Entries Tagged 'creeping socialist nightmare' ↓

The BBC recently wrote about a camera network in the UK to log car number plates. That is, a database that you can hook into any local council’s CCTV cameras, provided they’re of a high enough resolution, that runs text recognition on number plates. It means that the local police can add a number plate to the watchlist and have the system automatically flag any occurences of that number plates, anywhere in the country. Sounds great, right?

John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.
It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a “marker” on his car. That meant he was added to a “hotlist”.
This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.
“I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?”

Britain is increasingly becoming a nation that categorises people as criminals and enemies of the state based on whether or not they hold a viewpoint that disagrees with that of the government. This is another in the long line of examples of the label ‘terrorist’ being used to undermine the rights of citizens acting in a way completely accordant with the principles on which the country was founded. There’s a systematic campaign under way to silence dissenting voices through intimidation and harassment.

And where there’s Creeping Socialist Nightmare, one name can’t be far behind. Take it, Jacqui Smith:

“It’s something that we will look at further legislation about where necessary,” she said.
“I don’t think we should lose sight of the very considerable benefits that this technology also brings us, brings law enforcement.”

Much as I try, I can’t convince myself that the initial ‘considerable benefits that this technology brings us’, before she amends it to ‘brings law enforcement’ is anything but a tacit admission of her own complicity in trying to institute a state where the government hold the reins of absolute power, free to track whoever they want at will without fear of reprisal or of being held accountable for misuse of the power that they, after all, have signed over to themselves.

Recent research by Huddersfield University found that the public seemed to share that view. The study took place in Leeds as the ANPR system was being introduced. The vast majority supported the cameras if they caught law breakers, with only a few mentioning concerns about police surveillance.

Baa.

I remember 1995, when I first started writing online — it was awesome. You could — and I did — open up your entire heart, spill your guts out to a faceless, anonymous audience who could choose to listen or go somewhere else and not care. Those who listened, who cared, who sympathized with my rantings about how much I hated the government, hated my teachers, hated everything (hey, I was 15 in 1995) formed a bond with me, and I keep in touch with them to this day. Being able to express myself so freely and completely without hindrance made my angst-ridden teenage life possible.

Being able to hold politicians, companies, and individuals accountable for their actions by publicly calling them out for their misbehavior is what makes the internet a powerful tool for the consumer and the voter, what gives the silent majority a voice against tyranny and oppression.

So naturally, such a voice should be oppressed. But how?

Introducing The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would make it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to transmit an electronic communication (”including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages”) “with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person…to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.”

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both….

["Communication"] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; …

["Electronic means"] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.

Now the death of Megan Meier was a tragedy, I have no disagreement with that. There is something absolutely psychologically wrong with any adult who colludes with teenagers to systematically torment and psychologically torture a teenager with a well-known history of mental instability. It is morally wrong and in some states illegal to put a loaded handgun in the hand of a suicidal person and tell them, oh I don’t know, how about, “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.”_[1]

However, while free speech is not protected if it is with the intent to provoke or promote harm (can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre if there’s no fire, for example), the broad message of the new law is far greater that that. It goes farther than what your mother always said, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” and actually gets into the Orwellian territory of “If you say bad things, you’ll go to jail.” We’re not just protecting the Megan Meiers of the world any more. We’re now dancing in the territory of censorship.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh outlines six ways that this law could punish Citizen Journalists (like yours truly), newspaper reporters, personal bloggers, and posters on social networking sites:

1. I try to coerce a politician into voting a particular way, by repeatedly blogging (using a hostile tone) about what a hypocrite / campaign promise breaker / fool / etc. he would be if he voted the other way. I am transmitting in interstate commerce a communication with the intent to coerce using electronic means (a blog) “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior” — unless, of course, my statements aren’t seen as “severe,” a term that is entirely undefined and unclear. Result: I am a felon, unless somehow my “behavior” isn’t “severe.”

2. A newspaper reporter or editorialist tries to do the same, in columns that are posted on the newspaper’s Web site. Result: Felony, unless somehow my “behavior” isn’t severe.

3. The politician votes the wrong way. I think that’s an evil, tyrannical vote, so I repeatedly and harshly condemn the politician on my blog, hoping that he’ll get very upset (and rightly so, since I think he deserves to feel ashamed of himself, and loathed by others). I am transmitting a communication with the the intent to cause substantial emotional distress, using electronic means (a blog) “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” (I might also be said to be intending to “harass” — who knows, given how vague the term is? — but the result is the same even if we set that aside.) Result: I am a felon, subject to the usual utter uncertainty about what “severe” means.

4. A company delivers me shoddy goods, and refuses to refund my money. I e-mail it several times, threatening to sue if they don’t give me a refund, and I use “hostile” language. I am transmitting a communication with the intent to coerce, using electronic means “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” Result: I am a felon, if my behavior is “severe.”

