Former Seattle police chief knows from experience: cops are blowing it in their handling of OWS. (Tip o’ hat to C^2.) Family reluctantly surrenders its beloved island. I give you one guess as to why. I know you can tell me without even clicking on the link. My dogs could do this. I’m two weeks late learning this. So sad. Diaspora* is a great and hopeful creation. Now here’s a perfect example of how one man’s safe-haven is another person’s nightmare. Joel Skousen has named Tennessee as the best retreat location for people living east of the Mississippi. That’s this…
Category: Privacy and self ownership
Owning our own information and telling Big Brother to get lost
A random thought: I mentioned the other day that I was switching from Comcast to CenturyLink for Internet. C’Link will be an Internet-only contract. The Comcast package included the first land-line I’ve had in years. Didn’t really want it, but it came with the deal. I opted for a non-published number, then signed on to the national “do not call” list. I knew that list was dubious, but since it has pretty much replaced the earlier and better private “do not calls,” I went ahead figuring it would at least be of some help. The catch is that the fedlaw…
They probably hope to save themselves by selling a billion Justin Bieber stamps. Compromise. Ptooey! Y’know, in a free country they’d be in favor of privacy. I agree this is boneheaded. But this is another misuse of the word “mistake.” It’s not like GM did it by accident or anything. I was a little premature when I railed against this 14 years ago when the pilot project was just getting underway. (This is “freedom” as brought to you by “conservatives.” With the help of “liberals.”) I don’t care if they do make them in camo. It’s a dumb idea. Probably…
Some stuff I’ve been collecting while being quiet: Jake MacGregor is back again. Chapter 34 and 35. Ron Paul: speaking truth to knuckleheads (it’s harder than speaking truth to power). Another example of how government helps lower medical costs and make life easier for people. Jacob Hornberger: Blaming America. For fans of the DullHawk flag (aka “Time’s Up”). One of those good news stories. About a gutsy woman and her big, gutsy horse. A rare act of justice One reason I’ve quit focusing on stuff like this is that no matter how creepy it gets, you know next week it’ll…
One of my old, old articles that still draws occasional questions is one I wrote back in the golden (so it now seems) pre-Patriot Act days — an article about working without a social security number. The questions always carry a tone of desperation. They’re from people trying to do the right thing for themselves and their families and feeling increasingly pressured. I have no good answers. So many doors have closed in the last 10 years. Here’s the latest such letter. My response, such as it is, is below. If you have anything better, fire away in the comments…
Many hat tips today. To S, C^2 and Matt, another. Have you noticed that companies you deal with online increasingly force you to place symbols, capitals, and numbers in your passwords — under the illusion that their nannying guarantees a password stronger than any you could possibly invent for yourself? In its own inimitable style XKCD notes the folly of that. Another bank closes. But not for the usual post-crash reason. Nope. Just the usual governmental reason. “A right to be forgotten”? There’s an interesting concept. Could it really interfere with the right to free speech? More village self-defense. But…
To those of a certain age, “Telex” may evoke memories of large, unwieldy, chattering ancestors of the fax machine. Today Telex is something else: a potentially revolutionary way to route around Internet censorship. S., who found the information, comments (this will make more sense if you’ve read a bit on the above links): I suspect there will be a number of interesting variations on this technology. For example, the The Mental Militia forum is almost certainly monitored by one or more Three-Letter Aacronyms. The Telex approach requires many different machines in the network to run a Telex server, and is…
Prosecutorial misconduct brings a mistrial in the Roger Clemens never-talk-to-the-feds case. How come we never see the feds on trial for lying to us? (ADDED: Good commentary.) Gary Marbut — bless his bold and principled heart — does it again. This time, he makes the Wall St. Journal. “The Good Short Life.” Touching. Cops are at it again, too. Portable facial-recognition and iris-scanning devices. Another gift of USACorp’s perpetual war machine. While junque shopping, I really would have bought that set of five poker-playing dog prints (especially “Pinched with Four Aces.”) They were too expensive (and does anybody really need…
Still deadlining this week — on every day but Wednesday when I snuck away with girlfriends for an orgy of junque shopping. So still only “lite” posting. But I’m working on another Big, Heavy Tome of a Thought, which I’ll probably drop onto the blog with a floor-shattering thud next week. In the meantime … It’s so weird how we just take news like this for granted now. “Today you were lucky, but you will have to be lucky always. We only have to be lucky once.” Why the IRA was successful and Al Quaeda not, according to a very…
Good work up there, you Canadians! But don’t you always get a kick out of these statistics on the size of underground economies? Seriously. They know this how? (Tip o’ hat to C^2.) Remember, when your camera-containing device gets “lost” or ever-so-slightly altered in police custody, there’s always this. (Tip o’ hat to S^2.) Oh, the little people are getting so uppity! You know something will soon fall down and go bust when “experts” are this confident that everything is rosy. July 4 by Thomas Sowell. Two really good (and coincidentally related) ones from Get Rich Slowly: “Defining Your Financial…