constitution

If you’ve ever wondered how a democratic country can become a dictatorship, just look around you right now. The current “president” of the United States has:

Tried to ban immigration
Arrested journalists for covering events unflattering to him
Tried to silence the media
Told people to ignore the media and only listen to him
Fired people for daring to challenge him
Uses his own private security force, loyal only to him personally
Trying to concentrate power in a small group of people and bypass the legislative branch
Removed military leaders from decision making about national security
Describes people who disagree with him as having “betrayed” their country

These are not the actions of a free and democratic society, they are the actions of a despot.

We do not have a president anymore; we have a tyrant, and he deserves to be deposed as one.

A recent court decision has granted e-mail the same 4th Amendment protection as your home and your phone calls.

From Bruce Schneier’s Blog:

This is a great piece of news in the U.S. For the first time, e-mail has been granted the same constitutional protections as telephone calls and personal papers: the police need a warrant to get at it. Now it’s only a circuit court decision — the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio — it’s pretty narrowly defined based on the attributes of the e-mail system, and it has a good chance of being overturned by the Supreme Court…but it’s still great news.

The way to think of the warrant system is as a security device. The police still have the ability to get access to e-mail in order to investigate a crime. But in order to prevent abuse, they have to convince a neutral third party — a judge — that accessing someone’s e-mail is necessary to investigate that crime. That judge, at least in theory, protects our interests.

We can only hope.

Tag: constitution

The March to Tyranny

A Victory for Privacy