The United States government formally apologized and will pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by an Oregon attorney who was mistakenly accused of involvement in the 2004 Madrid, Spain, train bombings.
Archives: November 2006
NCLB: More than just an unfunded mandate
Posted: November 30, 2006 7:36 am
On Tuesday, school districts in Michigan, Vermont and Texas, together with the National Education Association asked a federal appeals court to revive an old lawsuit, arguing that schools should not have to comply with requirements which aren’t funded by the federal government.
Entry to U.S. scares away tourism, business
Posted: November 29, 2006 6:52 am
Updated: November 29, 2006 7:26 am
A survey of business travelers and tourists visiting the United States shows that foreign visitors worry more about customs officials at ports of entry than about terrorism.
Justice inspector general to review terrorist surveillance program
Posted: November 28, 2006 8:34 am
The Department of Justice Inspector General will conduct an internal review of how the department handled information gained from President Bush’s controversial terrorist surveillance program, but will not review whether the program is actually legal, officials said Monday.
The TSA Follies
Posted: November 27, 2006 11:35 pm
With each passing day, airport security becomes even more surreal. It’s becoming increasingly clear to even the infrequent traveler that Homeland Security has become just another government bureaucracy more interested in enforcing its rules without rhyme or reason than in keeping anyone safe. Here are a few bizarre things that happened over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Privacy Is Dead: Get Over It
Posted: November 27, 2006 12:08 am
Federal agents arrested private investigator Steven Rambam on July 22 on trumped-up charges, just before he was scheduled to give a talk on privacy at the HOPE Number Six conference in New York City, and attendees who had hoped to hear him speak about the intersection of commercial and government databases and the resulting loss of privacy left disappointed, confused and more than a bit fearful.
But on November 16, he returned and gave a three-hour presentation to a standing room only audience at the Stevens Institute in Hoboken, N.J.
New Hampshire Liberty Forum
Posted: November 24, 2006 8:39 pm
Updated: November 24, 2006 11:33 pm
Nearly halfway to its goal of finding 20,000 liberty lovers to move to the state of New Hampshire to work for smaller government and greater personal liberty, the Free State Project is hosting the 2007 New Hampshire Liberty Forum to showcase the progress already made toward making the state even more free.
Come to Concord February 23-25, 2007, and meet libertarian luminaries such as ABC News correspondent and author John Stossel, 2004 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, and many more, including yours truly.
The TSA Follies
Posted: November 23, 2006 3:48 am
“We have a serious problem in this country,” says security expert Bruce Schneier, who gets a hat tip for this week’s TSA Follies. “The TSA operates above, and outside, the law. There’s no due process, no judicial review, no appeal.”
Nor, it seems, is there any intelligence, or even plain old common sense. But if we’re lucky, we can have a good laugh.
Homeland Security contributed bad data to military intelligence database
Posted: November 22, 2006 3:24 pm
If you disagree with the policies of the U.S. government, or are a member of a group or association which expresses disagreement with government policies, an agent of the federal government is likely reading your web site and subscribed to your mailing list.
Undercover officers of the Federal Protective Service subscribed to the mailing lists and monitored Web sites of peaceful anti-war groups, and contributed information about those groups’ activities to a military intelligence database, according to Pentagon documents released Tuesday.
British police fingerprint on streets
Posted: November 22, 2006 1:17 pm
In a trial measure rolled out this week, British police gained the power to take the fingerprints of members of the public while out on patrol, cross-referencing the data against a national database containing 6.5 million fingerprints.
Arrest made in Transportation laptop theft
Posted: November 21, 2006 8:05 pm
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Miami-Dade Police Department, and the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General arrested a suspect in connection with the July 27 theft of a DOT laptop containing personal information on 133,000 Florida drivers and pilots.
MADD: A Breathalyzer in every car
Posted: November 20, 2006 11:10 pm
Updated: November 21, 2006 1:13 am
Mothers Against Drunk Driving has an ambitious long-range plan to prevent drunk driving: Have ignition interlock devices which sense alcohol and prevent the vehicle from starting installed in every vehicle in the country, whether the driver has been convicted of drunk driving or not.
San Francisco airport officials cheated on security testing
Posted: November 19, 2006 3:57 pm
Transportation Security Administration officials, along with officials of the contractor which performs passenger screening at San Francisco International Airport, compromised covert security testing by warning checkpoint screeners when a test was about to take place, a government audit found.
Former Homeland Security press aide sentenced to prison
Posted: November 19, 2006 3:03 pm
Brian Doyle, 56, former deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced to five years in prison Friday after pleading no contest to charges that he sent sexually explicit messages over the Internet to Florida sheriff’s deputies.
