About Debra Medina
Ms. Debra Medina is a recent Republican Gubernatorial candidate and founder of We Texans. We Texans is chartered as a non-profit, non-partisan organization promoting public policy and legislation that advances and protects private property, personal and economic liberty, and the legitimate role of the states and their citizens within the framework of constitutional government. We Texans, through education and activism, engages in research and analysis and strives to return accountability and freedom-minded principles, in accordance with the Texas and U.S. Constitutions, to the Texas legislature and her citizenry.

Ms. Medina is a registered nurse and founder and CEO of Prudentia, a medical consulting firm.  Ms. Medina has been heavily involved in politics for over twenty years.  Ms. Medina was the Wharton County Republican Party Chair. www.wetexans.com

About John Baeza
Mr. John Baeza is an Assistant State Coordinator with the Florida Campaign for Liberty.  Mr. Baeza  educated himself about the Constitution, has developed a Constitution course for the Florida Campaign for Liberty, teaches that course and also gives presentations about the Federal Reserve.

Mr. Baeza is a retired NYPD Detective where he worked undercover narcotics with the NYPD before spending the last six years in the Special Victims Squad investigating sex crimes, child abuse, serial rapes and sexual homicides. Mr. Baeza’s success in sex crime investigations resulted in a method of determining truthfulness of alleged assault victims, perpetrators and witnesses named after him: the “Baeza False Report Index” (BAFRI).  http://twitter.com/johnbaeza

About Bill Tofte

Mr. Bill Tofte is the former Chair of HALC and, along with his brother Mike, operates ITD Precision, founded in 1946 by Bill and Mike’s father.  ITD Precision is a metal stamping, heat treating, E-coating and insert molding company that has been in continuous operation for 64 years and specializes in high-quality metal stamping. Automotive, electronic, oil field, construction, power transmission, electric and appliance companies find that ITD fits their special requirements for quality, delivery, and price.  ITD Precision has an office in Houston, near US 290 and Telge Road and an office in Harlingen, Texas. www.itdprecision.com

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Help Stop Virtual Strip-search Legislation

Oh yes, those legislative busybody scanners are at it again, mandating that full body imaging x-ray devices be installed in every airport in the nation by 2013, under the illusory premise of increasing safety.

This is another unconstitutional tactic that Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to, but that doesn’t bother Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) who introduced S. 3536, the Securing Aircraft From Explosives Responsibly: Advanced Imaging Recognition Act of 2010, (SAFER AIR Act). “To enhance aviation security and protect personal privacy, and for other purposes,” is the leading line of the SAFE AIR bill text.

The goal of the bill must be “for other purposes,” because there will be no personal privacy when more and more travelers, both adults and children, are singled out for an extra security check that is in reality a revealing sneak peek at their anatomy, minus their clothes. Spending millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on more machines will do little to “enhance aviation security,” either, as it as already been established that the Detroit bomber’s explosives would not have been detected by such a machine, and even firecrackers have been missed.

The facts remain the same: Having a complete stranger view your almost-naked body is a violation of your privacy and civil rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Adult and child images have been saved on these machines, even though DHS policy already forbids such practices. A weak reiteration of this policy in new legislation will have zero effect in curbing existing abuses and securing these images that are recorded and stored in the machines — machines that also have the ability to transfer those images at the click of a button. And transfer them they will, between themselves, as it says in the text of the bill:

“An image produced using advanced imaging technology that shows personal or nonstandardized images shall be transferred using a secure connection to a location that enables an employee of the Department of Homeland Security to view the image without risking the exposure of the image to the public.”

There is also the question of health concerns over the radiation exposure, especially for frequent fliers, or anyone with medical problems, prostheses, etc.

Oh sure, the bill contains pathetic attempts to include privacy clauses. One section forbids TSA personnel from having cameras near the machinery, but they really wouldn’t need this precaution because apparently the screeners are adept at saving and transferring nude images generated by these devices, having practiced on 35,000 of them already. Passengers specially picked for extra attention can always opt out of the machine scanning and instead choose the ever popular personal groping session by a person of the same sex, if one is available.

Best thing to do with this legislation is contact your senators and tell them to throw out S. 3536 when it comes before them for the sake of real privacy, health, safety, and freedom.

