Time to wake up and smell the coffee... and trust me, the coffee isn't a cup you want to drink.  (Or maybe you've already developed a taste for this brew...)

I have written previously on issues of Net Neutrality, and the snowballing threats to freedom of expression and access to the Internet.

In those posts, among other references, I have pointed to the work of Lauren Weinstein, a prominent advocate of privacy and Internet freedom.

This morning's post to his Privacy Forum listserv to which I subscribe references a deeply disturbing issue that could seriously threaten the ability of anyone wanting remain anonymous while participating in discussion groups and forums to maintain that anonymity.

Although I personally have done everything but tell you my name and office number in my posts, I have still preferred to not totally expose myself. If you need a reason why, just read KOS report on the front page of this site today and sample the lovely email from Bill O'Reilly supporters he is receiving currently.

O'Reilly's hateful cadres

But on to today's topic below the fold.

Dear Keith,

You're one of a handful of Folks Who Get It in this whole FISA goat rope.  Problem is, FISA is a symptom of a much larger problem, and that has received less coverage than the color of your tie, as far as I can find.

This is beyond belief for myself and my husband.  If you knew this, then fine, but we did not.  And yes, his company does participate in Talx, and yes, he does feel like he has been lied to, and cheated of his anonymity, as much as one can be, within a large government contracting firm.

The next time you apply for a loan or a new job, a lender or prospective employer might go online to access a database instead of calling your human resources department to verify your employment and income.

You can read more after you engage your outrage at what corporate America is doing, for themselves, but not for you.

The fight to ensure that our Democratic Congress continues to hold its ground and refuses to take Jay Rockefeller's unwise advice to roll over for the Bush Administration on telecom amnesty has been of central importance for many of us in the progressive community.  Kossacks mcjoan and Kagro X have both done an outstanding job keeping this and the intimately related FISA issues front and center in the netroots, and groups like the Courage Campaign have done well in making sure that progressive activists continue to lobby decision-makers to do the right thing.

By Noam Biale, Advocacy Coordinator for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program

The struggle to fortify privacy rights in America is often like the proverbial frog trying to escape from a well: two steps forward then one step back – or maybe it’s V.I. Lenin’s slightly more Sisyphean formulation: one step forward, two steps back. Case in point for the last few weeks: genetic privacy.

DNA Collection Expands from Convicted Felons to All Arrested

The government plans to begin collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested by a federal law enforcement agency — a move intended to prevent violent crime but which also is raising concerns about the privacy of innocent people.

Using authority granted by Congress, the government also plans to collect DNA samples from foreigners who are detained, whether they have been charged or not. The DNA would be collected through a cheek swab, Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Wednesday. That would be a departure from current practice, which limits DNA collection to convicted felons.

The above is from an article:
Feds to collect DNA from every person they arrest By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer

From dorm and building access, to discounts for movie tickets and accessing the meal plan, a student's ID card is a nearly indispensable part of campus life. But at a growing number of colleges, those same ID cards are taking on a whole new slew of functions, including serving as debit and bank cards.

This is just too much:

In a speech to the American Bar Association, Mueller asked the assembled defense lawyers for help in "creating a culture of integrity" by reporting evidence of wrongdoing by politicians and corporate executives alike.

"Anyone who follows the news these days and sees repeated references to corporate fraud and public corruption might think the nation is in the midst of a moral crisis," Mueller told the defense attorneys. "Have we as a society become more corrupt? Or have we in the FBI simply become more adept at rooting out fraud and corruption?"

This coming from the man whose own agency purposely delayed a terrorism-related investigation in order to try to expand its already out-of-control NSL program, and in doing so, incidentally, apparently conspired to lie to Congress about it?

Corporate fraud is causing our moral crisis? Corporate fraud? Coming from a representative of an administration that spies illegally on Americans? That knowingly lied to take the nation to war? That TORTURES?!!?!?!? Gah!!!!

Short story: you have none. To prove that point, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has declared that fingerprints aren't "personal data."

QUESTION: Some are raising that the privacy aspects of this thing, you know, sharing of that kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is quite a scary thing.

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private.

Silly people, going around gloveless, leaving damning evidence everywhere we go. Serves us right if we end up like Brandon Mayfield:

On May 6, 2004, FBI agents descended on his law office, his home, and the family farm in Kansas to search for evidence that Mayfield was a terror mastermind. Media leaks let it be known that he was responsible for the Madrid train bombings of March 2004, which killed 191 people. The evidence was said to be a fingerprint found on a plastic bag of detonators at the scene. Federal agents threw Mayfield into the Portland city lockup not as a defendant but as a "material witness."

But not only had Mayfield been far from Madrid at the time of the bombing, he hadn't even left the United States since 1994. The FBI, however, insisted that his Army fingerprint matched a digital photo of the print from the Madrid bag. The Spanish police, who had the original fingerprint, were never convinced that Mayfield's was a match. But that didn't stop the FBI from swearing to a judge that it was.

The case collapsed when, after Mayfield had been held for two weeks, the Spanish police identified an Algerian, Ouhnane Daoud, as the real holder of the fingerprint. The feds released Mayfield.

Arrest first, on the basis of shoddy evidence and illegal surveillance, ask questions later. Because, after all, according to the Bush administration's Justice Department, the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against "unreasonable searches and seizures," has "no application to domestic military operations." We still don't know how the administration defines "domestic military operations" or whether the memo in which John Yoo declared the suspension of the Fourth Amendment is still operable. The current Attorney General refuses to answer those questions.

