The Freedom Bulletin

On Thursday, a federal court in Virginia ruled that Twitter had to turn over users’ private information to a grand jury investigating possible federal crimes involving WikiLeaks. This ruling affirmed a magistrate judge’s decision in March, which WikiLeaks volunteers Birgitta Jonsdottir, Jacob Appelbaum, and Rop Gonggrijp appealed, with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union.

It is unclear exactly what data people will no longer have the right to keep private, but it most likely includes IP addresses, email and mail addresses, login and logout times, and possibly private messages. The federal government now, according to Judge Liam O’Grady’s ruling, has the right to access this information without a warrant by issuing what is called a 2703 order. These orders have a lower standard of proof  than probable cause: the government must only have “reasonable grounds” that the information is “relevant and material” to an investigation. The judge’s reasoning was that the WikiLeakers had agreed to Twitter’s privacy policy, which warns that the site could turn over data to law enforcement.

The court also ruled that the 2703 orders can remain secret, denying the WikiLeakers’ request to unseal these documents so that they can find out which other websites, in addition to Twitter, have received similar orders.

It’s not a good thing for freedom when a court rules that people’s private information cannot remain secret, but government orders for people’s private information can. I couldn’t have said it better than Jonsdottir, who called the ruling “a huge backward step for the United States’ legacy of freedom of expression and the right to privacy.”

In somewhat related news, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, spoke to Green Left Weekly about her son’s legal trials and tribulations, alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning, the relationship between Australia and the US, and her plans to protest President Obama’s visit to the Australian parliament. I really admire how she is so outspoken and supportive of her son.

Read the full ruling (PDF)

In yet another small but significant encroachment on our liberty, TSA agents at Boston’s Logan Airport are using a new, worse pat down procedure. Instead of using the backs of their hands when patting down people’s private parts, agents are going to use their palms over people’s entire bodies (over their clothes, but still, this is not a good thing).

Pat downs will only happen to passengers who decline full-body scanners, where they exist. At checkpoints without full-body scanners, only people who set off metal detectors or are randomly selected will undergo pat downs. The worse pat down technique is being used only in Boston and Las Vegas until a “planned national rollout.” Great.

Christopher Ott, a spokesman for the Massachusetts ACLU, says:

“We’re concerned about this seemingly constant erosion of privacy…Accepting these kinds of searches may keep people safer in some situations, but not in every situation, and we’re encouraging people to stop and think about what is the right balance between privacy and security.”

But one air traveler actually said she supports the increased violation of privacy because “security trumps niceties.” Excuse me, but since when is freedom a nicety? Freedom is the most important thing in the world and is why the United States of America were founded. Anyone who calls liberty a nicety really does not understand right and wrong or what America is all about.

Ott, of the ACLU, is completely right. When will people wake up and stop accepting the erosion of their freedom just because it increases their safety and security?

In March, Steve Bierfeldt, development director of the Campaign for Liberty, was pulled aside by TSA agents and questioned relentlessly and brutally about $4700 that he was carrying. He was returning from a conference, and the money was from selling political memorabilia. The TSA agents questioned him for a half hour in a windowless room, swearing at him and refusing to answer his questions about whether he was legally required to tell them where the money came from.

Now, the ACLU is suing the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA, saying that Bierfeldt was harassed and illegally detained.

I support this lawsuit. Lately the TSA has really been going too far and is violating our rights and the Constitution. First the naked machines, and now this! There are no laws against carrying large sums of money on planes, nor should there be, since this does not violate anyone else’s rights. It’s none of their business how much money this guy wants to carry or where he got it from. Plus, the officers’ belligerence and foul language were just unprofessional.

The TSA has taken disciplinary action against one of its employees as a result of this incident, which is a good start. Hopefully the ACLU wins the lawsuit. Americans need to send the TSA a clear message to back off and stop their excessive interference in our lives.

Remember when the TSA installed those machines at Phoenix airport that create images of people’s naked bodies? Now they’re trying to defend the machines, saying that “privacy is ensured through the anonymity of the image.” So being seen naked doesn’t violate your privacy at all, as long as the people who see you naked don’t know who you are? The TSA is dead wrong. Now, I don’t always agree with the ACLU, but this time I like what they had to say:

“First, this technology produces strikingly graphic images of passengers’ bodies. Those images reveal not only our private body parts, but also intimate medical details like colostomy bags. That degree of examination amounts to a significant — and for some people humiliating — assault on the essential dignity of passengers that citizens in a free nation should not have to tolerate…They say that they are obscuring faces, but that is just a software fix that can be undone as easily as it is applied. And obscuring faces does not hide the fact that rest of the body will be vividly displayed.”

Right on!

I must mention that these invasive scans are only done on passengers selected for secondary security checks. But still, everyone who can afford a plane ticket has a right to fly on a plane. Performing humiliating security procedures on innocent people is never justified.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202401630

P.S. I added a new link to the sidebar. It’s the site of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a great organization dedicated to (among other things) fighting oppressive copyright laws. Check it out!