Filed under: Astronomy, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Government, ISS, NASA, NYT, Predictions, Preparedness, Press, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Society, Space, UFO, Uncategorized
Yesterday I wrote a somewhat snarky post at UTI about the Vatican’s Astronomer giving his official blessing (almost literally) to the notion that alien life – even intelligent alien life – probably exists in the universe, and that this was not at odds with Catholic doctrine. A friend this morning sent me a link to this 1996 article in the New York Times:
Does the Bible Allow For Martians?
WOULD the discovery of life on Mars be a blow to the idea of biblical creation? Should the knowledge of alien organisms shatter faith in a God who was supposed to have created heaven and earth and life in a week?
As it turns out, biblical creationists have been touting the existence of aliens for years — and Mars itself has featured prominently in their scenarios.
Ronald Numbers, a professor of the history of science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of ”The Creationists,” a history of this movement, was himself raised in a fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventist community where belief in life on Mars was no big deal.
According to the Bible, Mr. Numbers explains, Satan and his cohorts were thrown out of heaven, so the question arises: Where did they go? At his high school in rural Tennessee, Mr. Numbers was taught by his teacher, who was also a Seventh Day Adventist, that they were hurled to Mars. The famous Martian canals were cited as evidence of this habitation.
In turn, that article was mention by another NYT piece yesterday (also sent by my friend) which discussed the Vatican’s stance on alien life. And in it, this is mentioned:
On Monday, Mike Foreman, a mission specialist during the recent Shuttle Endeavor voyage, expressed confidence in the notion, saying “it’s hard to believe that there is not life somewhere else in this great universe.”
Today, TDG also noted that another Endeavor crew member agreed, with this news item:
Astronauts who returned recently from a Space Shuttle mission said on Monday that they expected alien life would be discovered.
“Life like us must exist elsewhere in the universe,” Takao Doi, who had been on a 16-day Endeavour mission to the International Space Station, told reporters in Tokyo.
Mr Doi and his colleagues denied seeing anything that proved the existence of extraterrestrial life forms, but said the scale of the solar system and beyond had impressed upon them the possibility of alien life.
Of course, also in the news just about everywhere is that the British government is in the process of releasing their UFO files, gathered by the Ministry of Defense. As I quoted in my UTI post yesterday:
LONDON – The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.
No one, they knew, would believe their claim an unidentified flying object landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed. Yet that’s what they reported happened at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1984.
The incident is one of hundreds of reported sightings contained in more than 1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents being released Wednesday by Britain’s National Archives.
And naturally enough, lots of people are just certain that whatever is in those files isn’t the *actual* truth, because you just can’t trust any government with this stuff. As noted (again, via TDG) in this post by UFO investigator Nick Redfern which pre-dated the recent release of documents:
Yes, the Government knows something. It may actually know quite a lot. Perhaps (although I seriously doubt it) it knows everything. But the idea that it (as a unified body) has any interest in telling us the truth, purely because we go knocking on its doors, loftily demanding to be let in on the secret, is self-deluded, ego-driven yearning of a truly sickening “I want to believe” nature.
Call me a cynic, but if the government reveals the truth about UFOs to us, you can guarantee it will be a lie. And it will probably be a lie designed to scare the shit out of us and ensure that we surrender more of our freedoms and rights to old men who wear suits and lack souls. And still the real secret will remain hidden – either in the pages of some hefty classified file or in a cryogenic tank deep below Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Maybe…
OK, I’ve written before about news related to SETI, because it ties in directly with Communion of Dreams. But why mention these reports and comments? Why get into the whole woo-woo land of UFOs?
Well, as I said over a year ago when French government made their UFO files available:
A staple of Science Fiction has always been the question of how humanity will deal with the discovery that we are not the only sentients in the universe. It is, of course, the main theme of Communion as well, and while I am somewhat ambiguous about what exactly is “out there”, I make no bones about the fact that they exist, and have even visited our neighborhood (hence the discovery of the artifact on Titan being central to the book).
