Quotulatiousness

October 16, 2010

“Officer Bubbles” sues YouTube for defamation

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:15

The Globe and Mail reports that police constable Adam Josephs has launched a suit against YouTube in an attempt to force them to divulge the identities of posters and commenters:

A Toronto police officer whose stiff upper lip made him an inadvertent YouTube sensation and a symbol of police heavy-handedness at the G20 protests has launched a $1.2-million defamation lawsuit against the website.

Constable Adam Josephs was nicknamed “Officer Bubbles” after a video surfaced of him online admonishing a young protester during the summit for blowing bubbles.

[. . .]

The original video shows Constable Josephs and a number of other officers holding a police line near Queen Street West in front of a crowd of protesters, when a young woman begins blowing bubbles in front of them.

“If the bubble touches me, you’re going to be arrested for assault,” he tells her sternly. When she questions him about the warning, he continues to warn her.

“You want to bait the police. You get that on me or that other officer and it gets in her eyes, it’s a detergent. You’ll be going into custody.”

The video of “Officer Bubbles” intimidating the dangerous bubble-blower:

Update, 18 October: By way of the Twitter feed of Colby Cosh, here’s the link to the actual document.

October 7, 2010

Isn’t this a barbaric practice for a free society?

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:25

I’m generally fine with our American neighbours, our societies are similar in so many respects, but this whole “Pledge of Allegiance” thing is something that I just don’t get. A country that theoretically prides itself on being the “home of the free” can still put you in jail for failing to recite it on command?

Danny Lampley (who clerked for me in law school), was jailed by Chancery Court Judge Littlejohn in Tupelo for failing to recite the pledge of allegiance in open court today. Danny was one of the local lawyers who represented the plaintiff in the Pontotoc school prayer case years ago, working with the ACLU and People for the American Way.

I’m informed that Danny rose and was respectful, but did not recite the pledge.

Is this just Judge Littlejohn being a prick, or does this sort of thing happen regularly? What penalty would he get for not singing the national anthem?

H/T to Radley Balko for the link.

October 1, 2010

QotD: Principles versus positions

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:56

As I was explaining to an attractive young woman the other day, most of my views — my basic political commitments — have not changed in twenty years: I support freedom of expression, equality of opportunity, equal rights for women, etc. and so forth.

Twenty years ago my views were called left wing and these days my views are called fascist.

Nicholas Packwood, “True Colours”, Ghost of a Flea, 2010-10-01

September 13, 2010

QotD: An alternate history we might have suffered

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:19

Thought experiment: imagine an Internet in which email and web addresses were centrally issued by government agencies, with heavy procedural requirements and no mobility — even, at a plausible extreme, political patronage footballs. What kind of society do you suppose eventually issues from that?

I was there in 1983 when a tiny group called the IETF prevented this from happening. I had a personal hand in preventing it and yes, I knew what the stakes were. Even then. So did everyone else in the room.

Thought experiment: imagine a future in which everybody takes for granted that all software outside a few toy projects in academia will be closed source controlled by managerial elites, computers are unhackable sealed boxes, communications protocols are opaque and locked down, and any use of computer-assisted technology requires layers of permissions that (in effect) mean digital information flow is utterly controlled by those with political and legal master keys. What kind of society do you suppose eventually issues from that?

Remember Trusted Computing and Palladium and crypto-export restrictions? RMS and Linus Torvalds and John Gilmore and I and a few score other hackers aborted that future before it was born, by using our leverage as engineers and mentors of engineers to change the ground of debate.

[. . .]

Did we bend the trajectory of society? Yes. Yes, I think we did. It wasn’t a given that we’d get a future in which any random person could have a website and a blog, you know. It wasn’t even given that we’d have an Internet that anyone could hook up to without permission. And I’m pretty sure that if the political class had understood the implications of what we were actually doing, they’d have insisted on more centralized control. ~For the public good and the children, don’t you know.~

So, yes, sometimes very tiny groups can change society in visibly large ways on a short timescale. I’ve been there when it was done; once or twice I’ve been the instrument of change myself.

Eric S. Raymond, “Engineering history”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-09-12

Call the president a “pr*ck”, get banned from the US for life

Filed under: Britain, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:09

Fox News picks up an item from The Sun:

A British teenager who sent an e-mail to the White House calling President Obama a “pr*ck” was banned from the U.S. for life, The Sun reported Monday.

The FBI asked local cops to tell college student Luke Angel, 17, that his drunken insult was “unacceptable.”

Angel claims he fired off a single e-mail criticizing the U.S. government after seeing a television program about the 9/11 attacks.

He said, “I don’t remember exactly what I wrote as I was drunk. But I think I called Barack Obama a pr*ck. It was silly — the sort of thing you do when you’re a teenager and have had a few.”

Angel, of Bedford, in central England, said it was “a bit extreme” for the FBI to act.

“The police came and took my picture and told me I was banned from America forever. I don’t really care but my parents aren’t very happy,” he said.

