ACTION ALERT: Legal circulators & volunteers needed in Tallahassee

REDUX BRIEF: The NSTIC debate that matters

BTC - Popular Science, an online tech magazine, reveals the panoramic divide facing the National Strategies for Identity in Cyberspace proposal which held its first privacy centric workshop at MIT Cambridge Monday and Tuesday of this week.

The Point/Counterpoint column exhibits the polarities in debate discussions reflected in some of the work groups and their findings.

IN FAVOR: We Need a System of Internet IDs by Becky Ferreira
"It'll save us money and provide secure (yet optional) ways to do our online banking, healthcare, and taxes."

OPPOSED: Internet IDs Are a Terrible Idea by Bryan Gardiner
"Internet IDs will be ineffective, risky, and won't address the root of our real problems with online security."

Summary releases and updates can be found at NSTIC.us and the NIST website. Other workshops and seminars are scheduled Monday, Tuesday of next week and throughout the Summer.

SEE ALSO: NSTIC as a National ID [or How NSTIC is not A National ID] by Aaron Titus

TSA Surveillance vans being deployed anywhere in the US

c/o friend Tim Biancalana @Natural News

"The real question in all this, of course, is how far will this go? The TSA is already reaching down your pants and feeling up peoples' genitals as part of the "security" measures. Will DHS soon just start subjecting people to body cavity searches as a necessary security requirement before entering a football stadium, for example? Will Americans now be X-rayed with cancer-causing ionizing radiation -- without their awareness or consent -- merely because they are walking down the street or boarding a train?"   :::MORE HERE:::

"Opposition Forces In Pennsylvania Moving On REAL ID"

REDUX: NIST goes on record about NSTIC..possibly TMI

“We have a major problem in cyberspace, because when we are online we do not really know if people, businesses, and organizations are who they say they are. Moreover, we now have to remember dozens of user names and passwords. This multiplicity is so inconvenient that most people re-use their passwords for different accounts, which gives the criminal who compromises their password the ‘keys to the kingdom.’ " - Cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt on NSTIC

"The Obama administration is creating a new office within the Department of Commerce to oversee implementation of its trusted identities in cyberspace strategy. "

BTC -  Great article about the wary American with concerns over NSTIC c/o Myce.com.  [Yes.  We've been burned before....]

NIST finally makes the scene regurgitating Gary Locke's statement that "it's not a national ID card".  It might really help to show us what the hell it is they are really talking about.

Yet... plenty of people are putting it together on their own that NSTIC is like letting Facebook issue drivers licenses to Internet users.

Or worse ... it's just the US government patronizing Internet users by saying "No, no!..it's not a government system to watch you! We just need to know if you really are who you say you are if you'll be using that computer in your home or at the cafe or wherever ...and that it's really you!"

Yes, yes.. we've heard it all before.. "We [NSA, DHS, FBI, CIA, DoD] just need to know who is: flying, driving, walking, talking, travelling, buying, selling, etc. etc."

It's got that new cybersecurity agency smell.  I don't trust it.

REDUX: NSTIC, TSA conferences

JON & KATE PLUS HATE

Bill Maher | Myspace Video


Here is second life for news that matters:


Social Security Information Systems Near Collapse

Facebook Wants to Supply Your Internet Driver's License

Cato Analysis here.   Similar news here.

Snubbed by Google, Goldman Sachs Manages to Friend Facebook

Republicans start screwing around with Constitution, citizenship.
CEI Analysis here.

Feds Subpoena Twitter Seeking Information on Ex-WikiLeaks Volunteer

Photo ID's could be required to cast ballots in Wisconsin

Rush Holt vs. the airport scanners

Wes Benedict tackles TSA "adult" scanners

DIY GOVERNMENT:
1.11-22.2011 Fast for Justice with Witness Agianst Torture for Brad Manning

1.28.2011 International Data Privacy Day

REDUX: cybersecurity and privacy laws, distinction "breaking down "

BTC - Lot's of emphasis on free speech and political opinion, analysis and essentially taking a stand on the irritable climate for digital privacy.

"The distinction between content and transactional

records is breaking down."

- ACLU Christopher Calabrese feat. in 

Washington Times "Big Brother continues his intrusion..."

"It is now technologically possible to track everyone all the time, essentially," Mr. Calabrese said. "Congress needs to recognize that new reality and treat this information as private."

