A true parable of legal violence

I know that a lot of people are put off or perplexed by my feelings on the state. I have no respect for soldiers, police, judges. I know people wonder why. Why would I hate "civil society". I have my reasons, and now I wish to share one of them. One of them that, I hope, shows that it is not "civil society" that I hate, for these elements are not part of it. It is violence and inequity that boils my blood. Violence like that which was met by someone I knew... a man named Taghi.

He moved here from a far off land. He was a good guy, in his mid 20s. He had a couple of businesses. He had many friends. A nice apartment. A nice car. He was a shrewd business man, but I never saw him treat anyone worst than most of us do from time to time. I liked the guy, and used to occasionally buy pot from him. It was only one of his businesses. It was one that he was good at.

Nobody really talks about Taghi anymore. He is just a memory, some guy who was around, and now isn't. I think of him occasionally. I wonder where he is now. Whenever I lay in bed and feel the warmth of my wife's body against mine, I think of him, and wonder how long it will be before he again will experience such simple joy.

Taghi, in all likelyhood, is not experiencing that joy, and wont for a long time. Instead Taghi will know cold beds, and burly male bunk mates. He will know weight lifting and cafeteria food. He will know stark walls, and heartless people in uniforms, to whom he is just a number. A guilty man, a perpetrator. Not many things choke me up, or bring tears to my eyes. The thought of what he endures at the hands of men, that is a tragedy that sometimes almost paralyzes me with grief.

If you made it this far, you may wonder what he did. You may wonder if I just made all this up. You can find what the DA has to say about the incident here: http://www.mass.gov/dasuffolk/docs/12.10.08B.html.

Did he sell drugs? Yes he did. He wasn't a violent person, he didn't pressure people into things, he was just a man. A man who was in a business of getting people what they want, and selling it to them. The report may be a surprise. "Oh he had 25 grand in a sack" but, any business has to have stock. He was no different than any business man except in the product that he stocked.

I ask you though, how does that justify putting a man in chains? How does that justify denying a man the simple right to sleep in a bed with his lover, and sit free under the sky outside? How can any of us hold our heads high knowing that the hard earned money that we make, we pay in taxes to support hurting this man?

Taghi was not a good friend of mine, but, he was a man that I knew. His story is a story of a life ruined by an abusive system, for which there is no excuse. I will not forgive the state for what its done to him, and I dearly hope, that these words can help you to hold it against them too. Could you imagine being torn from your life? Kept in a cage like an animal?

I wont say that nobody deserves that.... but he certainly doesn't... and I am thoroughly embarrassed to be associated with anyone who feels otherwise. As long as stories like his continue to be written, how do we call ourselves civilized?

I don't know what has happened to him. The news stories talk only of his arrest. They talk of how he was "a dealer". Thats that for them. They didn't know him, they don't care what happens to him. He isn't a man that feels and loves. He isn't a person torn from his life. Apparently, he was just a dealer.... not worthy of having his story known.

Why Obama is dead wrong on Computer Privacy

A recent article on Wired "Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned" lead me to think that if the "Leader of the Free World" has this one so wrong, then maybe a few other people do too. This one is just too important to let slip by.

The case, which President Obama would like to see revisited centers around the infamous case of Major League Baseball players and steroid use, and how information was obtained on some of these people. The reality is, the technical issue of this case is one that reaches into every one of our lives, in ways which we have little control over. From the decision:

"the warrant was limited to the records of the ten players as to whom the government had probable cause. When the warrant was executed, however, the government seized and promptly reviewed the drug testing records for hundreds of players in Major League Baseball (and a great many other people)."

Think about this. What servers does your email go through? Do you use yahoo? Gmail? All of these peoples drug tests (which is confidential information, many were told at the time that it was completely anonymous!) were viewed by the police, simply by accident of where they were stored. This would be like the police getting a search warrant to look at the emails of a known criminal, but instead, browsing through everyone elses email who uses gmail.

Are you sure that set of turntables that you bought off craigslist wasn't stolen? Without this ruling, if anyone at your ISP were to commit a crime, and have their email on the same server as you, then the police could legitimately consider your email "in plain sight" and feel free to make sure that you haven't been talking to anyone that they know about.

If this ruling is overturned, it will be a dark day for anyone who uses email, and doesn't run their own mail server. Without this ruling, the police may as well be CC'd on every email that you send and receive. Every steamy love note, every purchase, all of it. All because, it happened to be stored on a computer that also stored the information of some under investigation.

