I was surprised to receive an invitation from a colleague to join the quechup.com network so we can continue our [non-existent] friendship there. I figured G had sent out a notice to everyone in her address book without first removing the people she doesn’t really want to “be friends” with. I only got part of this right.
Every one in G’s address book did get an quechup.com invite, but those invites weren’t sent by G. I’ve been following up on this story since then.
The REAL ID provision was built into a must-pass appropriations bill in 2005 to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now a provision to make REAL ID permanent has been hidden in an immigration bill making its way through congress.
It is estimated that a national ID program will cost individual Americans 8 billion dollars and state governments as much as 14 billion more. Sixteen states have already voted against supporting a national ID program. Help stop REAL ID from robbing Americans of our freedom and privacy!
I just learned that the CIA has a venture capital branch. And guess what? One of the guys who runs it helped start Facebook. I particularly loved learning this little tidbit of information: when you become a Facebook member you authorize Facebook to gather information about you from Facebook and “other sources” and to share this information with “responsible corporations” Facebook has a relationship with.
What do you think about this practice? I think it’s intrusive and immoral. Leave your comment, let me know.
Mark Graber [Professor, U Maryland School of Law]
posts on Balkinization
Princeton University Professor Walter F. Murphy, “the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel,” discovered last month at an airport that he’s been placed on a terrorist watch list. One security aide asked, “”Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said.” Jump to article.
Article published in the Washington Post 2007 03 23
It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made . . . The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author’s attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.
The Justice Department’s inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue “national security letters.” It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision — demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval — to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.
Did the government have the right to examine Steven Warshak's private emails without a search warrant? Email privacy is an issue much larger than the Warshak debate. The EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] informs us that companies which offer both internet search and email storage can collect a massive amount of personal information about users . . .
