Spastic Monkeys » civil liberties

Linkage

Roger — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:09:58 +0000

Just wanted to put up this link so I can find it again. It was provided to me by a like-minded co-worker. By that I mean, he is a lover of freedom and liberty as I am. I’m reading the link and I’m just dumbfounded at the stupidity. I read this shit and I want to scream.

Anyway, the link describes what will happen to the working poor in this country as a result of the employer mandated healthcare provision.

As if there isn’t enough out there to ruin your day…

Roger — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:22:48 +0000

There’s this Surveillance Society Clock from the ACLU. Modeled after the famous Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to show how close we were to nuclear Armageddon, this clock purports to show how close we are to a Surveillance Society is which all of our privacy is finally stripped away and Big Brother truly is watching you.

According to the ACLU, several factors are at play in determining how close we are to midnight, the moment when our Cinderella freedoms turn into the pumpkin of totalitarianism. They are:

Powerful new technologies
Weakening privacy laws
The “War on Terror”
Courts that are letting privacy rights slip away
A president who thinks he can ignore laws against warrantless spying on citizens
Big corporations willing to become extensions of the surveillance state

I don’t know. The time seems so arbitrary to me. In general, I would agree that these items can have a negative effect on my privacy, but no where does the ACLU elaborate as to how each affects the clock. Why is it set at six minutes to midnight? Why not three minutes, or two? I just discovered this thing so I don’t know if it will change as noteworthy events, such as extension of the PATRIOT Act, happen. At this point, I just see it as an overly dramatic marketing tool to get people to think about the problem of lost privacy.

Which is NOT a bad thing, in my opinion, but put it all into perspective. Yes, the Constitution has been mangled under Bush, but he’s not the only president to play fast and loose with the thing. It’s been going on since at least FDR, who considered the Bill of Rights outdated in the face of the Great Depression.

And if you think it’s bad here, with fucked up TSA no fly lists, that CAPPS II boondoggle, and the domestic spying cockup, just look over the pond, where liberty-minded Brits are fighting the “Database State”.

A part of the cure, or am I part of the disease

Roger — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:17:06 +0000

Radley Balko spends much of his time monitoring drug war abuses, the ongoing militarization of the police, and legal cases involving extreme abuses of governmental power. He’s been following and documenting the career of Steven Hayne, the so-called forensics expert in Mississippi. In short, whatever you do, don’t get convicted of a crime in Mississippi. Seriously, if you’re driving cross country to, say, Florida, go around the state.

This post at his blog led to his article at Reason. The whole thing just really pisses me off. The extreme arrogance of the police in their casual disregard for common decency is appalling. I’ve been against the so-called Drug War since Reagan was president, and I find it sad that it takes an article about dogs being casually shot to, hopefully, get people to sit up and notice. The idea that people will casually surrender their civil liberties but get pissed off when a dog is killed is, frankly idiotic.

I guess the P.R. lesson here for drug war opponents and civil libertarians is to emphasize the plight of the pooch. America’s law-and-order populace may not be ready to condemn the practice of busting up recreational pot smokers with ostentatiously armed paramilitary police squads, even when the SWAT team periodically breaks into the wrong house or accidentally shoots a kid. I mean, somebody was probably breaking the law, right?

But the dog? That loyal, slobbery, lovable, wide-eyed, fur-lined bag of unconditional love?

Dammit, he deserves better.

Please don’t get me wrong. Killing a dog just because the animal is in your way is a hanging offense in my book. But then so is raiding the wrong house when serving a drug warrant, destroying a family’s home and personal possessions, and leaving the family with, arguably, a case of post traumatic stress disorder.

There are many things right about this country. The drug war is not one of them.