Christian Leftist

Bloggers have been advocating legislation that ensures the equal exchange of information between internet users regardless of class, status, or the content being transmitted — in other words, net neutrality — for a while now. It’s an incredibly important issue for those of us who rel on the internet for not only our livelihoods but our entertainment. What we download and upload is nobody’s business, period, and the whole proposed “tiered pricing system,” where users have t pay internet providers depending on how much they use the internet and how much bandwidth is consumed, would allow wealthy corporations to have the fastest connections and screw everyone else furth down the ladder, especially the average consumer. Who wants to pay fees based on how many YouTube videos they watch per week? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

As with almost any other issue these days, the major news networks have avoided talking about net neutrality whenever possible. But now that the WGA, which has recently ended a several-month-long strike against film and television producers, understands just how dependent the rest of the writing world depends on those flate-rate internet packages to communicate and thrive, its members are suddenly MUCH more ardent supporters of fair legislation, according to this Yahoo News report:

Writers push for laws to maintain Internet freedom

Don’t misunderstand me; I am fully in support of the WGA, and I think they’re doing the right thing. What I am frustrated with is the lag between the attention many news stories about the internet receive from those of us in the ‘electronic generation’ and those who are, despite the explosion of blogging aware, web 2.0 and the internet revolution, still incredibly slow and old school about bringing national attention to online issues OFFLINE.

By the way, Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate that I know of who has pledged to support net neutrality and protect the rights of individual citizens against a lack of regulation of the corporations who seek play gatekeepers and thus control access to the web.

They are many, many people who cannot afford to have internet service at home but who may someday. There are many, many people who are just now learning how to utilize the vast resources that the world-wide web provides. They and their children deserve to know about issues that will affect them when the ever-changing economic situations in all countries force them to seek jobs that require the internet.

This is one of those stories that should garner more attention than a quarterly blurb in the technology section of a newspaper.

From the NYT article on the abuse of national security letters:

The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target was in contact with. The bureau stopped the practice early this year in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said.

What this means is whatever or whoever the F.B.I. determines to be ‘relevant’ or within a suspect’s “community of interest” is fair game. Say someone named Margie Johnson shares a name with a suspected terrorist sympathizer in Scotland. That name comes up on the T.S.A.’s No-Fly list when she goes to an airport. Now, assuming that the two Margie Johnsons are one and the same (and that’s a big if, but the T.S.A. screw-ups are a beef for another barbecue), the F.B.I. would keep track of her calls and any meetings, activities, etc. that they deem suspicious.

It turns out Margie attends a local genealogy group meeting every Saturday at the local library. She also checks out a few books afterwards and usually returns those books in a few days. Since the feds tend to assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent, maybe they think these group meetings are suspicious and that she’s passing secret messages in the library books or learning how to build bombs.

Too bad you joined that group two weeks ago. The national security letter that went out? It covers everyone involved in the group. You thought you were just trying to find your lost great uncle from Romania!

It also covers anyone who was in the library and checked out or turned in a book in the time frames when Margie was present in the library. The library has to send their records of electronic checkouts and drop-offs and give the F.B.I. the names of all of those people. Now they’ll follow you and everyone else the sweep turns up. It’s already established that the F.B.I. has used its terrorist surveillance field agents and local law enforcement to monitor anti-war activists and others critical of the Bush administration.

In 2005, the Bureau instructed a telecommunications company to provide “a community of interest for the telephone numbers in the attached list.”

There are a lot of ways in which the vague language applied in many cases could be interpreted.

Hypothetically speaking, of course. But “relative” is a ‘relative’ term nowadays.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before that whole “we’re-the-government-and-we-can-send-out-letters-and-tell-you-to-turn-over-private-information-on-your-clients-and-you-can’t-say-anything-because-of-national-security-risks” thing blew up like a spark in sawdust. Of course, I didn’t think it would take this long for some sane judge to finally bring the hammer down on a ridiculous provision that makes every U.S. citizen guilty until proven innocent, but better late than never.

Yesterday, Victor Marrero of the Federal District Court in Manhattan struck down the provision in the USA PATRIOT ACT that allowed the F.B.I. to demand civil and financial records from any business or institution with the mailing of a so-called “national security letter.” Some 143,000 of these “national security letters” went out to retailers, local governments and police stations, communications networks and institutions of learning between 2001 and 2006, many of which appear to have been issued under dubious pretenses.

This is a terrific, if possibly short-lived, victory for the ACLU against the Bush administration. But underneath all of the lawsuits, the threats, the rhetoric and the fine print, one essential truth has come to light:

Don’t f*** with librarians.

Justice is served.

An interesting turn of events in the NSA wiretapping scandal. Here’s an excerpt:

Three federal appeals court judges hearing challenges to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs appeared skeptical of and sometimes hostile to the Bush administration’s central argument Wednesday: that national security concerns require that the lawsuits be dismissed.

“Is it the government’s position that when our country is engaged in a war that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?” Judge Harry Pregerson asked a government lawyer. His tone was one of incredulity and frustration.

Read the full article here.

There are probably a ton of people writing to the DHS concerning the enforcement of the so-called REAL ID Act, so I’m not going to pull out a bulletpoint presentation. All I’m going to say is that if for no other reason, placing all of one’s personal, private information like one’s social security number, bank statements, birth certificates, and passport information into a national database accessible by thousands of underpaid local employees is about as secure as posting that information on a billboard on a Nebraska highway. It only takes on unscrupulous passerby to notice and steal it.

If the government can’t even protect us from information brokers who selfishly expose our names and information to corporations and their own employees to turn a profit, why in the hell would I want any DMV Joe with a basic understanding of computer programming to have access to my birth certificate? People I’ve never even met would have an easier time accessing records that verify who I am as a person than I ever would.

Genealogists can’t even receive birth certificates from 200 years ago if they can’t prove a direct link to a family member. Information that is technically ‘free’ to the public, like census records, aren’t even available online unless through a paid subscription on a private site. Yet the US government wants to make information on the living that they need to work, accept payments, and receive medical care open to the Department of Motor Vehicle’s equivalent of an airport baggage handler.

What is wrong with this picture?

To write the DHS before 5pm EST on May 8th, go to http://www.realnightmare.org/actioncenter/109/