Quotulatiousness

August 24, 2010

Censors to poke noses into what Aussies can load on their iPhones?

Filed under: Australia, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:16

Roger Henry sent this information to one of my mailing lists and I repost it here with his permission:

An interesting bombshell in Oz. Apple iPhones, and presumably other similar devices, have been put on notice that all, or nearly all, of the apps that people buy and install should, by law, have been submitted for “Classification” (i.e., censorship). Failure to do so is a criminal offence with penalties of some AU$35,000 per offence. Purchasing said ‘apps’ without a Classification label is also a criminal offence, punishable with jail time and/or fines. Seems that getting these ‘apps’ Classified attracts a charge varying from AU$470 to AU$2,600 so a lot of money is outstanding. With 50,000 apps already in use, the government accepts that there are some practical limitations to the matter but they aren’t going to let the matter just fade away.

This is Roger’s summary from information posted in The Australian‘s weekly IT Notes. And then, in response to a “Dude, WTF?” query:

It may well be that Apple will cease making apps available in Oz. Yes. It is known that they have their own censors. This merely compounds their culpability. What might have been an accidental oversight is now clearly a deliberate attempt to A) avoid censorship and B) defraud the government. This cannot go unpunished. As for the consumers, well, they are all probable pedophiles and identified thieves. No punishment can be too severe . . . it might take awhile but Justice will be served.

While it likely will all end in a round of dignified press releases and backslaps all ’round, there’s still the outside possibility of a highly entertaining politico-technical train wreck here. Let’s hope the wilder spirits prevail.

“One of the few thrills of working as a bylaw enforcement officer is making people cry”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:23

Ezra Levant looks at the bylaw enforcement regime in Clarington, just east of Toronto:

It’s not a lemonade crime wave that the brave city elders of Clarington are combating. It’s the menace of backyard barbecues.

Peter Jaworski has been holding backyard barbecues at his parents’ property there for 10 years. It’s a house in the country on 40 secluded acres. Once a year, Peter invites a few dozen of his friends to spend the weekend eating his mom’s cooking and camping next to the swimming hole. I’ve been there: it’s one part family reunion, one part picnic and one part political talk.

So clearly, the Jaworski family must be stopped.

First came the health department. They poked and prodded, and even took water samples. No one has ever got sick at a Jaworski barbecue — the opposite; everyone comes for the food — but the government ordered that no home cooking would be allowed. The Jaworskis complied with these costly and ridiculous demands, catering the whole weekend and serving only bottled water, at great cost.

But bureaucrats travel in packs. A local bylaw enforcement officer waited until the barbecue itself, and marched right onto the property — no search warrant needed! — and started peppering the guests with questions.

He wasn’t a health officer; he was a bylaw officer. Yet he demanded to know what the guests had for lunch. In the name of the law!

Armed with this devastating information, the officer charged Peter’s parents with running an illegal “commercial conference centre,” which carries a fine of up to $50,000. The officer, a burly, tattooed, six-foot-something man, told Peter’s mom to “be very careful.” She burst into tears.

Why do people get this insane idea that they should be able to do what they want on their own property? If we wanted that to happen, we wouldn’t appoint bylaw officers and arm them with bylaws to quash your fun and destroy your ability to enjoy your own property!

This scourge of backyard entertainment must be defeated, and Clarington is leading the way!

August 23, 2010

QotD: Peak Culture

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Quotations, Space, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:47

The height of their society peaked in 1969. They used militarism and socialism to put two guys on the Moon, they trotted out their public-private partnership (Concorde) to build exclusive supersonic transport for the rich. Max Faget and some other brilliant engineers designed a space shuttle fleet of ten vehicles capable of hundreds of flights a year to make access to low Earth orbit cheap and routine. And the Advanced Research Projects Agency had some geeks create an inter-networking protocol that could survive a nuclear war.

Obviously, they shot their wad, as it were, and no longer put guys on the Moon. They no longer fly supersonic transports. Their space shuttle is going to stop flying soon, if it hasn’t already. Those geeky guys went on to develop open source cryptography, open source software, and totally private economic transactions. The future we’re creating is going to be very, dramatically different. It is going to be decentralised to a fare thee well.

