Tag: Shut Up Slave

The PATRIOT Act and Cloud Services

I’ve briefly described my attempt to get all of my “cloud” data moved to personal servers that I directly control. Part of my reasoning for doing this is the simple fact that I like having complete control over my property (and I consider my data personal property). The other reason is I don’t like the idea of federal agents being able to obtain my personal information without my knowledge. At the very least if the feds want to take my personal data now they will have to alert me when they come to take my server out of my dwelling (and since the data is all encrypted they’ll need my key to access anything… which will really frustrate them when I claim my fifth amendment right instead of giving over my encryption keys).

Some people have claimed another solution for this is to put your data in a foreign country. I never found that solution viable because the government of the country where your data is stored likely has access to it and will hand it over if the United States government puts in a request. Well Microsoft has confirmed that your data isn’t safe anywhere:

Organisations should be wary when entrusting their data to Cloud providers based in the U.S.

Microsoft, one of the first Cloud providers to come clean, have revealed that the U.S. authorities have the right to access any data stored by them, even if that data resides within the EU.

[…]

In addition, Gordon Frazer CEO of Microsoft admitted that customers would only be informed “whenever possible” with respect to authorities extracting data.

Such an example is where the FBI has the ability to issue a ‘National Security Letter’ demanding a company’s data. Frazer stated that in this case he wouldn’t even be able to admit he had received such an order.

Many people forget that those subject to “National Security Letters” are legally prohibited from even saying they received such a letter (note to the feds: if you hand me one of those letters I’m telling everybody, fuck you and your attempt to shit on the first amendment). This means if the feds to take your data you’ll never be notified because the company hosting said data will be legally muzzled.

I feel the best option in regards to your data is to maintain it all on systems that you have direct control over. Unless you have that direct control you can never be sure who is rummaging through your data (I’m not just talking about government agents at this point) or for what purposes. If you control the systems then you control who does and doesn’t have access to anything on that system.

Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Medicinal Purposes

Just in case all that research demonstrating the contrary confuses you into thinking that marijuana has medical purposes the federal government has made their ruling on the subject:

Marijuana has been approved by California, many other states and the nation’s capital to treat a range of illnesses, but in a decision announced Friday the federal government ruled that it has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin.

The decision comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

I wish I could just take a pen and make something so regardless of scientific evidence. In case you believe the government’s rule is based off of any scientific research I turn you eyes towards the following:

In a June 21 letter to the organizations that filed the petition, DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said she rejected the request because marijuana “has a high potential for abuse,” “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” and “lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” The letter and 37 pages of supporting documents were published Friday in the Federal Register.

I find that last item truly ironic. The government claims that marijuana lacks safety under medical supervision but that’s because it’s been ruled an illegal substance. You can’t put it under medical supervision if mere possession will land your ass in prison for many years.

The thing I never understood was the simple fact that most research indicates that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. To me it would only be logical if a substance less dangerous than another currently legal substance were also legal. Of course I realize I’m talking about the government so logic can just take a flying fuck and a rolling doughnut.

United States Claims Jurisdiction Over All .com and .net Domains

What good is authority if you can’t just wantonly expand it? The United States Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has claimed that they have jurisdiction over all .com and .net domains:

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency believes it has the authority to shut down any and all .com and .net websites that run afoul of copyright law, even if the site’s servers are hosted overseas.

[…]

Perhaps it has. The reason ICE feels its authority extends to any .com and .net domain overseas is because they’re all routed through Verisign, a registry service based in Virginia. As far as Barnett is concerned, that alone gives ICE the right extradite foreign site owners to the U.S. on piracy charges.

I hereby call bullshit on this. Although all traffic from those top level domains does route through Verisign the actual domain name is owned by the purchaser. For example I am the owner of christopherburg.com (although I use privacy protection to ensure my personal information doesn’t come up with a whois command). As a resident of the United States the federal government could attempt to lay claim that they have jurisdiction over my domain (if they claim that I’ll just laugh and give them the finger). On the other hand if the owner of a domain lives in Canada the United States government has no legitimate claim to the domain because it’s the property of a Canadian citizen.

Of course the United States government, like all governments, doesn’t give two shits about what is and isn’t “legal” for them. They make the rules and thus get to decide what is and isn’t legal. If they wish to perform a warrantless raid on a home you can damned well assure yourself that they will find some “legal” means of doing it (probably under anti-terrorism laws).

In this case ICE’s justification for claiming their actions are legal eliminates the concept of property rights.