Thanks much to @normative for refreshing tweets. You can add us on TWITTER and get the gist ahead of time.

Here is second life for news that matters:

Barksdale, from Google... yeah he did watch some kids.

U.S. Cybersecurity Plans Lagging

Internet users being tracked and information sold

DHS doesn't just make the news, it reports on the reporters!

`Deeply embarrassed' Pa. governor shuts down intelligence reports on peaceful protesters

PUBLIC INPUT c/o PRIVACY LIVES: DHS Proposes Rulemaking on Information Sharing Environment System of Records

Waking Up Orwell: TSA vs. The Identity Project

THIS WEEK ON WAKING UP ORWELL

Make sure to search "Facebook" on this blog's search bar to pull all of the tangential news. Why waste a perfectly good show complaining about it, when really important news is getting no coverage - like in the case of our Special Guest.

TSA vs. The Identity Project

wakinguporwell's Podcast

NEW TO THE SHOW: Ambient Music!
Here's how it works... cue it up from this link and hit the play button during Ed Hasbrouck's world class interview. You can listen to the interview with or without the sound. It should calm it down so you can be a rational sane person during and after this interview vs. someone super agitated while you have to get through the rest of your day.


CAN YOU PROVE YOUR NOT A TERRORIST with the Identity Project ?

SPECIAL GUEST: Edward Hasbrouck, leading privacy and travel identity blogger/advocate (blogvocate?) updates us on what is happening to paid escalation services to bypass or to expedite time consuming trips with the TSA. Heads up for Nexxus and CLEAR card owners - this is very bad news.

Hasbrouck also discusses the latest on a New Mexico man who is facing jail time for refusing ID to fly. In the trend of the exceptional becoming the norm, it is really high time we started paying WAY more attention to travel surveillance. The US is leading the international pack in the quest to surveill everyone. We discuss what's driving this in a very special 53 minute interview. Do we still have to worry about an RFID chip? Oh yeah.

SEE ALSO: USA presses travel surveillance and control agenda at ICAO

DIY GOVERNMENT: Continue to send your opposition to National ID programs. Washington needs to hear from your one man army.

National biometric ID to work in America, says Sen. Schumer

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

c/o WSJ

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill are proposing a new national biometric ID card that would be required of all U.S. workers. WSJ's Laura Meckler explains the proposal and the objections from privacy advocates.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.




The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

"It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. "If you say they can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it."

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."

Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. "We've all got Social Security cards," he said. "They're just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That's all I'm saying."

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

Last year, White House aides said they expected to push immigration legislation in 2010. But with health care and unemployment dominating his attention, the president has given little indication the issue is a priority.

Rather, Mr. Obama has said he wanted to see bipartisan support in Congress first. So far, Mr. Graham is the only Republican to voice interest publicly, and he wants at least one other GOP co-sponsor to launch the effort.

An immigration overhaul has long proven a complicated political task. The Latino community is pressing for action and will be angry if it is put off again. But many Americans oppose any measure that resembles amnesty for people who came here illegally.

Under the legislation envisioned by Messrs. Graham and Schumer, the estimated 10.8 million people living illegally in the U.S. would be offered a path to citizenship, though they would have to register, pay taxes, pay a fine and wait in line. A guest-worker program would let a set number of new foreigners come to the U.S. legally to work.

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.

Mr. Schumer first suggested a biometric-based employer-verification system last summer. Since then, the idea has gained currency and is now a centerpiece of the legislation being developed, aides said.

A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.

The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn't have a position on the proposal, but it is concerned that employers would find it expensive and complicated to properly check the biometrics.

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

OPEN SEASON ON IDENTITY PATENTING

By Sheila Dean

Can it be done? I want to patent my identity according to legal, private and corporate conventions. If it has never been done, I volunteer to be the first.

The public has their backs pushed against the wall. Corporate buzzards want to sell everything they can get from you - bones, muscle, cellular structures, blood, urine, fingerprints, DNA signatures, organs, eyeballs, semen, eggs, hair and hormones. They don't wait until your dead. They take it from your children as soon as the cord is cut between you and the baby. They won't even ask you if they can sell it or collect it in many cases. THEY - defined as health care and insurance corporations, telecomm companies, credit card barons, and Wall Street commodity thieves. The government is allowing corporations to define what a constitutional right is and who has legal license over aspects of your body, mind and intellectual property. In that pile is the conventionally defined identity. If they can get you to pay to do it to yourself even better for them - less overhead.

