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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (56096)	1/25/2006 2:26:52 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362340

You've Got Jail By Robert Scheer Posted on Jan. 24, 2006 truthdig.com <<...Bottom line is these guys in the Bush administration are obsessed voyeurs, poking their noses into everyone’s business, whether the excuse is squelching pornography or preventing terrorism. They simply do not believe civil liberties and privacy are important. It is an executive branch power trip, and completely anti-democratic. Corporations, of course, are not built to think about such lofty ideas as democracy, however, focusing instead on the bottom line. In the world of high-tech privacy, companies like AOL are also two-timers, collecting data on us users of their services so they can better feed us advertising and other revenue generating products, even as they try to protect that data from identity thieves. In acquiescing to the unwarranted demand of the Justice Department to pore over the companies’ records, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft are sliding down a slippery slope, unconvincingly claiming the data dump to the feds has no implications for online privacy. Does anybody think they won’t cooperate if the government comes back and asks for IP addresses — your computer’s unique signature on the Web — for everybody who dared type in questionable searches like “growing marijuana” and “fertilizer bombs?’’ The fact is, until Google made its demur public, these companies didn’t even tell us about the deals they were cutting with the feds, and they are still not being forthcoming with what exactly they’ve given up to date. We only have their word that they are protecting our privacy. “This is the government’s nose under the search engine’s tent,” said Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “If companies like Google respond to this kind of subpoena … I don’t see why the next subpoena might not say, ‘Give us what we asked for the last time — plus a little more.’” Fortunately, Google, the latest high-tech upstart giant, dared to challenge the government’s claim of an unbridled right to break into our information-age virtual homes. While avoiding the privacy argument as the others did because individual IP addresses were not requested at this time, Google forthrightly sounded the alarm on government arrogance. “Google is not a party to this lawsuit and (the DOJ’s) demand for information overreaches,” said a company statement. The subpoena is “overbroad, unduly burdensome, vague and intended to harass,” argued a company lawyer. Whether their motivation is moral or simply concern about the bottom line, it is a good thing Google has the corporate guts to resist an administration that is addicted to overreaching. As for the guardians of my data over at Time Warner’s AOL, I can only hope that when the spooks take their information demands to the next level, that AOL will back up my plea that it was merely a slip of the mouse that hyper-linked me to the Victoria’s Secret catalog, and not verboten lust...>>

To: geode00 who wrote (56096)	1/25/2006 8:04:17 AM
From: Rock_nj	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362340

One thing we've got in the 21st Century is computers and telecommuting. I'm sure telecommuting will become more common if energy prices keep rising. People who can't telecommute will just have to move closer to their jobs. It does seem like the U.S. is taking public transport more seriously these days. My state, New Jersey, has built two major light rail lines in recent years and expanded the other parts of the rail network. Los Angles now has a rail network and there is talk about building a new LA subway for the first time in a decade. We will adapt. Actually, what people will probably start doing is just buying more fuel efficient vehicles and perhaps demand even plug-in hybrids that would greatly reduce their dependence on expensive gasoline. That would be a positive consequence of all this. I wouldn't buy and stock in horse and buggy companies. There's no reason we have to go back to that era.