5. Several people use blogs or Web-based newspaper articles to organize a boycott of a company, hoping to get it to change some policy they disapprove of. They are transmitting communications with the intent to coerce, using electronic means “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” Result: Those people are a felon. (Isn’t threatening a company with possible massive losses “severe”? But again, who knows?)

6. John cheats on Mary. Mary wants John to feel like the scumbag that he is, so she sends him two hostile messages telling him how much he’s hurt her, how much she now hates him, and how bad he should feel. She doesn’t threaten him with violence (there are separate laws barring that, and this law would apply even in the absence of a threat). She is transmitting communications with the intent to cause substantial emotional distress, using electronic means “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” Result: Mary is a felon, again if her behavior is “severe.”

Cites:

• Everybody’s a Critic—and a ‘Cyberbully,’ Apparently
• Federal Felony To Use Blogs, the Web, Etc. To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through “Severe, Repeated, and Hostile” Speech?

I’ve always been a bit leery using the term Masshole; I have relatives that live in Massachusetts as well as a few friends in neighboring states. Yes, the people up there tend to be political insane (The Kennedy politicians are some of the worst offenders when it comes to paving the way for the Creeping Socialist Nightmare, and then there’s Mitt Romney, the disarmingly nice Republican) but they were the first state to grant equal marriage rights to people of all sexual orientations. Yes, they were founded by religious nutjobs sent here by England because, God only knows, the British didn’t want to put up with that Puritanical shit anymore, but they were also the people who gave us the Boston Tea Party — a brilliant act of sabotage, civil unrest, and general “fuck you!” ness that hasn’t been replicated in two hundred and fifty years.

So, it is with mixed emotions that I say this: Kathi-Anne Reinstein, you are a Masshole.

What is Ms. Reinstein’s great offense that has caused me to label her a Masshole you ask? The fact that the woman seems in complete denial about a simple fact of life and geriatric psychology: seniors (I’m talking pensioners, not the high school variety) and the mentally handicapped have sex. Often. Consensually.

Massachusetts House Bill 1668 [is] a proposed amendment to the state’s child pornography law that would make it a serious crime to photograph with “lascivious intent” a person over the age of 60 or a person with a disability who has been declared mentally incompetent.

State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein says the bill she sponsored was intended to protect vulnerable populations from sexual predators, but some disability advocates and law buffs have criticized the amendments as restricting the sexual freedom of seniors and people with disabilities.

I don’t know if any of you remember a show in the 80s called Life Goes On, which featured a family whose oldest son, Corky, had Down’s syndrome. At some point in the show, Corky got married — to a young woman with Down’s syndrome as well — and they wanted to start a family of their own. They wanted to have sex, but LOL! (in the days before we were completely sensitive to the feelings of the disabled) they didn’t know how! Ha ha ha! How funny!

Apparently, this is the kind of understanding of the mentally disabled that Ms. Reinstein (who has never seen an episode of The Golden Girls) has of the disabled and elderly — they’re so childlike, so infantalized in her Masshole mind, that they have no idea of the concept of sex. Ergo, if someone takes a sexual photo of them, it’s clearly exploitative.

Quick, someone call Farrah Fawcet! She was horribly exploited by Playboy when she posed for the cover at the age of 50! And they might want her to do it again! And she’s only ONE of several women over the age of fifty who’ve posed for the lad’s mag!

But enough about those horny seniors (and, if you’ve studied geriatric psychology, you know that they are, in fact, quite randy in their old age). Let’s talk about the handicapped.

Some observers have noted that the specification “declared mentally incompetent” appears only in one portion of the proposal. Says law professor Eugene Volokh, “The law is not limited to people who are mentally handicapped and thus unable to consent, or who are photographed against their will by their caretakers (the justification discussed in this story). The operative provisions cover people over 60 and the disabled whether or not they are incompetent.* One provision, relating to people’s being “deemed incapable of consenting,” would cover only “an elder or a person with a disability adjudicated as incompetent by a court of the commonwealth,” but I don’t see how this would stop liability under the other provisions, since consent is no defense under the other provisions in any event.”

* – emphasis my own

So, if you’re handicapped, elderly, or otherwise not a young person between the ages of 18-59, you’d better get out the chastity belt — or at the very least, don’t take pictures doing your dirty, horrid deeds. Because no civilized person wants to see that unless their exploitative monsters who are taking advantage of you! And if you’re doing this yourself — “sexting” at sixty! — you’d better get your ass in jail with the 16 year olds. It’s for your own good, you sick pervert!

