Posts tagged ‘Government’

Confrontation With TSA Agent Leaves Grandpa’s Ashes On Floor

Confrontation With TSA Agent Leaves Grandpa’s Ashes On Floor – RTV6 ABC – TheIndyChannel.com

“They opened up my bag, and I told them, ‘Please, be careful. These are my grandpa’s ashes,’” Gross told RTV6′s Norman Cox. “She picked up the jar. She opened it up.

“I was told later on that she had no right to even open it, that they could have used other devices, like an X-ray machine. So she opened it up. She used her finger and was sifting through it. And then she accidentally spilled it.”

Yeah, she opened it alright. She opened it, sifted through it with her finger and proceeded to spill some of the ashes on the terminal floor. Then laughed at him as he tried to scoop them up.

The man wants an apology from the TSA and the woman who violated his grandfather’s remains and to know how they get off treating people like this.

I would further add that it is abhorrent that anyone should have to pay for this kind of abuse just to fly home with the human remains of their grandfather.

This and so many other incidents since the TSA took over securty at airports — and they are expanding their reach! Unbelievable that this type of thing could happen in a “free” country.

I guess this abusive behavior will forever be linked with all the other insane treatments of airline passengers — PAYING CUSTOMERS — American Citizens — at airports in their own country like the ones in this article:

TSA Government Manipulation and Humiliation

A list of items that the TSA has done over time. And yes, there have been more! And this one will now be linked with it as well.

I will have to update the above article to include this new one, and add some of the other more recent TSA events to keep them all on one place.

Internet Freedom Day

Internet Freedom Day

Internet Freedom Day

One year ago we defeated SOPA.
Today, celebrate your freedom of expression.
January 18th is #InternetFreedomDay

What’s something you love on the net that you’d never want to see censored?

There are lots of great things we can do to celebrate this very important anniversary of
beating SOPA one year ago today! Check out a few of them at:

www.InternetFreedomDay.net

and do what you can to
celebrate the one year anniversary of beating SOPA today!

And don’t forget: Aaron Swartz was instrumental in helping to beat SOPA!

____

Not sure what it’s all about? Check out the following article:

The Day Wikipedia Went Dark - Boston Review

Many sites, including all of my websites went dark that day!

As was noted in the article:

The free Internet will rise or fall on the involvement and ingenuity of the people, not on courts or lawmakers.

Internet Freedom Day: Coming together a year after SOPA/PIPA – EFF.org

Internet Freedom Day: Celebrate SOPA/PIPA Victory One Year Later!

Internet Freedom Day: Celebrate SOPA/PIPA Victory One Year Later!

MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It

MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It

Right now Congress is considering two bills—the Protect IP Act, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—that would be laughable if they weren’t in fact real. Honestly, if a friend wrote these into a piece of fiction about government oversight gone amok, I’d have to tell them that they were too one-dimensional, too obviously anticonstitutional.

Make no mistake: These bills aren’t simply unconstitutional, they are anticonstitutional. They would allow for the wholesale elimination of entire websites, domain names, and chunks of the DNS (the underlying structure of the whole Internet), based on nothing more than the “good faith” assertion by a single party that the website is infringing on a copyright of the complainant. The accused doesn’t even have to be aware that the complaint has been made.

I’m not kidding.

Hope everyone has contacted their Congressmen and women and told them exactly what you think of this unconstitutional and anticonstitutional ‘so called’ legislation! I have!

BTW: Don’t forget to urge the President to VETO NDAA!!! “President has until December 26 to act on NDAA” per Americans to Obama: Veto NDAA, White House phones jammed

SOPA flip flop

So we can’t just sit back and relax and enjoy the holidays, eh?

House Delays Taking Action on SOPA Until Dec. 21 – Mashable

Nope. Guess not. SOPA was supposedly pushed off till 2012, but then they flip flopped and now they will be meeting on the 21st. I wonder how they got Congress to come back when they were supposed to be on break? Must have been pretty profitable to them one way or another?


SOPA Markup Runs Out Of Time; Likely Delayed Until 2012 [Update: Or Not...] – TechDirt

From this article: SOPA, bill to stop online piracy, hits minor snag in House – CBS:

Public Knowledge, a Washington based advocacy organization pushing for an open Internet, slammed the panel’s chair for pushing the legislation without understanding the bill’s unintended consequences.

“SOPA, as written, would threaten the functioning, freedom, and economic potential of the Internet,” said Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of Public Knowledge, adding that scheduling a vote “when many members may well be absent demonstrates a clear desire to continue dodging the questions raised by experts, members, and the public.”

