From Riley v. California:

Our cases have recognized that the Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s response to the reviled “general warrants” and “writs of assistance” of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity. Opposition to such searches was in fact one of the driving forces behind the Revolution itself. In 1761, the patriot James Otis delivered a speech in Boston denouncing the use of writs of assistance. A young John Adams was there, and he would later write that “[e]very man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance.” According to Adams, Otis’s speech was “the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.”

Party like it’s 1761 — in a good way - The Washington Post

At the time Erven’s team conducted their research, they didn’t know how many vulnerable medical devices were directly connected to the internet as opposed to simply being connected to internal networks accessible via the internet.

Erven and Merdinger set out to scan the internet to answer this question. They scanned for any systems using port 445—the port the SMB protocol uses to transmit data—and filtered for hospitals and other health care organizations while using keywords like “anesthesia” and “defibrillator.” Within half an hour, they discovered a health care organization that was leaking information on 68,000 systems. The organization, which Erven would not identify, has more than 12,000 employees, 3,000 physicians and large cardiovascular and neuroscience institutions associated with it.

Hospital Networks Are Leaking Data, Leaving Critical Devices Vulnerable | Threat Level | WIRED

The Mayor of Peoria, Illinois had a citizen arrested and his home and place of work raided by the police because he created a parody account on Twitter that criticized him. When faced with a lawsuit from the ACLU, the Mayor stuck to his guns. He thinks the police raids were appropriate.

Mayor Jim Ardis continued to maintain Thursday that the reporting on the Twitter incident that has become a global news story has been filled with “mischaracterizations of the basic facts.”

Analysis: Mayor Ardis claims 'mischaracterization' of Twitter controversy - News - Journal Star - Peoria, IL

What do you do with your Lamborghini if you think it isn't getting enough attention? For some of the Yakuza in Tokyo's underground, you customize it with vinyl wraps, flashing lights, and strings of colored LEDs.

These are the customized Lamborghinis of Japan's underworld | The Verge

Of course, the need to keep up with the Joneses played into Dad’s obsession: since the dawn of the ‘burbs, around 1870, the ornamental lawn, a democratized version of the rambling grounds that in Europe only nobility could afford and maintain, has been a status symbol in the States. Keeping the front yard, at least, in trim, as squared away as a marine’s high-and-tight haircut or the hospital corners on a boot-camp cot, brought out the competitive streak in Dad, a sublimated form of male threat-posturing and territory-marking.

The revenge of the lawn - Boing Boing

The Ideological Middle Is Dead in Congress

The Ideological Middle Is Dead in Congress | The Big Picture

Once upon a time there was one kingdom - the Kingdom of Bell. The Kingdom of Bell had many toll roads that connected the serf's homes together and allowed the serfs to travel to different marketplaces from which they could download content. Generally speaking, these roads were not as good for bringing goods to market as they were for downloading content from the marketplaces. No one seemed to care about that, because no one believed that the serfs had anything interesting to offer the marketplace anyway.

One day, a new Kingdom was born - the Kingdom of Google. The Kingdom of Google was once one of the marketplaces that the serfs downloaded content from, but it became very popular, and all the serfs wanted to travel there. In order to reach the Kingdom of Google, the serfs had to cross the Kingdom of Bell, and pay a toll. The King of Bell realized that many serfs wanted to travel to the Kingdom of Google, and decided to raise the toll on that trip.

The King of Google felt that this was unfair. He argued that all of the roads through the Kingdom of Bell should have the same price. This is referred to as Net Neutrality. The Kingdom of Google paid lawyers to extoll the virtues of net neutrality, arguing that all the different marketplaces ought to be able to compete on even footing for the interest of the serfs. If one marketplace was more expensive for the serfs to travel to than another, than the serfs might choose to do business at a less expensive marketplace because of the price, even if that marketplace was comparatively worse. The lawyers argued that it was in the best interest of all of the serfs to have access to the best marketplaces available.

The King of Bell disagreed with the King of Google. He argued that there was so much traffic on the road to Google that the road needed constant upgrade and repairs, and that the extra toll money could go toward making sure that traffic traveled along that road as fast as possible.

The King of Google didn't believe the King of Bell's explanations. The Knights of the Round Google handed pitchforks and torches to all of the serfs that visited their land and told them that the Kingdom of Bell was evil and their plans to disrupt Net Neutrality had to be stopped at all cost. Many of these serfs camped outside Bell Castle in protest of the new tolls.

