Check Your Engine: FBI Attaching GPS Bugs Without Warrants

If President Obama wants me to keep shouting "Yes We Can!" he'd better let me say, "No You Can't!" to the G-men attaching GPS trackers to American citizens' cars. The FBI snuck a GPS device onto a 20-year-old California university student's car, apparently for no greater reason than that he's Arab-American and has relatives in Egypt.

President Obama, who ought to know better, given the grief he gets for his skin color and his overseas family connections, thinks this kind of warrantless search is just fine:

The federal appeals court based in Washington D.C. said in August that investigators must obtain a warrant for GPS in tossing out the conviction and life sentence of Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner convicted of operating a cocaine distribution ring. That court concluded that the accumulation of four-weeks worth of data collected from a GPS on Jones' Jeep amounted to a government "search" that required a search warrant.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg said watching Jones' Jeep for an entire month rather than trailing him on one trip made all the difference between surveilling a suspect on public property and a search needing court approval....

The Obama administration last month asked the D.C. federal appeals court to change its ruling, calling the decision "vague and unworkable" and arguing that investigators will lose access to a tool they now use "with great frequency" [Pual Elias, "Discovery of GPS Tracker Becomes Privacy Issue," AP via Yahoo News, 2010.10.16]

Think about it, Mr. President. You have teabaggers making the nutty claim that they are engaged in a noble crusade against a tyrannical government. If you're going to support warrantless GPS tracking, you make it that much harder to refute claims that Big Brother is in charge.

Of course, I'm still waiting for the teabaggers to get off Marxism and tackle the real tyranny in our midst.

Big Brother at Your School: Check Tech Policy for UN Rights Violations

As you get ready to send your kids back to school (before Labor Day? far too early! it's still summer!), keep an eye out for those wordy Internet/Technology Use Agreements your kids will surely bring home for you to sign. Those are the hefty policies that basically say that if your kids touch a computer at school, the district owns their soul.

You might want to pay particular attention to the rules your school sets for monitoring your kids' computer usage at school, whether by spyware or even via webcam. As Web scholar Jill Walker Rettberg points out, your school may be violating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (to which, yes, the United States is a signatory). Walker Rettberg highlights these two relevant articles of the UNCRC:

13. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.

16. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.

Does your child enjoy those freedoms? I know ours does... in home school.
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Update 18:05 CDT: But oh my gosh: the kids are sexting! Aaaaccckk! Lock down all the computers! Confiscate all the cell phones!

Oh well: at least if they sext in a committed relationship, it won't hurt their grades.

Germany Rejects Phone/E-mail User Data Colletion on Privacy Grounds

In the spirit of the conversation desired by the sponsors of the failed Blog Control Acts, South Dakota House Bills 1277 and 1278, I offer another international note on online privacy:

Rep. Noel Hamiel's effort to muzzle the South Dakota blogosphere would have required anyone maintaining a blog to keep records of who visited and commented on the website. The German Federal Constitution Court has declared that sort of record-keeping a violation of privacy:

The highest court in Germany has suspended a controversial law in Europe requiring phone and e-mail providers to hold customer data for six months in case it's needed by law enforcement.

Germany's Federal Constitution Court called the law "inadmissable" and ruled that changes would be needed to limit its scope, according to a story in Spiegel Online. The court felt that the data was not properly secured or protected and that its use had not been made clear [Lance Whitney, "German court rules against data retention policy," CNet News, 2010.03.02].

The court ordered immediate deletion of all user data collected under the law.The court did not overturn the law completely, but it did say that if the government is going to mandate the collection of such data, the government must specify how that data is going to be used (no fishing expeditions allowed!) and establish very tight security to ensure that data is not used for any other purposes. Keep those standards in mind, South Dakota legislators, the next time you try to dragoon citizens into being online speech cops.

No Change from Obama on Fourth Amendment

If President Obama wants to keep the excited young activists who got him elected, he'd better knock off foolishness like letting the FBI seize our phone records without a warrant. Mr. President, do not make me go to a Tea Party (but if I do, I wonder if I can Skype my RSVP...).