Honestly, one of my greatest fears is that before I can get Communion published, we may indeed have such proof, and will get to see just exactly how that plays out in the public sphere. My own private suspicion is that it will not go well.
And I can’t help but wonder what is behind this sudden upsurge in scientists, astronauts, and even religious leaders commenting about how they are sure that there is alien life, possibly even intelligent alien life, “out there.” Sure the UFO community has always been convinced (it sort of goes with the territory), and vocal. But why this interest being expressed from so many other sources? I may have been snarky at UTI, but I do have to wonder whether or not there isn’t some larger agenda being played out here before our eyes. Certainly, were I in a decision-making position in government and we had conclusive and irrefutable proof of extra-terrestrial intelligence, I would advise spending some time ‘preparing’ the public for the release of that information.
Just a thought.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, General Musings, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Travel
So, I’m curious – given some kind of time-travel technology, what would you like to witness from the past? Let’s say that something about the technology prohibits you from interacting with the past – all you can do is passively watch/listen.
And note I said “from the past”, not “from history”, because while I would want to see some of the famous events, I think I would actually more like to see little things that seldom show up in history books. Like the building of our house (go down to the “Hurst John” house second from the bottom). Or maybe something from my childhood, since I remember so little of it. Sure, everyone would want to resolve some of the mysteries from history, and to witness specific events, but it’s more interesting to hear what personal moments of the time would attract your attention.
When would you go?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Machado-Joseph, Science, Sleep, Society, Uncategorized, Writing stuff
It’s now been three months since Martha Sr died.
You’d think by now that I’d be caught up on sleep. You’d be wrong. As I look over the last few month’s posts I note that time and again that I mention sleep. It is still the default that I want more, more, more. Even when I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, and am not fighting any kind of cold or flu, a nap in the morning or afternoon tempts me. For someone who thinks of himself as energetic, productive, it kind of goes against the grain. For someone who has a backlog of work running to years, it can be a little maddening.
Yet, sleep is still the default.
* * * * * * *
My sister called the other day.
“Thirty pounds? Wow. Be careful.”
I assured her that I wasn’t trying to overdo anything. That it was just my body moving back towards a natural set-point, as mentioned in that blog post.
But she has a good reason to be concerned: in our family, weight loss is one of the markers for the onset of the family genetic curse, Machado-Joseph disease. To be honest, this is one of the major reasons that I have always felt a little comfortable in being a bit overweight – it provided some sense of protection against the disease (which was very poorly understood or even known as I was growing up). That’s not how it works, of course, but it was always there in the back of my mind. If you’d lived with seeing what the disease does, you’d be willing to risk obesity, too.
* * * * * * *
Go back to any of the entries from last year under the tag Alzheimer’s, and you’ll see that one of the most common things I talk about is just how tired I was. For years – literally, years – my wife and I had taken turns being “on call” each night, lightly dozing while listening to a baby monitor in Martha Sr’s room. On those nights you’d barely get anything which amounted to real rest. When you weren’t “on call” sleep usually came, but wasn’t as easy or restful as it could have been – having your partner there more or less awake next to you all night wasn’t that conducive. Sure, there were naps whenever we could squeeze them in, but I would still say that my average sleep per 24 hour period was probably about 5 hours, maybe 6. Things did improve once we had a health aide three nights a week, but by then we were in hospice care, which had its own stresses and demands.
* * * * * * *
ATLANTA – People who sleep fewer than six hours a night — or more than nine — are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies.
* * *
The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don’t get proper shuteye, said Dr. Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
“The data is all coming together that short sleepers and long sleepers don’t do so well,” Kramer said.
The study released Wednesday is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 U.S. adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Surprise, surprise.
* * * * * * *
I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic. And it was shaped by conventional standards: get up, go to work for 8 -10 hours, come home. That’s not how I work – hasn’t been for years – but it is still the baseline instinct for me, the initial criteria I use for whether or not I am “getting things done”. So it is frustrating to feel sleepy and want a nap. That doesn’t pay the bills, get the backlog under control, get the next book written or the ballistics research written up.
