Category: Civil Rights

Cloud Computing, RIP

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The Department of Justice is now arguing that you have no property rights whatsoever to your data if you use cloud storage:

Yesterday, EFF, on behalf of its client Kyle Goodwin, filed a brief proposing a process for the Court in the Megaupload case to hold the government accountable for the actions it took (and failed to take) when it shut down Megaupload’s service and denied third parties like Mr. Goodwin access to their property. The government also filed a brief of its own, calling for a long, drawn-out process that would require third parties—often individuals or small companies—to travel to courts far away and engage in multiple hearings, just to get their own property back.

Even worse, the government admitted that it has accessed Mr. Goodwin’s Megaupload account and reviewed the content of his files. By doing so, the government has taken a significant and frightening step. It apparently searched through the data it seized for one purpose when its target was Megaupload in order to use it against Mr. Goodwin, someone who was hurt by its actions but who is plainly not the target of any criminal investigation, much less the one against Megaupload. This is, of course, a bald attempt to shift the focus to Mr. Goodwin, trying to distract both the press and the Court from the government’s failure to take any steps, much less the reasonable steps required by law, to protect the property rights of third parties either before a warrant was executed or afterward. And of course, if the government is so well positioned that it can search through Mr. Goodwin’s files and opine on their content—and it is not at all clear that this second search was authorized—presumably it can also find a way to return them. .

But in addition, the government’s approach should terrify any user of cloud computer services—not to mention the providers.  The government maintains that Mr. Goodwin lost his property rights in his data by storing it on a cloud computing service.  Specifically, the government argues that both the contract between Megaupload and Mr. Goodwin (a standard cloud computing contract) and the contract between Megaupload and the server host, Carpathia (also a standard agreement), “likely limit any property interest he may have” in his data.  (Page 4). If the government is right, no provider can both protect itself against sudden losses (like those due to a hurricane) and also promise its customers that their property rights will be maintained when they use the service. Nor can they promise that their property might not suddenly disappear, with no reasonable way to get it back if the government comes in with a warrant. Apparently your property rights “become severely limited” if you allow someone else to host your data under standard cloud computing arrangements. This argument isn’t limited in any way to Megaupload — it would apply if the third party host was Amazon’s S3 or Google Apps or or Apple iCloud.  

(emphasis original)

So basically, if a prosecutor decides to go after one person using a cloud service, then they could take down the entire service, and if you do not like it, tough, you have no property rights.

Having your property seized at the whim of a prosecutor is antithetical to the very idea of the rule of law.

Still bullish on cloud storage?

H/t Ecop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Greek Journalist Acquitted

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Costas Vaxevanis, who was persecuted prosecuted for publishing a list of Greeks with large Swiss bank accounts, has been acquitted:

A Greek journalist who published the names of more than 2,000 of his compatriots who held Swiss bank accounts was acquitted on Thursday in a case that touched a nerve over the role of tax evasion in the country’s debt crisis.

The trial of Costas Vaxevanis, editor of the weekly Hot Doc magazine, had aroused international concern and intense interest among Greeks hit by the impact of the country’s economic collapse and angry at the privileges of the elite.

He could have faced up to two year years in prison on charges of violating data privacy laws that Vaxevanis said were politically motivated and the result of politicians protecting an “untouchable” wealthy class.

His speedy arrest and trial following publication of the “Lagarde List” at the weekend – so named for Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund – touched a nerve in near-bankrupt Greece, where rampant tax evasion is undermining a struggle to cut public costs and raise revenue under an EU/IMF bailout deal.

It also enraged many who are already furious over the failure of consecutive governments to crack down on the rich while years of recession have wiped out a fifth of economic output and hammered middle-class living standards.

As the old saying goes, “A fish rots from the head.”

Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson notes, in situations like this, the first priority really has to be breaking the grip of the corrupt elites has over society and over the economy.

That is not going to happen, because the Greek leadership is incapable of doing this, and the corrupt elites in the rest of the EU do not want someone telling regulators where the bodied are buried.

