Categories
criminal law Technology

Government Safeguard an Oxymoron?

Last weekend, I had spotted Donald Kerr’s comments about reinterpreting privacy to mean that the government should have access to our private communications and financial information provided proper safeguards are in place. Who trusts the government to erect proper safeguards? Today, PC World reported that a former FBI and CIA employee had plead guilty to accessing a U.S. government computer system for unlawful purposes. The details of this case should make everyone think twice about granting the government unfettered access to all our private data.

In this case, a woman from Lebanon obtained American citizenship by entering into a fraudulent marriage. With her U.S. citizenship in hand, she was then able to secure employment with the FBI and CIA, two governmental agencies you assume would perform rigorous background checks on all their job applicants. Then, while working at the FBI, she looked up information on her family members and Hizballah. Sure, the government was able to secure a conviction, but let’s talk about those government safeguards. We’re talking about an ex-waitress and hostess at a Detroit restaurant, not a highly trained mole trying to embed into the upper echelons of our government. If she can penetrate the FBI and CIA, we’re screwed. And, all your neighbors who work for the government are reading through your file on the taxpayer’s dime. Good grief!

Categories
Technology

No Privacy Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Was the Fourth Amendment recently repealed? I may have missed it but the Associated Press reports that Donald Kerr recently testified that the time has come for us to adjust our definition of privacy. That’s a one-liner that should scare most Americans, especially when you consider he is the deputy director of national intelligence. If you weren’t scared before, you should surely be scared now.

Instead, Donald Kerr proposes that privacy should mean that the government and businesses properly safeguard our private communications and financial information. That’s frightening! And Congress had the temerity to criticize Yahoo! for turning over e-mail records to the Chinese government?

Seriously. If some people want to change the definition of marriage, that really doesn’t impact most of us on a day-to-day basis. However, if the government can simply siphon all our private information and financial records, and run some terrorist algorithm based on that data, we’re in a lot of trouble. Time for a Defense of Privacy Act.

Categories
Legal Research

Free PACER

Today, the U.S. Courts announced free public access to federal court records (via PACER). I headed straight to the press release to soak in all the details as I imagined accessing all the wonderful legal briefs hidden behind PACER’s pay wall.

However, before you head to the PACER website, you should know that free access is only available in 14 states. No problem, right? No. Within these 14 states, you only have free access if you visit one of the 16 libraries participating in this project. Gulp. Free is looking a lot less free by the second. Damn. Only the feds could craft such a devilish plan to offer free access to an internet resource from designated bricks-and-mortar locations.

This is where living in California, the most populous state in the nation pays dividends, or so I thought. I quickly saw that two of the libraries were located in California: the San Bernardino County Law Library and Sacramento County Public Law Library.

Not Los Angeles. Not San Diego. Not San Jose. Not San Francisco. Not Long Beach. Not even Fresno! Who made this decision? Was it out of spite? They picked two locations in the Great State of California where people do NOT live.

In New York, free PACER is only available at one location: Fordham Law School. But, It’s in New York City. I guess Cheektowaga and White Plains didn’t want to participate. 🙄

Categories
criminal law international

Waterboarding 101

When I read accounts describing waterboarding as being a simulated drowning, I thought they strapped the detainee to a board and actually dunked him into a water tank. I was mistaken. As it turns out, waterboarding is a much simpler procedure.

Categories
politics

Racist Democrats in Congress

SFGate.com: Lawmakers Blast Yahoo Executives for Helping China Jail Dissident. While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, said at the end of the three-hour hearing.

According to Wikipedia, “[m]embers of so-called Pygmy groups often consider the term derogatory, instead preferring to be called by the name of their ethnic groups.” I guess bigotry isn’t the exclusive province of white, Southern Republicans. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Tom Lantos managed to insult both Africans and the Little People in one quip? How about that? Is this Tom Lantos’ Macaca moment? Where is Rev. Al Sharpton?

Categories
Technology

China's PATRIOT Act

BusinessWeek: Jerry Yang on the Hot Seat. On Nov. 6, Yahoo! CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang answered to Congress for his company’s role in landing Tao behind bars. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs called on Yang on Nov. 6 to explain what reasons the Chinese government gave when it requested information from Tao’s Yahoo e-mail account.

Seriously, is this the U.S. House of Representations or the Chinese House of Representatives. I’m all for spreading freedom and democracy abroad, but can’t we first fix a few matters at home? When Tom Lantos criticizes a huge, U.S.-based multinational company for assiduously cooperating with the police, I’m thinking of search warrants for Yahoo
e-mail accounts as well as the Justice Department’s subpoena of Google search data. 🙄 It’s not just the Chinese who require a little protection from over-reaching bureaucrats.