Three months. Seems like a long time. And our culture doesn’t understand grief well, nor leave a lot of room for recovery that takes time. We expect people to “get over it”, to take a vacation and come back refreshed. It is part of who we are – part of who I am.
But I try to listen to my body. It is naturally shedding the excess weight I put on, now that regular sleep and exercise are again part of my life. Realistically, it is only halfway done – I’ve another 30 pounds or so to go to get back to a point which I consider ‘normal’ (though that’s still about 20 – 30 pounds heavy for me, according to the ‘ideal’). Does that mean I have another three months of wanting naps all the time? Yeah, maybe. Maybe more. I’ll try and give it that time.
I’ll try.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Government, Health, NPR, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff
Well, we all will, unless there’s some sort of miracle breakthrough in medicine or technology. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about something anyone who has thought about it much has probably already assumed is true: that in the event of a large-scale pandemic, procedures will be put into effect by medical authorities to determine who will be treated and who will be allowed to die.
This is called triage. And to the best of my knowledge, for the first time such procedures are being publicly put forth as being applicable for all hospitals in the US, in recognition that it is better to have consistent and uniform criteria already in place before a disaster hits. The May issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), today carried a supplement titled Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster. From the press release on the ACCP website:
(NORTHBROOK, IL, May 5, 2008)—In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of pandemic outbreaks or other mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions.
“Most countries, including the United States, have insufficient critical care resources to provide timely, usual care for a surge of critically ill and injured victims,” said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity.
So, is this just good public health planning? Well, yes. But it is also very sobering to read the following:
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
“When”. Emphasis mine. Not “if”. The news report goes further:
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”
While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.
“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”
Again, emphasis mine.
I’ve written many times about the possibility of widespread flu or some other kind of pandemic. Partly this is just because such a catastrophe sets the stage for Communion of Dreams. But more importantly – and this is even part of the reason *why* I wrote Communion of Dreams – is that I don’t think that people give this matter nearly enough thought.
It is good to see that the public health authorities are taking this step. And I was heartened to hear about it on NPR as I started to compose this post. Maybe it will prompt people to stop and think for a moment about what they themselves should be doing to prepare for some kind of pandemic or other disruption. Because I bet that almost no one you know is actually ready to ride out such an event – and by the time you hear of a pandemic starting, it will be too late to get everything you will need to increase the chances of you and your loved ones surviving. This is not fear-mongering; this is taking some reasonable precautions – the same sorts of precautions that have lead to the development of this new triage plan. If you want to know more, check out the Flu Wiki (where they also link to this resource).
Yeah, we’re all gonna die. And I can easily imagine disaster scenarios where I would not want to live. But I sure as hell don’t want to die needlessly from something I can avoid, or ride out with a little advance prep.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, General Musings, Government, Health, Music, NPR, Scott Simon, Society
Brief follow-up to this post.
This morning Scott Simon of NPR did his weekly meditation on the story of Christopher Ratte and the Hard Lemonade. It is worth a listen, as usual – Simon looks past the immediate news item to the underlying issues, as I try to do. He points out that at each stage of the whole debacle the various officials responsible were just “following procedure”, not risking taking some action on their own initiative which would lead to a common sense resolution for everyone involved. As he notes:
… But you might remember what happened to the Ratte family next time a poll discloses that the American people distrust bureaucracies, public or private, whether they run schools, airlines, or health-care systems – they abide by procedures, not people. They take lemons, and just make a mess.
Jim Downey
(With thanks and apology to Bob Dylan.)
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Hobbits, movies, Promotion, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Nah, other than a mild cold, things are going OK. But since it is the first of the month, thought I would post a quick note about how stats look hereabouts.
