You haven’t done anything wrong, so why should you worry about surveillance? It was Cardinal Richelieu who said, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.” The United States doesn’t hang innocent people any more, but it certainly does imprison them by the millions, and occasionally does kill them.

So why worry about surveillance, if you are honest? As the Miranda saying goes, anything can be used against you in a court of law. Law enforcement’s job is to come up with things to use against you, and the most innocent bits of data, combined together in ways you might not expect, can paint the most honest, innocent person as a criminal. Someday you could find yourself on trial for a crime you never committed, for instance, or you could be detained for hours every time you try to board an airplane or cross the border.

Last week the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched its Surveillance Self-Defense project, an online guide for protecting your private data against government spying. EFF created the guide, it said in a news release, “to educate Americans about the law and technology of communications surveillance and computer searches and seizures, and to provide the information and tools necessary to keep their private data out of the government’s hands.”

After all, data the government doesn’t have can’t be used against you. I presume, of course, that you are innocent of wrongdoing, and it is for innocent people that this guide is designed: activists who use their First Amendment rights to lobby for changes in government policy, for example, or ordinary Americans who get caught up in a criminal investigation due to a computer error, or simple human mistake such as police serving a warrant at the wrong house. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens far too often.

“Despite a long and troubling history in this country of the government abusing its surveillance powers, most Americans know very little about how the law protects them or about how they can take steps to protect themselves against government surveillance,” said EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston. “The Surveillance Self-Defense project offers citizens a legal and technical toolkit with tips on how to defend themselves in case the government attempts to search, seize, subpoena or spy on their most private data.”

The site explains the law in the United States as it applies to what data the law enforcement and intelligence communities can obtain about you and how they obtain it. It then covers in depth how to protect your personal data on your computer, as it is in transit over the Internet, and while it is held by third parties. Importantly, it also provides an easy to understand overview of what security is and how to assess your personal security risks so that you can implement security measures which make sense for your own circumstances. Finally it covers specific security measures and technologies which you can use to protect yourself.

I’ve reviewed the site myself and I highly recommend it for anyone who has even the slightest possibility of being targeted by the government for any reason. And, unfortunately, that means every single individual, since, but for happenstance, the next person who gets their house mistakenly raided and their dog shot to death by a SWAT team could be you. Protecting your privacy using these techniques won’t guarantee your security, of course, but it will certainly reduce the likelihood of becoming the next victim of government surveillance.

Last weekend the Bush administration pushed through Congress a law to bolster the government’s ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners and other “persons reasonably believed to be outside the U.S.” without a court order.

The so-called Protect America Act, which passed both the House and Senate by wide margins just before Congress went on its August recess, allows the government to intercept the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who communicate with people overseas, and for the first time, allows the government to intercept communications between foreigners which are merely routed through the United States, as well as conversations of Americans traveling abroad.

The only bright spot in this legislation is that it requires the government to design procedures to prevent the intelligence collection under the law from infringing on the privacy of ordinary Americans and for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to sign off on those procedures within six months. It also requires a review of the program every six months afterward.

The legislation will “give our intelligence professionals the essential tools they need to protect our nation,” spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Democratic leaders expressed disappointment about the result, but they pointed to language that would require lawmakers to reconsider the key provisions in six months.

“My Republican colleagues chose to rubber-stamp a flawed administration proposal that fails to provide the accountability needed in the light of the administration’s past mismanagement of key tools in the war on terror,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). — Washington Post

Privacy and civil liberties advocates were not mollified by the privacy provisions in the bill.

“Rather than acting as a meaningful check on the Executive, Congress essentially handed him a blank check to invade Americans’ privacy,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation activism coordinator Derek Slater. “Congress’ actions are particularly disgraceful given that the Administration has concealed the truth about its illegal spying.”

“This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., during the debate preceding the vote. “I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Republicans disputed her description. “It does nothing to tear up the Constitution,” said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif. — Associated Press

House Democrats complained that they had been “railroaded” into passing the bill, since they were close to passing a much narrower bill when the administration presented its demands for additional powers.

“I’m not comfortable suspending the Constitution even temporarily,” said Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence committee. “The countries we detest around the world are the ones that spy on their own people. Usually they say they do it for the sake of public safety and security.” — Washington Post

The rush to push through enhanced spying powers came from a ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court earlier this year that found that several key portions of President Bush’s terrorist surveillance program were illegal.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court’s decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision.

The decision was both a political and practical blow to the administration, which had long held that all of the National Security Agency’s enhanced surveillance efforts since 2001 were legal. The administration for years had declined to subject those efforts to the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and after it finally did so in January the court ruled that the administration’s legal judgment was at least partly wrong. — Washington Post

This is important to the administration because by monitoring foreign communications from within the U.S., where many of them are routed, the National Security Agency can gain access to over one-third of the world’s communications traffic.

Bush administration officials, though, said that the measure didn’t grant any broad authority to expand the government’s intelligence activities.

In a telephone briefing for reporters on Monday, officials said the administration had set out to resolve a “narrow” technical problem that had called into question whether intelligence officials needed to get a court warrant to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications that happened to pass through American telecommunication switches. But in fact the legislation as enacted not only provides that no warrant is needed in such a situation but also goes further, in giving the administration discretion to eavesdrop on foreign communications that might involve Americans.

The officials who participated in the briefing spoke on condition of anonymity, saying only that doing so would allow them to talk more freely.

They said the legislation did not authorize “a driftnet” aimed at eavesdropping on large volumes of phone calls and e-mail messages inside the United States. But they declined to discuss in detail the N.S.A.’s broader efforts tracing and analyzing the patterns of American communications — who is calling and e-mailing whom — without actually listening to or reading the content of the conversations. Those broader data-mining activities were part of a heated dispute within the administration that led senior Justice Department officials in 2004 to refuse at first to certify the legality of the N.S.A. operations and to threaten to resign in protest over their continuation. — New York Times

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court requesting the release of court orders interpreting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Over the next six months, Congress and the public will debate the wisdom and necessity of permanently expanding the executive’s authority to conduct intrusive forms of surveillance without judicial oversight,” the motion said.

