Saturday, December 19, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
The Feds are making a fortune stealing private property [feedly]
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The Feds are making a fortune stealing private property
// Personal Liberty Digest™
A new report out from the Institute for Justice reveals that the amount of money the federal government is raking in by seizing cash, cars and homes from Americans is rising dramatically.
In the second edition of its "Policing for Profit" report, the institute estimates that the Department of Justice seized $4.5 billion worth of Americans' personal property in 2014 through civil forfeiture.
Civil forfeiture allows the government to take cash, cars, homes and other property from people without ever convicting or even charging them with a crime. Often, victims of this government theft never see their belongings again.
Just 13 percent of the forfeitures that occurred between 1997 and 2013 were the result of direct knowledge that the property was used to commit a crime. The other 87 percent of forfeitures occurred under law enforcement's mere suspicion that the property was tied to a crime.
"Every year, police and prosecutors across the United States take hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, cars, homes and other property — regardless of the owners' guilt or innocence," the institute noted.
And it isn't just the police who are seizing property.
Consider this story from the report:
Lyndon McLellan runs a convenience store in Fairmont, N.C., and has done so without incident for more than a decade. All that changed in 2014, when the Internal Revenue Service used civil forfeiture to seize McLellan's entire $107,000 bank account. He did not stand accused of selling drugs or even of cheating on his taxes; in fact, he was not charged with any crime at all. Rather, the IRS claimed that he had been "structuring" his deposits — that is, breaking them into amounts of less than $10,000 to evade federal reporting requirements for large transactions. McLellan, like most people, did not even know what "structuring" was, let alone that it was illegal. His niece, who handles the deposits, had been advised by a bank teller that smaller deposits meant less paperwork for the bank, so she kept deposits small.
The government finally returned McLellan's funds after a legal battle and public outcry, but the small-business owner was still forced to foot hefty legal bills resulting from the incident.
There are hundreds of other stories like this from all over the country because the government has incentivized policing for profit at all levels of law enforcement and bureaucracy over the past couple decades.
In 1986, DOJ officials confiscated about $93.7 million worth of property through civil forfeiture laws. Last year, that number jumped to $4.5 billion, a 4,667 percent increase in just under 30 years.
Read the Institute for Justice's full report:
More information about civil forfeiture from Personal Liberty®:
"Police power is the foundation of the state""Maryland farmer fights to get back money the IRS stole through forfeiture""Christmas classic re-imagined: 'Twas the Night Raid Before Christmas""AG Holder moves against civil forfeitures""Another civil forfeiture horror story""House bill could curb IRS practice of seizing assets without probable cause""IRS seizes rural convenience store owner's career savings in another horrible abuse of civil forfeiture""Sorry, but the police can still steal your property""Small-business owner fights to reclaim money stolen by Feds""Who stole $2.5 billion from Americans? The answer might shock you""North Carolina store owner targeted in IRS civil forfeiture case is getting his money back""Lawmakers attempt dual check on federal power""A map that grades each state's asset forfeiture laws""Civil forfeiture shouldn't be this funny""In double win New Mexico civil forfeiture ban inhibits failed war on drugs""Rand Paul offers legislation to keep government from stealing innocent citizens' property""Minnesota ends law enforcement's civil forfeiture money grab""New Mexico puts an end to civil forfeiture"
The post The Feds are making a fortune stealing private property appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Saturday, November 14, 2015
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Vizio TVs caught tracking viewing habits, selling data to advertisers [feedly]
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Vizio TVs caught tracking viewing habits, selling data to advertisers
// Extremetech
Got a Vizio smart TV? Then unless you've opted out, it's watching you -- and reporting what you watch.
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Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
E.U. Strikes Back Over Snowden Leaks, But Blow Hits U.S. Startups [feedly]
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E.U. Strikes Back Over Snowden Leaks, But Blow Hits U.S. Startups
// ReadWriteWeb
This post appears courtesy of the Ferenstein Wire, a syndicated news service. Publishing partners may edit posts. For inquiries, please email author and publisher Gregory Ferenstein.
