is their right. At the same time the police are not legally obligated to protect anybody so since they are restricted from entering the business they could just as easily say they will not respond to any incidents that occur in that cafe. I think it’s a fair trade that would make everybody involved happy.

Making Recording the Police Illegal

There is a rather frightening article about the police and their love of cameras, so long as they’re the only ones who have them:

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

More or less the same group of individuals who often say nobody should fear being under surveillance unless they’re doing something wrong doesn’t like being under surveillance. This seems to imply they know they are doing something wrong using their logic. The justification for these laws is also sickening:

The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where “no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

If you or I are out in public we can’t sue somebody for recording us specifically because there is no expectation of privacy under the law. Apparently since the police are better than us lowly surfs they are getting an exception in some states. This is a classic case of rules being applied differently depending on your status (in this case a police officer is a civilian but since they’re employees of the government the government is giving them special treatment). Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying all police officers are beating people on street corners but any officer supporting laws banning citizens from recording their actions while on duty makes it appear as though they have something to hide (by many officers’ own logic).

Society and technology are now at a point where a majority of people are carrying video recording devices in the form of cell phones. Coupled with the cellular Internet access we can share recorded videos with the entire world instantly. Even if the police confiscate your cell phone upon discovering you are recording them the video can already be uploaded to any number of websites making the confiscation meaningless.

This has been used quite a few times to record instances of police abuse which is later used to reprimand the recorded officers. So now the citizens can monitor the police force instead of only the police force being able to monitor the citizens. Some people join the police force because they want the authority and power that goes along with it. Of course these same people don’t want to responsibility and accountability that also goes along with it hence empowered citizens are a bad thing to them.

Banning the recording of police officers (or any public servant) while they are on duty is nothing more than government empowerment at the sacrifice of the peoples’ liberty (which is always the case). It’s one of the few methods we have at our disposal to play checks and balances with the police force. Otherwise it simply becomes a case of our word against theirs which almost always goes the way of the officer under question.

Yet Another TSA List

We have the selectee list, the no-fly list, and now Dvorak Uncensored reports we have the uncooperative serf list:

Airline passengers who get frustrated and kick a wall, throw a suitcase or make a pithy comment to a screener could find themselves in a little-known Homeland Security database.

The Transportation Security Administration says it is keeping records of people who make its screeners feel threatened as part of an effort to prevent workplace violence.

Now I can understand wanting to deal with customers kicking walls and throwing suitcases (for instance removing them from the airport) but making comments? Seriously? Are the poor wittle TSA agents getting hurt feewings? On a more serious note this list could be used as a sort of “revenge” list:

Privacy advocates fear the database could feed government watch lists and subject innocent people to extra airport screening.

Once again I’ll state that customers who are acting outwardly violent by damaging equipment should be removed from the airport like the tantrum throwing child they are. They still shouldn’t be put on a list that opens them up to additional screening as a form of revenge by untouchable government agents. This goes double for people making rude remarks. But here’s the funniest part:

The database was created in late 2007 as the TSA launched a program to prevent the nation’s 50,000 airport screeners from being attacked or threatened, agency spokeswoman Kristin Lee said. At the time, TSA officials voiced concern about passengers disrespecting screeners, and they began issuing new uniforms with police-style badges pinned to shirts.

Lee said attacks and threats against screeners are “rare” and the database has records from about 240 incidents. Most are screeners in conflict with other screeners. About 30 incidents involve people such as passengers or airport workers attacking or threatening screeners, Lee said.

I don’t know why they put the word rare in quotation marks. Considering the number of people who fly every year having only 30 passenger names in it since 2007 means it’s pretty fucking rare. I do find it funny how 210 of the recorded incidents involved screeners in conflict with their colleague. It shows what happens when you give two morons a little bit of authority, they can’t use it responsibly.

When You’re All Alone

Jay, as the title of the linked post implies, brings up a tough question. Greg Baer, a higher up employee of Bank of America, had a slight dilemma on a Sunday morning when 500 SEIU hoodlums showed up in his front lawn screaming and holding placards. Of course Mr. Baer wasn’t home at the time only his 14 year-old son was but he did arrive at the scene while the hoods were doing their “protest.”

