Great piece from the great Paul Rosenberg. Smuggling as free trade and a boon to mankind. Which may be why the history books don’t like to talk about it?
Category: Privacy and self ownership
Owning our own information and telling Big Brother to get lost
“Sovereignty without Territoriality?” (H/T Hobbit) Anybody seen Mud yet? A friend recommended it glowingly and it’s at 98% on RottenTomatoes.com — almost unheard of for a live-action feature. Become your very own spy agency with these secret! NSA! Google! Tips! (Creepy, and a far cry from a Orphan Annie Decoder Pin). (Tip o’ hat to JJ) Speaking of creepy: Skype. It could have been very non-creepy. But it’s a M*******t product; so what can you say? It’s creepy. (H/T Wendy McElroy) Oh, that laugh-a-minute IRS. Turns out they also gave supposedly “private” info on conservative groups to a liberal group.…
Dan Brown’s got a new potboiler coming out. I like Dan Brown. I wish I could boil the pot like he does. Critics disagree. One says so in a familiar voice. 🙂 Almost a neighbor. Glad he’s not quite. Yet another judge fails to grasp the Fourth Amendment. (H/T JJ) Travis (TJIC) Corcoran’s upcoming novel sounds intriguing. I’d think so even if he didn’t take my name in vain in his trendy self-interview thingie. The Escherian stairwell 😉 Okay, so we’ve all heard about how the IRS illegally targeted tea party and related groups around the 2012 election. And they…
When we were kids, the adults around us often told us things they implied were both true and very, very important. Sometimes those adults were right. Other times, we eventually learned that certain “truths” were neither true nor important. In retrospect we realized somebody was telling us those things solely to compel obedience (“This will go on your Permanent Record!”) or mold us to social norms (“You have to go along to get along.”) Question of the day: What are some of the “truths” from you childhood that turned out either not to be true or not to be important…
No fair! How come the CIA doesn’t deliver bags of cash to me? I’m sure I could stay bought at least as well as the typical third-world puppet. (We all know those standards aren’t too high.) It’s a sure thing I could find some cronies to share the loot with. Heck, I’d probably have cronies crawling out of the woodwork as soon as they learned I was the source of buckets of untraceable dollars. I’ll bet I could even find a warlord or two to fund. So why not me? Why not you? But since it’s not us, I’d like…
When people entrust everything to the cloud. But hey, Google is a big company, right? Practically like a government. So nothing could ever go wrong. And when it does, of course they’ll be just eager as little beavers to help one of their 343 million very important customers. —– Working on one of those blog posts that takes a lot of thinking about. So please pardon the apparent lack of productivity.
Well, now we know what happens when police cordon off a neighborhood, declare it a Fourth-Amendment-free zone, send SWAT teams house-to-house, and hover helicopters overhead. People cheer and applaud. They turn out in the streets to wave little American flags. And next we can watch as they condone demand and slaver over illegal treatment of Suspect #2 (an American citizen). We can “enjoy” a new round of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam hatred. We can observe bobbleheads nodding from Los Angeles to Hartford as Good Citizens agree with all the new promises politicians and the state-security apparatus make as they concoct onerous…
This was a week for getting reminded of unconventional freedoms — and unconventional Outlawry (though some might call it just plain criminality). First, we got fascinated with Christopher Knight (aka the Maine Hermit), whose solitary life some found irresistible. Imagine speaking only one word to another human in 27 years and sleeping outdoors through 27 northern winters. Imagine doing that, yet remaining so un-resourceful that you think stealing from a camp for handicapped kids is a legitimate way to survive. Then yesterday afternoon, NPR interviewed Mike Brodie — not their usual sort of book author. At 27, Brodie is a…
Strange bedfellows. But I’d be willing to commit a whole lot of unnatural acts with the ACLU as long as they’re on our side on guns and databases. Great idea for great activists. And great use of the power of social media. Sure, the thugs could rip the bracelet off, but surely this would give them pause. Maybe you have to know the people and place involved, but I think this video from Joel and Friends is a screaming hoot. Let’s just say you had one of these. But in semi-auto. With quite a few extras. (Here’s a more thorough…
You know, it takes a lot more brainpower to write long, thoughtful, personal posts than it does to toss out a little news (maybe accompanied by a bit of snark or righteous indignation). So while I continue working on the “Perspective” Blog Tome, news (and one really good laugh) it is for today. “Anonymous has left the building.” “The logic of surveillance.” (H/T JG) This isn’t exactly nooz. It’s from last month. But it makes me proud that the Northwest is a national center of anti-surveillance activism. You go, monkeywrenchers! This pertains to yesterday’s “Perspective” blog. Gretchen Rubin of The…