Thursday, September 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Basic Rights in the Digital Age
I saw this on Kim Komando's daily newsletter. It's too good not to share.
Judge's Laptop Ruling Challenges the Constitution - and Your Privacy
It's pretty obvious that we as a society are now made up of two groups. There are those who, for better or worse, have moved their lives into the digital realm, and those who haven't.
I would like to introduce you to someone in the latter category. His name is Edward Korman and he is a federal judge in New York state. He had a case before him involving a U.S. citizen – a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal – who had his computer confiscated while returning to the States. The judge ruled, sweepingly, that, yes, the federal government had a right to confiscate laptops at the border without probable cause.
In other words: You are traveling overseas, with your laptop, tablet or smartphone. As you re-enter the United States, a federal official, for any reason or none, can take it away from you and look through it, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Here's what I have on my laptop. Years of email. Private conversations from close friends about personal matters, some of them tragic, heart-wrenching, and life-changing, and similar messages from my husband. There are thousands of family photos, 99.9 percent of which I would prefer to be private. There is medical information about me and my family. I have business plans that are the culmination of years of work and affect my family's current and future livelihood.
Something else is there as well – something more intimate. What's on my laptop is a reflection of my mind – the unadorned evidence, good and bad, flattering and embarrassing, of my victories and pratfalls, my joys and losses, my most elated moments and deepest thoughts. It's me.
Either you live in a world in which this extension of your very consciousness – and your constant access to it – is an inextricable part of your life, or you don't. You either appreciate that a laptop is a costly and delicate instrument you'd just as soon not be cavalierly tossed around by a TSA employee, or you do not. And you recoil at the thought of strangers pawing through that information on a whim, with trivial legal oversight, or you do not.
The taking of a laptop today is a striking act of confiscation almost without an equivalent 25 years ago. Back then, it would have taken a team of FBI agents days if not weeks to so comprehensively vacuum up a single American's health, business, financial and personal information, not to mention that of so many of his or her friends, family members, and business associates.
Today, Nosy McPatterson, your local TSA staffer, or Roscoe the border agent who got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, can accomplish the same feat, and in an instant. They can paw through your photos and email during their lunch hour. And anyone present with a 13-year-old's understanding of computing can easily and unnoticeably make a quick copy of it onto a device that slips easily into a pants pocket.
Judge Korman says it doesn't happen very often, though there's evidence he's wrong. I don't think it should happen at all.
It was odd – there's surprisingly little talk about the ruling online. (It came down on New Year's Eve afternoon.) The more you read, the weirder the rules are. The so-called "border exemption" extends 100 miles inland from the border. That includes the population of the Eastern Seaboard, Miami, Houston, the west coast, and Chicago.
I wanted to find a smart legal mind who'd considered the issue. I finally found someone who had. He came up with a simple encapsulation to prevent this sort of intrusion into our private lives for no reason. It went like this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
That's the Fourth Amendment, of course. The writer was a guy named James Madison, with help from a few friends. Judge Korman, I am quite sure, isn't the sort to carry his life around in his laptop. It's OK that he doesn't. The ironic thing about his ruling is that while initially I thought it encapsulated a division between people who live in the past (the judge) and the future (me and I assume you), but it's obvious this issue was well-debated – and from our point of view, resolved – by some smart people a very long time ago.
In the end, Judge Korman is the one with a different vision for the future. As a professional, mother, friend and citizen, I really don't like the looks of it.
Copyright 2014, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved.
- See more at: komando columns
Judge's Laptop Ruling Challenges the Constitution - and Your Privacy
1/26/2014
I would like to introduce you to someone in the latter category. His name is Edward Korman and he is a federal judge in New York state. He had a case before him involving a U.S. citizen – a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal – who had his computer confiscated while returning to the States. The judge ruled, sweepingly, that, yes, the federal government had a right to confiscate laptops at the border without probable cause.
In other words: You are traveling overseas, with your laptop, tablet or smartphone. As you re-enter the United States, a federal official, for any reason or none, can take it away from you and look through it, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Here's what I have on my laptop. Years of email. Private conversations from close friends about personal matters, some of them tragic, heart-wrenching, and life-changing, and similar messages from my husband. There are thousands of family photos, 99.9 percent of which I would prefer to be private. There is medical information about me and my family. I have business plans that are the culmination of years of work and affect my family's current and future livelihood.
Something else is there as well – something more intimate. What's on my laptop is a reflection of my mind – the unadorned evidence, good and bad, flattering and embarrassing, of my victories and pratfalls, my joys and losses, my most elated moments and deepest thoughts. It's me.
Either you live in a world in which this extension of your very consciousness – and your constant access to it – is an inextricable part of your life, or you don't. You either appreciate that a laptop is a costly and delicate instrument you'd just as soon not be cavalierly tossed around by a TSA employee, or you do not. And you recoil at the thought of strangers pawing through that information on a whim, with trivial legal oversight, or you do not.
The taking of a laptop today is a striking act of confiscation almost without an equivalent 25 years ago. Back then, it would have taken a team of FBI agents days if not weeks to so comprehensively vacuum up a single American's health, business, financial and personal information, not to mention that of so many of his or her friends, family members, and business associates.
