Dear Sen. X,
With all respect, I appreciate your sincere desire to serve the Nation and our fine State of residence, but I have serious doubts as to whether this can at all be accomplished through political affiliation with the Two-Party System as presently constituted.
When I wrote to you expressing my dismay at the Vice President's arguments concerning the legal classification of his Office (relative to the system articulated by the US Constitution), my concern was not for the timely reconciliation of rhetorical positions among various interested parties.
Perhaps, when I wrote you, my concerns were expressed in a simplistic manner. The content of my correspondence contained only a citation from a White House press conference (referencing the Vice President's recent claims about the legal status of his Office) and the statement "THIS IS FLAT OUT UNACCEPTABLE." The correspondence was not particularly intended to elicit a direct response, but rather to serve as a means by which I, an engaged citizen, might communicate my perceptions to one of my elected representatives in the Federal Government.
You wrote back, "our democracy is not perfect." My concern, Sir, is not whether our Democracy is perfectly implemented, but rather, whether it presently can be said to exist at all.
You wrote, "our government does successfully balance the many interests and concerns of our diverse nation in a manner that is representative and fair," but I see violence in the streets comparable to a theatre of war, increasing numbers of high school graduates sold into indentured servitude to procure funding for college, orchestrated disinformation campaigns by the Federal Government designed to keep the citizenry ignorant or perplexed, more incarcerations than any other country, state socialism for corporations and the fascist sheepherding of individuals. I hear politicians twisting language to serve their ends. I see high crimes and misdemeanors in the White House.
You wrote, "the process works because there are public servants...dedicated to the ideas of democracy." This assumes the existence of an effective means by which Democratic ideals might be implemented; I see diminishing evidence to support the validity of this assumption.
An Administration installed on contentious grounds, which of late appears to have abandoned even the facade of legitimacy, does little to mitigate my concerns. Under such circumstances, neither does a reply from an elected representative to the effect that I ought not worry because this will work itself out do much to instill confidence that our Democracy is functioning as intended.
I regret to inform you that you will not receive my votes in the future. This is due in no small part to your affiliation with the Two-Party System, as I see increasing evidence of late that this System is not operating in the service of individual US citizens. I will use all peaceful and civilized means at my disposal to persuade others of my position.
Sincerely,
XXX
Showing posts with label constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label constitution. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Taxation Without Representation
The reason the National Security Agency wants to read your email is because they are trying to use algorithms to detect terrorist activity. This invasion of privacy is based on the assumption that terrorists use the Internet in ways that are statistically distinct from the ways ordinary Americans use the Internet. In order to statistically detect online terrorist activity, the governmet needs a large sample of "normal" Internet use.
Although this may seem reasonable when we are confronted with an indistinct enemy, fighting on ill-defined battlefields, this really amounts to an unconstitutional indirect tax. Just as the Federal government incorporated FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security to hide the cost of creating the largest bureaucracy in the history of civilization, the government's use of private citizens' Internet service for surveillance purposes is used to hide the true cost of the War on Terror.
When the government compels private corporations to comply with national security directives, without compensating these corporations for the cost of implementing such directives, the cost is passed on to consumers.
Because the Administrative branch of government refuses to inform Congress as to the nature of these programs, these programs amount to taxation without representation.
Beyond violating the 4th Amendment right to protection against unwarranted search and seizure, this practice also violates the 5th Amendment, by effectively situating military operatives within private homes, taking private property for public use, and opening up the potential to compel private citizens to, in effect, unwittingly testify against themselves. Not only do these practices appropriate private citizens into the Federal intelligence infrastructure without compensation, but citizens are furthermore charged for this.
Our current Administration has a constitutional duty to either halt these programs, or to fully inform Congress as to their nature. In lieu of such disclosures, we as citizens have a duty to remove these criminals from office.