The question being asked by Jay is when is it OK to introduce such crowds to the business end of a defensive weapon. On one hand they didn’t hurt anybody but on the other hand there is good reason to believe lives were in danger (an angry mob is never a safe thing). Of course most people would say you should barricade yourself in your home and call the police. Of course that’s the best advice except for one little detail:

Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise, and it worked-even on the police. A trio of officers who belatedly answered our calls confessed a fear that arrests might “incite” these trespassers.

In this case the police were going to be of no assistance.

I believe there most certainly was a reasonable fear of life in this case. These protesters numbered in the hundreds (large crowds develop a hive mentality and all it takes is one person to turn violent for the entire crowd to follow suit) and were fired up big time. In addition the protesters weren’t protesting on the sidewalk or other public property but walked right up to his home. If they decided to go bursting in there would not be enough time for the police to react and with that many hoods the three officers on site couldn’t do anything anyways (gee maybe they should have called for backup).

Personally I think the best solution to this type of problem would be to call barricade yourself and family members in the home where a natural choke point exists (at the top of the stairs in a two story home for instance). Have every weapon available at hand along with as many loaded magazines as possible. I’d also ensure everybody capable of shouldering a weapon would be armed.

Why not give the invaders (what those hoods really were) some warning shots and hope they disperse? Well legal issues aside you’re facing odds of 500 to maybe one or two in most cases. No matter how well armed you are those odds aren’t going to look so survivable. You can only hope the crowd will disperse on their own without attacking, the police will show up and disperse the crowd (which they weren’t looking to keep on doing), or realize you’re surrounded by a superior force.

One thing I would do though is try to get a camera on hand to record or photograph the protesters. This would give a record and source of identifications so you could bring up changes at a later time (trespassing at the very least).

Of course Mr. Baer’s situation was different and worse in my opinion. He was not at the house but his kid was. What he did required major balls:

Baer, on his way home from a Little League game, parked his car around the corner, called the police, and made a quick calculation to leave his younger son behind while he tried to rescue his increasingly distressed teen. He made his way through a din of barked demands and insults from the activists who proudly “outed” him, and slipped through his front door.

I don’t care who you were walking through a crowd of people who outwardly hate you takes guts.

This entire situation was messed up to say the least. As usual the SEIU thugs were using fear and intimidation in an attempt to get what they want. This becomes more obvious when you see how cagey they are:

Targeting homes and families seems to put SEIU in the ranks of (now jailed) radical animal-rights activists and the Kansas anti-gay fundamentalists harassing the grieving parents of a dead 20-year-old soldier at his funeral (the Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the latter). But that’s not a conversation that SEIU officials want to have.

When I asked Stephen Lerner, SEIU’s point-person on Wall Street reform, about these tactics, he accused me of getting “emotional.” Lerner was more comfortable sticking to his talking points: “Millions of people are losing their homes, and they have gone to the banks, which are turning a deaf ear.”

Millions of people may be losing their homes but that doesn’t give them the right to trespass on the property of those who still own a home. And not only trespass mind you but in an obviously threatening manner. Then the obvious question:

Okay, fine, then why not continue SEIU protests at bank offices and shareholder meetings-as the union has been doing for more than a year? Lerner insists, “People in powerful corporations seem to think they can insulate themselves from the damage they are doing.”

Wait what? That makes no fucking sense. They aren’t insulating themselves from damage they are going to work. Oh right I forgot the SEIU wanted to scare Mr. Baer, not make a statement against him or his company’s policies. They are probably also trying to get out of the massive loan Mr. Baer’s company was so good to give them:

Complicating this picture is the fact that BofA is the union’s lender of choice — and SEIU, suffering financially, owes the bank nearly $4 million in interest and fees. Bank of America declined comment on the loans.