April saw just under 500 downloads of the .pdf of Communion. This continues to happen in clumps, for whatever reason. Comparing it to over 1,100 in March, you might think that things have slowed down – but that’s just the clustering effect, I think – there was a substantial cluster right at the end of March. Had it been a few days later, the stats for both March and April would have been almost the same. We’re now at about 9,000 total downloads.
About 50 people downloaded the MP3 of the novel last month, bringing that total to just under 100.
I still have a hard time getting a handle on how people find out about the book, or this blog. In March I signed up for some additional stats/information about the Communion of Dreams website, which gives me all kinds of data, but it still seems that the majority of people who find out about the book do so by word of mouth. Not a bad thing, just a bit odd. Particularly in that I get very little feedback or commentary from people – yet they seem to be passing on a recommendation to others to download the book. Goodness knows that I haven’t done anything remotely approaching a real effort at promotion, so something is happening of its own accord.
This blog is now at 18,000 total views, averaging upwards of 70 views a day. The somewhat odd thing is that there is a consistent bit of traffic to look at one post: Welcome to the Hobbit House from almost a year ago. That gets 20 – 25 people a day. I think that the secret to getting a lot of traffic would be to write about Hobbits. At least until the new movie is done and out. So, if you see me mentioning Hobbits just randomly in posts, you’ll know that I am just blog-whoring, trolling for hits.
But hey, Hobbits are cool. Right? Just saying the word is somehow comforting: Hobbits.
Uh, sorry.
Anyway, that’s just a brief look over the current stats. Something more meaty later, or tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, General Musings, Government, Health, Society
Via BoingBoing, news of just how vigilant they are in Detroit to make sure you read the label of any beverage you are served:
Boy, 7, taken from family after drink mixup at Tigers game
The sign above the Comerica Park concession stand said: “Mike’s Lemonade 7.00.”
So when Christopher Ratte of Ann Arbor ordered one for his 7-year-old son at the April 5 Detroit Tigers game, he had no idea he was purchasing an alcoholic beverage.
Or that his son would end up spending three days and two nights in the custody of Children’s Protective Services.
A park security guard spotted 7-year-old Leo Ratte drinking the Mike’s Hard Lemonade, confiscated the bottle and took the family in for questioning.
Yep. Didn’t just tell the guy to drink the damned thing himself. Didn’t warn him that giving the kid an alcoholic beverage in a public venue wasn’t a great idea. Took the family in for questioning. What followed was Kafkaesque. And all too common when one transgresses something that the authorities think you shouldn’t do.
They took his kid to a foster home, where he stayed for several days before being released into the custody of his mother. And the father was prohibited from living in his own home for a full week, so that he wouldn’t have contact with the child.
And that happy outcome wouldn’t have happened nearly so quickly had not the parents been professors at the University of Michigan, with the full power and resources of the University available to them to help deal with the nightmare. From the news article:
Don Duquette, a U-M clinical professor of law and director of the child advocacy law clinic, said he got a call from the chair of Ratte’s U-M department at 9 a.m. the next day. Duquette spent most of that day on the phone, trying to get Leo back into his parents’ custody.
* * *
Duquette said the fact that Ratte and Zimmerman got their son back so quickly was unusual and due only to their sophisticated legal counsel.
Ratte said he and his wife know that they were lucky to have the resources of U-M behind them.
“Class has something to do with the fact that the child was only in care for two days,” Duquette said. “What the referee said was that she would have kept the case for at least a week while the department completed the investigation. … If you’re not sophisticated, the system isn’t set up to give you very much of a chance to work against the ritual that’s ordinarily done.”
It took three more days for the judge to dismiss the complaint, allowing Ratte to return to his home. That happened after Leo and his 12-year-old sister, Helena, were taken back to Detroit for further interviews.
Imagine if it had been you. Think you would have been able to get your kid back so easily?
