Tag: brought to you by the fda

Remind me to never, ever, ever again to to the US. If this is the land of the free, they can shove it where the sun don’t shine.

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices have been taken — for months, in at least one case — and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.” This may take place “absent individualized suspicion.”

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ “

Reasonable measures must be taken to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material, the policies say, but there is no specific mention of the handling of personal data such as medical and financial records.

When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed. Copies sent to non-federal entities must be returned to DHS. But the documents specify that there is no limitation on authorities keeping written notes or reports about the materials.

“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts “do not infringe on Americans’ privacy.” In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had “plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant” to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that “the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices.” Searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials” as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.

With about 400 million travelers entering the country each year, “as a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary [for a more thorough examination] when there is some level of suspicion,” Chertoff wrote. “Yet legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers’ often split-second assessments are second-guessed.”

The emphasis is mine, but it’s still disgusting. They say that it’s for the good of the people. That’s like saying “only the guilty have something to fear”. All hail Big Brother! It’s in the same vein as killing off all of Usenet in order to get rid of a few hundred binary newsgroups. It’s like using a shotgun to kill a fly – as subtle, as effective and as smart.

Source: Washington Post

Seizing Laptops and Cameras Without Cause

Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan’s luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? “Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop,” says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. “It was fortunate that I didn’t use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information,” he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.

The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler’s privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies – so-called “mirror images” of drives – are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.

A ruling this year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that DHS does indeed have the authority to search electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it would inspect a briefcase. The lawsuit that prompted the ruling was the result of more than 20 cases, most of which involved laptops, cellphones, or other electronics seized at airports. In those cases, nearly all of the individuals were of Muslim, Middle Eastern, or South Asian background.

Travelers who have their computers seized face real headaches. “In a February survey of its membership, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives found that 7 percent said they’ve had electronic devices seized at the U.S. border. It immediately deprives an executive or company of the very data – and revenue – a business trip was intended to create,” says Susan Gurley, head of the ACTE, which is asking DHS for greater transparency and oversight to protect copied data. “As a businessperson returning to the U.S., you may find yourself effectively locked out of your electronic office indefinitely.” While Hogan had his computer returned after only a few days, others say they have had theirs held for months at a time. As a result, some companies have instituted policies that require employees to travel with clean machines: free of corporate data.

The security value of the program is unclear, critics say, while the threats to business and privacy are substantial. If drives are being copied, customs officials are potentially duplicating corporate secrets, legal records, financial data, medical files, and personal E-mails and photographs as well as stored passwords for accounts from Netflix to Bank of America. DHS contends that travelers’ computers can also contain child pornography, intellectual property offenses, or terrorist secrets.

It makes practical sense to X-ray the contents of checked and carry-on luggage, which could pose an immediate danger to airplanes and their passengers. “Generally speaking, customs officials do not go through briefcases to review and copy paper business records or personal diaries, which is apparently what they are now doing now in digital form – these PDAs don’t have bombs in them,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. More troubling is what could happen if other countries follow the lead of the United States. Imagine, for instance, if China or Russia began a program to seize and duplicate the contents of traveler’s laptops. “We wouldn’t be in a position to strongly object to that type of behavior,” Rotenberg says. Indeed, visitors to the Beijing Olympic Games have been officially advised by U.S. officials that their laptops may be targeted for duplication or bugging by Chinese government spies hoping to steal business and trade secrets.

Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, agreed that CBP needs more authority to conduct searches at the border than other law enforcement officials have inside the U.S. Only in a few cases, such as strip searches, are CBP officials required to have suspicions of illegal activity, he noted. “I hope we can go through this on the basis of protecting an individual’s rights, but also looking at trying to protect the country,” Brownback said. However, Brownback said he would not want his BlackBerry searched by border agents.

Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), acknowledged that border agents have more power to conduct searches than internal U.S. police. But searching and seizing laptops, which often contain an “autobiography” of their owners, should be considered unreasonable and invasive under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment banning such searches, he said.

“EFF does not dispute that the Fourth Amendment works differently at the border,” Tien said. “But ‘differently’ does not mean ‘not at all.'”

This makes me ill.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity. The agency's goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation's borders.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Also in the news-that-just-makes-me-cringe category, a quote from none other than Dubya himself:

“Brother Jeb would be great president”

Uh huh… let me break out the tinfoil hat now…

State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state's new science standards hanging on a Stucky Middle School teacher's door.Fellow board member Sue Gamble told The Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.

The creature, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is the creation of Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Ore. It looks like a clump of spaghetti with two eyes sticking out of the top and two meatballs flanking the eyes.

Henderson created the entity and an accompanying mythology on the origin of mankind to make fun of Kansas' recent debate over the teaching of criticisms of evolution, including intelligent design.

In November, the board voted 6-4 to allow criticisms of evolution to be taught in Kansas schools. Morris, who voted for the new science standards, saw the picture during the tour. She did not return phone calls for this report. Gamble, who voted against the new standards and was also on the tour, said that Morris asked principal Kenneth Jantz to have the picture taken down.

Board members toured Stucky before finishing two days of meetings in Wichita on Wednesday. Gamble said that when she saw the picture during the tour, she knew that some board members wouldn't approve of it.

