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Declan McCullagh | 4 May 2007 00:14
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Real ID regulations: Five days left to tell Homeland Security to pull the plug [priv]


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 5 days left to tell DHS to STOP REAL ID
Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 13:40:41 -0400
From: Guilherme Roschke <roschke <at> epic.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan <at> well.com>

Declan,

For politech:

A broad coalition of organizations across the United States is urging
the public to submit comments rejecting the illegal national
identification system created under the Department of Homeland
Security's REAL ID program:

http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/

The website has links to portals for web submissions, as well as how to
fax your comments. Also included are sample comments such as:

"The plan will create a massive national identification system without
adequate privacy and security safeguards. It will also make it more
difficult for people to get driver's licenses. And it will make it too
easy for identity thieves, stalkers, and corrupt government officials to
get access to such personal information as a home address, age, and
Social Security number."

We urge your readers to submit their comments, and to tell their friends
and allies to do so as well. Comments are due May 8th at 5pm.
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Declan McCullagh | 5 May 2007 05:23
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Dispatches from 2007 Computers Freedom and Privacy conference in Montreal [priv]

So I've been in Montreal this week for the 2007 Computers Freedom and 
Privacy conference. Some of the articles:

Should Amazon.com be able to charge you more than someone else?
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9715959-7.html

After seven years, government data-regulation committee recommends new 
federal bureaucracy
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9716077-7.html

Canada may stop using U.S. passenger profiling lists
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9715942-7.html

Bush wants to derail wiretapping lawsuit against AT&T
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9715930-7.html

No Facebook, Youtube for Canadian government workers
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9715957-7.html

Florida ditches problematic touch-screen voting, and now what?
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9715960-7.html

Oh, and Simson Garfinkel and another CFPer and I got lost thanks to a GPS:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/garfinkel/17599/

-Declan
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Declan McCullagh | 24 May 2007 11:07
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Net tax fight resumes in Congress; senator warns of e-mail tax [econ]

Here's Sen. Enzi's bill advancing Net sales taxes:
http://politechbot.com/docs/enzi.sales.tax.bill.052407.pdf

Three bills dealing with Net access taxes:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.00156:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.01077:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00743:

And a podcast I and my colleague did with former House Majority Leader 
Dick Armey on this topic:
http://news.com.com/2324-12835_3-6185539.html

And the e-mail tax is back! No, it's not bill 602P. See below.

-Declan

---

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6186193.html

Net taxes could arrive by this fall
Wed May 23 23:01:07 PDT 2007

The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections 
could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove 
successful.

State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress 
for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to 
impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly
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Declan McCullagh | 24 May 2007 11:13
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Alleged psychic Uri Geller sues, is sued over YouTube video clip [ip]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against "psychic" 
Uri Geller after Geller filed a DMCA YouTube takedown notice over a 
video clip that lasted a few seconds:
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9717464-7.html

But there's a second lawsuit afoot. Geller also sued a skeptic over the 
same video, claiming copyright infringement:
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9717780-7.html

I've placed the complaint here:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/uri.geller.copyright.lawsuit.050907.pdf

And the video clip is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo

Here's what the Skeptic's Dictionary says about this "psychic":
http://skepdic.com/geller.html

-Declan
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Declan McCullagh | 24 May 2007 20:41
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Does the ACLU still believe in free speech? Maybe not any more [fs]

Wendy Kaminer, who co-authors thefreeforall.net with longtime Politech 
subscriber Harvey Silverglate, has a provocative and well-argued op-ed 
in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. Wendy asks whether the ACLU still 
broadly supports free speech, and answers the question in the negative:
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010111

Wendy points out that the ACLU has been silent on a key free speech case 
involving anti-homosexual statements that set an important (and awful) 
precedent before the 9th Circuit and was AWOL on the Muhammad "hate 
speech" cartoons. The ACLU has supported legislative restrictions on 
speech of pro-life groups offering abortion counseling. The New York 
Civil Liberties Union failed to criticize a New York City Council 
resolution condemning use of the "n-word." And so on.[1]

It's true that ACLU litigators have done terrific work on free speech 
cases before, and will continue to do so. It has represented me as a 
plaintiff in the 1996 CDA case, for which I will always be grateful, and 
has devoted countless resources to COPA as well. The organization boasts 
the most principled and ardent First Amendment lobbyists in Washington, 
who are willing to take controversial stands on things like outlawing 
morphed child porn (a stand later vindicated by the Supreme Court).

But those attorneys and lobbyists ultimately report to a national board 
that seems to be growing more politically correct by the day. (Wendy was 
a dissident board member; I'm not sure if she's still on the board.)

This is not exactly a new phenomenon. Liberals and progressives have 
long been split between their totalitarian-minded leftist wing that 
loves to enforce political correctness through "hate speech" laws and 
campus speech codes -- and those who recognize the social and political
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