Nefaria.com

First, watch the following video:

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002008/

Just a point of order before I get too far into this; throughout this post, I’ll use the terms “warning banner”, “warning message”, “logon banner”, “network banner” and “privacy statement” interchangeably… they all refer to just about the same thing and serve the same purpose.

Now if you are to take Beck at his word, this is scary shit right? Wrong. First of all, don’t take beck at his word [ever], he’ll give you brain herpes. Here’s the deal, that disclaimer that he’s taking such a big issue with? Yeah, it’s a pretty standard warning message actually. Take the U.S. Army’s website for example (warning, you’ll have to confirm a security certificate exception); one of the “scary issues” that Beck has with the warning on the cars.gov website is that it’s too broad (never mind the fact that it has to be… we’ll get to that in a second). If you read the security warning on the Army’s site, it too is broad and so is their terms of service. Moreover, all this bullshit about “America, do not try this at home.” is just silly fucking nonsense, meant only to scare people who do not know any better. This security message that Beck is all up in arms about is what is known as a “warning banner”. Warning banners are common on just about all corporate and government computers that are accessible from the Internet (…and have been common for a looooong time). Even some private computers, such as someone who runs a web, e-mail, ftp, etc. server from their home for personal use will have warning banners. In addition to those, it’s also common to see similar, broadly worded messages at the bottom of some e-mails (pursuant to the “e-mail” policy of some organizations). Their purpose is to cast a wide legal net so that in the event that someone abuses the system in question, legal action can be taken. The basic purpose of any warning banner should be to make the following point: If you attempt to circumvent the security measures employed by this system, succeed in doing so, and/or abuse this system in any way, legal action will be taken against you. Not to belabor the point, but here’s what the DOJ has to say about warning banners:

Network banners are electronic messages that provide notice of legal rights to users of computer networks. From a legal standpoint, banners have four primary functions. First, banners may be used to generate consent to real-time monitoring under Title III. Second, banners may be used to generate consent to the retrieval of stored files and records pursuant to ECPA. Third, in the case of government networks, banners may eliminate any Fourth Amendment “reasonable expectation of privacy” that government employees or other users might otherwise retain in their use of the government’s network under O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709 (1987). Fourth, in the case of a non-government network, banners may establish a system administrator’s “common authority” to consent to a law enforcement search pursuant to United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974).

If my name were Glenn Beck, I’d be throwing a tantrum upon reading eliminate any Fourth Amendment “reasonable expectation of privacy” … and I wouldn’t read the rest before running to the camera with a story about how the Communist-terrorist Obama administration wants to eliminate our Fourth Amendment rights (never mind the fact that the referenced DOJ website was in existence well before Obama took office)… but I digress.

Warning banners, such as the one Beck is holding up as an example of “scary shit that the Obama administration is doing” shouldn’t frighten anyone except for those who plan on doing exactly what the warning message tells them not to do. Warning banners are passive security measures; they need to be broad in order to apply to any/all possible cases of abuse. They don’t actually make the computer/network/website/etc. more secure (with the exception of causing would-be “crackers” to think twice before trying anything). Their real power comes from the fact that they can be used in court to show that the defendant had been warned in advance and knew full and well they were doing something that they shouldn’t have been doing.

In regard to this particular warning banner, I went to the cars.gov website to see what I could find out about it… it turns out, that the only way you’ll ever see the message that Beck is ranting about is if you are a car dealer participating in the CARS program. Given the potential for fraud on behalf of unscrupulous car dealers, I’d say that the strong wording of the warning banner/privacy message (whichever you choose to call it) is entirely appropriate. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens looking for information about the CARS program only consent to have their IP address tracked (which is something that all webservers do by default anyway).

This is just another example of fearmongering on behalf of a fanatic who cannot reconcile his world-view with reality.

### Update! Here’s some more information about this from Daily Kos, enjoy.

I’m surprised that Faux “News” hasn’t given this much coverage at all. Here’s what Lou Dobbs had to say about it:

And here’s a copy of the treaty.

