I'm sure all you liberal-lily-livered-bin-laden-sympathizing-constitution-as-suicide-pact-surrender-monkey-terrorist-
appeasers who used to whine about "profiling" will now cry about Excessive Force! Some people are just never satisfied. Instead of complaining, you should be celebrating. Now the TSA and airport police offer equal opportunity beatings. Yay!
Here's the tape... Good thing these Uber-Patriots are Protecting The Homeland, right?
Remember the 90s? It was the dawn of an era of globalization and easy, instantaneous movement of information. The hero of this new age was the "road warrior" who jetted around the globe solving problems, selling Infomation Age products and making deals. And the warrior's chief weapon was the state-of-the-art laptap crammed with all the features and data needed to accomplish the task.
Not any more. The Patriot Act, zealous U. S. Customs and TSA officials and a Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling giving a green light to warrantless searches and seizures has made traveling with a laptop very difficult. And if you carry sensitive data on that laptop these days, you're a fool.
[If you are a member of the Current community, please share with them as well.]
This is a personal question from me to the rest of the DailyKos community. I'm hoping that you'll pay it forward.
Knowing what you know regarding the conduct of the men in charge of our government right now, is just a little part of you afraid to speak out publicly?
Do you hesitate from bringing it up when given an opportunity?
Is there at least little part of you that is mortally afraid of what your government is capable of doing right now?
I am.
If you are, perhaps recommend to others outside this community. Obama is doing well, but I don't trust these guys when they're backed in a corner. And I feel like they could sneak up behind my back.
And share your fears. Because the only way these bastards win is through our silence.
The Examiner is reporting that Washington, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier plans to lock down violent neighborhoods with police checkpoints, ID checks, and the stated intent to turn away or arrest anyone without a "legitimate" reason to be there.
Phoenix Police may now contact ICE when they suspect a persn to be in the country illegally, a shift in policy that is expected to increase the number of illegal immigrants deported from the state. Under the new policy everyone arrested in Phoenix will be questioned about his or her citizenship. If an officer makes contact with someone who did not commit a crime but is still believed to be in the country illegally, the officer can give ICE that person's contact information over the phone or via a one page form.
Senior government officials have leaked detailed information about a database of 8 million Americans targeted for detention in case of a declared national emergency.
Called "Main Core," the database's origins date back to the 1980s when the Reagan administration began its "Continuity in Government" planning. The Bush administration stepped up the effort to the point that even John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey objected on constitional grounds, leading to the dramatic confrontation between Ashcroft and Comey on on side and Alberto Gonzales (then Bush's lawyer) and Andrew Card on the other as Ashcroft lay critically ill in an intensive care unit.
High resolution cameras covering nearly every inch of public space. National IDs crammed with biometric data. Facial recognition software that can't be defeated even by plastic surgery. And a massive database to connect the cameras, the IDs, all financial and medical data.
It's not merely resident in the mind's eye of a screenwriter of the next dystopian thriller. According to Naomi Klein in the latest issue of Rolling Stone , China has already implemented much of the above and is only a year or two away from completing this Information Age 1984 with the eager help of U. S. corporations and an American government that looks the other way as anti-export laws are violated.
As thrilling as it is to see Barack Obama moving, slowly but surely, toward his date with history on January 20th of next year, there's something a little scary about it, too.
While the US general public watches Reverand Wright dance and Hannah Montana strip in the mass media, George’s Gang of Nine has been quietly setting the future of Anerica as a secure police state. Maybe the upholding of the Indiana law that brings back a new twist on that old ploy of using literacy tests and poll taxes to suppress minority and poor voters showed up on the media you were watching. But if it did, it was no doubt used as a lead to play up our ongoing political soap opera histrionics between the Dems and Repubs.
So a week before the Indiana primary, everybody who doesn’t have a driver’s licence or similar picture ID will have to get a free one from the state. In a week. After getting a form and filling it out. And bringing it back with their original birth certificate, proof of current place of residence, original Social Security card, etc. And the state will get that good ol’ ID out to you. In a week. Right.
The other two rulings of George’s Gang are almost as good – rejecting consideration of some death penalty cases (after ruling last week that lethal injections are A-OK, why not?) -- which has been interpreted legally as a go-ahead to capital punishment.
It's called the "Internet real-name system" and it's touted as the perfect antidote to terrorism, child pornography, Internet abuse and fraud.
South Korea, where it's been the law since 2005, attributes all kinds of benefits to it from securing "healthy development" of the blog world to attracting more investment to web-oriented businesses. Prior to obtaining any webmail services or even signing up for an Internet membership or chat site, South Koreans are required to submit an application with their real name, address, ID number and telephone. Internet providers who fail to collect accurate information from their customers are subject to a fine equivalent to $30,000 per person.
I've long talked about the abuses and incompetence of this administration, the corruption and criminality at its heart, not to mention its messianic delusions. All this, however, pales when compared to the latest revelation, yet another memo by John Yoo. Mr. Yoo's most recently revealed memo takes the position that the Constitution does not apply to military actions, even within the United States. Link here. There's an old word for this, one Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would have understood very well: tyranny.
Imagine that somewhere close to your local community there exists a secret computer center. Equipped with powerful mainframe computers and the database integrating powers of XML, this government-funded facility gathers data from thousands of sources including local, state and federal law enforcement, social welfare agencies, hospitals, banks, telephone companies, ISPs, computer search engines, private security companies, schools--essentially an endless list. With its massive computing power, this secret outpost is able to search and sift this data using vaguely defined criteria like "suspicious activity" in order to identify individuals for even closer scrutiny. Finally, this computer center dispenses the results of its analyses to local, state and federal law enforcement and to the military so that they can take action against the citizens tagged as threats.
Such a scenario is no longer the product of a paranoid, over-stimulated imagination. It is a reality called "fusion centers," forty of which have been established throughout the United States.
Stay afraid people. We're not sure exactly what. But there's probably something to be afraid of. Keep being afraid, and let us keep control. We'll keep you safe. But not so safe you shouldn't be afraid.
How can anyone rationalize the fact that the United States, with only 4 percent of the world's population, incarcerates one third of all those imprisoned on planet earth. In 1980 we had only 200,000 Prisoners yet in 2006 that figure had risen to 2.3 MILLION in the so called land of the free. This is a moral issue, and the government's mishandling is not only a national disgrace but also a very costly one.
If somebody doesn't put an end to this and very soon our government will have us all walking in chains. You can literally go to prison for almost anything in the USA if you think I'm kidding watch the video.
When people think of a police state they usually think of East Germany's Stasi, Stalin's KGB or the Saudi Monarchy. A police state in America would look much different.
As the Bush administration calls for increased surveillance of the American public while defending the new tactics of torture and pre-emptive wars, many people jump to the conclusion that the American government is trying to impose martial law on the country. While they are correct in assuming that there are a lot of people in the government and military who have fascist tendencies, it's a mistake to think that the threat comes from the government, whose very purpose is to stop such a thing from occurring.
It was Calvin Coolidge who famously said, "The business of America is business." America's police state looks much different from the state-run totalitarian regimes we're used to. It has been privatized.