Good News Out of Pakistan

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Yes, this is a phrase that I did not expect to say, but the fact that Pakistani law enforcement is beginning to enforce notorious blasphemy laws against Islamic extremists too:

Most people have heard of Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Carrying the death penalty of life imprisonment for anyone who criticises the Prophet Muhammed or the Qur’an, it gained renewed international scrutiny this year after Rimsha Masih, a young Christian girl apparently suffering from Down’s Syndrome, was arrested in Islamabad. She was subsequently freed and a Muslim cleric now stands accused of fabricating evidence against her.

………

But could that be changing? Here in Karachi, protests against the anti-Islam film that have caused rallies across the Muslim world turned violent. One of the incidents on 21 September was an attack on a Hindu Temple on the outskirts of the city. Protesters attacked the Sri Krishna Ram temple, breaking religious statues, tearing up the Bhagavad Gita (the holy book), and assaulting the temple’s caretaker.

Community leaders took the unusual step of going to the police, who have announced that the case against nine attackers has been registered under Section 295-A of the blasphemy laws. This lesser known section, which covers the “outraging of religious feelings”, can apply to any religion and carries a fine or imprisonment of up to 10 years.

Of course, this case does not represent a sea-change in attitudes just yet. For a start, no one has been charged, or even arrested. But it was a positive move by local police, if only because Pakistan’s religious minorities are frequently too frightened to speak out at all. Numbering about four per cent of the population, this small minority of Christians, Hindus and Islamic sects such as the Ahmadis (regarded as non-Muslims) translates to nearly ten million people, the equivalent of the population of Tunisia. It is not an insignificant number.

While this is not the same as the death penalty for defaming the Mohammad or Islam, I am tickled pink that the same people who are this law’s most vociferous supporters are now being targeted by this same law.

Great, I Just Got Caught Up in the Patriot Act

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I was getting some medicine containing some Pseudoephedrine HCL, and because of a glitch with a card swipe, their computer had me getting it, so I could not get another dose for 24 hours.

You wee, when the Patriot Act was reauthorized in 2006, it included legislation that made it tougher to buy Sudafed than it is to buy Plutonium.

After an hour of trying to fix the computer glitch, I left without the decongestant (Zyrtec® D).

F%$# the Patriot Act, and F%$# every F%$#ing member of Congress who F%$#ing voted for this F%$#ing piece of Sh%$ legislation, either the original, or the renewal.

OK, This Could Be Big

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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has vacated the lower court ruling which upheld the law.

While this is not an injunction, it does appear that the court is very dubious of the claims by state government:

Signaling that it will tolerate “no voter disenfranchisement,” a divided state Supreme Court is sending the dispute over Pennsylvania’s new voting law back to a lower court to decide whether the state is doing enough to get photo ID cards to voters who need them.

 In a 4-2 ruling issued Tuesday, the high court ordered Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr., who upheld the law in August, to file a supplemental opinion on whether the alternate-ID programs set up by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and state election officials are providing the “liberal access” to ID cards that the legislature intended.

 “If they do not, or if Commonwealth Court is not still convinced in its predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the commonwealth’s implementation of a voter identification requirement . . . that court is obligated to enter a preliminary injunction,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion.

The justices gave Simpson until Oct. 2 – just five weeks before the presidential election – to decide.

So, it appears that they are demanding affirmative proof that the state has set up its voter ID program properly.

I find it highly unlikely that they will be able to show this.

Of course, it is concerning that they basically kicked it down the road until October 2.

It’s a clusterf%$#, and I would argue that this is by design. The goal is to keep blacks and Hispanics from voting.

Yet Another Person Disenfranchised by the ‘Phants

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer’s dad:

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” revealed Tuesday that the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts will prevent his own father, a veteran, from casting a ballot this fall in Pennsylvania.

“I have a problem,” Cramer said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “My dad, a vet, won’t be allowed to vote in Pa. because he does not drive, he is elderly, and can’t prove his citizenship.”

That would mean Cramer’s father is one of nearly 760,000 voters, or about 9 percent of Pennsylvanians who regularly participate in elections, who the state said does not carry a state-issued photo identification. Despite that alarming statistic, a Republican Pennsylvania judge approved the law last month, saying that voters still have time to obtain their ID cards.

So now Republicans are pissing off hysterical white dudes.