The technology industry is scrambling to understand how it will continue business in Europe, after the continent's high court struck down a privacy agreement on Tuesday that protected U.S.-based companies operating abroad.
Under the umbrella of Safe Harbor, American tech companies were free to send personal data over the Atlantic, so long as they conformed to certain privacy measures.
See also: LinkedIn Cofounder Wants To Teach You How To "Blitzscale" Your Company
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down the agreement, which had been in place since 2000, in part due to fears of U.S. mass surveillance. "This is the reaction from the Europeans over the Edward Snowden leaks," Berin Szoka, president of policy group TechFreedom told me.
Since mass spying was revealed, much of the world has leveled heavy criticism and threats against the U.S. Until yesterday, the legal threats were often theoretical. Now, the ones threatened most could be the country's emerging tech businesses.
Europe Fights NSA Surveillance—And Hits U.S. Businesses
The recent court ruling, according to Szoka, is the big policy backlash. Tech companies are scrambling for an answer, because the impacts aren't known quite yet.
What is know is that the decision made Safe Harbor immediately invalid. Now, the E.U.'s many regional data protection authority organizations are free to bring suit, should they find a tech company's privacy protection policies inadequate.
The matter could affect European businesses as well. "A company in Europe may run afoul of these rules if it uses a U.S. service provider that it sends data to, such as for email marketing or … if it sends data to a U.S. subsidiary," said Daniel Castro of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
Many legal experts aren't completely sure how far ruling's influence might go either. It could be that a company will develop different policies for American and European users, like Twitter has done. But, that may not be enough. The entire Internet industry is built on communication between users.
For example, say a European Google users opens up a Gmail account in Germany, but travels to the U.S. His email and personal communications could be visible to NSA spying. That would violate the European authority's sense of fairness.
What Can Tech Companies Do?
At the moment, options may be limited. For big tech companies, it's less of an immediate issue, because they can afford to house data centers within Europe, (potentially) outside of the NSA's surveillance capabilities. The scenario's much trickier for smaller companies.
At the very least, if they have operations in Europe, they most likely will have to reevaluate their service providers and vendors, seeking partners who have abided by the E.U.'s rules, as well as revamping their own policies. If they haven't hit the continent yet, but plan to—well, they may want to hold off.
"If [startups] haven't launched in Europe yet, I might tell them to wait", said Szoka. The ITIF agrees: "To completely reduce risk of facing an enforcement action, they would have to stop all of these activities. Or they could limit their activities so that data does not leave Europe." It's hard to overstate how damaging that could be to an intercontinental business.
Noted civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is taking advantage of the craziness to campaign for NSA reform. "U.S. companies should be campaigning to get the NSA surveillance laws fixed," EFF's Danny O'Brien said.
Few things drive policy like business, and in business, there are few things worse than legal uncertainty. We'll see if it's enough to pressure the kind of reform that has yet seemed impossible.
For more stories like this, subscribe to the Ferenstein Wire newsletter here.
Lead photo by woodleywonderworks
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Verizon to Share Customer Browsing Data with AOL [feedly]
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Verizon to Share Customer Browsing Data with AOL
// Phone Scoop - Latest News
Verizon recently indicated it plans to let AOL track its customers' mobile browsing activity through the use of a supercookie. The supercookie is a controversial tool used by Verizon to help it build user profiles via the browser. Beginning in November, that data will be accessible to AOL's advertising network so the company can more effectively target ads based users' browsing habits. Verizon bought AOL earlier this year. Supercookies can be deleted from Verizon phones, but they are activated by default and most consumers likely don't know how to get rid of them. AT&T stopped using supercookies last year, but Verizon has continued the practice. Verizon claims the move protects user privacy because Verizon owns AOL and "it's all within one company." Verizon subscribers can expect to see more personalized ads once AOL has access to the supercookie data.