Let's do something. Lets patent who we are. Lets sue them out of existence for selling and stealing who we are and using us without our permission or consent. Drag them through the violent hells of civil court and get damages and royalty rewards. With the damages awarded to cities and communities in Class action level lawsuits lets pay the police and protectorates to take down all the cameras and excessive surveillance. Civil liberty PAC squads can buy the best Congressional legislative engines in D.C. to repeal the Homeland Security Act, the Patriot Act, the Real ID Act and somehow get Joe Biden to work in a "bipartisan" way to let it all happen via the Senate. Obama can pick a really cool tie when he signs it all for everyone in TV land.

If it doesn't happen exactly like that then I'll accept spawning millions of small businesses who will franchise a model to scrub persons private records from Lexis Nexus and any other business who legally can capitalize on private background checks without consent using State or federal resources. Don't like that idea? The royalty checks alone from the illegal sale and distribution of our identity articles should help boost the economy.

There are a lot more of us than them anyway.

New Mexico: A new battleground State for National ID

BTC Exclusive

New Mexico reports are piling in about every facet and every detailed move DHS or their local governance makes in the direction of a national ID card. However, New Mexico's Senators Udall and Bingaman both have responded to constituents demands to go against the PASS Act.

Most states are pacing themselves on the national ID debate to get through the Healthcare valley of decision. Provisional procrastination on PASS ID and the prospective DHS deadline drama has created a slow reaction time from most States. However, New Mexico's political leaders are buzzing. State level press has been dispached on fact finding missions for any whisker movement from the national ID strata, reporting any leg of development as quickly as possible.

To wit, we feature Neala Schwartzberg for news and analysis in New Mexico. To follow is her latest on New Mexico's relationship to Real ID and a digest of her recent work on the issue. We thank her for joining the ranks of media active in coverage of this issue.

New Mexico is not supportive of Real ID in its current form.When talking about Real ID, [Rick] Homans [Secy. of NM Tax and Revenues] says, "It was a bad law to begin with and that’s why 14 states have passed binding legislation that prohibits their state government from taking any steps to comply with Real ID."

NEW MEXICO & REAL ID

Special to BTC, Neala Schwartzberg

Driver's Licenses, Foreign Nationals and Undocumented Residents

One of the issues for us in New Mexico is the issue of foreign nationals. New Mexico views border security as a federal issue and the safety of New Mexico roads and highways as a state issue.

The lack of compliance with the Real ID act does not come from poor security. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of Real and Pass ID, all the security measures, background checks New Mexico is fully in compliance.

Homans notes that people have the perception that if we solve the issue of foreign nationals we’d be home free - but we are still strongly opposed because the issues of privacy and compliance and federal government overstepping its reach.

Neala Schwartzberg is an Albuquerque-based freelance writer specializing in travel-related stories, and publisher of Offbeattravel.com and OffbeatNewMexico.com and The Albuquerque Travel Examiner.

DIGEST: REAL ID & NEW MEXICO

• DHS Responds to State queries for deadline extensions
• Real ID, PASS ID: Coverage of Statements in Senate Science & Transportation Committee
• 2009 States & Compliance on Real ID Act
• Real ID Travel ID & Immigration for travelers in 2009
• Bingaman & Udall's Statement for New Mexico on the PASS ID Act, '09 Real ID deadlines

CHOKEFEST '09: PASS ID an unfunded "opt-in"

8 States set to choke Real ID deadline game of "chicken"

BTC Exclusive

Today States feel federal pressures to conform and pay for 18 national ID benchmarks. The "D.O.A." legislation requiring these standards- Real ID - is headed for a repeal. Some States, smarter than others, have rebuffed compliance requests until DHS solidifies a plan. In these straits, PASS ID (S.1261) is being presented as a reasonable alternative for the harsh regulations slapped on States in January of 2008.

