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The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s department has received $1 million for a violence prevention unit that is getting attention from privacy advocates. Florida legislators awarded the money to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw to create the unit with the idea that they will be able to prevent gun tragedies from occurring. Bradshaw intends on utilizing specially trained deputies and mental health professionals in the prevention of crimes.

“Every single incident, whether it’s Newtown, that movie theater, or the guy who spouts off at work and then goes home and kills his wife and two kids — in every single case, there were people who said they knew ahead of time that there was a problem,” Bradshaw said. “If the neighbor of the mom in Newtown had called somebody, this might have saved 25 kids’ lives.”

Bradshaw is readying a hotline and is planning public service announcements to encourage local citizens to report their neighbors, friends or family members if they fear they could harm themselves or others.

While the deputies and mental health workers might be able to spot a problem, the vast majority of people do not see the warning signs until after an incident occurs.

The goal won’t be to arrest troubled people but to get them help before there’s violence, Bradshaw said. As a side benefit, law enforcement will have needed information to keep a close eye on things.

On paper, this appears to be a noble cause, but if there is nothing wrong with a person, how is keeping a close eye on anyone a benefit? It raises Stasi comparisons, something no American should ever strive for.

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’”

No. You do not want to call the police because someone says they hate the government. Many Americans do not like their government, but they have the right to espouse that view. You even have the right to say you hate your mayor, congressman, or anyone else and wish them dead. If one takes a moment to think, they have probably voiced those opinions out loud [12 angry men], but out of frustration and never with any real intent. Now, if that person says, “I hate the mayor and I’m going to shoot him,” while holding a shotgun, then you might want to call the police. In this case, a new crime prevention unit is not needed because people already do this.

It hurts people to go knock on a door and ask if everything is okay because people do not want others butting into other people’s business for something that was said, especially when the person reporting it doesn’t have the qualifications to determine intent. It undermines free speech and creates a climate of fear where dissent can be easily misinterpreted and people are put under suspicion for no reason.

That’s enough for Senate budget chief Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who helped push through the funding last weekend.

He said he met with Bradshaw about the program and “got assurances from the sheriff that this is going to be done in a way that respects people’s autonomy and privacy, and that he makes sure to protect against people making false claims.”

If he got assurances, then why doesn’t he list what they are so that everyone can see if those assurances are valid or not? How does the sheriff intend to protect innocent people from making false claims? Saying there are assurances to protect people indicates that something has been discussed, so why isn’t it out in the open?

Mental health advocates, however, worry about a potential new source of stigma, and the potential for erosion of the civil rights of people with mental illnesses.

It is not just citizens with mental illnesses that have to be worried about being stigmatized. Anyone who is suspected of not liking the government is going to be forced to talk to a mental health professional. This information may or may not be public. If the person is taken in for questioning, neighbors are likely to make conclusions about what is happening, making life difficult for the person questioned. If any of this is made into the public record, the person could have problems later on finding a job. Those who do have mental illnesses could also be singled out merely because they are different.

“How are they possibly going to watch everybody who makes a comment like that? It’s subjective,” said Liz Downey, executive director of the Palm Beach County branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We don’t want to take away people’s civil liberties just because people aren’t behaving the way we think they should be.”

It is impossible to watch everyone unless you resort to Stasi-like tactics and Soviet-style political commissars and get every citizen to report on each other. What will happen is the police will have a database of people that they have harassed for no reason, yet still may continue to “keep an eye on” while those that may truly have criminal intentions keeps quiet and falls into whatever the police think is socially acceptable. Not everyone behaves the same. Some people have quirks that are not harmful at all, yet others might find it weird and report a person for being different.

Bradshaw acknowledged the risk that anyone in a messy divorce or in a dispute with a neighbor could abuse the hotline. But, he said, he’s confident that his trained professionals will know how to sort out fact from fiction.

“We know how to sift through frivolous complaints,” he said.

Obviously, the police can’t figure out all the frivolous items. There are several instances of SWAT teams being called in after a fake 911 call because an individual online 911 said that person X is at home making a bomb right, there’s a domestic assault happening, or any number of other things. This phenomenon is called “swatting” and it has serious repercussions for the person that is made a suspect.

