Tags: Freedom | our privacy | our rights

The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the
Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy
within the United States.

In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider “modifications” to
the act in order to protect civil liberties.

“The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine
the effectiveness of these important authorities,” Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general,
wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring
Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.

It should come as no surprise that President Barack Obama supports renewing the provisions,
which were part of the Patriot Act approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Tags: our rights

Nearly a year after announcing the plan, new Federal Trade Commission rules prohibiting most
robocalls are set to take effect Tuesday, Sept. 1.

With the rules,  prerecorded commercial telemarketing robocalls will be prohibited, unless
the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such
calls.  Hopefully the rules will go a long way to helping consumers eat dinner in peace
without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather or in this case
prerecorded blather.


The change will not affect your ability to continue to receive calls that deliver
informational prerecorded messages - notifying you, for example, that your flight has been
cancelled, or that you have a service appointment. Such purely "informational" calls are not
covered by the TSR because they do not attempt to sell the called party any goods or
services, the FTC said.

The requirement is part of amendments to the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that
were announced a year ago. After September 1, sellers and telemarketers who transmit
prerecorded messages to consumers who have not agreed in writing to accept such messages
will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call.

Tags: our privacy | Police State

In February, the opponents of REAL ID were given a bit of hope when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that she wanted to repeal the REAL ID Act, the federal government's failed plan to impose a national identification card through state driver's licenses. But what has taken place since is no return to sanity, as political machinations have produced a cosmetic makeover called "PASS ID" that has revived the push for a national identification card.

The PASS ID Act (S. 1261) seeks to make many of the same ineffectual, dangerous changes the REAL ID Act attempted to impose. Fundamentally, PASS ID operates on the same flawed premise of REAL ID -- that requiring various "identity documents" (and storing that information in databases for later access) will magically make state drivers' licenses more legitimate, which will in turn improve national security.