Argus Overblows Privacy Concerns on Smart Meters

That Sioux Falls paper does a fine job of digging for controversy where there is little, running a front-page story on the pros and cons of smart grid technology. Sioux Valley Electric is getting ready to use federal stimulus dollars to install 23,000 smart meters here in eastern South Dakota. Smart meters will give you and your utility more information about and more control over how much electricity you use. Just one part of the smart grid, smart meters have been shown to be able to lower electric bills by 15%, and in some cases as much as 50%.

Against all the potential benefits of the smart grid—and Mike Knutson at Reimagine Rural offers a great five-point response on why smart meters are just plain sliced-bread-super—the only con that Sioux Falls paper can find is faintly Tea-Party-esque Big Brother talk. They cite a Bob Sullivan MSNBC article, Wired, and an out-of-state think tank who raise privacy concerns.

(Citing MSNBC and Wired... that Sioux Falls paper is sounding a lot like a blog....)

Not so long ago, my privacy meter might have sounded an alarm as well. Sioux Valley will know when I microwave some popcorn... it's 1984! Aaaahhh!

But if you really want to get bent out of shape about the privacy issues associated with energy-saving smart meters, then you'd better be prepared to decouple yourself from much more than the electric grid:

1. Cut up your credit cards: Citigroup et al. have detailed records of all that stuff you buy and when and where you buy it.
2. Smash your cell phone: its GPS chip can tell law enforcement exactly where you are.
3. Unwire OnStar... or ride your bike!
4. Get off the Internet: Google knows much more about you than Sioux Valley Electric ever will.
   
5. Repeal the Patriot Act (warrantless wiretaps? there's a real privacy freak-out).
   

So just curious: do any of you have privacy concerns about smart meters? If so, what other aspects of modern technology will you abandon to protect your privacy?

Lake Herman Sanitary District Dodges Bullet on Constituent Info Sales

The Sioux Falls School District has gotten itself into hot water over selling the addresses of its constituents. And indeed, I must agree with Sioux Falls parent Shannon Barnes:

They tell them, you know, 'Don't post your personal information on Facebook. Don't post your personal information on MySpace. Don't give out your address. Don't even give out what school you go to,' And yet, they are selling these names and addresses [Shannon Barnes, quoted in "Complaint Alleges Names Could Fall into Wrong Hands," KSFY.com, 2009.08.25].

As Lake Herman Sanitary District president, I received a call earlier this summer from a salesman for a local retailer who asked if we would give him our address list so they could do some direct mail advertising. As noted in our minutes from last week's meeting, I declined to hand out that list. (At least Lawrence and I can agree on something! ;-) )

Of course, I hear the Lake Madison Sanitary District will sell you a copy of their address list for a reasonable fee. Porbably a good deal. Besides, Lake Madison folks spend more money, anyway—much better targets for an ad campaign.

I'm also happy to note that my current employer, Dakota State University, does not sell its student lists to commercial interests or anyone else. Heck, we aren't even printing a paper directory this year.

Refusing to Respond to Census Rarely Punished, Does More Harm Than Good

Sibby and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman (wouldn't you like to have those two on a panel?) are worried that the census is going to fine you $5,000 if you don't fill out your census form. The U.S. House's online federal law book shows Title 13 imposing only a $100 fine for refusal to respond and seems more concerned with protecting the confidentiality of your info. The U.S. Census Bureau does say your answers are required. The U.S. Census also says that an amendment increased the fine for non-participation to a maximum of $5,000 (a change that appears to have been made in 1987).

But notice also that Title 13, Chapter 7, Subchapter II, Section 221, clause (c) creates a religious exemption: if it's against your religion, you don't have to answer, no fine.

Plus, this Census blogger (yes, there apparently is such a person) can't find a single instance of the Census Bureau ever enforcing those fines. As Census spokesman Stephen Buckner tells MyTwoCensus.com, “The Census Bureau is not a law enforcement agency. We try to make Americans understand the importance of completing the census, but we don’t try to enforce those penalties.”

The only penalty you'll really receive for not responding to the census won't hit you but your whole community: you'll lower the headcount for your community, and you'll thus receive less federal funding. "Hooray!" shout the Tea Partiers, but remember, even if the Census doesn't know you exist, the IRS still has your number. Ditch the census, and you'll still pay taxes; you'll just get less in return.

