Rachel Maddow - Prop 8 Decision

Boycott Arizona

The draconian immigration law recently passed in Arizona demonstrates the power of small groups of crazy people when they are in charge.

We're people. What can we do?

Attorney Michael Yaki, writing at SFGate, has some thoughts:

Illegal immigration is a problem. Perhaps this law galvanizes a reluctant Congress and Administration to tackle it. But mere displeasure, even outrage, at federal inaction is no excuse to enact a law that has its antecedents in a dictatorship, not a democracy, and certainly not American democracy.

There is one way to express displeasure and opposition to the outrageous action of the Arizona legislature. Boycott the state. Cancel conventions. Shift golf vacations to Oregon, New Mexico, Florida, the Carolinas. And as painful as it may seem, if the state of affairs continues next year, it may be time to think the unthinkable -- missing the annual fan and beerfest known as spring training.

That's change we can believe in. Don't drop any coins to support Arizona.

Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Informational Privacy Case

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court ruling on how much information the federal government can collect as part of pre-employment background checks.

This is actually pretty good news, although the outcome is far from certain.

From Wired Threat Level:

The justices, without comment, decided Monday to review a lower-court decision surrounding the concept of so-called “informational privacy.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down intrusive background checks last year on nearly three dozen National Aeronautics and Space Administration contractors as being too invasive — calling them an unconstitutional, “broad inquisition.”

Before you start drawing conclusions about what's appropriate for the feds to review before offering you a contracting gig, consider that these consultants would not have access to classified information, and the scope of data included their sex lives and possible drug use.

It's pretty common for the government to review the possibility of risky behaviors, given the constant threat of blackmail by foreign agents seeking to exploit personal foibles  to flip someone into providing information.

What's interesting here is the lack of balance exhibited - a trampling of privacy rights without cause, given the types of data the would-be contractors might be accessing.

Even corporations are looking into prospective employees personal lives and finances as part of their hiring decisions. It's become common for firms to pull credit scores and reports and to search social networking sites for nuggets of information that might shed some insight into someone's proclivities or nonconforming activities, to say the least.

I remember friends and family telling me that the feds came knocking on their doors back in the day when I needed a top secret clearance in the military. While that still occurs, it's much easier to pull scads of electronic data for analysis than it is to pound the pavement checking someone out the old-fashioned way.

Let's hope that the Supreme Court places some clear boundaries around what's appropriate. Given the current makeup of the court, it's not likely that it will be a civil liberties bonanza, but something would be better than nothing.

Image via Wikimedia Commons
 

Wolf Blitzer - Judge, Jury, and Executioner

Hey Wolf - kudos for never bludgeoning Lou Dobbs with a blunt object, but if you had, wouldn't you have expected competent legal counsel and the benefits of due process?



Via Talking Points Memo

Consumerist Refuses to Melt vs. Cash4Gold

We've all seen those television commercials where Cash4Gold promises "top dollar" for grandma's old gold jewelry that's been laying around collecting dust.

We've also heard the Better Business Bureau tell us, over and over, that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Which brings us to the pitched battle between The Consumerist and Cash4Gold that revolves around the former writing about (and linking to) a former employee's litany of methods in which the latter engaged in an effort to ensure maximum profitability for Cash4Gold, and anything but "top dollar" for the jewelry owners.

Essentially, Cash4Gold is playing the "shut up" card, claiming that the information provided by the former employee is false and defamatory. "Not so!" claims the fired associate, while The Consumerist resists legal intimidation tactics that would limit their ability to do what they do - track and report on customer service, consumer, and business practice complaints.

It's also appalling how cavalier the Florida court systems are in dealing with this, executing default judgments and restraining orders that appear to contain details not in the original complaints while ignoring responses previously submitted by at least one of the defendants.

Quite an interesting story, and one that might have slipped below the surface and sunk to a watery grave had it not been for Cash4Gold's legal maneuvers and The Consumerist taking a strong stand while demanding proof. Cash4Gold's actions in this matter perfectly demonstrate the Streisand Effect.

If you are so inclined, go read the full story, and pass it along. Advertising is expensive, so let's give Cash4Gold some free publicity.

