Police State

If you want to chat with somebody securely, the DEA says they can't break Apple's chat encryption. This should be a great selling point, but it's really a warning to Apple that the government plans to demand a back door.

"When Apple's iMessage was announced in mid-2011, Cupertino said it would use "secure end-to-end encryption." It quickly became the most popular encrypted chat program in history: Apple CEO Tim Cook said last fall that 300 billion messages have been sent so far, which are transmitted through the Internet rather than as more costly SMS messages carried by wireless providers.
A spokeswoman for the DEA declined to comment on iMessage and encryption. Apple also declined to comment.
The DEA's "Intelligence Note" says that iMessage came to the attention of the agency's San Jose, Calif., office as agents were drafting a request for a court order to perform real-time electronic surveillance under Title III of the Federal Wiretap Act. They discovered that records of text messages already obtained from Verizon Wireless were incomplete because the target of the investigation used iMessage: "It became apparent that not all text messages were being captured."
This echoes what other law enforcement agencies have been telling politicians on Capitol Hill for years. Last May, CNET reported that the FBI has quietly asked Web companies not to oppose a law that would levy new wiretap requirements on social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail. During an appearance two weeks later at a Senate hearing, the FBI's Mueller confirmed that the bureau is pushing for "some form of legislation."
Andrew Weissmann, the FBI's general counsel, said last month at an American Bar Association event that enacting a new law to amend a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is a "top priority" this year. CALEA requires telecommunications providers to build in backdoors for easier surveillance, but does not apply to Internet companies, which are required to provide technical assistance instead." 

That was easy to predict. This is ridiculous. People have a right to talk in code if they want.

Isn't it funny how the most aggressive supporters of government control of our lives claim to be pro-choice?

The government is using health care as an excuse to imprison people and steal their guns and money.

"On February 5, Schmecker’s hospital primary care doctor called and heard a message on Schmecker’s answer machine that “sounded peculiar,” prompting him to contact the local police and urge them to visit Schmecker to perform a “wellness check”.

“The police came to my home, and, without any justification whatsoever, hauled me away for a psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. I submitted to their forceful insistence under duress and fear of arrest or worse. I wasn’t arrested, no crime was committed nor any threats were made to myself or others,” Schmecker told Survive and Thrive’s George Hemminger.

“They confiscated my guns and pistol permit. I was released two days later from the evaluation on my on recognizance. I have since attempted to use the courts and attorneys to fight the revocation of my pistol permit. Then on top of everything else, the bills from the short stay at the hospital and EMS bills that they billed me, along with what I had to pay the attorney adds up to a large amount of money,” he adds."

"The FBI has repeatedly characterized returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan as a major domestic terrorist threat. In addition, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said she stood by an April 2009 DHS intelligence assessment that listed returning vets as likely domestic terrorists."

You can't make this stuff up.

How Obama has expanded the police state.

US spy admits the government spies on Americans, but only Americans who politically oppose it.

The real lesson of 1984.

"But there is one aspect of 1984 that most commentators fail to mention: in the end, Big Brother wins.
It's not even a close thing: at no point in Orwell's book does Big Brother break even a little sweat as it goes about crushing Winston Smith and all other would-be malcontents.
Now, it may be that Orwell, seriously afflicted with tuberculosis at the time of writing his darkest book, couldn't muster the creativity to concoct a deus ex machina to tip Big Brother over. But in my opinion, he simply came to the conclusion that once a certain threshold of power has been attained by government, there's no way to unseat it. Minor examples for that contention are found in abundance and include, I would propose, the longevity of Robert Mugabe's reign and North Korea's Kim Il Sucks dynasty.
For me, then, the real message of 1984 is that once governments are allowed to get too firm a grip on the reins of power – including the judicial, the constabulary, the military, the media – they are not just imminently corruptible but super-hardened to any real change."

But government can't win once it can't fund itself. It requires production to prey upon. Orwell didn't deal with that aspect.