Looks like the power brokers in DC are squirming in the hot seat today. According to government rules Congress and some of their staffers are required to disclose their financial information publicly. This is an effort to make sure your elected officials and those they employ are not corrupt.

According to this article from The Hill -

Furious senior House aides are demanding committee action against a website that has posted their bank account numbers, signatures, home addresses and children’s names that are included in financial disclosure documents.

Some are demanding legal action against the website LegiStorm, which since February has been posting congressional documents online as a way to increase transparency in government. Aides have brought their complaints to the House Administration Committee and the clerk of the House.

But things don’t appear to be so dire when you read the response from Legistorm -

- The U.S. Congress wrote the law that requires disclosure of personal finances to aid in the fight against public corruption.

- Congressional staffers were the ones who voluntarily filed what they did in their personal financial disclosures. In a handful of disclosures, a tiny fraction of the total, staffers included unnecessary personal details like investment account numbers and children names. Their signature is the only detail that they now most complain about that is required.

- The Congress made these documents public. It did so after a one-month review process that concluded, apparently, that nothing was wrong with their disclosure.

- Neither the House nor the Senate require any form of identification to access this information. Anybody can access it without talking to a single person and by simply entering a fake name into a computer.

- We have voluntarily gone to significant lengths and costs already to scrub the most sensitive of information released due to staffer slipups and ethics committee oversight. This includes investment account numbers and Social Security numbers. We did so without delay.

- We have voluntarily provided various security measures such as user registration and authentication, a legal warning (one that is not present on two other heavily trafficked web sites that have for years provided member of Congress disclosures), and a human response system to make sure that automated bots cannot access the data.

So, instead of simply exposing the government documents to the world (which I would have no problems with) they have gone above and beyond what is required and attempted to clean up some of the mess which the Hill is complaining about.

Every time the government proposes new intrusions into its citizens private lives we hear the supporters repeat the mantra – “If you are innocent then you don’t have anything to hide”. It is high time that we turned the tables on the people who are behind the laws and regulations that infest our daily lives. They certainly seem to be doing alot of squirming and spreading alot of FUD about LegiStorm — I wonder what they are trying to hide from us?

Ever had the feeling someone was watching you? Maybe you just tossed a wad of gum into the gutter or crushed out a cigarette. Well now you won’t have to wonder if you’ve been seen. Authorities have installed talking cameras in a park in England. Their goal is to ‘curb anti-socail behavior’.

All I can say is that George Orwell’s view of the future continues to come true. A bit slower than 1984, but still on target.

Here comes another story from Colorado. SWAT officers invade a home, with guns drawn, to drag an 11 year old off to see the doctor. Add this one to my list in a previous post and we are seeing an increasing use of police to ‘enforce’ the government’s views on parenting. Do parents have any rights left? Are we just baby sitters for the Nanny State, serving at their whim?

Joe Huffman’s post on Being treated like cattle has spurred me to collect some recent articles and break my posting silence. I am seriously questioning the direction that this country is taking. In Colorado we have a sleazy lawyer biding his time so he can steal 30% of the vacant lot a couple had bought to build their dream home on.

In Houston we have the cops testing out the use of UAVs for spying on its citizens. Then along comes the article about judges issuing warrants without probable cause for tracking cell phone locations.

We also have the government in Maryland forcing parents to have their kids immunized against their will and with the threat of jail (at the point of a gun). In Omaha a baby was ripped from its mother’s arms in order for the state to give it a blood test. It took them a week to get their child returned to them from the State mandated foster care.

To top this off I am finally convinced that our Democracy experiment in Iraq is doomed to eventual failure. Look at Pakistan, they can’t even hold their government together. Jerry Pournelle is right when he says we could have spent a fraction of the trillions that this war is costing us and had energy independence (Nuclear Reactors don’t need oil from unstable nations, nor does space based solar satellites.)

I feel like we’ve tipped over the edge and are sliding into the abyss. And I don’t see ANY presidential candidates who realize this.

From the Altavista Journal comes the latest in the fight againt cybercrime -

I am a local farmer; my wife teaches elementary school; our three children are well-adjusted, “A” students.

We go to church, work hard, and pay our bills and taxes.

