Crisis Begets Opportunity

Memory’s Half-Life: A Social History of Wiretaps

"American attitudes towards wiretapping significantly shifted during the 1940s, as the war and changes in the class distribution of telephones helped shift judicial acceptance of wiretaps. President Roosevelt issued a secret executive order authorizing widespread Justice Department wire-taps of 'subversives' and suspected spies. Hoover used these vague new powers to investigate not just Nazis but anyone he thought subversive. The social history of wiretaps is a history of mission creep, where FBI agents initially hunting for wartime Nazi spies soon monitored progressive activists fighting racial segregation." Continue reading →

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California school district preps for lockdowns with 1,800 plastic classroom toilets

"A California school district said this week that they had so many lockdowns last year that it seemed like the perfect time to spend $36,000 on portable plastic toilets for the classrooms. The so-called lockdown kits sold by SOS Survival Products include a 5-gallon bucket with a toilet seat lid, toilet paper, wet wipes, waste bags, duct tape, latex gloves, a tarp and a bag of kitty litter. 'This year, as a district, we bought it district wide in order to get the most cost-effective rate on our cost,' Teves explained. 'We were able to buy these for about $20 each. We bought a total of 1,800, so it was a cost of about $36,000.'" Continue reading →

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Your identity will become “property of the U.S. government” under new rules

"Requirements in Senate Bill 744 for mandatory worker IDs and electronic verification remove the right of citizens to take employment and 'give' it back as a privilege only when proper proof is presented and the government agrees. Any citizen wanting to take a job would face the regulation that his or her digitized high-resolution passport or driver's license photo be collected and stored centrally in a Homeland Security database. The pictures in the national database would then need to be matched against the job applicant's government-issued 'enhanced' ID card, using a Homeland Security-mandated facial-recognition 'photo tool.'" Continue reading →

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India state moves to ban black magic after anti-superstition activist gunned down

"An Indian state government Wednesday approved legislation banning superstition and black magic, an official said, a day after a prominent champion of the bill was shot dead. 'An ordinance will be promulgated in the next two days,' the official said, declining to be named. Details were not yet available but an earlier draft proposed bans on beating a person to exorcise ghosts and on raising money by claiming to work miracles. Dabholkar, who founded the Committee for the Eradication of Blind Faith two decades ago, encountered opposition over the bill from Hindu nationalists who feared it could be used to curb religious freedoms." Continue reading →

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New Zealand passes law allowing domestic surveillance

"New Zealand passed legislation Wednesday allowing its main intelligence agency to spy on residents and citizens. The bill to expand the power of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) passed by 61 votes to 59. 'This is not, and never will be, about wholesale spying on New Zealanders,' Prime Minister John Key told parliament. 'There are threats our government needs to protect New Zealanders from, those threats are real and ever-present and we underestimate them at our peril.' The push to change the law came after it emerged last year that the GCSB illegally spied on Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom." Continue reading →

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Los Angeles City College Trustees Ban the Word “Gun” From Course Catalog

"If a book has the word gun in it, the book is not subject to the ban, but no mention of it must appear in the catalog. Otherwise, it would give the wrong idea. Scott Svonkin, the Vice President of the Board of Trustees, introduced the ban. He explained his position. The school must not teach students how to use guns. The faculty must promote gun control. 'We should make sure that students don’t come to campus being afraid to run into somebody with a gun.' The ban includes non-operational guns. They scare students. When asked what a non-operational gun is, he said he had no idea. 'I’m not an expert in guns,' he explained." Continue reading →

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Demography is Destiny, Hold On To Your Wallet

"Already, the media drumbeat about 'America’s retirement crisis' — laying further groundwork for a mandatory savings plan — is becoming deafening. Into this void the academics and fund managers have stepped with what you might call 'the Australian Solution.' Fair warning: The politicians won’t be far behind. We won’t let our guard down on the 401(k) confiscation issue, but all the same, we find the Australian Solution comforting in its own awful way. Mandatory retirement savings are a terrible idea. But all else being equal, it’s a better idea than forcing you to convert some of your existing 401(k) account into U.S. Treasury debt." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDemography is Destiny, Hold On To Your Wallet

Demography is Destiny, Hold On To Your Wallet

"Already, the media drumbeat about 'America’s retirement crisis' — laying further groundwork for a mandatory savings plan — is becoming deafening. Into this void the academics and fund managers have stepped with what you might call 'the Australian Solution.' Fair warning: The politicians won’t be far behind. We won’t let our guard down on the 401(k) confiscation issue, but all the same, we find the Australian Solution comforting in its own awful way. Mandatory retirement savings are a terrible idea. But all else being equal, it’s a better idea than forcing you to convert some of your existing 401(k) account into U.S. Treasury debt." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDemography is Destiny, Hold On To Your Wallet

San Francisco bans helmet cams after firefighters captured running over victim

"The Associated Press reported on Monday that video from Battalion Chief Mark Johnson’s helmet camera shows a fire truck running over 16-year-old Ye Meng Yuan, who was lying on the ground following the crash. The discovery of the footage led Chief Joanne Hayes-White to expand a 2009 order banning cameras on department grounds to include helmet cameras, citing concerns over firefighters’ safety. 'Why would anybody not want to know the truth?' attorney Anthony Tarricone. told the AP. 'What’s wrong with knowing what happened? What’s wrong with keeping people honest? That’s what the helmet cam did, in effect, in this case.'" Continue reading →

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The Phony Trade-off Between Privacy and Security

"What Barack Obama, Mike Rogers, Peter King, and their ilk mean when they tell us that 'we' need to find the right balance between security and privacy is that they will dictate to us what the alleged balance will be. We will have no real say in the matter, and they can be counted on to find the balance on the 'security' side of the spectrum as suits their interests. Of course, our rulers can’t really set things to the security side of the spectrum because the game is rigged. When we give up privacy — or, rather, when our rulers take it — we don’t get security in return; we get a more intrusive state, which means we get more insecurity." Continue reading →

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