Note that even Michele Bachman is smart enough to tell the Census how many people are in her household. If her followers went ape and refused to answer any Census questions, they might put Michele out of a job, as that part of Minnesota could lose a seat in the U.S. House. That doesn't affect South Dakota—we're already down to one at-large seat—but it could screw up our state legislative redistricting. If the Tea Partiers in Sioux Falls and Rapid City all put a big NO on their Census forms, liberal hotbeds like Lake Herman could end up with their own legislative district! Whoo-hoo!

I sympathize with those who prefer not to give the government information. I often leave questions about gender and race blank. But when the Census comes, I will tell them I'm here, along with my wife and daughter.

Refusing to fill out the Census form is an easy bit of civil disobedience. I suppose it might make you feel good, but it will likely be counter-productive. Fill it out, and fry some other fish!

Obama Eases Real ID; Paranoid Right-Wing Worldview Continues to Crumble

The radical right-wingers have been trying to convince us that President Obama is some closet socialist or fascist with a master plan to take away all of our liberties.

Cynical paranoid meme-spewing, meet reality: The Obama Administration is scaling back the Real ID law, a Bush-era law that caught heck from privacy advocates and numerous state governors:

...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID.

As governor of Arizona, [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano called Real ID "feel-good" legislation not worth the cost, and she signed a state law last year opting out of the plan. As secretary, she said a substitute would "accomplish some of the same goals."

Eleven states have refused to participate in Real ID despite a Dec. 31 federal deadline [Spencer S. Hsu, "Administration Plans to Scale Back Real ID Law," Washington Post, 2009.06.15].

The replacement plan, Pass ID, gets rid of at least some of the unfunded mandates in Real ID and includes stronger privacy protections, although folks at the ACLU and the Cato Institute still say it's too much of an infringement on individual rights. I'd agree with them; the government might do better to back away completely from the fear rhetoric and leave states alone on drivers licenses. But Pass ID serves as yet another example that the wild-eyed anti-Obama conspiracy theorists have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Wiken Spots Privacy Double Standard -- Let's Flip It!

Doug Wiken at Dakota Today riffs nicely on an apparent double standard in South Dakota conservatives' thinking about privacy and government secrecy. Wiken highlights a point raised by SDPB's Paul Guggenheimer in last week's South Dakota Focus on President Bush's warrantless wiretaps:

Deep irony too that while most in South Dakota look the other way mumbling things like, "If you don't have anything to hide, what does it matter if your phone calls are recorded and call data collected into a huge federal government database." Meanwhile however, the State of South Dakota thinks almost everything it does should remain secret with a court-ordered need to know required to pry out much of anything in contrast to many states where most information is available by default unless locked for sufficient reason.

The most recent eruption of news in this area compliments of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader story on the "secret" ownership of the South Dakota video gambling machines. Also apparently state contracts issued without bids, etc, etc. Good golly, If they don't have something to hide, what difference does it make? [Doug Wiken, "South Dakota Focus and Those Bloggers and Newsmen," Dakota Today, 2008.12.22]

To their credit, Republican state senators Gant and Abdallah, along with outgoing senator Napoli, all state in Jonathan Ellis's video lottery article that the names of video lottery owners should be public.

Senator Napoli notes that video lottery comprises an alignment of the "biggest guns in Pierre"—retailers, petroleum dealers, beverage distributors, and others. The power behind video lottery and other government operations explains why, far from arguing for consistency in individual and government secrecy, I will argue the double standard should be flipped: government affairs like video lottery should be subject to much more public scrutiny than the state can impose on my phone calls. As an individual, I have relatively little power to do social harm on a daily basis. The content of my phone calls to friends in Canada or Russia should be subject to state inspection only upon demonstration in court of reasonable suspicion. Governments have much more daily impact on our social welfare; the actions of our governments (local, state, and federal) thus warrant much more transparency.

I've never liked the "if you have nothing to hide" argument on privacy. Try getting strip-searched at the airport, and you'll see where that argument fails. Privacy for individuals is a recognition of human dignity and autonomy, not individual innocence.

Secrecy for government affairs is much different. Government action is an extension of our popular will. We as the generators of that will thus have a right to know what our will is doing.