During a recent show, Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes, made some very important points worthy of sharing here about government secrecy and the government’s inability to keep secrets: As of the end of 2011, there were 1.4 million people with top secret security clearance […] just one of the 1.4 million [...]

The world is changing. It’s happening rapidly. And it’s freaking people out. Libertarians are concerned that constant surveillance, like that which helped identify the Boston bombers, is an infringement on our privacy. This can be true whether the cameras are public or private, as it’s not hard to justify a subpoena for a company’s tape [...]

In light of the recent white paper release by the DOJ concerning the Obama administration’s drone policy, I thought it would be apropos to repost a post I wrote back in November 2011 entitled: Are You or Someone You Know a Victim of the Drone Mentality? I think it’s very telling how little interest there [...]

In Little Canada, MN the police are trying to argue that Andrew Henderson violated HIPPA (federal healthcare privacy law) when he recorded a police interaction with a third party which required an ambulance. His camera was confiscated, the file was deleted (according to Henderson), and is being charged with “disorderly conduct” and “obstruction of the [...]

Cory Doctorow started the New Year with a very interesting piece on the “roboticization of the workforce”. The whole article is worth a read, but it brings up a disturbing question: But here’s the thing that neither of these articles — or even Bruce’s acid observations — touches on: once technology creates abundance, what possibilities [...]

Today may be Constitution Day but given the repeated assaults on this document and those who take their liberties seriously, today doesn’t seem like much of an occasion to be celebrating. Over at The New York Post, Andrea Peyser refers to the treatment of the no longer obscure film maker Nakoula Basseley by the very [...]

How much can we or should we rely on Wikipedia, particularly concerning controversial issues? I have linked the site in the past from Liberty Papers’ posts and probably will in the future but I do think anything you or I find at Wikipedia should be verified by at least one other source before assuming it [...]

Is the forensic science used in the courtroom reliable? The PBS documentary series Frontline makes an attempt at answering this question in an episode entitled: “The Real CSI.” I cannot recommend this episode enough. Watch The Real CSI on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE. Also, the producers of this episode hosted a live chat for [...]

How about some good news on the civil liberties front to kick off the week for a change? Robert Barnes writing for The Washington Post reports that SCOTUS ruled 9-0 in United States v. Jones stating that the police placing a GPS tracking device on a person’s vehicle and tracking said vehicle over days, weeks, [...]

We’re not going black today, over SOPA or PIPA. In case you by some miracle hadn’t noticed it yet, tens of thousands of web sites around the country and around the world, are “going black” or putting up banners explaining that they are not available or there is no content today etc… In protest against [...]

Over at Cato, Jim Harper responds to proponents of gov’t research that point to the products of that research as justification — they never really consider that such products would still occur via private-sector investment. He takes a bit of a swipe at IP policy in the middle, and in his discussion of the history [...]

Having “grown up” online — a bit more than most of my contemporaries, as I had the techno-geek life of BBS’ing and AOHell in the early days of the internet — I’ve always had as much of an “online” presence as off. Today, this means that many of my personal hobbies, whether it be making/drinking [...]

HuffPo is writing on a new Fed report that of 500 foreclosures they investigated, they couldn’t find a single one where the borrower was not significantly delinquent on payments. Thus, the Fed declared that no improper foreclosures occurred. This doesn’t matter to those who think bankers are raping angels in their spare time, and who [...]

Were it not for our federalist system, the debate over Real ID would have been over long ago. Fortunately, it’s still going: The political problem for the GOP committee chairmen is that the 2005 Real ID Act has proven to be anything but popular: legislatures of two dozen states have voted to reject its requirements, [...]

“Nobody likes the 4th amendment being violated when going through the security line, but the truth of the matter is we are going to have to do it.”-Former. Asst. TSA administrator Mo McGowan So when the friendly TSA agents pull you out of the line for a groping or full body nudie scan as you [...]

I had a really interesting philosophical discussion with Brad Warbiany, our curator at The Liberty Papers, over a Facebook status I wrote. I had just re-listened to the CBS Radio Workshop rendition of Brave New World and had commented that it seemed like a far more livable situation than 1984. Warbiany added that California, if [...]

As cameras have become more available to individuals and government alike, viral videos of cops behaving badly have become quite pervasive on the internet. This short video by The Cato Institute provides a few recent examples of this relatively new phenomenon and explains why recording the actions of police and government officials for all the [...]

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue is currently running an ad – a friendly reminder to encourage PA residents who owe back taxes to pay up because the PDR knows where you live. Creepy huh? But don’t be alarmed PA residents who owe back taxes, go to the website (PAtaxPayup.com) and you will find that the [...]

Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a California law that made it illegal to sell “violent” video games to minors. Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the State of California’s appeal in that case: WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will decide whether free speech rights are more important than [...]

Fox’s Neil Cavuto spoke last week with Adam Sharp, the blogger who posted a video of a Democratic Congressman saying he doesn’t worry about the Constitution: Sharp is, of course, referring to a book by Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds titled An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big [...]