Wouldn’t you just know it? Wouldn’t you just? As soon as domestic drones even start looking like they could be a nuisance, somebody comes up with this: Drone Shield. Yes, indeedy, you to can keep the paparazzi and other airborne vermin away. Fancy that! But look who all is in the list of potential clients — a veritable roster of the crony capitalist police state. Pity. (H/T MJR.) —– People laughed earlier this summer when big-time columnist Maureen Dowd tried her first cannabis, did it unwisely, and wrote about feeling like she was dying. They thought she was making a…
Category: Privacy and self ownership
Owning our own information and telling Big Brother to get lost
“What I did after police killed my son.” The food insecurity lie. 12 graphs showing why people get fat. Oh, Canada. What you’ve reduced your people to. Airhorns? Seriously? Airhorns against thug barbarians? (H/T L.A.) Couple of weeks ago I linked to Ryochiji’s farewell to his Serenity Valley cabin as he prepared it as best he could against approaching fires. Good news; his cabin survived. Barely, but it made it. Yep, that would be about par for the course for U.S. surveillance priorities. Um … I’m really not sure why various news media keep presenting this as amusing. I know…
Tam? Tam, where have you gone? Your blog was one of the stones on which the gunblogosphere was built. Doctors getting fed up with their profession. No surprise. Not really news. But an interesting perspective from a physician. “Who owns your children?” Bayou Renaissance Man asks after last week’s case of a family subjected to an international manhunt for disagreeing with their son’s doctors. What do you know about MaidSafe? Is this the future of communications privacy? (H/T PB in comments) Teacher arrested over school shootings — that he wrote about in novels. David Codrea notes that we don’t know…
What? Eric Holder a hypocrite? Nooooo. Why, that would be as unthinkable as saying cops are lying thugs or that they get away with things that would send the rest of us to prison. Why, that would even be like saying that feds and local cops are conspiring to keep information out of the hands of judges. Couldn’t happen. This is Murrica! Isn’t that cute? The NSA has its own search engine just for sharing information about us. Sigh. Another hopeful libertarian project collapses into a rubble heap of fraud and scandal. Oh well. Here’s something useful (and maybe even…
“The boy who invented email.” Wonder why more of us don’t know this. When “experts” had dismissed it as too difficult, a precocious 14-year-old invented email. Love this from Brigid: stripper clips and “Lab” dances. More snoopery? No problem. More privacy tools. Haven’t really been a fan of Rand Paul’s (for the usual “he’s not Ron” reasons). But this is a good guy. SNL thinks Obama is nothing to laugh at. Do all languages derive from a common ancestor? Finally, via Keith in a comment over at Joel’s Gulch, here’s a funny for ya. The Expert. If you’ve been in…
Safe spaces. Why not for geeks, too? Safe spaces for gun owners? Anarchists? Oh, the possibilities … So if you like both kale and bacon, does that make you a libertarian? (Via Alphecca) Oh, Kevin Wilmeth. Ouch. Only in The Onion: “The pros and cons of militarizing the police.” (Stolen from Wendy.) I think Egyptian officials are having a little fun at our expense. Not sure whether this is high-tech creepy or just Cold Warish enough to be weird. Gov’t listens in on scientists listening to marine life and … well, it’s complicated. (H/T H.) You have the right to…
Okay, I get why Americans abroad with a deadly disease (and their families) would want to be cared for in the U.S. I understand that the fedgov has some obligation to protect U.S. citizens in other countries (though that’s often more theory than practice). What I don’t get is why the CDC would go out of its way to bring an incurable infectious disease to these shores. I don’t care how many “precautions” you take. We’ve seen how well “precautions” often work. “The app I used to break into my neighbor’s home.” Covert key copying goes high tech. The criminalization…
The U.S. Department of Justice (sic) is arguing that nobody has a right to refuse to snitch. That is, should you just say no when offered the “opportunity” to become the fedgov’s patsy, TPTB are free to punish you by means fair or foul to coerce and terrify you into doing their bidding. First Amendment does not apply. Nor any other amendment, for that matter. So they argue and so (in today’s statist legal climate) they may prevail. Another brick in the wall. Another brick we’ll pull down on their evil, power-mad heads one day in the not too distant…
The bigger costs of surveillance that nobody’s talking about. Well, maybe not quite nobody. But yes, it’s strange (though of course not surprising) that the uber-government — and the public government and the surveillance complex that enable it — refuse to see how much they’ve broken and how badly they’ve broken it with their foul behaviors. Of course, to some of us, those broken things are also opportunities. For stronger tech. For alternative commerce. For weening the naive from their trust in the untrustworthy. For freedom.
This story is about the best and brightest leaving Russia. It has nothing to do with the U.S. — except that my email brings me daily reports about American ex-pats that sound just like this. “The leader of the unfree world.” Not long ago, this sort of privilege, with its cruel disregard for the “little people,” was granted only to puffed-up Oriental potentates and pashas in lands of the notably unfree. You already knew you were a terrorist in the eyes of “your” democratic, representative, passionately liberty-loving, and devoutly transparent government. Now read the criteria, such as they are, secretly…