Currently S. 3536 sits in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. Urging the committee members to drop the legislation now would save a lot of time and trouble down the road.

Thanks,

Your friends at The John Birch Society

Radical environmentalists and Big Government Politicians are joining forces to jam through the radical Cap and Tax scheme, with a vote possibly as soon as September.

Campaign for Liberty needs your help if we are to defeat this tax-increasing, freedom-stealing legislation.

Campaign for Liberty President John Tate and I have prepared an urgent audio update on how C4L plans to defeat this Big Government power grab.

Please take a moment to read John’s email below and then listen to this crucial message.In Liberty,

In Liberty,
Congressman Ron Paul

————————————————————————————————-

August 24, 2010

Dear Reader,

Congressman Ron Paul and I have prepared an urgent message for you regarding the Cap and Tax Scheme.

You see, Big Government politicians know that freedom-loving Americans are furious.

They realize they are facing a bloodbath at the polls in November, so they are preparing a desperate push to jam Cap and Tax through the Senate, with a vote possibly as soon as September.

Please take a few minutes to listen to this urgent message. Despite what you may have heard in the press, Cap and Tax is far from dead, and we must keep the heat on the Senate to make sure we win this fight.

For Liberty,
John Tate
President

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September 3, 2010

Dear  Friend,

I have some important information and some really great news to share with you.  I hope that after reading this update that you will consider giving to WeTexans.   We are going full speed ahead with the agenda we all had during the primary – we “lost a battle” but we have not “lost the War” – not by a long shot. This is evidenced by calls from folks who are willing to do TV commercials with us (you will be surprised!), and calls from other campaigns and/or their supporter or staff wanting our endorsement.  It is also evidenced by the fact that so many legislators are willing to visit with me about our property tax agenda.  I have been surprised and pleased at the responses I have been getting.  However, we all know that elected officials can’t always be trusted to do what they say they will do, so I keep beating the pavement, knowing you’ve got my back! Thank You!

I continue to travel across the state carrying our message. As you know gas and other travel incidentals are expensive these days so please, if you still consider our work worthwhile, consider giving anything you can.  $5.00 helps more than you know.  And my thanks to all of you who have been so generous in the past!

I was also surprised to learn that I had been named as one of the Top Influential Texans by www.politicsmagazine.com.  Although I was pretty far down on the list I did make it.  When I saw my name I thought that should really say WeTexans instead.  I was thinking that this time last year almost no one knew me, the WeTexans slogan or anything about us and our liberty movement.  So we have come quite a ways in 12 months time – from an unknown grass roots movement to being sought out by legislators, the media, and having been designated as “influential”!

Endorsing a gubernatorial candidate

In every interview since the Texas governor’s primary race, there has been that looming large question, “Who are you going to endorse for Texas governor?”

A comment on a recently published article speculated I was “going to fold like a cheap bedspread and endorse Rick Perry”.  If I was a regular politician, just looking to move up in popularity, playing the game business-as-usual; it would sure be the politically correct thing to do.

But I’m not that person and this is not a game. For We Texans and for me, public policy and politics are very personal.  I have looked into the faces of people who have lost their homes, businesses and children because we haven’t been good stewards of freedom in Texas. I’ve committed to stand by your side and defend life, liberty and property.  And I’ve promised to do that until I draw my dying breath.

The establishment elite expected, when the primary was over and the dust settled, that we would all high-five and play Texas Team GOP.   Many continue to complain that I have not given a concession speech.  Political contests are called campaigns because they are military in nature.  These battles are not athletic competitions and they are not games.  I’ve aknowledged defeat in the primary, but I will not endorse a victor who fails to protect life, liberty and property.

The isses we fought for have not gone away nor have they been resolved. We lost one race but the fight for freedom is not one that we will concede just for political correctness. I realize, of course, that the endorsement of Debra Medina is not the important issue here, it is your vote that the establishment is looking for.  I won’t sell myself out and I won’t sell you out.

Rest assured that I am looking for every opportunity to individually support like-minded candidates and elected officials who join in the cause of freedom as evidenced by their actions.

One final thought: I believe that our proclivity to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils has done nothing but facilitate the growth of bigger government in our courthouses, in Austin and in Washington D.C..