Right now, today, two people anywhere in the world *can* have a totally private economic exchange that cannot be detected by anyone else. And since it cannot be detected, it cannot be regulated, it cannot be prohibited, and it cannot be taxed. Even inflation cannot tax it, if the exchange is denominated in some money like silver or gold. Which means that those who dream of ruling the world sowed the seeds of their own damnation?

Jim Davidson, “Peak Culture”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2010-08-22

August 13, 2010

QotD: Same-sex marriage in California

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

Me, I’m no bleeding-heart small-D democrat. But to the opponents of gay marriage, and perhaps even to unpersuaded moderates, this might seem like sharp dealing. It is one thing for the judiciary to block the will of the majority: hey, welcome to the U.S.A., tenderfoot. This, however, is a case where the judiciary may not only end up obstructing the volonté générale, but elbowing it good and hard in the vitals. Somehow, in California, a majority vote against same-sex marriage will have led directly to the near-permanent entrenchment of same-sex marriage.

Colby Cosh, “Same-sex marriage in California: the trap closes?”, Maclean’s, 2010-08-13

August 11, 2010

Jonathan Rauch on overturning Proposition 8

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Jonathan Rauch has concerns about the judicial decision that overturned California’s Prop. 8:

Last week, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker declared that California’s ban on same-sex marriage — and, by implication, any state’s ban — violates the U.S. Constitution. The case is on its way to appeal, where it may be overturned. Already, though, gay men and women across the country are celebrating unreservedly. I only wish I could join them.

That feels strange to say. After all, as a gay man, a leading proponent of gay marriage and half of a same-sex marriage myself (my partner and I got married in the District of Columbia in June), I find so much to celebrate. How could I not?

[. . .]

So I think the decision is a radical one, but not, ironically, as it pertains to homosexuality or to marriage. No, Walker’s radicalism lies elsewhere: In his use of the Constitution to batter the principles of its two greatest exponents — Madison and Abraham Lincoln, a Burkean who was steadfast in his belief that ideals must be leavened with pragmatism.

History will, I believe, vindicate Walker’s view of marriage. Whether it will see him as having done gay rights a favor is less clear. For all its morally admirable qualities, his decision sets the cause of marriage equality crosswise with moderation, gradualism and popular sovereignty. Which, in America, is a dangerous place to be.

August 9, 2010

The inevitable decline in public respect for the police

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Paul Bonneau examines the declining levels of respect among members of the public for the police:

I’ve gotten the impression lately that cops aren’t getting very much support in Internet forums these days, even in places where in the past you’d find almost unqualified support. About everyone seems fed up with ’em.

I wondered why this should be. Why are they becoming so much more frequently scorned?

[. . .]

I think one reason cops are hated is that people generally don’t like being scrutinized, and put under suspicion for minding their own business; they really, really don’t like that. Cops are always checking you out, looking for a reason to “brace” you (an old meaning of the word that looks very useful these days).

The War on Some Drugs has to cause some hatred, as more and more peoples’ lives are ruined by it. Indeed, this prison industry boondoggle has stained all aspects of the “Justice” system, not just cops.

Another reason is that cops are treated, and see themselves, as superior to the rest of us. In innumerable ways, cops are always given the benefit of the doubt; certainly legally, and also informally — although the latter seems to be fading a bit, as trust in cops fades. They are “The Only Ones”, we are “mundanes”, “proles”, peons. They can lie to us, we can’t lie to them; they can beat us up and torture us, but if we touch them it is “assault”.

Along with this insufferable attitude is a self-regard that what they are about is important and good. I suppose everyone suffers from this malady, but usually it does not impact a person as it does when one runs into a cop in the throes of it. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” What are cops, if not “omnipotent moral busybodies”? At least when the Mafia runs a protection racket, they don’t deceive themselves they are doing you a benefit. One appreciates the Mafia’s honesty, in comparison.

