CBS News report on cyberspying school district.

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CBS News has reported on the cyberspying school district that we reported previously.

Privacy: Is it only for people doing bad things?

When businesses get big they often suck up to the authorities. Consider the ass kissing Google CEO Eric Schmidt referring to how Google keeps track of people's searches and will happily turn them over to the government. His response is: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Really? So Mr. Schmidt how many times per month do you masturbate? Clearly that is not a privacy issue any more since, if you don't want people to know about it, you shouldn't be doing it.

This contempt for privacy is bad news for Google in that is is very off-putting. At one point they fought the State for the privacy of their clients now they roll over and take it up... well, you get my point. But if they didn't want people to know that's what they are doing they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

The problem with bigness in corporations is not that they are big but that the tend to become institutions which have no common sense. They take on an ethos of their own which pushes them into the Statist camp. When people lose individual responsibility they act badly and when people act as a "group," as they do in corporations, they tend to act badly. It is the same phenomenon that we witness in mob behavior. People act badly in large groups in ways that would never do individually.

The same thing happens with the moral senses of government. Bureaucrats have no conscience because they don't act as individuals in their minds, but as cogs in the machine called government. Felix Morley wrote that "the State has no conscience, and is primarily a mechanism of material power..." It has no conscience precisely because it a collective body acting where no individual within the body feels totally responsibility. When people can pass responsibility for their actions to others they tend to act irresponsibly. The State does that and large institutions, such as corporations, can do the same thing (I recognize that corporations have a countervailing force that makes them less susceptible to the eradication of conscience—they can't compel customers without the State and they have to make a profit.)

In 2008 Schmidt argued that the reason Google rolls over is "the government has guns and we don't." But, of course, there are many ways of fighting state intrusion that doesn't require guns, such as in the courts. And that can be done in many different ways.

The war on your privacy.

I want you to do a thought experiment. In your head list some of the things you may have on your laptop that you don’t want anybody else to see.

You might immediately think of illegal things and protest. But don’t. Surely there are entirely legal items that you have on your laptop which you wish or need to keep private. Let me list some possibilities to get you going.

Do you have bank account information on your computer? Maybe you have passwords for banking sites which would allow others to transfer your funds if they got hold of them?

You might be a businessman who has classified corporate information on your laptop which, if leaked, might give a competitor an advantage over you and do severe harm.

Maybe you sat down and wrote some highly personal thoughts about aspects of your life. You might have been depressed and wrote about some suicidal thoughts. Or perhaps you wrote about how you cheated on your partner or how they cheated on you. You might have written down fantasies that you never intend to carry out.

Maybe you have some highly personal photos of yourself or your partner.

Once you have your list go to the second part of this thought experiment. How would you feel if you discovered that someone had gone through those items? Would you feel violated? Angry? Disgusted?

Remember I have stipulated that you list items where you have done nothing wrong. With that in mind would you still have highly negative feelings about someone violating your privacy in this way?

After all what kind of low-life would do that to someone? When we discover that people have actually gone through other people’s computers in this manner we would think very poorly of the person who did it. In fact we would probably call it criminal. What kind of scum would do this?

That’s easy to answer. U.S. government border nazis. Here are the facts.

Government border “agents” regularly search the contents of laptops. Now you may remember something about “reasonable cause” being involved when it comes to government searches. Not anymore. The courts have ruled that border thugs don’t need reasonable cause. They may search your lap simply because they don’t like your face.

If a border agent finds a rather attractive model with her lap top coming through he might decide to see if she has any personal photos on her laptop. He can then force her to boot up the laptop and demand that she open any files he requests including information as to her where she lives, her phone number or diaries about sexual encounters if she has them there. If he finds nude photos of her that is sufficient for him to confiscate the computer for a more thorough search -- this in spite of the fact that the photos are entirely legal.

He can then walk off with her laptop and it disappears into the bureaucratic bowels of federal agents. Now nothing illegal may be found. But when our model gets her laptop back, which can be months later, she will never know who copied her photos and passed them around. And the courts say this is all legal.

The government argues that at borders the federal thugs can do anything they want and you have no right to complain. Actually, if they can do whatever they want you have no rights whatsoever. One expert, Mark Rasch, a former head of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit, described the position of the Feds:

The consequences of the government's argument would be that they could, at the border, seize your daughter's iPod and lock her up if they thought the songs were not licensed. They could copy the entire contents of your computer, read your e-mail, medical records, communications with doctors, lawyers, or priests. They could examine deleted files, create a database of your friends and associates, and provide any or all of this information to the CIA, Interpol, the NSA, the FBI, or for that matter, the Iraqi intelligence services. All without probable cause, suspicion, or warrant, because you had the unmitigated gall to cross the border with your laptop.

And don’t think encryption will necessarily help. They also take the position that they may force you to provide the keys to open any encrypted files. In fact, I would bet that they would particularly want to investigate encrypted files.

The government contends that this device called a laptop is exactly like your suitcase. Well, perhaps it would be if you routinely kept all your private correspondence, your banking account details, private photos, and reams and reams of documentation about your life, in your suitcase. Of course you would be over the weight limits so it is unlikely you would do this.