Although this may seem reasonable when we are confronted with an indistinct enemy, fighting on ill-defined battlefields, this really amounts to an unconstitutional indirect tax. Just as the Federal government incorporated FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security to hide the cost of creating the largest bureaucracy in the history of civilization, the government's use of private citizens' Internet service for surveillance purposes is used to hide the true cost of the War on Terror.
When the government compels private corporations to comply with national security directives, without compensating these corporations for the cost of implementing such directives, the cost is passed on to consumers.
Because the Administrative branch of government refuses to inform Congress as to the nature of these programs, these programs amount to taxation without representation.
Beyond violating the 4th Amendment right to protection against unwarranted search and seizure, this practice also violates the 5th Amendment, by effectively situating military operatives within private homes, taking private property for public use, and opening up the potential to compel private citizens to, in effect, unwittingly testify against themselves. Not only do these practices appropriate private citizens into the Federal intelligence infrastructure without compensation, but citizens are furthermore charged for this.
Our current Administration has a constitutional duty to either halt these programs, or to fully inform Congress as to their nature. In lieu of such disclosures, we as citizens have a duty to remove these criminals from office.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Who is Being Brainwashed?
Regarding recent articles on government "mind control" in The Washington Post and on Wired:
An important area of operation for contemporary intelligence gathering agencies is data aggregation: collecting information from multiple sources and creating meaningful connections between these disparate sources of information. Increasingly, this is being carried out by government agencies with the cooperation or coercion of private infrastructure. The intrusion of military intelligence operations into the private sector is especially troubling because it represents the ability, facilitated by the Web, to not only appropriate private citizens and organizations into a federal intelligence infrastructure, but also to manipulate these individuals and organizations for obscure motives (given our present state of government secrecy).
Consider the potential of combining the functionality of MySpace with that of Google, if the actions of users are mapped to a set of IP addresses or a MAC address:
The value of MySpace for intelligence purposes extends beyond the content of individual postings or personal data stored in a user’s profile. Every time a MySpace user does or does not click on a MySpace porn bot's solicitation, the result of that user’s decision is recorded. The way in which users respond to eachother’s social cues, the way blog posts are categorized, and the frequency or methodology with which one seeks to extend one’s social cluster are not only recorded, but furthermore represent a psychological model of that individual user.
Google also keeps track of user behavior. This data, which is recorded for advertising purposes, can be used to reveal word-by-word accounts of how users view language, associate specific terms, and, in a sense, what users are thinking about.
If intelligence agencies have access to user logs for both MySpace and Google, they have, on the one hand, a psychological model to describe an individual, and on the other hand, a semantic database to explain that individual's decision-making. This information could be combined to not only predict how individuals will respond to various stimuli, but to provide stimuli whereby certain behaviors are likely to be provoked. Such a semantic-behavior model could be tested by inserting specific search results into a list returned by Google and recording if and how a user responds.
Other, more direct methods of manipulating individuals have been investigated. Several recent patents issued to Hendricus Loos discuss a variety of ways in which, for example, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by cathode ray tube monitors can be used to manipulate an individual’s central nervous system.
Beyond the potential for illegal government experimentation or sadistic behavior on the part of rogue contractors, the proliferation of these technologies and the diffusion of these abilities into private hands will present to law enforcement a new and serious challenge. Frightened governments, faced with a problem which they have no idea how to detect or mitigate, may be part of the reason why people complaining of “mind control” are actively marginalized.
It would seem that governments concerned with serving the interests of their citizens would want to halt such research, assess the state of things, and begin to make disclosures. How can citizens ensure that their interests are being served if they cannot discuss the actions of their own government?
An important area of operation for contemporary intelligence gathering agencies is data aggregation: collecting information from multiple sources and creating meaningful connections between these disparate sources of information. Increasingly, this is being carried out by government agencies with the cooperation or coercion of private infrastructure. The intrusion of military intelligence operations into the private sector is especially troubling because it represents the ability, facilitated by the Web, to not only appropriate private citizens and organizations into a federal intelligence infrastructure, but also to manipulate these individuals and organizations for obscure motives (given our present state of government secrecy).