Isn’t that their base?

Good News Out of Florida

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Federal Judge Robert Hinkle has announced that if the Appeals court remands or dismisses the state of Florida’s appeal, he will issue a permanent injunction against their voter suppression law:

A federal judge said Wednesday he would permanently remove harsh restrictions on third-party voter registration groups that have handicapped registration efforts in Florida this year. U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle said he would grant a motion to permanently remove the restrictions once he receives confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case (the state of Florida has agreed to dismiss their appeal).

Hopefully, this will happen in the rest of the states that are trying to people from voting while black.

An Update from Obama’s Gulag

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Looks like those military tribunals are not going as well as expected, so now they are trying to ensure that effective and vigorous representation by counsel is impossible:

In a federal court hearing that fully disclosed the deepening level of distrust between the military officers who run the Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the volunteer lawyers who represent the detainees there, the presiding judge reacted with obvious skepticism to the military’s new move to curb those lawyers’ activities there.

………

As the hearing unfolded, a government lawyer suggested darkly that detainees’ lawyers have brought unspecified “contraband” into their meetings with clients at the Naval prison, and argued that intensifying activities in prosecuting war crimes cases there are raising new security fears among military officers, with many more lawyers in their midst. Answering those expressions of distrust, lawyers for detainees countered that the government cannot be trusted to keep its word even if it promises not to interfere with legal representation; they cited shifting details of lawyer curbs as well as the government’s more fully expressed doubts that some of the detainees have any remaining right to a lawyer.

“‘Counsel visits [to Guantanamo] are a burden on the resources and manpower of Guantanamo Bay to provide accommodations for counsel and on security personnel to ensure the safety of counsel and their good behavior as well,” Justice Department attorney James J. Gilligan said at the hearing. In turn, one of the lawyers for the detainees, New York attorney Rebecca Briggs, contended that “these limitations [on counsel’s access] that are being added in footnotes [in government access rules] just highlight the fact that their assurances to yield their discretion responsibly cannot be taken at face value, unfortunately.”

When the rabid right wing rants that Barack Obama wants to create some sort of Soviet style totalitarian state, they miss the fact that Obama has already done so, but he hasn’t expanded it beyond Muslims ……… yet.

Here is an Interesting Case

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An appeals court has reinstated a case against the South Burlington, VT jail for slavery, for forcing inmates in pretrial detention to do hard labor:

A man who claimed he was forced to do manual labor while detained pending trial can proceed with claims against the state of Vermont under the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.

In an opinion on Friday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a lower court wrongly denied Finbar McGarry a chance to argue that he was forced, against his will and under threat, to work in a prison laundry.

………

For six weeks, McGarry said he was forced to work three days a week for up to 14 hours at a time washing other inmates’ laundry at a pay of 25 cents an hour.

The work was hot, unsanitary and resulted in his getting an infection in his neck, McGarry said. If he refused to work, McGarry said prison officials threatened to send him to “the hole,” where inmates were confined for 23 hours a day.

………

His lawsuit, which he filed himself, asked for $11 million in damages.

In dismissing the case, U.S. District Judge Garvan Murtha in Brattleboro, Vermont, ruled that the state was immune from McGarry’s claims because he had failed to show that the prison work was sufficiently akin to African slavery.

Appeals judges Robert Katzmann, Barrington Parker and Richard Wesley, however, disagreed with the judge’s reading of the 13th Amendment, which was enacted in 1865.

“The Amendment was intended to prohibit all forms of involuntary labor, not solely to abolish chattel slavery,” the opinion, drafted by judge Parker, said.

More broadly, the appeals court said Vermont could not treat people in custody pending trial the same way it treats convicted prisoners, such as compelling them to participate in work programs designed to rehabilitate inmates.

The Supreme Court has recognized that you cannot treat people in pretrial detention the same as people who are serving a sentence, and if this stands, this will make a major change in the operation our prison industrial complex.

Fabulous!!!

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The Democratic Party has decided to place a marriage equality plank in the party platform:

The Democratic Party platform drafting committee approved on Sunday language endorsing same-sex marriage in addition to other pro-LGBT positions as part of the Democratic Party platform, according to two sources familiar with the drafting process.