The police also cannot distinguish right away if a person is simply a target through a messy divorce without going to that person’s house and performing their version of the “are you okay” spiel. Again, they must actually go and disrupt this person’s life, with others watching and jumping to conclusions, in order to sort fact from fiction.

Also, after troubled people are identified by Bradshaw’s teams, then what? Who will pay for their care? The state? Medicaid? The county? The Palm Beach County Public Defender has a good program to ensure qualified people apply for the Social Security and Medicaid benefits they may need, she said. Some high-level conversations have started, but more are needed, Berner added.

No one really knows what they’re going to do with people that need help. Another question not being asked is how long are the people going to be kept under surveillance? How long will their names be kept in the database that is going to be made? If the police ask if you’re okay and you say you’re fine and tell them to go away, currently your right, what happens next? Are they put on a “keep an eye on” list? There are far too many questions that haven’t been answered or even looked at. We’re just supposed to take one man’s assurances that he’ll do the right thing. How many people will be caught up in this unit and have their lives ruined until the sheriff gets everything sorted out?

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The post originally appeared at The Daily Censored.

When CISPA reared its ugly head last year, it was soundly defeated. This year, not only is is back, it’s taking more swipes at individual privacy, passing in the House 288-127, with more representatives in favor of the bill and more supporters than last year. As the fight now shifts to the Senate, there are several interesting developments that Americans should be aware of before this bill becomes a law.

One of the most important issues comes from Representative Mike Rogers, who dismissed CISPA opponents as 14-year old tweeters on the internet in their parents’ basements.

Not only does Mr. Rogers not understand how the internet works, he doesn’t understand how anyone could be against this bill. Despite being the sponsor of the bill, Rogers can’t even keep straight as to whether or not the NSA will have access to your information (it will).

The EFF, one of the bigger opponents to CISPA gathered together a collection of people who aren’t fourteen to show Mike Rogers just who is against the bill.

One has to wonder, however if Representative Rogers is so pro-CISPA because his wife stands to benefit from its passing, because he took so much money from supporters of the bill, or if he really believes taking away peoples’ privacy is a good thing.

So it seems rather interesting to note that Rogers’ wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers, was, until recently, the president and CEO of Aegis LLC a “security” defense contractor company, whom she helped to secure a $10 billion (with a b) contract with the State Department. The company describes itself as “a leading private security company, provides government and corporate clients with a full spectrum of intelligence-led, culturally-sensitive security solutions to operational and development challenges around the world.”

Kristi Rogers is also the author of an article for Washington Life in which she declares it is with the utmost importance that cybersecurity legislation be passed. In it, she, and the magazine, never see the need to disclose that her husband is the one behind CISPA and is pushing for its passing in Congress.

Kristi Rogers recently changed jobs as well, such that she’s now the “managing director of federal government affairs and public policies” at Manatt, a big lobbying firm, where (surprise, surprise) she’s apparently focused on “executive-level problem solving in the defense and homeland security sectors.”

I’m sure the fact that he husband is pushing a bill that will create a lot of money for her present and past employers, as well as the Rogers has nothing to do with this at all. Since Kristi Rogers probably has some type of equity package from leaving Aegis, the Rogers will garner a lot of money should CISPA pass.

Just before the final push to vote on CISPA in the House of Representatives, IBM flew 200 senior executives to Washington to speak with legislators about the bill. After they arrived, the bill gained 36 new sponsors.

The IBM executives will pound the pavement on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday, holding nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers and staff. Over the course of those two days, their mission is to convince lawmakers to back a bill that’s intended to make it easier for industry and government to share information about cyber threats with each other in real time.

The technology services company runs the information technology networks of major hospitals, banks and electric companies—key infrastructure that lawmakers and security officials warn are top targets for hostile actors to launch a cyberattack.

Big Blue is also the top recipient of U.S. patents and owns a trove of valuable intellectual property that would be enticing to probing hackers looking to siphon valuable proprietary information. A report published by computer security firm Mandiant this year concluded that an elite military unit of Chinese hackers has allegedly cracked into the computer systems of more than 100 U.S. companies and stolen intellectual property.

Again, this comes down to money. IBM stands to gain a lot of it should CISPA pass, so they sent their executives to make sure the bill passed.