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Monday, October 5, 2015
What Obama didn’t say in his gun-grabbing rant [feedly]
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What Obama didn't say in his gun-grabbing rant
// Personal Liberty Digest™
For the elected and bureaucrat class, there is no problem that cannot be fixed by yet another law. If one law is in place to prevent a thing and the thing occurs anyway, two more will certainly do the trick.
If three laws don't stop it, three more surely will. If six laws aren't enough, surely one — or six — more is enough.
This is the way liberty is lost, one law at a time. One law leads to another and another and another. And then, one day, a once-free nation finds itself in bondage.
It's called gradualism. It's a time-honored practice of the ruling class. They are content to set events in motion knowing they will not come to fruition in their lifetime, but will mature 50 years or 100 years down the road.
That's because the people rarely accept tyranny in one fell swoop. It has to come slowly and imperceptibly, or the people will resist and rebel. Gradualism reduces the shock potential and numbs the senses to the reality that is transpiring all around, no matter how serious the consequences. It neutralizes the mind and numbs the senses to reality.
Investigators were still sorting out how many were dead and wounded in the Umpqua Community College shootings Thursday afternoon and the narcissistic undocumented usurper currently despoiling the people's House was already going before the cameras politicizing the incident — and admittedly doing so — by calling for more gun laws and blaming guns in a vacuous and fallacious self-promotional philippic.
He said little of consequence in his twelve-minute tirade. Not much of what he said was on point, and less of it was true. But he revealed that deep within his soul his goal is gun confiscation.
"We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings," said he. "Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it."
And what laws did Great Britain and Australia craft to "almost eliminate mass shootings?" They passed gun confiscation laws. That is Barack Obama's — and the gun-grabber crowd's — ultimate aim. Yet curiously, despite those laws, mass shootings in those countries have still occurred.
But in the meantime, he'll settle for something less, knowing that it is one more step toward tyranny. It's sleight of hand. Look at the left hand, which holds the big thing. Ignore the right, which is doing the actual dirty work.
It doesn't matter if the thing he gets would not prevent another mass shooting — or a shooting of any kind. He's happy as long as he gets something that makes it harder for the law-abiding citizen to protect himself, which would then turn him into another ward of the state. Unarmed dependents are much easier for the social Marxists and oppressors to control.
There was more that the narcissist in chief did not say than he did. Not mentioned in Obama's charade tirade was the fact that there are already federal and state laws against murder. There are federal and state laws against using a weapon for illegal purposes. There are already federal and state laws in Oregon requiring a background check before a weapons purchase can be completed. (Not known as I'm writing is how the shooter obtained his weapons.) There is already a state law requiring a permit to carry a handgun. The campus was a gun-free zone. It had policies prohibiting carrying a weapon on campus.
In other words, the shooter (who will not here be named) likely violated half a dozen laws or more in carrying out his deed. Yet in the world of the gun grabber, one more law would surely be the one that makes a difference. Though they never say what those laws might entail.
Obama did not mention that the shooter was targeting Christians for murder: the second mass shooting in recent months in which Christians were targeted specifically (though the first was propagandized as racist rather than anti-Christian). This would qualify it as a "hate crime." There are already federal laws against "hate crimes."
Obama did not mention that the shooter comes from a broken home. He is British, and his white father and black mother were not married, had apparently never been, and his birth father was not in the picture from the time of his birth. Criminality and broken homes go hand in hand.
Obama did not mention that the shooter in online posts showed an affinity for a terrorist organization — the Irish Republican Army — and praised the homosexual lunatic failed reporter who shot down two of his co-workers in Virginia.
Obama did not mention that shooter was a graduate of The Switzer Learning Center in Torrance, California, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, teaches students with special needs, emotional disturbances, autism, Asperger's syndrome and other issues. According to its website, the school "has a long history of working with children who have been unsuccessful in traditional classrooms because they need the special attention and encouragement that only a school like Switzer can provide."