Consider the potential of combining the functionality of MySpace with that of Google, if the actions of users are mapped to a set of IP addresses or a MAC address:
The value of MySpace for intelligence purposes extends beyond the content of individual postings or personal data stored in a user’s profile. Every time a MySpace user does or does not click on a MySpace porn bot's solicitation, the result of that user’s decision is recorded. The way in which users respond to eachother’s social cues, the way blog posts are categorized, and the frequency or methodology with which one seeks to extend one’s social cluster are not only recorded, but furthermore represent a psychological model of that individual user.
Google also keeps track of user behavior. This data, which is recorded for advertising purposes, can be used to reveal word-by-word accounts of how users view language, associate specific terms, and, in a sense, what users are thinking about.
If intelligence agencies have access to user logs for both MySpace and Google, they have, on the one hand, a psychological model to describe an individual, and on the other hand, a semantic database to explain that individual's decision-making. This information could be combined to not only predict how individuals will respond to various stimuli, but to provide stimuli whereby certain behaviors are likely to be provoked. Such a semantic-behavior model could be tested by inserting specific search results into a list returned by Google and recording if and how a user responds.
Other, more direct methods of manipulating individuals have been investigated. Several recent patents issued to Hendricus Loos discuss a variety of ways in which, for example, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by cathode ray tube monitors can be used to manipulate an individual’s central nervous system.
Beyond the potential for illegal government experimentation or sadistic behavior on the part of rogue contractors, the proliferation of these technologies and the diffusion of these abilities into private hands will present to law enforcement a new and serious challenge. Frightened governments, faced with a problem which they have no idea how to detect or mitigate, may be part of the reason why people complaining of “mind control” are actively marginalized.
It would seem that governments concerned with serving the interests of their citizens would want to halt such research, assess the state of things, and begin to make disclosures. How can citizens ensure that their interests are being served if they cannot discuss the actions of their own government?
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Ethics and Legislation of Stem Cell Research
Indiana Representative Mike Pence, contesting new House Legislation to authorize Federal funding for stem cell research, remarked, "Proponents of this legislation don't just want to be able to do embryonic stem-cell research...they want me to pay for it and, like 43 percent of Americans who believe that life begins at conception, I've got a problem with that."
Rep. Pence's remarks, which echo a Bush Administration statement on the matter, reveal a dangerous double-standard and a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for our Federal government to collect and spend tax money. Considering that some 70 percent of Americans are obligated to fund a war in Iraq with which they disagree, I imagine there are relatively few Americans who would find no objection whatsoever to the use of their tax dollars.
Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist No. 31, asserts that, "A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."
Stem cell research represents an opportunity to provide effective cures and treatments for life-threatening diseases, to preserve liberty in various forms for those who suffer ailments that impinge upon the exercise of liberty (such as through the impairment of mobility, dexterity, or cognitive function), and to secure the pursuit of happiness on the part of those citizens constrained by such diseases as the Federal government is in a position to help cure.
Beyond the hypocrisy implied by pro-life Representatives who apportion funds to war over schools, art, and life-saving medical research, there is the blatant and concerted effort to obscure the fact that existing and accepted medical procedures (such as in vitro fertilization) create and discard precisely those types of cells required for stem cell research.
The position of Rep. Pence - that human life begins at conception - if not political (insofar as current purveyors of medical treatments have an economic interest in selling perpetual remediation, rather than a singular cure) is bound to be religious or arbitrary. By arbitrary I do not mean ridiculous or unfounded, but subject to the same qualifications as any definite demarcation between entities whose boundaries are porous or gradated. The Representative's criterion does not appear to be founded in the standards of our courts, which hold permissible those procedures that, given pressing medical concerns, affect the viability of an embryo only until that time when the embryo might support its own life independent of the mother and the womb. It is worth noting that this court standard is upheld by the thinkers of Greek Antiquity.