Now my two cents…

I’m always wary of any legislation that removes rights or places restrictions because in my opinion, once you start along the path of taking rights away from the populace, there’s really no limit to the number of rights that could be potentially taken away. The people making the rules seem to believe that the rules somehow do not apply to them, or, they view the rights that they’re crusading against with such contempt that they have convinced themselves that only “bad” people would complain about them being taken away. I hate to frame this in such simplistic terms, but this probably fits the mentality of the majority of people who would push a “prohibitionist” agenda. With respect to gun rights; I have a particular problem with people who crusade against gun ownership—in all it’s forms, while not realizing that it was private gun ownership on behalf of the colonists who fought for the freedom of this nation, that has given them the right to bitch about guns. These very same people also ignore the fact that private gun ownership is first and foremost a matter of self defense—not recreational activity. Highlighting this point is the following line in the text of the SIFTA treaty:

If they actually understood the reason the Second Amendment exists, then the words “self defense” or something to that effect, would appear in this paragraph. But they do not. Instead, we’re left with the ambiguous statement: “and other forms of lawful ownership and use recognized by the States Parties;”

The Second Amendment exists because our forefathers realized that as time goes on, the probability that the government would stop serving the people and serve only itself, approaches one. They also realized that should this ever happen, the people should have the right to rise up and replace the government with one that better suits them—which is exactly what just took place a few years before the Second Amendment was conceived. The prohibitionists also like to argue that such a rebellion would likely not be successful. This completely misses the point. During the Revolutionary War, the greatest military force at the time (the British) were defeated by a rag-tag force of under-gunned and outnumbered farmers. But the revolutionaries had one thing on their side: they were fed up with the oppression that they were experiencing at the hands of their current government, and they were willing to die fighting against it.

The prohibitionists always like to point out crime statistics as a reason for banning weapons. This is a flawed approach, because it’s obvious that if you are going to commit a crime then you don’t care much about the law. If alcohol prohibition and the war on drugs has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t outlaw something and expect it to just go away. You also can’t make the law-abiding population safe by taking away their ability to defend themselves… and aside from the impractical concerns involved with the police force protecting every single citizen; it’s not really the job of the police to defend you from criminals anyway.

Their definitions are all wrong too. For instance, “assault weapons” … what an ambiguous term! Damn near anything can be used as a weapon to assault someone with. Ignoring this, the anti-gun crowd has effectively defined “assault weapons” to include weapons that are only cosmetically similar to military style weapons. To me, this is just ignorant fear.

I’ll end this rant with a plea; if you feel the same way that I do, please contact your Representatives and/or Senators to express your opposition.

So last night I get this e-mail:

> > SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES
> >
> > It does not matter if you personally like or dislike Obama. You
> > need to sign this petition and flood his e-mail box with e-mails
> > that tell him that, even if the House passes this bill, he needs to
> > veto it. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone.
> > If the government gives benefits to 'illegal' aliens who have never
> > contributed, where does that leave those of us who have paid into
> > Social Security all our working lives?
> >
> > As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow 'illegal'
> > aliens access to Social Security benefits.
> > Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires
> > citizenship for eligibility to that social service.
> > Instructions are below. If you don't forward the petition and just
> > stop it, we will lose all these names.
> >
> > If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone
> > you know.
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> > To add your name, click on 'forward'. Address it to all of your
> > email correspondents, add your name to the list and end it on.
> >
> > When the petition hits 1,000, send it to comment@whitehouse.gov
> >
> > PETITION for President Obama:
> >
> > Dear Mr. President:
> > We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on
> > recently which would allow illegal aliens to access ur Social
> > Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives
> > require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the
> > United States .
> >
> > We further demand that there not be any amnesty give n to illegal
> > aliens, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal
> > immigrants

E-mail petitions always crack me the fuck up. Who the hell do they think they are petitioning to hm? Who gets the petition once all 1,000 “signatures” have been collected? I understand that to a lot of people, the internet is some big magical thing and these questions need not be asked, but to those of us who know how the damn thing works, how can this not be annoying as all hell? Maybe they’re smarter than I give them credit; maybe they are depending on the NSA to track this and forward it to the president as soon as the required amount of signatures have been collected… but I digress.

Apparently (and, as always) nobody checks their facts. A quick search on snopes.com gives us all the information that we need to know about this. Another thing that always fascinates me about these is their ability to change over time. For example, the original e-mail mentioned President Bush, rather than President Obama (which is funny, seeing as how I never got that one… I wonder why). I wrote a response, but not before harvesting ALL of the e-mail addresses from the message body, to, and cc fields (with the help of sed and grep of course) so I could send my [intentionally provocative] response to every last one of ‘em. I know that I’m fighting an uphill battle, but at least I’m fighting

My response:

So, does everyone believe everything that hits their inbox nowadays? 

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp

DISCLAIMER: I'm about to say some offensive s**t so if you are easily
offended, stop reading.

###

I mean it. If you read any further, don't reply to me all hurt expecting
an apology; your words will fall on deaf ears.

###

Last chance.