Tech Companies have repeatedly stated that this would be bad for everyone:

Looks like Congress has declared war on the internet – Gigaom


Tech firms fight SOPA by talking job creation – CNN Money

WTF is happening with SOPA now? – Boing Boing:

If you followed my tweets from the markup session for SOPA in the House of Representatives, you know how frustrating it was to watch: you had these lawmakers blithely dismissing the security concerns of the likes of Vint Cerf, saying things like, “I’m no technology nerd, but I don’t believe it.” In other words: “I’m a perfect ignoramus, but I find it convenient to disregard the world’s foremost experts.” Another congressman from Florida kept saying things like “No one can explain to me how this bill harms political debate or academic freedom.”


Congressional SOPA hearings: no opponents of the bill allowed
:

Irony Alert: The House is holding hearings on sweeping Internet censorship legislation this week — and it’s censoring the opposition! The bill is backed by Hollywood, Big Pharma, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of them are going to get to testify at the hearing.

But the bill’s opponents — tech companies, free speech and human rights activists, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users — won’t have a voice.

And can anyone be blamed for being upset with this mess!?!

The nightmarish SOPA hearings – ComPost – Washington Post
:

This is terrifying to watch. It would be amusing — there’s nothing like people who did not grow up with the Internet attempting to ask questions about technology very slowly and stumbling over words like “server” and “service” when you want an easy laugh. Except that this time, the joke’s on us.

As long as there have been new technologies, the entertainment industry has been trying to get them shut down as filthy, thieving pirates. Video cassettes? Will anyone tune into TV again? MP3 players? Why even bother making a record? Digital video recorder that lets you skip ads? That’s a form of theft!

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that, in the name of preventing online piracy of copyrighted work, creates a horrifyingly large censorship authority for the Internet. Among other things, it requiresservice providers (which have come out opposing the bill) to block access to entire sites if a user on the site is accused of copyright infringement.

There are dozens of reasons this is wrong. The biggest and most pressing is that not only does the bill not do what it sets out to do, it also creates a horrifyingly blunt instrument to censor the Internet.

Top Internet engineers warn against SOPA:

Some of the original engineers of the Internet called Thursday for lawmakers to scrap anti-piracy bills, saying the proposals would pose major technological barriers for the Web and stifle new innovations.

The letter comes as House Judiciary committee members on Thursday debate the Stop Online Piracy Act introduced by Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) that has drawn impassioned support from media firms but opposition by Web firms and some public interest groups.

Vint Cerf of Google, domain name system software author Paul Vixie and Internet routing engineer Tony Li were among 83 high-profile engineers who signed an open letter to Congress in opposition to the House Stop Online Privacy Act and Senate Protect Intellectual Property Act.

“If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure,” the engineers wrote.


An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress
:

Today, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills that are under consideration in the House and Senate respectively.

The article has the letter itself, as well as a link to the pdf of the letter.

It also has the impressive list of VERY SMART PEOPLE! Engineers! People who would know! SOPA is a very bad thing!

Call your Senators! Please work it in to your busy holiday schedule. I did and I hope you will too. I will do it again come Monday. All this on the weekend when we can’t do anything about it?! Very annoying that they would flip flop like this at beyond the 11th hour!

As an American Citizen..I am appalled at our Congress. And even more so with our President who seems to be backing this crap legislation.

The PIPA (Protect IP Act = Senate Bill S.968) is no better. Both of these crap legislations need to go!

These bills are so bad, in next to no time, we could all be feeling like we are in a tyrannical empire … The NDAA was bad enough and they let that piece of crap legislation through already. Don’t let Congress make yet another major mistake and give away the remaining liberties and freedoms we so love.

In the words of Eye Drops from the old ZDTV/TechTV: “Think about that!

EDIT: Adding the following from Cory Doctorow on Twitter:
“@doctorow: A good piece explaining what #SOPA can mean to everyday Americans http://t.co/qIqInkYJ” The original posting is here: http://www.bricoleur.org/2011/12/overbroad-censorship-users.html

An Explosion of Opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill – EFF.org


An Explosion of Opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill – EFF.org Deeplinks

On the eve of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Stop Internet Piracy Act—where five witnesses will appear in favor of the bill to just one against—a broad group of tech companies, lawmakers, experts, professors, and rights groups have come out against the bill.

This is wonderful news! Let’s just hope things haven’t gone so far that our government won’t listen to their own people…that can’t happen, right?…

AN ILL WIND – The Secret Threat of Coal Ash

First, I would like to thank those who got our grid power back on here in Virginia after Hurricane Irene knocked it out about 24 hrs before Irene made landfall in the Outerbanks of NC.

One thing that being out of power for more than a couple days does do is make you realize how dependent we all have become on ‘the grid’ and how we really need to change that at some point, don’t you think? Between dangers of outages like this, and potential threats from terrorists on our infrastructure, it just seems to make sense that we figure out a way to get the power we need but by decentralizing from The Grid.

