Or how about not.

Our genius Commander-in-Chief has, in all his infinite wisdom, decided to support the extension of several provisions of the USA PATRIOT ACT, including illegal wiretapping and the infamous “national security letters” that compel businesses to hand over records to the feds, and then impose a blanket gag order on the very mention of said letters.

The PATRIOT ACT has been a giant shit stain on the Constitution from day one.  It has always been unconstitutional, bad law at best, and insidious police state machinery at worst.  It was enacted by manipulative politicians who capitalized on the politics of fear in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, in order to extend federal power into whole new areas of our lives.

What I find most striking is how the Great Leader’s repeated campaign promises to break with old school politics and bring “change” to Washington were dropped and forgotten as soon as he finished reciting the oath of office.  The Bush administration did plenty of damage to our nation’s civil liberties and international image, and much change is needed.  Instead of implementing that change and moving forward in a positive direction, President Obama has slipped comfortably into the culture of slimy deal-making and political fear-mongering that dominate the post-9/11 debate on national security.  This is not only a wasted opportunity, but an epic failure of a politician who once embodied the promise of a new direction.

I don’t say that lightly.  Courtesy of the New York Times, here’s where we are:

“WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.

The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said.”

Hoovering up information is what the NSA does.  I understand that.  But their giant goddamned vacuum cleaner is sucking in all kinds of things they have zero business seeing without a warrant (FISA guidelines be damned).

Congress, of course, is feckless concerned.  There are investigations, oversights, talking heads, propagandistic slogans (you want to be safe from the terrists, don’t you citizen?)

Dictionary.com’s second definition for treason is this:  a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.

No matter which way I look at this I see the NSA wiping its ass with the Fourth Amendment.  You know, the one that specifies that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Courts can interpret that all they want to, but there is limited room in there for unaccountable federal agencies and FISA panels.  I respect the NSA’s important role in national security, but it has gone completely off the reservation by conducting illegal surveillance on US citizens.  Those involved should be fired and prosecuted.

Flagrantly ignoring the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of US citizens is a violation of allegience to one’s state.  Treason, indeed.

Don’t get me wrong: I love New York.  It’s just about the coolest city on earth, and there’s really nowhere else I’d rather spend a long weekend in May or September.

That said, what the fuck are the transportation officials at PANYNJ thinking?  They’re deploying millimeter wave (strip search) machines at PATH train stations.

(PATH is Port Authority Trans-Hudson, a suburban rail service that links parts of New Jersey with Manhattan.)

These are the machines TSA is deploying in airports that show a detailed image of your naked body to a stranger.  Not only are there no credible threats to commuter rail in the northeast, even if there were you don’t respond by dropping a steaming turd on your citizens’ civil liberties.  Not that I don’t want to flaunt my masculine body every day, but I put on clothes for a reason: privacy (and I don’t just give away the striptease gratis).

I’m sure the brain trust that came up with this genius scheme is the same that gave us the NYPD (warrantless) bag searches of subway passengers.  Whether it’s a bag search or strip search, there needs to be some level of cause before the authorities are allowed to invade our privacy so rampantly.  Absent that it’s an unconstitutional practice, regardless of what some sycophantic court thinks about it.

You know the expression: nothing good comes from Jersey.

PS- a correction to the AP article I linked above: millimeter wave machines do not detect explosives.  They produce a detailed image of a person’s naked body to the machine operator.  Any explosive detection will be done by a human, not the machine itself.  If they want explosive detection they should use ETD swabs on every bag.  Those are effective and far less invasive to privacy.

This lovely piece of news comes to us from Michigan (hat tip Jeremy) via the Chicago Tribune:

“Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

…

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects.”

The nightmare gets worse by the day.  A panel of judges actually ruled that because nothing is physically searched or seized, police don’t need a warrant to spy on you.  So why not take it to the next step?  Allow police to put clandestine tracking devices on our clothing.  Or allow them full-time access to cellular network data, which can pinpoint even non GPS-enabled phones with a high degree of accuracy?

I’m a little spent on outrage today, so all I’m going to say is: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?  They are allowed to track people who are not even suspects.

I’m outraged by bullshit like this so often it’s starting to wear even me out.  If the slow slide toward authoritarian government continues to be supported by courts like this, what chance do we really have of preserving our civil liberties?

Thank god for SpyZone.

Surely most of you have heard the old story about putting a frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly turning the heat up until he boils to death without noticing.  The point is that if you drop the frog into a pot of already boiling water, he’ll jump out to save himself.  But with the gradual increase in temperature he won’t notice and will get cooked alive before he realizes what’s happening to him.

This story is often used when discussing issues of liberty and personal freedom relative to changes in our society and laws.  I think it’s an appropriate and accurate analogy to make; we don’t easily notice gradual changes in our lives.  Look no further than the ageing process.  Show a 15-year old version of yourself a picture of what you look like today and he’d be shocked by the changes.  But seeing ourselves in the mirror every day hardly produces any reaction at all.

