This is an excellent summary of the recent revelations of the massive surveillance by our government on us, it's citizens. Maureen Dowd explains below why this is an absurd excuse for violating our privacy rights, without cause

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

Following the Money Trail: Telecoms and ISPs Feed the Secret State's Surveillance Machine

"Follow the money."

And why not. As the interface between state and private criminality, following the money trail is oxygen and combustible fuel for rooting out corruption in high places: indelible signs left behind like toxic tracks by our sociopathic masters.

After all, there's nothing quite like exposing an exchange of cold, hard cash from one greedy fist to another to focus one's attention on the business at hand.

And when that dirty business is the subversion of the American people's right to privacy, there's also nothing quite like economic self-interest for ensuring that a cone of silence descends over matters best left to the experts; a veritable army of specialists squeezing singular advantage out of any circumstance, regardless of how dire the implications for our democracy.

In light of this recommendation researcher Christopher Soghoian, deploying the tools of statistical analysis and a keen sense of outrage, reaffirmed that "Internet service providers and telecommunications companies play a significant, yet little known role in law enforcement and intelligence gathering."

That the American people have been kept in the dark when it comes to this and other affairs of state, remain among the most closely-guarded open secrets of what has euphemistically been called the "NSA spying scandal."

The persuasive power of false confessions

The APS Observer magazine has a fantastic article on the power of false confessions to warp our perception of other evidence in a criminal case to the point where expert witnesses will change their judgements of unrelated evidence to make it fit the false admission of guilt.

We tend to think that no-one would confess to a crime that they didn't commit but there are numerous high profile cases where this has happened and the article notes that "because of advances in DNA evidence, the Innocence Project has been able to exonerate more than 200 people who had been wrongly convicted, 49 of whom had confessed to the crime we now know they didn’t commit."

As a result of some of the early discoveries of false confessions, there is now a growing amount of research on what personal and situational factors trigger false confessions.

Warning: some graphic content

Click
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Extraordinary Rendition: The CIA's Worst-Kept Secret

Kidnap subject. Strip off his clothes and dress him in a tracksuit. Blindfold and shackle him. Force headphones over his ears. Fly him to an unknown location to be interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned. Repeat.

This is the practice of "extraordinary rendition," and the experience of 35-year-old U.K. resident Binyam Mohamed on his journey home to London from Pakistan in July 2002. He was kidnapped to Morocco, where he was held for 18 months and tortured repeatedly.

Report Shows 70% of California Public Universities Violate Speech Laws

By State Senator Leland Yee

While serving in the Assembly and the Senate, I have proudly authored a number of laws to protect student speech rights and provide greater transparency at California school campuses.

AB 2581 (2006) made California the first state in the nation to specifically prohibit censorship of college student press and explicitly granted free speech rights to students. SB 1370 (2008) further protects school employees from retaliation for assisting students in exercising such speech rights.

Although California may lead the nation in providing legal protections for student speech rights, a report released this week showed nearly 70 percent of our public universities are violating state law or the US Constitution through policies restricting free expression.

9th Circuit Widens Split on Rights of Independent Contractors

Tresa Baldas
The National Law Journal
November 30, 2009

The federal courts were already divided over the rights of independent contractors to sue for discrimination. The split widened this month when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that a doctor whose contract was terminated after a hospital learned of his sickle cell anemia can sue under the Rehabilitation Act.

The 9th Circuit on Nov. 19 reversed a lower court ruling, which concluded that the Rehabilitation Act covers only employer-employee relationships and not claims by an independent contractor. "[T]here is no need to 'extend' the Rehabilitation Act; its language is broad enough to cover employees and independent contractors alike," the appeals court said.

Related: 9th Circuit's Baseball Ruling Pumps Up Computer Privacy

Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned

By David Kravets November 25, 2009 | 10:27 am |

The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrows the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August ruling that federal prosecutors went too far when seizing 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 9-2 decision offered Miranda-style guidelines to prosecutors and judges on how to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights while conducting computer searches.

We couldn't have done it without you!

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, we wanted to stop and take a moment to express our gratitude for all you do for the ACLU.

This year, you and the entire ACLU online community have taken action on a host of issues in every state across the country. We hope you’ll take a moment and watch a quick video about some of the civil liberties battles you have helped the ACLU fight -- and win -- in 2009.

ACLU Launches MUCH NEEDED DotRights Campaign

My friends at the ACLU, with special thanks to Nicole Ozer, the Norther California branch Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director, have launched an exciting, and what I consider to be an incredibly important campaign called "DotRights".

The campaign was launched yesterday with an ENORMOUS task in front of it: both educating the public about our right to control our data on the Internet and throughout our evolving cyberspace reality, as well as the concrete steps we need to take to protect our privacy rights. And as the campaign notes, some fairly broad rights were granted - though its intent is rarely followed - to each and every one of us by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.

[...]

For anyone that ever reads this blog you probably already are aware of the myriad of ways in which companies and government agencies take advantage of both a lax legal landscape that allows massive amounts of our personal data to be collected and sold simply based on our browsing habits...and the lack of consumer understanding of this growing business practice.

Think behavioral marketing, think Google books, think Facebook, think the coming smart grid, think locational tracking, think government surveillance, and so on, and so forth. The list is becoming infinitely long as today's information economy grows and evolves...which is precisely the point of the ACLU'S DotsRights effort.

Check out this particularly useful tool on the site...as it takes you through step by step how your data can be used for purposes other than what you want it to be...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

ACLU-Sacramento condemns ‘hate crime' against Temple Beth Shalom, deplores violation of rights

SACRAMENTO – The ACLU of Sacramento released a comment Wednesday regarding the "hate crime" at Temple Beth Shalom in Sacramento. Jim Updegraff, Sacramento chair of the board of directors, commented:

"The Sacramento County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union deplores and condemns the desecration of Temple Beth Shalom on Tuesday. This hate crime occurred on the 71st anniversary of the Kristallnacht program when Nazi thugs destroyed most all the synagogues and Jewish businesses in Germany and Austria, murdered Jews, and sent thousands of Jewish men to concentration camps.

"This action was the beginning of the genocide of European Jews. Only a person(s) with a sick twisted mind would ‘celebrate' this horrific event by defacing a synagogue with Nazi symbols.

"Certainly one of the important civil rights we enjoy is the ability to attend a place of worship of our choice and to peaceably worship without fear of government or private adverse actions. The congregation of Temple Beth Shalom has had this right violated by a hate-monger(s). The perpetrator(s) will have to face the consequences of this action."