Indeed, the only oversight the program will get is from Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and the attorney general. Alberto Gonzales has hardly proved himself capable of overseeing and preventing abuses of the American people’s rights. His idea of oversight, it seems, is the word’s other definition: to fail to notice, to overlook.

As for McConnell, he says in a letter to the U.S. Senate that he is “committed to keeping the Congress fully and currently informed of how this Act has improved the ability of the Intelligence Community to protect the country and reporting — and remedying — any incidents of non-compliance.” It remains to be seen if he’s up to the task.

There are at least three other problems with this law and the surveillance system it represents.

First among them is that the government will pay communications providers to create a potentially permanent surveillance infrastructure out of the country’s communications facilities, one which could be turned inward at any time and without legal recourse.

In short, the law gives the Administration the power to order the nation’s communication service providers — which range from Gmail, AOL IM, Twitter, Skype, traditional phone companies, ISPs, internet backbone providers, Federal Express, and social networks — to create possibly permanent spying outposts for the federal government.

These outposts need only to have a “significant” purpose of spying on foreigners, would be nearly immune to challenge by lawsuit, and have no court supervision over their extent or implementation.

Abuses of the outposts will be monitored only by the Justice Department, which has already been found to have underreported abuses of other surveillance powers to Congress.

In related international news, Zimbabwe’s repressive dictator Robert Mugabe also won passage of a law allowing the government to turn that nation’s communication infrastructure into a gigantic, secret microphone. — Threat Level

A second problem is that this surveillance infrastructure is unlikely to be secure, and will make an inviting target for hackers, criminals and other countries, not to mention the very terrorists it’s supposedly meant to catch.

Grant the NSA what it wants, and within 10 years the United States will be vulnerable to attacks from hackers across the globe, as well as the militaries of China, Russia and other nations.

Such threats are not theoretical. For almost a year beginning in April 2004, more than 100 phones belonging to members of the Greek government, including the prime minister and ministers of defense, foreign affairs, justice and public order, were spied on with wiretapping software that was misused. Exactly who placed the software and who did the listening remain unknown. But they were able to use software that was supposed to be used only with legal permission.

The United States itself has been attacked. In six hours in August 2006, remote attackers entered computers at the Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington; the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego; and the Army Space and Strategic Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala. The hackers transported more than 10 terabytes of data to South Korea, Hong Kong or Taiwan, and from there to the People’s Republic of China. Each intrusion was only 10 to 30 minutes. The downloaded information included Army helicopter mission-planning-systems specifications and flight-planning software used by the Army and Air Force. — Washington Post

Why don’t we save the taxpayers a few hundred billion dollars and just publish all the government’s secrets on the Internet where everybody can get to them without having to waste 30 minutes hacking into an insecure system?

Finally, widespread surveillance introduces destructive changes in behavior in the population under surveillance.

Now imagine a society where everyone knows they are or may be watched as they walk through the streets, or while surfing online. That – as in societies like Hitler’s Germany or Soviet Russia – will have tangible and widespread psychological consequences, reinforcing conformity, and literally crippling the ability to make autonomous and ethical decisions, he argued.

An analogy might be the well-studied population of children with overprotective mothers, the philosopher said. Studies show that such children tend to be indecisive, dependent on others, have little “ethical competence,” and often live suppressed and unhappy lives.

As or more disturbing may be the political implications of having a surveillance infrastructure in place.

Many philosophers reject the notion that given technologies are inherently politically neutral, [philosopher Sandro] Gaycken said. Surveillance, for example, can be used to support democratic values of freedom, equality, and state neutrality – but its tendency to create a watched and a watching class lends itself better to totalitarianism. In a country such as Germany, which has seen democracy slide into the Nazi state, such a warning resonates strongly.

“Surveillance stabilizes totalitarianism, and destabilizes democracy,” Gaycken warned. — Threat Level

So the end result is 300 million Americans who think they’re safe because the government is watching out for them by watching them, even though they weren’t doing anything wrong to begin with. Shortly, the people begin watching what they say, suppressing themselves out of fear they could be mistaken for a terrorist, and the destruction is complete.

In late 2001, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing a controversial National Security Agency program, and on Tuesday, director of national intelligence Mike McConnell revealed that the executive order authorized not only the “terrorist surveillance program” whose existence was revealed in 2005, but a series of other programs as well.

The program, which President Bush publicly acknowledged in December 2005 after its existence was revealed by theNew York Times, is only one part of a series of undisclosed intelligence programs which were authorized at the same time.

The terrorist surveillance program has been criticized for producing large volumes of information with little intelligence value while violating the privacy of ordinary Americans.

In a letter (PDF) to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included “a number of . . . intelligence activities” and that a name routinely used by the administration — the Terrorist Surveillance Program — applied only to “one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more.”

“This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged,” McConnell said.

McConnell’s letter was aimed at defending Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales from allegations by Democrats that he may have committed perjury by telling Congress that no legal objections were raised about the TSP. Gonzales said a legal fight in early 2004 was focused on “other intelligence activities” than those confirmed by Bush, but he never connected those to Bush’s executive order.

But in doing so, McConnell’s letter also underscored that the full scope of the NSA’s surveillance program under Bush’s order has not been revealed. — Washington Post

Gonzales has also come under fire recently for telling Congress in 2005 that no civil liberties abuses had occurred in connection with the Federal Bureau Investigation’s misuse of national security letters and exigent letters in counterterrorism investigations, while he had received internal reports documenting such misuses as early as a year before his testimony. Some members of Congress have called for Gonzales to resign.