Police Arrest People for Feeding the Hungry in Orlando

It’s often said that people aren’t willing to help others like they used to. Many blame this on the fact that the population has become apathetic since the government involved itself with welfare, Medicare, and Medicade. The belief is people won’t help others because they think the government will do it. Well this is probably part of the reason but I think the other part is the fact the government has basically made it illegal to help others out. Take for instance the organizations Food Not Bombs who have been providing two meals a week in Orlando:

A group called “Food Not Bombs” serves two vegan/vegetarian meals in the Lake Eola Park in Downtown Orlando FL every week. They server breakfast on Mondays and Dinner on Wednesdays.

Of course what they’re doing is illegal because Orlando has an ordinance against sharing food with a “large group” in a downtown park more than twice a year. On top of that the city is also enforcing this ordinance:

The city of Orlando passed a controversial city ordinance that prohibits sharing food with large groups in a downtown city park more than twice a year. This ordinance was, of course, meant just for the “Food Not Bombs” group that did it twice a week. The group had been fighting the ordinance but lost a legal appeal in April. So they decided to keep serving the homeless and the hungry dispute the fact the ordinance could now be enforced. So far, according to the “Food Not Bombs” website, 13 have been arrest for feeding the homeless and the hungry in the park.

As is the general case when people give the government a big middle finger and decide they will continue helping those in need the government sent in their thugs to arrest the members of Food Not Bombs. Here’s the video of that fun little stunt:

Remember kids you’re not supposed to help those in need. Should you decide to do something as subversive as provide food to the hungry you will be arrested and if you don’t come willingly you will be forced to comply through the judicious use of violence. Shut up slave and do as you’re told.

The author of the linked article of course criticizes the actions of Food Not Bombs for disobeying the rules. It’s not the author’s fault for not understanding that the only way to get change in government is through disobeying their stupid rules. Once enough people are arrested and the public outcry is large enough these types of ordinances usually go away or at the very least the police get sick of enforcing them. It’s amazing how effective clogging up the court system and filling jails will non-violent individuals messes up the authoritarian’s little system.

Obama Doesn’t Considering Bombing a Country to be Hostilities

Because of oil humanitarian reasons Obama decided it would be a jolly good time to cruise some of our warships over to Libya and hurtle missiles into the country. After 90-days of this the War Powers Act states that the President must get Congressional approval to continue killing people on foreign countries. Obama not being one to follow United States law decided that rule doesn’t apply to him because bombing the shit out of Libya doesn’t qualify as hostilities:

“The president is of the view that the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent with the War Powers Resolution and do not under that law require further congressional authorization because U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of “hostilities” contemplated by the resolution’s 60-day termination provision.,” the White House said.

Personally I’d find the act of somebody hurtling bombs onto my property to be pretty fucking hostile. Then again I also believe the whole humanitarian argument is bullshit because the Syrian government is killing demonstrators and we’re not even talking about it. How people can’t see that Obama is just as much a war monger as Bush is beyond me. Oh, and I love the definition of hostilities the White House uses:

“U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors,” the report said.

So hostilities are only hostilities if any of our people may get hurt. Thus somebody hurtling bombs onto your property isn’t hostilities unless the guy bombing your place could get hurt. I’ll try to keep that in mind.

Personally I think impeachment hearings should begin immediately but instead all we get is a lawsuit:

The White House rebuttal came as a bipartisan group of US lawmakers sued Mr Obama in federal court for taking military action in Libya without authorisation from Congress.

The lawsuit alleges that the president had violated the US constitution in bypassing Congress.

The lawsuit, which also targets Defence Secretary Robert Gates, challenges the policy “that any president can take the US to war unilaterally”, Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said.

“We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies,” he added.

I think commencing the bombing of a foreign nation not only counts as hostilities but an act of war. Obama dragged us into Libya without Congressional approval which is required by United States law and thus he has broken the law. How that’s not grounds for impeachment I’ll never understand.

Government Using Fear to Justify Its Own Existence

The state of Minnesota has something of a deficit going on which has required a rework of our state budget. Because politicians can’t actually do the job their elected to do we currently have a stalemate between the Democrats who want to reduce our budget by $1 and the Republican who want to reduce our budget by $1. The problem is the two parties can’t agree on which $1 to cut and thus we’re facing a potential government shutdown. As our state government is a government it has already moved to bypass it’s own laws by using fear to justify its existence:

In a petition to Ramsey County District Court, Lori Swanson said that unless a court keeps core services running, sexual predators could be out on the streets, veterans turned out of nursing homes, unemployment checks left languishing, and there would be a “catch-and-release” criminal justice system if no judges were able to preside over hearings.