PASS ID may have evaded the label of "unfunded mandate", but the fiscal breakdown is the same. States will still pay to construct identity data surveillance hubs to insecurely network government records across the nation. PASS ID knocked off some attributes which originally drove States mad to push out Real ID - massive unfunded mandatory projects to be footed by States. This time States can opt-in and test the programs first. Try it, before you buy it. There is nothing in the newer legislation, S.1261, to stop expenses of digital project scope creep from expanding incrementally for years to come once States are on the hook. Unfortunately, scope creep is a problem currently plaguing existing Real ID digital network management, increasing expenses.

PASS ID has been drowzily accepted by some of its former critics due to the special "national recession discount". One theory on the loss leader acceptance is ignorance about requirements for States to comply with national identity standards. States today do not yet have a full recognition of what Real ID will cost or what is fully required from them to build a national identity data aggregate or infrastructure. Local governments remain hesitant because DHS is still settling matters of how to both afford and competently network the IT behemoth. The plan to "kick the can", started underneath the Bush administration, has eroded DHS credibility to enforce a national ID deadline. States know DHS issued comprehensive blanket waivers on Real ID compliance measures.

This week 8 states "choked" the compliance game of chicken, some issuing letters defying Real ID regulations going into 2010. That is exactly what was done by States to address the last DHS deadline, March 31st, 2008. Based on previous results, DHS is expected to issue blanket waivers to all 50 States to continue Real ID development.

DHS expects much to occur towards a successful vote on PASS ID between now and December 31st, 2009. If the S.1261 bill passes, it wouldn't necessarily nullify Real ID deadlines, it would simply absorb them. The majority of Real ID practices and standards would then move forward as the PASS Act. Senator Joe Lieberman did his best to get a unanimous YES vote on S.1261 this week. PASS ID opponents are hawkish about DHS Senate members attempts to import the language in an upcoming omnibus appropriations bill.

Pro-national identity advocates favoring Real ID are fighting PASS ID. Their motives may differ from immigration and privacy advocates, but the attack remains the same. PASS ID may suffer a significant minority block for purely political reasons.

Meanwhile, there are little to no reports of widespread identity adversity without the full battery of Real ID regulated ID cards across the United States.

Nonetheless, citizens are urged to continue to speak up now about a national ID card system in America. Please don't allow the rebranding of Real ID as PASS ID to give you more of what you've dreaded all along: identity surveillance. :::TAKE ACTION HERE:::

FLOGGER: Latest REAL ID Deadline Will Pass Without a Blip

National ID Bashing with Cato's, Jim Harper

by Jim Harper

Via the ACLU blog, there’s no chance that the Department of Homeland Security will interfere with Americans’ travel when its latest deadline for REAL ID compliance passes at the end of this month. As happened with the original deadline for states to implement the national ID, DHS will give out waivers to recalcitrant states instead of carrying out the threat of refusing to accept travelers’ IDs at airports.

States were required by Tuesday to request a waiver from DHS showing that they had met certain milestones for REAL ID compliance. But according to NextGov, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and three U.S. territories have not asked for a waiver.

Supporters of a REAL ID revival bill called “PASS ID” want to use this end-of-year impasse to hustle their bill through Congress (the way REAL ID was originally passed). But the impasse is fake, and states can do what they want.

“Should Congress not act before it adjourns this year, DHS has planned for contingencies related to REAL ID implementation, including extending the deadline as a last resort,” said a DHS spokesman.

PODCAST: G. Nikolettos for ONE MAINFRAME

>>> LISTEN NOW
AUSTRALIA - Greg Nikkolettos is an investigative journalist & producer for We The People Will Not Be Chipped. Most recently he has become an anti-Transhumanism advocate. In his film, ONE MAINFRAME TO RULE THEM ALL he exposes the powers and dark history behind Verichip Corp., the first company to move forward with an internal RFID capable system. The film is based on exposing IBM's role as the key fiscal sustainer for Verichip Corp.

$123 Million proposed on PASS ID Act

GovTrack.us

A new Congressional Budget Office Report is available: "CBO estimates that implementing S. 1261 would increase discretionary costs by $123 million over the 2010-2014 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. We estimate that enacting the bill would increase direct spending by $4 million over both the 2010-2014 and 2010-2019 periods. Enacting S. 1261 would have no significant effect on revenues."

