Category: Soap Box

Sometimes I see, read, hear or think about something that sets me off. If it gets me worked up to the point where I need to write about it this is where I’ll file it.

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The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Bush says feds can open mail without warrant
Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

By James Gordon Meek

New York Daily News

WASHINGTON — President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

In the early days of PGP encryption, advocates used to use comparison of regular email to a postcard, and encrypted email to a sealed letter. The government was trying to restrict PGP and its use, frequently with the illogical argument that someone would only encrypt their email if they had something to hide. Advocates would point out that if that were the case, everyone would use postcards instead of letters in envelopes. A postcard, or regular email, can be read by any of the systems that is passes through. Letters offer greater privacy, and do not mean that the sender has something to hide.

Well, that argument is effectively moot now. If Grand Marshall Bush Supreme Arbi-Traitor of Democracy can claim “exigent circumstances” as a ‘war president’ than I can easily foresee secret rooms installed at the Post Office much as they were at SBC in San Francisco. In these rooms, and without benefit of the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment, people without conscience will violate your privacy for The Good of the Homeland. They will pre-screen your credit offers, make copies of the sexy photos from your long distance relationships, giggle at the itemized pay-per-view bill listing your late night viewing habits, and steal the junk-mail offers for penis enlargement pills in the hopes of someday developing a social life. They will do this for God and Country, and because they enjoy Power; Power from which our Constitution was designed to protect us.

This is particularly unsettling considering it follows so closely upon the heels of news that the government believes a warrant is not required to read your email if it is on someone else’s server.

Thank you Mr. Bush. I feel safer already.

-Chris

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Government may not need warrant to search your e-mail

First off, I hate snake-oil salesmen. Whether they are dubious Search Engine Optimizer specialists, or greedy buggers selling bogus penis growth pills on late night television. That said, I also don’t like seeing the freedoms of the majority eroded in the pursuit of the few bad apples.

Government may not need warrant to search your e-mail
At issue is the Stored Communications Act, a law that gives the government easier access to material held by third parties than to first-party documents. In this case, the government claimed that Warshaks e-mail was stored on servers belonging to Yahoo and other companies, and that this meant it should be easier for them to access than if the e-mail was stored only on Warshaks personal computer. According to court documents seen by Ars Technica, Warshak argues that the act is unconstitutional and that users should have the same expectations of privacy regardless of who is storing their e-mail.

No decision has yet been made on the email issue. Once it is, Warshaks case will proceed in a lower federal court.

The crux of the matter is that the government feels your email is ‘more accessible’ because it is stored on someone else’s server. That should send a chill down your spine, because there are only a couple of people I know who own and run their own email servers, and I don’t think they read my weblog. I’m betting you, the reader, have at least one Yahoo or Gmail account; and the government wants the court to rule they can read it without a search warrant. (As a side note, if they win this one how long will it be until they argue mail at a non-USPS mailbox service is not protected under the 4th Amendment either?)

Should the government win this round, law enforcement will be allowed greater freedom in regards to access to email on third party servers in order to fish for reasons to get a real search warrant.

Should this happen, I see a perfect business model for defeating their lame ‘material held by third parties’ justification: co-op mail servers. Set up a mail service business under the co-op model, where every user is in fact part owner of the service and servers. Charge a buy-in fee when they join the co-op and a monthly membership fee for upkeep. The upside is that the users do own the server, and would be exempt from this new loophole the feds are trying to use to get around the 4th Amendment. The downside is that they will eventually find a way around it and perhaps put at risk all the members if one is a bad apple. It might not be a perfect solution, but I would prefer to have my mail on a server I own, or at least trust, than on a random Yahoo or Google/Gmail server.

-Chris

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Yet Another ‘Big Lie’…

I’ve been reading a book of short stories by Neil Gaiman titled Smoke and Mirrors and it contains a story called “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories”. It’s about a trip to Los Angeles where the behavior of the inhabitants is nicely summed up by an observation about goldfish: They are so damn stupid that they swim around the pool thinking “I’ve never been here before” and so even things they have done a thousand times seem new to them. The thing is, the story isn’t just about Los Angeles and the cult around the movie industry; it applies to everyone in this country. If it didn’t, George W. Bush wouldn’t think for a moment that he could pull off yet another Big Lie. It’s really unbelievable that he is trying this again… If you have the memory of a goldfish and have forgotten that the same tactic was used on the topics of WMDs and the supposed Saddam/Al-Qaeda link. Follow the link below, and try to remember what you see and read on Election Day.

Think Progress » Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’
Bush: ‘We’ve Never Been Stay The Course’

During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’.

Why on earth isn’t the President of the United States bald-face lying to the American people an impeachable offense? I’m pretty sure it was considered one when Clinton was in office…

-Chris

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