Man Arrested for Declining to Show His Driver's License

One more example of the small ways our liberties have been eroded and which continue the trend toward a de-facto police state.

"Michael Righi was arrested in Ohio over the weekend after refusing to show his receipt when leaving Circuit City. When the manger and 'loss prevention' employee physically prevented the vehicle he was a passenger in from leaving the parking lot, he called the police, who arrived, searched his bag and found he hadn't stolen anything. The officer then asked for Michael's driver's license, which he declined to provide since he wasn't operating a motor vehicle. The officer then arrested him, and upon finding out Michael was legally right about not having to provide a license, went ahead and charged him with 'obstructing official business' anyways."

A state of ignorance of the law, the constitution, bill of rights (and the civil liberties granted by these documents) combined with overwhelming consumerist capitalism and apathy about our rights as citizens leads to loss of those liberties as much as the illegal domestic spying activities of the US government. Bless those Slashdot geeks, nerds and code-heads who really get it.

The Slashdot post on the story here: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/09/03/1449200.shtml

Technorati Tags:
civil liberties, Ohio, 4th amendment, illegal search and seizure, Bill of Rights, Constitution, liberty, freedom, loss of freedom

Germany Joins US in Domestic Cyberspying ... Spying Trojans Bots Hacks Part of US Domestic Spying

Worth noting:
News > Security

German government to create 'police' Trojans?

Anne Broache of CNET News.com
September 03, 2007

The German government wants to create Trojans that will spy on suspected criminals.

In the name of nabbing terrorists, the German government is floating a plan that would permit authorities to plant spyware on suspects' hard drives through e-mail messages appearing to stem from official sources, according to various news reports out of Berlin this week.

The proposal, which has not yet been made public but was leaked in part to some German news outlets, is reportedly the brainchild of Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Use of spyware by US Police is hardly a new idea. Recent cases in the United States have revealed agents with the FBI and the DEA have installed spyware -- in both cases, with a court's permission -- as part of investigations.

He's pushing for its inclusion in a broader security law under consideration by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. The spyware provision is a response to a federal court decision earlier this year that frowned upon secret remote searches of computers, according to a recent report by the Associated Press.

But left-wing party members and civil liberties advocates are railing against the idea as a potential invasion of citizens' privacy, according to AP and Agence-France Presse reports. One Left Party Parliament member told AFP she also feared the policy would make citizens fearful to open e-mails from government sources.

Advocates of the plan, for their part, have tried to assuage fears about abuse of the technique. They have told reporters they would use the so-called "Trojan horse" spyware in a targeted way and would do so only with court approval.

Use of spyware by US Police is hardly a new idea. Recent cases in the United States have revealed agents with the FBI and the DEA have installed spyware -- in both cases, with a court's permission -- as part of investigations.

It was not clear how the German software would operate, although the news reports indicate the goal is to snoop on a suspect's hard drive data and Internet activity. An FBI tool called CIPAV, for example, can immediately report back to the government a computer's Internet Protocol address, Ethernet MAC address, "other variables, and certain registry-type information." Then, for the next 60 days, it will record Internet Protocol addresses visited but not the contents of the communications.

The widespread availability of spyware-detection software could arguably make it more difficult for any government to hide such a scheme from a tech-savvy suspect.

In a recent CNET News.com survey of 13 leading anti-malware vendors, not one acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies -- at least US ones--to mask the presence of police spyware. Some, however, indicated they may keep quiet if ordered by a court to do so.

The issue is whether as it happens in the USA (because it IS happening), are FISA laws, civil liberties, habeas corpus and other 4th amendment protections being observed by our government? Remember that with all the domestic spying that's been done so far, reports indicate few if any 'terrorists' have been apprehended using those (illegal) domestic snooping, prying methods.

In the same vein, if they're nailing actual domestic and foreign criminals, scammers, phishers, thieves, pederasts, predators, rapists, swindlers, psychopaths, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, presidents, vice presidents, former attorneys general -- you know, seriously dangerous criminals -- while following the letter and spirit of the law ... then law enforcement and the citizenry can be immensely well-served by technology that has been used so successfully by criminals (like those emails appealing to stupid people for their help in prying loose millions of dollars) against innocent (and greedy but stupid) victims.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/German-government-to-create-police-Trojans-/0,130061744,339281681,00.htm

Technorati Tags:
news, FISA, Security, Germany, spying, 4th amendment, cyber-spying, criminals, civil liberties

Amerika The Fascist Police State: How I learned to stop resenting the Patriot Act and started learning to love kissing the ass of the fascist in chief

First, the prophecy of Ben Franklin (paraphrased):

Those who trade freedom for security deserve neither.

After reading the anonymous editorial/column below, a streaming of consciousness emerged starting with a famous, controversial (naive) Beatles song, but the similarities end there:

Back in the USSR — Amerika.
Big Brother is here and
His names are George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Robert Mueller, Tom Delay, the FBI, law enforcement, credit card companies, corporate america, republican wingnuts, dittoheads, moral majority, evangelical christian, theocratic fervor, the health care system, insurance companies ....
and you Amerikkkan Lemmings stand by
sucking your thumbs and
Voting for your Amerikkkan Idols and
Praying to your imaginary fairy tale fathers
with flowing beards sitting on clouds.
If this does not scare the bejesus out of you and
tell you
how far down the fascist rabbit hole we have fallen ... then
you do not deserve democracy Amerika the lemmingful.
America that used to care about ideals and democracy and justice --
now Amerika the pathetic joke rapidly becoming a third world dictatorship.

One of the scariest editorials I have ever read. The implications are enormous.
Can you say AMERIKA the FASCIST POLICE STATE?

My National Security Letter Gag Order
I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government.

Friday, March 23, 2007

By Anonymous

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Footnote by the WP:
It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

From the WashingtonPost.com

PS: Doesn't the guy on the left side of the movie poster eerily remind you of someone who currently occupies an ENORMOUSLY influential position in the white house -- in fact, maybe it looks like two of them, one elected, one not. Both dangerous.