The Bush administration, which placed the terrorist surveillance program under the review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in January, is pushing for a change in law which would permit it to continue operating the program without warrants or other court review.

“Time and again, the Administration has described the blatantly illegal TSP as a ‘narrow’ and ‘targeted’ program, and it’s playing a similar game of linguistic misdirection with this bill,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation legal director Cindy Cohn. “Rather than a mere ‘update’ to the law focused on foreign-to-foreign communications, it could facilitate wide-ranging surveillance of Americans’ private communications.”

Cohn urged people to contact their legislators and oppose the bill. “It would be absurd for Congress to legislate in the dark, before the Administration comes clean about the domestic spying program.”

Updates to stories previously covered at Homeland Stupidity include spying, spying and more spying.

The National Security Agency has run out of power, causing it to implement severe power-saving measures across the Fort Meade, Md., complex from which it runs acres of computing equipment to collect and process signals intelligence. Now, the NSA has implemented rolling blackouts and scheduled shutdowns of computer equipment to help keep it running at all. But it still hasn’t arranged for more power to be brought into the complex, despite having known about the problem for years.

Speaking of the NSA, last week the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an August 2006 decision that held that the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program was unconstitutional. The program monitors telephone calls and other communications entering and exiting the U.S. which the government says may have a connection to terrorists. The decision was overturned because the plaintiffs could not prove they had been directly affected by the program. Lawsuits related to the program remain alive in the Ninth Circuit.

In 2005, the Department of Defense was caught running an intelligence program which was collecting information on peaceful anti-war protesters. Much of the improperly collected data originated with the Department of Homeland Security. The database was cleaned up and later shut down. The Department of Defense Inspector General released a report (PDF) on the Threat and Local Observation Notice program saying that it complied with relevant law, though some information was improperly collected. But even though the database was shut down, NORTHCOM plans to bring back something like it.

Technology is changing how people interact with government forever, says a prominent homeland security consultant.

InFederal Computer Week on Monday, W. David Stephenson argues that emergent behavior enabled by the convergence of personal communications and publishing technology with massive private and government data sources will “empower individuals in their relations with governments.”

Stephenson cited examples of New York City’s plans to allow mobile phone users to send text and multimedia messages to 911 and 311, as well as a private project in Washington, D.C., which publishes District-provided road work data overlaid on a Google map, as two examples of the changes in the way citizens interact with government.

Displays showing the status of potholes repairs subtly, but effectively, keep the city’s Department of Public Works on its toes. That example also illustrates an important aspect of the Web 2.0 world. Some call it “sousveillance,” which happens when people turn the tables and monitor government.

Also, the growing scientific understanding of the principle of swarm intelligence is an important aspect of this potential transformation of government. The term suggests that groups of people may be capable of a higher level of collaborative behavior than could be predicted from the abilities of individual members. — Federal Computer Week

In the past, Stephenson has also cited how private citizens collaborated during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to share information, help reunite families, and pick up the slack where government failed.

Smart mobile phones, PDAs and other communications devices, all connected to Web 2.0 applications on the Internet, have the potential to utterly transform the way people react to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or even ordinary fender benders, Stephenson argued, as people collaborate with each other to find solutions.

“These devices have transformed our daily lives and the media,” Stephenson said in an e-mail. “It’s inevitable that they will have the same impact on government.”

Stephenson also has had a long-running weblog which he recently relaunched, along with a new RSS feed. For those of you who have wondered where he disappeared to, Stephenson said he’s trying to move all of his old content from Userland to the WordPress platform.

“Unfortunately those who have subscribed to my blog in the past don’t know that, because, with everything else, the blog feed changed,” Stephenson said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly broke the law in order to obtain personal information about tens of thousands of Americans, much of which was never related to any sort of investigation, according to an inspector general’s report released Friday.

The report (PDF) did not find that FBI agents deliberately broke the law, but misinterpreted or ignored it, and failed to implement procedures which would ensure that agents followed the law when using national security letters.

It also found that the FBI frequently used so-called “exigent letters,” to obtain telephone records for more than 3,000 telephone numbers, without having exigent circumstances, or even an open investigation. It just wrote up a letter, said there was an emergency, and threatened the phone companies with dire consequences should they fail to comply with these illegal requests.

The FBI used the letters to request telephone records, e-mail records, employment and credit histories, and other personal information on more than 52,000 people from 2003 to 2005, the report said.

“This is not simply about errors in oversight,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is about disregard for the law. For example, FBI terrorism investigators ignored their own lawyers’ advice to stop using so-called exigent letters for about two years.”

Congress significantly lowered the threshold for the government to obtain such information after the 2001 terrorism attacks, producing what the FBI itself reported as at least a fivefold increase in annual requests. Its tally cited 39,000 requests in 2003, 56,000 in 2004 and 47,000 in 2005 — involving a total of 24,937 “U.S. persons” (including citizens and green-card holders) and 27,262 foreigners in the United States. In 2004, nine letters alone requested telephone-subscriber information on 11,100 phone numbers.

The inspector general’s report discloses, however, that these numbers understated the FBI’s use of national security letters to collect data. After checking 77 investigative case files at four FBI field offices, investigators found that those offices had “significantly” underreported the number of requests they had made and that, in this small subset alone, the real number was 22 percent higher. — Washington Post

The abovePost article is a great summary of the IG’s findings.

One of the details buried in a footnote in the IG’s report was that FBI agents were supposed to record national security letters issued into a database maintained by the Office of General Counsel for its required semiannual classified report to Congress. Many of these records never made it into this Microsoft Access database which, the report noted, “had limited analytical capabilities.” Anybody who’s ever used Microsoft Access knows not to use it for anything more serious than your kid’s lemonade stand. It’s certainly not something you would trust classified information to — unless you’re the FBI.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were furious, at least while reporters were watching.