I’m just saying. Oh and to just judge the intelligence of the SEIU’s supporters in this particular matter:

Of course, HuffPost readers responding to the coverage assumed that Baer was an evil former Bush official. He’s not. A lifelong Democrat, Baer worked for the Clinton Treasury Department, and his wife, Shirley Sagawa, author of the book The American Way to Change and a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, is a prominent national service advocate.

In the 1990s, the Baers’ former bosses, Bill and Hillary Clinton, denounced the “politics of personal destruction.” Today politicians and their voters of all stripes grieve the ugly bitterness that permeates our policy debates. Now, with populist rage providing a useful cover, it appears we’ve crossed into a new era: The politics of personal intimidation. To top of page

Yeah they’re supporters are mostly uninformed nitwits.

What He Really Said

So I’ve noticed a meme going around that is pegging Rand Paul as a racist. I thought that was pretty surprising being he just won the Kentucky Republican nomination and thus coming out as a racist would not seem the wisest political maneuver ever. Needless to say I did a little digging and found out he didn’t say anything racist at all.

What Rand Paul did say was the Civil Rights Act is in direct conflict with private property rights. Of course when he came under fire he went and said the opposite which I think was just plain dumb.

I agree with the fact that private property rights give you the ability to do what you want on your property including being a racist bigot. If you don’t want to allow black, brown, white, or indigo people into your place of business that’s fine it’s your right to determine your clientele. If you want to require all customers of your business to wear red shoes before they walk in that’s your right as well. Likewise if I don’t support your rules of business I can take my money elsewhere.

What the Civil Rights Act should have done is required all facilities receiving public funding to recognize all races and serve them equally. In essence it should have only applied to government and people receiving tax payer money. Our system of laws are supposed to protect us against our government not protect us against idiots who are willing to turn down business from customers who have a different skin color than themselves.

Needless to say Rand Paul doesn’t seem to have quite the backbone as his father but he most certainly is on the right track.

Oh My God Signs Kill

Apparently advertising can cause suicide! Every Day, No Days Off brought up a quote from a hack individuals claiming to be a counselor that really struck me as well researched and reasonable:

Year after year, I have been disgusted with the blaring and offensive gun show billboards that show no respect to women and millions of victims of violence. I have been disturbed by the plethora of “Buy & Sell Guns” signs littering our streets when the gun show comes to town.

And now the offending stupidity:

It’s a lot easier to pull a trigger than it is to use alternative, and often less successful, means. Putting “guns, knives, and machine guns for sale” advertisements in people’s faces – especially those who are feeling hopeless, or worse yet, angry – is a recipe for death. So stop the suggestive selling because the bottom line is, you don’t know who’s responding to your advertising and what your ads may “trigger.” Or alternatively, expect that people will die, and don’t be surprised by it.

Yes obviously my last statement was sarcasm. I like how this individuals said it’s easier to pull a trigger than to use alternative methods. You know there are a lot of drugs you can take that will kill you silently and with far less room for error (no I’m not talking Tylenol, if you want to kill yourself using that be prepared for a very painful and lingering death). So by this person’s “logic” we should ban all pharmaceutical advertisements because people can kill themselves via overdosing on drugs. Fuck we need to pan automobile advertisements to because some suicidal person may decide to buy one and ram it into a wall (of a school containing teh childrenz of course) at 100 miles per hour.

What this really comes down to is the moron who wrote this doesn’t like guns shows and therefore believes they shouldn’t be allowed to advertise (and I’m sure if you ask the individuals will state they should be outright banned as well).

More on Laptop Spying Case

I mentioned some time ago about a situation occurring where a school was caught spying on students via webcams built into laptops that were issued to students. Well apparently there is nothing to see here:

An “independent” investigation into the Lower Merion School District laptop scandal has concluded that there’s no evidence that students were being spied on. This is despite the existence of 58,000 photos surreptitiously taken of students on or around their computers and e-mails between district IT people commenting on the entertainment value of the photos. The 72-page report (PDF) from law firm Ballard Spahr claims, however, that most of the photos were not seen by anyone and that the district merely failed to implement proper record-keeping procedures.