There remains the matter of personal conviction, which may be religious in character, or related to a secular ethic. Religious traditions, which in our Nation ought to be restricted in the degree to which they influence or direct political processes, are by no means unanimous as to whether human life begins at conception or at some later time. Within the Judeo-Christian Tradition, one finds in the Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 69b, the assertion that "the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day." Exodus 21:22, in discerning punishments for causing a miscarriage or the death of a pregnant woman, seems to assign to the fetus a value that is somewhat less than that of a fully-developed human.
Should the personal convictions the Representative and his like-minded companions be a matter of secular ethics, he and his companions have some explaining to do. How is it that one man with a few allies should withhold the Constitutional entitlements of so many?
Rep. Pence's remarks, which echo a Bush Administration statement on the matter, reveal a dangerous double-standard and a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for our Federal government to collect and spend tax money. Considering that some 70 percent of Americans are obligated to fund a war in Iraq with which they disagree, I imagine there are relatively few Americans who would find no objection whatsoever to the use of their tax dollars.
Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist No. 31, asserts that, "A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."
Stem cell research represents an opportunity to provide effective cures and treatments for life-threatening diseases, to preserve liberty in various forms for those who suffer ailments that impinge upon the exercise of liberty (such as through the impairment of mobility, dexterity, or cognitive function), and to secure the pursuit of happiness on the part of those citizens constrained by such diseases as the Federal government is in a position to help cure.
Beyond the hypocrisy implied by pro-life Representatives who apportion funds to war over schools, art, and life-saving medical research, there is the blatant and concerted effort to obscure the fact that existing and accepted medical procedures (such as in vitro fertilization) create and discard precisely those types of cells required for stem cell research.
The position of Rep. Pence - that human life begins at conception - if not political (insofar as current purveyors of medical treatments have an economic interest in selling perpetual remediation, rather than a singular cure) is bound to be religious or arbitrary. By arbitrary I do not mean ridiculous or unfounded, but subject to the same qualifications as any definite demarcation between entities whose boundaries are porous or gradated. The Representative's criterion does not appear to be founded in the standards of our courts, which hold permissible those procedures that, given pressing medical concerns, affect the viability of an embryo only until that time when the embryo might support its own life independent of the mother and the womb. It is worth noting that this court standard is upheld by the thinkers of Greek Antiquity.
There remains the matter of personal conviction, which may be religious in character, or related to a secular ethic. Religious traditions, which in our Nation ought to be restricted in the degree to which they influence or direct political processes, are by no means unanimous as to whether human life begins at conception or at some later time. Within the Judeo-Christian Tradition, one finds in the Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 69b, the assertion that "the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day." Exodus 21:22, in discerning punishments for causing a miscarriage or the death of a pregnant woman, seems to assign to the fetus a value that is somewhat less than that of a fully-developed human.
Should the personal convictions the Representative and his like-minded companions be a matter of secular ethics, he and his companions have some explaining to do. How is it that one man with a few allies should withhold the Constitutional entitlements of so many?
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
patents assigned to the national security agency
the following patents are all issued to the national security agency, and describe one proprietary method the nsa may be using to analyze the network traffic it intercepts by tapping into data streams at telecommunications companies such as at&t:
***
United States Patent 6704449
Method of extracting text from graphical images
US Patent Issued on March 9, 2004
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method for extracting text from an image which is typically displayed on web pages of the World Wide Web. The character recognition will be determined to be successful by comparing the extracted text to a lexicon of legitimate words, computing the likelihood of the sequence of characters (e.g. "Qxv" is highly unlikely in English, whereas "com" is relatively common), or character recognition software which can provide a confidence measure for each character based upon how well its pixels matched the nominal template or features.
***
United States Patent 7020338
Method of identifying script of line of text
US Patent Issued on March 28, 2006
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Script identification is a useful preprocessing step in automatic document recognition. Most optical character recognition (OCR) devices are trained to recognize a limited set of scripts. If an OCR device was presented with a document that includes text printed in a script for which the OCR device was not trained to recognize then the OCR device would not be able to process the document correctly. So, there is a need for a method of identifying each script in which a document is printed so that an OCR device that was trained in all of the scripts can be identified and used to process the document.
