They’ve faced down humans time and time again, but Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church were not ready for the cosplay action that awaited them today at Comic-Con. After all, who can win against a counter protest that includes robots, magical anime girls, Trekkies, Jedi and…kittens?

Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego’s Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting “WHAT DO WE WANT” “GAY SEX” “WHEN DO WE WANT IT” “NOW!” while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs. Simply stated: The eclectic assembly of nerdom’s finest stood and delivered.

(via xkcd)

Playing Sisyphus is only fun for the first million or so grains of sand.

Now that Vivendi and General Electric have struck a deal, cable giant Comcast is expected to to buy a controlling stake in NBC-Universal; marking the biggest proposed media merger in recent memory. Comcast, the largest cable company and the No. 1 residential Internet service provider in the nation, would take over the NBC empire: a television network, Universal Studios, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Telemundo, the Weather Channel, Hulu.com, 27 television stations and a host of other properties.

This train wreck of a deal will hurt all over. It will mean increased costs for cable television service; currently free online NBC content locked behind a pay wall; less opportunity for the distribution of independent media; even fewer choices and less programming diversity. On average, nearly one quarter of all channels offered to cable subscribers will be owned by the bloated Comcast.

I’m not sure I buy that this deal must mean free content moving behind a pay wall, but for the rest… pretty much. Consolidation of formal, accepted media (that is, not the internet) into such a small number of companies is a Really Bad Idea, for democracy, freedom, and overall entertainment value. Think about it – in just a few months, 80% of everything you see on TV will be coming from one of four companies. That’s just crazy.

1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint

5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism

6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7) “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit

9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

I’m kind of sad I’ve only read four of those, actually.

Woohoo! I’m famous, bitches! Bow before me, for I am dangerous!

Oh, and the TSA and Bush administration can lick my sweaty nutsac. I’ve got your freedom of speech right here.

Louisiana Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a ban on most abortions, which would be triggered if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 ruling legalizing the procedure, a spokesman said on Saturday.

The ban would apply to all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, except when the mother’s life is threatened. It is similar to a South Dakota law that has become the latest focus of the abortion battle.

Bonus points for having a woman sign the bill. Nice job, traitor to your gender. I’m putting in my claim on Kathleen Blanco’s uterus now. Kathleen, I expect you to ask me permission before you use your uterus for anything. Even menstruate.

I already gave for NOLA/Katrina, but Louisiana will never see another dime out of me.

A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that evidence could be used even when the police entered a suspect’s home illegally by failing to knock on the door or announce their presence.

By a 5-4 vote, splitting along conservative-liberal lines, the high court ruled that a police violation of the so-called knock-and-announce rule does not require that the evidence seized during the search be thrown out.

…

“Today’s opinion is thus doubly troubling. It represents a significant departure from the court’s precedents. And it weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution’s knock-and-announce protection,” Breyer wrote.

Tell me again, how five justices departing from precedent are not activist judges? How they are not legislating from the bench?
Oh yeah, those are just meaningless code words to use when you disagree with the outcome.

So long, Fourth Amendment! Thanks, scAlito! Thanks bigot voters! Thanks compliant media! Thanks eletion fraud and disenfranchisement!

via Apostropher

the news that a committee of scholarly bootlickers has blackballed Juan Cole’s candidacy for a tenured professorship at Yale absolutely refuses to leave me in peace.

This may not seem like particularly noxious news, at least when compared to the stench of putrefying corpses hanging over Haditha, or the Nazi stab-in-the-back myths now being recycled in Right Blogistan, but it’s touched an extremely raw nerve with me – because of what it says about the age of fear and intellectual intimidation that we live in, because of the unadulterated vileness of the self-appointed commissars involved, and, not least, because I consider Juan Cole my friend, and a man who won’t take the time to speak up for a friend who’s being blacklisted is, as the Godfather might put it, less than a man.

Now, I don’t know Juan Cole. He and I aren’t friends, and he probably doesn’t need any defense from me. What I do know is that he is a fair-minded intellectual history professor who is an expert on the Middle East, fluent in the languages of the region. And english. Which is nice, since I don’t know those other languages.

In addition to his other pursuits, Professor Cole maintains a blog, focusing on the news out of Iraq and the region at large, gathered in large part from the news sources of the region and translated by Cole. Because he’s fair-minded, because he speaks the truth about things like Zarqawi and Ahmadinejad and the actual situation on the ground and Israel’s policies and how it affects Palestinians, he has been relentlessly attacked by the mouthbreathing pond scum of the right wing bigotsphere. It’s his view that Palestinians are people too, and whose rights are being infringed, that has brought the thermonuclear righty meltdown (see also, the uproar over the papers about AIPAC’s influence, etc.)

