Here's a frightening but real proposition: if you are caught breaking certain traffic laws, not only do police have the right to search you—they can go through all your electronic data as well—your text messages, call histories, browsing history, downloaded emails and photos. In a recent academic paper, South Texas Assistant Professor Adam Gershowitz explains that because many traffic violations are arrestable offenses, just as a cop could search your pockets for drugs, said cop can also search your pockets for a smartphone and go through all its contents. The same is true for any standard arrest, and given the amount of data in current smartphones, it's a scary proposition (even for law-abiding citizens like us).

We'll give you the CliffsNotes version of Gershowitz's 30-page article in which he outlines the situation.

The Issue:

While society and technology have changed drastically over the last few decades, the search incident to arrest rule has remained static. Thus, if we think of an iPhone as a container ­­like a cigarette package or a closed box, police can open and search the contents inside with no questions asked and no probable cause required, so long as they are doing so pursuant to a valid arrest.

A Recent Precedent:

The Fifth Circuit's recent 2007 in United States v. Finley is representative. Police arrested Finley after a staged drug sale. The police then searched Finley incident to arrest and found a cellphone in his pocket. One of the investigating officers searched through the phone's records and found text messages that appeared to relate to drug trafficking...­­the court explained that "police officers are not constrained to search only for weapons...they may also, without any additional justification, look for evidence of the arrestee's crime on his person in order to preserve it for use at trial.

The Solutions:

Courts and legislatures can attempt to minimize this invasion of privacy by changing the legal rules to require that searches be related to the purpose of the arrest, by limiting searches to applications that are already open, by restricting suspicionless investigation to a small number of discrete steps, or by limiting searches to data already downloaded onto the iPhone, rather than data that is merely accessible through the iPhone's internet connection.

I guess the larger moral of the story is that if you plan on getting arrested, don't have a smartphone in your pocket with all the seedy plans.null

Cops Can Search You...and Your Phone's Memory

A top Homeland Security official indicated Wednesday that the answer may be yes.

In a presentation aimed at promoting the final identification requirements released Friday, Stewart Baker, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for policy, suggested the controversial system could help federal agents combat methamphetamine production and abuse in the United States.

Baker cited a 2005 federal law, which requires pharmacies to keep tabs on how often people buy certain drugs, such as cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, that can be used to concoct the drug. The key to that process, naturally, is verifying the customer's identity through some sort of document.

"If you have a good ID...it would make it much harder for meth labs to function in this country," Baker said in a morning presentation here at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports Real ID.

Under the final Real ID rule, starting on May 11 (unless states request waivers, which many are expected to do), Americans will be expected to present compliant licenses for "federal purposes," which have so far focused on boarding a commercial aircraft and entering a federal building or nuclear facility. If granted extensions, states will have until 2017 to begin issuing the cards to all their residents.

Baker's comments on Wednesday hinted that the government envisions other uses for the documents. In addition to the methamphetamine issue, he also suggested Real ID could be valuable for employers trying to avoid hiring illegal immigrants who present falsified identification cards.

Read on... Do you really want the gov. to know what you buy?

DHS: Real ID could help shut down meth labs?

Date: 2007-11-07, 5:23AM PST

I met you at the bar last night, and we hit it off. Ya we were both a little buzzed, but you seemed as into me as I was into you. Things got to things, we made out a bit, and you ended up going home with me on the back of my motorcycle, which was awesome because that doesn't usually happen to me. I luckily had the extra helmet with me and let you wear my bike jacket while suffering the cold on the way home. I was feeling pretty happy and lucky to say the least.

This is where things got crazy.

I don't know if you slipped, or thought I was taking you home to kill you, or if your're just plain crazy and had a change of heart, but all of a sudden you let go of me MID-TURN and went flying into the bushes at about 10-15mph near the park by my house. I was so freaked out!!! when I looked back to see you fumbling in the bushes I could only PRAY TO GOD that you didn't hit the asphalt or something worse.

I really thought you must have been hurt at least a bit, but as I turned around to come check on you, you took off into the unlit park running full speed with my helmet and jacket still on! I parked my bike and looked for you for over 2 hours calling your name until I was so cold I had to go home or risk freezing to death.

WTF

Im sorry for what happened and I really hope your're ok, really I do, but seriously WTF. Running into a forested park in the middle of the night like that....I really can't begin to guess what you were thinking, and you weren't that drunk, but i suppose my "crazy-bitch o' meter" wasn't working at the bar that night, and from the speed you took off I can only surmise that your're not that hurt. I would like my expensive bike gear back though, I hope it kept you warm during your psychotic episode, but it IS mine and I kinda need it to get around in the winter. If you could return it to the bar for me, check in with your shrink, and promise to never come near me again that would be great, cause you scared the #*$% outta me and are costing me alot of money.

Sincerely,
Very cold/poor motorcycle rider who will never let women near his bike again.

* Location: Seattle
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

one of the better craigslist posts i've seen...

best of craigslist : To the Drunk Hottie who fell off my motorcycle

- To a group of earnest academics who study faith, the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- the spiritual icon of a new internet-based religion -- is more than just a spicy pop-culture dish.

They use words like "didactic device" to describe the beloved but carb-heavy god of Pastafarianism. They say the FSM is cloaked in a "folk-humor hybrid body," and reveals a web-fueled movement toward "open source theology" that challenges existing beliefs.

"open source theology"? HaHa! Come on people... Is everyone so jaded now that they cant laugh and whine at the same time...

Flying Spaghetti Monster Inspires Wonky Religious Debate

More Australian voters would like to see Labor Opposition leader Kevin Rudd naked than their current prime minister, John Howard, a poll showed on Sunday just two weeks out from a hard-fought general election.

The question was posed in a Galaxy poll of 1,200 voters and published in Zoo magazine, the Australian Associated Press reported.