What the government wants you to see is the reason you need them to live. What you should be seeing is a weakness, a central entity that is critical to the livelihood of many people. A lack of redundancies is a bad thing as any network administrator will tell you. If you only have one central e-mail server and it goes down that means your organization can’t send or receive e-mails until the system is fixed. On the other hand if you have redundant e-mail systems and one goes down you will be just fine.

Having so many services administered by the government means there is a complete lack of redundancies. If the government goes down then peoples’ lives are negatively affected. This is why giving the government a monopoly on anything is a very bad idea (well that and because they use their monopoly on the initiation of force to provide everything they do). Imagine for a minute if the government didn’t have a monopoly on critical services.

Let’s use the police force for this this example. As it sits now the government wants you to believe there will be chaos in the streets if they shutdown because the police will not be funded and thus unable to perform their duties (this of course ignores the ability of individuals to defend themselves without the need of state assistance). Now let’s image police forces were privatized and communities or even individuals could hire the services of any private security company they so chose. If the company you’re currently contracted with goes bankrupt and thus can’t provide their services the solution is simple, you hire a different security company.

When I talk about the privatization of police forces people instantly jump up and yell about why that’s a terrible idea. I disagree but this post isn’t about that, it’s about having redundancies for critical services which the government doesn’t allow for. Either way any system controlled by government is a weak point because private entities are seldom allowed to provide similar systems (either by law or by the fact that government can undercut any private entity as government can run at a constant loss).

Claiming that society will basically collapse if the government shuts down is fear mongering. It’s no different than a fire department allowing a house to burn to the ground to make an example of somebody who wouldn’t play by their rules. In order to maintain their current power and to continue grabbing more the people in the government’s territory must be afraid, they must fear something and believe the government is the only entity that can protect them. The war on terror is a similar tactic used by the federal government to grab power through such atrocities to liberty as the PATRIOT Act.

If you believe society will collapse if the government shuts down you need to open your eyes and realize why that’s such a bad thing. It’s not because the government is glorious and the only thing that separates society from chaos, it’s because they’ve removed any redundancies to the services they provide and thus are a central point of failure. This is one reason for the advocacy of small government, every system you remove government interference from is a system can will be provided by private individuals and thus competition and redundancy will be allowed to flourish. Don’t fear a government shut down, fear government control which causes a shut down to affect so many lives.

SWAT Team Cleared in Murder of Former Marine

Remember the SWAT team in Arizona that stormed into Jose Guerena’s home and put 70 rounds into his home? Remember how I said the SWAT team was likely to receive nothing more than a paid vacation followed by clearance to return to duty? Well I hate being right in these cases:

The SWAT team that gunned down a former Marine in his Tucson, Ariz., home was cleared today of any wrongdoing in the incident.

Jose Guerena, 26, was killed in a hail of bullets from the SWAT team, which broke down the door to his home on May 5 while trying to serve a search warrant as part of a home invasion probe.

Guerena did not fire a single shot in the incident, but Pima County Chief Criminal Deputy Attorney David Berkman said in the report issued today that the five SWAT team members were justified in using deadly force because the former Marine pointed his weapon at them.

You have to admire how the fact that Mr. Guerena was pointing a weapon at the SWAT team because they came busting into his home is completely ignored. Mr. Guerena never fired a shot, likely because he was either identifying his assailants or because he had identified them but was unable to lower his weapon before being riddled with bullets. Oh, and get this:

“A close examination of the rifle revealed it appeared to have been damaged by being fired upon from such an angle that it must have been pointed toward officers,” Berkman wrote. “The officers were mistaken in believing Mr. Guerena fired at them. However, when Mr. Guerena raised the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle in their direction, they needed to take immediate action to stop the deadly threat against them.”

Emphasis mine. They were mistaken that Mr. Guerena fired at them? How do you make that kind of fucking mistake? An AR-15 is a fairly loud weapon especially when fired indoors and although I realize those SWAT team helmets likely muffle some sound I don’t think they can muffle gun fire as you can hear human voiced through the damned things. And the outrage doesn’t stop there ladies and gentlemen:

He said “many guns” were found in the house, including the AR-15 that Guerena was holding, another rifle and a handgun. Body armor and a U.S. Border Patrol hat also were found, he said.

“He was well-armed, well armored,” Krygier said.