Categories
international politics

Waterboarding the Attorney General Nomination

Senator Patrick Leahy stated that he will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General over the waterboarding issue. While Mr. Mukasey has indicated that our current laws prohibit waterboarding, he declined to conclude that waterboarding constituted torture. The problem in this case resides with the question and not with Mr. Mukasey’s answer. Specifically, Senator Leahy should have asked Mr. Mukasey whether he would have considered the simulated drowning of an American service member while in captivity by the Iranian military to be a war crime.  If he opined that such an act was merely morally repugnant, then we know we have the wrong candidate.

Categories
Legal Research

I am Pro-Tax (And So Can You!)

Los Angeles Times: Democrats Calculate Risk on Tax Hikes. More than two decades after presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale called for tax increases — and lost the White House in a landslide — the Democratic Party is on the verge of a major political gamble: Some of its leading members are proposing an array of tax hikes on wealthier Americans.

Happy Halloween. The Democratic Party showed up at my door dressed as Britney Spears. Seriously, can you act any more self-destructive than running on tax hikes? Despite the overwhelming unpopularity of the Quagmire in Iraq, the Republicans just may pull off another four more years in the White House at this rate. The problem confronting the Democrats is a clash between traditional perceptions and modern-day realities. As The Wealth Report has pointed out, Americans who have reached the traditional measures of wealth don’t feel wealthy. The sad fact is that millionaires are middle-class in many parts of American nowadays.

Households earning $200,000 or $250,000 aren’t wealthy in California, New York or other high-cost states. In fact, a husband and wife each earning $100,000-$125,000 a year in Silicon Valley may only be mid-level employees. Not management. Not wealthy. Just another middle-class, working family that the Democrats have decided to attack. Go Britney!

Categories
legal marketing

How Trustworthy is Law Firm Online Advertising?

Kevin O’Keefe says that online advertising by law firms suck, if you extrapolate from a Nielsen Research study that compares the different advertising channels. To no surprise, word of mouth was the most effective form of advertising. I vet a lot of my purchasing decisions through Consumer Reports, as well as Amazon. As for newspaper, television, magazine or Internet ads, I don’t know that I trust one of them over the other. I really question the 63% of people that trust print newspaper ads since fewer than 63% even read a newspaper in an average week. How can you even trust something you don’t read? For newspaper ads, I doubt if reader trust flows uniformly to all advertisers with the Macy’s ad being not untrustworthy, the cell phone ad with an inch of disclaimers being possibly untrustworthy, and the classifieds offering work-at-home opportunities and real estate riches garnering the greatest skepticism. Television ads work the same way with Nike, Disney and Apple ads on the positive end of the spectrum and pharmaceutical, exercise equipment, and spray-on hair ads at the opposite end.

As I see it, one form of advertising isn’t necessarily better than another. Instead, the companies and brands that succeed are the ones that constantly build trust and customer loyalty, which in turn generates that valued word of mouth recommendation. How can law firms build trust? Law firms can build trust and their online reputations through a law firm blog. However, like advertising, which can be good or bad, blogs can swing both ways as well. Know that you are writing for a sophisticated audience that can rapidly differentiate between genuine insight and marketing copy. Also, understand that while some bloggers may praise your blog posts, others may target them for criticism, whether warranted or not, and how you react to praise as well as criticism can amplify or destroy your trustworthiness.

Categories
Legal Research

Scary Sanctions 2

Fox News: Iran Sanctions, Bush Administration Rhetoric Worries Lawmakers. The Bush administration ratcheted up pressure on Tehran last week with new sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. Senate — but several lawmakers are wondering whether the latest step is a move closer to military action.

Who doesn’t love anniversaries? Next Sunday, November 4th, will mark the 28th anniversary of takeover of the American embassy in Tehran by those Iranians. To commemorate the event, Condoleezza Rice announced yet another sanction, this time targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Brilliant! After 28 years of extremely poor relations, I would think that (1) we are running out of people to sanction in Iran, and (2) any additional sanction will only prove to be yet another meaningless gesture by now. Count me among the unimpressed. If you believe some in our country, the real way to trigger the downfall of civilization in a country is by offering free, uncensored access to the Internet combined with unlimited access to gambling, pornography and MP3s websites. Since nothing else seems to work, maybe we should test this out on the Iranians. Oh, and don’t forget to shower them with RU-486 and condoms.