Three short stories today: Glenn Greenwald (more), pager privacy (not), and criminalizing condoms (really).
ONE Star civil and human rights reporter and commentator Glenn Greenwald is moving from Salon to The Guardian's US edition. He will write daily for The Guardian and do one longer form piece weekly. His announcement gives great praise to Salon for backing him when powerful people wanted him silenced. Kudos to Salon for supporting Greenwald, and kudos to The Guardian for taking him on. More Greenwald, more better, in my view.
TWO Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica reports, and Boing Boing's Corry Doctorow picks up, another brick in the wall of the US surveilance society. A federal appeals judge in Washington state has ruled that pager, and mobile phone, email, postal mail, etc, users enjoy no privacy protection from police dirty tricks using their communications once they reach their destination device. Judge Penoyer says that we can't know in whose hands that pager resides, and thus have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" for our messages on it. If it resides in the hands of police, responses impersonating the intended recipient for purposes of entrapment don't need a warrant, probable cause, etc. (Legal beagles please correct me in comments if needed.)
THREE This one comes from the You Couldn't Make this Stuff Up department, as well as the War on Women and How Stupid Can You Be departments. Criminalize women carrying condoms? Yes, in multiple big US cities! In yet another example of US police state insanity multiple US cities have de facto criminalized the carrying of condoms, or too many condoms. Possession of condoms, or too many condoms, is being offered and accepted as evidence of involvement in prostitution in multiple US cities, including NYC and Washington, D.C. Human Rights Watch has issued a formal report on this man made human rights and public health disaster. Coverage appears in TruthDig, and The Guardian. (amy pohler voice) "REALLY? REALLY?" (/amy pohler voice)
Thu Jul 19, 2012 at 11:40 PM PT: adding tag