Homeland Security introduces RSS feeds
Posted: November 18, 2006 9:13 pm
A month ago I leveled a scathing critique of the Department of Homeland Security’s new Web site, citing among other things the lack of redirected URLs resulting in 404 errors and the lack of RSS feeds. DHS almost immediately reacted to the former and put up redirects for the most frequently used areas of the site. And at some point they also very quietly rolled out some RSS feeds.
Florida eighth graders to declare majors
Posted: November 18, 2006 2:53 am
Updated: November 18, 2006 3:17 am
Beginning in 2007 all Florida eighth grade students will be required to choose from a list of state-approved “majors.” School board member Sandra Richmond thinks the program won’t “do too much damage.”
UCLA student Tasered after failing to show ID
Posted: November 17, 2006 1:52 pm
Campus police repeatedly shocked a University of California Los Angeles student with a Taser after he allegedly refused to leave a campus library computer lab.
Who knew protesting could be so fun?
Posted: November 16, 2006 12:49 pm
In preparation for my move next year, and for other reasons which I’ll explain, I visited New Hampshire this week, participated in a well-attended protest, and thumbed my nose at government bureaucrats while they watched out their office windows.
It was fun for the whole family, even standing in the pouring rain.
Found not guilty and still doing the time
Posted: November 15, 2006 6:40 pm
In the United States, you can be sentenced to prison for crimes you didn’t commit.
Secret law case sent to Supreme Court
Posted: November 14, 2006 4:18 pm
One of the most fundamental, and sometimes annoying, principles of American law is described by the old adage, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” But the courts have held that in order for this to apply, and you to be responsible for a law, the government must provide “notice,” for instance, publishing the law in the Federal Register.
So it is that John Gilmore is challenging apparently secret Transportation Security Agency regulations which he was told he could not see after being denied boarding two aircraft at two different California airports. Gilmore is taking his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing on appeal in the Ninth Circuit.
The nice guys behind REAL ID
Posted: November 14, 2006 10:19 am
The REAL ID Act of 2005 sets up a de facto national identification card for American citizens. Almost nobody actually wants a national identification card. For many, it brings up still-fresh memories of Nazi Germany, which used national identification to control, and later slaughter, its population. For others, the national ID is the mark of the beast, without which one won’t be able to participate in everyday commerce, and which brings closer the prophecy of the second coming.
For a very few well-connected people, the REAL ID Act is a way to make lots of money.
FEMA left modular homes out to rot
Posted: November 13, 2006 4:35 pm
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has wasted another $3 or $4 million of your dollars on Hurricane Katrina relief that never arrived — and now, never will.
FEMA purchased about 1,800 pre-fabricated modular homes and put them in storage in Texarkana, Ark., without assembling them, because they never actually used them to build housing for hurricane victims. But despite a warning from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office, FEMA never bothered to protect the homes from the weather, and as a result, some of them are beyond repair.
Big Brother, Big Business
Posted: November 12, 2006 1:12 pm
The Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, places a few restrictions on how the federal government can compile dossiers on Americans. It was passed in response to multiple scandals in which, for instance, former Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover would spy on Americans for his own purposes.
But does it go far enough? When the government can’t get the information on you that it wants because of the Privacy Act, it can always turn to a commercial data broker. And they know more about virtually everyone than anyone else, including the government itself.
The Dog Dialed 911
Posted: November 11, 2006 3:53 pm
When the police arrived, they arrested the dog’s owner — not for allowing his dog to dial 911 on his cell phone, but for the 150 marijuana plants he had growing in the house.
Despite the fact that he was doing absolutely nothing wrong by growing marijuana, that isn’t what this post is about. Instead, it’s about the extent of human stupidity.
Los Angeles police beating caught on video
Posted: November 10, 2006 3:21 pm
Updated: November 10, 2006 3:39 pm
A vicious street gang has been terrorizing the residents of Los Angeles, Calif., and shocking new video has surfaced of gang members brutally assaulting a Hollywood resident.
Social Security data used for criminal investigations
Posted: November 9, 2006 9:37 pm
Wage and earnings data held at the Social Security Administration has been used in terrorism investigations since September 11, 2001. But few if any of those investigated have been brought up on terrorism charges.
Federal prosecutors don’t actually bring terrorism charges if they can find any lesser charges which will result in a deportation and preserve national security secrets, officials said.
Government tries to stop AT&T surveillance lawsuit
Posted: November 9, 2006 1:02 pm
Updated: November 9, 2006 1:28 pm
A federal appeals court on Wednesday agreed to hear arguments from the government as to why a lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged cooperation in a terrorist surveillance program should be dismissed due to state secrets.