“This goes above and beyond almost everything they’ve done already,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who was among a host of Democrats promising investigative hearings. “It shows just how this administration has no respect for checks and balances.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, told reporters that Congress may “impose statutory requirements and perhaps take away some of the authority which we’ve already given to the FBI, since they appear not to be able to know how to use it.”

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who has been pressing for a review of national security letters since 2005, said the report “confirms the American people’s worst fears about the Patriot Act.” — Washington Post

FBI director Robert S. Mueller offered a public apology and said, “I am to be held accountable.” But, he noted, nobody had yet asked him to resign.

Sen. Schumer did, however, get on national television Sunday and call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

“Attorney General Gonzales is a nice man,” Mr. Schumer said. “But he either doesn’t accept or doesn’t understand that he is no longer just the president’s lawyer but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution, even when the president should not want it to be so.”

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Mr. Gonzales had “demonstrated decisive leadership by demanding a new level of accountability to address systematic problems in oversight over some of the F.B.I.’s national security tools.” — New York Times

Gonzales said Friday he would follow up to ensure that the FBI implemented the IG’s recommendations for fixing the problems.

“People have to believe in what we say,” Gonzales said. “And so I think this was very upsetting to me. And it’s frustrating.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information.

“The attorney general and the FBI are part of the problem, and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution,” said ACLU’s executive director, Anthony D. Romero.

Both Gonzales and Mueller called the national security letters vital tools in pursuing terrorists and spies in the United States. “They are the bread and butter of our investigations,” Mueller said. — Associated Press

Even President Bush weighed in Saturday, saying he had been briefed and ordered the problems fixed.

“These problems will be addressed as quickly as possible,” Bush said at a news conference in Uruguay, his second stop on a six-day Latin America tour. . . .

“My question is: What are you going to do to solve the problem and how fast can you get it solved?” he said.

But Bush defended the need for tools such as national security letters, which are used by the FBI to demand information from businesses and individuals without the court order normally required for a subpoena. Such methods, he said, are “important to the security of the United States” as it tries to track down and capture terrorists. — Washington Post

That much is obvious. After all, when you’re requesting highly sensitive personal information on almost 10,000 Americans per year, using a highly secretive process intended to ensure that Americans never find out they’ve been targeted, then the country must be just crawling with terrorists. Sooner or later, perhaps they’ll start arresting these thousands of terrorists who are apparently already here.

The Bush administration will stop conducting warrantless surveillance on Americans with suspected ties to terrorism, and will give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court jurisdiction over the so-called terrorist surveillance program run by the National Security Agency since shortly after 9/11 and first disclosed in December 2005.

Senior Justice Department officials said Wednesday that the department had been working with the secret court since before the program was disclosed to find a way to bring the program under the court’s review, but would not explain how the court orders worked or whether the orders applied to individuals or gave blanket authorization to conduct surveillance.

An official did say that a judge on the court issued more than one order, and that each order is valid for 90 days.

“As a result of these orders,” Mr. Gonzales told leaders of Congressional Intelligence and Judiciary Committees in a letter dated Wednesday, “any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

Justice Department officials said that the FISA court orders, which were not made public, were not a broad approval of the surveillance program as a whole, an idea that was proposed last year in Congressional debate over the program. They strongly suggested that the orders secured from the court were for individual targets, but they refused to provide details of the process used to identify targets — or how court approval had been expedited — because they said it remained classified. The senior Justice Department official said that discussing “the mechanics of the orders” could compromise intelligence activities. — New York Times

“The orders we’re talking about here are not some cookie cutter order,” one official said. “People have been working very hard on this for almost two years actually, and it has just now been approved a week ago by the judge of the FISA court.”

Congressional Democrats and privacy activists are not convinced that the program doesn’t still need oversight. “I intend to move forward with the committee’s review of all aspects of this program’s legality and effectiveness,” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.V.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“The administration’s claims that it was simply too cumbersome to comply with FISA held absolutely no water,” said Mark Moller, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

The announcement comes a day before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Justice Department’s activities.

The terrorist surveillance program spawned dozens of lawsuits against the government and telephone companies, and Wednesday’s announcement is likely to render moot at least some of the cases.

As you probably aren’t aware, your cell phone can be used to locate you whenever the phone is turned on, even if you aren’t on a call, and even if you think you have the GPS function disabled. The government has long taken advantage of this ability, tracking people even without probable cause.

To make it more palatable, several wireless carriers are now offering this functionality as a service to parents to track their children.

And of course, some parents are eating it up. Surprisingly, so are the kids. Wichita, Kan., resident James Davis subscribes to a Sprint service to monitor his 14 year old stepdaughter.

“It’s kind of expensive to do but peace of mind because I can know where she is,” Davis said. “You’re never too old to get kidnapped. My kids, they’d probably bring them back. But just in case. … As long as my daughter has her cell phone on her, for a fee, I can know exactly where she’s at. . . .

“When you’re 14, you don’t have the right to complete privacy,” said Davis, who also monitors his stepdaughter’s e-mail and cell phone usage. . . .

Lynn, Maggie and Kurt Rich – 14, 11 and 10, respectively – think such devices are “cool.”

John Rich said he wasn’t surprised his children thought monitoring tools were a good idea.

“They’re not troublemakers,” he said. — Wichita Eagle

Let’s take a look at some of these services.

Disney Mobile’s Family Locator service is the most basic. It allows parents to determine the location of their children in real time.

The Chaperone Service from Verizon Wireless allows parents to monitor their children’s locations in real time as well as be notified if their children leave predefined “zones” of where they’re expected to be. Verizon notifies the child’s phone by text message if their parents look up their location.