But companies are currently hesitant to share information about cyber threats they spot on computer networks with the government because they fear it may put them at risk for being sued. CISPA would address that concern, Padilla said, by granting companies liability protection from lawsuits if they share threat information with the government, allowing firms to get the assistance and data they need faster.

So, companies don’t want to share information because their customers (regular American citizens) might sue them for failing to protect their data. If CISPA becomes a law, all they have to do is tell the government and you can no longer sue them.

But the cyber information-sharing bill has rankled privacy advocates from Washington to Silicon Valley. One of their chief concerns with the bill is that it would allow companies to share threat information directly with the military, including the National Security Agency, without being required to take steps to remove personally identifiable information from that data. Privacy advocates warn that could lead to people’s email and IP addresses, names, and other personal information being inadvertently passed on to the NSA without their knowledge.

Congress doesn’t see what’s so bad about allowing the military or NSA have all your personal information. They still believe in that, if you have nothing to hide, you don’t have to worry about anything. Except that everyone has something to hide and, once your information is in a database, you can’t control how it’s used or how your information is connected to others.

An explanation of CISPA:

The FBI has spent so much time creating its own fake plots against America that, when a real one occurs, they totally missed it. Yet, law enforcement and politicians are claiming that the bombing in Boston proves that we need more surveillance and that CISPA should be passed. CISPA, more surveillance, and every citizen under scrutiny isn’t ever going to change that. The more surveillance there is, the more likely someone is going to slip through the cracks. No one on Earth is ever 100% free from calamity. We can mitigate it as best we can, but eroding constitutional rights and privacy is not the way to do it. If we had been in such mortal danger, the Boston Police Department would not have told everyone to stay home unless they worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, in which case those places needed to stay open so the police could eat.

President Obama has threatened to veto CISPA, should it reach his desk. Whether or not CISPA passes, there is something you can do. Contact your senators before it gets to a vote in the senate. That may or may not help as, unfortunately, politicians only listen to money. On a personal level, take back your privacy yourself:

* Browser Privacy: HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock Plus + EasyList, Ghostery, NoScript (FireFox), NotScript (Chrome)

* VPNs: BTGuard (Canada), ItsHidden (Africa), Ipredator (Sweden), Faceless.me (Cyprus / Netherlands)

* Internet Anonymization: Tor, Tor Browser Bundle, I2P

* Disk Encryption: TrueCrypt (Windows / OSX / Linux), File Vault (Mac).

* File/Email Encryption: GPGTools + GPGMail (Mac), Enigmail (Windows / OSX / Linux)

* IM Encryption: Pidgin + Pidgin OTR

* IM/Voice Encryption: Mumble, Jitsi

* SMS/Voice Encryption: WhisperSystems, Silent Circle ($$$)

* Google Alternative: DuckDuckGo

* Digital P2P Currency: BitCoin

* Live Anonymous/Secure Linux: TAILS Linux

If you have any problems installing or using the above software, please contact the projects. They would love to get feedback and help you use their software.

Have no clue what Cryptography is or why you should care? Checkout the Crypto Party Handbook or the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense Project.

Just want some simple tips? Checkout EFF’s Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Censored.

The state of Tennessee is attempting to pass new legislation that will penalize families if their children do no perform well in school. If a child does not meet the state’s requirements in reading, math, or language arts, the family will have their welfare benefits reduced by 30%.

One of the most egregious errors in introducing this bill is that it solely affects low-income families. If you are middle or upper income and your child does poorly, you won’t have to worry about where your next meal is coming from or if you can pay the rent. Those on welfare have already fallen on hard times and are already likely to struggle in all aspects of life, yet the government of Tennessee has decided put more pressure on children where it doesn’t belong.

“It’s just one more way to punish families who have fallen on hard times,” Johnson told theGrio. “I don’t believe for a second this will be anything to improve a child’s education.”

As a high school special education teacher, Johnson said this kind of bill is not what at-risk students need.

“To add the responsibility of the family budget on these kids, it’s not going to help these kids.  It’s not going to move them forward,” Johnson said.

“[The bill] sets up a terrible relationship between families and educators,” Johnson continued.  ”It sets up animosity between school and home.”

Low-income families often struggle to put food on the table. With a cut in benefits, there will be less food. Students who don’t have the opportunity to eat properly lack the ability to focus, which, in turn, leads to lower grades, and the cycle continues. This bill penalizes the children who are most at risk in this new legislative plan.