We are law-abiding, responsible members of society; we have never had reason to fear the law.

On Saturday morning, Sept. 23, 2006, many police vehicles appeared in our driveway. Men in black with flak jackets ran to and around our house.

I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description. I feared there had been a murder and I was a suspect.

My wife and I were interrogated about Internet crime. We are not avid computer users; we do not even e-mail. We knew nothing of what they were speaking.

At 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 2, the chief investigator of Pittsylvania County returned our possessions and said that the wrong IP (computer) address had been identified. We would not be charged.

It appears that the local Sheriff made a mistake. I wonder if they cleaned up their mess after searching thus poor guy’s house? Did the issue him an official apology? Will they compensate him for the terror that he endured while under investigation for two weeks? Doubtful.

The 4th Amendment is pretty darn clear as to how the Government is to behave in this situation. Maybe they need a refresher course?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Remember how we warned you that the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) was just a foot in the door? They the big brother types in government wouldn’t stop until they had their ears glued to all your doors and windows? We were right. The EFF has taken a look at proposed changes to the law and come up with this chilling analysis:

By itself, this expansion of CALEA is bad enough for your privacy. But the bill gets even worse — the law’s existing privacy protective provisions are “clarified” so that they do not “override [the carrier's] … primary duty” to help law enforcement spy on you. Furthermore, carriers will be forced to temporarily store your data stream and allow law enforcement agencies to analyze it on their own time. In other words, we are supposed to trust the government with all of our online interaction and hope that they only isolate the right packets.

Its time to give Phil Zimmermann’s new project, Zphone, a try if you are a VoIP user. Switching to secure IM and chat programs would also be recommended. We went through this fight with email and PGP and won. We can do it again.

Hat Tip: Bruce Schneier

[tags]security, encryption, big brother, eavesdropping, voip, eff, privacy, security[/tags]

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today at the Chinese government’s announced intention to close down all China-based websites and blogs that are not officially registered. The plan is all the more worrying as the government has also revealed that it has a new system for monitoring sites in real time and spotting those that fail to comply.

“The Chinese authorities use this type of announcement above all to intimidate website operators and bloggers,” the press freedom organisation said. “The authorities also hope to push the most outspoken online sites to migrate abroad where they will become inaccessible to those inside China because of the Chinese filtering systems.”

Reporters Without Borders added : “Those who continue to publish under their real names on sites hosted in China will either have to avoid political subjects or just relay the Communist Party’s propaganda. This decision will enable those in power to control online news and information much more effectively.”

The new initiative was announced in a decree issued by the ministry for the information industry (MII) on 20 March, which said all China-based websites – commercial or otherwise – would have to register by 30 June, giving the complete identity of the persons responsible for the sites. According to the authorities, the aim is to control information that “endanger the country.”

According to official figures, about 75 per cent of Chinese sites have already complied with the new procedure. The Russian news agency Interfax reported that the ministry subsequently announced that a new system called “Night Crawler” (Pa Chong, in Chinese) that allows the authorities to locate and block unregistered sites would get under away at the start of June.

At the request of the authorities, the Telecom operators that host the biggest Chinese news portals informed their users that this procedure is obligatory. In May, many bloggers received e-mail messages telling them to register to avoid their blogs being declared illegal.

A China-based blogger told Reporters Without Borders on condition of anonymity that the Shanghai police recently rendered his website inaccessible because it had not been registered. He then phoned the MII to ask what he had to do in order to register, and was told that in his case it was “not worth bothering” because “there was no chance of an independent blog getting permission to publish.”

This came from Reporters Without Borders, via the Politech mailing list.

With the WA State Legislature and Congress back in full swing now is a good time to examine ways to quickly analyze their new attempts to curtail our freedom. Joe Huffman came up with a great test back in 1999, the “Jews In The Attic Test”, which asks the basic question – will this law/reglation make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death?

That pretty well sums it up for me. Take a look at the slew of new gun restrictions that the WA State Dems. want to inflict on the innocent citizens of this state and put them to the test.

Joe is also the inventor/instigator/coordinator of Boomershoot, on of the coolest annual shooting events. His blog, The View From N.Central Idaho is a good place to visit.
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