“When we went into that classroom, students were looking at rock formations,” Gamble said. “Connie stopped to talk to a teacher and I moved on. That was when I was aware of the flyer. I thought 'she's probably going to say something to the teacher.' ”

Gamble said that when Morris saw the picture, she asked the principal, who was on the tour, to take it down. Jantz did not comment for this report. Gamble said she didn't see Morris talk to Randy Mousley, the teacher, or to the principal, but that she later went up to Mousley and asked if Morris said anything to him about the picture.

That's when Gamble learned that Morris had asked the principal to take it down. The monster's picture has hung on the door since September or October and was put up there as a joke, Mousley said.

“It's a parody,” he said. “It's just making fun of anti-evolution.”

Mousley said he doesn't teach students about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Also on the door is a Doonesbury comic strip about science, said board member Carol Rupe, who represents Wichita. She also voted against the new standards.

“It was two little pieces of paper on the door,” she said. “It was poking good fun.”

Gamble said she told the principal that it was his decision whether the monster could stick around. “I advised the principal that Morris has no authority,” she said. “I told him to deal with his staff as he saw fit, not by what a state board member says.”

Board chairman Steve Abrams, who voted for the new standards, didn't see the picture but said he thinks that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is silly. “Personally, I think it's juvenile,” he said.

The picture was still on the door at the end of the school day Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — With no fanfare, President Bush signed a bill Monday pushing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion. The measure allows the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes. It also lets the government pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes or cutting popular domestic programs. The debt limit increase was the fourth of Bush's presidency, totaling $3 trillion. With the budget deficit near record levels, an additional increase in the debt limit almost certainly will be required next year. The measure allows the debt limit to rise from $8.184 trillion to $8.965 trillion.

Yes folks that's 9,000,000,000,000$USD. Now given the fact that at the time I'm writing this, the world population is about 6.6 billion people, this means that if you spread out the US debt across the whole friggin world (!!!), each man-woman-child would owe about 1400$. If you reduce that down to the US population, about 295 million, that comes to a staggering 30 grand!

Canada's debt per capita is a third of this amount and people are already worried the country is going to go bankrupt. But since this is the US, everything is hunky-dory…

From the I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-reading-this-shit desk:

As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts.

Said an FBI spokesman on why not all agents of the FBI are allowed to have an email account…

Risking the kind of nationwide ridicule it faced six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public-school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for intelligent design advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. Critics of the new language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools, in violation of the constitutional ban on state establishment of religion.

All six of those who voted for the new standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted no.

This is a sad day. Were becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,[Rc: ya think?] said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said the decision would encourage school districts in Kansas and elsewhere to make similar moves, distracting and confusing teachers and students.

It will be marketed by the religious right … as a huge victory for their side, she said. We can expect more efforts to get creationism in. Supporters of the new standards said they would promote academic freedom. [Rc: you're free to think what we tell you to. Riiiiight.]

This is a great day for education. This is one of the best things that we can do, said board chairman Steve Abrams. Another board member who voted in favor of the standards, John Bacon, said the move gets rid of a lot of dogma thats being taught in the classroom today. [Rc: he actually said that with a straight face??]

John Calvert, a retired attorney who helped found the Intelligent Design Network, said changes probably would come to classrooms gradually, with some teachers feeling freer to discuss criticisms of evolution. These changes are not targeted at changing the hearts and minds of the Darwin fundamentalists, Calvert said. [Rc: fundamentalists.. that's rich.]

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports challenges to Darwinian evolutionary theory, praised the Kansas effort. Students will learn more about evolution, not less as some Darwinists have falsely claimed, institute spokesman Casey Luskin said in a written statement.

The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena. [Rc: then a miracle occurs…]

The new standards will be used to develop student tests measuring how well schools teach science. Decisions about what is taught in classrooms will remain with 300 local school boards, but some educators fear pressure will increase in some communities to teach less about evolution or more about creationism or intelligent design.

The vote marked the third time in six years that the Kansas board has rewritten standards with evolution as the central issue. [Rc: How long has Dubya been in office now?]

In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution. Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said that was akin to teaching American history without Lincoln. Bill Nye, the Science Guy of childrens television, called it harebrained and nutty. And a Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, OK?

Two years later, after voters replaced three members, the board reverted to evolution-friendly standards. Elections in 2002 and 2004 changed the boards composition again, making it more conservative. The latest vote likely to bring fresh national criticism to Kansas and cause many scientists to see the state as backward.

Many scientists and other critics contend creationists repackaged old ideas in new, scientific-sounding language to get around a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1987 against teaching the biblical story of creation in public schools.

The Kansas boards action is part of a national debate. In Pennsylvania, a judge is expected to rule soon in a lawsuit against the Dover school boards policy of requiring high school students to learn about intelligent design in biology class. In August, President Bush endorsed teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.

In an effort to fight back against intelligent-design advocates, a grass-roots group calling itself Campaign to Defend the Constitution said Tuesday that it was launching a $200,000 online ad campaign to combat a threat posed by the religious right to American democracy.

This is a significant attack on science, said Jack Krebs, vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science. They really are advancing a sectarian religious view. Theyre treading on constitutional grounds.

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9967813/