###

Ok, I get it... hating the president is cool now that we have a black
guy in office, fine, but seriously people... where the f**k was all this
outrage when Bush was raping our constitution, involving us in illegal,
unnecessary wars based on lies (Iraq), draining the economy whilst
giving enormous kickbacks to his friends (the very people who put his
dumb a$$ in office to being with), and spying on each and every one of
us under the guise of "national security", huh? where? Nowhere. Don't
try to act like you actually care now because it's painfully clear that
you're being disingenuous.  

If you forwarded this to your friends, family, whatever, without first
checking your facts then you're an idiot. If you SIGNED YOUR NAME to it
without ever even questioning it's authenticity, then you're a bigger
idiot. One might argue that it's people like you who are to blame for
our current situation---Yes, you. You who bent over and took it straight
up the cornhole because "9/11 changed everything" ... you who let your
government run wild directly afterwards while you sat by in silent
agreement (just as long as we were killing Muslims) ... and you, who
probably still do not have a single f**king clue about the damage to our
country that the past ~8 years has wrought. Every last one of you should
be terribly ashamed of yourselves.

Terrorists aren't destroying this country; blind obedience, complacency,
anti-intellectualism, and laziness are. Do you really think that... even
if the bill mentioned in this e-mail was real, that signing your name to
an e-mail and forwarding it to other people actually constitutes some
sort of political action? Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave.

I know that the majority will probably just delete this reply… sadly, they’re most likely the ones who really need to be reading it. Also, there were actually about ten lines above and below each ‘###’ but wordpress ate those. I know that this won’t make a difference though; hell, just a few minutes ago I got a reply (to my reply) stating: “i dont know. i just forward them. i did hear something about that recently on the news.” … two things, (1) No the hell you didn’t. (2) Thanks for proving my point.

Just another “conservative” displaying their utter disregard for fact:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/First-Case-of-Swine-Flu-in-by-E-Nelson-090429-628.html

This begs the question; even if the swine flu outbreak in the 1970’s did occur during Carter’s administration, so what? What exactly are you getting at Rep. Bachmann?

The use of cannabis for medicinal purposes has been a source for heated debates for quite some time now, but recently we’ve seen more states vote on legislation that would make it legal to use cannabis for medical afflictions such as migraines, insomnia, chronic pain, and illnesses that would otherwise be treated by common drugs like anti-depressants, sedatives, and/or opiates. The newest state to join this group is Arizona. Next year’s general election may very well contain an initiative for the legalization of cannabis as a treatment for the sick. This is a very touchy issue, as opponents of the measure tend to believe that cannabis is just another dangerous drug like heroin and cocaine, while proponents claim that the drug, when used responsibly, has less side effects and is more effective than prescription drugs. Personally I have much to say about this whole debate, but I’ll try to keep it short. First of all, the medical effects of cannabis have never been given serious attention, however, I’d venture a guess that people who genuinely suffer from chronic illnesses know their disease better than people who either haven’t or aren’t currently experiencing the same thing thus, they are in a better position to say whether or not a certain treatment works for them. Second, cannabis was made illegal for political and racial reasons—it had absolutely nothing to do with science. Indeed, the technology to accurately test many of the claims made about “the dangers of Marijuana” and it’s effects on the human brain, didn’t even exist when they were made! Third, tobacco and alcohol are known killers yet they are legal. While it’s tempting to say that nobody has ever died from smoking cannabis, I can’t prove it; but if cannabis was as dangerous as we are told, then you’d think that the news would be all over any reports of illnesses or hospitalization caused by long-term usage or overdose… instead we hear about lung cancer, emphysema, cirrhosis, and other illnesses cause by smoking and drinking. Fourth, the idea that you can outlaw something and it will go away is seriously flawed. If there’s a market for a particular item, that market will continue to exist regardless of law. Prohibition will only create a black market and drive up the demand. We should have  learned this with alcohol prohibition.

If you can’t already tell, I’m in favor of legalization. You would think that a substance so demonized would have been studied thoroughly—but it hasn’t been. Occasionally you’ll hear about some government funded study confirming all the misinformation that we’ve been told, but how do you reconcile the disparity between that and reality? People are not dying in the streets from smoking cannabis, but according to the government, they should be. Conversely, every now and then you’ll see a report about how scientists in Europe or elsewhere are having success in treating cancer (or some other malady) in mice, but by and large, those reports are not heard by the majority of Americans—this is a taboo subject, but not because there’s a proportionate amount of scientific evidence to warrant such a high level of condemnation.

Thoughts?

Relevant links:

http://www.azcentral.com/…

http://newmexicoindependent.com/…

http://blogs.salon.com/…

http://www.philly.com/…