Consequently, I will refuse to vote in those races where the balloted candidates have failed to demonstrate that they will uphold their oath of office and, first and foremost, protect life, liberty and property.  I hope you will consider doing the same.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m delighted to share with you some REALLY GOOD NEWS!

We are a just few short weeks away from submitting a proposal for draft legislation to the Texas Legislative Council for the elimination of property tax in Texas. A second proposal will address plans for allowing local government revenue to be obtained from a broader based sales/consumption tax.  Together these two bills will go a long way to restoring the essential element of freedom:private property ownership.  We have several state representatives who have offered to take our plans to both the Legislative Council and the Legislative Budget Board.  We’re working hard to make sure the “i’s” are dotted and the “t’s” are crossed before January.

We are also working very diligently on another piece of legislation which is designed to protect Texas and Texans in the face of unstable currency markets and U.S. dollar value.  I have been shocked to see the amount of support that this is getting from elected officials here in Texas as well as in other states.  Rest assured I will be sharing these ideas this weekend as I visit with state sovereignty experts from around the country at the Nullify Now conference in Ft. Worth.

I am very optimistic that we can advance these ideas if we will continue to stand together and push hard.  In our war against property taxes, we must wake more people up to the realization that if your property can be taken, you aren’t free in Texas. So, we are going to be airing television commercials with some pretty heavy hitting Texas celebrities. We finished filming the first one this past weekend, and I think you’ll be very excited to see the bipartisan support.

Your boots on the ground and your donations to We Texans go directly to the support of this vital work.  If you’d like to specifically sponsor television ads simply enclose a note with any contribution you make putting “commercials” in the memo line.

Who will win the war on property taxes in Texas? We can. We will. We Texans!

Ubi libertas habitat. Ubi nostra patria est
(Where liberty dwells, there is our country.)

Debra Medina,
Chairman

P.S. The greater our numbers, the more we will be heard in Austin. Spread the word!

Note: WeTexans is a non-profit organization and is precluded from endorsing any candidate.  Questions about endorsements are directed to me as an individual.

By: Allen Darman

http://nutrientscure.wordpress.com

Introduction

Alternative medicine clearly has won the battle of truth about healing on the Internet during the past ten years.

So much has changed regarding alternative medicine on the Internet in the past decade. Its presence has exploded exponentially. And so has its depth of healing knowledge. (It has found many cures, when none existed before.)

Alternative medicine has “trumped” conventional drug-oriented medicine in the past decade, as far as the truth is concerned. If you perform a “simple linking search” on the Internet typing in whatever illness you may have, and precede it with the words “alternative medicine” or “integrative medicine” (without the quote marks), and then compare what you find to what conventional medicine has to offer for the very same illness, the aforementioned fact will often be clear.

Does this mean that alternative medicine is going to replace conventional drug-oriented medicine in a very big way, as it justifiably should?

Not necessarily.

It is up to the law.

Alternative vs. Governmental Medicine

Federal law in America favors ONLY conventional drug-oriented medicine at this point. (“Governmental medicine” is the appropriate term for the latter. Governmental medicine and conventional drug-oriented are synonymous, for the former mandates the latter.) 

Federal law does so with its ridiculous FDA mandate that states “ONLY A DRUG can prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure ALL disease”. (Based on reality, this is nuts!)

In taking the above position, federal law is also mandating the reverse; NO NUTRIENT, NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENT, ***OR*** NATURAL MEASURE is allowed to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure ANY disease”. (Based on reality, this is nuts!)

Why does our government mandate drugs to heal, and bar nutrients, nutritional supplements, and other natural measures from healing?

In mandating drugs, federal law provides for greater drug company sales and profits, at the expense of the public’s health. (This is nuts!)

Federal law also provides close to 100,000 substantial, and fraudulently achieved, incomes. These are the incomes that drug-prescribing medical doctors make. (How many M.Ds are there? It has to be 80,000 plus, and growing, I think.)

This “opposite the truth” state of medicine is the result of corporate bribery of medical schools, corporate bribery of doctors, and corporate bribery of the law.

Many hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake here on an annual basis. And trillions of dollars over time.

There is a reason that there are 17,000 lobbyists pushing a myriad of corporate agendas in Washington, D.C. This reason is that when money buys the law, it makes corporations (and the people that own and run them) wealthier.