August 7, 2010

Mr. Harper: Tell the Americans to bugger off!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 20:31

If you’ve been reading Quotulatiousness for a while, you’ll rarely detect serious amounts of anti-Americanism. I’m not reflexively anti-American, and have little time for those folks who think that being Canadian requires an anti-American attitude. That being said, it’s time for the Canadian government to tell the American government (and Canadian “tough on crime” types) to go to hell:

The Canadian government’s effort to give the United States the authority to veto any Canadian-origin airplane passenger who is unwelcome in the United States — even on flights merely overflying the United States, without a scheduled stop in that country — is unacceptable. It is another worrisome indication that the Conservatives are posturing over-manfully over the tired hagus of law and order, at the expense of the sovereignty of Canada and the rights of its citizens and welcome visitors.

Certainly, the requirements of continental security must be emphasized to give the United States an adequate comfort level that Canada is not a conduit of terrorists. But plausibly suspected terrorists already are subject to detention in, and extradition from Canada. So the main effect of the proposed legal changes would be to extend the rules governing terrorism and other extreme criminal activity to people who are alleged wrongdoers or undesirables on much less grave and certain grounds.

It should be perfectly adequate to advise the United States of the identity of overflying passengers; and to warn all passengers that if they are sought in the United States, or persona non grata in that country for any reason, in the unlikely event of an unscheduled stateside landing, they could be at risk of inconvenience and even detention.

Canada is, despite recent attempts to emulate a doormat, an independent country. We’ve been “offered” chances to join the union and have seen off those offers with fixed bayonets (our own and our British allies). We share with the United States what used to be the world’s longest undefended border, and both countries have benefitted from this arrangement for more than a century. Since 9/11, the “undefended” status has become less and less accurate.

It is in our interests to keep that border as open as possible: most Canadian businesses depend on having access to the 300+ million American market, and our economy would suffer greatly if the border was closed. What would be a minor economic inconvenience to the Americans would be a devastating government-induced depression to Canada. But keeping the border open is not worth allowing Washington to dictate Canada’s foreign and domestic policies.

Though not identical, it smacks of the British practice in the early 18th century of seizing American seamen and forcing them into servitude on British ships. That practice led to the War of 1812, a slightly farcical conflict in which a British-Canadian shore party burned down the White House and the U.S. Capitol, and chased President Madison out of Washington with a painting of the first president under his arm, (one of the less publicized but more picturesque episodes in the eventful history of the U.S. presidency).

It’s unlikely that a war of any kind would break out between Canada and the United States, thank goodness, but Canada should not kowtow to American pressure. Tell Mr. Obama to go to hell, Stephen!

Pat Condell: Freedom is my religion

Filed under: Europe, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 20:14

August 6, 2010

Tide turning on porn prosecutions in the UK?

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

After the US government’s prosecution of a pornography company owner collapsed last month, the British anti-porn campaign has suffered a setback. The Register reports on the case:

A stunning reversal for police and prosecution in North Wales may herald the beginning of the end for controversial legislation on possession of extreme porn.

The case, scheduled to be heard yesterday in Mold Crown Court, was the culmination of a year-long nightmare for Andrew Robert Holland, of Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Clwyd as the CPS declined to offer any evidence, and he left court a free man. The saga began last summer when, following a tip-off, police raided Holland’s home looking for indecent images of children. They found none, but they did find two clips, one involving a woman purportedly having sex with a tiger, and one which is believed to have depicted sado-masochistic activity between adults.

Despite Holland’s protests that he had no interest in the material, and that it had been sent to him unsolicited “as a joke”, he was charged with possessing extreme porn. In a first court appearance in January of this year, the “tiger porn” charge was dropped when prosecuting counsel discovered the volume control and at the end of the action heard the tiger turn to camera and say: “That beats doing adverts for a living.”

The laws are seriously skewed when the potential punishment for simple possession of “extreme” pornography approaches the actual punishment for serious violent crime.

