Category: Civil liberties
-
FBI director James Comey thinks FBI’s own online safety tips should be illegal
originally published in ConsumerAffairs Q: What does FBI director James Comey have in common with your average computer hacker? A: They both really, really hate the idea of secure encrypted data. When Apple launched its iPhone 6 in September, it bragged about the phone’s strong security features, including automatic data encryption. Which made Comey, who’s…
-
Apple’s “warrant canary” died; did Patriot Act spy activities kill it?
originally published on ConsumerAffairs Photo: Library of Congress There’s possible bad news for privacy advocates and Apple customers alike: a sharp-eyed look at Apple’s two most recent Transparency Reports (more specifically, what’s not in them) suggests that, despite the company’s recent announcements affirming its strong commitment to protecting customers’ privacy, it might have been forced…
-
AT&T helped NSA spy on United Nations, foreign emails and 1.1 billion US phone calls per day
originally published on ConsumerAffairs This has been an especially rough summer for the poor devils working in AT&T’s public relations department (to say nothing of the poor devils who are actual AT&T customers). Two months ago, the feds levied a record-breaking $100 million fine against the company for its practice of throttling the connections of…
-
Face Crimes
originally published in the Hartford Advocate Let’s play “Name That Background Noise,” where the Advocate lists the sounds of a given location and you guess where it is. Ready? Here goes: “Take off your jacket and shoes. I’m confiscating your shampoo because it’s in a four-ounce bottle and any bottle bigger than three ounces is…
-
How the ‘war on drugs’ can kill
Originally published in The Guardian In America there are plenty of scare stories about the “obesity epidemic”, which is caused by too many Yanks eating too much junk food, and does bad things to public-health statistics. Clearly this obesity problem needs solving, and here’s how: poison the nation’s sugar and fat supply so anyone who…
-
Welcome to kidulthood
Originally published in The Guardian We Americans call our nation the “land of the free and home of the brave,” but that’s not true anymore. Freedom is for adults, and childhood in this country isn’t a temporary condition but a permanent state. When I was a kid, and probably you too, grownups had certain things…
-
Lost freedoms are not to be sneezed at
Originally published in The Guardian I hope I don’t get arrested. I surely won’t this evening but a few days hence that might change, if the authorities take undue interest in my household here in the US, the Land of the Free. There’s sickness here, and has been all week – an annoying cold virus…
-
Immigrants helped make America great
Originally published in The Guardian Back during the Vietnam War, an American military officer pioneered the concept of destroying a village in order to save it. Last week Arizona lawmakers continued that tradition by passing an anti-illegal immigration bill that would save America from the alleged immigrant scourge by destroying the very ideals that make…
-
US cops: armed and dangerous?
Originally published in The Guardian When Americans read British newspapers referencing “her Majesty”, “his Highness” or “Lord So-and-So”, we bask in the smug patriotic pride of knowing ours is no nation of aristocrats, but a country based on principles like equality before the law and authority granted by merit. So we’re told. Yet we do…
-
The latter-day ‘scarlet letter’ of sex work
Originally published in The Guardian In the waning days of the last millennium, I worked as a stripper to pay for university. It requires no courage to admit this now, but had I written it a few years ago, when I taught high school, I would have been fired on the spot. My continued presence…