Over the last month, since August 4th, we have intermittently had to deal with the smoke and ill air quality of the wildfire in the dismal swamp. There were times when here in our little town there was smoke hanging in the air, and in our very homes when we woke up in the morning and were having trouble breathing. It was particularly bad for my Jim who is on an oxygen concentrator. Thankfully, Hurricane Irene, actually did one thing that was good, it almost (but not quite) put out that wildfire. I hope they can get the 30 or so hot spots put out before it dries out again.

Because I have a problem with the whole issue of dangerous coal ash, and huge coal plants close to people’s homes and spewing dangerous arsenic, and so much more into our air, does not mean I don’t appreciate The Grid or those who work to provide and maintain, and restore that power after natural disasters like this. My only complaint is the dangerous ways in which they often do that; meaning coal – from the cradle to the grave and the health and environmental dangers it poses.

Coal from Mountain Top Removal to this ILL WIND of coal ash that sends ‘sandstorms’ of coal ash directly over the reservation when the winds blow wrong, and other coal plant travesties around the country and around the world, to ODEC trying to get a 1500 MW coal fired power plant in Dendron, VA and Surry County rolling over to get the money they are promised and the empty purse of promised jobs (yeah, how many and for how long, and what of those who live here?) To the whole of a region like Hampton Roads that will be adversely affected by a 1500 MW coal plant with a prevailing wind that will draw that smoke/vapor over other areas in Hampton Roads.

From the text at Youtube:

See the whole project at http://www.earthjustice.org/illwind

The Moapa River Indian Reservation, tribal home of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, sits about 30 miles north of Las Vegas and about 300 yards from the coal ash ponds and landfills of the Reid Gardner Power Station. Coal ash is the toxic ash and sludge left at the end of the coal burning process. It’s laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals. It’s the second largest waste stream in America and it’s currently unregulated.

If the conditions are just wrong, coal ash picks up from Reid Gardner and moves across the desert like a toxic sandstorm sending the local residents running for their homes. The reservation has lung, heart and thyroid disease rates that are abnormally high and the power plant is currently seeking to expand its coal ash storage capability.

The film An Ill Wind tells the Paiute Indians’ story.

View and interactive presentation of the story at:

http://www.earthjustice.org/illwind

Watch the complete film at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL49Ibc0L88

And learn more about coal ash at:

http://www.earthjustice.org/coalash

Many thanks to the Moapa Band of Paiutes for allowing us to tell this story and to Vinny Spotleson of the Sierra Club and Dan Galpern of the Western Environmental Law Center for helping with the project.

I guess we as individuals and families really do need to start thinking about how we can get ourselves off the grid … if more homes are off the grid, these big coal plants wouldn’t even be considered necessary…

Lying is not Patriotic


A valiant speech by Ron Paul: Lying is not Patriotic

It was refreshing to hear Ron Paul in Congress speaking out on the Wikileaks/Julian Assange situation on Youtube!

Who will be next? One really has to ask this question.

This heinous Espionage Act has had only dire and detrimental consequences to the freedom of the people of our country in the past. Many suffered unjustly as noted in Naomi Wolf’s article here at Huffington Post.

Those who allow themselves to forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Are we doomed to a “1984″ fate 26 years later than predicted? It looked like we were heading there, but if this is allowed, I fear for all of us in this once great country.

Freedom is something that takes diligence to maintain.

And don’t forget, some of the most horrible things in history were done with the best intentions.

TSA Government Manipulation and Humiliation


There was a saying from an old movie, Network that bears repeating:

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!

This is how many of us feel about the abuse by the TSA and ‘our’ government regarding full body scans and invasive pat downs that we apparently pay to have the privilege of going through since you can’t fly without the possibility of abusive TSA behavior.

And you have folks like Rush saying it’s intentional. No kidding it’s intentional … they want to humiliate and thereby manipulate people publicly so they won’t buck the system.

Well….

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!

Actually, I haven’t flown since the 1990s and refuse to do so because of the way they are treating paying customers at the airports in this country (USA).

This is more like Gestapo behavior than American Civil Servants (paid by our tax dollars) respectfully trying to protect its Citizens.

Info on what has been going on:

TSA Pat-Down Leaves Mich. Man Covered in Urine (CBS):

A bladder cancer survivor from Michigan who wears a urostomy bag that collects his urine says a rough pat-down by a security agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport caused the bag to spill its contents on his shirt and pants.

The Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network says bladder cancer survivors “deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by TSA agents.”

ALL United States Citizens deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by TSA agents!

No United States Citizen should be made to feel embarrassed, humiliated or manipulated by their taxpayer funded Civil Servants.

Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects? (Congressman Ron Paul) who is proposing a Bill to address this an other issues:

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits… That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.

Airport body scanners ‘could give you cancer’, warns expert (Mail Online):

They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

Christie joins critics of TSA’s airport screening procedures, calls them ‘too invasive’ (NJ.com)

At a town hall meeting today, Christie , a former federal prosecutor, called them “too invasive.”