Johnson recommends after school or weekend programs, such as “community schools” where parents spend time with their children and can see what they are doing and how they are doing in school.

If a parent is already struggling and needs assistance, it is highly unlikely that they have a job with weekends off. By suggesting a “community school” during a time that is convenient for the state, they are, essentially, setting the parent up to fail.

Amendments have been made to the original legislation to exclude students with learning disabilities and those who have an individualized education program (IEP) from being penalized for not maintaining satisfactory academic progress. Instead, special education students will be measured on school attendance.

These amendments will cover many students and, as soon as parents discover that a learning disability or IEP will eliminate their worries, they will push to have the child tested. This will soon overburden the school system and the government in their attempts to implement testing and new IEPs. Learning disabilities are highly subjective and it is trivial to be labeled SLD (Specific Learning Disability). Further still, there are four ways to restore benefits to the families. By providing so many loopholes into the plan, it almost becomes moot as to why legislators are pushing for such a bill, particularly since there are also ways to earn back assistance, some of which aren’t difficult to achieve.

Attending two parent teacher conferences, eight hours of parenting classes, enrolling the child in a tutoring program, or enrolling the child in summer school are the available options.

The first should be easily attained as they are scheduled at a time that is convenient to all those involved. While it might sound like a good idea to take parenting classes, it is still flawed. The parent will need to adjust their schedule to attend such classes and will likely spend months fulfilling this requirement to have their assistance restored. This further penalizes families because their money will be stretched for an indeterminate amount of time, causing more stress and undue hardship.

There is also the consideration that, even though a parent may be doing everything right, you can only control your child so much. At some point in time, the child also has to take responsibility for their actions. Some students, no matter how much pleading, prodding, and helping will simply refuse to do any schoolwork. In such a case, an entire family is penalized for the actions of a single child as the whole family are deemed guilty by association.

The legislation put forth in the Tennessee legislature is ill-thought out. It doesn’t address homeschooling properly, leaving that questions up in the air as to whether or not it will be included in the final bill. Both bills disproportionately affect low-income students. Higher income students are not disadvantaged economically for performing poorly in school. The State of Tennessee, however, doesn’t seem to care. They are only looking for ways to cut their budget and reducing assistance to low-income families as a quick fix without being concerned about the long-term costs or effects. Students who do poorly in school are more likely to be low-skilled with little motivation. Many often turn to crime as a means to make ends meet. If the state removes assistance, it could have a long-term detrimental effect on a community.

If the Tennessee legislature votes for the bill, it will be in full effect for the 2013-2014 school year. For Tennessee, it will be a law that further disenfranchises and entire group of people instead of helping to lift them out of poverty.

This post originally appeared at The Daily Censored.

UPDATE: State Representative Stacey Campfield has withdrawn the bill after Republicans refused to support it.

Who would ever be against child porn? That’s what Finland thought when in 2006 when they implemented their child porn filters on the internet. Surely, no one would be against blocking such detrimental information. Certainly, no one wants to accidentally visit such a website and, so, Finland passed and implemented their blocking technology to keep child porn away from the majority of people. So who would ever want to be against that?

Despite what many people think, child pornography is not that easy to come by on the internet. You have to know people and have connections to gain access. You simply don’t accidentally stumble upon these sites. Yet, most people also fear being that one person who will speak up and defend child pornography. No matter how rational you attempt to be, you will be viewed as a pervert and any valid points you may have will not be taken seriously. What Finland now wants to do, however, is an extension of the child pornography blocklist to add additional sites to the list that aren’t child pornography, but, rather, sites that someone in the government find distasteful.

Finnish Minister for Justice, Anna-Maja Henriksson…is backing extending Finland’s current pornography censorship to move beyond child pornography.

Specifically, the Minister eyes expanding the list to involve websites that include pornographic material showing animals, and “violent porn.”

There are two separate problems with such an expansion. First, what will be considered pornographic material showing animals. Will it include humans and animals having sex or animals mating? What is considered pornographic in this sense?

Secondly, what is violent porn? It’s not defined clearly enough, which will only lead to problems. What one considers violent another does not. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be wide support for the expansion.

