In Illinois it is considered "eavesdropping" if all parties to a conversation do not agree to be recorded. Police have been charging people with eavesdropping for recording their interactions, in public, with police. The penalty for this can range from misdemeanor to class 1 felony, with maximum penalties up to 15 years in jail.

Check out http://www.c-drew.com/blog/comments-on-suntimes-article-creative-felony/ for some quite sobering information on the burgeoning police state.

I was driving thru a construction area, and an anal-retentive female trooper, who was obviously PO'ed, yelled at me thru my open window: "why is your sun visor down? you're not looking into the sun?" Well, the visor was down 'cause I had previously put it down to partially hide my face from coming traffic. 'cause er....'cause...I was picking my nose! Yeah! thats it! I had been picking my nose. :D Anyway, I almost responded to the cop "Well, I'm not driving up there!"...then I bit my lip; then I almost said "The UFO's are less distracting that way!"... then I thought better of it and just lifted the visor and drove on.

Which is easier, using a shovel on a large concentrated pile of sand, or picking up individual grains that have been dispersed by the wind?

The answer is obvious.

Consider the tragic treatment of the Deepwater Crime, err I mean Deepwater Horizon oil volcano. Since oil floats on water most of this catastrophe would naturally be in the top few inches of water. By adding poisonous "dispersants" we are magnifying the problem a few thousand-fold as now it affects the ENTIRE 5280 foot depth of the ocean in the area.

We have a choice:

Spread the disaster to the entire depth of the ocean by adding millions of gallons of poisonous dispersants, thus making the disaster so widespread and inaccessible that no devices can reach it and the entire ocean is affected.

Or,

Centralize the problem at the surface, where we can add relatively benign coagulants to keep the effects as small as possible, and use thousands of ships, along with people and machinery on the coast, to attempt to deal with the oil.

The answer appears to be obvious.

@Zero G: so, did you have to split your coke with him?

An officer a few years ago hit me with his car's search light as I was waiting for a bus..."come over here."

He started to question me and I replied as I've been taught, "Am I being detained, officer, or am I free to leave?"

I was informed that I had J-walked to the bus stop, and if I didn't want to be cited for that, I needed to answer his questions about cocaine distribution at a bar I'd never been in. I considered just taking the ticket and taking it up with the judge, but thought better of it. I had J-walked across an empty street at 10:00 PM, no cars in sight except for the patrol car, which had passed by and had to pull a U-turn to confront me.

The War on Some Drugs has lead to the Fourth Amendment being decimated, led to searches in schools and stop and frisk actions in some cities. The death toll rises in Mexico and now Jamaica.

The nexus between drugs and the intelligence services goes back, way way back,

My friend was stopped at a "safety" checkpoint by police. Nothing wrong with the car; nothing regarding impairment. The cop asked him, "Where are you coming from?" He pointed his thumb backward and said, "that way." Then the cop asked, "where are you going?" My friend pointed his finger forward and said, "that way." The cop said he wanted a serious answer, and my friend said, "I am serious." He was allowed to proceed.

"In democratic societies, citizens’ behavior is unduly restrained if they fear being watched at every turn."

--- Tim Berners-Lee et al.

But the problem, as Tim et al. point out, is that we can't keep out information from being collected -it's nearly impossible. What we CAN do is by controlling what is done with it. See:

http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2008/Talks/InfoAccountability-Weitzner-cens.ppt.pdf

re: #32: unfortunately, the legal precept of "en loco parentis", (which means, of course, 'your parents are crazy') gives school officials limited parental rights over students while at school or on school activity.

I'd like to see the school officials in this case get counter sued for invasion of privacy. Plain and simple, they had no legal reason to go through the phone after confiscating it. Too many school officials think they're running their own personal kingdom or dictatorship, and abuse the positions they hold. Why we allow them to act with such draconian principles is beyond me (wish principal and principle was spelled the same way, using a double meaning here would be cool).

N

Councils use anti-terror powers to check for dog collarsCouncils have used anti-terrorism laws to try to catch people donating goods outside charity shops and to make sure dogs are wearing collars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7753375/Councils...

Gives a new meaning for the word terrorist. It seems to me that it invalidates the whole "war on terror".