Retiring gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who sits on the committee, told the Washington Blade on Monday that the 15-member panel unanimously backed the inclusion of a marriage equality plank after a national hearing over the weekend in Minneapolis, in which several witnesses testified in favor of such language.

“I was part of a unanimous decision to include it,” Frank said. “There was a unanimous decision in the drafting committee to include it in the platform, which I supported, but everybody was for it.”

Frank emphasized that support for marriage equality is a position that has been established for the Democratic Party, from the president, who endorsed marriage equality in May, to House Democratic lawmakers who voted to reject an amendment reaffirming the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this month.

There is a lesson to be learned here, if you relentlessly hound Barack Obama, protest his fund raisers, confront his contributors, and organize a donation boycott, then he will EVENTUALLY he’ll do the right thing.

Today’s Civil Rights Heroes

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No, this is not intentional, just very apropos!

The Muppets. Seriously:

The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors. Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD. (http://www.glaad.org/)

You know, it’s a never a good idea to f%$# with the Muppets.  When you f%$# with the (what the hell is Gonzo anyway?) you get the horns.

H/t Think Progress.

Kafka, Obama Style

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The prosecution in the Bradley Manning Wikileaks trial the claims to have proof that he was aiding the enemy, a crime that carries the death penalty, but is refusing to produce any evidence”

The US government claims to have proof that Bradley Manning, the WikiLeaks suspect, knowingly passed state secrets to a location where it was bound to be obtained by enemy groups, a military court in Maryland has heard.

Captain Joe Morrow, a member of the five-strong prosecution team assigned to the case, said that the government would show at court martial that Manning had knowingly “aided the enemy” – the most serious of the 22 charges facing the soldier that carries the death penalty. Morrow said the evidence would show that Manning sent the information to a “very definite place” that he knew was used by the enemy.

He did not mention al-Qaida, though the terrorist network has been explicity named by the prosecution in previous hearings.

The insistence by the US government that it can prove Manning had actual knowledge that the WikiLeaks dump would be used by enemy groups was instantly disputed by the lead defence lawyer, David Coombs. He demanded that the government produce the evidence to which it was alluding.

“We haven’t seen any evidence that the government has provided by discovery that supports any knowledge that the information would be obtained by the enemy,” he said.

Note that if the court accepts this, to quote the ACLU, “the threat of criminal prosecution hangs over any service member who gives an interview to a reporter, writes a letter to the editor, or posts a blog on the internet. In its zeal to throw the book at Manning, the government has so overreached that its ‘success’ would turn thousands of loyal soldiers into criminals.”

I believe that this is one of the goals of this prosecution.  When you define laws this broadly, every is a criminal, and so “troublemakers” can be dealt with.

The Good Guys Beat the Borg (For Once)

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Specifically, Wikileaks has won a case against Visa for cutting off their credit card donations:

The Reykjavík District Court has ruled that Valitor, formerly known as VISA Iceland, violated contract laws by blocking credit card donations to Wikileaks, according to a press release posted on the whistleblowers’ Twitter account.

The court also ordered that the donation gateway should be reopened within 14 days otherwise Valitor will be forced to pay a fine of $6,200 daily. Valitor CEO Vidar Thorkellsson told Bloomberg, however, that the company would appeal the ruling. He declined to comment further.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said “This is a significant victory against Washington’s attempt to silence WikiLeaks. We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it’s done outside of the rule of law its doubly wrong. One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

Most Transparent Administration Ever

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Have you heard the latest? The FDA spied on outside critics in an attempt to find out who were the whistleblowers.

The f%$#ing F f%$#ing D f%$#ing A was engaged in a f%$#ing witch hunt and coverup?

Un-f%$#ing-believable:

A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.
What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.
Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.’s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and “defamatory” information about the agency.
F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical devices.
While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications, but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.
The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.
The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter dispute lasting years between the scientists and their bosses at the F.D.A. over the scientists’ claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation.
A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists’ medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed “a substantial and specific danger to public safety.”

There is a saying, “A fish rots from the head,” and this is completely in line with the Obama administration’s jihad against whistle blowers.