Finland’s Interior Minister, Päivi Räsänen, doubts the need to expand pornographic censorship at all. Indeed, even Finland’s own child pornography blocklist has, in the past, included websites that had nothing to do with such vile content.

If the child pornography blocklist does not have a 100% success rate, how is it even possible to not ensnare innocent websites in an expansion? A Finnish website that analyzes the blocklist was censored for a long time and a court battle ensued over getting it taken off the blocklist. Wouldn’t it be better to let the adults decide what they find appropriate in their household instead of letting the government do it for them? In a free society, the government should not be making the decisions for what the public finds attractive or distasteful. The people are far more capable of doing this for themselves.

This is precisely why, when the argument comes up, others need to step up and say no to censoring child pornography. It’s not because anyone wants child pornography around, it’s because of the slippery slope that begins with a “think of the children” attitude without looking at the whole picture of what might happen in the future.

Implementing a block of child pornography is always done with good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No one wants to defend child pornography and most people wouldn’t find fault in anyone who didn’t speak up. However, once no one speaks up to defend this type of censorship, because it’s to protect the children, the blocklists begin to grow. It moves to outlaw animal pornography. Again, the majority of people agree because they’re grossed out by it and don’t want to be seen as some sort of pervert or degenerate for defending animal pornography. Since the law is already in place, the next move is to start blocking other types of pornography. It’s now too late for anyone to step up and try to stop censorship of pornography because, back in the beginning, everyone was afraid to defend child pornography censorship because it’s one of the most vile things on the planet.

Next comes the pornography used with what could be those forced into the sex trade. Then, gay and interracial pornography and on and on. After all the porn is blocked, including written porn, the blocklist can be moved to anything else the government would want removed or censored. This includes free speech, satire, government criticism, religious criticism, and anything else that the current government doesn’t like. It may appear to be a slippery slope analogy, but given the fact that child pornography is already blocked in Finland and they want to take two further steps, it is no longer just a logical fallacy. It is reality.

As with any blocklist, it can be circumvented. The simplest methods would be to use TOR or a VPN or a combination of both. It would be better if the Finnish government simply allowed people to opt in to such a blocklist. Blocklists will never solve the problem of child pornography. It just makes them hidden so that people do not have to think about it and pretend that it doesn’t exist.

Image source.

This article originally appeared at The Daily Censored.

Last week, numerous news reports stated that the TSA was pulling its controversial full body scanners. Many people assumed this meant they were going to be removed completely. This is not what is happening. The TSA actually stated in October 2012 that they would only be removing the backscatter scanners and not the millimeter wave scanners. Their contract with Rapiscan, the makers of the highly controversial backscatter scanners, was expiring and they were not going to renew it. Instead, they are going to heavily invest in the millimeter wave scanners because they, supposedly, have better privacy software.

At this point, all Millimeter wave units have been equipped with ATR, but even with the extension to 2013, Rapiscan was unable to fulfill their end of the contract and create the ATR software that would work with backscatter units. As a result, TSA terminated the contract with Rapiscan in order to comply with the congressional mandate.

All Rapiscan AIT units currently operational at checkpoints around the country, as well as those stored at the TSA Logistics Center, will be removed by Rapiscan at their expense and stored until they can be redeployed to other mission priorities within the government. Most of the backscatter units being removed will be replaced with millimeter wave units. The millimeter units will be moved from the inventory currently deployed at other airports and from an upcoming purchase of additional millimeter wave units.

The TSA says that passengers should see only millimeter wave scanners by June 2013.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

With the removal of the Rapiscan backscatter scanners, we will never know exactly what the health risks were to individuals who used them. The government stonewalled the public for years, dismissing any concerns out of hand.

The fact is, the full body scanners were more of a money-making scheme for former Washington officials than anything else. It is well known that former DHS chief, Michael Chertoff, made millions off the Rapiscan scanners. Former US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, also profited by having clients in his lobbying and consultancy firm that sold their software and equipment to the federal government. They were never about passenger health, safety, security, or protecting anyone’s privacy.

Apparently, the primary screening method of using metal detectors is good enough for pilots, flight attendants, military personnel, diplomats, and airport workers isn’t good enough for the general public. Until the government actually performs independent testing on the scanners, it doesn’t matter if they are backscatter or millimeter wave, they are a risk to your health and an invasion to your privacy.

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This article originally appeared at The Daily Censored.