Of course, it was impossible for any of the serfs to compete with the Kingdom of Google, because the roads through the Kingdom of Bell enabled the serfs to download content from the marketplaces, but they were not good for bringing new content to market or running new marketplaces. None of the lawyers paid by the Kingdom of Google to extoll the virtues of Net Neutrality ever bothered to mention the fact that the serfs were not on equal footing with the marketplaces.

In the end, neither the King of Bell nor the King of Google nor the any of the King's lawyers nor any of the King's men gave a damn about the legitimate interests of serfs. They all just want the serf's collective money. The King of Google has, nevertheless, managed to convince many of the serfs that those serfs are engaged in a revolution against the King of Bell, that this revolution is a grass roots fight against oppression, and victory is necessary to restore all that is right and good to the world.

Hence this fight over net neutrality is really no different from countless wars that have been fought for thousands of years in which serfs bled and died for the interest of Kings, believing all the while that they were defending honor, valor, good, and right, when in fact they were just defending some jerk's pile of gold.

The End.

And although this constitution was violated and set at naught by Norman force, yet force cannot change right. A perpetual claim was kept up by the nation, by their perpetual demand of a restoration of their Saxon laws; which shews they were never relinquished by the will of the nation. In the pullings and haulings for these antient rights, between the nation, and its kings of the races of Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts, there was sometimes gain, and sometimes loss, until the final re-conquest of their rights from the Stuarts. The destitution and expulsion of this race broke the thread of pretended inheritance, extinguished all regal usurpations, and the nation re-entered into all its rights; and although in their bill of rights they specifically reclaimed some only, yet the omission of the others was no renunciation of the right to assume their exercise also, whenever occasion should occur.

To Major John Cartwrigt Monticello, June 5, 1824 - The Letters of Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826

In defending their mass domestic surveillance program the NSA is arguing, on the one hand, that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to their activities, while simultaneously arguing that the strict limits that the Fourth Amendment imposes on surveillance are sufficient to protect the First Amendment rights of citizens. They cannot have it both ways.

The domestic meta-data surveillance program collects everyone's call records. These records reveal who you communicate with, how often, and when - essentially, what your associations are with other people. Of course, you have a right to Freedom of Association, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its obvious that if the government is keeping a record of all of your associations, which may be used against you in the future, this might deter your exercise of your First Amendment rights.

In court filings defending the meta-data program, the NSA responds to this concern by arguing that we don't need to worry about the negative impact that meta-data surveillance might have on our Right to Freedom of Association, because the Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable surveillance.

"The Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit have held... that when governmental investigative activities have an indirect impact on the exercise of First Amendment freedoms, those interests are safeguarded by scrupulous adherence to Fourth Amendment standards... Accordingly, “surveillance consistent with Fourth Amendment protections . . . does not violate First Amendment rights, even though it may be directed at communicative or associative activities.”

In other words, they are saying that even though spying can have a negative impact on our First Amendment rights, that impact is acceptable because spying is only authorized by the Fourth Amendment in the narrow circumstances where it is necessary. In the past, people have argued that government surveillance of their speech or political and religious activities can have a negative impact on their Constitutional rights, even when that surveillance was authorized by a warrant. The courts addressed this concern in holding that the Fourth Amendment's probable cause and warrant requirements create a framework that limits the impact that government surveillance has on First Amendment activities, and the remaining impact is acceptable.

The government is trying to reference this logic in a context where they are simultaneously arguing that the Fourth Amendment's probable cause and warrant requirements do not apply! The government has repeatedly asserted that Americans have "no legitimate expectation of privacy in telephony metadata" and that "even the 'collection of breathtaking amounts of information unprotected b... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Lots of people are expressing anger this morning about the updated Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate. If you live here, something positive you can do is get a Historic Preservation license plate, which puts money toward preserving the actual history of this place rather than the heavily rationalized one promoted by groups like Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The General Assembly has not funded their grant program for the preservation of historic sites since the economic downturn in 2008, so all of the funding comes from license plates. License plate revenues have funded 9 projects totaling $116,685. Thats not nearly enough.

Help preserve Georgia's actual heritage:

Preservation license plate | Historic Preservation Division -- Georgia Department of Natural Resources