NSA

Here’s yet another in the series of “Before you call me a paranoid raving lunatic” blogs.
Right after 9-11, Operation Highlander got started.  Poorly organized, hastily staffed, and given an illegal mandate to violate your civil rights.
Rest assured there were counterparts in at least two countries.  I’ll go with the UK and Australia, but that’s my [...]

In July, Condoleeza Rice was in New Zealand and had to flee because she was being chased by one hundred fifty people calling for her arrest, motivated by a ten thousand dollar bounty.  The crowd tried to arrest her under the Geneva Convention, for war crimes and authorizing torture!
It’s so nice to finally be able [...]

The champions of our digital rights, the Electronic Frotier Foundation, went to court twice this week. The first suit is on behalf of AT&T customers, against the NSA and others, for illegally spying on them.  They are also personally suing Bush, Cheney, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House [...]

You thought you could rest.  The coast appeared clear.  You could surf with impunity.
You were wrong.
China has proposed that the UN draft regulations for a tracing protocol that could potentially kill anonymity on the net.  The UN, never opposed to thinking up draconian rules, is in the process of drafting them.
No, really.
Every time I [...]

Remember when the Prevaricator-in-Chief tried to get his buddies at the telcos blanket immunity for the illegal spying they did?  Then the lying, backstabbing thieves in Congress went ahead and approved it?
It’s still in the courts, thanks to the EFF.
I urge you to read this short article to become familiar with this case.  Congress already [...]

According to Paul Joseph Watson at Prison Planet, one of the seminal post 9-11 knee-jerk `security’ responses just proved itself to be a large prevarication.  Or perhaps an excuse.  You decide:
The much vaunted liquid bomb “terror plot” that provoked paranoid airport security measures, an overnight change in baggage procedures, and at one point led to [...]

A congressional investigation found that a very important terrorism database is on the verge of failure due to mismanagement and design flaws.
Let’s put aside for the moment my knee-jerk reactions to gov’t run databases and get right down to one of the reasons that always backs me up:  the folks who put them together can’t [...]

People who drive fewer than 15,000 miles per year can save 13-54% on their GMAC insurance premiums under a GMAC Insurance’s new Low-Mileage Discount. All you have to do is opt-in to let OnStar…
This sounds like a really interesting way to lower insurance costs.  Until you think about it for a moment.  You have to [...]

Wille Faler writes “Swedish blogger and civil rights activist Henrik Alexandersson has been reported for “freedom of speech” violations by the head of FRA (Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment), the government agency that is responsible for surveilling the contents, origins and destinations of all phone calls, internet traffic and text messages passing through swedish networks, [...]

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency’s position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots — communications, according to those who [...]