(Edit: This comment from The Volokh Article demonstrates a real example of why this is important. Apparently this sort of "Grab and Search" has already been abused in Civil matters by the Church of Scientology)

The Most Unpopular Position: Real Justice

Think for a moment: What images come to your mind when you hear the word "Justice"? Do see judges slamming their gavels down? Men going to jail to "pay for their crimes"? Do you think of free men being exonerated and set free? Each of these is justice, in its own way. There is another side to justice, a far less popular side. It is justice, sometimes, when the guilty walk free.

The Obama Administration has said that they will attempt to bring many of the people at Guantanamo Bay detention center to trials. This should be heralded as a victory for justice. A victory for the rule of law and the belief that it is patently unjust to dole out punishment without due process, they might be lowly criminals, but WE HAVE STANDARDS!

Also just, some will be set free. Freeing a man who you can't find grounds to give his day in court is always just and right.

The last group should give us pause. This is the group of people who cannot be brought to trial, but are determined "dangerous" and cannot be let free. This is a travesty of justice, which shows low moral character of our leadership, and a lack of faith in the very system which they are charged with leading.

What stops illegal searches? What stops police from entering your home and snooping? What protects you from torture when you are a suspect?

We have a concept in our legal system "Fruit from the Poisoned Tree". It is a check and balance against police power. Any evidence obtained through coercion, through torture, through illegal discovery, is not admissible in court. So if a police officer is tempted to beat you, tempted to threaten you or your family, he does so with full knowledge that HE is ruining the case against you, and HE is going to be the reason that you walk free.

This is a powerful check and balance, and one that is not just good: It is FUNDAMENTAL to justice. Without this concept, there may as well be no courts, and no laws.

In the end, it doesn't matter what our enemies do. It matters little if they live or die. They cannot hope to actually hurt us, except to make us compromise our ideals. When we torture them, they win. When we hold them without trial, they win. When we make exceptions to our laws because of them, they win. They win because of what WE do.

If we don't have enough faith in our own system to send them to trial, if we don't have enough faith in the system to reject torture, and reject ANY standard less than "beyond a reasonable doubt", then, they win.

Our country has itself in a precarious position, but one where the path is obvious. If we look at the tradition of our laws, if we look at WHY our legal system is setup the way that it is, then there is little doubt that justice, in this case, leaves us unsatisfied, and feeling a bit cheated and empty. That is because justice doesn't do one night stands. We are in a committed relationship with Lady Justice, and we cheated on her; and now she asks us to do right by her.

It is sad but, we did this to ourselves. THEY didn't make us water board them. They didn't make us hold people without trials. We did that all on our own. We deserve to send a message to ourselves: These actions will NOT be tolerated, even if it means releasing a little bit of scum back into the world. It is our fault. Its time for us to eat our crow, and vow that next time, we will do it without debasing ourselves.

Squeeky Wheel gets grease; Eats Crow

I would like to send out a huge thanks to Steve Jaques at the MA Turnpike Authority. I also want to suggest that anyone who has had the problems that I did, hit up their contact page. Steve is a great guy, and explains things in a very rational manner. It makes a lot more sense now.

They claim to have sent letters to me about my credit card information. I never saw these letters, had I seen them, I may have never started complaining, and might have avoided the whole process. So its either the US postal service, or one of my roomates was an idiot and put them in a spot where they got lost. Oh well.

The real surprise here, is I talked to two level headed people today. While I was on the phone with Steve, I told him that I had been on hold waiting to talk to someone at the RMV about getting my car registered again; because their website was broken. He said he would pass that on.

About 5 minutes after I got off the phone with him, I had called the RMV again and was again on hold. Then I got a call from a nice woman at the RMV whose name I did not catch. She was extremely pleasant. Took the report of the broken website, and then... took my credit card information and offered to fax me a copy of my registration!

While I may not agree with some of the things they do, or the way that they go about it, some of them are good people, and I guess that its worth remembering that. I still want to see all of their departments spun off into non-profit orgs, and to see them move completely to non-extortion based revenue streams, but... thats a fight for another day and to be taken to people far above their pay grade.

