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Britain enacts blanket ban on protests
The Home Office announced the blanket ban on all marches in five London boroughs for 30 days starting from September 2, the Independent reported.
Home Secretary Theresa May banned all marches in Tower Hamlets, east London, and four neighbouring boroughs in the capital for a 30-day period following a request from Scotland Yard Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin.
The move comes amid fears of violence and disorder if the marches were allowed to go ahead.
“Having carefully considered the legal Read more…
Girl Scout Cookies On Their Own Front Lawn
Once upon a time in America, if you were a couple of little girls and you wanted to sell lemonade or girl scout cookies at a little stand in front of your home nobody would give you any problems. In fact, most of the people passing by would have smiled and would have seen it as a sign of hope that the next generation was being so industrious. Well, that is not the way that it works anymore. Today, all across America nightmarish control freaks are seeking to micromanage every single aspect of our lives. That includes banning young girls from selling girl scout cookies on their own front lawns. Yes, you read that correctly. In Missouri of all places, two young girls named Abigail and Caitlin Mills were recently taught a lesson on how to be good citizens in the emerging totalitarian control grid going up all over the United States. After a complaint from a neighbor, the city of Hazelwood cracked down on the two girls and told them that they must shut down the girl scout cookie stand that they had been operating in their front yard.
So were the girls doing anything wrong? No. There are very few things that are more Read more…
US Internet censorship fight falling short: report
WASHINGTON — State Department efforts to combat Internet censorship in China and other countries have fallen short and funding for the drive should be shifted to another US agency, a Senate committee report says.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report sharply criticizes the State Department for being slow in spending money allocated by Congress for Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT).
The report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, recommends that the funding be given instead to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and other US radio and TV networks.
The report is to be released on Tuesday, the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to Read more…
FBI can obtain phone records without oversight, Justice Dept memo claims
Without court oversight, the nation’s top law enforcement agency can obtain domestic records of telephone conversations made to international receivers, the Justice Department claimed recently.
“[The Office of Legal Counsel] agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency,” the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a recent report by McClatchy Newspapers.
The claim put forth in the document released to McClatchy seemed to indicate that the Obama administration has continued the previous administration’s policies.
The Bush administration maintained that the FBI needed such policing powers in order to stop possible terrorism. Critics of the FBI’s surveillance program stated that the tactic was frequently applied in abusive manners.
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told McClatchy that the OLC’s disclosure that Read more…
Germany deploys contactless national ID
Germany began issuing the new contactless national ID to citizens in November. The program is one of the first contactless-only electronic ID programs. It also employs a unique privacy scheme to protect cardholders.
National ID cards aren’t new in the European Union and many countries use smart card technology to power the credentials. But the contactless German ID is a bit of a departure from what other countries have done and thus necessitated a slightly different take on existing contactless smart cards.
The country expects to issue 60 million cards over the next 10 years to replace existing paper documents, says Rudy Stroh, executive vice president of the ID business and country manager for Germany at NXP Semiconductors. NXP is providing the chip–its 128-kilobyte SmartMX secure contactless microcontroller–for the German e-ID.
“The contactless technology used in the e-ID enables strong privacy protection,” Stroh says.
The first difference between the German ID card and other contactless smart cards is that is can only be read from four centimeters, whereas most other cards can be read from Read more…
PATRIOT Act extension would add judicial oversight
Bill would shift next extension away from election year
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced legislation to the Senate Wednesday that would extend expiring provisions of the controversial PATRIOT Act.
“Congress now faces a deadline to take action on the expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act,” Sen. Leahy said in a statement. “The USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011 will preserve law enforcement and intelligence techniques that are set to expire on February 28, 2011, and extend them to December 2013.”
The legislation, titled “The USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011,” would extend the roving wiretap provisions, the “lone wolf” measure and the “library records” provision. The provisions allow authorities to conduct surveillance without identifying the person or location to be wiretapped, permits surveillance of “non-US” persons who are not affiliated with a terrorist group, and lets the government gain access to “any tangible thing” during investigations, respectively.
The bill also increases judicial oversight of government surveillance powers, such as requiring authorities to list the facts that justify obtaining a court order and raising the standards for gaining permission to conduct wiretaps.
“While this bill makes important changes to the Patriot Act to increase oversight of its powers, it unfortunately allows many dangerous provisions to continue,” Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel, said. Read more…
Representative McCarthy Releases Text of Gun Control Bill
Following the tragic Tucson, Arizona shooting, lawmakers quickly reacted by announcing their intent to strengthen gun control laws. On Sunday, Representative Carolyn McCarthy released the draft of the bill that she is planning to introduce to Congress next week, one that would outlaw high-capacity magazines.
Politico reports, “Representative Carolyn McCarthy’s (D-N.Y.) bill also goes further than the assault weapon ban that would expire in 2004, outlawing the sale or transfer of clips that hold more than ten rounds, even those obtained before the law takes effect.”
Likewise, it “closes a loophole in the expired assault weapon ban that let gun owners buy high-capacity magazines made before the ban took effect in 1994.”
Those who violate the provisions of the bill face a possible penalty of up to 10 years.
McCarthy explains of the bill, “The only purpose for the existence of these devices is to be able to shoot as many people as possible as quickly as possible. There is no reason that these devices should be available to the general public.”
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has already stated that he will introduce a Read more…
Freedom in decline worldwide: US report
Global freedom declined for a fifth straight year in 2010 as authoritarian regimes dug in worldwide and crime and unrest plagued democracies like Mexico, a US watchdog said Thursday.
In “Freedom in the World 2011” the Washington-based Freedom House said it had documented the longest continuous period of decline since it began compiling the annual index nearly 40 years ago.
“A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains,” the group said.
“Authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world,” it said.
The recent decline “threatens gains dating to the post-Cold War era in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the former Soviet bloc.”
The report classifies countries as free, partly free or not free based on individuals’ ability to exercise political and civil rights, taking into account political systems and other factors like war and crime.
Mexico, which along with Ukraine, Djibouti and Ethiopia saw its status decline, Read more…
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