Teen Arrive Alive, provided through Nextel, allows parents to track their children in real time as well as determine the direction and speed they’re traveling. They also provide “Am I driving safely?” decals for the back of teenagers’ cars.

It may well be a good thing for many parents to be able to locate their children, especially in an emergency. But I’m afraid that this technology is making children accustomed to being tracked at all times, and therefore the next generation will grow up without an appreciation for privacy, and with a quiet acquiescence to the coming surveillance state.

Homeland Stupidity maintains an affiliate relationship with T-Mobile, which to the best of our knowledge does not offer a child tracking service.

TracFone, a wireless phone carrier in the U.S. which offers low-cost prepaid wireless service, does not want people to be able to purchase phones it puts up for sale and use them with other wireless carriers. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But now TracFone is trying to use force against people who want to do this.

Until today, I had an affiliate relationship with TracFone and offered its products for sale. A few minutes ago, I ended that relationship and sent the program manager the following letter:

While I am by no means a large affiliate, I thought it important that I let you know why I have chosen to end my affiliate relationship with TracFone.

On Tuesday, TracFone Wireless, Inc., filed a federal lawsuit against the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights arguing that people who purchase TracFone handsets should not be allowed to unlock them and use them with another wireless carrier. The lawsuit stems from a November ruling by the Library of Congress that unlocking a legally purchased wireless handset is exempt from certain provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. TracFone claims its views were not taken into account in the rulemaking process.

Since it became technically feasible in the late 1990s, wireless carriers have used handset locking to ensure that subscribers who purchase a handset, typically at far below cost, cannot then use the handset with another carrier. To the extent that it is technically feasible to lock a phone to a carrier, I have no problem with it.

But many people have learned that these locks can also be unlocked, and a niche market exists for the service of unlocking wireless handsets, as well as unlocked handsets themselves. Unlocked handsets allow a wireless phone customer in some circumstances to keep his wireless handset when he changes from one wireless carrier to another, so long as the underlying wireless radio technology used by each carrier is the same (e.g. GSM or CDMA).

My problem with TracFone’s approach is that it wants to use the force of law to prevent people from reprogramming their legally purchased phones. TracFone alleges in its lawsuit that this practice is “illicit,” a claim which is ridiculous on its face. It further alleges that trade in unlocked phones “supports terrorism,” a claim which is dubious at best, and which does not inspire confidence in TracFone as a company.

I cannot support this morally reprehensible misuse of the force of law against TracFone’s own customers, former customers and future customers.

Some of the news headlines you might have missed over the last week range from the simply inane to the truly frightening.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently now has the capability to remotely activate the microphone in your wireless phone and listen to whatever is going on around you, even if your phone is “off.” Remember, your phone is an electronic device. It’s never really off unless you’ve removed its power source.

New federal rules require companies who are involved in litigation, or expect to be in the future, to retain electronic data that may be relevant to the lawsuit and produce it during the discovery process. Sounds reasonable, except that we’re talking potentially terabytes of data that someone actually has to go through. The new rules are therefore quite costly, already creating a $1.6 billion “e-discovery” industry which is expected to double in size in the next year.

Lawmakers and businessmen who missed the story a month ago (because they don’t read Homeland Stupidity) about Homeland Security’s Automated Targeting System being used to assign terrorism risk scores to international travelers are expressing outrage over the system. “I have never seen anything as egregious as this,” said Kevin Mitchell, president of the Business Travel Coalition.

Finally, Transportation Security Administration employees nationwide have lost “1,183 badges and nearly 1,000 government-issued uniforms,” according to WMAQ-TV. “And those uniforms and badges are a free pass to secure areas in airports,” Radioactive Communist Zombies points out. “Now if I wanted to commit a terrorist attack, that would be the perfect disguise.”

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.

I attended HOPE Number Six back in July, and I heard rumors that day that one of the speakers had been arrested, but the details would not emerge until later.Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs was among the first to find out what happened and inform the public.

Rambam, who owns Pallorium, Inc., a company which provides support services to private investigators and law enforcement agencies, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, charged with witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and the charges promptly dropped.

The arrest was unrelated to the HOPE conference, but this didn’t come out until after the conference had ended. Many at the conference that afternoon and evening were worried about who the FBI would target next. And the large number of New York Police Department officers on Seventh Avenue weren’t making anyone feel safe.

When Rambam finally was able to give his presentation, he told everyone why this happened, and I won’t spoil the story for you by recounting it; you can hear him tell it for yourself. Suffice it to say for now that a bureaucrat got a little out of hand and did something he wasn’t supposed to do.

Rambam outlined several ways in which private companies get your personal information, combine it, and maintain massive databases, which are then available to the government, much of the time just for the asking. He tells which online services are blatantly lying in their privacy policies. He also points out that government already has much more data than they let on, and why they get it from private companies in the first place.

The presentation was originally meant to demonstrate just how easy it is to find information on anyone, and to demonstrate this, Rambam had taken a volunteer, Rick Dakan, and in four and a half hours found hundreds of pages of documentation, photographs, and more, and learned almost everything there is to know about him. Rambam explained how he did this and how almost anyone could do the same thing to almost anyone else.

And he suggested ways to protect yourself from privacy invasion. They’re rather difficult, and most people won’t be able to actually do them for any length of time.

While he didn’t go into quite as much detail on some aspects as I would have liked, mainly because three hours isn’t nearly enough time to cover this topic, and he clearly didn’t want to share some information he knew outside the private investigator and law enforcement communities, I did come out with a lot of useful knowledge.

If you’re interested in protecting your privacy, this is absolutely essential knowledge.

Listen now (MP3): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation brought a lawsuit January 31 against AT&T alleging that the company unlawfully cooperated with the National Security Agency in implementing what President George W. Bush calls the terrorist surveillance program, a program to capture international telephone calls of suspected terrorists and their associates where one end of the call is in the United States.