Note that I’ve been very careful not to spell out that “unacceptable” word in the headline. No need to risk that just for reporting the news, right?

September 7, 2010

The problem with knee-jerk reactions

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

Too often, they make you look like a jerk:

The CRTC has nixed the idea of “mak[ing] us all pay” for Fox TV News for now. But a CRTC under a compliant chairman could rubber-stamp whatever sort of licence Quebecor wanted, purely for political reasons, and the Fox News-ification of Canada would be unstoppable. Would that not be outrageous?

Yes. It would be outrageous. I’d sign a petition protesting it. But Ms. Atwood seems to accept this theory as fact. And it isn’t fact. Fact is that the petition is called “Stop ‘Fox News North’ ” and refers to its product as “hate media.” In a particularly astonishing Tweet on Thursday, Ms. Atwood revealed that she hadn’t even realized the Quebecor network wasn’t, in fact, to be called Fox News North! Had she done any due diligence whatsoever?

Anyone who supports Quebecor’s right to beam its product into our homes under reasonable commercial circumstances, as Ms. Atwood claims to, would do well not to sign that petition. It’s clearly opposed to the existence of Sun TV News, not just to the Prime Minister’s hypothetical meddling in the CRTC’s affairs. She’s far from the first celebrity to embarrass herself by blundering headlong and uninformed into politics (an urge that still baffles me). But she could at least own up to the gaffe. Surely it’s not a far-fetched idea that one’s signature beneath a block of text signifies approval of the foregoing.

Because I don’t watch much TV (except for NFL games), I must have missed the mass takeover of American TV by hate mongers. Yet another advantage of avoiding TV watching, I guess.

September 1, 2010

QotD: Tolerance Does Not Require Approval

Filed under: Liberty, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

Why does the First Amendment enshrine both speech and religion as things the state shall not legislate against or establish an approved version thereof? To formalize “tolerance” without requiring “approval.”

In this wise, it is possible to form a society of individuals with vastly different ideas and religions in which the liberty of all is respected by all. In essence we agree that I tolerate your worship of a moon god and you tolerate my worship of a tree. It’s “live and let live” at the most basic level. If, on the other hand, you decide that I have to make continuous noises of “approval” of the moon god in order for you to grant me the right to worship the tree god in peace, we are headed towards an argument that ends in guns.

At its most basic the American tradition is that I don’t require approval of my beliefs from you and you don’t insist on my approval of your beliefs. Regardless of what we may do, we tacitly agree not to do things which exacerbate a state of mutual disrespect. We mutually agree not to get in each others faces about these issues with acts like, oh I don’t know, building a temple to the moon god so that it casts a shadow across my cemetery. Doing so starts a process of disrespect that also tends, if history is any guide, to end in guns and fire.

“Toleration does not require approval.” It really is the simplest of social compacts and like all great and simple ideas bringing in nuance and qualifiers doesn’t strengthen our common bonds as society but weakens it. This is well-known to those that seek to create a climate of continual upheaval in the mistaken belief that, in the end, the fire will not consume them. Civil war consumes all.

Gerard Vanderleun, “Tolerance Does Not Require Approval”, American Digest, 2010-08-27

August 7, 2010

Pat Condell: Freedom is my religion

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

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.

July 9, 2010

Poll numbers understate unhappiness with police over G20

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 18:11

Publius makes a very good point here:

The Greater Toronto Area holds a population of about 5.6 million, stretching from Burlington in the west to Oshawa in the East. The City of Toronto comprises less than half the total population, and less than one-tenth of the total land area. The summit, protests and general mayhem occurred in the downtown core, itself a small area of the City of Toronto. In the lands north of Bloor, west of Bathurst and East of the Don River, the summit meant traffic delays, not riot cops.

Travelling on the 400 series highways that weekend entailed some delays — much of the Gardiner Expressway was closed — and the most notable police presence was at highway interchanges and on / off ramps. Even for those who live in the City of Toronto itself, the vast majority saw the violence of the summit weekend on television. A large number of Torontonians had simply evacuated the City altogether, either to the suburbs to stay with relatives, or to cottage country. As a result, the images fixed in most Torontonians minds are of police cruisers burning — played again and again — and not of officers dragging middle aged men with prosthetic legs across city streets. As the stories of that weekend seep out, expect those poll numbers to change.

I was one of those who chose not to hang around in the city for the entire week leading up to the summit: I didn’t see the point in putting up with the delay and hassle. I still think it was a remarkably stupid idea to hold the G20 meetings in downtown Toronto, and that the police were handed a duff hand to play. But even given that, the police played their hand very badly.

There may or may not be a serious inquiry into the affair, but the police lost a lot of support between Friday night and Saturday night: letting the geeky nihilists get away with dramatic street theatre on national TV, then turning around and arresting innocent bystanders. It took remarkable effort to squander public support, but the police or the politicians directing the police managed to do it. Bureaucratic bipolar disorder isn’t pretty.