If you thought that, having gorged themselves on the rights and freedoms of We the People and wiped their asses with the Bill of Rights, the Thought Police of the Supreme Court would return to Valhalla to slumber now that Bush and Co. are out of the White House, think again. In the past week, they’ve hit We the People with a double whammy of First Amendment bashing.

First, there was the decision to uphold the FCC’s right to fine people for swearing and other verbal slips:

The Supreme Court said yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission may penalize even the occasional use of certain expletives on the airwaves but left for another day the question of whether such a policy is constitutional.

The court’s narrow ruling said the FCC — prompted by Cher’s use of the F-word during a 2002 live broadcast and similar remarks by what Justice Antonin Scalia called “foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood” — was justified in changing its policy in 2004 to fine broadcasters up to $325,000 every time certain words are allowed on the air.

This from a man who laughed as Stephen Colbert flipped him off (Italian-style) at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few years ago. Then again, the WHCD is just one massive circle jerk when the media and the politicians in bed with said media get together for an orgy of mutual masturbation.

Fox Television Stations and other networks had challenged FCC’s actions under the Administrative Procedure Act. They said the agency did not adequately explain why it changed its policy, which previously held that one-time utterances of expletives did not constitute a violation of FCC rules.

…Fox said it was disappointed but “optimistic that we will ultimately prevail when the First Amendment issues are fully aired before the courts.”

For Christ’s sake, Supreme Court, you’re making me side with FOX on this one? Something is seriously wrong here.

My favorite quote, however, once again comes from the Justice I love to hate the most. Mr. Scalia, take it away:

“Whether [the policy] is unconstitutional will be determined soon enough, perhaps in this very case,” Scalia wrote in sending the case back to the appeals court. In the meantime, any suppressed “references to excretory and sexual material surely lie at the periphery of First Amendment concern.”

Essentially, if it refers to sex or feces, it’s automatically naughty! Because we’re not going to go by the intention of our Founding Fathers — especially not the so-called Constitutionalist Scalia. Oh no. We’re going back further, to the true founders of this country, the Puritans! They knew the score, and that is to say that scoring is bad, mmm kay. Sex is bad, it’s something we do, but we should still be kind of ashamed of, because we enjoy it! And we shouldn’t! It’s dirty! It’s wrong! It is animalistic and uncivilized! It’s horrid! WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE STOP THINKING ABOUT SEX! DIRTY!

Then, to drive the point home, the Supreme Court decided to send the FCC fine of CBS over Nipple Gate back to the lower courts for reconsideration.

The high court on Monday directed the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to consider reinstating the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on CBS over Jackson’s breast-baring performance at the 2004 Super Bowl.
…
Last year, the appeals court threw out the fine against CBS, saying the FCC strayed from its long-held approach of applying identical standards to words and images when reviewing complaints of indecency.

The appellate court said the incident lasted nine-sixteenths of one second and should have been regarded as ”fleeting.” The FCC previously deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so ”pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience,” the court said.

But, ah, see the Supreme Court just decided two things in Tuesday’s ruling: sex is always naughty and not protected by the First Amendment on it’s face (THANKS SCALIA!) and that “fleeting” does not equal “excusable”. So, if you’ve been dying to see Janet Jackson’s nipple again, you’re in luck, because this case just won’t go away! The nip slip seen and heard round the world returns, and this time, it’s personal.

Or something like that.

References:
Supreme Court Revives Fine Over Super Bowl Incident
Supreme Court Rules that Government Can Fine for ‘Fleeting Expletives’

Oh, fuck you, you Socialist prick.

From the New York Times:

A federal judge in Scranton issued a temporary order preventing the Wyoming County district attorney
from filing criminal charges against three teenage girls accused of sending nude or semi-nude photos on a
cellphone, or “sexting.” Last week the girls and their mothers, represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, sued the district attorney, George P. Skumanick, arguing that by
threatening to prosecute the girls for being in photos he considered “provocative” he was violating their
constitutional rights. The judge, James M. Munley of Federal District Court, found that the girls and their
mothers “are reasonably likely to succeed on the merits” in their lawsuit. He ruled that his order would
be in effect at least until a June 2 hearing that could make the order permanent until the girls’ federal
civil lawsuit is resolved.

Thank God I’m not a teenager today. I’d have a criminal record and be a registered sex offender, as I don’t think there’s a guy I dated out there who doesn’t have nude photos of me.

Creeping Socialist Nightmare UK continues: the Ministry of Justice plan to set up new laws governing acceptability of depiction of children in cartoons.
The law is intended to make it a criminal offence to possess cartoons depicting child abuse, which is well-intentioned but ultimately wrongheaded. This largely because the definition is being left so open that it lets legitimate art fall under its umbrella. The Independent elaborates:

If the Coroners and Justice Bill remains unaltered it will make it illegal to own any picture of children participating in sexual activities, or present whilst sexual activity took place.