Of these 17,000 lobbyists, Big Pharma (the drug companies), Big Healthcare (the hospitals), Big Medicine (the doctors), and Big Health Insurance (the health insurance industry) are very well represented. Thousands of lobbyists work for these industries to bribe lawmakers, and to otherwise influence the law. (Each year these industries are spending more than they did on lobbying the year before.)

America spent 2.9 trillion dollars on healthcare as a whole in 2009, almost a fifth of our GDP (gross domestic product). No other country spends nearly as much. (It is as if “we are the sickest nation on earth”. Indeed, we are.)

This overall cost, and this ratio to GDP, would both be getting worse even if Obama’s folly in the spring of 2010 did NOT pass (health care costs have been rising more than the GDP percentage-wise for decades). Obama mandating another thirty million or so conventional health care customers via “health care reform” will push medical costs to the point that they are going to bankrupt the United States. (Many economists feel this way. I suggest the reader join the 743,000 or so persons that have watched the YouTube movie “Meltup” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb1n1X0Oqdw, and watch other videos on YouTube regarding America’s impending fiscal collapse as well.)

For this 2.9 trillion on healthcare that we spent in 2009, one in six children is now considered to be “learning disabled.” Obesity rates, cancer rates, mental illness rates, addiction rates, and physically disabled rates have all continued to increase dramatically for decades with no end in sight. New illnesses are being born that did not exist in the first half of the last century such as fibromyalgia, acid reflux disease, P.A.D. (peripheral artery disease), social anxiety disease, rampant obesity, rampant diabetes, and rampant high cholesterol. The rate of autism “has gone through the roof”. And NO cures are being found. (Only newer and more expensive drugs are being found, many of which perform no better that the out-of-patent ones that they replace.)

We, as the public, have gotten nothing for our money when it is spent on drug-mandated medicine. Drugs only “mask” (hide) one’s symptoms, while always increasing the toxic load on the body. Nutrients, nutritional supplements, and other natural measures, which can actually CURE many illnesses (physical, degenerative, and mental), are not legally allowed to do so. (This latter situation is absolutely nuts!)

What about choice? Freedom means choice. If I had to choose, I would choose that all my health care dollars be spent on alternative medical truth, and none of them would be spent on fraudulent doctors and toxic drugs. Unfortunately, Obama’s mandate of conventional medicine substantially took away our (the public’s) freedom of choice healthcare-wise, by burdening all of us individually with conventional medical costs.

Four separate times in 2010 bills were introduced at the Federal level that attempted to restrict the public’s access to nutritional supplements, affected their available potency, or unnecessarily burden the supplement industry in some way. (This is corporate bribery at work, for nutritional supplements solidly threaten entire classes of drugs.)

Currently there is a law (S. 510) working its way through the U.S. Senate that is, or can easily become, unduly restrictive of the production, growing, and/or sale of food. See http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/s-510-is-hissing-in-the-grass/#more-1828 for more on this. (Some portions of this proposed law are nuts!)

What The Heck Is Going On?

We are being pushed, if not often forced, to take a myriad of toxic vaccine shots from cradle to grave. (This is nuts!)

We are being over-prescribed antibiotics, which mess up gut floral health. (Gut floral health is critical to optimal human health… period.)

Our doctors are making us sicker. (This is nuts!) Big Pharma intent underlies this. (They are using their control over our government, control over medical schools, control over doctors, and fraudulent medical science to increase their customer base.)

Big Pharma and medical researchers are caught in lie after lie, and fraud after fraud. The fines they get for doing so are either non-existent or “peanuts” (in relation to their profits).

Over the years millions have died unnecessarily. (Perhaps as many as 200,000 people die each year as a result of taking doctor-prescribed or over-the-counter drugs.)

Despite all of the above, our government is STILL mandating drugs that do not cure, and disallowing nutrients that do. (Our government is clearly mandating lack of choice here.)

Our government is STILL promoting processed, irradiated, sterilized, GMO, and/or “dead” food. If S. 510 passes things will get much worse. (S. 510 is another bill that is taking away public choice.)

Our government allows us to be brainwashed by a deluge of drug company and food company ads on TV. (Incidentally, almost no other country allows direct drug ads to the consumer like we do. I for one see a great need to legally ban ALL direct-to-the-consumer drug ads.)

