Government Privacy Threats

By Dennis O'Reilly

This Weekly Digest of posts from the Workers' Edge blog highlights the dangers posed by unfettered surveillance activities conducted by law enforcement and agencies at the local, state, and federal level. Topic include the return of the general warrant for phone searches, the dismantling of the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine, and whether police and other government offices can claim "ownership" of the videos and other private data they collect. Also discussed are government and corporate control of the internet, the continuing erosion of government privacy protections, and the meaninglessness of "personal jurisdiction" in an internet-connected world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dennis O'Reilly
• Release date: Mar 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370624720

Dennis O'Reilly

Dennis O'Reilly has been writing about personal technology since microfiche and ROM readers roamed the Earth. He spends his leisure hours wondering how all these strange names got into his contact lists. When not in front of a computer he can be found riding his heavy-duty Schwinn bicycle at a steady 7.5 miles an hour along the backroads of Sonoma County. Dennis can be reached at [e-mail] The Workers' Edge blog is at www.workersedge.org Dennis's fiction writing is at www.dennisoreilly.com

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Weekly Digest

Government Privacy Threats

Copyright 2017 Dennis R. O'Reilly

Published by Dennis R. O'Reilly at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

The Rough Beast's lies indicate his intentions - Just like the Nazis, December 6, 2016

Nazis take over Google’s search algorithm

You’re going to keep using Facebook and Google no matter what I say

Reliable internet information isn’t always easy to find

Government phone searches: Return of the 'general warrant,' November 29, 2016

A return of the ‘general warrants’ that the Founding Fathers rebelled against

Democracy on life support: ‘Warning signs flashing red’

How do we bridge the growing media and political divides? October 4, 2016

Stepping outside the echo chambers

Breaking down the Facebook news-filter algorithm

Facebook and other social media as hoax-spreading machines

Attempting an unbiased look at bias in media

Why internet voting is a terrible idea, September 6, 2016

No such thing as a hack-proof network

Accurate, reliable vote counts require a medium you can feel

All of Facebook’s privacy settings in a single infographic

Supreme Court throws 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine under the bus, August 16, 2016

Justice Sotomayor leads the defense of the Fourth Amendment

A primer for white people on life in the real America

About that ‘repealing the Second Amendment’ claim

Silly questions: Who 'owns' video captured by police? And does Facebook really enhance privacy? August 2, 2016

Legal underpinnings of 'government ownership' of information

One state takes a safe-and-sane approach to release of police bodycam video

Facebook: Paragon of privacy

How do they track thee? Let us count the ways…

Twenty-first century version of toxic waste: Metadata

It's official: No expectation of privacy on the internet, June 28, 2016

Noble cause, but dangerous implications for privacy

Is privacy still a ‘fundamental right’?

Protecting against non-governmental threats to our privacy

How to wrest control of our government away from corporations, June 21, 2016

The struggle to overcome ‘the false hope, the grand illusion’

Our survival depends on the demise of politics as usual

Once more on the nuclear brink

Privacy threats on parade, May 17, 2016

What becomes of your data when the tech industry hits its next rough patch?

Welcome to the ‘Golden Age of Surveillance’

You gotta fight for your right to privacy

Government goes dark as private lives are exposed, May 10, 2016

Microsoft takes the privacy-rights fight to the government

Judicial warrants now extend to all computers, everywhere

FCC to regulate ISP data collection, but Google, Facebook off the hook, April 6, 2016

Profits soar when customers are kept in the dark

Privacy only for those who can afford it?

Silicon Valley's long-standing connections to the U.S. government, March 2, 2016

A call for a publicly owned 'fellowship of the net'

2016: The first social-media election, March 2, 2016

'Hey, gang, let's put on a government!', January 5, 2016

Tracing political distrust back to states’ rights

We’re more polarized in our political beliefs than ever

It’s time to shine a light on the ‘shadow government’

The time has come for a direct democracy

A word from the author

The Rough Beast's lies indicate his intentions - Just like the Nazis, December 6, 2016

In 1951, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism was published. I haven’t read it, and I learned about the book only this week from a tweet by Elliot Lusztig that Ben Grimes retweeted. I found more information about the book on its Wikipedia entry.

Lusztig cites Arendt’s statement that the bizarre claims made by German Nazis in the 1930s about Jews defied fact checking because the claims were never meant to be factual. The lies were a declaration of intent, according to Lusztig.

It’s 80 years later, and once again fascists are lying openly. We believe we can challenge these lies with the facts, but to the fascists, the facts don’t matter. Their statements are declarations of intent, just like the Nazis that came before them.

So when the Poobah-elect lies about millions of people who voted illegally for his opponent, he knows no such thing ever happened. He’s declaring his intention to take away our right to vote.

And that’s precisely what is happening right now. A December 5, 2016, New York Times editorial explains the direct link between lies about voter fraud and efforts underway by Republicans in several states to take away people’s fundamental right to vote – particularly the poor people who are most likely to vote against Republican candidates.

The Times editorial closes by stating, It’s outrageous, but it’s hard to see why they would stop when lying has gotten them this far. (The Nation’s Ari Berman updates the Republican challenges to voting