My friends, the total lack of real change from our new leaders in Washington means the temperature in our national pot continues to rise.  Today we have a story out of North Carolina about 16-year old Ashton Lundeby getting bitch-slapped by the most mis-named piece of legislation to date: the USA PATRIOT Act.  Some gems from the article, emphases are mine:

[A]ccording to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.

Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.

Lundeby said the USA Patriot Act stripped her son of his due process rights.

“We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution,” she said. “It wasn’t intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can’t even defend.”

“Never in my worst nightmare did I ever think that it would be my own government that I would have to protect my children from,” Lundeby said. “This is the United States, and I feel like I live in a third world country now.”

___

Is this really where we are?  Sixteen year-olds getting hauled off to jail with minimal evidence of wrongdoing?  Have they declared this kid an enemy combatant yet?  He may get to go to Cuba before Obama lifts the travel ban.

As I’ve said before, various federal agencies have been indoctrinated to see terrorists on every street corner and do their utmost to stop them.  As these terrorists are largely imaginary outside of Af-Pak, the net effect is a federal law-enforcement culture that encourages its personnel to wield enormous (and unconstitutional) power over law-abiding US citizens in their own country.

It’s easy to look at a single incident like this and dismiss it as the work of a rogue agent or bad tip.  But this is far from the only time something like this has happened since late 2001.  From NSA spying on US citizens to data mining to border checkpoints up to 100 miles inland, we are allowing the machinery of a police state to be constructed right under our noses.  That may not have been the intention of those who authorized these laws and procedures, but it’s the reality of what continues to go on in this country day after day.  And one day, we’ll have a terror event so big, or a government so inclined toward authoritarianism, that this liberty-destroying machine will be turned on us with full force.  And we’ll be so acclimated we won’t even notice.

Hello dear malcontent readers.  I realize I haven’t been blogging nearly as frequently as is my custom.  I have 30 things draining a little bit of my attention each day instead of five things I’m really focused on.  Time for some spring cleaning.

Now, on to the pressing matter of the ongoing erosion of your privacy.  Here are some things I’ve seen the media blather about recently that I think you should be aware of:

* First the passports, now our driver’s licenses?  Some state gubmints want to put RFID chips into our licenses.  This would mean anyone with access to Google, $40, Radio Shack and a nefarious streak could intercept your license information, including number, DOB, digitized picture, et al.  More advances in the name of “security”.

* Our friends at the TSA want you to know they watching, always watching.

For the past 13 months, “behavior-detection officers” have been walking the airport’s terminal and concourses, observing people’s faces, mannerisms and even to whom they speak while passing the time at their gate. The program is called SPOT, Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique.

…

TSA officers don’t have arrest authority and can’t compel passengers to answer questions or submit to searches. However, those who don’t agree to the search are not permitted to board their plane, TSA spokesman Jon Allen said.

Note that last part: TSA employees (they are not officers) lack authority to compel you to speak to them.  These people are nothing more than a power-tripping joke, and should be treated as such if they confront you in an airport.  (Outside of an airport may I suggest a kick in the balls).  I recommend either ignoring them completely or telling them they can ask you questions through a real law enforcement officer.  Most airport cops have a very low opinion of TSA’ers and know what a farce their organization and methods are.

That’s it for now.  Stay tuned for some exciting additions to the world of Malcontent, including some upcoming columns with expert (and free) travel advice from your resident blogger/jet-setter.

I recently shared a frightening experience I had with our immigration authorities.  Their almost limitless court-appointed power to detain, harass and search innocent Americans isn’t congruent with the principles of a free republic, even one threatened with terrorism.

Today, via the Drudge Report, we have a story about a Canadian man who was pepper sprayed at a US/Canada vehicle crossing checkpoint.  Did he pull a weapon?  Threaten an officer?  Make a run for it?

None of the above.

This man had the audacity to insist on the courtesy of the word “please”.  The border officer in question didn’t like that, so our Canadian friend got a face full of pepper spray.  From the National Post:

“A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to “say please” when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.”

In addition to gross professional misconduct, this incident illustrates a broader problem with government agencies.  The more power they are given, the more power they will exercise.  And that exercise of power is seldom to the benefit of liberty.  The nearly limitless power enjoyed by the immigration, customs and border cops has contributed to a culture of impunity.  This starts at the top: they are taught that they are on the front lines of terror, and the essential message is that the ends justify the means.  This sort of Jack Bauer problem-solving works fine on 24, but in the real world absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is no reason to treat visitors to the United States like terrorists because they demand a little courtesy.  It’s time to rein in this arrogant and power-saturated agency and put it in a straight jacket called the Fourth Amendment.  And some classes from Miss Manners wouldn’t hurt, either.

I can’t say this is hot-off-the-presses news, per se, but there have been some recent developments that make it worth highlighting.  Courtesy of USA Today:

“Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano endorsed the use of body scanners Wednesday to screen airline passengers despite concerns that the machines create vivid images of people under their clothing.”

That’s not change, that’s more of the same.