Cole doesn’t need our defense in any substantive way; he’s ably smote all of the fools who challenged him on factual or interpretive grounds (particularly Goldberg, a repeat ass kickee). Cole could probably use some moral and publicly-stated support, however, because you see, the vile, dishonest, cowardly, Stalinist cretins of the right have finally found a way they could hurt him: by working money angles to keep him from getting tenure at Yale. And it worked.

Tenured History Professor is, essentially, the pinnacle of the history professor profession. He is immensely qualified and would be a great addition to that campus. By all objective, reasonable, academic terms, he was a shoe-in.

But the righties have turned their slime machine onto the donor list of Yale. Libelling Cole with accusations of antisemitism and urging jewish donors to contact the school and protest.

In a “highly unusual” move, Cole has been denied tenure.

Cole knows about the conspiracy. In his typical even-handed way, this is what he said on the vote:

Cole, while refusing to comment on the tenure committee’s vote, told The Jewish Week he believes that the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity.

“The articles published in the Yale Standard, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the Washington Times, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, contained made-up quotes, inaccuracies, and false charges,” he said. “The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity.”

This is how you say “this is fucking ridiculous” in academic-speak. And thus, a good, honest man is denied a post for which he is emminently qualified.

So the anti-intellectualism, the closed, ignorant, propaganda arms of the right are in full display. What do they have? Money. Money and no morals or ethics. They can’t win in the war of ideas or in the war of facts, but they can abuse the structures of power and pull levers with their money in a way to make it miserable for the non-authoritarian cultists. Billmon has a decent rundown of the history prior to this nomination. The result is shocking and appalling. McCarthy would be proud. As is every person who fantasizes about the Jewish cabal running the world.

But what’s really bizarre about this business is the massive propaganda firepower being trained on one mild-mannered Middle East specialist with a blog. Just the thought of Juan Cole at Yale was enough to send the Rubins and the Mowbrays and the Powerliars into a full-blown conniption fit – like the lady elephants in Dumbo once the mouse shows up. This reaction reeks of fear, in much the same way as the panicked response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s recent paper on the Israel Lobby. It’s totally out of proportion to the political threat these Ivory Tower types would seem to pose to the great and powerful Oz.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

So if you get the chance, drop Professor Cole a note saying you support him. The forces of evil, ignorance, and darkness have won. Again. I’m tired of this shit.

The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office.

Meeting in New Orleans, the board of governors for the world’s largest association of legal professionals approved the creation of an all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties.

They include a former federal appeals court chief judge, a former FBI director, and several prominent scholars — to evaluate Bush’s assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Bush has appended statements to new laws when he signs them, noting which provisions he believes interfere with his powers.

Among the laws Bush has challenged are the ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and “whistle-blower” protections for federal employees.

The challenges also have included safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research.

Bush has challenged more laws than all previous presidents combined.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong.

This echoes my thoughts almost precisely. The bookies, too, were betting on Kerry. The bookies!

I’m generally loathe to join in conspiracy theories, but I think it a likely truth that the last two national elections were stolen from we, the People. The scale of the corruption and antidemocratic evil is just so astounding that is almost incomprehinsible, and to quote Han Solo, “I can imagine a lot.” It may not be centrally directed (who needs to centrally direct when you’ve got willing, fanatical authoritarian participants in positions of power in every county? You read the bulletpoint memo and let them loose), but the corrupt effort is widespread, and on the state level pervasive, particularly as to intimidation and disenfranchisement via bureaucratic moves or lies (adding up to more than vote count fraud, though I have no studies to back me up as the subject is impossible to study).

However, as there’s no clenis involved and the fascists GOP holds all the reins of power, there will never be an investigation, nor will anyone be held accountable. Except the powerless and the small whose backs are going to be first against the wall, that is. The media hand-waves it all away without really looking at the issue. After all, what’s in it for them?

Kennedy’s article is the most important so far on our disenfranchisement, not necessarily due to the depth, but due to the publication it appears in – Rolling Stone. This is the widest reading yet and as close to mainstream as this will probably ever become. Hell, I may have covered this a couple times before (here and here), but Jane and Joe Schmoe have probably never even considered the issue.

Once the sheeple wake up and realize we’re living under the autocratic thumb of authoritarian cultists with no democratic legitimacy, well… I’m sure they’ll flip the channel right back to American Idol.

But a couple might not.

Update: Manjoo raises substantive issues with RFKjr’s article. RFKjr has been reliable in the past, but it is possible he overreached and possibly been dishonest. I’m looking forward to the reply.

Update 2: RFK responds. I find Manjoo’s overall points uncompelling and his rebuttal of the RFK response particularly weak. I think what we can all agree on is that something about the results from Ohio 2004 stinks like a frat house bathroom the night after a party. The particulars may not be precise, but we know something was up, as all the results went wildly in favor of the GOP beyond all reason or expectation, and the situation needs to be examined and fixed.