We are also being forced by law to be poisoned with chloride and fluoride in our water supply, with no warning of their intake dangers by any branch of our government via TV (the most efficient medium to reach the general public).

Even our drinking water reflects lack of choice, especially where fluoride is concerned.

Isn’t our government supposed to act in the best interests of the people?

I think the American public would choose to be healthy, happy, productive, and economically competitive in the world marketplace vs. unhealthy, unhappy, disabled, and bankrupt as a country.

If the American public is unable to make the above choice now, perhaps when things get worse economically the right choice will become clearer.

It should be clear to all that economic health, public health, academic achievement, and our national security are all intertwined.

One cannot have a secure nation without economic and public health, no matter how much is spent on wars overseas or on national defense.

One cannot have a high rate of academic achievement without a high rate of public health. (Spending over a half a billion dollars on a high school in LA will not help academic achievement if its pupils are eating candy bars and pizza for lunch along with a soda pop, and then taking an antidepressant, ADHD, or other psychotropic drug.)

Basic common sense applies here. One cannot have a high rate of public or economic health if much of our nation is regularly taking toxic, symptom masking drugs, while eating a diet of processed and/or junk foods at the same time. And spending a trillion or two on never ending wars is not going to help our national security if a large (and growing) portion of American youth are obese, mineral (or other essential nutrient) deficient, overly toxic, health compromised, disabled, addicted, or mentally ill.

It Is Time For Change

Governmental medicine needs to go the way of the dinosaur. It is both fraudulent and obsolete. It is bankrupting this country economically, as well as bankrupting the public health.

Governmental medicine is only benefiting one group of people; those that are becoming richer due to it.

President Obama… you were right about one thing. It is time for change.

It is time for you to change.

It is time for you, ALL career politicians on “the corporate take”, and ALL career politicians unaware of the enormous fraud of drug-mandated medicine, to be changed “out of office” via the vote when up for election.

It is time for our government policies to change, such that they do not favor the corporations over the people, and such that they cannot ever do so in the future.

And it is time for our highly touted democratic system to change. Any system of government that allows corporate lobbyists, and corporate influence, to dictate the course of law is inherently flawed. Such a system of government fosters rampant political corruption. Rampant political corruption sounds an inevitable death knell for the country being governed.

We need to amend our Constitution such that it locks out corporate influence of government, rather than allows and promotes it, as it clearly does now.

On another front… when our government can collude with corporate interests to suppress the truth that a car can run USING WATER in its fuel tank for its ONLY FUEL, AND can run with almost twice the mileage using some water split into hydrogen and oxygen as an additional fuel (to gas or diesel fuel), while starting a war over the control of oil (Iraq), something is seriously wrong with it. (See the “The Water Powered Car” at http://nutrientscure.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-water-powered-car/ or http://www.waterfuelcell.org/ for more on this.)

Things sure do need to change.

November is coming. Other than Ron and Rand Paul, and a few other possible exceptions such as Senator Grassley, we need to vote all the bums out. (Any legislator that did not scream “bloody murder” when the Supreme Court ruled this winter that corporations can donate any amount to any candidate they desire to during the elective process ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO GO.)

Conclusion

The sad truth here is that drug-oriented medicine is the biggest hoax in history bar none. No other hoax is even close in magnitude. (What Bernie Madoff did on Wall Street is “very small potatoes” compared to the fraud of modern medicine.) And due to government mandate this hoax continues to thrive; while stripping America of both its economic and public health.

America needs to decide, and decide very soon, whether it is going to let itself be enslaved by the corporations, or whether we will rise up and take our freedom back.

We need to do this before anti-supplement, anti-healthy food, and anti-freedom of speech laws are passed. If such laws are passed the job of reversing the corporate takeover of our government and our healthcare system will be considerably harder.

We also need to do this before national bankruptcy, hyperinflation, public panic, and corporate controlled martial law take over. When these things happen, change may simply be “too late”. (I strongly suggest that the reader take a long look at the website http://www.thefallofamerica.net/ and watch the free movie trailer there.)

Incidentally, now that we know that alternative medicine is better than drug-mandated governmental medicine, which is better in regard to the next choice before us? Which is better… “alternative medicine as practiced by an alternative doctor”… or “alternative medicine primarily self-applied”? The answer to this question is interesting. It may surprise you. This is going to be a blog for another day.

