The strength of a nation is not characterized by what it holds dear in times of peace, but what it holds dear in times of war. Unfortunately, this administration has been all too willing to bend the rules and reinterpret the law.

Wrongly Held: It Can Happen Here

Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer in Oregon, was held for two weeks, even though the only other connections between him and terrorism were things like the fact, as the FBI pointed out, that his law firm advertised in a "Muslim yellow page directory" whose publisher had once had a business relationship with Osama bin Laden's former personal secretary.

So is this what you call a Non-Obvious Relationship?

This nation was organized under a rule of law, not a dictatorship of the virtuous. The founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights specifically because they did not believe that honorable men always do the right thing.

About Independence

] A police officer stops you on the street, then taps
] something into a device in the palm of his hand.
]
] The next minute, he knows who your relatives are, who
] lives in your house, who your neighbors are, the kind of
] car you drive or boat you own, whether you've been sued
] and various other tidbits about your life.

"Sir, what is your name?"

CNN.com - Cop on the beat now a walking database - Jul 1, 2004

] And so it's come to this. The American people -- proud
] heirs of a bold revolutionary spirit now marking the
] 228th anniversary of its fiery eruption into the world --
] have been reduced to thanking the robed Olympians on the
] U.S. Supreme Court for preserving a few crumbs of the
] nation's once-vast ancient liberties.

Damn...

A Russian view of the Supreme Court Decision

] In Boston the liberty of the press is now completely
] abolished; and hence all other privileges and rights
] of the people will in a short time be destroyed.

Justice Thomas's concurrence on this case provides an interesting history lesson on anonymous speech in the early days of the nation.

McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission Opinion(Concurrence, Justice Thomas)

] A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that people
] are required to identify themselves when asked to do so
] by police, and rejected arguments that it violates their
] constitutional rights to privacy and to remain silent.

There are very serious problems with this ruling. For example, the Supreme court has ruled that I am not required to identify myself when distributing political pamphlets. This ruling seems to contradict that ruling.

Supreme Court rules that your must identify yourself to police!!

] The UK-based vehicle licence plate manufacturer, Hills
] Numberplates Ltd, has chosen long-range RFID tags and
] readers from Identec Solutions to be embedded in licence
] plates that will automatically and reliably identify
] vehicles in the UK.

More on the license plate tip.

The reference to encryption is interesting. Some digging revealed that these tags have a battery. My assumption was that they are simply choosing codes from a sufficiently large data space such that they are hard to guess, but it looks like I might be wrong. An encryption system could be used such that the tag never provides the same number twice. This would eliminate identity theft by scanning, and it would require that anyone who wanted to use the codes for anything else (parking garage access, toll paying, etc...) would need to subscribe to a network service that would decrypt the tags (thus generating revenue, and a choke point, for the government).

It would be much easier to implement such a system in a license plate then in a drivers license. You can put tags in drivers licenses, but they'll be static, and much easier to steal/fake.

There is a lot of convenience to be had from this technology. There are also "minor" hassles such as getting a warrant check run everytime you drive your car. If they want to find a car in the United States they'll be able to pull up a big screen and see it located. You won't be able to hide. If you steal a car it will get tracked fairly quickley. And good luck borrowing one from a friend. PIs can currently track relationships between people. They'll be watching all your friends cars too...

I think it might be interesting to get an RFID reader and start playing around with the tags in tires. For example you could set up a scanner in your neighborhood and start collecting tag numbers that frequently drive up and down your street. If you get a new one either someone got a new set of tires or someone new is in your neighborhood. I wonder if you can tell anything about the manufacturing date of a tire from its RFID tag? Does anyone know where to get a cheap linux capable RFID scanner?

RFID-enabled license plates to identify UK vehicles : RFID News

] The state plans to test a system on the Ohio Turnpike
] that uses optical scanners to catch criminals and look
] for stolen cars.
]
] The Ohio State Highway Patrol will use two scanners on
] turnpike gates and two scanners in patrol cars for four
] months. The system recognizes license plates registered
] with a national crime database that tracks stolen cars
] and serious crimes.

The license plate ambles closer to it's destiny. Just wait until they put RFID in your driver's license.

nbc4columbus.com - State Tests Anti-Crime Turnpike Scanning System

] The Hollywood Bowl indicates the cultural activities,
] while the two stars represent the County's motion
] picture and television industries.
]
] The cross represents the influence of the church and the
] missions of California.

The right wing is hopping mad right now because the ACLU of SoCal has gotten the board of LA County, under threat of suit, to agree to remove the cross from their seal.

The argument that they are making is that the seal represents the influence of the Spanish Missions on the history of California. That makes sense to me. Los Angeles was founded by Spanish Missionaries (along with San Francisco, San Diego, and everything in between).

To be sure, the Catholic Church is hardly "established" in the LA government. Regardless of the facts of this case, I don't believe that the ACLU ought to be going around suing crosses off of public land and city seals. There are simply more important civil liberties battles to be fought, especially in a place like L.A.

I like the ACLU because they defend my civil liberties. I like them because they uphold the Constitution. We need an institution in this country that defends the people against civil liberties encroachments by the U.S. Government. People don't have the resources to defend themselves as individuals. Only an independent organization can do that effectively.

When I first saw the right smear them as "liberal radicals" I was a little surprised. Aren't constitutional rights something that all sides of the political spectrum have an interest in? Haven't I seen the ACLU defend far right interests? Why does this perception exist?

The right has three problems with the ACLU, all three of which I suppose they must care about more then any other civil liberty which the ACLU must defend. Two of these problems are expressed in a popular joke:

"How does the ACLU count to ten?"
"1,3,4,5,6,7,8"

This thing spreads around the right wing. People laugh because they think they are supposed to make fun of the liberal radicals at the ACLU. They understand the part about 2, but not about 9 and 10. They don't even know what the 9th and 10th amendments are, anyway. So they pass the joke on. Har Har

9 and 10 are omitted in this joke for a very sinister reason. 9 and 10 have to do with unenumerated rights being held by the states and the people. States Rights. People often talk in philosophical terms about states rights and come to the conclusion that they make sense. What is good for Tennessee is not necessarily good for California. Furthermore, states serve a useful role as laboratories of democracy, where new policy ideas can be evaluated on small scales.

Unfortunately, what the right means when it takes about states rights is segregation. The federal government came into the South in the 50's and 60's and forced them to stop discriminating against black people. Older conservativ... [ Read More (0.9k in body) ]

Seal - Los Angeles County

] Using extra-Constitutional tools in the Padilla case has
] not necessarily accomplished anything more than seasoned
] FBI agents and Assistant U.S. Attorneys could have done.
] But what it has done is create a losing dilemma for the
] Justice Department. In a case like this, where all of the
] evidence has been either tainted by torture or tainted by
] poor process, the only options are to detain Mr. Padilla
] indefinitely as an enemy combatant or release him onto
] the street.

This is a jumping point to some interesting discussions of the Padillia case. There are links and links and links to follow. Read the Slate article quoted here at the least. (It links back to another article by this author.)

Basically, the evidence that we have against Padilla was obtained illegally, so its not admissible. Which means they can't make a case about him in open court. Assuming they will loose the Supreme Court case they are probably going to have to ask for special Congressional authority to continue to hold him.

INTEL DUMP - The messy messy Padilla case