A Win for the Fourth Amendment. Meh.

Posted on by mrpikes

I’ve been yelling at the radio about this more loudly and more often recently, since the press coverage has increased in The Supremes’ current term.

The issue is whether or not it is constitutionally cool for law enforcement to attach a GPS device to a vehicle without a warrant and then surveil that vehicle indefinitely.

It seems like such a softball question. OF COURSE YOU NEED A FUCKING WARRANT! WHAT IN THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?

And this is how my mornings with the radio have gone.

Radio Personality: …argued that no warrant would have been required to follow Antoine Jones using human beings.

Me: 24 HOURS A DAY? FOR A MONTH? HOW MUCH WOULD THAT HAVE COST? AND JUSTIFIED ON WHAT BASIS?

Radio Personality: …arguing that, in instances where law enforcement did not have the requisite probable cause to get a warrant, the GPS surveillance could be used to help obtain that probable cause.

Me: THE SURVEILLANCE IS TO GET THE PROBABLE CAUSE? WHAT THE FUCK? ARE WE LIVING IN RAND MCNALLY, WHERE THEY WEAR HATS ON THEIR FEET AND HAMBURGERS EAT PEOPLE?

Radio Personality: …Dreeben, representing the Department of Justice, cited Katz, the ruling that people have no reasonable expectation to privacy on public roadways.

Me: BUT DUDE, IT’S MY CAR! YOU CAN’T JUST START ATTACHING SHIT TO MY CAR! DO I HAVE NO REASONABLE EXPECTATION THAT YOU WILL NOT ATTACH STUFF TO MY PANTS BECAUSE I BROUGHT THEM WITH ME INTO PUBLIC?

Radio Personality: No.

And so on.

Today, The Supremes ruled unanimously that the installation of GPS devices did, in fact, require a warrant (full opinion, PDF). And they did so in basically the narrowest, most tepid way possible. Justice Scalia, representing the majority, basically said that the act of trespass that occurs in the device’s installation constitutes a “search,” which is why it falls afoul of the Fourth Amendment.

If this ruling were an erection, Scalia would be saying, “This has never happened to me, baby. I guess I shouldn’t have eaten that second piece of pie.”

Justice Alito, in more tumescent counterpoint, wrote:

The court’s reasoning largely disregards what is really important (the use of a GPS for the purpose of long-term tracking) and instead attaches great significance to something that most would view as relatively minor (attaching to the bottom of a car a small, light object that does not interfere in any way with the car’s operation).

And I could not agree with Justice Alito more. While law enforcement attaching stuff to my car pisses me off, the physical surveillance mechanism is the least problematic part of the practice. Alito continues:

“…physical intrusion is now unnecessary to many forms of surveillance. With increasing regularity, the Government will be capable of duplicating the monitoring undertaken in this case by enlisting factory- or owner-installed vehicle tracking devices or GPS-enabled smartphones.

Per Justice Scalia, though, spectacularly and willfully kicking the can down the road, “The present case does not require us to answer that question.”

National Motto

Posted on by mrpikes

While I was yelling at the radio this morning, I heard a piece that NPR did on a non-binding resolution sponsored by House Representative Randy Forbes (Religion-VA), reaffirming “In God We Trust” as our national motto. Setting aside questions about this being the best use of the House’s time, this resolution is important because the last time that the motto was reaffirmed was in the Senate in 2006 (apparently mottos have low self-esteem and require frequent reaffirmation).

Forbes was quoted as stating:

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will have the same opportunity to reaffirm our national motto and directly confront a disturbing trend of inaccuracies and omissions, misunderstandings of church and state, rogue court challenges, and efforts to remove God from the public domain by unelected bureaucrats. As our nation faces challenging times, it is appropriate for Members of Congress and our nation – like our predecessors – to firmly declare our trust in God, believing that it will sustain us for generations to come.

Whew, well that should put the matter to rest.

One disturbing example that Representative Forbes cited was a speech President Obama delivered at the University of Indonesia in which he stated that our national motto was E Pluribus Unum, which set some sphincters a’twitching on Capitol Hill.

What got me cackling was that NPR closed the piece by stating that the national motto may be offensive to those who do not, in fact, trust in God. I’ve got to use that line. “It’s not that I don’t believe in God, I just don’t trust the bastard.”

Hotlinking

Posted on by mrpikes

For those not in the know, hotlinking is the act of displaying an image located on another web site by referring to it directly, as opposed to linking to the page on which it appears.

The upshot is that every time the hotlinked image is displayed on site A, it costs site B (the site hosting the image) the bandwidth required to serve it up. This is considered rude. Site B incurs a cost without receiving any benefit. The accepted alternative is to save a copy of the desired image and host it on one’s own site, or on one of numerous image hosting services. Not only is this polite, but it’s smarter, because when you hotlink to an image on someone else’s web server you don’t have control over it.