The Department of Justice on Thursday asked for a stay in the case, as well as the other cases which had been consolidated with it, asking the district court to halt entirely while the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considers the case.

“The government’s proposed stay would not be in the interests of justice in this very important case about ongoing illegal spying on millions of ordinary Americans,” said EFF media relations coordinator Rebecca Jeschke. “Many elements of our suit can and should go forward while the 9th Circuit considers the state secrets issues.”

The Department of Justice asserted that litigating the case would reveal national security secrets, causing exceptionally grave damage to the national security, and moved to dismiss the case. In July, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker denied the government’s motion to dismiss, ruling that “because the very subject matter of this litigation has been so publicly aired . . . dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.”

The government appealed that decision, and the the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed Wednesday to hear the appeal. The appeals court did not give an indication as to when it might rule on the appeal.

“We are looking forward to defending Walker’s decision to deny the motions to dismiss before the appeals court,” said EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl.

After the motion to dismiss was denied, 17 other lawsuits against various telephone companies were consolidated with the EFF’s case. Judge Walker will hold a case management conference Nov. 17 for these cases, Opsahl said.

In a separate case, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that the NSA terrorist surveillance program was unconstitutional. The government is being allowed to continue the program while it pursues an appeal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency can continue eavesdropping on Americans’ overseas telephone calls and e-mail messages pending the outcome of the government’s appeal of a district court decision which had ruled the program illegal.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay (PDF) of U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s order that the program, which President Bush has called “critical to our national security,” be halted.

Intelligence officials “need this program in addition to the other tools that we have, such as the FISA court, and that if they didn’t have it they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs as effectively as they have been,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. The program collects telephone calls and e-mail messages into and out of the country sent or received by people with “a clear link to . . . terrorist networks,” Bush said in December.

“This program is both critical to preventing terrorist attacks and fully consistent with law. We are pleased to see that it will be allowed to continue while the Court of Appeals examines the trial court’s decision, with which we strongly disagree,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. . . .

The ACLU filed the suit in March on behalf of scholars, attorneys and journalists who regularly communicate with people in the Middle East.

“A stay in this type of case is not uncommon. We’re focused on the appeal of the case itself,” said Paul Silva of the American Civil Liberties Union. — Reuters

The three-paragraph ruling said that the motion to stay was considered by balancing factors such as whether the government would be likely to win the case on its merits, whether anyone would be injured by issuing or not issuing the stay, and where the public interest lies. It did not, however, elaborate on how the court reached its decision.

A decision on the appeal is expected by year’s end, Silva told Reuters.

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Kurt Opsahl called the decision “disappointing,” but noted that “this case will still be heard on appeal by the Sixth Circuit.” The EFF is not a party to the lawsuit, but has filed a separate lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged role in the terrorist surveillance program. Its lawsuit has been consolidated with over a dozen other lawsuits and the government is currently appealing a motion to dismiss which the court denied.

A federal court judge ruled Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program conducted since shortly after September 11, 2001, is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled (PDF) that the terrorist surveillance program violated the rights of the people to speech and privacy, as well as violated the separation of powers doctrine.

“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote, in a decision that the White House and Justice Department said they would fight to overturn. A hearing will be held before Judge Taylor on Sept. 7, and her decision will not be enforced in the meantime. — New York Times

Under the program, authorized by President George W. Bush, the National Security Agency listened to telephone calls between the U.S. and other countries when one of the parties had suspected links to terrorists or terrorist organizations.

The U.S. Justice Department appealed the ruling and issued a statement saying the program is “an essential tool for the intelligence community in the war on terror.”

“In the ongoing conflict with al-Qaida and its allies, the president has the primary duty under the Constitution to protect the American people,” the department said. “The Constitution gives the president the full authority necessary to carry out that solemn duty, and we believe the program is lawful and protects civil liberties.”

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program” is “firmly grounded in law and regularly reviewed to make sure steps are taken to protect civil liberties.” — MSNBC

Obviously there is some disagreement about the law this program is firmly grounded in. The Justice Department has said in court that it would have to reveal state secrets in order to discuss the legal justification for the program.

“Today’s ruling is a landmark victory against the abuse of power that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Government spying on innocent Americans without any kind of warrant and without congressional approval runs counter to the very foundations of our democracy.”

He called the ruling “yet another nail in the coffin of the Bush administration’s strategy in the war on terror. . . . The judge very clearly points out that this, at its core, is about presidential powers.” — Washington Post

“This is just the initial round of what will likely be a long legal fight,” wrote Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued AT&T in a separate lawsuit in California alleging that it unlawfully cooperated with the NSA in implementing the terrorist surveillance program, which EFF alleges is larger than the government has admitted publicly.

In that case, the judge rejected the government’s motion to dismiss under the state secrets privilege, and a number of other lawsuits filed around the country were consolidated with that case in a decision last week.

(Hat tip)

The Government Printing Office on Wednesday published the 2006-2007 U.S. Government Manual, which “provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches” as well as “information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees.”

It makes a great indicator as to how the federal government is growing out of control and desperately needs to be scaled back.

Here are just a few offices, departments, agencies, commissions and organizations of the federal government which we just don’t need. This is list not exhaustive; it’s only a sampling of things the federal government is doing that it should not be. I’ll first present the government’s description of the program, and then the reality.

Only one program in the Legislative Branch made the list this year.

• “The U.S. Botanic Garden has artistic displays of plants, exhibits, and educational programs promoting botanical knowledge through the cultivation of an ordered collection of plants; fostering plant conservation by acting as a repository for endangered species; and growing plants for the beautification of the Capitol complex.”

