Loss of Privacy

With the deadline approaching, more states are resisting the implementation of REAL-ID.  President Bush has already caved in to pressure over REAL-ID and extended the compliance date from May 2008 to December 31, 2009.  Maine has already passed a nonbinding resolution objecting to REAL-ID.  New Hampshire, one of the loudest resisters last year, formally began their process of rejecting REAL-ID last week.  New Hampshire’s House Transportation Committee unanimously voted to forbid the state from complying with REAL-ID.  The next step is to have the entire New Hampshire House vote on it this week.

At a hearing last week, opponents argued the law was too intrusive. They also said the risk was too great that thieves would gain access to information needed to steal people’s identities if a national database was created.

Costs of implementing REAL-ID and privacy concerns are the more important reasons for rejection.  New Hampshire Governor, John Lynch, reiterated his comments of last year stating that if the bill reaches his desk, he would sign it.

Last month, Lynch reiterated his concerns that too many questions remained about the cost, privacy and turning motor vehicle workers into de facto agents of Homeland Security. He said implementing the federal identity system could cost New Hampshire tens of millions of dollars.

Rep. Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, said Congress went too far in passing the law.  ”We have to uphold the constitution,” he said. ”We will not be blackmailed by the federal government.”

Committee Chairman Jim Ryan, a Franklin Democrat, said New Hampshire needs to send a clear statement that ”we believe the federal government has strayed too far.”

New Hampshire and Maine have sparked the revolution against REAL-ID.  Their lawmakers have recognized that REAL-ID is not only unconstitutional, it is bad for the American people.  The issue of identification is not authorized in the Constitution.  It is a state’s right.  The US Congress knew that the only way to implement REAL-ID properly was by a constitutional amendment, something they knew would never pass.  Therefore, it was quietly slipped into law as a rider to the more important bill of military support.

Since most of our Congressmen do not read most of what they vote on, it was an easy fix to do an end run around the law.  As of now, Lamar Alexander is the only one who has admitted that this is a national ID card.  There was no debate on REAL-ID.  Most had no clue it was even attached to the military spending bill.  It was passed 100-0 because no one wanted to be accused of not supporting the troops.  This is how your government works and, without careful scrutiny, more things like REAL-ID will be attached to bills of greater significance.

Remember, innocent citizens are not criminals.  We should not submit to biometric scans of our persons and allow the government to violate our 4th Amendment rights.  We all fear our identities will be stolen.  Placing so much information into one place will only help the criminals,  not you, the innocent citizen.  We need to stop allowing the government to centralize so much power by taking over States’ rights.  As an innocent citizen, you need to write and protest to your State Legislatures.  If you live in New Hampshire, you should write and tell them thank you and keep going.

Don’t feel secure in your identity and privacy.  Don’t stop fighting for your Constitutional rights.  And, most importantly, if you stop fighting to save yourself from tracking and transparency in all aspects of your life, no one is going to come save you when your information has been erroneously added to some database preventing you from traveling, getting a car or purchasing a home.  You must practice your own due diligence in the fight to keep what our forefathers gave us.

I don’t often eat out at restaurants.  I prefer to eat at home and cook my meals.  Not only is it cheaper, I know exactly what ingredients were placed into my food.  However, when I do eat out, I have noticed that far more people are wasting their food than in the past.

I have always taken a doggie bag home with me because restaurant portions are far too large.  I can get two, sometimes three, meals out of what the restaurant thinks is one meal.  I see no point in wasting food that is perfectly fine to heat up and eat the next day.  Apparently, neither did anyone else, until recently.  I’m not sure when the shift occurred, but it has, and I see it more each time I visit a restaurant.

The BBC has written a story about how much food Britain’s waste and, though it covers all aspects of food wasted, it claims that, “A third of people are throwing away food that’s cooked and left on the plate.”

I have seen this first hand at many restaurants.  Recently, I visited the chain restaurant, Chili’s, to try their new fish and chips.  I brought half of my dinner home and had it for lunch the next day.  While I was there, I saw a couple at the table next to me leave more than half their food on the table.  When the waitress came and asked if they’d like to take it home with them, the man emphatically replied no, as if it were some sort of evil deed for him to take home leftovers and reheat them.