When John McCain was running for president, his campaign set up a MySpace page (remember MySpace?) using a common template. The template’s creator made it available for anyone who wanted to use it, but requested attribution and asked those who used it to host the associated images themselves. The McCain staffers did neither. The template’s creator responded by modifying one of the images that was being leeched from his own web server such that the following occurred:

John McCain

The McCain staffers saw the light and quickly corrected their faux pas.

I bring up hotlinking because a lot of my blog posts contain images that a lot of people find via Google Image Search. Then they hotlink to them. The pages on which they are displayed are frequently in forums and, given the highbrow nature of the images I post, you can only imagine the levels of erudition present in the forums’ discourse. For example:

http://www.last.fm/group/I+Hate+Metal+Maiden+Hell/forum/124912/_/531272

There are methods to block hotlinking, and some of those who engage in hotlinking subscribe to the viewpoint of, “If a site lets me hotlink to its images, that’s tantamount to an invitation.” Well, fuckers, you are no longer invited.

One has choices when blocking hotlink requests. One can simply forbid the request, which usually results in a broken image icon appearing on the target site. One can also redirect the request so that an alternate image is served up. Given the potential humor value of the latter, which method do you think I chose?

Some people select an image like this:

Hotlinking is Bad

Practical but boring.

Some serve up a transparent image that is very, very wide, which is designed to break the target site’s layout such that the left and right borders get blown out. I consider this somewhat malicious in that it punishes bystanders along with the culprit.

Being true to my nature, I decided to go with something offensive. My initial choice was this:

Jesus Says, Go Fuck Yourself

Then I was briefly taken with this:

Ponch

Then I considered taking the scattergun approach and offending everyone imaginable:

Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus

Then, after reading an informative essay by Ryan “pizza” Flynn on what to consider when coming up with an irritating, disturbing or offensive hotlink replacement image, I embraced one of Mr. Flynn’s offerings for my very own. I think it strikes a tasteful balance:

Gay Swastika

I am well aware that by serving up an alternate image, I am still incurring the bandwidth cost associated with that image. That’s okay. Ever since I set this up, several times each day I feel a little zing of pleasure out of nowhere that I can only imagine is my replacement image appearing somewhere unexpectedly. So either the tumor has grown beyond the point of “Are you sure you don’t smell burning plastic?” or my investment is paying dividends.

Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy

Posted on by mrpikes

Having addressed all other weighty matters of state, the Virginia legislature is considering HB 1452, which reads as follows:

No person shall display upon or equip any motor vehicle with any object or device that depicts, represents, or resembles human genitalia, regardless of size or scale.

The good news is that cloacas are still okay:

newt cloaca

The legislation was proposed specifically to criminalize Truck Nutz (marginally NSFW) and the like, because, according to the bill’s sponsor (Lionell Spruill, Sr.), a constituent complained to him that his young daughter saw such an accessory, asked him what it was, and he was flummoxed for a response (incidentally, the correct answer is, “That’s how you spot a redneck, sweetie.”).

No word yet on whether or not these will get a pass:

calvin ford

Intended Consequences

Posted on by mrpikes

Okay, so this jackass Jason Fortuny posed as a woman seeking BDSM sex on the Seattle Craig’s List personals. On his LiveJournal page he stated that he was conducting an experiment to see how many responses he could get in 24 hours. He got 178. The majority included images, which ranged in content from headshots to genitalia. He then posted the replies (NSFW) online.

That is, he posted the replies online, in their entirety, including e-mail addresses, IM handles and phone numbers.

Holy crap.

Now 178 people, none of whom did anything illegal, find that what was ostensibly personal correspondence is displayed for all the world to see. That’s just plain wrong.

Did some of these fellows demonstrate breathtaking ignorance by sending their replies from business or otherwise “non-throw-away” e-mail accounts, using their full names and images including their faces? Absolutely. Having read the responses, I can say with confidence that the reputations of future Nobel Prize winners remain intact.

So? Ignorance isn’t criminal (thank God). Otherwise we would just slap a lid over the United States and have done with it. That’s not the point. This was no “experiment.” It was a juvenile, malicious prank with no purpose other than to inflict harm, then chortle smugly at those exposed. Only a truly damaged person behaves like that.

Abraham Lincoln said:

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Jason Fortuny entrapped a bunch of guys looking for no-strings rough sex. His power came from offering something that these men wanted. He then used that power to burn them publicly, for no other reason than that he could.

I offer two things to consider:

  1. As my friend Gokmop has reminded me several times, do not put anything online (via web site, blog, forum, e-mail, whatever) that you don’t want made available and searchable, forever.
  2. I posted an article about instances where actions on the Internet cross over into Real Life™. Jason Fortuny may well experience the downside of that phenomenon.