August 5, 2010

US governments still finding this “free speech” thing annoying

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

If you support the notion of free speech, it is most important to support it during elections . . . but not everyone feels this way:

The Associated Press reports that California’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is considering “how to regulate new forms of political activity such as appeals on a voter’s Facebook page or in a text message.

Not whether to regulate these new forms of political speech, but how.

The recommendations apparently include “requiring tweets and texts to link to a website that includes . . . full disclosures, although some people feel the disclosure should be in the text itself no matter how brief . . . .”

To paraphrase Chief Justice John Roberts, this is why we don’t leave our free speech rights in the hands of FPPC bureaucrats. To bureaucrats like those at the FPPC, the Federal Election Commission or their analogues, there seems to be no need to show any evidence that Twitter, Facebook or text messages actually pose any threat to the public. It is enough that they these new forms of low-cost media aren’t currently regulated, but could be. Their primary concern, apparently, is that the regulation of political speech be as comprehensive as possible.

Free speech can be a messy thing — but censorship is worse.

August 3, 2010

Your elected representatives demand tokens of your respect

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:44

You may have elected them (someone had to), but you must show deference and respect at all times:

Sources reported this week that the city council of Elmhurst, Ill., had asked its attorney to research various definitions of “disorderly conduct,” in the course of considering possible changes to rules of decorum in city council meetings. The move was prompted by an incident in June in which a frustrated citizen rolled her eyes and audibly sighed during a meeting, and was promptly ejected from the chamber.

Reportedly, Darlene Helsop had hoped to speak to the finance committee about its plan to hire a state lobbyist, but wasn’t given the opportunity to do so. She sighed and rolled her eyes, to the great irritation of committee chairman Stephen Hipskind. “Making faces behind the mayor’s back is disruptive, in my opinion,” he said, and he ordered Helsop to leave. To their credit, other council members objected and two left, ending the meeting for lack of a quorum. But the council still seems to have asked its attorney to look into the legal ramifications of a rule that would encompass eye-rolling and (presumably) face-making.

So remember, serfs citizens, show respect to your owners leaders . . . or else!

July 29, 2010

An end to ASBOs in sight?

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

BBC News thinks that the much-maligned ASBO may be going away.

Home Secretary Theresa May has signalled the possible end of Asbos in England and Wales, saying it is “time to move beyond” the orders, first introduced by Labour 11 years ago.

They have been imposed on 10-year-old boys and 80-year-old women, used to sober up persistent drunks and mute noisy neighbours.

Of course, one of the more useful aspects of the ASBO has been to allow the media an easy way to find stories to run in the quiet times, like this one:

A 60-year-old man from Northampton was banned from dressing as a schoolgirl.

Peter Trigger’s Asbo stopped him from wearing skirts or showing bare legs on school days between 0830 and 1000 and 1445 and 1600.

The authorities acted after parents complained he was waiting near a primary school dressed in clothes similar to school uniform. He then breached this in December last year by bending over in front of his neighbours repeatedly.

You see, without the ASBO, reporters would have to dig up gems like that themselves, instead of having the local police blotter highlight the most newsworthy items for them.

I often wondered, when reading some of the weird and whacky things that people were hit with ASBOs over, why existing laws weren’t applied (lots of these violations were clearly against the law before ASBOs were created). The intent may have been to give judges more flexibility in sentencing, but in practice it appears to have created a “market” in unusual sentences and distorted the notion of equality before the law.

July 28, 2010

More on that elusive right to photography

Filed under: Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Jon, my former virtual landlord sent me a link to this article, with more on the “you have the right only if they don’t stop you” aspect of imaginary laws and their not-so-imaginary enforcers:

Legally, it’s pretty much always okay to take photos in a public place as long as you’re not physically interfering with traffic or police operations. As Bert Krages, an attorney who specializes in photography-related legal problems and wrote Legal Handbook for Photographers, says, “The general rule is that if something is in a public place, you’re entitled to photograph it.” What’s more, though national-security laws are often invoked when quashing photographers, Krages explains that “the Patriot Act does not restrict photography; neither does the Homeland Security Act.” But this doesn’t stop people from interfering with photographers, even in settings that don’t seem much like national-security zones.

