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Jamie Leigh Jones, a contractor for KBR (which was then part of Halliburton) was drugged and sexually assaulted in Iraq last year, and forced to spend a day in a cargo container so that she wouldn’t report her attack.  Her employers insist that as part of her agreement with them, any such issues should go to arbitration for a third party to decide; thankfully, a judge has seen fit to let the rape case go to trial.

“From the article at Wired Blog: “The Internet Archive’s case is only the third known court challenge to an NSL, all of which ended with the FBI rescinding the NSL, according to the ACLU’s Melissa Goodman.”  The FBI brought a national security letter to the Internet Archive, and Brewster Kahle (pictured, from Wired) with help from the EFF, not only successfully challenged the FBI, but also got the court case unsealed so that documents could be made public.

The bottom line here is that while the sample size is small, every challenge to an NSL has been successful.  When people stand up for themselves, the results are often favourable for Liberty!

The article says it best: “Your tax dollars at work. On one side, subsidize more roads, sprawl, and related infrastructure, on the other, subsidize various approaches to try to convince people to keep off the roads.”

A Federal appeals court has said that Customs can do whatever they want with your electronic files when you cross the border.  The ruling extends to all electronics: laptop, cell phone, digital camera, calculator - you name it - if it’s got a file system, it’s fair game.

Update:  It will come as no surprise that millions of dollars of military expenditure is simply wasted.

Alternet has an excellent story on how “60 years of enormous military spending is taking a dramatic toll on the rest of the economy“.  It goes through several points, all of them excellently detailed with numbers, showing how our defense spending is simply crippling us.  We are spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, a feat certainly unsustainable, but mostly ridiculous when you actually stop and think about it.    Here’s the chart they use:

The article is a long one, but well worth the read!

While it may not be an immediate prelude to an actual fight, it seems that the US is drawing up plans on how to go to war with Iran.  As if spending 12 BILLION dollars a week in Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t enough, they are now making contingency plans for attacking yet another country that’s never attacked us.  There is speculation that General Petraeus’s promotion may be because he favours the hard-line, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs isn’t helping matters.

 Update:  The New York Sun has a similar story.

With the clearest numbers yet, we can see the ugly toll that inflation is taking on this country.  As the government continues to print money (with nothing backing it) the value of the dollars that exist continues to go down, and prices go up.  Here are the figures from the Wall Street Journal, who are urging Americans to stock up on food:

“And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.” Read more

Well, it seems that you can put anything through Congress as long as you’re doing it to protect children, as the DOJ wants more money for monitoring P2P networks. Granted, while going after child predators is certainly necessary and worthwhile:

“Recent revelations about the FBI’s honeypot scheme for catching possible child porn traders do give some cause for concern over the lack of detail on how the system works, a concern that’s only likely to grow as the system itself grows. There’s no doubt that child exploitation ruins lives, but so could the high number of false positives associated with computer-automated surveillance and tracking systems, especially when combined with Read more

From The Associated Press: “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.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.

Congress gave the Justice Department the authority to expand DNA collection in two different laws passed in 2005 and 2006.”

“Once privacy and civil liberty concerns are resolved” the US is going to start using spy satellites for domestic purposes soon, according to this story in the Washington Post. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff has said, “There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.” Is there anyone else that just doesn’t believe him?

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