Tag: god bless the land of the free

In the land of the free, it is possible to win the popular vote and lose the electoral vote, and therefore the election. It is also possible to win the election with less than 50% of the voting population. Both of these scenarios, as well as others, have happened in actual elections.

There have been 12 Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the entire election would have been different.

Case and point: in 2000, if only 269 Floridians had voted with their heads instead of with their ass (or if the hanging chad issue hadn’t stolen the election), Al Gore would have won the election and the Dubya era would only have been a bad what-if scenario.

Source: https://www.msu.edu/~sheppa28/elections.html#2004

TSA Snafu Damages Nine Planes at O’Hare Field – Pilots Furious with Misstep

Nine American Eagle airplanes were grounded Tuesday after a TSA inspector, conducting an overnight security check, used sensitive instrument probes to climb onto the parked aircraft at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. A TSA official confirmed the incident.

The TSA agent, as part of spot inspection of aircraft security, climbed onto the parked aircraft using control sensors mounted on the fuselage as handholds, according to a TSA official.

“Our inspector was following routine procedure for securing the aircraft that were on the tarmac,” said the official. The TSA agent was attempting to determine if someone could break into a parked aircraft, according to the agent.

Pilots were furious at the TSA misstep.

“The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers,” one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. “They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder,” the pilot wrote.

Another pilot wrote the TSA agents, “are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk.”

The TSA has been conducting such overnight spot checks at airports around the country.

Source: ABC

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.'”