  Run as a side project of the Library of Congress, the U.S. Botanic Garden received $6,275,000 in fiscal year 2005. While one could argue that the Capitol building needs plants, that could be done for far less, and the bulk of the Botanic Garden, if not the entirety thereof, should be sold to a private conservation organization.

Now comes the Executive Branch, the source of all of the remaining programs on this list.

• “The Office of National Drug Control Policy assists the President in establishing policies, priorities, and objectives in the National Drug Control Strategy. It also provides budget, program, and policy recommendations on the efforts of National Drug Control Program agencies.”

  Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol, and it hasn’t worked with drugs. The War on Drugs has become a War on the American People, creating violent criminals out of what would be respectable businesses, overflowing our prisons with nonviolent people and releasing real violent criminals early to make room for them, and gets innocent people injured or killed in police raids gone wrong. The War on Drugs must end and this agency must be abolished.

• “The Department of Agriculture works to improve and maintain farm income and to develop and expand markets abroad for agricultural products. The Department helps to curb and to cure poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. It works to enhance the environment and to maintain production capacity by helping landowners protect the soil, water, forests, and other natural resources. Rural development, credit, and conservation programs are key resources for carrying out national growth policies. Department research findings directly or indirectly benefit all Americans. The Department, through inspection and grading services, safeguards and ensures standards of quality in the daily food supply.”

  And so begins our Orwellian doublespeak section. What the Department of Agriculture really does is this: It drives small farmers out of business to the benefit of large corporate operations. It runs several communist programs of wealth redistribution wherein some farmers, generally the larger ones benefit at the expense of others, generally the smaller ones. It helps to perpetuate poverty, hunger, and malnutrition through its Food Stamp program and other such programs.

  It does nothing for the safety and quality of the food supply that any number of other organizations, already in existence, could not do — and do far better. It promotes whatever policies it wants to, whether they help the environment or not, though generally they do not.

  The Department of Agriculture threw $19.1 billion of your pearls to the pigs in fiscal year 2005, and it should be eliminated.

• “The Department of Education establishes policy for, administers, and coordinates most Federal assistance to education. Its mission is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the Nation.”

  The doublespeak continues. The true purpose of the Department of Education is to ensure that as many people as possible fail to receive a real education. Instead, they are to receive a thin gruel of regurgitated facts presented to them over twelve years of confinement for one-third of their childhood, during which they also learn how to be dependent on the State and other authority figures, sacrificing their own independence, and how to be good consumers with few or no aspirations. This helps perpetuate the virtual caste system set up here in the U.S. which, though few actually notice it, is right in front of everyone.

  The Department of Education spent $57.3 billion dumbing down America’s children in 2005. It must be eliminated and the function of control of education returned to where it properly belongs under the Constitution: the States and the People.

• “The Department of Health and Human Services is the Cabinet-level department of the Federal executive branch most involved with the Nation’s human concerns. In one way or another, it touches the lives of more Americans than any other Federal agency. It is a department of people serving people, from newborn infants to persons requiring health services to our most elderly citizens.”

  That it touches the lives of more Americans than any other Federal agency is certainly true. Its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is responsible for getting children hooked on prescription psychoactive drugs as early as possible, making sure that everyone is “mentally ill” and in need of “treatment” from the federal government, which of course knows best.

  Among other things, it also encompasses the Food and Drug Administration, responsible for preventing lifesaving drugs from reaching the U.S. market; the Administration for Children and Families, which is responsible for breaking up families and keeping them broken up; and several agencies responsible for delivering socialist health care to various groups of Americans.

  The Department of Health and Human Services siphoned off $66.8 billion of your money in fiscal year 2005. It must be abolished and its useful functions, such as the National Institutes of Health, which sometimes performs useful medical research, turned over to the private sector.

• “The Department of Housing and Urban Development is the principal Federal agency responsible for programs concerned with the Nation’s housing needs, fair housing opportunities, and improvement and development of the Nation’s communities.”

  Ever seen a housing project? Do you know why it’s so different than any other neighborhood, with higher crime chief among the noticeable differences? That’s HUD. It provides rental properties, not only in the projects but through a program known as Section 8, throughout the community.

  HUD also prevents you from failing to sell or rent a property to someone because you don’t like them, or suspect they may be a poor credit risk, or didn’t offer enough money, or any number of legitimate reasons, so long as the person plays the race card on you.

  HUD spent $31.3 billion in fiscal year 2005 on its various programs of poverty perpetuation, all of which would run more efficiently, with less money, and actually begin to help people get out of poverty, once it’s eliminated and its functions transferred to private charity.

• “The purpose of the Department of Labor is to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.”

  And how do they do that? Like all the other doublespeak programs, they don’t. Instead, they administer a minimum wage, which helps perpetuate poverty, prevent employers from offering jobs to people based on merit and require them to do so based on race, require them to conform to numerous “safety” regulations, most of which are common sense and the rest of which are of dubious merit, burden them with additional costs of complying with government paperwork, and require them to pay for insurance in case they might need to lay off an employee, rather than the employee paying for it.

  One might say that Labor’s programs which help people find and keep work are useful, but they are no different in principle from equivalent private programs, which already exist, and would exist in abundance without it. We don’t need any of Labor’s $11.9 billion drain on the economy in fiscal year 2005. Most of what it does should be eliminated, and the useful programs transitioned to private charities.

Then come a wide variety of independent establishments, government corporations, and quasi-official agencies, virtually all of which advance some anti-libertarian agenda. Due to space constraints I can only provide a sampling of these.

• “The African Development Foundation’s goals are to alleviate poverty and promote broad-based sustainable development and empowerment in Africa; to expand local capacity to promote and support grassroots, participatory development; and to enhance and strengthen U.S. relations with Africa through effective development assistance.”

  Sending large bales of cash to Africa won’t solve the poverty problem there. Africa needs market reforms and more economic freedom for its people first.