Allen Darman

http://nutrientscure.wordpress.com

Note: Any portion of this blog, or this blog in its entirety, can be used, copied, reprinted, or reposted anywhere on the Internet by any person or party that desires. This material is not copyrighted in any way.

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Related reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine

http://douglassreport.com/recommended-reading/
http://hubpages.com/hub/Alternative-Medicine-versus-Western-Medicine-Finding-Balance
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/modern-medicine-versus-nature.html

By Chris Moran
Houston Chronicle

Harris County clerk is urging public to cast ballots early

A fire that destroyed nearly all Harris County’s electronic voting machines Friday has election officials scrambling to re-equip the county for an election in which early voting starts in just 51 days.

Even before the pre-dawn fire was out, County Clerk Beverly Kaufman pledged to hold a “timely election” on Nov. 2 but suggested the county may have to run fewer than its planned 739 Election Day polling stations if it cannot find enough machines.

Because she does not know how many machines will be available for each polling location, Kaufman started appealing almost immediately to voters to cast their ballots early to help avoid long lines on Election Day.

Early voting begins Oct. 18.

Harris County, with 1.9 million registered voters who account for nearly 15 percent of the state’s electorate, must start from scratch to rebuild an elections infrastructure just over two months before a gubernatorial election.

“There is no doubt in my mind that we’re going to have a timely election here and that we’re going to take care of the voters,” said Kaufman, who is retiring in December after 16 years as chief elections officer. “We have a huge obligation here.”

Continue reading story here

Related reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa111300b.htm
http://www.texaswatchdog.org/2010/08/threealarm-fire-destroys-nearly-all-of-harris-countys/1282942989.column
http://rangevoting.org/VotSystMap.html

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just decided that it was legal for the police to put a GPS tracking device on your car, sitting in your driveway, on your property. Here’s how to protect yourself.

Matt’s post about the decision explains in depth about the ruling. To quickly summarize, the supreme court had said before that police can look through things that anyone in the public could come across, meaning, your driveway is freely accessible to the public, hence, the cops can look through it. The 9th circuit court now says that cops can shove a GPS locator onto your car, because the area is publicly accessible and you have no reasonable expectation of privacy there. Then said cops can use the GPS track you. Without a warrant.

(Updated above text to improve clarity.)

How do you stop this without combing over the underside—or perhaps even inside—of your car and finding the GPS tracker? With technology.

Your first bet is probably to find out if someone is tracking you or not. You can turn here for cellphone and bug device detectors. But these aren’t 100%, so if you’re really paranoid and want to hide your location, you’ll want to just go ahead and stop the trackers anyway.

The first type is a GPS jammer, which is technically illegal to buy and use in the US, so keep that in mind. These types of GPS jammers plug into the cigarette lighter in your car, and will “prohibit GPS signal” up to 10 meters. Ten meters isn’t too far, but it isn’t super close either, so cars next to you might get some GPS interference as you drive down the road.

Update: Jammer Store tells us that the only model that stops all GPS transmission for the police—GPS L1, L2 and L5—is this model. The other GPS models, the cheaper ones, only stop GPS L1 and maybe L2, depending. But if you’re talking about stopping EVERY GPS transmission, you have to use the GJ6, which is $430.

This model is $33. There are handheld and higher-powered versions available for slightly more. Our friends at Brando have one too, for $50.

If you’re worried that someone is tracking your cellphone, there’s a signal blocking bag for about $10 that you can shove your device into when not in use.

You also have the cellphone-type trackers, which need to be stopped with a different device: a cellphone jammer. There are various portable versions, as well as ones that go into your car. These types of jammers are as illegal as the GPS ones, so again, know what you’re getting into.

Is it worth it to go to the potential legal troubles of owning and operating a GPS or cellphone jammer if you’re not doing anything wrong? That’s up to you to decide. But if you are doing something that you want to make sure the government doesn’t know about and they’re already surveilling you, it might already be too late to get one of these. [The Jammer Store]

Send an email to Jason Chen, the author of this post, at jchen@gizmodo.com.