Yeah obviously there was no spying. Sure they had 58,000 pictures of kids doing who-knows-what but most of the pictures weren’t actually seen by anybody, scouts promise. After all I’m sure the Ballard Spahr law firm has evidence proving none of the pictures were viewed:

Ballard Spahr admits that there is no way to determine how often the images were viewed, but says it found no evidence that the IT staff had viewed any of the images. Additionally, it says there was no evidence that district administrators knew how TheftTrack worked or even understood that large numbers of images were being collected in the first place.

Oops I guess not. Oh wait there was evidence… of the pictures being viewed:

This, of course, is the problem: because there was very little record-keeping going on and no official policies, there are few ways to know who knew what and when. However, claiming that there’s no evidence whatsoever that IT staff saw the images seems disingenuous, considering the fact that e-mail records were dug up last month that showed at least two IT administrators chatting about the photos. One staffer that has since been put on leave, Carol Cafiero, described the pictures as “a little [Lower Merion School District] soap opera,” while another staffer responded, “I know. I love it!”

Yes the school gave all the students laptops, installed spyware (in the most literal sense) on the machines, but didn’t really document it nor put any polices in place of when the cameras were to be used. That’s doesn’t scream trying to cover your tracks because you knew what you were doing was going to land you in very hot water.

But the fact of the matter is the school went to great lengths to ensure an outside party chose an independent entity to carry out the investigation so no possibility of bias could have entered into the equation:

One detail of note is that Ballard Spahr was hired by the Lower Merion School District itself to carry out the investigation, casting doubts on the true “independent” nature of the report.

Fuck me. I’m still hoping that school district gets sued right into oblivion.

I know quite a few parents who don’t want their kids having a laptop with a webcam because pedophiles may be able to access the camera without anybody’s knowledge and watching everything going on. I usually write such concerns off as over-the-top paranoia but I guess when the school is providing the laptops you should be worried about such things (the cameras being activated remotely without anybody’s knowledge, well and possibly the pedophiles doing it depending on the truth reason for installing that spyware).

My ultimate question here is who requested the installation of the spyware? Did the IT people do it without asking the school administrators or did the school administrators ask the IT people to do it? This will ultimately show the guilty party.

No Miranda Rights For You

Dvorak Uncensored lead me to another reason for me to hate most of our politicians. Senator Lindsey Graham wants to deny reading Miranda rights to “suspect terrorists.” This another one of those bills that may look acceptable on paper until you look at what Senator Graham views as a terrorist:

“The homeland is part of the battlefield. So this idea that you get to America, the rules dramatically change, to the benefit of the suspect – the terrorist – makes no sense,” he said.

Yes the suspect is a terrorist. Note that wording. The suspect is not a potential terrorist, he or she is a terrorist. I’ve often argued that terrorism is akin to child molestation in this country in that you are guilty upon accusation. In either of the two cases you are pretty much screwed because even if you are found guilty the stain of the accusation is permanent and is as good as being found guilty. I will note another thing here:

Graham told POLITICO he is working on legislation that would redefine the so-called “public safety exemption” to Miranda warnings. Under current law, police can question a suspect to obtain admissible evidence without informing them of their rights if they believe that there is an “exigent danger” – like a ticking time bomb — that another crime is about to be committed.

If the suspected terrorist is an immediate threat Miranda rights can be ignore. So why do we need another law? Oh that’s right because you could avoid having to inform detainees of their rights simply by accusing them of terrorism.

Now truth be told you’re an idiot if you don’t know your rights. I’m not saying having to read Miranda rights is a good or bad thing here (personally I think they’re a good thing). What I’m saying is we shouldn’t be making exceptions like these to laws. It’s a slippery slope to say the least. The next thing that would be up I believe would be an exemption to a fast and speedy trial for suspected terrorists holding an American citizenship caught within the United States.

Likewise Mr. Graham’s attitude that suspected terrorists are automatically guilty is disturbing. Nobody who is making laws should have this attitude.