Tag Archives: privacy

Closing a Business is a Felony

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Justice James Clark McReynolds wrote 75 years ago, in a dissent from a Commerce Clause-impacting labor case, this in part:

We are told that Congress may protect the “stream of commerce….”  Therefore it is said he may be prevented from doing anything which may interfere with its flow.
…
May a mill owner be prohibited from closing his factory or discontinuing his business because so to do would stop the flow of products to and from his plant in interstate commerce?

Apparently he can, when the stream of commerce’s products include government’s ability to spy on its citizen employers.

Again, Progress

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EEOC v Freeman concerned an events company that used [criminal and credit] background checks in employment decisions between July 2006 and August 2011. The company had experienced problems with employee drug use, embezzlement, and workplace violence, and saw background checks as a legitimate way to screen applicants.

US District Judge Roger Titus scored the agency for…putting employers “in the ‘Hobson’s choice’ of ignoring criminal history and credit background, thus exposing themselves to potential liability for criminal and fraudulent acts committed by employees, on the one hand, or incurring the wrath of the EEOC for having utilized information deemed fundamental by most employers.”

And if that wasn’t a clear enough message, he continued: “Something more, far more, than what is relied upon by the EEOC in this case must be utilized to justify a disparate impact claim based upon criminal history and credit checks.  To require less, would be to condemn the use of common sense, and this is simply not what the discrimination laws of this country require.”

There’s more to this:

[T]he [EEOC] didn’t show that Freeman Co discriminated against black applicants by using criminal-background checks or credit checks in its hiring process.

Well, duh.  The judge went on:

The story of the present action has been that of a theory in search of facts to support it.  But there are simply no facts here to support [the EEOC’s claim that black applicants were improperly discriminated against].

Freeman has 4,100 full-time and 25,000 to 30,000 part-time employees; that part-time to full-time ratio is a potful of turnover—which puts a premium on those background checks.

Progress, indeed.

Another Reason to Shoot Down Drones

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Deer Trail, CO, is looking at passing an ordinance allowing its residents to shoot down drones.  It seems those good folks have a proper disdain for government fishing expeditions masquerading as “surveillance.”

But it’s not just the government that’s intruding objectionably.

When Tina Turner got married at her estate in Switzerland over the weekend, she wanted to keep paparazzi away.  But photographers used drones and other aircraft to get the exclusives they [wanted].

And [emphasis added]

Drones are gradually becoming established in Germany as a tool of photographers and television crews….  Drones are cheaper and quieter than helicopters and can be navigated unnoticed over gardens or in front of windows.

And

“They can be very helpful—it works well in the US,” says Heiko Schoenborn of the photo agency WENN.

Maybe Deer Trail should expand its target list.

Obamacare Hub and Privacy

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Courtesy of Senator Max Baucus (D, MT)—President Barack Obama isn’t the only politician appreciating the joys of greater flexibility after a last election—we get the following concerning Obamacare’s ability to pry into the private affairs of American citizens.

Baucus had asked HHS to provide “a complete list of agencies that will interact with the Federal Data Services Hub,” the agency of Obamacare that is responsible for determining eligibility, exemptions, grant sizes, and so on related to the delivery of Obamacare…services.

The Hub will, it turns out, draw from the Social Security Administration, the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Defense, and the Peace Corps and it will suck data from the states’ Medicaid databases.

That’s a broad reach of information feed to support determining who’s buying insurance and who needs to be finedtaxed or subsidized.

Here’s a subset of the personal, private information being collected by the Federal government on every individual American:

Social Security numbers, income, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, and enrollment status in other health plans….

Of course, the Feds aren’t going to actually store those data, or so they claim.  They’ll only “securely transmit” those data.

Sure.  Never mind that the Feds’ regulatory notice filed last winter was for

a new “system of records” that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the ObamaCare exchanges, as well as “tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources.”

They will also store data from businesses buying coverage through an exchange, including a “list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers,” and keep it all on file for 10 years.

All of those data listed above, plus a potful more, will be collected by the Hub.  And retained, apparently under the fiction that 10 years is just temporary storage solely for “secure transmission.”

And all of that temporarily stored information can be bruited about at will without so much as a fare-thee-well to the information’s owners—us private citizens.  The following can have our data without notice:

agency contractors, consultants, or grantees…need[ing] to have access to the records…as well as law enforcement officials….

Of course, it’s the Feds’ definition of “need,” not ours; it’s against the Feds’ evident lack of interest in safeguarding this information of ours that they’re collecting:

  • A [GAO] report found that weaknesses in IRS security systems “continue to jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the financial and sensitive taxpayer information.”
  • A separate Inspector General audit found that the IRS inadvertently disclosed information on thousands of taxpayers between 2009 and 2010.
  • In 2011, the Social Security Administration accidentally released names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of Americans.

Where’s the NSA when we need it?  Oh, wait….

A Whistleblower

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I offered this first as a comment to a Spiegel Online article.  Here it is with slight modifications to support its stand-alone status here.

Edward Snowden, of Verizon metadata and PRISM outing fame, thinks of himself as a whistleblower, and so do many who agree with him that the US’ PRISM program and its program for collecting metadata from cellphone providers are terribly wrong programs.

I agree that the programs are anathema to individual liberty.  However, the programs are legal under US law.  The only question here is whether the programs’ limits and checks are being honored–and that’s a matter of trust, since the programs and its procedures are secret.  That secrecy and the need for that blind trust in Government (not just the Obama administration, but any Government) form a large part of my dismay over the programs.

However, the programs’ legality mean Snowden cannot be a whistleblower; he’s simply a man who has illegally revealed classified data to the public.

What about civil disobedience, then?  Is he practicing this honorable means of protest of a government behavior to which he objects?

There are many legal avenues of calling legitimate attention to these flawed programs, including, for instance, any of the several formal whistleblower and Inspector General facilities to which he could have taken his case.  Given the damage already done by these programs (stipulating arguendo that damage to individual liberty has been done) any additional damage done through the delays of going through these legitimate programs would have been quite trivial.  Yet Snowden eschewed these programs and went directly public.  From within a foreign country.

Were this an act of civil disobedience, it would have had to satisfy two criteria: he would have had first to exhaust his legal remedies.  As I noted, he chose not to do so.

Secondly, he would have to have been willing to face the consequences of his actions.  It is, after all, those consequences and their absurdity in the face of the disobedience and the thing over which the disobedience is occurring that give force and credibility to the disobedience.  Snowden’s reason for being in Hong Kong, as stated by him, is to avoid facing those consequences.

If Snowden truly believes that what he has done is just, he must return to the US and face the outcomes of his actions in open court.  Let him make his case in front of the American people (where he’ll find no small measure of support) and convince our representatives in that court case–the jury of his peers–that his act was justified.

Of course he risks not being supported by our representatives, that jury, as there also are a large number of Americans who disagree with what he has done.

Snowden’s flight and so far refusal to return indicates he’s unwilling to take that risk, that he does not have the courage of his convictions.  In that case, Snowden did not commit an act of civil disobedience; he is simply a small man who is placing his ego above justice.