High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com.

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of “illegal or inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Pray tell where a public school district gains the authority to punish students for activities they perform outside of school. This is no different than if the Feds were monitoring the phone calls of US citizens without warrants and then detaining them.

Legally, speaking, the schools have no right to monitor, prohibit, inhibit, or punish students for extracurricular free speech activities. In fact, every time this has been done, the schools have lost and lost big. We’re talking money and a public, formal apology big. If you have been affected, or know someone who has, your first steps should be the ACLU and the Student Press Law Center.

In 2003 AT&T built “secret rooms” hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

Seriously, people. Encryption + obfuscation == you maintain your privacy

Philip R. Zimmermann created a program to encrypt e-mail. His Zfone will do the same for Internet calls.

He has found out once already. Trained as a computer scientist, he developed a program in 1991 called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for scrambling and unscrambling e-mail messages. It won a following among privacy rights advocates and human rights groups working overseas — and a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Mr. Zimmermann, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially.

Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. On Sunday, he released a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to-computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available earlier this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the system known as voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP.

Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law. But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))

Though it’s not considered one of the signs of fascism, an obsession with secrecy is certainly a hallmark of a despotic government.

If the Executive issues an ad hoc presidential memorandum that authorizes corporations to violate laws passed by the Legislative, how are we not in the middle of Constitutional crisis right now?

Dear M. Moore:

Thank you for your email concerning your interest in the subject of warrantless monitoring of American citizens’ communications by the National Security Agency.

Working Assets has taken the following position on this subject:

Working Assets believes that the warrantless monitoring of phone conversations ordered by the Bush administration is both illegal and alarming.

We will pursue this issue through our citizen action program, and by supporting organizations committed to preserving civil liberties in America.

Working Assets has never been approached by any government agency seeking our help in illegally accessing the content of conversations by our customers, and we would refuse any such request.

We have information regarding the conduct of our underlying carrier (Sprint). For more information, please visit: http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/nsa.html#blog

They can’t control Sprint, but WA will not release your records. Using the theory of doing what one can, a) use encryption (because this is email as well as phone), b) use a traffic obfuscator like Tor, and c) switch providers to one who will not comply with illegal Executive requests.

Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile say they did not share information. Verizon, the land line company, did. Cingular and Sprint declined to comment, which you can probably read as they have shared their information with the NSA.

Known involved companies at this point are entirely land line. VOIP, particularly encrypted VOIP, looks to be a great option. Not that it really matters, but you may want to avoid Skype, since I’m sure the NSA is applying the “they’re a European company, therefore every Skype packet is international and we can intercept it” card.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Looks like time to add another notch to points 3 and 6 of the defining steps of fascism to me. Probably 13 as well.

Possibly. But it’s also certainly our own NSA.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest’s foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest’s lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA’s explanation did little to satisfy Qwest’s lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn’t want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

So, kudos to Qwest, for being the only telecomm to refuse to comply with the NSA’s illegal requests absent a court order. If you can switch, by all means do so. Or better still, Working Assets, the only telecommunications company to sign on with the ACLU to stop the illegal wiretapping of US Citizens.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what the NSA is doing is collecting an immense database of the behaviors and activities of American citizens. Without a warrant. Without probable cause. Outside of the law. This is a shadowy group that even the CIA lifers think are right wing. A group completely amoral, devoted to black ops, and in favor of authoritarianism at every step of the way.

If anyone imagines for even one second that the data the NSA is collecting here is not going to be used or already used for such things as domestic spying, intimidation of protest groups, disruption of reporters who may be investigating actions embarassing to the administration, exposing whistleblowers and the like, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Remember, at first they said they didn’t spy. Then they said they spied only with court approval. Then they said they spied only on international calls, not your calls to your girlfriend or your parents or your fellow little league coaches. And now, they’re spying on we domestic citizens. Outside of the Rule of Law, with no legal authority outside of an authoritarian state.

At each new revelation, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders said if you didn’t like what was happening, you loved the terrorists. At each step, they gave tortured justifications or credulously believed the administrations patently absurd legal justifications. At each step, these cowardly bedwetters begged for the paternalistic administration to come tuck them in and save them from the bad people. Well, now they’ve met the bad people, and the bad people wear US Government ID cards.

See also, Greenwald, Glenn. Side note: I can see Glenn’s point that the Constitutional and legal issues aren’t exactly bright lines here (primarily resting on privacy grounds, as in lack thereof in PEN registers), but I think the burden is upon the administration to prove the legality of monitoring citizen activities, using coercion against businesses, and essentialing Taking corporate assets for government use. I should point out that, legally speaking, I think the Constitutional issues are probably non-starters, but that statutory issues are almost ironclad in prohibiting the NSA’s actions here. I’ll try to remember to look up the USC sections later.