The Ministry of Justice is here defining ‘picture’ as broadly as possible to include paintings, graphic art and cartoons — down to something as insignificant as doodles on a scrap of paper, if they really feel like it. They are also defining ‘children’ as broadly as possible, to include anything that might be perceived as a child.
The problem of this is that it makes no distinction between The Erotic Adventures of Captain NAMBLA and serious art. Intent doesn’t matter: whether it’s a collection of drawings of child rape designed for pederasts to whack off over or an in-context depiction of child abuse in a comic book about someone who endures child abuse and goes on to cope with the aftermath of the same (for example, The Tale of One Bad Rat). Part of this problem is that maybe we have to argue that as reprehensible as we might find it, and unpopular as the choice might be, then so long as no-one is actually being directly affected by these images the possession of them shouldn’t be criminalised. It’s a ridiculous argument to say that child abuse is being committed by the people making the images in the first place: I can’t remember the last time I read about a comic book creator dressing as a rodent and fighting crime to get into the mindset of making a Batman comic. Clearly, if anyone is fucking kids in order to draw comics about it afterwards, the fault lies with the individual and not with the act of making the comic. If you choose to argue that possessing cartoons of children engaged in sexual acts makes one more likely to commit child abuse or more likely to seek out actual child porn, then you’re stupid and wrong for four reasons: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV. The Saw movies are about people being tortured and killed in a host of different gruesome ways. Possession of the Saw movies does not make a person more likely to torture and kill someone, and if somebody that tortured and killed a person was found to own the Saw movies, any reasonable person would place the blame on the individual’s disposition rather than on the influence of the movies. As Neil Gaiman points out, freedom of speech is sometimes about defending the indefensible. If no other crimes are being committed then it seems incredibly foolish to criminalise something based on the bad feeling it gives us when we think about it. Freedom of speech says we can make movies about accidentally killing someone and being haunted by it or we can make movies about serial killers with no redeeming characteristics who are still the hero of the piece. You just can’t kill someone to make that movie, because that’s the point when speech becomes action, and actions can be criminalised.

The worst part of this whole proposed bill for me is the statement the Ministry of Justice put out to combat criticisms that the bill might be misapplied to target legitimate art:

The clauses in the Bill are to tackle pornographic and obscene images of child sexual abuse which have no place in our society. It is not our intention to criminalise the possession of material that does not fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act or to criminalise the legal entertainment industry, the art industry or pornographic cartoons.

This is a very carefully worded statement that addresses the concerns without ever really taking action on them. It says ‘don’t worry, we promise we won’t misuse the wide definitions we set as our parameters’ without even addressing the idea of making the parameters more specific or setting in place exemptions from the bill. It says ‘it’s not our intention to criminalise other areas, but we’re keeping our options open’.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the final word:

The Bill currently going through Parliament is closely modelled on a similar piece of Australian legislation which has caused numerous controversies since it became law. Earlier this month an Australian man was convicted of possessing child pornography because he downloaded six images of characters from The Simpsons performing sex acts on each other.

In order to give valid support to this bill, you must describe how anyone in this case beside the convicted man (as wrongful victim) and Fox (as copyright holders) were directly affected. Please show all work and cite sources where applicable.

Yet again, the British government shows that they regard 1984 as an instruction manual.

See, in the name of stopping terrorism, it’s very important that the government require social networking sites to retain all information created by British users so they can monitor it. For, I don’t know, potentially deadly image macros, or something.
This is on top of something that’s already in the works that says the government gets to store all e-mails sent in the UK as well as monitor all phone calls from landlines and mobiles. This database is planned to monitor for chatter that could give advance warning about terrorist attacks, like that day the trains got bombed in London four years ago, or… um… well, that’s pretty much the only major non-IRA attack in recent memory. Appending on this new idea about social networking sites is because the increasing popularity of these sites over the past few years has “left a loophole for terrorists and criminal gangs to exploit.”
Which just goes to prove, really, the government just aren’t taking this threat seriously. Sure, it’s all well and good to monitor social networking sites, blogs, phone calls, e-mails, your financial transactions and your vehicle’s movements, but doesn’t that leave the alarming loophole of everyday conversation? We need above all else to implant some kind of chip in people, something that will track their movements, monitor their body chemistry for poor diet and drug use, and crucially, record every word they say. Doesn’t it terrify you that right now, outside your window, two people are having a conversation and the government have no way of knowing what they’re saying? What if they’re plotting a terrorist attack? What if they plan to abduct a photogenic child? What if they plan to give cancers to our most beloved reality TV stars?
It could be happening right now and we’d have no way to stop them. That’s why we need to protest this ridiculous, short-sighted proposal that doesn’t begin to consider the real criminals getting away with speaking freely right now.