Ron Paul Is Right: Get TSA out of Our Pants!

Congressman Ron Paul is leading the Tea Party to the airport... and I'm going with him. The best libertarian in Congress is saying enough is enough when it comes to the daily sexaul harassment of innocent Americans at airports across the country. Rep. Paul is sponsoring HR 6416 to deny immunity to TSA employees for their pointless groping of citizens. Watch his statement from the House floor, last night, November 17:



I have not flown since October 2000. I got hot with an airport lackey back in 1995 just because he asked me to remove my belt. I honestly believe that if some poor yokel in a uniform at Joe Foss Field ran his hands over my wife or my daughter, I would say something that would get me arrested. Or I'd just deck him. (The clicking sound you hear is Cory Allen Heidelberger being typed into the TSA watchlist.)

Ron Paul is right. So's Bob Ellis. Uncle Sam, you can have a hand in my pocket, but not in my pants. The lame-duck Congress should pass HR 6416 before Thanksgiving, restore the Frouth Amendment, and reel back and retool airport security.

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.

Midco Resists Subpoena for Customer Info in Video Piracy Case

Last February, when legislators like Noel Hamiel, Nancy Turbak Berry, and Mitch Fargen (yeah, you, Mitch), threatened to decimate the South Dakota blogosphere with the ill-concieved Blog Control Acts, I offered five counterplans that would better serve the goals of the legislation in protecting citizens from anonymous libel. My first counterplan was to use current law to subpoena service providers like Google and Midco instead of individual bloggers to obtain Web user information in cases of suspected wrongdoing.

I might have overestimated the willingness of Midco to play ball with such a plan:

Midcontinent Communications, an Internet, phone and cable provider in Sioux Falls, is refusing to provide information about an estimated 140 customers who are accused of illegally sharing copies of the film "The Hurt Locker" through peer-to-peer networks.

...The subpoena sent to Midcontinent is asking for the names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Media Access Control addresses for all the customers whose IP addresses are listed.

...[Midco VP Tom] Simmons also said providing the information would take a lot of work, time and money."We're going to expect some degree of compensation for all of that to jump through all the hoops that they are requiring," he said [Kelly Thurman, "Midco Resists Subpoena in Lawsuit," that Sioux Falls paper, 2010.09.04].

I am pleased to see Midco takes protecting customer information as its default. I am also heartened to see that they are resisting having to act as unpaid police. Midco's resistance to these subpoenas shows one of the major flaws of the thankfully defeated Blog Control Acts: bloggers and nearly anyone at a computer would have had to invest significant amounts of money, time, and study in Internet surveillance and legal advice that would have driven most casual users away from the most free press ever invented.
------------------------
Update 2010.09.06: David Newquist differs with me (and with prevailing court opinion) about the responsibility for comment-section libel. He agrees with me, however, on the general quality of comment sections, especially on KELO, as refuges for subliterate ad hominem wretches.

Are Bloggers Journalists? Test Case A-Comin'?

Eager reader alert: Did you hear about the Apple software engineer who took an unreleased iPhone prototype home... and forgot it at a bar? The tech bloggers at Gizmodo got hold of the little techno-gem and scooped everyone.

Now police (not just any police, but California's cyber-SWAT team!) have seized Gizmodo writer Jason Chen's computers from his home on a search warrant claiming to be investigating a felony related to sale of the iPhone prototype.

Gizmodo's company, Gawker, already has on its war face. Says Gawker chief Gaby Darbyshire in a letter to the police:

...under both state and federal law, a search warrant may not be validly issued to confiscate the property of a journalist....

Jason is a journalist who works full time for our company. Abundant examples of his work are available o the web. He works from home, which is his de facto newsroom, and all equipment used by him there is used for the purposes of his employment with us.

...In the circumstances, we expect the immediate return of the materials confiscated from Mr. Chen [see full letter at Gizmodo.com].

...and that letter is subscribed with those yummy words, Copies to counsel.

Says Gawker founder and prez Nick Denton, "Are bloggers journalists? I guess we'll find out."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is on board, too, saying the warrant was patently illegal. But Business Insider Henry Blodget points out that the California cops may be ready to duck any such very interesting argument and concomitant charges that they violated California's shield law. The warrants speaks of a felony, but they do not specify that they are seeking the sources Chen used ot get the story. The focus of the investigation may be on whether the iPhone was stolen and whether any money that changed hands around it constituted an illegal transaction.

Now the original Gizmodo story of its acquisition of the phone sure doesn't sound like theft. They say the guy who found the phone in the bar waited to see if the owner would return, then took it home. Next day, the finder called Apple repeatedly and got no help. Weeks later, Gizmodo paid the guy $5000 and broke the story.

Besides, EFF is ready to argue that the iPhone isn't typical property; it falls under the definition of protected "information or materials" that journalists gather.

Theft? Journalism? Violation of anyone's rights? I can't wait for the resolution of this legal question.

--------------------------
Update 12:33 CDT: Read more from Simon Owens, who talks to some big-time blog editors about what the Chen search and seizure means for blogging and journalism.

Tea Party Fails to Fight Patriot Act

Great Plains Observer is right: the Tea Party's silence over the PATRIOT Act shows that rabble has no credibility when it comes to standing against unconstitutional government power. (The Democrats' acceptance of Bush fascism on this issue is cause for shame, too.) President Barack Obama has signed an extension of warrantless searches and other violations of the Fourth Amendment. But the Glenn Beck watchers—not even useful idiots—just keep bleating twisted and absurd arguments about how we need to nullify federal laws on guns and health care.