Further questions I have:
1) internet – are they tracking our browsing/usage behavior? Are they capturing emails? For those of you not already using encryption such as PGP or GnuPG, ferchrissake, what the hell are you waiting for? For those of you not using Tor, what are you waiting for?

2) VOIP too? If yes to internet, then yes to VOIP.

This may not be the America that I knew, but going forward anyone who contacts me should be under the assumption that the communication is monitored and possibly able to be read if in text format.

… Unless you use encryption. Which is both useful and necessary for our privacy. It’s also super easy to use and install. I’m tired of trying to get people to use encryption. You may be forcing my hand here, but by FSM, I’m going to start encrypting everything I send and if the recipients can’t figure it out… tough. My public key is linked to at the bottom of every page on this site. GnuPG + enigmail (two plugins for Thunderbird). All of this is Open and Free. Learn it, live it, love it.

Tor is the other leg to the encryption side. If your packets aren’t encrypted, they can read them. If they are, they can still do packet analysis to see where you are going. Tor eliminates the packet analysis leg. Use it. If you have spare bandwidth, please donate that as well.

Remember the right wing saying how if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns? Well, if my government suspects me of being a criminal, then only my government is suspect.

Update: the telcos could be liable for many billions in damages (see also: ACSBlog). Now, who wants to be the first attorney to form a class for a Class Action?

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can’t handle the truth. They won’t admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won’t blame those who led us into the quagmire; they’ll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

Dictator. Decider.

“I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation,” the president told reporters in the Rose Garden. “But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”

Decider. Dictator.

My position on open standards, neutrality, and fairness have been discussed here quite a bit, and this is no different. The internet has been one of the greatest forces for change and democracy in a long time; at the very least, it has been a catalyst for the explosive growth of knowledge and information sharing (not to mention giving The People a voice that they haven’t had – ever. A necessary voice that is the only thing currently safeguarding our democracy on the popular front). There is a slight argument toward a capitalist solution (i.e. neutral providers will attract more customers), but in a monopolistic situation (at best, most people in America effectively only have a duopoly of ISPs from which to choose), I do not think this applies. See also, Wal-Mart).

Without net neutrality, the inernet as you know it will likely die. Many scenarios have already unfolded, such as Comcast Cable blocking Vonage packets… and then rolling out their own VOIP solution a few months later. As things stand, even with the many to many access model, ISPs are our gateways, and are still subject to control from the anticompetitive, antipeople corporations. If the internet had not been developed the way it had and been nurtured via universities, we would currently have a “net” of walled communities, to which we would have to pay to access. Think this wasn’t what the Suits wanted? Imagine a world where the “internet” are competing AOLs.

That’s the future we are heading toward, and the Suit lobbyists from AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, in coordination with the corrupt GOP Congress are trying to turn back the clock and destroy the internet as we know it. For the businesses, it makes sense to try and control content. For the government, it makes sense to try and control information, and there has not been a governmental body in history that has not tried to coopt and control any and all technologies that increase the amount of information available to the people.

We must not allow the internet to become a series of walled gardens, run by warlords, robber barons, and tinpot dictators. Let your Congresscritter know how you feel.

If nothing else convinces you, imagine how much the temperature in hell dropped when they realized that Instacracker and MoveOn were on the same side of this issue. And if that inbred, mouthbreathing, genocidal racist twit can come around to the correct viewpoint… hell, everyone should.

“The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

“More than just threatening individuals’ privacy, AT&T’s apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans’ Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now,” said Bankston.

Easy Fourth Amendment violation right there. Well, it was a violation until the busheviks took over and smilin Sammy scAlito was mortared into place using the hooves of the traitorous Dem sellouts, that is.

You know, when my back’s against the wall, I’ll think on all of the quislings and cowards that let us inch into this situation. Then I’ll track them down in whatever afterlife they’ve chosen and kick ‘im in the nether regions.

Also, in case it’s not too late, you can still join the EFF and the ACLU (the ACLU has a companion case going against the NSA). Oh, and if you aren’t using Tor, you should be.

Unmanned aerial vehicles have soared the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq for years, spotting enemy encampments, protecting military bases, and even launching missile attacks against suspected terrorists.

Now UAVs may be landing in the United States.

A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday heard testimony from police agencies that envision using UAVs for everything from border security to domestic surveillance high above American cities. Private companies also hope to use UAVs for tasks such as aerial photography and pipeline monitoring.
Click for photos

“We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory,” Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner at Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection Bureau, told the House Transportation subcommittee.

This is Hoover’s America, not mine.