Oregon Should Put Limits on Drones

I'll send an email to my Oregon State Representatives suggesting Oregon should follow up on California's initiative in limiting Drone use in Law Enforcement.  I think it would "fly" here too.  If only we could do the same with Automated License Plate Tracking.

Obama War on Freedom of the Press

The NY Times reporter James Risen may be in jail weeks from now for refusing to reveal his sources in a case first involving George W Bush and then aggressively pursued by President Obama and Eric Holder. There is a petition in support of Risen, I invite all to sign it.  In an article in The Guardian, Rises says about Obama "He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”.  Those are pretty strong words, but a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists tells the tale, with nearly every journalist interviewed calling this administration the most hostile to the press in history.

Six government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden, have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act, accused of leaking classified information to the press—compared with a total of three such prosecutions in all previous U.S. administrations.  

 “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.  

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”  

“President Obama had said that default should be  disclosure,” Times reporter Shane told me. “The culture they’ve created is not one that favors disclosure.”  The administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate. The 30 experienced Washington journalists at a variety of news organizations whom I interviewed for this report could not remember any precedent.

Oregon Political Attack Ads and Dark Money

The outside Koch brothers have targeted Senator Jeff Merkley and are running attack ads in Oregon.  They launched an estimated $3.6 million television campaign of 30 second ads, courtesy of a Koch controlled group called freedompartners which is pouring money into the election.  The Oregonian Politifact page has of course rated the ad as false.

And what about the organization?  On its membership page, it has this to say, not very enlightening.

With more than 200 engaged members, Freedom Partners is a chamber of commerce that advances its members’ interest in promoting the principles of a free market and a free society.

The board of Directors of the organization is tied closely to Koch, as an example.  "Dr. Richard Fink is an executive vice president and member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, Inc.  Additionally, Rich is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC, which provides legal, government, philanthropy, and community relations services to Koch companies.  Rich also serves as the president of the Charles G. Koch Foundation, and a director of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation.  Rich earned his PhD from New York University and M.A. from UCLA.  He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in economics from Rutgers University."

More to come I'm sure

Ron Wyden Battles On For Civil Rights

I don;t think I can come up with any commentary other than to quote excerpts from Wyden's speech to the TechFestNW event in Portland on Friday, August 15, 2014.  He is a wise thinker on government power to do good or evil in the digital age.  Read the full speech.

For centuries, individual privacy was protected to a large extent by the limited resources of governments. It simply wasn’t possible for governments to secretly collect huge amounts of personal information about every single citizen without building massive networks of spies and informants. ...  

Our luck has run out. Here in the 21st century, this dynamic has already shifted in a profound and fundamental way. Advances in technology have made it possible for governments around the world to vacuum up and rifle through the personal information of huge numbers of law-abiding citizens. If you would defend a society built on the principle of individual liberty you need to recognize that you can no longer rely on the fact that mass surveillance is hard – in the 21st century, it’s easy. The only protections that we can count on now are those that are written into law, upheld by a responsible judiciary, and enforced by a public willing to stand up for their own freedoms.  Fortunately, our Founding Fathers left us with some pretty darn good legal principles that can guide us when it comes to privacy. The Fourth Amendment guarantees the fundamental right of the people to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. Justice Louis Brandeis called this the right to be left alone.