Budding industry?

Do you know how easy it would be to make a pocket faraday cage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage )?

Hell, just make a tin foil hat for your iPhone and you’re good to go.

#21 | J sub D | February 12th, 2010 at 2:06 pm

You actually think the citizens will be able to avail themselves of the technology?

That’s so cute.

I’m shocked, shocked! that you have so little faith in our betters.

It’s a nationwide problem. HMO’s such as CMS run the prisons healthcare. It’s not uncommon for CMS to request that wardens release sick prisoners, so they avoid the expense of surgeries, chemo, etc. Once the prisoner recovers, the medical parole is revoked and they’re back in the joint.

Google ‘CMS prison death’ for a horrifying education on government-controlled health care…

Whether or not one has a privacy interest when one is going out and about in public in such fashion as to be visible to anyone nearby, one does have a privacy interest if one chooses to travel in such fashion as to be obscured from outside view (which is perfectly legal), or if one is traveling within an area of private property (such as a farm or corporate campus). Arbitrarily collecting info on people’s whereabouts would imply wanton disregard for whether or not those people were exercising any privacy interest in that information.

Notice how the Department of Injustice’s sharks get around the Fourth Amendment by saying that the phone company’s own records are obviously not the customer’s and, therefore, the phone company can do what it wants with them. Technically, they’re right. My question is this: If I started a phone company and made agreements with my customers that their phone records would be confidential and could not be released to any entity without the their permission, how long do you think it would be before the government tried to shut down my company if I didn’t comply with their request for any of my customers’ records? (Of course, since I would need a government license to even start my company, you can see how easy it would be for the government to pull my license if I didn’t “cooperate” with them.)

More glaring proof that we’re now in the 2nd year of a third term of the Bush Administration.

| Boyd Durkin | February 12th, 2010 at 4:00 pm

if there’s no expectation of privacy for us then there’s none for government officials…

On Bizzaro World maybe, but here we know there is a different set of rules for our government overlords. Try to remember your place.

Actually, I have come to believe that we are living in ‘Bizarro World’. We left the sane, normal one behind a few pieces of kryptonite ago.

#41 Boyd Durkin

If national security trumps citizen rights…

I’d argue that is a nation that should cease to exist.

I’m not ready to argue a blanket statement like that. For example, we surrender some 4th Amendment rights when we permit ourselves to be scanned for weapons or bombs before entering a government building such as a courthouse. Does the government not have the right to demand that?

Of course, we also permit ourselves to be scanned for weapons when we board an airplane full of people, but the answer there would be to get the government out of the transportation business and leave the searches up to the airline.

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/

Wasn’t the whole premise of the article though that the Michigan Governor was finally doing the right thing specifically because as a lame duck she didn’t care about the votes :)

If national security trumps citizen rights…

I’d argue that is a nation that should cease to exist. In other words, they are securing a nation not worth securing. However; with apologies to Abe Lincoln I believe today’s state would gladly put every citizen to death if it meant securing the state.

Michigan can’t cut its welfare budgets, cut its education budget or even just release all non-violent drug offenders instead of commuting elderly murderers?

Follow the votes and you’ll see what can (and cannot) be cut. You were thinking too much like a leader and not a politician.

Elderly murderers of peasants don’t count to politicians that much. Make no mistake no cop or government official killer will be released.

if there’s no expectation of privacy for us then there’s none for government officials…

On Bizzaro World maybe, but here we know there is a different set of rules for our government overlords. Try to remember your place.

It doesnt have to be that way. The governor could ask: is this an old person, do they seem like they are no longer violent, do they have somewhere to go, etc, and just sign the papers. You could do thousands.

#27 | witless chum |
“We also call ourselves the home of the brave and wet our collective pants about terrorists.”

Big time thumbs up for you two.

Then the only extra cost would be picking up the tab for elderly murderers who have loving families able to provide for them without any subsidies. I expect that is a pretty small set of people.