jmcmichael

The DOJ’s escalating criminalization of speech →

Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening.  The latest episode emerged on Friday, when the FBI announced the arrest and indictment of Jubair Ahmad, a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, charged with “providing material support” to a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)).

What is the “material support” he allegedly gave?  He produced and uploaded a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of U.S. abuses in Abu Ghraib, video of armored trucks exploding after being hit by IEDs, prayer messages about “jihad” from LeT’s leader, and — according to the FBI’s Affidavit — “a number of terrorist logos.”  That, in turn, led the FBI agent who signed the affidavit to assert that ”based on [his] training and experience, it is evident that the video … is designed as propaganda to develop support for LeT and to recruit jihadists to LeT.”  The FBI also claims Ahmad spoke with the son of an LeT leader about the contents of the video and had attended an LeT camp when he was a teenager in Pakistan.  For the act of uploading that single YouTube video (and for denying that he did so when asked by the FBI agents who came to his home to interrogate him), he faces 23 years in prison.

Let’s be very clear about the key point: the Constitution — specifically the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment — prohibits the U.S. Government from punishing someone for the political views they express, even if those views include the advocacy of violence against the U.S. and its leaders.

–Glenn Greenwald, The DOJ’s escalating criminalization of speech

RUN!! LIBERTARIANS WANT TO TAKE OVER THEN LEAVE YOU ALONE!!

Do You Like Online Privacy? You May Be a Terrorist →

A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity.  The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity.  The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using “software to hide encrypted data in digital photos” or other media.  In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others” should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities.

Rules of American justice: a tale of three cases →

The Rules of American Justice are quite clear:

(1) If you are a high-ranking government official who commits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immunity, both civil and criminal, and will have the American President demand that all citizens Look Forward, Not Backward.

(2) If you are a low-ranking member of the military, you will receive relatively trivial punishments in order to protect higher-ranking officials and cast the appearance of accountability.

(3) If you are a victim of American war crimes, you are a non-person with no legal rights or even any entitlement to see the inside of a courtroom.

(4) If you talk publicly about any of these war crimes, you have committed the Gravest Crime — you are guilty of espionage – and will have the full weight of the American criminal justice system come crashing down upon you.

- Glenn Greenwald

The roots of Bain Capital in El Salvador’s civil war →

A significant portion of the seed money that created Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, was provided by wealthy oligarchs from El Salvador, including members of a family with a relative who allegedly financed rightist groups that used death squads during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s.

The United States Constitution rests on a handful of closely related premises. (Let’s call them “Madisonian.”) First: the Constitution has to serve the interests of citizens, not politicians and especially not state politicians. For an emphatic statement see Federalist 45 (To appreciate the depth of Madison’s conviction on this point, note that the verbal bombast in 45 is out of character for him. Even his letters to Dolley sound like they were written by her accountant.) Second: the Constitution has to make politics possible and discipline it against factional abuse. For the general theory see Federalist 10. Third, the Constitution has to ensure stability, both in the sense of institutional durability and of preventing political hyperactivity. For the perils of a “mutable government” see Federalist 62.

Now invert the premises. First: the Constitution must protect the “states as states”—that is, their political elites and hangers-on. Second: the Constitution should facilitate interest group politics. Third: the Constitution should be democratic (and since the demos is fickle, the Constitution should be unstable). There you have the actual Constitution, upside-down. Get used to it: it’s the New Deal Constitution under which we live.

— Michael S. Greve, discussing his book The Upside Down Constitution

HOPE you don’t get indefinitely detained

The future isn’t pre-ordained. It is contested and contestable. Science fiction isn’t a literature that tells you what will happen tomorrow. It is a literature that tells you how to prevent the bad tomorrows and usher in the good ones. It is an active and activist literature, with an agenda and a point of view. As we hurtle through our century of rapid change and economic, ecological, and technological disruption, it’s precisely the literature we need.

— Cory Doctorow, A Vocabulary for Speaking About the Future

Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy →

Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. In his new book, Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, Neuwirth points out that small, illegal, off-the-books businesses collectively account for trillions of dollars in commerce and employ fully half the world’s workers. Further, he says, these enterprises are critical sources of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and self-reliance. And the globe’s gray and black markets have grown during the international recession, adding jobs, increasing sales, and improving the lives of hundreds of millions. It’s time, Neuwirth says, for the developed world to wake up to what those who are working in the shadows of globalization have to offer.

The Coming War on General Computation
a talk by Cory Doctorow at the Chaos Computer Congress

The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.