Privacy Under Attack

Privacy is Another of Those 'Quaint' Notions I Guess

Telecom Immunity
So the Telecom immunity bill passed the Senate, thanks to Hero of the Bush Revolution Harry Reid.

With just a few days until a stop-gap surveillance measure expires, the Senate finally seemed ready to acquiesce to President Bush's demand that telecommunications companies that helped him spy on Americans be let off the hook.

Meanwhile, having been betrayed for the ten thousand time on this issue by Reid, actual American hero Chris Dodd has abandoned the by-now-farcical effort to get a fair hearing in the Senate and moved on to the House, where he has some powerful allies not as yet completely corrupted by the Telecom lobby.

After failing to strip immunity from the Senate bill, Sen. Chris Dodd announced he would abandon his effort to block the bill with a filibuster, arguing that the House, which has passed an immunity-free bill, would be a better place to try to strip immunity from Congress's final piece of legislation.

"We lost every single battle we had on this bill," Dodd said on a conference call Tuesday with reporters and bloggers. "And the question is now, Can we do better with the House carrying the ball on this bill?"

Now we're likely to get shafted, though the House is showing signs of resistance to Bush's little fascist power grab.

Meanwhile, as soon as the fix was in on the Senate bill, Bush admitted that the telecom companies DID definitely spy on us, as opposed to the whole 'maybe they did, we won't admit what we know until we have blanket immunity, la la la' game they have been playing at.

Well, he finally dropped the "allegedly." President Bush at long last admitted what everyone has suspected for years -- the nation's telecommunications companies closely cooperated with the National Security Agency and his administration to implement large-scale spying on Americans.

Bush was praising the Senate for approving his long-sought update to a foreign surveillance law. Critics say the bill legalizes his warrantless wiretapping program, which was implemented outside the boundaries of the law, and frees phone and internet companies from any responsibility for violating customers' privacy.

"The senate bill also provides fair and just liability protections for companies that did the right thing and assisted in defending America, after the attacks of Sept. 11," Bush said.

The 'right thing' was violating the Fourth Amendment on a scale never before seen in the history of this country.

Riiiiight.

Sources: Raw Story
Raw Story (Bush changes tack)
Jesus' General (Hero of the Bush Revolution)

Doctors or Rats?
Which is it gonna be?

Well, Blue Cross of California (operated by an Indiana company, go Heartland Values!) has decided that they should be informants on their patients first, and practitioners of medicine second.

The state's largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients' medical coverage.

Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," including "pre-existing pregnancies."

"Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately," the letters say. The Times obtained a copy of a letter that was aimed at physicians in large medical groups.

The letter wasn't going down well with physicians.

"We're outraged that they are asking doctors to violate the sacred trust of patients to rat them out for medical information that patients would expect their doctors to handle with the utmost secrecy and confidentiality," said Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Assn.

Outraged, but not surprised, most likely.

Shocking, an insurance company that betrays its customers.

Anthony Wright, executive director of HealthAccess California, a healthcare advocacy organization, said the letter had put physicians in the "disturbing" position of having to weigh their patients' interests against a directive from the company that, in many cases, pays most of their bills.

"They are playing a game of 'gotcha' where they are trying to use their doctors against their patients' health interests," Wright said. "That's about as ugly as it gets."

Have faith in American know-how! It'll get even uglier!

Source: The LA Times

The TSA and Computers
So the Transportation Safety Administration, an oxymoronic organization if there ever was one, has decided that any brown person with a computer is a suspect. Though increasingly, they'll raid white people too, for kicks, or to steal their corporate secrets if they're traveling on business.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus announced on Thursday that the groups had filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for its invasive electronic searches at the border.

The civil-liberties groups filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to gain access to any public records on the United States' policy of questioning travelers and rifling through their electronic files at the border. Nearly two dozen residents in Northern California have complained of searches of their computers and cell phones when entering the United States, the groups stated in a press release. The groups filed a FOIA request with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol last autumn but have not received any information.

The residents claimed "they were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad," the EFF and ALC stated in a news release. "In addition, customs agents examined travelers' books, business cards collected from friends and colleagues, handwritten notes, personal photos, laptop computer files, and cell phone directories, and sometimes made copies of this information."

Naturally, from what I've read on Slashdot (and from personal conversation with a friend in the IT industry whose company has found itself on the wrong end of these illegal searches), these practices have only led to people being sneakerier about the data they carry when they travel.

Companies are increasingly creating explicit policies for employees that travel internationally so that business-sensitive information is not revealed by such border searches.

In particular, people are being issued 'blank' laptops, that is laptops with no personally identifiable information on them, that can be used to dial into a secure server at the business' home location, and access data securely.

Thus defeating the entire point of spying on these individuals. Unless you're telling me the BIG BAD SUPER SECRET TERROR network can't use encryption properly.

Source: Security Focus http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/676

Intelligent Intel Chair
So the chair of the House Intel committee has taken objection to the whole 'approve telecom immunity or we all die!!!!' ploy Bush is trying to use on the country.

Good for him. He wrote an angry letter to Bush, and it seems that this manuever has backfired in a big way on El Presidente. Check out this ending.

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

Sincerely,


Silvestre Reyes
Member of Congress
Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Source: Raw Story

A Conclusion
Offered, in its entirety and without further comment, a brief article that illustrates why giving these clowns all the power in the world is, in and of itself and without reference to abstractions or philosophical principles, a bad idea, as they are, in fact, very, very bad human beings.

A 14-day-old infant traveling here for heart surgery died at Honolulu International Airport on Friday after he, his mother and a nurse were detained by immigration officials in a locked room, a lawyer for the boy's family said.

The Honolulu medical examiner's office yesterday identified the infant as Michael Futi of Tafuna, American Samoa's largest village, which is located on the east coast of Tutuila Island. Autopsy findings have been deferred.

According to police, the child died at 5:50 a.m. It is unknown why immigration officials detained the mother, the nurse and the child.

Scott Ishikawa, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the child went into respiratory failure while in the customs office, which is located near the baggage claims area of the overseas terminal. Airport paramedics were called about 6:10 a.m., he said.

The group arrived on a Hawaiian Airlines flight that landed at 5:30 a.m.

"We were later told the baby was coming here for heart surgery," Ishikawa said.

Attorney Rick Fried said the child had come to Hawai'i from American Samoa for heart surgery.

The boy's family plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit, Fried said.

Source: The Honolulu Advertiser