• “The Broadcasting Board of Governors’ mission is to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding by broadcasting accurate, objective, and balanced news and information about the United States and the world to audiences abroad.”

  I’ll bet you didn’t know the federal government has a propaganda machine. Actually it has several under this umbrella: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, all of which (usually) make sure the American viewpoint makes it onto the radios and television sets of people in the targeted areas. You think I made that up? That’s their stated purpose: to “clearly present the policies of the United States.”

  Apparently the U.S. news networks can’t “clearly present the policies of the United States” well enough for the government’s purposes.

• “The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment–air, water, and land–upon which life depends.”

  Oh, I just love doublespeak. The real purpose of the Environmental Pollution Agency is to ensure that large corporations can pollute the air, land and water with impunity, to prevent human development where there is even the slightest chance that one so-called “endangered” animal might be displaced, and to make us all pay for their wanton destruction of our natural resources. The EPA needs to go away. People who want to save endangered species can do so themselves; and those whose environments are polluted can sue the offenders out of business.

• “The Federal Communications Commission regulates interstate and foreign communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. It is responsible for the orderly development and operation of broadcast services and the provision of rapid, efficient nationwide and worldwide telephone and telegraph services at reasonable rates. Its responsibilities also include the use of communications for promoting safety of life and property and for strengthening the national defense.”

  At least they’re somewhat honest about their violating the People’s rights to speech and the press. The FCC is primarily responsible for the creation of every telecommunications monopoly in this country, and thinking that it can somehow solve the problems it created is silly. It needs to be abolished along with its ridiculous First Amendment-violating regulations on what we can say or do on and with our telephones, radios, televisions and Internet connections.

• “The Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States, is charged with administering and formulating the Nation’s credit and monetary policy. Through its supervisory and regulatory banking functions, the Federal Reserve maintains the safety and soundness of the Nation’s economy, responding to the Nation’s domestic and international financial needs and objectives.”

  The Federal Ripoff System in reality manages a fiat currency through which it’s managed to devalue the U.S. dollar to less than four percent of its value in 1913, the year it was created. It lies about inflation, manipulates the economy to the benefit of the people in power, and is primarily responsible for enabling the massive debt in which most Americans find themselves. On top of all that, it is widely believed to be solely responsible for causing the stock market crash of 1929 which ushered in the Great Depression.

  We were prosperous when our money was backed by gold and silver, as the Constitution specifies. Now we are poor and in debt. We must return to a monetary system based on value, rather than the whims of one man, and abolish the Federal Reserve.

• “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration maintains the United States’ role as a leader in aeronautical and space science technology by improving the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles and by conducting space flight research. It also conducts space exploration activities with manned and unmanned vehicles and utilizes the aeronautical and space resources of the United States and other nations for peaceful purposes.”

  If only it could manage to do that. Created in the Cold War to counter a perceived Soviet space threat, NASA has outlived its usefulness. These days it can barely manage to get two space shuttle flights in a year, and that’s a good year. Private space companies, on the other hand, are not only flying their own space vehicles, but launching their own space stations, at a minuscule fraction of the cost. NASA, too, needs to go away — after they find the lost moon landing tapes.

• “The National Railroad Passenger Corporation was established by Congress to meet the Nation’s intercity passenger transportation needs.”

  Now this is an interesting one. Congress created Amtrak in 1970 to provide intercity rail service. At a time when airplane flights were becoming more and more common and less and less expensive. These days Amtrak costs more than flying, and is still losing so much money that it won’t agree to expand service unless the state it expands into agrees to give it money to cover its losses.

  Amtrak should be sold to the highest bidder, if any, or dismantled entirely. Where rail service really is needed, it can be provided by local and regional governments and private concerns, as many of them have shown in recent years.

• “The Social Security Administration manages the Nation’s social insurance program–consisting of retirement, survivors, and disability insurance programs–commonly known as Social Security. It also administers the Supplemental Security Income program for the aged, blind, and disabled. The Administration is responsible for studying the problems of poverty and economic insecurity among Americans and making recommendations on effective methods for solving these problems through social insurance. The Administration also assigns Social Security numbers to U.S. citizens and maintains earnings records for workers under their Social Security numbers.”

  Last but not least we have Social Security, the most overtly Communist and most overtly unconstitutional program still in operation. FDR threatened the Supreme Court in order to get them not to declare it unconstitutional. That’s how bad this program really is.

  At its root, the program resembles nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, illegal for you and I to run, but one in which we are all forced to participate, whether we want to or not. It takes money from us, ostensibly to provide for us at retirement or disability, but doesn’t have enough money to actually do so. Even if it does manage to pay out, most people will take a heavy loss on Social Security.

  And those people who would rather get a better rate of return for their retirement on the open market are prohibited from doing so, except for one small county in Texas where a pilot project invests the money in the marketplace and everybody has more than enough money for retirement.

  Social Security takes almost 13 percent of Americans’ income and gives them nothing but promises in return, promises it can’t deliver nearly as well as the free market, or in the future perhaps at all.

  Social Security should be phased out. Those currently stuck paying into the Social Security system should be given the opportunity to opt out, and no one new should be accepted into the scheme. After several years, once the system no longer has any participants, it will shut down gracefully with nothing left to do (except enjoy their retirement).

And in a bit of sheer irony, the U.S. Government Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, documents which almost every government agency violates merely by existing.

There are many other pointless, needless and useless government agencies, commissions, organizations, and departments which I simply couldn’t get to and still keep this article readable in one sitting. But feel free to browse through them for yourself, and if you think I missed a program which should be eliminated sooner rather than later, please let me know.

And if you’d like to help scale back the federal government, please consider joining Downsize DC, which is dedicated to eliminating the federal government from the parts of our lives it doesn’t belong in.