Dog.Beckament.net

ARS Technica reports the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 (s3325) got approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee by 14-4 vote. If passed into law this empowers the Justice Department of the USofA to litigate civil suits (and seize property) on behalf of IP owners (corporate interests).

ARS Technica reports “Critics have blasted this provision as a gift of free, taxpayer-funded legal services to content owners”.

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Watch the videos and read the article, I am really too busy to summarize this one, but if you live in the USofA it is important. This has to do with vote swapping on modern voting systems.

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Ohio sues Diebold over voting machines that ‘drop’ votes, finally! Election Systems & Software (formerly Diebold) manufactures voting machines and they have gotten a lot of bad press, but nobody I know really seems to care.

A paper ballot system can be audited by any rational adult. An electronic ballot system can not… you can’t see the source code and Diebold doesn’t want you auditing their software (because it’s a trade secret). Even if you have access to the computer’s source code, are you sure that it is the same as the binary running on their machines? Are you a computer programmer who understands both security and election rules? I’m not… I can count though. I could count ballots and be accurate.. I’d even let you look over my shoulder and watch to make sure that I’m being honest.

Read the article for yourself, I’m not going to write a good summary… you do the work this time! These are your freedoms here… Don’t expect anyone else to do the work for you!

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Ok, I was going to vote for Barack Obama, he seemed like the ‘big-time’ candidate that had more of my interests at heart. Then he voted for the recent FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that grants telecoms immunity for helping the government break the law. This floored me… A law that protects lawbreakers. This just didn’t make sense… FISA already had rules in place for spying on Americans (FISA established a secret court a long time ago…), the government has been ignoring them for some time now. Now he wants to grant immunity from prosecution for companies (telecoms) that broke the law. He made some statements after voting trying to explain why he voted the way he did, but they are meaningless; the vote counts, not the words.

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