No need to thank us, Cash4Gold.

Image by Joi via flickr

Gay Marriage and Equal Protection Under the Law

Demonstrated by the collective yawn of a nation when given the news that Vermont and Iowa had moved the ball forward, gay marriage supporters are cautiously optimistic that the majority of Americans are ignoring that histrionic bleating from the religious right and choosing to save their short attention spans for things that truly matter to them, like jobs and food and being able to have money in their retirement account when they turn 65.

Governor David Patterson of New York has even put forth the view that the Empire State should revisit the same-sex marriage issue, lest hipsters in Brooklyn and the entire population of the East Village find themselves trailing Iowa (Iowa? Really??) in progressive social matters. How long before we spot DeKalb corn hats and John Deere color schemes incorporated into the trendy fashion scene as yellow corn cobs on green backgrounds becomes the Von Dutch of 2010?

That's the superficial view, though, and what's really at stake here is equal protection under the law. It's encouraging that for the gay and lesbian community, after waiting 230 years for the privilege, may finally be granted some of the same protections that the rest of us have enjoyed since birth.

Marriage is a wonderful thing, and we should embrace its value while understanding its purpose. For most, getting wed is a religious event, where couples stand before family and friends while a member of their clergy recognizes and validates their unity in the eyes of the church - after they present a civil, government-issued marriage license.

Government cares not which religious ceremony you hold, if you hold one at all, any more than they care what caterer you choose or whether you go the cummerbund route or vest it up with your bridal party. What concerns government is ensuring that society is organized in such a way as to facilitate the application of common laws and principals for the greater good.

When two people, gay or straight, are willing to profess their love and commitment to each other in a formal manner, and choose to formalize this bond in the eyes of society, there should be no delineation when it concerns equal protection under the law. Justice is supposed to be blind, and the application of legal principle should not be driven by whether a particular religious affiliation gives a thumbs-up to the union based on their particular value system.

It's completely understandable if Catholics, Jews, United Methodists, Southern Baptists, and other denominations find same-sex marriage to fall outside the boundaries of accepted behavior for their particular brand of worship, and therefore cannot support religious recognition of the commitment via a church wedding ceremony. No one is suggesting that clergy be required to marry same-sex couples.

But a denominationally-recognized ceremony should not be a requirement for society to enforce the guarantee of governmental adherence to equal protection statutes and to require the full weight and power of the local, state, and federal government to ensure that all who choose to formalize their love can make medical decisions for their partner, benefit from existing property laws, and participate in financial and economic programs whose supposed purpose is the broad benefit of society.

Recognition of same-sex unions from a civil and legal perspective is a concept whose time has arrived and the fact that most Americans believe in the enforcement of basic rights over "gathering storms" means that it will be very difficult to hold back the swell of support for continued progress across this land.

It's a scary time for the religious right as they see control of the discussion snatched away from their narrow interpretation of morality as it is placed instead in the context of society and what is right, rather than what is moral according to their denomination. But it's not more frightening than to be unable to make life and death decisions for your partner as she lays unresponsive in a hospital bed, or to continue to raise a child in a stable family environment if one of the daddies should happen to suffer a tragedy.

A tip of my hat to Iowa and Vermont, and to New York (maybe), and to the other states that have chosen to be the tip of the spear in this struggle. Your work and sacrifice is noble and true.

Speaking for my traditional family of a married man and woman, with three healthy, happy children, we don't feel at all threatened by your new-found ability to be like us.

Welcome to the party. Can I get you something to drink?

When Is Hacking OK?

Here in the states, agencies such as the FBI are known to employ some nefarious methods to gather evidence of a crime, such as installing keystroke loggers or other spyware-like code on the computers of suspects. What's less clear is whether law enforcement agencies are required to obtain search warrants or court orders before implementing hacking techniques that would land the rest of us in the pokey.

It's not even a question in the UK anymore, as police there have been given permission to hack into the computers of suspects without the need for a court-approved warrant of any kind.