If you have a suitcase sitting out in the open you don’t fill it with you most personal information. But your expectations are that you laptop is private. The government says that all this personal information makes no difference. After all it is reasonable to “protect” the country from . (Fill in the blank with whichever bogey man is the government scare story of the day.)

Mr. Rasch, however, points out that if “protecting the country” makes all such searches reasonable then there is no limit to what the King, I mean the government, may do. But what about flying within the country, where you never cross an international border? Remember that none of the 911 hijackers grabbed an international flight -- they were all on domestic flights. Mr Rasch writes:

A search at the border is permissible because it is "reasonable." It is "reasonable" because the government has a good reason to do it -- to protect the borders. But, just try flying domestically without being patted down and having your luggage examined. Certainly such a "search" on a domestic flight is "reasonable." Oh, and on a train or bus as well. Try entering any federal property, such as a federal office building, military facility, or courthouse. You and your belongings are subject to search, but does this give carte blanche for examining, copying, or analyzing the contents of electronic devices at any of these places? I think not.

While Mr. Rasch might not think government should have such powers remember we are dealing with the Bush Administration. And the Bush team doesn’t believe that government power is limited in any way. Bush has said that he can do anything he damn well pleases just as long as his pea brain tells him that it is for “national security.”

Banks playing cop led to Spitzer case.

Banks in the United States are no longer private businesses serving their clients. They are police agents who willingly spy on you on behalf of the federal government. This has become much worse under the presidency of George Bush. The reality is that you bank is spying on you.

Apparently that is how Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York was caught hiring prostitutes. He transferred funds to the agency that ran the prostitution service. ABC News reports that this transaction “was initially reported by a bank to the IRS, which under direction from the Justice Department, brought in the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad.”

Please remember this when you have a U.S. bank account. Any and all financial transactions can be investigated by employees at the bank who may report you to the federal government if they feel it is necessary. They need not have evidence you have actually violated any law. They just have to find something suspicious and your entire life could be turned upside-down while police agents comb through your life trying to see if they can find something warranting prosecution. Considering the overabundance of bad laws, stupid laws, vaguely worded laws, etc., if they can’t find something to charge you with then they aren’t trying.

Politicians tell you that these laws are for “evil doers” (to quote the Moron in Chief). But Mr. Spitzer, as repugnant a politician as he is, wasn’t violating the rights of anyone. He was having some sex with a hooker -- hardly something on the level of 9/11. Mr. Spitzer now faces potential criminal charges because he transferred money to pay a hooker.

This just proves that individuals who have done nothing truly criminal, in the sense of harming others, can be prosecuted and turned into media fodder because of the “know your customer” laws that turn banks into police spies. You may think it will never come to your doorstep. I suspect that Mr. Spitzer thought so as well. But when you have government this powerful and lethal acting on “tips” that come from hundreds of thousands of bank employees then you can bet more individuals will be prosecuted for minor offenses merely because their bank’s employees now cops.

Hoisted by his pitard but has he learned his lesson?

U.K. television presenter Jeremy Clarkson wanted to prove a point. And strictly speaking he did -- just not the one he intended.

In recent months England has been shocked by the systematic lose of personal data on millions of people. Inept bureaucrats now handling mountains of data on individuals as part of their fake “war on terror” -- fake because they aren’t engaging in surveillance on terrorists but on millions of innocent people.

Well, data disks with records on people seem to disappear right and left inside the Labour government. No one apparently knows who has what or where it is.

Clarkson thought the fury over these lost records was a tempest in a teacup and he set out to prove how harmless it is to have personal information in the hands of just about anyone. Poor Jeremy decided the way to prove his point was publish details about himself in a major newspaper. So he published his bank account details including his account number and sort code. And for good measure he even told people how to track down his home address.

He bragged: “All you will be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I’ve never known such a palaver about nothing.”

Clarkson wasn’t so smug when he got his next bank statement. A sum of just over $1000, £500 to be exact, had been extricated from his account and donated, on his behalf, to the charity Diabetes UK.

Of course in the world of surveillance the laws on privacy only apply to the private sector not to the State -- where they are needed the most. So when Clarkson attempted to find out who had taken the money from his account he was told that the Data Protection Act didn’t allow the bank to tell him. And they told they can’t prevent it from happening againg.

Clarkson admitted: “I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.” He wrote: “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick coctail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”

Close, Mr. Clarkson, but no cigar.

The problem isn’t just with the loss of the data. The problem is with the very collection of it.

A black day for America

Privacy International has released their ratings of how far down the road toward the surveillance society various countries have gone. The United States, which once prided itself as being a bastion of individual liberty, is now one of the worst in the world when it comes to state surveillance. Thanks, George. If you can stomach reading the entire report on our lost liberties you can do so here. Here is the world map with the color code. Read it and weep. You may enlarge it by clicking on it. Please note our friends in this special club. If anyone in D.C. took Constitutional rights seriously note only would Bush and Cheney be impeached but on trial for treason.