"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

Proposed upgrades and exemptions for the Electronic Privacy Act of 1974 (EPCA)

BTC - Digital Privacy, like most things over 35 years of age,  is in need of a little in need of shaping up around the middle as Senators push to update to electronic privacy law in spite of elections.

Almost on cue, Washington domestic intelligence agencies are expressing resistance to this new regimen of reduced budget diet and political exercise to cut the fat.

To start, DHS is asking to be exempted from the dated provisions in the 1974 Privacy Act in a new National Proposed Rule or NPRM concerning "electronic records".  Yes, that would include e-mail, phone calls and anything else that creates a record from an electronic pulse. This is possibly so they won't have to pass an additional appropriations bill or comply with the development of more stringent Privacy codes designed to protect citizens from non-criminal surveillance.

"The Department of Homeland Security is giving concurrent notice of a newly established system of records pursuant to the Privacy Act of 1974 [EPCA] for the “Department of Homeland Security/ALL-031 Information Sharing Environment Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative System of Records” and this proposed rulemaking. In this proposed rulemaking, the Department proposes to exempt portions of the system of records from one or more provisions of the Privacy Act because of criminal, civil, and administrative enforcement requirements."

[They are seeking public input on this for the next 19 days.]

NPRM's are a chronic source of irritation for electronic privacy advocates seeking ways to cut funding to bureacratic tech adoptions in local and national governance; which are later used for broad public surveillance.  Domestic federal intelligence agencies, like the FBI, are trying to hang onto the vagueries which allow them to veer into places they have no right to go.  However, in all fairness, the government is only one aspect of our society where upgrades to the EPCA will face resistance.

Wireless, social networking, and cloud computing companies, like Google, have been compromising the public cache, divesting analytics, or information gained by use of their technology, for profit or for leverage in a tough economy.  Strange concessions from these companies have started to emerge, maybe to demonstrate how they can change their evil ways.  Perhaps more so they won't get the heavy legal hit expected if the EPCA gets the legal upgrade necessary to constrict the private tap of consumer information being abused today.

One thing is clear ; as the EPCA is updated it should end the festive looting of your private digital records at the convenience of the US government and private information brokers.

RELATED NEWS:  Stephen Colbert's, Colbertlist 

Waking Up Orwell Debuts KPDO 89.3FM live 9/29

READY.... SET.... GO!  On KPDO 89.3 fm Pescadero

AHOY! LAND.. ye scurvey pirates!!

BTC - It looks like Wednesdays 10 AM  - Noon  PST are THE good day to broadcast Waking Up Orwell up the Golden Coast.

Waking Up Orwell, the dystopian program you all know and love, will re-broadcast in South Bay and Penninsula.   The show is looking for the following:

• Guests
• Segment Sponsors and special reports
• Station affiliates for syndicated programming
• Station Underwriters
• Volunteers for press, web and promotion 
• Activists networking (for D.I.Y Government segments, specials and PSAs) 

Waking Up Orwell will continue to be featured initially online via Podomatic.com.   Waking Up Orwell's website is still under construction.

NOW... please support KPDO by sending $$$ support to develop KPDO's youth programming.  

HURRICANE SEASON: Citizens reporting truth during media blackouts

US history of media blackouts during hurricane disasters increase the cause of citizen journalism

BTC- During Hurricane Ike I was threatened with arrest or citation in an attempt to document DHS practices with citizens. My quest was to find out whether they were forced to forgo any rights because they were in the path of a hurricane disaster.   I was specifically concerned about demand for identity articles in order to gain access to the FEMA hurricane relief center in Round Rock, Texas in 2008, what was in or on their bracelets, what was being asked of  citizens, what their movement limitations were (if any) and how they were being treated. Why would I take such a job on myself?

At this time there was a media black out.  So the only media was citizen media.

So there were no reporters present to document anything of the sort.

Why?

In 2005, paramilitary police were hired by Louisiana's governor to "assist" in the Katrina disaster. Shortly following you may have seen videos of citizens who did lose basic rights and suffered damages.
Among those basic rights, was the 1st amendment right to a free press. There was an attempt to gag or censure CNN from continued reporting of the human conditions in New Orleans after Katrina.

Here is a list of articles compiled by citizens about events surrounding Katrina citing witness of expiditious disposal of unknown dead, police brutality, and illegal search and seizure of guns in a very treacherous time.

So here we are, right in the seat of hurricane season. It might be time to review our rights as citizen jounalists, exactly the type who can make a difference.  One of the G-20 videos shot by a bystander, featured in this video, made a difference in prosecuting police brutality towards a student.  So never doubt your improptu role in using those phone cameras and video cams.

Luckily for all of us, you can take this *free* online course offerred by the Cato Institute on how to watch out for yourself and your rights to document events during a situation where police have hand of force.

Recording the Police: 
Is Citizen Journalism against the Law?

LIVE ONLINE D.I.Y. FORUM

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Noon EST / 11 AM CST/ 9 AM PST 

"Should it be illegal to record the police? Several high-profile cases of police brutality have been exposed by citizens who recorded police actions with cell phones. Yet some state wiretapping laws, written before the age of ubiquitous recording devices, prohibit recording these events and then further criminalize the publication of the recordings on the Internet. Does the First Amendment protect citizen journalism, or do police agents have a right to privacy while performing public duties? Please join us as we discuss this timely and provocative topic."