FULL REPORT HERE -PDF

Ex-Darpa Chief Joins D.C. Lobbying Firm

c/o Noah Schactman at WIRED's DANGER ROOM

Former Darpa director Tony Tether is joining a Washington-area lobbying firm best known for its influence on Capitol Hill. But Tether — who served for more than seven years as the head of the Pentagon’s premiere research arm — says he won’t be doing any lobbying in his new role.

“I won’t be going to the Hill or otherwise,” he tells Danger Room. Instead, Tether says he’ll serve as a part-time technical consultant and “strategic advisor” for the influencers at The Livingston Group.

Earlier in September, Tether joined an advisory panel of Scientific Systems Company, Inc., which works on robotics projects for the Pentagon. In June, he joined the board of Aurora Flight Sciences, Inc., developers of military unmanned aircraft.

The company was founded by Republican Congressman Bob Livingston in 1999, after he stepped down as Speaker-elect of the House following his admission of marital infidelity. Today, the company “has an extensive network of over 60 principals and consultants” and “over 50 domestic and international clients,” the firm’s website notes. Those clients include defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, CACI International, Raytheon, and Accenture, according to SourceWatch. The Republic of Turkey, the Cayman Islands, and the Council for a Democratic Iran have also enlisted The Livingston Group’s services.

“What TLG (and their clients) need is someone to assess technology solutions that the clients are usually sure is the best thing since sliced bread,” Tether e-mails. “This gives the TLG folks a better idea what the client has and therefore who might be interested, and what the issues are if any. It also helps the clients re-set their expectations (upward or downward).”

Joining Tether at TLG is former Darpa program manager Art Bruckheim. “Our clients will benefit from their knowledge and expertise,” Livingston says in a statement.

Waking Up Orwell on BlogTalkRadio.com

Bill Introduced to Reform Patriot Act c/o ACLU

Legislation Would Also Narrow Overly Broad Surveillance Laws

WASHINGTON - September 17 - Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) today introduced legislation that would narrow several provisions of the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws, including the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA). Three sections of the Patriot Act - the John Doe roving wiretap provision, Section 215 or the "library records" provision and the "lone wolf" provision - are up for renewal this year and will expire on December 31 if Congress does not take action. The American Civil Liberties Union has endorsed the new bill, the JUSTICE Act, and calls on Congress to move quickly to pass it.

"Over the past eight years, Congress and the executive branch have allowed for more and more surveillance while doing little to protect Americans' privacy rights," said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The JUSTICE Act is a much needed remedy for the overbroad and out of control surveillance in our country. Given that three of the Patriot Act's provisions expire at the end of the year, it's vital that Congress pass the JUSTICE Act as quickly as it can so that proper action can be taken to protect Americans' privacy rights."

The JUSTICE Act would make vital changes to the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act by inserting privacy and civil liberties safeguards into each law. The JUSTICE Act would amend the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act by establishing a standard of individualized suspicion, mandating meaningful judicial review and requiring thorough reporting on the FBI's use of NSLs to Congress. The NSL provision of the Patriot Act greatly expanded the FBI's ability to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit bureaus without prior judicial approval and to impose gag orders on record demand recipients. The ACLU has successfully challenged the constitutionality of the amended NSL statute's gag provisions in a lawsuit called Doe v. Holder. A lower court ruled in 2007 that NSL gag provisions were unconstitutional and in December 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in part, agreeing that the NSL statute's gag provision violated the First Amendment.

The JUSTICE Act would restrict the sweeping wiretapping powers given to the government in the FISA Amendments Act passed last year, preventing agencies from conducting bulk collection of Americans' communications. The Act would also repeal a highly controversial provision in the FAA that granted immunity to telephone companies that aided the Bush administration in its illegal and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program.

"This bill will give our surveillance laws the overhaul they so desperately need, restraining the government from unconstitutionally collecting vast amounts of data about innocent Americans," said Michelle Richardson, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Ensuring public reporting is a crucial part of keeping our government's surveillance powers in check. Holding law enforcement accountable for how it uses these tools will not only help to preserve Americans' privacy, it will ultimately keep us safer. Congress must make passing the JUSTICE Act a priority."

To learn more about the ACLU's work on the Patriot Act, go to: www.reformthepatriotact.org

The ACLU conserves America's original civic values working in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in the United States by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The problem of cosmetic activism

By Sheila Dean

As an agitator and activist, I love what I do, but I know when it is simply not working.