Tennessee law student Morgan Manning has compiled a list of incidents in which individuals were wrongly stopped. Cases like that of Seattle photographer Bogdan Mohora, who was arrested for taking pictures of police arresting a man and had his camera confiscated. Or NASA employee Walter Miller, who was stopped for photographing an art exhibit near the Indianapolis City-County Building and told that “homeland security” forbade photos of the facility. More recently, a CBS news crew was turned back from shooting the oil-fouled gulf coastline by two U.S. Coast Guard officers who said they were enforcing “BP’s rules.”

All of which leads people to believe that there really are laws restricting peoples’ right to take photographs or videos, because police and other government officials keep acting like there are such laws.

So what should you do if you’re taking photos and a security guard or police officer approaches you and tells you to stop? First, be polite. Security people have tough jobs and probably mean well. Ask them what legal authority they have to make you stop. (If you’re in a public place, like a street, a park, etc., they have none; if you’re in a private place, such as a shopping mall, they may have a basis for banning pictures.) Krages advises those hassled by security guards to threaten to call law enforcement. If it’s an actual police officer who’s telling you to stop shooting, ask to speak to a superior. And remember — you never have a legal duty to delete pictures you’ve taken.

More importantly, we need better education among security guards and law enforcement. In Britain, the country’s police chiefs’ association is attempting to educate officers about the rights of photographers. So far, nothing like that has happened in the U.S., but it should. Trying to block photography in public places is not only heavy-handed and wrong but, thanks to technology, basically useless. With the proliferation of cameras in just about every device we carry, digital photography has become too ubiquitous to stop. Let’s have a truce in the war on photography and set our sights on the real bad guys. Who, it seems, don’t carry cameras anyway.

What is a “fusion center”?

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

Wendy McElroy thinks you should know how much domestic surveillance has increased in recent years:

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported on July 25 that “there are 72 fusion centers around the nation, analyzing and disseminating data and information of all kinds. That is one for every state and others for large urban cities.”

What is a fusion center?

The answer depends on your perspective. If you work for the Department of Homeland Security, it is a federal, state, local, or regional data-coordination units, designed to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism and anti-crime data in order to make America safer. If you are privacy or civil-rights advocate, it is part of a powerful new domestic surveillance infrastructure that combines data from both the public and private sectors to track innocent people and so makes Americans less safe from their own government. In that respect, the fusion center is reminiscent of the East German stasi, which used tens of thousands of state police and hundreds of thousands of informers to monitor an estimated one-third of the population.

The history of fusion centers provides insight into which answer is correct.

July 23, 2010

Define, or be defined

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 22:28

Jesse Walker looks at efforts to take the notion of “capitalism” and wrap it up in the more user-friendly term “free enterprise”:

[T]here’s an effort afoot to rebrand “capitalism” as “free enterprise.” On the face of it, I like the idea. Capital is going to be a central part of any modern economic system, whether or not there’s a lot of government intervention. By contrast, the phrase “free enterprise” implies economic liberty.

Unfortunately, MSNBC identifies the chief force behind the idea as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group whose commitment to economic liberty is so strong that it came out for TARP, the Detroit bailout, and the 2009 stimulus. If the Chamber were more honest about its outlook, it would reject “free enterprise” for a more frank label, like “corporate welfare.” But I suspect that wouldn’t be good branding.

In the same way we had to give up the historical meaning of the word “liberal” to folks who used it to imply almost the opposite, we should probably abandon the word “capitalism”. For a start, the word was popularized by that great pamphlet writer Karl Marx, and it has a pejorative connotation to most people who hear it used. “Capitalists” are folks in top hats who ride in chauffeured limousines and have no sympathy or respect for “the working man”. Try subbing in “Plutocracy” or “Rich F*cking Bastards” and you’ll get close to the popular image of the current term.

In any argument where you try using terms that have been appropriated by your opponents, you’re already ceding the high ground. “Capitalism” is a word that comes pre-loaded with all the negativity your opponents delight in — don’t play their game by their rules!

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