Well, This is a Surprise

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Seriously, I am surprised that Egyptian President-Elect Mohamed Morsi has announced that he will appointing a woman and a Christian to vice-presidency positions:

Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, will appoint a woman as one of his vice presidents and a Christian as another, his policy adviser told CNN.

“For the first time in Egyptian history — not just modern but in all Egyptian history — a woman will take that position,” Ahmed Deif told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “And it’s not just a vice president who will represent a certain agenda and sect, but a vice president who is powerful and empowered and will be taking care of critical advising within the presidential Cabinet.”

I think that a deal has been cut between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, because we also saw the military’s power to make warrantless detentions rolled back.

Some sorts of reassurances must have been made.

Hopefully, this is a good thing.

I’m Surprised

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It turns out that the Egyptian Generals decided not to steal the presidential elections. My guess is that they decided that reducing presidential authority, as well as disbanding parliament was enough:

As his supporters in Tahrir Square were chanting on Sunday for the end of military rule in Egypt, the country’s president-elect, Mohamed Morsi, had glowing words for none other than the army, saying he regarded it with a “love in my heart that only God knows.”

Mr. Morsi’s remarks, during his first address to the nation after his victory was announced, were an acknowledgment of his new, changed role. He had gone from being a representative of a banned Islamist group to the leader of a nation and its public’s chief negotiator with the military generals who assumed power after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

As the first freely elected president of Egypt, Mr. Morsi has a historic opportunity, but he faces a litany of challenges that could prevent him from becoming more than just a figurehead. He will have to spar with the generals, who, just after the election, stripped much of the power from the presidency, and he must overcome the doubts of those who chose his opponent — nearly half of the voters — and millions more who did not vote.

Mr. Morsi will also have to convince Egyptians that he represents more than just the narrow interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and to soothe fears among many that his true goal is to bind the notion of citizenship itself more closely to Islam.

I’m thinking that there was a lot pressure put on the generals to accept this from inside of and outside of Egypt, and they blinked.

New Protests at Tahrir Square

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And I still don’;t expect any pro-democracy actions to be taken by our government, because, after all, the Egyptians buy our weapons, not Russian weapons:

Tens of thousands have gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against a decision by the ruling military council to assume new powers.

The protests were called by the Muslim Brotherhood, as it claims its candidate won last weekend’s presidential poll.

His rival, former PM Ahmed Shafiq, also says he has won.

This Ain’t Good

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The Egyptian Army has blockaded parliament:

Egypt’s military rulers moved to consolidate power Friday on the eve of the presidential runoff election, shutting down the Islamist-led Parliament, locking out lawmakers and seizing the sole right to issue laws even after a new head of state takes office.
The generals effectively abandoned their previous pledge to cede power to a civilian government by the end of the month, prolonging the increasingly tortuous political transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year. The power play has also darkened the prospects that Egypt, the most populous Arab state and one that historically has had tremendous influence on the direction of the region, might quickly emerge as a model of democracy for the Middle East.
Their moves, predicated on a court ruling on Thursday and announced with little fanfare by the state news media, make it likely that whoever wins the presidential race will — at least at first — compete with the generals for power and influence. The military counsel also indicated through the official news media that it planned to issue a new interim constitution and potentially select its own panel to write a permanent charter. The generals have already sought permanent protections for their autonomy and political power.

Additionally, there are indications that the military is preparing to engage in massive voter fraud on behalf of the Mubarak hack running for President:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsy is tempering forecasts of victory in Egypt’s presidential election with a warning that vote rigging typical of the Hosni Mubarak era may hand victory to Ahmed Shafik, the deposed leader’s last prime minister.

On the eve of the run-off, Morsy, 60, hopes a big turnout of voters worried about a revival of the old regime will prevent that outcome and make him Egypt’s first Islamist president.

But after a court ruling by judges appointed under Mubarak dissolved a new parliament in which the Brotherhood was the main force, momentum appears to have ebbed away from Morsy, reflecting a broader sense that a political transition which had brought his movement dramatic gains is no longer going its way.

What a surprise, the generals like running things.

With a real civilian government, their control of much of the economy would be at risk, and the the gravy train would end.