The technique is known as "remote searching", a nice euphemism for breaking into your personal computer(s) without your knowledge and removing items of interest that can later be used against you in a court proceeding. It follows a European Union (EU) decision to allow police across the EU to significantly expand the use of what had previously been a seldom used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private properties. This would include the ability of MI5 or other police agencies to remotely search the contents of your computer hard drive from hundreds of miles away, whether you were at home, in your office, in a hotel, or working from a conference.

If that's not disturbing enough, consider that this ruling allows other agencies from the EU (French, German, etc.) to ask their counterparts in England to invasively search someone's UK computer and send back to them any information or material obtained in the remote search.

Concerned that the contents of your email, or your web browsing habits might be examined without your permission? You should be. It certainly makes you think twice before you decide to IM with friends, knowing that someone might be reading your keystrokes. Similarly, how about the people with whom you are communicating? Their information becomes part of the data mining too.

What are the requirements that need to be met before your privacy can be violated under this ruling? Well, if a senior officer "believes" that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime, then all bets are off. That seems pretty subjective to me, and anytime you add subjectivity into the mix, the propensity for abuse of power is both real and well documented.

If there are any doubts, examine the American policy of National Security Letters instituted after September 11, in which federal agencies could go to the secret FISC court implemented under FISA - often after the fact - to obtain the needed permission to justify the search of a suspects property or information.

A 2006 US Justice Department report cited "issuance of NSLs [national security letters] without proper authorization, improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records due to FBI errors or mistakes made by NSL recipients." In 2006, FBI agents using NSL requests sought secret data on more than 11,500 U.S. citizens and resident aliens, compared to 6,500 in 2003, and there were also about 8,600 requests for information about "non-U.S. persons" that included visiting and illegal foreigners, which was actually down from 10,200 in 2003. Quite a black eye for the FBI, who struggled to get into compliance with the NSL requirements even after their abuses became public.

So what did the FBI do? In early 2008, reports surfaced that the FBI had sought approval from the very same Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to implement their CIPAV spyware program to support investigations into terrorism or foreign spying. Some of these FBI requests dated back to 2005, while the agency was still trampling the rights of citizens using NSLs.

What's CIPAV? The acronym stands for "computer and internet protocol address verifier," software designed to secretly infiltrate a suspect's computer and collect information, including IP address, MAC addresses (the card your network cable plugs into, as theoretically there are no two NIC cards with the same MAC address anywhere in the world), a list of open TCP and UDP ports, running programs, operating system type and serial number, default browser, the registered user of the operating system and the last visited URL, among other things.

Once this information is collected, it is secretly sent to FBI systems in Quantico, Virginia, where your machine is monitored, checking in regularly with the FBI to report your activity without your knowledge. Very Orwellian.

Civil liberties groups in both the UK and US have howled in outrage over not only the scope of information that can be obtained, but the cloak of secrecy and the lack of adequate oversight to ensure that the new rules are followed in this age of technology-aided sleuthing.

Many are questioning the different rulesets for searches of homes and physical property versus binary data, with good reason. As we're seeing in cases involving online music sharing litigated by the RIAA, intellectual property lawsuits, and other civil and criminal proceedings involving the use and transport of materials via 1s and 0s, there's a significant lack of maturity in the interpretation of laws intended for 20th century property when applied to modern electronic data than can span the globe in an instant.

Given the UK government track record on data breaches involving information in their care and control, there's an additional layer of risk I'd call out. One would hope that since the stated goal is to secretly obtain evidence for use during an investigation, a measure of data security above and beyond what it typically used would be implemented. Time will tell if that's a valid wish.

As someone with a background in investigation and prosecution before coming over to the dark side of information security, I can understand the desire to have many investigative tools available in the constant struggle of good vs. evil. I'm also pragmatic enough to support the theory that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," and I'm a strong believer in the application of oversight and the implementation of frameworks that include checks and balances. There's simply too much evidence that abuse occurs.

The UK implementation of the EU directive is a bad idea, even in a world filled with emerging threats and evolving technologies being put to use by radical elements and terror groups. Are we willing to surrender civil liberties when the tradeoff is a vague, unsubstantiated promise of safety?

Since these kinds of measures are being implemented globally, it sounds like the answer is yes. I hope we don't come to regret that decision any more than we do currently.