Transport Canada is road-testing cutting-edge devices that use global positioning satellite technology and a digital speed-limit map to know when a driver is speeding, and to try to make them stop.

When a driver hits a certain percentage above the posted speed limit, the device kicks in and makes it difficult to press the accelerator.

Why write tickets when you can just have your computer take over their car?!

The Globe and Mail: New spyware gives drivers a brake

The Convention on Cybercrime will endanger Americans' privacy and civil liberties--and place the FBI's massive surveillance apparatus at the disposal of nations with much less respect for individual liberties.

For instance, if the U.S. and Russia ratify it, President Vladimir Putin would be able to invoke the treaty's powers to unmask anonymous critics on U.S.-based Web sites and perhaps even snoop on their e-mail correspondence.

There's an easy fix. The U.S. Senate could attach an amendment to the treaty saying the FBI may aid other nations only if the alleged "crime" in their country also is a crime here. The concept is called dual criminality, and the treaty lets nations choose that option.

Unfortunately, neither the Bush administration nor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been willing to make that change, calling it too "rigid."

Fuzzy logic behind Bush's cybercrime treaty | Perspectives | CNET News.com

"They're avoiding what the Supreme Court would say about American citizens. That's an issue the administration did not want to face," said Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor who specializes in national security. "There's no way that the Supreme Court would have ducked this issue."

They charged him. Fine. Thats what I wanted.

However, by raising the specter of "I don't have to charge him" for so long, and then being unwilling to haul that claim before the court for analysis, the door is open. I'm not particularly worried about detentions today. I would have liked a precident that clarified that this was not legal today, so that it can be referenced when the day comes that I am concerned about the detentions. I won't have that. Those future inappropriate detentions will reference this episode, and they may do so in front of a court which is more sympathetic to executive power.

The administration has presented a platform for tyrants to stand on. I pray it doesn't have legs, but it will be a very long time before anyone knows the answer to that question.

Administration blinks on Padilla

One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.

There is a new case up on Papers Please. This is probably the most cut and dry of the three.

Papers Please : Deborah Davis

The rate at which individuals shed transactional data simply by living in a networked world seems to increase daily. The composite picture of individual activity that can emerge from such data is often of startling clarity, and will likely sharpen with in the future.  We don’t really have a coherent legal theory to address appropriately the growing privacy interests in this kind of data.
The full-scale judicial supervision accorded electronic surveillance and physical searches is probably overkill, and far too cumbersome for data for which basic investigative access is justified. On the other hand, the Miller view that the "consensual" delivery of this data to third parties strips it of any privacy interest looks untenable when one considers the effect of the information aggregated.

I'm disappointed that Rattle was the only one who rememed the Washington Post's recent coverage of National Security Letters, which is being hailed by people on both the left and the right as important journalism.

This commentary provides more of the debate. The main commentator seems to echo the modern conservative view that the legislature needs to be the final arbiter of civil liberties. Forgive me for being tactless, I think in the general case this view is stupid. The whole point of civil liberties is to limit the power of the democratic government with regard to the rights of individuals. Thats what the court system does. The legislature cannot be its own check and balance. The question here is whether this matter rises to the level of a civil rights issue. I think it does.

There is a healthy debate in the threads...

The Volokh Conspiracy - More on National Security Letters:

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond.

The WashPost has a very good feature on National Security Letters here.

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster."

...

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

The seemed fishy so I went looking for mainstream press coverage. Seems like the story checks out, but the "liberal" media is very short on details. One particular detail the "liberal" media is careful not to mention is the name of the film development house that called the police. The "liberal" media is very careful not to threaten advertising revenue from sponsors. Obviously part of their left wing agenda.

1. This isn't the first time I've heard of Walmart calling the police because they are suspicious of the contents of photos they've been asked to develop. I would not suprised if they aren't specifically trained to report suspicious information they are handling. Don't have anything developed or printed there.
2. This should not have actually resulted in Agents going to a school. At some point some amount of actual reason should have kicked in here. One moron at walmart is understandable. When the Agent and the US Attorney are also morons one begins to wonder.
3. The message here is clearly that freedom of speech barely exists. We will at least try to find a reason to prosecute.

AlterNet: Wal-Mart Coverage: Civics Student...or Enemy of America?

A federal judge promised a quick decision Wednesday on a motion to temporarily stop election officials from requiring photo identification at the polls.

This is interesting. Georgia now requires a photo ID to vote in person. As the ID costs $20, some people are calling it a poll tax. Supporters argue that if you don't want to pay the tax you can vote absentee. Detractors argue that voter fraud only occurs absentee and they don't know of any cases of in person voter fraud, so there is no point.

Georgia Poll Tax

'Our way of life is right. Yours isn't.'

An update on the Utah Rave. Bad news... The cops won in court.

Salon.com News | Stark raving mad

Judges are bound by the rulings of their superior courts.

Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools.

Of course, the 9th circuit was simply upholding Supreme Court precedent, and Clarence Thomas (perhaps the most conservative guy on the court these days) agrees:

Justice Thomas voted to uphold the Pledge of Allegiance on the merits against an Establishment Clause challenge…Yet he specifically said that the Ninth Circuit's decision was "based on a persuasive reading of [the Court's] precedent."

So you can imagine how comments like this annoy the crap out of me:

This is an extraordinary and blatant display of judicial activism," Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary

Conservatives accuse this Court of judicial activism for upholding the ruling of a superior Court? This sort of antilogic seeks to undermine the very rule of law in the minds of people who buy into it. This is not a responsible way to play politics.

On the meaning of Judicial Activism.