I came up with the term, cosmetic activism, over a year ago regarding a complaint I have with contemporary political culture. In Los Angeles, the best you can do is have roving performance art with a permit and call it a protest. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the best you can you do is show up to a scheduled Town Hall meeting and be allowed 3 minutes of public input. This is all I have ever had allowable in my adult life for political mass protest.

In the meantime, police personnel show up in full riot gear, hyper-vigilant for violence and are often guilty of provoking it themselves to bring dissolution to any legitimate mass protest.

I do not want to be jailed or beaten. Often during my militarized upbringing, I was not spared roughness by military police and arbitrary threat of force by U.S. soldiers stationed for duty. I learned early that the only divine hand strong enough to stop the U.S. military must be your own.

Rosa Parks & You

The problem with movement for social justice today is that Rosa Parks does not have permission to do today what she did for civil disobedience in American history. Non-violent civil disobedience today is met with tasering and blows by armed forces - forget that they are police. What's happening right now is that police forces are now being trained as civilian military and given license to enforce federal law over State affairs. This is why you see America breaking out in hives by the titles Tenth Amendment Center, Campaign for Liberty, American Freedom, Courage Campaign and many many others who are out of practice, maybe new to the game of public protest, but understand acutely that something is wrong and they are afraid to do nothing and to stand by while Bush continues as Obama.

I don't really have privacy anymore. Those paid to oversee also know I don't care. It's not really stopping me from creating a bridge to those who deliver on progress.

Mohandas Ghandi said of the British occupiers, challenged by India's resolve for national independence, "they are desperate when they resort to martial law." Martial paranoia includes citizen surveillance to preclude public prisoners of the state, watching for non existent wrong doing. This practice spawns boredom, from boredom wickedness and from wickedness, violence.

Ghandi did infinitely more than he said as an example to remedy blow-for-blow retaliation. Labor protests and marches are among the most effective and least utilized forms of protest in national histories. During one of Ghandi's more famous labor rights protests in South Africa, the offending corporate tycoon sent in police wielding batons as threat of force. All the marchers followed Ghandi's instruction to simply lie down. No one was within a baton's reach. No one was hurt, except the corporation who lost productivity.

America & Real Protest

American patriots are known for hawking blood soaked, revolutionary tactics with slogans like "It's time to water the tree of liberty." However, it is such a different story when it's no longer Hollywood props, cardboard, and makeup. After dealing with activists suffering from critical head injuries and a few who took longer to get out of jail than intended, you try to qualify protest efforts as "calculated risks" much as possible. Responsible activists with children, do more to make sure if they get hurt or seized upon by planning ahead if the police send in artful provacateurs. When you meet and speak to people targeted as examples for their resistance to the Federal government as gun owners, you have to appreciate the dichotomy which accompanies our culture. Our culture honors and respects brutality and bloodlust. However, when it is returned on the heads of those doing the dealing ... Intuitively, we know the ugly and thoughtless results of this double standard.

"Smart people don't need guns," softer urbane civilians say; those with degrees, living decent lives. However, American life is getting less decent by the day as the unemployment and the bills climb paired. Smart, strapped people get desperate and angry too. That is why the Obama administration and the stagnant water in Washington, which won't change itself, are fearful. It's too little, too late and for far too long to not fear the American blowback for our luckless inheritance.

The real question is, what happens when smart, desperate, angry Americans with nothing to lose aim their lives at changing the way government happens?

Real protest. Not drive-time dinner theater. Convention defying, legal bending, technologically mutating protest that is both organized and effective. It won't be your grandma's protest. My only hope is that it will be peaceful.

It's out there and its habit forming for people with less to lose everyday.

PODCAST: The ACLU on a Real ID Repeal

BTC Exclusive

AUDIO:::> The ACLU on a Real ID Repeal 

The ACLU's Chris Calabrese, veteran legal counsel assigned to the anti-Real ID effort in Washington updates listeners on a newly filed legislation. The new bill filed by Rep. Cohen in the House of Representatives, would repeal Real ID entirely and replace it with language allowing for a negotiated rulemaking process. The rule making process, part of a 9-11 Commissions reform bill, was itself repealed by the Real ID Act of 2005. We observe the modern marvel of when the ACLU can finally agree with the Secretary of DHS on something - that Real ID is dead. More is also included on the PASS Act.