***
United States Patent 6904564
Method of summarizing text using just the text
US Patent Issued on June 7, 2005
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Prior art methods of processing text typically incorporate linguistic knowledge that is not resident in the text (e.g., document) being processed. Prior art text summarization methods often rely on a collection of exemplary text that is external to the text being processed to assess the role a word plays in the text being processed. For those methods that rely on a collection of exemplary text, it is difficult, if not impossible, to generate a single collection of exemplary text that can be used to successfully summarize textual documents on widely different topics because a word in one context may have a different meaning in another context. This problem is often overcome in the prior art by generating multiple collections of exemplary text, where each collection is tailored to a specific topic (e.g., scientific, financial). Generating a collection of exemplary text is difficult, time consuming, and prone to error (e.g., biases of those generating the collection).
***
United States Patent 6990634
Method of summarizing text by sentence extraction
US Patent Issued on January 24, 2006
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The field of automatically summarizing text consisting of a collection of sentences has been studied for over forty years. However, automatic text summarization has received greater attention recently because of its pervasive use in present information retrieval systems. One type of text summarization method consists of extracting a number of sentences from the text that convey the essential points of the text. The number of sentences extracted from a text may be few to present only enough information to allow a user to determine whether or not to read the entire text or many to act as a substitute for the text.
***
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-mailer/intelligence-101a_b_1142.html
***
United States Patent 6704449
Method of extracting text from graphical images
US Patent Issued on March 9, 2004
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method for extracting text from an image which is typically displayed on web pages of the World Wide Web. The character recognition will be determined to be successful by comparing the extracted text to a lexicon of legitimate words, computing the likelihood of the sequence of characters (e.g. "Qxv" is highly unlikely in English, whereas "com" is relatively common), or character recognition software which can provide a confidence measure for each character based upon how well its pixels matched the nominal template or features.
***
United States Patent 7020338
Method of identifying script of line of text
US Patent Issued on March 28, 2006
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Script identification is a useful preprocessing step in automatic document recognition. Most optical character recognition (OCR) devices are trained to recognize a limited set of scripts. If an OCR device was presented with a document that includes text printed in a script for which the OCR device was not trained to recognize then the OCR device would not be able to process the document correctly. So, there is a need for a method of identifying each script in which a document is printed so that an OCR device that was trained in all of the scripts can be identified and used to process the document.
***
United States Patent 6904564
Method of summarizing text using just the text
US Patent Issued on June 7, 2005
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Prior art methods of processing text typically incorporate linguistic knowledge that is not resident in the text (e.g., document) being processed. Prior art text summarization methods often rely on a collection of exemplary text that is external to the text being processed to assess the role a word plays in the text being processed. For those methods that rely on a collection of exemplary text, it is difficult, if not impossible, to generate a single collection of exemplary text that can be used to successfully summarize textual documents on widely different topics because a word in one context may have a different meaning in another context. This problem is often overcome in the prior art by generating multiple collections of exemplary text, where each collection is tailored to a specific topic (e.g., scientific, financial). Generating a collection of exemplary text is difficult, time consuming, and prone to error (e.g., biases of those generating the collection).
***
United States Patent 6990634
Method of summarizing text by sentence extraction
US Patent Issued on January 24, 2006
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The field of automatically summarizing text consisting of a collection of sentences has been studied for over forty years. However, automatic text summarization has received greater attention recently because of its pervasive use in present information retrieval systems. One type of text summarization method consists of extracting a number of sentences from the text that convey the essential points of the text. The number of sentences extracted from a text may be few to present only enough information to allow a user to determine whether or not to read the entire text or many to act as a substitute for the text.
***
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-mailer/intelligence-101a_b_1142.html
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