The assault on privacy and liberty are battles often fought in backrooms, sometimes following measures with unintended consequences, sometimes openly, with competing objectives, nefarious and otherwise. Anyone who is a "seller" (usually of labor) and not a "buyer" in the social economy is at risk, one might argue.
Here's a list of some items:
MATERIAL WITNESS INFORMATIONDUBLIN, Calif. (AP) - A video blogger, who spent a record 226 days behind bars for refusing to turn over his footage of a chaotic 2005 street protest, walked out of prison after cutting a deal with prosecutors.
Joshua Wolf, 24, said Tuesday he was looking forward to "pizza and a beer" after spending more time in prison than any journalist who's refused to testify.
Under the deal with prosecutors, Wolf agreed to turn over the uncut video, which he also posted on his Web site Tuesday. But he refused to testify before the grand jury about the events at the protest or the identities of participants
'BAD ATTITUDE' INFORMATION AND PROFILE
Police Log Confirms FBI Role In Arrests
Group Detained, Questioned During D.C. War Protest
By Carol D. LeonnigWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, April 3, 2007; Page B01
A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.
For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.(hat tip, Drudge, for these two items)
John Lennon's FBI file (he's a Marxist sympathizer ...):
IS INFORMATION NEUTRAL?
Many people believe you have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong, but there is always The Garden of the Forking Paths to consider. To wit:
Census Bureau Aided Internment Of Japanese, Researchers Say
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN; Staff Reporter of the Sun; March 30, 2007
... and, in relation to the struggle over health-care privacy:
Many think that security of electronic health records serves primarily to preserve the privacy of people with HIV/AIDS, just as Todd Sloane suggests in his article Privacy could be IT standards' deal-breaker. Nobody considers national security concerns. What if one of our growing number of enemies gains control of a significant portion of American citizens' health records? - article
and such theft in relation to reality?
April 02, 2007 (Computerworld) -- After more than two months of refusing to reveal the size and scope of the high-profile intrusion into its systems, The TJX Companies Inc. finally disclosed details about the extent of the compromise. In filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week, the company said 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from two of its systems over a period of more than 18 months by an unknown number of intruders. That total eclipses the 40million records compromised in the mid-2005 breach at the former CardSystems Solutions Inc., and makes the TJX incident the worst publicly disclosed compromise involving the loss of personal card data.
All told, same struggle, new day, and, as ever, not too much learned.
