Loss of Privacy

It seems the cylons had a plan too. Then, somewhere in season 3 they seemed to lose sight of what it was. The US government assures us, though, that they know what they’re doing.

It’s called the Personal Localized Alert Network or PLAN. Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts would appear on cell phones equipped with special chips and software.

Ah, “special” software. That means the government is telling you that the PLAN will help in emergencies, you’ll end of having it be required equipment, and you won’t be able to turn it off.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the system would also warn about terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Verizon and AT&T, the nation’s largest cell phone carriers, are already on board. Consumers would be able to opt out of all but those presidential messages.

You see, you can opt out, for now. Except to hear the president, which will soon be all the messages. This announcement comes right after the death of Osama bin Laden and the new, made-up, but super scary terror alerts. You should be more scared of the government and these new chips than any terrorist on the planet.

Right now, the FCC and Department of Justice are preparing to approve the NBC/Comcast merger — something that would have dire consequences for years to come.

Please take 2 minutes to watch this important video and get the details.

Then please sign our open letter asking that this merger be stopped. It’s up to each one of us to do everything we can to stop big corporations from gaining control of our media.

Sign the letter.

You’ll need to skip ahead to about the eleven minute mark to where the hearing gets started. Senator Al Franken’s speech begins at about 30:29.

If you own a cordless phone, remote car door opener, baby monitor, cellphone, wireless router, or anything else with radio frequency capabilities, the FCC claims that it can enter your home without a warrant any time they want and inspect it.

While this claim has been used in the past to monitor pirated radio and television stations, the FCC now claims that this power applies to any licensed or unlicensed RF devices.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

In the 1967 Supreme Court ruling, Camara v. Municipal Court of the City and County of San Francisco, the Court clearly stated that warrants were necessary in such cases.  So, Fuck you very much, the FCC.