At another table, a family of five were eating.  They ordered an appetizer and then barely touched it.  The mother ordered fajitas, was given enough food to make five of them, ate one and left the rest.  One son ordered a bowl of macaroni and cheese (which another rant for another time).  He ate about half and left the rest.  The other son ordered macaroni and cheese and broccoli.  He ate the broccoli and three spoonfuls of the macaroni and cheese.  The daughter picked at what the mother had but barely ate.  The father did eat all he had but, when asked again if they’d like to take the leftovers home, they shunned the very idea.

During the Second World War, wasting food was not only a crime punishable by heavy fines, but near treasonous. Indeed, the world’s major religions have always forbidden the wasting or throwing away of food.

If so many people in America consider themselves good Christians, then why do they not feel like they are sinning when they toss perfectly good food away?  In Islam, the wasting of food is covered under Halal and Haram.  Judiasm has a divine commandment to not waste food.

Personally, wasting food was a sin in my family.  We didn’t have much, so we knew the costs of things and how hard everyone worked to put food on the table.  The occasions that we did eat out, we either cleaned our plates or took it home with us.  When I see people wasting food, I often wonder if they return home to light their dollar bills on fire.  I know this is extreme, but why do people think that it’s okay to spend their hard earned money on food that they aren’t going to eat?  Why do restaurants continue to offer such gigantic portions if people just waste it?  Wouldn’t they make more money if they reduced the portion sizes and charged the same amount?  The chocolate and candy makers figured this one out a long time ago.

If people paid more attention to what they were wasting, they could reduce the amount of food purchases, whether at home or the supermarket, thereby creating less waste and more cash in their pockets.  It also reduces the detrimental effects of wasted food on the environment.

We have forgotten the value of food and the fact that there continue to be food shortages around the world, with many children malnourished or starving.  We need to relearn the value of food and stop considering it a throwaway item like so much else in society.

The mantra of 9/11 Changed Everything has been echoing in our ears now for over five years.  The government continues to tell us that the attacks on the World Trade Center changed who we are as a nation and that new laws enacted are there to protect us from changing the United States into a nightmare.  Unfortunately, 9/11 created a nightmare state from which we cannot seem to awaken.

The FBI has recently told us that they do not need to create a paper trail when they are asking “in good faith” for copies of telephone records if there is some emergency or imminent danger if they do not get the records.  Of course, if you are going to abuse the powers of the PATRIOT Act, there’s no point in keeping a pesky paper trail to trip you up later on now is there?

While I understand that there are some emergencies that you need information now and not hours later when the subpoena arrives, there still must be a paper trail.  Without one, anyone can flash a badge and get whatever records they want.  The telephone companies also have no way of knowing if the FBI complies with the PATRIOT Act or not.

Before 9/11, this story would have, quite frankly, pissed off most of America.  But we have been bombarded with stories of torture, from our side and the enemy, cover ups about the real reason we’ve gone to war, cover ups at nearly every federal level and illegal wiretapping, is it any wonder that no one bats an eyelash anymore when we discover that the telephone companies just bend over and give whatever information the FBI asks for?

VeriSign’s NetDiscovery also has an extensive network of spying and at a good price.  Governments around the world, including the USA and Italy, are increasingly asking VeriSign for help in the spying needs.  NetDiscovery is a fullservice wiretapping system that can, and does, have access to all telephone communications (land line, cellular, VOIP), ISPs, cable television, and wireless networks.

Americans have let fear rule their lives since 9/11.  Everyone who claimed that the sorts of abuses we see now would happen, were called part of the tin-foil hat wearing crowd, seeing conspiracies where they didn’t exist.  We were call crazy, paranoid, and lunatics.  When we complained, we were asked why we hated freedom and how come we didn’t hate the terrorists.  We were always told, “the government wouldn’t misuse these powers” because they were only using these laws to help protect us from further attacks.

We have allowed once assumed rights to be taken away, in the name of security and protection from evil.  There was little outcry when the PATRIOT Act was renewed, something that should never have happened.  We let REAL-ID pass, with nary a cry for the real dangers it proposes.  We shouted when those “evil Arabs” wanted to control our ports because, you know, all Arabs are the same, yet we said it was okay to allow the government to create a passport with biometrics that can be tracked and stolen easily.  As long as the government doesn’t interfere with us while we’re watching garbage TV or eating from places that will eventually kill us, we don’t really care if we’re tracked, spied upon, or followed.