It’s okay for the government to plant a GPS tracker on the car parked in your driveway, tracking everywhere you go. It doesn’t violate your rights, at all—according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, Arizona, Oregon and a bunch of the western US, has ruled that the government did nothing wrong when the DEA planted a GPS tracking device on Juan Pineda-Moreno’s Jeep, which was parked in his driveway—without a search warrant. The underpinning for the ruling is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your driveway—unless you’re loaded and it’s kept safe, hidden from the outside world by gates or other security measures—and you have no reasonable expectation not to be tracked by the government.

It’s the worst of all possible outcomes, our darkest nightmares about the increasingly mindful technology we put in our pockets come true—that technology being blithely turned against us by our government in a move that only be described as Orwellian, even if that goes the writerly instinct to avoid cliches. Because it’s not so much cliche as it is fact. That decision says it’s okay for the government to track our movements, everywhere we go, without so much as a scratched slip of paper, eliding all of the protections that are supposedly in place to prevent that kind of thing from happening.

The ‘slippery slope’ is typically deployed as a trope to argue against men marrying men sliding into a world where dudes do dogs, but if you squint, it’s not so hard to see how if it’s okay for the government to plant a GPS tracker on your vehicle in the night, without a warrant, it could progress to suddenly being okay to flip the switch on your phone, tracking everywhere it went—after all, if Google can know where you’re at, why can’t the government?

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals is the same court that ruled it was okay to search the contents of laptops without even a reasonable suspicion that you’re doing something illegal, arguing they’re just like any other dumb piece of luggage. Together these two rulings—along with every other boneheaded government utterance about technology, from copyright to broadband regulation—highlight how desperately we need smarter, more considerate laws, rules and regulations when it comes to how the government can use technology for and against the people.

Otherwise we’re screwed.

[Gizmodo]

Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.

A petition to ban red light cameras in Houston has been certified by the city secretary, making it all but certain that voters will decide in November whether the 70 devices at intersections across the city will be taken down.

“This is a great day for Houston,” said Michael Kubosh, one of three brothers that collected more than 20,000 signatures required to get the proposed charter amendment on the ballot in this election cycle. “People just need a right to vote, that’s all we’re saying. Now the citizens will have a chance to decide.”

Jim McGrath, a spokesman for Keep Houston Safe, a political action committee advocating the cameras, said the petition is illegal and represents an abuse of the city charter amendment process. He noted that Paul Kubosh, another brother behind the petition, is a lawyer who specializes in defending traffic ticket recipients and has a business interest in the outcome of the election.

“Mr. Kubosh has repeatedly stated that he went to his own clients to sign his petition, so no one should be surprised that a traffic ticket attorney and the clients he has defended are against holding red light runners accountable,” McGrath said. “We’ll see what the council has to say and we’ll abide by their decision.”

Keep Houston Safe is funded in part by American Traffic Solutions, Inc., the Arizona-based contractor that administers the red light camera program together with the Houston Police Department. An attorney representing the PAC has said it intends to challenge the validity of the ballot initiative in court.

City Council is scheduled to vote on the petition today and that vote cannot be delayed for a week as some items generally are at the discretion of individual council members, according to a memorandum City Attorney David Feldman sent council members Monday. He also advised them that it is their “mandatory ministerial duty” to order the charter amendment election.

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UPDATE:
8/25/10, 12:00 am
Media reports today noted that the petition drive by the Kubosh brothers and the citizen action group, Citizens Against Red Light Cameras, had indeed collected more than 30,000 signatures, the requisite number, of City of Houston resident signatures.  The signatures now need to verified by city personnel.  If the total amount of verified signatures meets the requirement, then a referendum item will be on the November ballot for the City of Houston.  This means that a vote for a ban on red light cameras within the City of Houston limits will appear on the City of Houston ballot for the November general election.

Related reading:

http://nocamerashouston.com/

http://www.houstonticketlawyer.com/red_light_cameras_houston.html

http://www.click2houston.com/automotive/10103894/detail.html

http://www.houstontx.gov/police/trafficsafety.htm

http://www.houstonredlightcamera.com/

http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/red-light-cameras/

http://www.chron.com/mm/ymap/lightcams/

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6237816.html (from Jan ’09)

http://offthekuff.com/wp/?p=30341

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=6152611 (from May ’08)

http://cliveredlightcamera.com/

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/32/3232.asp

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1773957/posts