The survey found 34 percent of respondents wanted to see Rudd, 50, with his gear off, more than double the 16 percent who said the same thing about Howard, 68.

Even Howard's usually strong following among the over 50s slipped, with the poll showing just 16 percent wanted to see him naked compared with 27 percent for Rudd.

"No one wants a prime minister who doesn't look good naked," Zoo editor Paul Merrill was quoted as saying.

More conventional polls have consistently shown Howard's conservative government trailing well behind Labor, although the gap has narrowed slightly ahead of the November 24 general election.

Do you want to ask this question in the USA.....

Hillary vs Obama? ***shudders***

Which politician do voters want to see nude?

Sandra Day O'Connor's husband struck up a romance with a fellow Alzheimer's patient after moving into an assisted living center, and under the circumstances, the retired Supreme Court justice is just glad that he is comfortable, her son told a TV station.
art.oconnor.getty.jpg

Sandra Day O'Connor cited her husband's illness and her need to take care of him when she retired in 2005.

The retired justice isn't jealous about his relationship with the woman, Scott O'Connor told KPNX in Phoenix in a broadcast that aired Thursday. He said it has dramatically changed the outlook of his father, John, toward being in the Huger Mercy Living Center.

The focus of the broadcast report was Alzheimer's patients who forget their spouses and form new relationships. It quoted experts as saying that that situation is not unusual.

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, cited her husband's illness and her need to take care of him when she retired in 2005. His neurological disease was diagnosed 17 years ago.

"Mom was thrilled that Dad was relaxed and happy and comfortable living here and wasn't complaining," their son said.

It was different when he first came to the center recently, the son said: "He knew this was sort of the beginning of the end ... It was basically suicide talk."

John O'Connor was shifted to another cottage at the center, Scott O'Connor said, and "48 hours after moving into that new cottage he was a teenager in love. He was happy."

The Associated Press sent an e-mail request for comment from the retired justice via Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg. There was no immediate response. A message left with the only Scott O'Connor found in a Phoenix phone listing was not returned.

An official with the assisted living center, Dr. Marianne McCarthy, told the station that there were several romances at the center, and people with dementia need intimacy as much as anyone else.

Sandra Day O'Connor, 77, was named to the high court by President Reagan in 1991. She married John O'Connor in 1952 and they have three sons

This is sad. How can a person forget so much?

O'Connor not jealous of husband's new relationship

Sacha van Loo, 36, is not your typical cop. He wields a white cane instead of a gun. And from the purr of an engine on a wiretap, he can discern whether a suspect is driving a Peugeot, a Honda or a Mercedes.

Van Loo is one of Europe's newest weapons in the global fight against terrorism and organized crime: a blind Sherlock Holmes, whose disability allows him to spot clues sighted detectives don't see.

"Being blind has forced me to develop my other senses, and my power as a detective rests in my ears," he said from his office at the Belgian Federal Police, where a bullet-riddled piece of paper from a recent target-shooting session was proudly displayed on the wall. "Being blind also requires recognizing your limitations," he added with a smile, noting that a sighted trainer guided his hands during target practice "to make sure no one got wounded."

Van Loo, a slight man who has been blind since birth, is one of six blind police officers in a pioneering unit specializing in transcribing and analyzing wiretap recordings in criminal investigations. An accomplished linguist who taught himself Serb Croat for fun, he laments that he is not entitled to carry a gun on the job or make arrests. But such is his acute sense of hearing that Paul van Thielen, a director at the Belgian Federal Police, compares his powers of observation to those of a "superhero."

A blind Sherlock Holmes: Fighting crime with acute listening

President George W. Bush vetoed a major spending measure on Tuesday that would have funded education, health care and job training programs, saying it contained too many special projects, even as he signed a $459 billion bill to increase the Pentagon's non-war funding.

The veto, of a measure providing $150.7 billion in discretionary spending for the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, was announced as Bush was en route to southern Indiana to deliver an economics speech at which, his spokeswoman said, he would criticize Congress for its "wasteful spending."

This is total bullshit! He is truly trying to take this country down... Really? What is his logic ... ?

Bush vetoes domestic spending bill on health, education and jobs

CHOICE IS GOOD. And the more choices, the better.

This simple American credo lines the shelves of grocery stores with 162 varieties of breakfast cereal, turns ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks into an Olympic challenge, makes selecting a phone company an enterprise requiring a business degree and supplies dating services with an endless stream of hopeful customers.

It also underlies the way many economists think about human behavior. Human beings, according to traditional economic theory, are rational creatures who, faced with a choice, weigh the costs and benefits of each option and pick the one they prefer. And the more options people are given, the theory goes, the more satisfied they will be.

Yet in an article published last month in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, two social psychologists dispute this view, arguing that at some point, multiplying the number of alternatives people are given becomes counter productive.

In a series of studies, Dr. Sheena S. Iyengar, an assistant professor at Columbia's business school, and Dr. Mark R. Lepper, chairman of Stanford's psychology department, have demonstrated that providing too many options— particularly when the differences between them are small — can make people feel overwhelmed and overloaded, and as a result, less likely to buy or pursue any of the options available.

Choice is good.... Amd the more the better...

What's the number one issue to voters right now?

James Carville made the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" famous during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run.

"It's the economy, stupid" -- a phrase Clinton advisor James Carville made famous during President Clinton's successful 1992 presidential race.

It's possible that the top issue in next year's election will not be Iraq or terrorism.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation's poll conducted November 2-4, the economy now tops the list of the issues voters now rate as most important in their vote for president, with 82 percent of those surveyed saying it was extremely or very important. That's just ahead of the war in Iraq, which 80 percent said was an extremely or very important factor in how they will decide to vote.

Could it be 'the economy, stupid' again?