Red Hat, Blue Hat, Which Hat, No Hat

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern.
They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
Daniel Webster

Another of those infamous political discussions at the premier writer's site, Absolute Write, forced me to spend some time thinking about the differences between political groups, particularly those here in the US.

The political narrative in the US is between the left and the right, liberals (or progressives) and conservatives, or as I prefer to put it, the nanny state and the daddy state.

CISPA House Debate Starts Tomorrow

Author's Note: If you haven't been keeping up with CISPA, here are two earlier Tireless Agorist posts about CISPA: CISPA Keynotes Cybersecurity Week and Who's Buying CISPA and Selling Us Out?

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The ACLU is asking that you contact your representative today because tomorrow the House of Representatives will open debate tomorrow on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, including more than 40 potential amendments. The first link above includes a lookup for your representative's phone number and even a sample script for the phone call.

Have you made that phonecall yet? Don't disappoint the ACLU, Tim Berners-Lee, Ron Paul, this Tireless Aorist, and a large group of other people. Go make your call, then come back and read what those people, and others, have to say about CISPA.

Drones Coming Home to Roost

Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird's-eye view that's too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.

Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.

The Federal Aviation Administration is gearing up to advance the widespread use of remotely piloted aircraft. By the fall of 2015, Congress wants the agency to integrate remotely piloted aircraft, also referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles and commonly called drones, throughout U.S. airspace.

Jury Nullification Still Legal

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
In celebration of a recent decision that it's still legal to discuss jury nullification, I'll take this window of opportunity to dedicate a blog post to the topic. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood determined that it's perfectly legitimate to encourage jurors to vote their conscience, even when that conflicts with the letter of the law. More specifically, she found that distributing pamphlets about jury nullification is not jury tampering, even in front of a courthouse.

Jurors have the authority to judge the law and may vote to acquit a defendant who is guilty of doing something that should not be a crime.

Who's Buying CISPA and Selling Us Out?

Congress is currently considering CISPA – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act – a bill that purports to protect the United States from “cyber threats” but would in fact create a gaping loophole in all existing privacy laws. If CISPA passes, companies could vacuum up huge swaths of data on everyday Internet users and share it with the government without a court order. I oppose CISPA, and I’m calling on Congress to reject any legislation that: Uses dangerously vague language to define the breadth of data that can be shared with the government. Hands the reins of America’s cybersecurity defenses to the NSA, an agency with no transparency and little accountability. Allows data shared with the government to be used for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity. Join me in opposing this bill by posting this statement on your own page and using this online form to send a letter to Congress against CISPA.

For those who haven't yet read my previous column, here's a brief analysis from CNET. Others can skip ahead to Who's Selling Us Out?

CISPA Keynotes Cybersecurity Week

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), H.R. 3523, is Congress' most recent incarnation of the SOPA/PIPA battle that the Internet community fought and won handily in January of this year.

Congress is set to act on cybersecurity legislation that has been making its way through committees in both chambers for several years. The House is set to vote on these bills during the week of April 23, dubbed "Cybersecurity Week." The Senate will take action soon after.

The House is expected to kick off Cybersecurity week by taking up HR 3523, a bill sponsored by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.).

The House Intelligence Committee approved the bill in a secret session held one day after the bill was introduced and without a single public hearing on the legislation.

The Rogers bill creates a sweeping "cybersecurity exception" to every single federal and state law, including key privacy laws---the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Wiretap Act, the Privacy Act—allowing private companies holding our private communications to share them with each other, with the National Security Agency (NSA), and with other intelligence and defense agencies, and all other agencies of the federal government.

...under Rogers, once your personal information is in the hands of the government, all bets are off. It can be used for any national security purpose, including to track patterns of communications to decide whether to seek authorization to wiretap you. In can be used to prosecute you for any crime, provided an intelligence agency also finds at least a significant national security or cyber security purpose for the information.

Where in the World is Ron Paul?

... and what's Wolf Blitzer doing in that tire swing?

On April 4, FOX Nation asked "Where in the World is Ron Paul?" They weren't looking very hard. Ron Paul is all over the place, and he's drawing crowds the other Republican candidates only dream about.

White Male Privilege

It must be nice to be a baby boomer heterosexual white man.
During an online discussion about voting, after I sarcastically recommended the lesser of two evils theory, I got this clever non-sequiter dropped in my lap.

It must be nice to be a baby boomer heterosexual white man.

My reply, although pointed, was far too brief.

Actually, it sucks. We can't blame our failures on the inequities in the system and postulate that if only we get the right people into political office they'll fix everything. We have to face the stark reality that the One Percent's idea of "equality" is to destroy the "privileged" middle class so that all the ninety-nine percent are equally disadvantaged and dependent on their largess, rather than removing the roadblocks that allow everyone to compete with those who are politically protected and achieve all they're capable of achieving.

My concept of equality does not mean we're all equally powerless to do anything without permission from the state and grateful for whatever paltry portion of our own efforts they deign to let us keep.

Our Crumbling Infrastructure

We Americans today have been a lot like a generation who's inherited our grandparents' mansion. People drive by going "nice house," but when you go inside it, it's falling apart.
Stephen Flynn
An economy runs on infrastructure, and America is no different. Energy and fresh water must be available wherever it's needed, and waste of all kinds must be removed to maintain a healthy environment. Roads, bridges, waterways, aviation and transit systems keep people and products moving. Dams and levees are critical to taming mother nature's propensity to provide too much water in one instance, too little in another.

And America's infrastructure is falling apart, as Pew Research reported back in 2008.

The numbers are staggering. More than one in four of America's nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The Homebrew Production Model

In earlier columns in this series, we've explored technologies that promise to challenge mass production and distribution of goods, much as decentralized arts have begun to challenge the major media outlets and local farming is becoming a nascent threat to factory farming; technology that will soon be as readily available to the local craftsman as farming implements are to the local farmer.

Both an ecological and economic case can be made for the wastefulness of the current production-push model of goods creation. Making cheap, disposable goods centrally and distributing them globally in a never-ending cycle uses considerably more resources and energy than crafting durable, repairable goods for a smaller geographic area. As with produce, the hidden costs of socialized infrastructure account for a considerable portion of the supposed economic advantages of mass production.

The counter-argument can be made that only centralized production lines can produce many goods, such as today's sophisticated electronic consumer goods. To continue down the path toward a more decentralized economy, new models of decentralized production will be necessary. Fortunately, some models have already shown themselves to be viable, and others offer great promise.