I’m disappointed in myself for being naive enough to think that the Obama administration might give a shit about what the traveling public has to go through at the airport, to say nothing of the Constitutional issues involved.  Screeners full of attitude and faux-authority, along with their ridiculous and ineffective procedures, will now to joined by one of the most serious invasions of privacy the government has engineered to-date.

The ACLU is right to call these machines for what they really are: a strip search.  Some brief background: these scanners use millimeter wave technology to create a detailed image of you in your birthday suit.  TSA screeners - in a supposedly controlled and private room far from the checkpoint - will inspect you in all your glory to make sure you’re not carrying weapons.  Nevermind that dangerous weapons are metallic and detected by the current technology (walk through metal detectors).  Nevermind that any attempted hijacking would be met by a revolt in mid-air.  TSA wants to keep you “safe”, so your compliance is demanded requested.

TSA says that (for now) if you don’t like the new scanners, you can opt for a pat-down.  That misses the point: innocent travelers should not be subjected to any of this harassment.  Do a reasonable job of scanning us and our bags for weapons and leave it at that.  As they roll this technology out at more and more airports, the day will soon come where “if you want to fly, comply” will become the standard response to any objection.

I will never go through one of these machines.  Period.  If you share my sentiments, fight this with your actions: refuse every time.  If the day comes when we’re denied our right to travel as a result of our refusal, we take the battle to the courts.  If we can’t win it there, that’s another nail in the coffin of our free repubic.

I’m going to share a disturbing experience I had last month on re-entering the United States from a holiday trip.

As you fellow international travelers know, returning from abroad is usually a very simple process.  Walk off the plane, down an eternal hallway, queue up, show your passport, collect bags, through customs and out.

But sometimes it’s not that simple.  Especially in an era where citizens are suspects and the government thinks it can do whatever it pleases in the name of “security”.

In early January I disembarked from an international flight, bleary-eyed from sleeping and generally addled from about 30 hours of travel.  There was a CBP (Customs and Border Protection) officer on the jet bridge checking passports.  I saw him look and waive a few people on, but on opening mine he asked me to come with him.

I can’t fault this officer for being impolite or unprofessional; he was neither.  But that isn’t the point.  Upon reaching an immigration booth he proceeded to ask me some personal questions about the nature of my trip, and about my employment and lifestyle.  This probably won’t strike many of you as a huge invasion of privacy, but I have to ask: what do these questions have to do with admitting a US citizen back into the country?  Under federal law US citizens cannot be denied re-entry, so why the invasive questions into my personal business absent some sort of probable cause?

I was caught off-guard, extremely tired, and traveling with my 60+ mother who depends on her jet-setter son to get her to the right terminal, gate, etc.  So I tersely answered his questions.  The whole process didn’t take more than ten minutes, but as I walked out of the customs area toward the “free” world, I felt dirty.

The scariest part is that in this instance CBP only used a fraction of the legal authority granted it by our judicial system in recent decades.  In addition to the invasive searches and personal questions, did you know that the courts have granted the border authorities license to take our laptops and other digital media without even documenting suspicion of wrongdoing?  That’s right, they can take it, copy and search the contents, and return it to you weeks or months later with no explanation as to why.

Do you trust the government with the private contents of your personal life?

Moreover, does any court have the legal authority to circumvent the Bill of Rights in such an obvious and destructive way?

This will only stop when we make it stop.  Americans should never be subject to suspicionless searches, whether verbal or physical.  And our private, personal property should be inviolable absent a warrant based on probable cause.

Long story short, Google wants to minimize the importance of the desktop PC by giving you massive amounts of storage on their servers.  Think of it as Gmail on roids, or - more accurately - as a virtual hard drive for all of your personal data.  Welcome to The Cloud, people.

Tentatively called the Gdrive, Google’s soon-to-be-launched service will allow users access to their data from anywhere with an internet connection.  Convenience has never been so cheap or ubiquitous.  But it’s not as generous of The Google as it first sounds.  Much like with Gmail, I suspect they’ll be scanning your data so as to provide you with relevant advertising.  The thought of Google’s automated systems scanning my personal files is not appealing, but it’s not nearly as horrifying as Google sharing that data with the government and not telling me.  In the age of national security letters, this is a distinct possibility.  There’s no safer place for my data than on my own encrypted hard drive or memory stick.

Another issue with The Cloud is that internet connectivity is required in order to get to your stuff.  This is the same reason I hate VOIP phones.  If you’re like me, you’re routinely cursing Comcast or Time Warner over interrupted service.  How do we ensure access to our most important files and documents when they reside outside of our direct control?

My last objection to The Cloud is that it’s largely irrelevant.  Prices for hard drives and solid state memory continue to decline as their capacity continues to increase.  If I can carry 64GB on an iPod and another 8 in a flash drive, is there really a need to put all my data on the web where it would be more vulnerable to hackers as well as potentially less accessible?

The Goog is an innovative, creative and entrepreneurial company.  By the nature of their mission to organize the world’s information, however, I think there’s bound to be some unintended over-reach.  Watch them - and anyone you choose to share your data with - carefully.