Today, Nosy McPatterson, your local TSA staffer, or Roscoe the border agent who got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, can accomplish the same feat, and in an instant. They can paw through your photos and email during their lunch hour. And anyone present with a 13-year-old's understanding of computing can easily and unnoticeably make a quick copy of it onto a device that slips easily into a pants pocket.
Judge Korman says it doesn't happen very often, though there's evidence he's wrong. I don't think it should happen at all.
It was odd – there's surprisingly little talk about the ruling online. (It came down on New Year's Eve afternoon.) The more you read, the weirder the rules are. The so-called "border exemption" extends 100 miles inland from the border. That includes the population of the Eastern Seaboard, Miami, Houston, the west coast, and Chicago.
I wanted to find a smart legal mind who'd considered the issue. I finally found someone who had. He came up with a simple encapsulation to prevent this sort of intrusion into our private lives for no reason. It went like this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
That's the Fourth Amendment, of course. The writer was a guy named James Madison, with help from a few friends. Judge Korman, I am quite sure, isn't the sort to carry his life around in his laptop. It's OK that he doesn't. The ironic thing about his ruling is that while initially I thought it encapsulated a division between people who live in the past (the judge) and the future (me and I assume you), but it's obvious this issue was well-debated – and from our point of view, resolved – by some smart people a very long time ago.
In the end, Judge Korman is the one with a different vision for the future. As a professional, mother, friend and citizen, I really don't like the looks of it.
Copyright 2014, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved.
- See more at: komando columns
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Cancun Trip - October 2013
Click here to view this photo book larger
Shutterfly the perfect way to preserve your precious moments.
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Wednesday, December 5, 2012
This Chart Implies Something Very Troubling About the Price of Gas
TheBlaze.com
Crude oil prices account for about 66 percent of the price of gasoline, according to the U.S.
Energy Information Administration.
Granted, other factors play a role in deciding the price we pay at the pump, including taxes and the cost of distribution, but it’s clear that the price of crude directly affects the price of gas. As crude oil increases in price, the price of gasoline tends to increase. Likewise, when markets are calm and the price of crude oil decreases, the price of gasoline decreases.
With that in mind, take a look at the following chart and try to make sense of what’s going on:
See that? Although the price of crude has fallen in recent months, as the
above chart clearly indicates, the price of gasoline remains at a record high.
“Anecdotally, it feels like when oil prices rise, gas prices at the pump rise; but when turmoil pauses in global geo-politics – or some entity decides that high oil prices just will not do for the world’s economy – gas prices at the pump seem not to drop so quickly,” writers at Zero Hedge note.
“Yes there are pipeline, inventory (and even tax) issues but the following chart suggests ‘gouging’ on a national level,” they add.
It’s also worth noting that what we’re seeing today with the price of gasoline and crude is eerily similar to what we saw right before the economic collapse of 2008.
Posted on December 4, 2012 at
12:50pm by Becket Adams
“Under my plan, ENERGY PRICES would NECESSARILY SKYROCKET”
- Barack H. Obama
- Barack H. Obama
Granted, other factors play a role in deciding the price we pay at the pump, including taxes and the cost of distribution, but it’s clear that the price of crude directly affects the price of gas. As crude oil increases in price, the price of gasoline tends to increase. Likewise, when markets are calm and the price of crude oil decreases, the price of gasoline decreases.
With that in mind, take a look at the following chart and try to make sense of what’s going on:
The price of gas is represented by the light grey line
and the price of oil
by the dark black line (courtesy Zero Hedge, UBS, WSJ)
“Anecdotally, it feels like when oil prices rise, gas prices at the pump rise; but when turmoil pauses in global geo-politics – or some entity decides that high oil prices just will not do for the world’s economy – gas prices at the pump seem not to drop so quickly,” writers at Zero Hedge note.
“Yes there are pipeline, inventory (and even tax) issues but the following chart suggests ‘gouging’ on a national level,” they add.
It’s also worth noting that what we’re seeing today with the price of gasoline and crude is eerily similar to what we saw right before the economic collapse of 2008.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Philip Roth Pens Open Letter to Wikipedia to Fix Error
... and it works, after he is first rejected as a 'credible source'
Read this article from Newser. This is why academia is a "primary source" for misinformation. The media is also guilty of this. The comments for this story are also fun to peruse.Philip Roth Pens Open Letter to Wikipedia to Fix Error
By John Johnson, Newser Staff
Posted Sep 8, 2012 11:30 AM CDT
Philip Roth glanced at the Wikipedia entry for his novel The Human Stain and learned that his book was inspired by the life of the late writer and literary critic Anatole Broyard. The problem, writes Roth in an open letter to Wikipedia published in the New Yorker, is that the assertion isn't true. It's just "the babble of literary gossip." The novel, he explains, is based on the life his late friend Melvin Tumin, who taught sociology at Princeton. (A main plot point revolves around the protagonist getting into hot water for innocently referring to two missing students as "spooks," something that actually happened to Tumin.)
The best part of Roth's open letter is that when he approached Wikipedia with the correction through an intermediary, an administrator shot him down: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources," he quotes the administrator as writing. Hence, the open letter, which appears to have worked: The entry on Roth now reflects the new version.
The best part of Roth's open letter is that when he approached Wikipedia with the correction through an intermediary, an administrator shot him down: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources," he quotes the administrator as writing. Hence, the open letter, which appears to have worked: The entry on Roth now reflects the new version.
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