Something Deserving of Protest

This is something actually deserving of protest.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

This is all sorts of fucked up. There's no other way to put such an egregious violation of basic civil liberties. As conservative (label alert!) as the current Supreme Court is, I can't see them letting this stand. God, I hope not, anyway. This and not the Muslim community center (not mosque) near (not on) Ground Zero is something that people should be up in arms about.

Internet Anonymity Getting More Difficult

I'm not really sure how to feel about this.

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.

"While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday.

"Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level."

On one hand, it's hard to argue with anything aimed at going after scumbags who target children. On the other, what happened to our right to privacy. Supporters of this measure will, of course, argue that the records are only accessed if someone is suspected of a crime, that honest, law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. That sounds good, but where does it stop. This is a slippery slope. What if the government wants to start tracking where all automobiles to have GPS devices and a database tracking where each car goes? What if they want to track everything you purchase with your credit card? What if they want to put chips in people to monitor where they are?

Perhaps I am going to absurd levels, but the point I want to make is that we need to ask ourselves how much we are willing to curtail our civil liberties in the name of safety.