Things That Just Piss Me Off

The government loves the phrase, “it’s for the children”. They know how to play on your emotions to get the laws passed that they want passed. They can now invade your privacy, because it’s to protect you from terrorism. They can collect your DNA now without even charging you with a crime to protect you against terrorists.

Now Joseph Biden believes the government should spend a billion dollars to monitor all file sharing traffic on the web. He says it’s because he wants to fight child pornography. And many people will all applaud him for it and say it’s a great idea because as we all know child porn is bad.

This law will also be used to find people who are illegally sharing movies and music. The RIAA and the movie industry lobby congress. They want to monitor all file sharing. And now people will let them do it because Joseph Biden says, “it’s for the children.”

A prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.

At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it’s “pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation” simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.

Based on Waters’ statements to the committee, the system appears to work like this: Investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download the files–frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like “children kiddy underage illegal.mpg” and much more obscene–to their own machines. They’re able to use the Fairplay software to obtain the IP address of the file’s sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.

Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. “It’s not necessarily the suspect but it tells us the physical location to start,” Waters said. (He didn’t say whether any wiretaps were conducted to monitor ongoing file swapping.)

And since it is also illegal to share movies and music, as soon as this law is passed the movie and music industry will push and get it adopted for that as well. Watch and see.

Even 5 years ago, anyone who wrote about law enforcement collecting DNA on people to track them would have received comments from people saying it was just another conspiracy theory. Is even your DNA not your own?

Feds to collect DNA from every person they arrest

WASHINGTON - The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.

I understand collecting DNA from people who have been convicted of a crime. I understand law enforcement needing the tools to do their job. If you commit a crime and are convicted, not accused, then they should collect your DNA. But not everyone who is arrested is automatically guilty of a crime. Innocent until proven guilty is one of the primary concepts this country was founded on.

So now, if the feds want your DNA, all they have to do is find SOME reason to arrest you. They get your DNA, then they can drop the ridiculous charge they came up with. Too much power given to the police equals the destruction of democracy. Hitler’s power was for the most part gained by giving the gestapo and other police the power to arrest anyone they wanted and detain them as long as they wanted.

Using authority granted by Congress, the government also plans to collect DNA samples from foreigners who are detained, whether they have been charged or not. The DNA would be collected through a cheek swab, Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Wednesday. That would be a departure from current practice, which limits DNA collection to convicted felons.

Expanding the DNA database, known as CODIS, raises civil liberties questions about the potential for misuse of such personal information, such as family ties and genetic conditions.

Ablin said the DNA collection would be subject to the same privacy laws applied to current DNA sampling. That means none of it would be used for identifying genetic traits, diseases or disorders.

For now that is. The government always passes laws like this and initially they contain limits. Then slowly but surely over time they eliminate those limits one by one. Soon insurance companies will be able to get your DNA so they can decide whether or not to insure you.

This is typical of an administration that is friendly to big business and uncaring about the general public. Consumers are supposed to trust the government agencies in charge of prosecuting crime, whether the crime is perpetrated by individuals or corporations.

After Enron, the oversight and enforcement of corporate fraud should have tightened up. But instead, big business got george bush elected and the reverse has happened.

In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials
In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: April 9, 2008

In 2005, federal authorities concluded that a Monsanto consultant had visited the home of an Indonesian official and, with the approval of a senior company executive, handed over an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. The money was meant as a bribe to win looser environmental regulations for Monsanto’s cotton crops, according to a court document. Monsanto was also caught concealing the bribe with fake invoices.

A few years earlier, in the age of Enron, these kinds of charges would probably have resulted in a criminal indictment. Instead, Monsanto was allowed to pay $1 million and avoid criminal prosecution by entering into a monitoring agreement with the Justice Department.

In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years.

Instead, many companies, from boutique outfits to immense corporations like American Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret.

Letting crimes committed by corporations go on with a slap on the wrist and a fine is just wrong. Anyone should be able to see that. These corporations can pay the million-dollar fine easily when they just made millions by committing fraud. This just insures that the government also profits from their crime.

That makes our government their partner in crime. The motto seems to be, “Go ahead, commit fraud, steal money, just make sure we get our cut.

This is what we could reasonably expect if george bush were elected to a third term in office. I just hope it doesn’t happen near the end of his second term.