Why is it that misanthropes like me continue to fight?  Why can’t we just be left alone?  Why is it that governmental mistakes that failed to prevent 9/11 are justifications for robbing me of my constitutional rights?  Why do people continue to seek out their instant gratification instead of keeping things right for the long term?

Can someone help me to return the country I remember before the war with Iran starts?  I don’t want to have to fear car bombs, worry about the imminent collapse of the economy, have triple gas prices, or watch the world drop the dollar and have my country collapse.

In October 2006, President Bush signed the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, which overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.  The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal military personnel from acting as a police force within the United States except when authorized by the US Congress or Constitution.  It was passed to strictly limit the government’s powers.

Quietly slipped into the law at the last minute, at the request of the Bush administration, were sections changing important legal principles, dating back 200 years, which limit the U.S. government’s ability to use the military to intervene in domestic affairs. These changes would allow Bush, whenever he thinks it necessary, to institute martial law–under which the military takes direct control over civilian administration.

The article, however, quotes Sec. 1042 when it should be Section 1076.  Posse Comitatus has it’s pros and cons.  We saw kind of help it could be during the L.A. Riots in 1992.  Most people do not worry and, if we had any other president right now, most people would not be worrying about the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act.  However, we have seen the president continue to strip American citizens of their freedoms and lead them down the path to a police state, that this new act is worrying.

Bush has modified the main exemptions to posse comitatus that up to now have been primarily defined by the Insurrection Act of 1807. Previously the president could call out the army in the United States only in cases of insurrection or conditions where “rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” Under the new law the president can use the military in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or “other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.”

No doubt, the Bush administration will hold this Act up to the people and say, “see, now if another Katrina happens, we can help.”  The fact is, they could have helped during Katrina because FEMA had the authority to do so but couldn’t be arsed to do anything in a timely manner.  This was partly due to the fact that Bush slashed FEMA’s budget so that he could fund the Department of Homeland Security.  A Katrina incident should not be the responsibility of the military, however, Bush wants it them to be responsible and his overriding of Posse Comitatus does just that.  Are you starting to see a pattern here of Bush’s extreme disdain for the Constitution and the laws of the United States?

The fact is we need Posse Comitatus because it protects us.  A little over a year ago, Bush said that he would institute martial law if there were some sort of outbreak like Avian Flu.  He’d rather turn straight to the police state than get some vaccines, give out free health care, and let the police do their jobs.  George Bush is dismantling all the legalities that restrain the powers of the executive branch and is creating an executive branch answerable to no one.

In 2002, the government created the new Northern Command. This is the first time since the Civil War that the U.S. military has been given an operational command inside the continental United States.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that Northcom had developed battle plans for martial law in the U.S. One secret document, CONPLAN 2005, envisions 15 different scenarios where these plans could go into effect.

In 2006, the Military Commissions Act was passed which, in addition to legalizing torture, allows the president and military courts to declare anyone an enemy combatant without basic civil rights like habeas corpus.

There is also the massive spying, aided by AT&T, on unsuspecting citizens, and the building of large detention and processing centers to be used “in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S. or to support the rapid development of new programs.”  We all need to wake up and smell the police state.

While there are people out there who really care and call and write their representatives, there don’t seem to be enough of them crying out, begging, for these horrible changes to stop sneaking their way into our laws and our lives.  We gave our representatives the power to represent us, not Bush, not some dictator wannabe, not corporations.

I’ve never been a big advocate of having personal weapons.  While I agree we all should be allowed to have them, and that’s protected in the Constitution, I’ve never felt the need to own one, until now.  If not enough people take a stand against this, then we will need these weapons in the near future to protect us from our government and to, hopefully, replace it.

Godwin’s law would usually prevent me from stating this but, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler was able to easily suspend civil liberties with a decree.  I’m not saying that Bush is quite Hitler, however, instead of suspending our civil liberties and society in one fail swoop, he is doing it piecemeal so that no one notices.  He has already put the necessary pieces into place.  All he needs now is to finish dismantling the barriers to an all powerful executive and we will no longer recognize the America our forefathers fought to preserve and that we have come to enjoy and take for granted.

There’s no title for this one but it caught my eye while browsing online.

This was taken by sheetal_shundori on Flickr.   She has a lot of other great photos to look at as well.