Welcome back to the United States. Give me your laptop and your passwords.

Glenn Greenwald has written about the federal government's common practice of seizing laptops and smartphones of American citizens who are re-entering the United States and reviewing their private data. Amazingly, our government is seizing this personal data without probable cause and even without reasonable suspicion:

When you really think about it, it's simply inconceivable that the U.S. Government gets away with doing this. Seizing someone's laptop, digging through it, recording it all, storing the data somewhere, and then distributing it to various agencies is about the most invasive, privacy-destroying measure imaginable. A laptop and its equivalents reveal whom you talk to, what you say, what you read, what you write, what you view, what you think, and virtually everything else about your life. It can -- and often does -- contain not only the most private and intimate information about you, but also information which the government is legally barred from accessing (attorney/client or clergy/penitent communications, private medical and psychiatric information and the like). But these border seizures result in all of that being limitlessly invaded. This is infinitely more invasive than the TSA patdowns that caused so much controversy just two months ago.
But how often are these e-strip searches occurring?
[T]his is happening to far more than people associated with WikiLeaks. As a result of writing about this, I've spoken with several writers, filmmakers, and activists who are critics of the government and who have been subjected to similar seizures -- some every time they re-enter the country.
But this is the tip of the iceberg:
A FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people -- roughly half of whom are American citizens -- were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant.
I highly recommend reading Greenwald's detailed article for the reaction to this practice by a smattering of members of Congress and by a few court decisions. The sad bottom line is that there is no political momentum to condemn and bar this practice, even in the context of ubiquitous rhetoric regarding the need to limit the power of the federal government.

Continue ReadingWelcome back to the United States. Give me your laptop and your passwords.

I love Sara Tavares

I'll try to get myself under control. But you see, I've been sitting at my desk for 15 hours today, creating an extremely complicated legal document that is finally finished. For the last 2 hours of this almost-torture, I have been listening to an album called Xinti by Sara Tavars. Gad, such intense, gorgeous music! (See, I even used an exclamation point). I've never met Sara, but . . . her voice . . . her fantastic song-writing and that excellent guitar playing . . . This is music that removes you from wherever you are and puts you in a place where everything is OK. I've never met Sara, but I love her. She's got me wrapped around her finger. This is pathetic, in a good way. When visitors come over to the house when Xinti's playing, they all demand to know who is making that incredible music. Sara is. And it's really daunting to try to describe exactly what kind of music she creates. Here's the description of her work from Amazon:

Brimming with Cape Verdean guitar licks, Angolese rhythms and warm Portuguese vocals, Sara never sounded more intense. This is a startling collection, packed with surprises that displays how progressively richer and more expansive Sara Tavares' vocal repetoire has become since her previous album "Balance". Her songs are lyrcial, sensual and more textured. They are intimate but also wrapped in irresistibly funky rhythms drawn from the Cape Verdean / African / Brazilian / Caribbean diaspora.

Have you ever listened to music of that genre? Maybe it's time you tried. Or buy Sara's album as a gift for someone you love, and they will love you back. It's unfair, because Sara did all of the work to make that music, and all you had to do was buy it. Here's a cut called "Sumanai" from Xinti (and you'll find quite a few of her other tunes on Youtube):

Continue ReadingI love Sara Tavares

The cigarette industry is even more evil than we thought

According to Scientific American, there are more dangers to smoking cigarettes than tar and nicotine. There's also polonium:

[P]eople worldwide smoke almost six trillion cigarettes a year, and each one delivers a small amount of polonium 210 to the lungs. Puff by puff, the poison builds up to the equivalent radiation dosage of 300 chest x-rays a year for a person who smokes one and a half packs a day.  Although polonium may not be the primary carcinogen in cigarette smoke, it may nonetheless cause thousands of deaths a year in the U.S. alone. And what sets polonium apart is that these deaths could be avoided with simple measures.
The print edition of this article reveals that most of the polonium could be removed from cigarettes by removing it from the fertilizer and by washing the tobacco leaves with a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide. What follows is an old sad story: the tobacco industry has long refused to incorporate these changes to reduce the polonium. The good news is that the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, passed in June 2009, requires the tobacco industry to address this problem, which it has ignored for more than four decades. Now let's be conservative with the numbers. Let's assume that only 2,500 people needlessly died each year from polonium poisoning for the past 40 years. That's 100,000 people who have been sent to early deaths by tobacco executives. That's the moral equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on Green Bay, Wisconsin. Yet no tobacco executives have ever been prosecuted, much less thrown in prison for this hideous conduct.

Continue ReadingThe cigarette industry is even more evil than we thought

Why do we make music?

Lots of cognitive scientists are studying why humans like, make and listen to music. Carl Zimmer discusses some of the recent research in the Dec 2010 edition of Discover Magazine. One of the scientists studying music is Robin Dunbar, and Zimmer describes Dunbar's ongoing work (which extends his earlier work on verbal grooming):

Dunbar has spent much of his career studying bands of primates. One of the most important things they do to keep the peace is groom one another. Grooming triggers the primate brain’s hypothalamus to release endorphins, neurotransmitters that ease pain and promote a feeling of well-being. Our early ancestors may have engaged in similar behavior. As humans evolved, though, they started congregating in larger groups. By the time the average group size hit about 150, grooming was no longer practical. Music evolved, Dunbar proposes, because it could do what grooming could no longer do. Large gatherings of people could sing and dance together, strengthening their bonds. In a few studies, researchers have found that listening to music can raise the level of endorphins in the bloodstream, just as grooming can.

Continue ReadingWhy do we make music?

Remember states’ rights? Sit back and watch the power of money

Mix Lux sees what's coming. Will it be another bailout for the banks in the form of a federal invasion of states rights? Will it be a federal law that says that banks don't need to obey state law? It could be ugly, and it might involve the transfer of massive amounts of money to banks that caused the current foreclosure problem. Lux cites to the writings of someone named "Numerian":

With increasing desperation, banks along with their enablers in Washington are going to try to jerry-rig a way out of this problem. Unfortunately for the banks, ex post facto laws are strictly forbidden by the Constitution, which is now being treated with new-found reverence by the Congress. It may be impossible to construct a law that solves problems like this that already exist. Perhaps the banks will get lucky, and some courts will begin to find in their favor, though that is certainly not the trend at the moment. Maybe the US Supreme Court will accept the banks’ argument that the securitization process in itself established a valid foreclosure claim even though mortgages were not properly assigned as required by state laws. This, however, would require the Supreme Court to make up a legal doctrine out of the blue (as the banks have done), thereby overturning all state laws and court rulings going back well over 100 years. Only a Supreme Court bought and paid for by bank lobbyists, and willing to prostitute itself publicly to its paymasters, would issue such a ruling. This means that the likely progression of events – the path we are now on - will lead to a near complete collapse of the housing market, because the big banks and the two government enterprises responsible for supporting the housing market will be fatally crippled wards of the state. The US government itself, including the Federal Reserve, will be equally crippled. Try as you might, you will find no words in the Bible – no phrases applicable to The Flood or to the destruction of whole cities at the hands of a vengeful God – that appropriately capture the financial gravity of this situation. But if we are forced to come up with some metaphor, Financial Armageddon will have to do.

Continue ReadingRemember states’ rights? Sit back and watch the power of money