In this truly depressing article about journalists and business people who are having their laptops seized by the Department of Homeland Security (the most Orwellian sounding U.S. government agency EVAH!), I came across this (italics mine):
The security value of the program is unclear, critics say, while the threats to business and privacy are substantial. If drives are being copied, customs officials are potentially duplicating corporate secrets, legal records, financial data, medical files, and personal E-mails and photographs as well as stored passwords for accounts from Netflix to Bank of America. DHS contends that travelers' computers can also contain child pornography, intellectual property offenses, or terrorist secrets.
Wasn't DHS formed to stop terrorists? Granted, child porn is pretty damn awful, and intellectual property offenses, well, are illegal, but how is this related to stopping evildoers from forcibly converting me to Mexicanism and making me speak Muslim? This is a perfect example of how the encroachment on your rights never stops unless there are clear lines about what the scope of the activity is allowed to be.
It's not the government's freedom, it's your freedom.
Or something.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Glenn Greenwald, in an excellent post about privacy in the computer database era, relates the following chillling story about the public release of his personal information (italics mine):
I had an ultimately inconsequential but nonetheless quite illustrative personal experience with this several…
As someone who takes his laptop everywhere, this is chilling news about the ongoing erosion of our rights:
Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border…
There are no NASA scientists in this picture (from here)
Because if NASA scientists do science, the terrorists win. Or something.
Over at Culture Kitchen, there's a good series of posts about the new NASA security procedures that apply to all NASA employees. Parts one and two are worth reading…
Dear Mr. Kirby and Mr. Olmsted:
You are both journalists. I realize that neither of you at present work for the traditional press and that both of you seem to devote yourselves mainly to blogging (Mr. Olmsted at the Age of Autism and Mr. Kirby at the Huffington Post), but I have to believe that you…
Whatever happened to illegal search and seizure!? Even if I were a terrist muzlin radicul lefty evil guy, where does DHS get any right to seize my laptop (presumably at the airport)? Police State USA. We haz it.
The Child Porn Defense is kind of a classic. If you want to erode civil liberties, you don't roll out "Our illegal searches allowed us to catch this guy who had unpaid parking tickets!", you roll out "Sure, the searches were illegal, but this guy is a child pornographer!" It's the digital equivalent of Reductio Ad Hitler.
But it's not like they're the only ones doing it. You aren't going to see the ACLU making a federal case out of "That illegal search caught this guy with a suitcase full of kiddie porn and nuclear weapon plans." -- They're going to point out how some humanitarian was imprisoned with a suitcase full of kitten-saving vaccine because his skin was a bit too tan for DHS's liking.
We are so fucking fucked, it's not even funny. Is our experiment in constitutional republicanism over?
I suggest everyone possessing a laptop store a few files bearing pornographic-sounding names with messages about how our commander-in-chimp is a prime source of kiddie porn.
thanks for all
thanks for all