Obama did not mention that more and more evidence — despite efforts by Big Pharma, Big Food, the government and the propaganda media to cover it up — links autism, Asperger's and other mental conditions to vaccines, FDA-approved drugs and genetically modified foods and chemicals in the packaging.
If he had emotional issues or autism or Asperger's, the shooter was likely on a psychotropic drug. Obama did not mention that psychotropic drugs — including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) — are a common denominator in mass shootings. Aurora movie theater shooter James Holmes, Columbine killer Eric Harris and a host of other mass-murdering young killers were on some type of psychotropic drugs when they committed their crimes.
According to a study published in the journal PLoS One and based on the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System, the following mind-altering drugs are most frequently linked to violence:
10. Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) is an antidepressant associated with 7.9 times more violence than many other drugs. 9. Venlafaxine (Effexor) is related to Pristiq and is an antidepressant also used in treating those with anxiety disorders. Effexor is 8.3 times more associated with violent behavior than other drugs. 8. Fluvoxamine (Luvox) is an antidepressant that affects serotonin (SSRI), and is 8.4 times more likely to be linked to violence than other medications 7. Triazolam (Halcion) can be addictive and is a benzodiazepine that supposedly treats insomnia. It's 8.7 times more likely to be associated with violence than other medications. 6. Atomoxetine (Strattera) is often prescribed to tread ADHD and is 9 times more likely to be associated with violence. 5. Mefoquine (Lariam) treats malaria and sometimes products bizarre behavior, and is 9.5 times more likely to be linked to violence. 4. Amphetamines come in many forms and are often used to treat ADHD (even to children not diagnosed with ADHD). They are 9.6 times more likely to be linked to violence. 3. Paroxetine (Paxil) is an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant. Many users experience severe withdrawal symptoms and are more likely to produce children with birth defects as well as 10.3 times more likely to be linked to violence than other medications. 2. Fluoxetine (Prozac) is a household name for a powerful SSRI antidepressant linked with 10.9 times more violence than other drugs. 1. Varenicline (Chantix) is administered to smokers to supposedly help curb cigarette cravings, but it's a whopping 18 times more likely to be linked to violent behavior than other drugs.
The website SSRIstories.org lists thousands of violent events carried out by people on these chemical agents and others.
Obama did not mention that a typical weekend in his adopted hometown of Chicago — which has some of the strongest gun laws in the country — sees as many killed and wounded every weekend as were killed and wounded in Oregon on Thursday.
Obama did not mention that more people are killed each year by hands and feet than by rifles and shotguns combined, and more are killed by knives than rifles and shotguns combined, but he wants to ban so-called "assault weapons," which are used in a miniscule number of annual murders. And Obama would have you believe that guns are used to kill people at a higher rate in the U.S. than in other places, but he won't tell you that if you take out black-on-black crime, the U.S.'s rate is among the lowest in the industrial world, as I told you in "Statistics don't lie, but gun grabbers do."
And finally, Obama did not mention that more than 316 million Americans and more than 108 million American gun owners did not shoot anyone on Thursday — or any other day — nor will they ever.
That's because shootings are carried out by less than half of one-tenth of 1 percent of people. Yet Obama and the gun grabbers are targeting all of the 108 million or so law-abiding gun owners for the crimes of less than one-tenth of 1 percent. But because those who would commit a gun crime are criminals and, by definition, criminals don't obey laws, no amount of new laws would prevent mass shootings, short of complete confiscation.
Obama claims he wants to pass "common-sense laws" to make America safer. If that were the case, he'd support laws to make it safer to be a baby in the womb by defunding Planned Parenthood, which commits mass murder on scale far greater than all the shooters in history.
But what Obama and his ilk are truly about has nothing to do with "common-sense laws" and everything to do with disarming Americans in order to make them dependents of the state. And they're content to do it one law at a time by politicizing every shooting that serves their nefarious purpose.