*Sigh* I am not against the state watching out for the safety of children, and following up on any reported cases of abuse. Not at all. But look at what happened – this guy, perhaps a bit clueless about modern alcoholic drinks (I’ll admit – I hadn’t heard of this beverage before – I pay no attention to ‘alcopop’ drinks. I drink beer, or scotch, and could have made the same mistake), no doubt distracted by all the excitement and activity of taking his 7 year-old son to a ballgame – accidentally gives his kid this bottle without carefully reading the label to see that it contains alcohol. Guard notices the kid drinking it. Guard confronts parent, who denies knowing that the thing had alcohol in it. Guard summons police, and the nightmare begins, and at no point does anyone in authority exercise the slightest bit of common sense.
Why? Probably because once the paperwork started, everyone involved on the side of the authorities was ‘just doing their job’.
I don’t know what Michigan law is on the matter, but a number of state laws allow parents to give their kids alcohol, so long it is consumed in the presence of the adult. In Europe, kids routinely drink alcohol with meals. It used to be that most cough medicines contained a large alcohol content, even the stuff made for kids (this may still be the case). I grew up having alcohol now and then with my family. OK, ignore that last item – I’m not the best example, godless heathen that I am.
Anyway, my point is that it isn’t like the kid was plastered, or that the father was doing anything dangerous. The guard should have just told the guy to stop. Once the cops were called, they should just have exercised a little discretion (which happens all the time, particularly if it is another cop involved in a transgression), warned the guy, and sent father and son on their way.
Insanity. Glad I don’t have kids.
Jim Downey
(cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Press, Science, Society, Writing stuff
Communion of Dreams is set in a post-pandemic world, some 40 years after a new flu strain has caused massive death and global disruption.
For the most part, people never really think about the flu or any other virus presenting much of a threat. Partially, this is due to not wanting to think about such things as death. Partially, it is because there really isn’t much in the way of treatment for most viral diseases. As a result, sometimes it is difficult to get much information in the news, unless you really work at it. A good example of this is the recent outbreak of EV71 in China – my wife caught a brief mention of it on the BBC news, told me. I had to really hunt around to find this:
Mass intestinal virus infection up to 1,520, kills 20
HEFEI — A lethal outbreak of intestinal virus in Fuyang City in east China’s Anhui Province has killed 20 children and befallen 1,500 others, the provincial health department said on Tuesday.
Du Changzhi, Anhui Provincial Health Department deputy chief, said the virus, known as enterovirus 71, or EV71, had altogether sickened 1,520 children, claiming 20 lives by Tuesday morning.
Of the sick, 585 had recovered thus far. At present, 412 sick children have remained in hospital for further medical observation. Of the total, 26 are seriously ill.
The Wall Street Journal did have this:
China Suffers HFMD Outbreak
Common Illness Catches Attention Of Global Officials
HONG KONG — A deadly outbreak in eastern China of a common childhood illness that rarely kills people has caught the attention of international health officials.
The outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease, or HFMD, has killed 20 children in Fuyang, a city in eastern Anhui province, and has affected some 1,200 children altogether, according to the Anhui provincial health department. Of those cases, 341 children are still in the hospital.
A report by the state-run Xinhua news agency late Sunday evening said the outbreak began in early March and cited the city’s health department as confirming that the disease was caused by enterovirus-71, one of several viruses that can cause HFMD.
* * *
China’s Health Minister Chen Zhu visited Fuyang on Saturday, according to the Xinhua report. Chinese health officials at the local level in the past have sometimes played down disease outbreaks early on, only to be caught off guard later.
Indeed. There have been a number of such problems with reporting outbreaks in China, as we saw with the SARS virus in 2003. What this means is that a new virus can get established before anyone really knows what is going on. And that could be really catastrophic in terms of implementing public-health plans to limit the spread of any major new disease.
[Major Spoilers Ahead.]
At the end of Communion, I reveal that the new engineered flu virus which has been released comes from China. I did this for this reason – to draw attention to this very real problem. It’s bad enough that some virus could pop up just about anywhere where there is very little public health infrastructure, and so be missed. That a threat could come, and be intentionally ignored, is really dangerous. You really gotta wonder just what people are thinking when they do this.