But when asked if Guerena was wearing body armor at the time of his death, he said, “No. … He basically had a pair of boxer briefs on and that was it.”

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? I understand you SWAT team members made a huge fucking mistake and are trying to improve your image any way you can but trying to sully the image of Mr. Guerena but making him sound like a man up to something is disgusting. Owning firearms and body armor is irrelevant to the case beyond the point that it makes Mr. Guerena look crazy in the eyes of many people.

Either way I’m not at all surprised by this result. The police can get away with murder, literally, because the same legal system that employs them also determines the validity of their actions. When you get to determine the validity of your own actions you can get away with anything as this story proves.

The Government’s Attack on Bitcoin Has Begun

One thing many people fail to realize is that government’s like to control what is legal currency as it gives them unprecedented power. This tradition has gone back to the days of kings issuing coins with their images on them and disallowing commerce in their realm unless it was done with the use of coinage bearing their faces. It’s not at all surprising that the United States government eliminated the gold standard, a standard most often chosen in a free market, and created the Federal Reserve to issue all legal tender. Not only did the United States government switch to a fiat currency which they basically control they also made the possession of gold coins illegal and then confiscate coins in private hands.

Every time a new currency starts to make any headway the government steps in and shuts it down. These shut downs are always preceded by justifications for eliminating the potential alternative currency and now the government has unveiled their excuse for attacking Bitcoin, which not surprisingly involves the drug war:

Two U.S. senators have written an open letter to the United States attorney general, asking federal authorities to crack down on “Silk Road,” the Internet black market drug trade, and the digital currency that funds it, Bitcoins.

After reading the report on Silk Road, written by Gawker’s Adrian Chen, Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Reuters reports. The letter states:

“The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is an untraceable peer-to-peer currency known as Bitcoins. After purchasing Bitcoins through an exchange, a user can create an account on Silk Road and start purchasing illegal drugs from individuals around the world and have them delivered to their homes within days. We urge you to take immediate action and shut down the Silk Road network.”

The truth behind this attack though is the bankers aren’t happy with the idea of an alternative currency that they can’t control. Unlike previous currencies though Bitcoins aren’t controlled in any manner by a central system making the elimination of the currency difficult. That being said there is nothing stopping the government from making possession of Bitcoins illegal and then establishing a method of searching for Bitcoin related Internet traffic. It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out, especially if Bitcoins become more popular in commerce.

Turning Your Keys Over to The Government

If you live in Cedar Falls, Iowa it’s officially time to perform an act of civil disobedience. Ordinance 2740, which requires every person with commercial property to surrender keys to said properties to the government under threat of force, was passed by a six to one vote against strong opposition from city residents:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFCLiij0CBA]

As the ordinance passed against the wishes of city denizens appealing to “representation” is a worthless endeavor here. When appealing to the “better nature” of government doesn’t work the next best thing is simply giving a big fuck you to those who think of you as a slave by ignoring their so-called laws. If you have commercial property in Cedar Falls either refuse to surrender keys to your property or give the city keys that don’t work. If the city tests the keys to ensure you gave them the right set give them a working key to test and change the locks as soon as the city’s thugs leave. The worst possible thing to do though is to surrender valid keys to your commercial properties because that will give those fuckers in the City Council exactly what they want and then they’ll decide they want more (probably keys to every home in the city).

It would be prudent to also call the members of the City Council (very late at night or early in the morning if you have their home phone numbers) an explain to them that they’re not going to have their cushy jobs next election cycle. This is the kind of abuse of authority that needs to be fought if we are to have any hope of regaining a free society.

Pennies No Longer Legal Tender

We’ve all heard stories of people paying fines in pennies and most of us cheer on this kind of behavior. The government may be able to put a gun to our heads and force us to pay unjust fines but paying it in pennies is one way we can at least stick it to them a little bit. Well that used to be the case as it seems paying in pennies will get you charged with disorderly conduct now:

No lucky pennies here: Police have charged Jason West, an aggrieved medical patient in Vernal, Utah, with disorderly conduct. His alleged crime? Attempting to pay a disputed medical bill of $25 entirely in pennies.

What’s funny is this charge came not from trying to pay an unjust government fine but by paying a bill to a private corporation. According to United States law any currency issued by the Federal Reserve is considered legal tender for all debts. Although you don’t have to accept Federal Reserve issued money for instant transactions you must accept them if somebody is paying back a debt which a bill can be considered. Apparently pennies are no longer considered legal tender though if this charge is to be taken into account.