I guess we have two Patriot Acts: the unconstitutional police-state law President Obama lacks the guts to kill, and the substanceless political play-acting folks like Citizens for Liberty and R. Blake Curd like to stage.

-------------------
A related note: the Black Hills Tea Partiers thought they had a great way to fight big government at the county level with House Bills 1087 and 1250. Actually, I think they were just trying to get out of paying to clean up their own poop. Both bills failed... and the Black Hills Tea Partiers failed to do or say anything about HB 1082, a measure that genuinely expands government power by allowing counties to fingerprint and background check all job applicants. Typical Tea Party: so lost in their own rhetoric, they fail to understand or respond to real policy.

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...).

U.S. Courts Free Religious Terrorist, with Deadly Results

...but that's how things work in a nation of laws.

The accused murderer of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, Scott Roeder, had all the makings of a domestic Christian terrorist. In 1996, he was arrested for sporting bogus license plates. Police discovered bomb components and instructions in Roeder's car. He declared himself above the law, subject only to what he decided were "common sense" laws. The judge called Roeder a threat to public safety and sentenced him to probation. Roeder proceeded to violate that probation and get arrested a year later for tax delinquency. (See KAKE TV video here.) His religious fanatacism—"very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way" says his ex-wife—caused the collapse of his family. He subscribed to literature that justified the assassination of abortion providers. He associated with known anti-government groups like the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia and a Freemen group called "One Supreme Court."

Just a week ago, Roeder was caught on videotape vandalizing a Kansas City clinic, but a clinic worker said the video wasn't strong enough evidence to support a conviction. Another worker reported Roeder's license plate number to the FBI on Saturday, but the FBI said (CNN's words) "nothing could be done with the information until a federal grand jury convened."

There was as much evidence against this religious fanatic as there is against any detainee in Guantanamo Bay that he was a threat to public safety. Yet this man was not detained indefinitely without charge or subjected to torture. He received due process, and his original conviction was overturned on the technicality that the police had not followed the law in searching his vehicle. Due process and the Constitution allowed this religious terrorist to go free, to escape justice long enough to kill an American citizen on American soil.

But I still love the Fourth Amendment and the Constitution. I still want domestic wiretaps and the whole Patriot Act repealed. I still want all religious terrorists, whether in Guantanamo Bay or the Sedgwick County Jail in Wichita, to be charged and tried or, if the government doesn't have a case, to be set free.

Such is the price we pay for being America, for choosing laws over tyranny.

-------------------------------
Note: I extend my appreciation to Ken Blanchard, who issues an unequivocal denunciation of domestic terrorism. Why can't Pastor Hickey and other abortion opponents speak that clearly?

Sobriety Checkpoints: Public Safety or Nanny State?

For all of you readers who like to complain about Marxism and the "nanny state," here's a question: how do you feel about sobriety checkpoints? KJAM reports the South Dakota Highway Patrol will be stopping drivers throughout April at checkpoints in Minnehaha, Moody, and several other counties around our fair state.

Police stop you without cause, ask to see your papers, sniff around... for all the talk about surging socialism in the new Administration, I'm not sure you can find a more apt analog to life in the USSR than sobriety checkpoints, and they've been going on for years... in Republican South Dakota.

I've always been made a bit nervous by the extent to which we defang the Fourth Amendment on our public roads, especially when evidence of their effectiveness is questionable. Apparently so are eleven states, including the Democratic People's Republic of Minnesota, which prohibit sobriety checkpoints.

I do not drink, and I have darn little tolerance for those who do so to excess. But I also have little tolerance for officers of the law detaining me without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.

So you tell me: where do we strike the balance?

No Fourth Amendment for Laptops: US Customs Can Seize Computers at Will

...wherein Osama bin Laden scores another victory against global commerce and freedom...

If you're planning to blog your international vacation, you might want to plan on using the Internet cafés of Paris and Mumbai: Homeland Security has empowered U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize, inspect, and keep your electronic devices at the border. No probable cause, no reasonable suspicion, just the whim of the lackey standing between you and your flight to Finland... or your permission to re-enter the U.S.A.

This is no new policy: Homeland Security has apparently been practicing this further breach of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments for years; they only just made it public in a July 16 document.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers some advice on keeping your data safe, but really, if you're traveling overseas, Uncle Sam can take your laptop, your iPhone, and your flash drive and never give them back. Better leave all your mission-critical data at home... just what every technoentrepreneur wants to hear.

Obama Caves to Bush; Clinton Stands for 4th Amendment

Not only can't we get any of our South Dakota delegation to stand up for the 4th Amendment; we can't get Senator Obama to help, either. Back in October 2007, the Obama campaign said the Illinois Senator would support a filibuster of the FISA reform act in the form it took at that time. That promise left Obama a lot of wiggle room: the FISA reform act before the Senate today has changed some from last year's incarnation, and Obama only said he'd support a filibuster, not actually start one himself.

Great. Grand. I can't wait to defend Obama with that line.

No one else started a filibuster, so Senator Obama joined 68 other senators today in voting for a FISA reform act that lets corporations off the hook and guarantees continued arbitrary disregard of the Fourth Amendment by our government. More than 40 lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, et al. move to a circuit court for a show hearing and summary dismissal, and the government continues to listen to Americans' phone conversations without any court order.

A Democrat-led Congress hands George W. Bush a big victory in the dog days of his lame-duckery, and on a basic issue of Constitutional liberties, no less.

Interestingly, not joining Senator Obama in his capitulation to fear and Bush was the junior Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. Harrumph. Maybe Hillary needs to get together with Dennis Kucinich for that Cleveland insurrection at the convention after all....