What we do know is that this administration has operated above and beyond the law, demonstrating not just a disrespect for the right to privacy of American citizens, but a denial that those privacy rights even exist. Consider this example from last month's WSJ bombshell about the resurrection of Operation Total Information Awareness:

Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn't need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their "essential privacy," or "what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs," should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

By leaving our fingerprints around willy-nilly, by participating in online communities, we've all forfeited our Fourth Amendment rights according to the Bush administration philosophy. So if those details of our private lives, including our fingerprints, should fall into the hands of the FBI or NSA--with or without probable cause--we're fair game.

That this Congress would even consider granting any of the Bush administration legislative goals is baffling, but particularly that they would be willing to give them an inch on issues that go to the core of our Constitutional protections, like the FISA law or the NAO, is just jaw-droppingly insane. Particularly when the Attorney General still won't answer questions about their activities. Of course, there's also the issue of his being a liar, so trusting what he tells them is a dicey proposition to begin with.

It's time for the Congress to invoke the "Thurmond Rule," only they must apply it to everything the administration wants, not just judicial appointments. There needs to be a complete moratorium on passing any significant administration legislative proposals for the remainder of Bush's term.

By Barry Steinhart, director of the ACLU Technology & Liberty Project.

A lot of Americans have gotten pretty steamed as we’ve learned more and more (though not as much as we should be learning) about how our government is engaging in illegal, mass eavesdropping on our communications.

But we’re not the only ones who have reason to be steamed about the spying centered at the National Security Agency.

By Mike German, policy counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

If the federal government announced it created a new domestic intelligence agency made up of over 800,000 operatives dispersed throughout every American city and town there would be near-universal shock and outrage. Yet this is exactly what the Bush administration is accomplishing with its little-noticed National Strategy for Information Sharing, which establishes State, local and regional "fusion centers" as the primary mechanism for the collection and dissemination of domestic intelligence. According to the Congressional Research Service, fusion center proponents regard the "800,000 plus" law enforcement officers across the country as "the ‘eyes and ears’ of an extended national security community." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was even more expansive, arguing that state and local government officials should be regarded as "a deep line of information assets."  

Last November, after 11 years of Neo-con rule in Australia under GWB’s "Man of Steel" know as his deputy sheriff in the South Pacific, John Howard. Progressive Australian's celebrated the return of the "Labor" government to power. Today we find that our "Labor" party doesn’t trust the workers, and instead want’s to give unprecedented power to corporations.

Beautiful diary here http://www.dailykos.com/... on a WSJ article by Lanny Davis judging Obama through his association with Reverend Wright, and kind actions by the Princeton Theological Seminary who have invited Rev. Wright to speak there.

In that diary, Davis states

I am a strong supporter of and a substantial fundraiser for Hillary Clinton for president (though in this column I speak only for myself).

If Lanny Davis can pass judgement on Barack Obama via his association with Rev. Wright, can't we pass judgement on Hillary Clinton via her association with Lanny Davis. Specifically on our intruded upon privacy rights, via FISA revisions, Warrantess Wiretapping, and pending Senate Bill 1959 the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007?

It’s a good thing the Heart Association decided to stop recommending mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and just to urge people to do chest pushes on someone suffering a heart attack. I think I’m a member of the ACLU (I sent them money a few times anyway), and I’m opposed to unreasonable searches of my seizures.

Already they’re covertly collecting my longitude and latitude.

I have an E-Z Pass box on my windshield, and an On-Star system came with the car; so I guess the government snoops would take the position that I have voluntarily put my whereabouts up for public auction. Actually, I was just trying to get into the fast lane at the toll booths where the On-Star system often sends me by mistake.

Today's Orwell Award goes to the unnamed Internet service providers engaged in the clandestine monitoring of "every click you make." We all know that the government lurks in Islamic chat rooms, is curious about your search history, and who might be borrowing Bomb Making for Dummies from the public library. Now tech savvy "business intelligence" companies are leaping at new opportunities to explore your intimate online details. TheWashington Postexplains the practice:

Although common tracking systems, known as cookies, have counted a consumer's visits to a network of sites, the new monitoring, known as "deep-packet inspection," enables a far wider view -- every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered. Every bit of data is divided into packets -- like electronic envelopes -- that the system can access and analyze for content.

The saga of government intrusion into the private lives of government workers continues. Congress is now taking up the issue of Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12, a directive intended to, quite reasonably, standardize ID cards in government facilities to include contractors and students. The directive itself isn't so bad, but it is being implemented in a horrible way. So far I know it has been implemented in parts of the Department of Ed, Bureau of Land Management (where one lawsuit has been filed) and NASA (where another lawsuit has been filed). My wife is a grad student working in a joint Columbia University/NASA program...and that means this intrusive process may be applied to her soon unless the court cases finish up sooner rather than later...or unless Congress intervenes. Congress has just started to hold hearings on the issue.

In the near future, hundreds of government-owned video cameras may record hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers a day as they maneuver the streets of Manhattan.

Is this some Orwellian Bush Administration plot?

No, it's the simple reality of the city's congestion pricing, which got the thumbs upfrom the New York City Council this week and now heads up to Albany.

Watch New York Civil Liberties Union Legislative Director Robert Perry describe how the congestion pricing proposal say violate New Yorkers' personal privacy rights.

Continue reading for more information on how New York's congestion pricing proposal may violate New Yorkers' civil liberties.