A comedy of errors: Election 2006
Posted: November 8, 2006 11:37 am
The concept behind voting is simple. You go in, you make your choices, and they’re counted to see who wins what.
As in recent years, Election Day in 2006 was anything but simple. Aside from the results themselves, here are just a few things that went wrong this year.
The cover-up of Homeland Security’s virus infection
Posted: November 7, 2006 4:24 pm
Last August a Windows virus infected over 1,300 computers which Customs and Border Protection uses to screen foreign travelers visiting the U.S. The bureau almost immediately tried to cover up the incident.
In “The Virus That Ate DHS,” Wired reporter and former hacker Kevin Poulsen illustrates that the Department of Homeland Security’s grasp on computer security is tenuous at best.
The TSA Follies
Posted: November 7, 2006 1:52 pm
Airport security is in good hands with the Transportation Security Administration . . . and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
The TSA’s new motto is “Vigilant, Effective, Efficient.” Let’s see about that. Here are four examples of how the TSA seems to be, well, a bad joke.
Fourth-grader suspended for refusing to call his principal a witch
Posted: November 6, 2006 3:21 am
Nine year old Tyler Stoken of Central Park Elementary School had always been instructed to write about the first thing that entered his mind on such tests. The first thing he thought of, however, was his principal as a witch. He thought this was mean, so he left the answer blank.
Under normal conditions, a student may be encouraged to fill in a blank item or asked why he left it blank. But under the intense pressure of No Child Left Behind’s testing component, conditions are not normal.
Homeland Security data mining all international travelers
Posted: November 5, 2006 7:06 pm
The Department of Homeland Security is recording all of your international travel, and much more information about you, and using it to determine how much of a “risk” you pose of committing a terrorist act. And it will keep all this information on file for up to 40 years, keep it secret from you, and refuse to allow you to challenge it if it’s wrong.
Good information or bad, if your “risk profile” is too high, you could be denied travel to and from the U.S. — even if you’re a U.S. citizen holding a valid passport.
The news just keeps breaking
Posted: November 4, 2006 1:15 pm
Here are three short updates to stories previously covered at Homeland Stupidity. We’ve got good news and bad news. First, the good news.
Homeschooling and public school students assaulted in Michigan
Posted: November 4, 2006 12:45 pm
The state has failed to provide effective oversight of public school children in foster care. Now a candidate for Michigan’s state legislature has stated that he intends to give the state the power to destroy the lives of homeschooled children in his state.
Election 2006: The Shadow of Bush/The Bride of Clinton
Posted: November 4, 2006 8:12 am
As Halloween recedes, Turkey Day looms. Yessir, the elections are upon us. But not all the monsters have decamped. Shove over inflatable Pilgrims and plastic Santas. The ghoulish denizens of Party City have decided to hang in our yard FOREVER.
Air marshal fired for making planes safer
Posted: November 3, 2006 10:12 am
Updated: November 3, 2006 3:34 pm
In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration wanted to pull federal air marshals off the highest-risk nonstop flights, just after the U.S. had foiled an al-Qaeda hijacking plot in which terrorists would have used bombs smuggled inside cameras, flown planes into London landmarks, and caused general mayhem in the skies.
Air marshal Robert MacLean blew the whistle. The air marshals didn’t get pulled off the flights. And for that, he was fired.
New immigration Web site sucks
Posted: November 3, 2006 8:17 am
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that part of the government responsible for preventing people from immigrating to the U.S., rolled out a redesigned Web site Wednesday. And the new site sucks.
Google denies intelligence cooperation
Posted: November 2, 2006 5:41 pm
Google released a brief statement Thursday denying that it was providing information about its users to the U.S. intelligence community.
The TSA Follies
Posted: November 2, 2006 9:00 am
The Transportation Security Administration . . . Vigilant, Effective, Efficient. Yes, and pigs can fly, too.
Here are three examples of how the TSA is keeping you less secure, and giving a good laugh to those of us with enough sense to stay away from airports as long as the government is in charge of security.
Vegemite ban update
Posted: November 1, 2006 3:31 pm
Last week I reported on apparently overblown news that the U.S. was interdicting Vegemite, the national food of Australia, at the border. At the time, I said I was going to order some Vegemite from Australia to see what happens, and today, something happened.
Intelligence agencies share information via Intellipedia wiki
Posted: November 1, 2006 1:21 pm
The U.S. intelligence community now has its own top-secret wiki, modeled on the popular Wikipedia site, for the sharing of intelligence information.
