"Don't Let the Back Door Hit You"

As featured in The San Mateo Examiner:

Waking Up Orwell: FBI misbehavin' & shadowy ways of the Flexians

This week on Waking Up Orwell....

**** KPDO PREMIERE DELAYED***
The station, in an ambitious 4 day effort to install a new programming board and equipment, is still in its testing stages and was automated through the broadcast scheduled for 9/29/2010.

This gives us an additional week to upgrade graphics, develop the website and come up with ways to promote the show.

" 22nd Century" music by Kelis, from the Fleshtone album

THIS WEEKS NEWS: This about sums the national state of affairs pertaining to civil liberty this week.

"A bad weekend for civil liberties"


DIY Government

This weeks bid for sanity is to add your public comments about the Dept. Homeland Security's request to for exemption from legal conditions set by the ECPA or Electronic Privacy Act of 1974 to monitor e-mail, phone calls, and anything else that creates a record from an electronic pulse.

*Big Thanks to Lady Axxiom for throwing this out there.

PUBLIC COMMENT DETAILS HERE:
http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/09/10/2010-22639/privacy-act-of-1974-implementation-of-exemptions-department-of-homeland-securityall031-information

GUESTS:

• Public Knowledge about ECPA, COICA and a return to the days of the "clipper chip" with special guest, Art Brodsky.

• Jessica Sundin for the Minnesota Anti-war Committee tells us what it's like when the FBI raids you when they HAVE a warrent. More news about "improper" FBI conduct. 

• Professor and social anthropologist, Janine Wedel, teaches us about the world of Washington D.C.'s Shadow elite public-private policy drivers called "flexians"

• Tony Fish reverse engineers the properties of a digital footprint towards the body of online reputation. 

REDUX: Waves of DOMINT surveillance of activists

BTC - Special thanks to Amy Ferrer @ BORDC.





Here's second life for news that matters:

Inspector General Criticism Doesn't Faze FBI Raids on Midwestern Anti-war Activists

Software for dissidents : 

On Writing, Funding, and Distributing Software to Activists Against Authoritarian Regimes

FBI Launching Mass Raids of Antiwar Activists’ Homes

"Don't F*** With Our Activists" 

The Obama administration's war on privacy

Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’

How the Chinese surveill their activists

ACLU seeks privacy records from secretive state police "fusion center"

A Reminder for the F.B.I.

Killings of Journalists Lead to News Blackouts in Mexico

NSA chief envisions 'secure zone' on Internet to guard against attacks

REDUX: COICA, NSA seeks to "tap" Skype- P2P, weekend update

Here is second life for news that matters (weekend update):

Is Deidentification Sufficient to Protect 
Health Privacy in Research?

NYT : U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

"Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages."

COMMENTARY c/o Seth Schoen, for EFF :
"US Government Seeks Back Door Into All Our Communications"

WHAT THE HELL IS "COICA"?   Senator Patrick Leahy ... introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA) = Censorship of the Internet.  

Meanwhile... in the UK: 'They asked me where Bin Laden was, then they took my DNA'
See also: The CIA and U.S.

Database of suspicious activity going live with little attention c/o Center for Invesitagtive Reporting


REAL ID OP-ED: To serve and protect: Or, enslave and oppress

"Only Michigan and North Carolina have joined Florida in aggressively upgrading their I.D.s since 9/11. While Alabama, California and North Dakota have made progress in complying with Real I.D., not the many other states Mrs. Sikes' letter infers.

There is a rule of thumb that I always use, Mrs. Sikes, any time a government worker or politician uses terms such as "To serve and protect," I always substitute "To enslave and oppress."

Therefore, your letter should have read "The Legislature enacted this law in order to oppress the citizens of Florida!"

ESTA fees: the whole is worse than the sum of its parts
c/o Papers, Please

New U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations took effect this month that combine two bad ideas — fees to encourage foreigners to visit the US by charging them more to do so, and fees for the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) — in a way that creates new possibilities for travel surveillance and control that are far worse than either component alone.

ALSO SEE: How will Secure Flight be enforced?

Robocopywright  ACTA c/o Loss of Privacy 

HOT SHEETS:  ECPA Reform and the Revolution in Cloud Computing

A Surveillance State Coda