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Archive for Surveillance

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Wednesday 24th November 2010

TSA: Attitude Fines for Complaining About Being Molested

11:15 am | Attention Deficit Democracy | Surveillance | Transportation Security Admin. | Comments: 4

The Transportation Security Administration has a long history of stretching power far past the bounds of sense of decency. This 2008 piece from the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily exposes the perils of a bad atttiude at the airport..
Freedom Daily, June 2008
Federal Attitude Police
by James Bovard
The Transportation Security Administration has created more gantlets [...]

Tuesday 23rd November 2010

TSA: Three Cheers for National Opt-Out Day!

National Opt-Out Day is a great response to the TSA’s damned outrages.
From the Opt-Out Day website:

Wednesday, November 24, 2010 is NATIONAL OPT-OUT DAY!
It’s the day ordinary citizens stand up for their rights, stand up for liberty, and protest the federal government’s desire to virtually strip us naked or submit to an [...]

Wednesday 15th September 2010

Abolish the Phony Privacy Board

Washington Times September 16, 2010

BOVARD: Abolish the Phony Privacy Board
Panel was designed to rubber-stamp constitutional infringement
by James Bovard
President Obama has failed to make any appointments to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This board epitomizes the charades Washington has played since Sept, 11, 2001. Instead of stocking the board with [...]

Thursday 2nd September 2010

Government Online Surveillance and Your Bad Attitude

This great Dilbert cartoon perfectly captures how surveillance breeds distrust.
The feds are spying on us left and right, and yet politicians whine that we don’t trust the government.
At least not everyone’s a damn fool on that regard. (No - this isn’t the cue to recite the Pledge of Allegiance….)

Wednesday 4th August 2010

My 2 Cents on WikiLeaks, the FBI, and Assorted Hokum - Antiwar.com Transcript

The good folks at Antiwar.com Radio added a transcript to the MP3 of last week’s interview. My comments on the Obama administration’s ploy to increase FBI surveillance power are excerpted here at the top. (The full text is below. My Kelly Girl past is now no longer secret).
Bovard:
National Security letters have [...]

Tuesday 3rd August 2010

New U.S. Government Motto: Controlling Us to Secure Us

“If you don’t have control of the population, you can’t secure the population,” according to Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, director of operations for the NATO regional command in southern Afghanistan.
The front-page Washington Post piece with the above quote deals with Kandahar.
But it is also the motto for the U.S. government’s approach to [...]

Saturday 31st July 2010

MP3 of My Interview with Scott Horton on the FBI, WikiLeaks, Etc.

Scott Horton of Antiwar.com Radio and I had fun tarring-and-feathering the usual federal outrages on Thursday. The MP3 is here.
Scott balked at the chance to reveal his deepest thoughts on Chelsea’s wedding. It could have been a great “Bill Hicks moment.”
Here’s Scott’s thumbnail of the interview:
James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy, [...]

Wednesday 21st July 2010

The Media’s Attitude Towards Government Surveillance

This 1990 New Yorker cartoon perfectly captures the usual media attitude towards government surveillance in the post-9/11 world.
Happily, today’s Washington Post blockbuster does not show the same complacency.

Monday 19th July 2010

Best Comical Response to Wash. Post “Top Secret America” Series?

The Washington Post series on “Top Secret America” by Dana Priest and Bill Arkin is off to a great start.
I am shocked to learn that the federal government has little or no idea what the hell it is doing.
I expect some conservatives will want to indict the Post reporters and editors for treason….
What are [...]

Friday 9th July 2010

“Freedom & the War on Terrorism” - my Pennslyvania speech…

Now online here: the video of my “Freedom and the War on Terrorism” speech last month in Bernville, Pennsylvania. I want to thank Bob Bowers, who organized this libertarian supper club, for inviting Jacob Hornberger and I to talk there. The audience was excellent - lots of hardliners full of fire-and-brimstone. [...]

Thursday 27th May 2010

The Worldwide Downfall of Democracy

From the July issue of the American Conservative - my review of a fine new book -
Global Undemocratic Revolution

Freedom for Sale: Why the World Is Trading Democracy for Security, John Kampfner, Basic Books, 294 pages
By James Bovard
Freedom for Sale is the best synopsis of the recent collapse of restraints on government [...]

Wednesday 28th April 2010

Make All Politicians Wear Microphones All the Time

9:31 pm | Democracy | Surveillance | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was wearing a microphone for a TV station as he went out and talked to the common people. But he ran into one elderly ingrate who didn’t burnish his boots.
After he got back into his chauffeured car, he groused that the woman was a “bigot” and wanted to [...]

Tuesday 20th April 2010

The Slippery Definition of Extremism

The Future of Freedom Foundation is shotgunning out this op-ed today….

The Slippery Definition of Extremism
by James Bovard
Americans are once again hearing of the perils of extremism. But the definition of this offense is slippier than a politician’s campaign promise. The definition of extremism has continually been amended to permit government policies that few sober people [...]

Thursday 15th April 2010

Podcast of Census-Bashing Interview on Free Talk Live

Mark Edge of Free Talk Live interviewed me yesterday on the Census, government surveillance, and other perils of our times.
The podcast is here. My interview is the final 20 minutes of the 2+ hour program.
I did not see the interview listed as a separate downloadable file. If I missed something [...]

Friday 2nd April 2010

My CPAC Interview with Bill Jasper, Liberty News Network

When I visited the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, I talked with Bill Jasper about the state of the Republic.

I was relieved to see that, according to the logo on that page, the interview was rated “G.”

Extremist Blogs Could be Next!!!!

From today’s Washington Post website -
“FBI warns extremist letters may encourage violence”
By EILEEN SULLIVAN and DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Friday, April 2, 2010; 9:34 AM
….
The article ominously notes: ” In the past year, federal agents have seen an increase in “chatter” from an array of domestic extremist groups, which can include radical self-styled militias, white separatists [...]

Wednesday 31st March 2010

Federal Judge: Bush Administration Was Criminal Conspiracy

Federal judge Vaughn Walker ruled today that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program was illegal.
This has been obvious ever since the New York Times blew the lid off of the National Security Administration’s massive surveillance operation in late 2005. It is amazing that the issue is still open to dispute.
Unfortunately, there is not a [...]

Tuesday 30th March 2010

New York Times: My Two Cents on How to Respond to the Census

9:33 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Census | Surveillance | Comments: 0

The New York Times on Wednesday has a piece on the controversy over the Census. It includes my two cents on how to respond to the feds:
“The census has become a lightning rod, and it’s drawing people’s attention to the danger of federal surveillance,” said James Bovard, an author and former census taker who [...]

Wednesday 24th March 2010

How Germans Fought & Beat an Intrusive Census

1:32 pm | Surveillance | Comments: 2

This article ran in the Detroit News, the Washington Times (which ran a great cartoon with the piece), and a few other places.
DATELINE: HAMBURG, WEST GERMANY @ June 1987
[...]

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