The post What Obama didn't say in his gun-grabbing rant appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Thursday, September 17, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
Parking your car by backing it into your driveway could soon be illegal in Jacksonville, Florida [feedly]
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Parking your car by backing it into your driveway could soon be illegal in Jacksonville, Florida
// Personal Liberty Digest™
The city council in Jacksonville, Florida, has taken up a proposal that, if approved, would make it illegal for residents to park their cars in any manner that prevents law enforcement from seeing their rear license plates from the street.
For those who live in single-family homes with off-street parking, such a law would make backing into the driveway to park an illegal act. Florida is among a handful of states that don't require car owners to display license plates at the front of their cars.
The proposed local bill would also require people who use car covers to figure out a way to make the license plates of covered cars similarly visible.
According to The Florida Times-Union, local officials attribute the need for such a law to code enforcers' inability to cite owners of abandoned vehicles.
If all that sounds like a head-scratcher, here's the language from the bill itself (italics have been added to highlight the most relevant portion):
WHEREAS, the Council finds that certain persons are storing vehicles in side yards or parking vehicles in such a manner which prevents the observation of the license tag from the right-of-way; and
WHEREAS, such improper storage of vehicles contributes to blight conditions; and
WHEREAS, the City of Jacksonville has a compelling interest in promoting the health and safety of citizens and visitors by regulating potentially hazardous conditions and blighting influences on private property; now therefore
BE IT ORDAINED by the Council of the City of Jacksonville:
Section 1. Chapter 518 (Jacksonville Property Safety and Maintenance Code), Ordinance Code, amended. Chapter 518 (Jacksonville Property Safety and Maintenance Code), Ordinance Code, is hereby amended to read as follows:
…
It shall be unlawful for any person to store on any private or public property, or the owner or occupant of any property to store or allow to be stored on private or public property owned or occupied by such owner or occupant, outside of a legally constructed fully enclosed structure, unless approved pursuant to a Planned Unit Development zoning district, the following items:
1) any abandoned, disabled or inoperative motor vehicle or parts thereof, or unless it is stored on a bona fide automobile sales lot or an automobile storage yard or automobile wrecking yard, as those terms are defined in Section 656.1301, Ordinance Code;
2) any abandoned, inoperative, disabled or unattended freezer, refrigerator or parts thereof;
3) any junk, rubbish or garbage;
4) any materials, equipment, furnishings, furniture, appliances, construction materials or any items which are not designed to be used outdoors;
5) any item of personal property including clothing or bedding; or
6) any vehicle that is parked on private property, and is visible from the right-of-way or any vehicle that is covered to protect the motor vehicle which does not comply with this subsection:
Any parked vehicle that is visible from the right-of-way shall contain the required license tag, and such license tag shall be clearly visible from the right-of-way or the license tag shall be printed legibly and visible from the right-of-way, with characters not less than two inches in height so that it is clearly visible from the right-of-way. Any cover shall allow at least the bottom of at least six inches of each tire to be visible from the right-of way. The required license tag shall be clearly visible from the right-of-way or the license tag number shall be printed legibly on the cover with characters not less than two inches in height so that it is clearly visible from the right-of-way.Covers shall be in good condition without tears, rips or holes. The entire cover shall be one color, except factory-made fitted covers may have more than one color, and shall be kept clean and free from mold and mildew. Covers may include tarpaulin which shall be in good condition, free of holes, tears and rips.
As the bill makes plain, it seeks to apply these requirements to all vehicles, regardless of whether they're parked on public or private property.
The bill doesn't refer to other law enforcement endeavors that might require an unobstructed street view of parked cars — such as the use of license plate scanners. The American Civil Liberties Union asked the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in 2012 whether it uses such devices — and what it does with any data it collects — but has not indicated any response.
The sheriff's office told WJXT-TV in 2013 that it does not use license plate scanners.
The post Parking your car by backing it into your driveway could soon be illegal in Jacksonville, Florida appeared first on Personal Liberty.
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