“I support the TSA trying to keep us safe, but not the way they’re doing it,” Christie said.

And what about the Pilots and Flight Attendants who would have to go through it day in and day out, potentially multiple times a day?

TSA’s double standard – In the uproar about scanners and pat-downs, no one seems to have noticed that one group is exempt from inspection (Salon):

Late last week, the Transportation Security Administration, bowing to controversy and the threat of lawsuits, ruled that airline pilots will no longer be subject to the backscatter body scanners and invasive pat-downs at TSA airport checkpoints.

(Incidentally, the requirement that crews undergo checkpoint screening was imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration after the crash of a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight in 1987. A recently terminated flight attendant, David Burke, used his credentials, which the airline had failed to recover, to carry a concealed handgun onto Flight 1771 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. En route, he shot both pilots and nosed the airplane into the ground near Harmony, Calif., killing all 44 on board.)

Flight Attendants?

Delta: Let Flight Attendants Skip Scanners, Too (NPR):

The Transportation Security Administration has said it will let pilots skip the body scans and aggressive pat-downs that travelers get. Now, Delta CEO Richard Anderson has asked the TSA to let flight attendants get the same treatment. His request was included in a letter to employees over the weekend.

And what about other stuff…

TSA security is as futile as it is invasive (Baltimore Sun):

But what makes it all so disturbing is the fact that while we’re submitted to extensive yet inefficient procedures, we’re totally unprotected while we we’re all jam-packed waiting to pass security check; did anyone ever see any type of protection there? How many casualties would a single terrorist throwing grenades and spray-shooting be able to cause? Ask the Ben Gurion Airport security authorities what Kozo Okamoto, the converted to Islam Japanese Red Army member, was able to do on his own in 1972.

Furthermore, what kind of preventive and protection measures are in place regarding our luggage? Close to zero.

So while we’re harassed and frustrated by revealing screening machines that can’t “see” many explosive types, and exposed to unnecessary privacy invasion, tens of pounds of plastic explosives can be easily loaded on the plane with very low chances of being discovered.

John Tyner, who has obviously had enough of this!


Bloggings On Dysfunctional Government (ILW.com’s Angelo Paparelli)

John Tyner, a San Diego software engineer and newly minted American folk hero, faces an $11,000 civil-disobedience fine for refusing an intimate groping, dubbed by Orwellian bureaucrats as an “enhanced patdown,” that Hillary Clinton would herself refuse. The man who threatened a citizen’s arrest if his “junk” were touched epitomizes an aroused populace, even including flaccid Baby Boomers, who will no longer tolerate TSA inanity passing off as security at the nation’s airports.

TSA Responds to “Strip Search” Video of Boy (CBS):

News reports about what critics say are overzealous screening procedures are proliferating: Here’s one story entitled “TSA Makes Cancer Victim Remove Prosthetic Breast,” and here’s a post entitled “TSA Screening Soaks Bladder Cancer Survivor with His Own Urine.” A story about a person being arrested for refusing the security procedures is entitled “TSA airport screeners gone wild in San Diego- again;” here’s one called “TSA pats down a screaming toddler.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton probably didn’t help matters when she said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that she would not submit to a pat-down “if I could avoid it,” adding, “I mean, who would?

Good question…good question.

When Copyright Goes Bad

When Copyright Goes Bad

Info from the YouTube video page:

A film by Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch.

Suddenly, copyright rules no longer do what they are supposed to do. They have gone bad.

This is a film about how copyright has become one of the most important consumer issues of the digital age; why corporate lobbying risks criminalising the actions of hundreds of thousands of people; and what the future holds for the fight for fairer copyright laws.

When Copyright Goes Bad is an introduction to the renegotiation of copyright and is for anyone interested in how copyright is affecting consumers. It features some of the key players in the copyright debate, including:

Fred Von Lohmann – Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist – University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock – Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee – Co-founder of Public Enemy.

For more, visit http://www.A2Knetwork.org/film

Protect net neutrality

Protect net neutrality

Rather than send this via email, since I hate receiving unsolicited emails, I figured I would just put it on my blog.

Our ability to have a free and open Internet is under attack.

The Federal Communications Commission has been attempting to enforce net neutrality safeguards that would keep big telecoms from inspecting and filtering the Internet content you access, blocking websites and applications they don’t like, and overcharging you for using the Internet. But a recent court decision prevents the FCC from regulating net neutrality in the way it tried.

The FCC now faces an important decision. Will it stand up for consumers and reclassify broadband Internet providers to ensure the Internet stays free?

The FCC has asked for public comment on their net neutrality plans. Join me in submitting a comment in support of the FCC doing everything it can to protect a free and open Internet. Just click the link below to submit your comment.

http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/fccnn_replycomments/?rc=homepage

I have already submitted my comments. Maybe you could too…

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