June 19, 2010

Penn still waiting for that call from Hitler’s booking agent

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:57

An amusing interview in Vanity Fair points out that Penn Jillette would even go on Hitler’s talk show:

Is that why you don’t have a problem going on Glenn Beck’s show, because he doesn’t pretend to be objective?

Well, it’s complicated. Tommy Smothers, who’s one of my heroes, got really angry at me about it. We actually had this argument in public, on another show that’s going to be on Showtime this summer called The Green Room With Paul Provenza. Tommy attacked me for being on Glenn Beck, and he ended up saying, and I don’t think this part made it on the air, “If Hitler had a talk show, you’d probably do that too.”

And your retort?

I said yes, I would, and I would tell the truth.

Wow. O.K. then.

I’m not kidding.

Just don’t mention the part about telling the truth to Hitler’s talent bookers, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get a guest slot.

Oh, I won’t say a word. But you know what I mean, right? It does have an effect. I go on Glenn Beck as an atheist and talk about atheism. And I have people come up to me and say, “You know, until I saw you on Glenn Beck, speaking so passionately about atheism, I’d never considered that as a moral decision.” That’s incredibly powerful. These are people watching a hardcore Christian show and being exposed to an atheist point of view.

Your intentions seem genuine, but I can’t help myself, Penn. Every time I hear you’ve been on Glenn Beck, it makes me a little sick.

It makes me sick too! When people come up to me and say they love the show, I feel sick. Because I do disagree with a lot of what he says. But I also feel a little sick whenever people say they saw me on Keith Olbermann.

And yet you continue to do it. You know, there’s an easy way to stop making yourself sick.

But I think it’s important. I may be the only person who goes on Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and says the exact same shit. I am so much more socially liberal than Olbermann will ever be. You can’t believe how pro gay and pro freedom of speech I am. I’m way out beyond anyone on the Left. And as for fiscal conservatism and small government, I’m so much further to the right than Glenn Beck. Nobody is further left and further right than me. As I’m fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it’s straight ahead.

And I love Penn’s suggestion for the Obama re-election campaign in 2012 at the end of the article.

June 18, 2010

Another “daring” ad

Filed under: Britain, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

If it was really “daring”, it wouldn’t be Christianity being mocked for commercial purposes:

A controversy-courting Italian ice-cream maker is in hot water for running an ad featuring a heavily pregnant nun with the strapline “immaculately conceived”, after a stream of complaints to the advertising watchdog that it is offensive to Christians because it mocks the birth of Jesus.

The ad, which is featured in magazines The Lady and Grazia, features a pregnant nun enjoying a pot of Antonio Fedirici ice-cream.

The Advertising Standards Authority has launched an investigation to see if the campaign breaks the advertising code on the grounds of taste and decency. The ASA has received about 40 complaints from members of the public that it is offensive to Christians, especially Catholics, “because it mocks the virgin birth of Jesus”.

It’s not only safe to poke fun at the religious beliefs of Christians, it’s rather expected in certain quarters. Just as a thought experiment, what are the chances that someone would do something similar mocking any other religion?

Update: Of course, there’s mockery and then there’s mockery.

June 11, 2010

What could possibly go wrong?

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

The US Senate is considering a bill that would give the President an internet “kill switch”. Funny how the one area most open to the widest possible spectrum of opinion and belief might be shut down at will, leaving only the regular propaganda outlets uncontrolled:

Under PCNAA, the federal government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC’s emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to “conduct surveillance” of Americans unless it’s otherwise legally authorized.

Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said. “Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

For those of you who think this is a super-cool neat idea (because Obama wouldn’t ever abuse this new rule), just try the mental image of George Bush or Sarah Palin with this kind of power. Still seem like a good notion?

April 23, 2010

Senator McCain’s latest assault on “due process”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

Whenever I think badly of President Obama (which is a pretty regular event), I have to remind myself that his main opponent in the 2008 US presidential campaign would have been even worse on civil liberties:

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill that would allow the President to imprison an unlimited number of American citizens (as well as foreigners) indefinitely without trial. Known as The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, or S. 3081, the bill authorizes the President to deny a detainee a trial by jury simply by designating that person an “enemy belligerent.”

Even better, should someone manage to be released, the notion of “return to the battlefield” apparently includes exercising your freedom of speech:

[T]he U.S. military has officially classified many former Guantanamo detainees, such as England’s Tipton Three, as having “returned to the battlefield” for merely granting an interview for the movie The Road to Guantanamo. Another five innocent Uighur (Ethnic Turkish Muslims from China) detainees had been listed as having “returned to the battlefield” after their release because their lawyer had written an op-ed protesting their prolonged detention without trial after they had been mistakenly picked up by a greedy bounty hunter. Writing an opinion or speaking an opinion against the party in power in Washington can — and already has — made some people “enemy belligerents.”

So, thank goodness Senator McCain didn’t become president, even if it means putting up with Barack Obama for at least four years . . .

April 13, 2010

Why you should be worried about ACTA

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

H/T to BoingBoing.

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