Just as you really gotta wonder why such things are not covered in the news, rather than the latest celebrity gossip or outrage.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Cory Doctorow, General Musings, Government, Predictions, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, Wired, YouTube
Man, I love the UK, particularly Wales. Have been there half a dozen times, and enjoyed it every time.
But I have to admit, the whole creeping and creepy 1984 mindset about CCTV there drives me nuts. The Brits are well on their way to being a true surveillance society. As I have written recently:
I am constantly dismayed by just how much Great Britain has become a surveillance society, to the point where it is a dis-incentive to want to travel there. In almost all towns of any real size, you are constantly within sight of multiple CCTV cameras, and there is increasing use of biometrics (such as fingerprint ID) as a general practice for even routine domestic travel.
Well, there’s another development related to this: the mindset that for “security purposes” the police and public need to “be aware” of people taking photographs. I’m not talking about around some kind of secure military base or something – I mean in general. This sort of thing has been mentioned numerous times over at BoingBoing (in particular, check out this, this, and this), but an item yesterday really jumped out at me:
Middlesbrough cops, goons and clerks grab and detain photographer for shooting on a public street
That links to this Flickr account of the incident:
My friend and I were photographing in the town. I spotted a man being detained by this security guard and a policeman, some kind of altercation was going on, i looked through my zoom lens to see what was happening and then moved on.
Moments later as i walked away this goon jumped in front of me and demanded to know what i was doing. i explained that i was taking photos and it was my legal right to do so, he tried to stop me by shoulder charging me, my friend started taking photos of this, he then tried to detain us both. I refused to stand still so he grabbed my jacket and said i was breaking the law. Quickly a woman and a guy wearing BARGAIN MADNESS shirts joined in the melee and forcibly grabbed my friend and held him against his will. We were both informed that street photography was illegal in the town.
Two security guards from the nearby shopping center THE MALL came running over, we were surrounded by six hostile and aggressive security guards. They then said photographing shops was illegal and this was private land. I was angry at being grabbed by this man so i pushed him away, one of the men wearing a BARGAIN MADNESS shirt twisted my arm violently behind my back, i winced in pain and could hardly breathe in agony.
A policewomen was radioed and came over to question the two suspects ( the total detaining us had risen to seven, a large crowd had now gathered)
The detaining guard released me, i asked the policewoman if my friend and i could be taken away from the six guards, she motioned us to a nearby seat and told all the security people to go. She took our details, name, address, date of birth etc. She wanted to check my camera saying it was unlawful to photograph people in public, i told her this was rubbish.
Now, before you get all worked up hatin’ on the Brits for not respecting the civil liberties of their citizens and guests . . .
. . . here’s a little gem about New York’s finest, also courtesy of BB:
NYPD cop: videoing me breaking the law is a terrorist act
This video is of a man filming a cop who parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant. He follows her, asking questions, and she mostly ignores him. Then something truly disturbing happens.
A retired police woman comes by and informs the first cop, and the man filming that citizens aren’t allowed to film anybody who works for the police department “’cause of the terrorism.”
OK, isolated incident. But here’s a little something else to consider about how the “War on Terror” is suppressing civil liberties of all of *our* citizens and guests:
Border Agents Can Search Laptops Without Cause, Appeals Court Rules
Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.
The unanimous three-judge decision reverses a lower court finding that digital devices were “an extension of our own memory” and thus too personal to allow the government to search them without cause. Instead, the earlier ruling said, Customs agents would need some reasonable and articulable suspicion a crime had occurred in order to search a traveler’s laptop.
On appeal, the government argued that was too high a standard, infringing upon its right to keep the country safe and enforce laws. Civil rights groups, joined by business traveler groups, weighed in, defending the lower court ruling.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.
So, it isn’t just your underwear and sex toys that the Feds want to paw through when you travel outside the US. It’s also any data you might have on any kind of electronic device. “‘Cause of the terrorism,” you know.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 