Civil Disobidience: A Duty to do it right

Last week, I found myself issuing forth the following tweet:

#Freedom fighters resist #occupation in.... #Pittsburgh ?!?( http://bit.ly/4LIlQ )

It turned my stomach to see the oppression of protesters by police. The very idea that a person would be restricted to specific "zones" just to speak their mind is an offense against the very concepts fundamental to our republic. It is a violation of the right of people to peacefully assemble. There is just no excuse for this behavior by any state that wants to count itself in the United States Federal Union, it is shameful.

I am not interested in convincing the police, or mayors, or governors of this fact. While it would be great, I don't believe any one of them will listen. I want now to address my brethren, the protesters. When I saw the police come in to force people away, when I saw the tactics they used, I was disgusted and uplifted. Disgusted by what they planned to do, uplifted by knowing that the first to move to violence is the weakest opponent in public opinion.

When I saw protesters roll dumpsters towards the police line, I laughed, but then was made sad by the knowledge that this was going to undermine the whole cause.

Allow me to bring up an important concept, something that I have tried to take to heart, as hard as it can be. Henry Davit Thoreau said it best:

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. -- Henry Davit Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

The use of violence to suppress speech is a most enormous wrong. It is not a mans duty to right it, merely to not help it. Fighting back with violence does not help the cause, a fact born out in public opinion over and over. In truth, those who oppose the police with violence do nothing but bolster the enemies cause.

I am no pacifist. If I thought that freedom could come from mowing down that line of police and bringing massacre to every single one of them, I would wholeheartedly suggest it. There is no duty to toil under the whip of oppression either. The simple fact is, the media and those in power have deep business interest in each others continued existence. We MUST NOT hand them PR victories, because Hearts and Minds are the only battle fields that matter.

So, rather than throwing stones, rolling dumpsters, and the like, I would like to suggest a few older tactics that could work to win much bigger PR victories.

First, read, and reread the following statement on Civil Disobedience, written by one of the few real winners of a struggle, Mahatma Gandhi:

1. A civil resister (or satyagrahi) will express no anger.


2. One will sometimes suffer the anger of the opponent.


3. In doing so, one will put up with assaults from the opponent, never retaliate; but one will not submit, out of fear of punishment or the like, to any order given in anger.


4. When any person in authority seeks to arrest a civil resister, he will voluntarily submit to the arrest, and he will not resist the attachment or removal of his own property, if any, when it is sought to be confiscated by authorities.


5. If a civil resister has any property in his possession as a trustee, he will refuse to surrender it, even though defending it he might lose his life. He will, however, never retaliate.


6. Retaliation includes swearing and cursing.


7. Therefore a civil resister will never insult his opponent, and therefore also not take part in many of the newly coined cries which are contrary to the spirit of ahimsa.


8. A civil resister may not salute the Union Flag, but he will not insult it or officials, English or Indian.


9. In the course of the struggle if anyone insults an official or commits an assault upon him, a civil resister will protect such official or officials from the insult or attack even at the risk of his life.

Think backwards from the youtube video. Think backwards from the news reel. Do you want to be seen amongst the rowdy crowd, attacking the police line? Or do you want them to show a video of peaceful people, walking slowly with palms open and visible, politely asking for liberty?

I think the biggest victory ever would be to show hundreds of protesters, polite, and unarmed, walking dutifully into the police line and being beat down, one after another, offering no resistance. Tear gas wont kill you. The military practice with masks off all the time. It sucks, but if you can get up and continue walking, if you can make it to the baton that smashes your nose... you win.

Give them NO footage of rocks being thrown. No footage of ANY violence but "The violence inherent in the system". You are not there to beat them, you are there to lose. To be beaten. To show the face of the beast.

That is not to say that you can't be assertive. I think protesters should practice the soetto stomp. Sadly I can no longer find a description of it online (where I learned about it). So I will describe it here.

The move takes practice. It is basically a human chain mail, a form of modified (peaceful) phalanx. Each person links arms to the person to his right and his left, and then grabs the belt of the person to his front. Like this a wide and deep chain can be formed. Once the block begins to move, not even killing the people in the front and sides with machine gun fire will stop it.

I was thinking that, with a little more practice, the front rows could partially disengage on contact with the police line, forming a wedge to break their line (which the broken off people would be wedged aside with the line and able to fall back to the back of the formation). This would be peaceful, it would be almost unstoppable. (hint: To get moving a cadence could be helpful)

That is all I have. I hope that some of you will take this to heart and the next G20 conference can be overshadowed by the stories of police abuse, and not, the story of rowdy protesters.

