Originally
posted from 12-01-02 to 12-08-02
Copyright Violations: The Next Drug War?
by Katherine Albrecht
"Officials
at the Naval Academy have seized nearly 100 midshipmen's computers
that allegedly contained illegally downloaded music and movies, sources
said."
Take CAREFUL note
of this news story. Many nasty plans get tested out on captive audiences
first (the military, state employees, prisoners) before going public.
Watch what happens to them and you can often get a glimpse into the
future. To see where this fits in the bigger picture, look at two converging
facts.
Fact One: the Internet
is a thorn in the side of the emerging American police state. Witness
emails like this -- people who love freedom and hate oppression can
communicate with one another like never before. If something nasty comes
down the pike, the Internet allows millions of people to know about
it within hours -- and organize resistance to it. It is only a matter
of time until ways are found to curb this freedom of association and
the free flow of uncensored information. It is too volatile a mix for
the oppressors to have free flow of information co-existing with Draconian
police measures. Too volatile for the oppressors, that is.
Fact Two: A sizeable
number of people have bootlegged software or music on their computers.
Sizeable enough to make fishing expeditions rewarding. This means that
the "War on bootlegged software/MP3's/music files" could become
the next drug war. (You know, where a SWAT team busts down your door
based on an anonymous tip that you've been smoking marijua-- er, I mean
listening to the Grateful Dead without forking over $14 first.)
Couple these two
facts, and you have an easy way for an oppressive government to get
into our computers. When I say get into our computers, I mean put ACCESS
CONTROLS on them and MONITORING SYSTEMS on them to ensure that we are
being obedient consumers (paying for the things we read, see, and hear)
and obedient citizens (by not sending or reading emails like this one).
Then they can bust up your home and shoot your dog if you don't comply
-- or even if they only think you might not be complying.
And here's a prediction:
the government will eventually make it a crime to encrypt your own computer
in your own home. Otherwise they may have no way of knowing whether
you've ever had a freedom-loving thought or known someone else who did.
Katherine Albrecht
is a freedom and privacy advocate who is the founder and director of
CASPIAN (Consumers
Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering).
Originally
posted from 05-03-02 to 05-08-02
The Wrong Side of the Split Hair
by DracoDei
In
a recent decision, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that since the outside
of a person's car has no expectation of privacy, the police do not need
a warrant to place an electronic tracking beacon on a car (get the details
in a story published at Yahoo!).
This
splits the hair, and while the court rightly states that the outside
of a car - in this case parked on the street - is in the public domain,
they fall on the wrong side of the principle. Consider the fact that
the outside of the car is linked with the inside of the car, and a person
sits in that inside.
Would
it be a warrantless search, in this case determining the movement pattern
of a person, were the tracer planted on the person directly? Unless
strongly convinced in the absense of the idea of "personal space"
and "personal posessions", one would have to say no. Planting
a tracer on a person would, of course, be a gross violation.
By
extension, therefore, the "coat" that a person wears extends
to their car. The court is right, a device can be attached without a
warrant, but it should not be activated without a warrant. For while
a car has no rights, the person inside does, and that right includes
the reasonable expectation that a person's movements are not tracked.
Being
in public is necessary for living any sort of a normal life. One does
not surrender the right to privacy of movement simply because one is
forced to move in public.