Scores of volunteers gathered at a remote ranch Saturday to help a civilian border-patrol group start building a short security fence in hopes of reducing illegal immigration from Mexico.
The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps plans to install a combination of barbed wire, razor wire, and in some spots, steel rail barriers along the 10-mile stretch of private land in southeastern Arizona.
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Timothy Schwartz of Glendale, Ariz., who was among at least 200 volunteers gathered, said he wants to see a fence along the border from California to Texas.
::flip::
Wiki:
Soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order that authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct surveillance of international communication on any U.S. person who was suspected of having links to a terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda or its affiliates.
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime.
Government Still Pushing for Cell Phone Tracking Without Probable Cause
EFF Urges New York Judge to Reject Latest Surveillance Request
New York – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked a federal magistrate judge in New York City to reject a Department of Justice (DOJ) request to track a cell phone user without first showing probable cause of a crime. In a brief filed in New York on Tuesday, EFF and the Federal Defenders of New York argue that no law authorizes the government’s request, and that granting the order would threaten Americans’ Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches.
A diary I wrote last year:
Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company’s laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the “serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots” in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.
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[…]there are no laws to stop the Secret Service from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents;
wiki:
OnStar is a subscription-based communications, monitoring, and tracking service provided by General Motors. As of 2005, it is a standard feature for many General Motors vehicles, and it will be standard on all new GM vehicles sold in North America by 2007.
[…]
Critics are wary of the possible privacy implications of OnStar and other similar and related technologies. They raise questions about whether police or others could make use of OnStar’s tracking, whether legally or illegally, for surveillance or stalking. They cite cases where evidence collected by OnStar has already been used in court and where OnStar has contacted the police, against the driver’s wishes, in the course of incidents such as hit-and-run accidents.
The Atlanta suburb of Marietta has set up cameras to catch drivers running red lights. The digital snapshots go into a database, where they stay until drivers pay fines or appear in court. Despite their narrow function, the cameras have been found pointed at drivers’ faces instead of their license plates. Assistant city manager Warren Hutmacher told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Our position is, we have an absolute right to catch you, and you have no right of privacy…