Mass Pike Fast Lane Violation Scam

Edit: This issue is resolved, and while I may not agree in totality with the reasons, I do appreciate the response and have written a blog post on a more positive experience: (squeeky wheel gets grease eats crow)

Original Post:
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority was kind enough to send me a couple of notices to inform me of what a disgusting scam they have been able to use our tax dollars to set up. I put it right up there in terms of honesty with those telemarketers who try to sell people auto warranties on ten year old cars. Don't take my word for it, here is some text taken directly from a violation notice. (edit: more on FAST LANE Fee Scams)

If you are a FAST LANE or E-ZPass customer, you are encouraged to fill out the Appeal Form that was included with the Toll Violation Notice. If your appeal is accepted the $50.00 violation fine will be waived and you will be required to pay only the missed toll amount and a $5.00 administrative fee.

This seems pretty straightforward, if you ignore several facts:

1. I had my transponder in the car and it was registered.
2. My credit card on the account had expired, the ONLY needed remedy was for them to notify me of the issue so that I could update the card information.
3. They sent a picture of my license plate, and used the Registry Of Motor Vehicles database to look up my registration information.

Of course, the appeal form asks for a FAST LANE account statement. The same statements that they have not sent me in a few years now. So I set it aside and said "I will have to deal with that later.". Later came when, a month later, the two $50 violations became two $90 violations. A competent company, that wasn't trying to fleece anyone would have made this a single $5 fee. The Mass Turnpike Authority wants $180.

So I appealed the violation. I was informed that I would need to FAX in my appeal, and then call back in two days, because they don't notify people of their appeal results. They ask you to write an appeal and fax them, and just like they can't be bothered to lookup your account information, they can't be bothered to tell you the result of your appeal.

When I called, I was informed that my fine was reduced from $180 to $60. No mention was made of the fact that this $60 should have been a $5 administrative fee. AT this point I paid, since my car needs to be re-registered, and they sent a notice to the RMV that I owe them money.

So what we have here is a state run agency, that has setup a system designed to cause overcharges, with an annoying process that only removes a portion of the charges... EVEN WHEN IT IS CLEARLY THEIR OWN SYSTEM THAT CAUSED THE CHARGES.

This is a scam pure and simple. It is blatant, and I cannot recommend that anyone in the state of MA get a FAST LANE pass or use their E-ZPass within the state. If you have an E-ZPass, put it in a metal box when you enter MA. Do NOT risk using the FAST LANE system, it just isn't worth it.

That is, unless you like the idea of having to write an appeal just to be overcharged $55 for their mistake. In that case, enjoy!

Of course, if you don't like what a scam the MA FAST LANE system is, then you COULD complain to these people.

When Decency Trumps Liberty, We All Lose

NPR's Andy Carvin sent out the following retweet today:

Two words for ya: basiji bloggers RT @evgenymorozov: on how authoritarian regimes use crowdsourcing to muzzle free speech http://is.gd/2q7Cm

This is really just the latest incarnation of what we have seen here in the US. A minority of people, who are willing to organize around their personal offense at someone else's statement are able to magnify their voices to drown out the majority of people who have better things to do. We saw it with FCC complaint campaigns like this one.

It may seem that a site like youtube seems pretty liberal with its "Community Guidelines" however, it still starts down the slippery slope of not allowing "pornography", or "bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making." and also "YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust."

The problem here is that, everyone will be offended by something. Youtube (and many other sites) implement "Flag Systems" that are all the rage. You let the community flag problems and have things taken down. So is it any surprize that armies of "the offended" will now spring up to make their voices heard above the rest?

How do we define pornography when the internet has people from all countries on it? Here in the US, its generally illegal for a woman to be topless in public; In France, being topless at the beach is simply a part of life normal for women from birth through old age; then there is Saudi Arabia, where women are covered from head to ankle.

It is plainly clear to me that there is only one solution here, only one real choice. Show nothing, or show everything. Get rid of any shadow of censorship and declare everything ok, or shut down the site completely, because everything will offend someone.

It was thirteen years ago when John Perry Barlow transmitted "A Cyberspace Independence Declaration". I think it is high time that the citizens of this space take heed and demand the independance that we need. Why should we continue to subject ourselves to the tyrrany of the whiners and the nannies?

These well meaning, if misguided, ninnies who seek to force others into silence, are worst than all the crimnals and miscreants combined. We should not kow-tow to them one iota.

I will let John Close it out:

...more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have
declared war on Cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling, and
powerful we can be in our own defense.