privacy

You remember the 2002 Tom Cruise film, Minority Report, right? In that movie, the government had a PreCrime Department that stopped crimes before they happened. Well, Department of Homeland Security currently has a program to do the same thing.

From Wired:

The [Department of Homeland Security] is already testing a program on select members of the public to determine if algorithms using these factors could indicate mal-intent, according to an internal document obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and passed to CNET.

...

FAST is designed to track and monitor body movements, voice-pitch and rhythm changes, eye movement, body heat, breathing patterns, blink rate and pupil variation.

The LA Times has an article about OnStar's new privacy policy changes. It seems that OnStar has updated their policy to allow them to sell your private data in a supposedly anonymized form.

But the kicker?

And according to the new policy, data will continue to be collected from a vehicle even if the owner no longer pays for an OnStar subscription.

You don't have an option to consent. If you buy a vehicle with OnStar, you are consenting to this unethical invasion of your privacy.

So what's new? Here's the video that was posted on Randy's Right:

So really, what's new?

In the case filed in the Southern District of Mississippi against the individual mandate, the plantiffs make a good case for how the individual mandate violates the privacy protections of individuals in the Constitution.  Most notable are paragraphs 70, 74, and 75.

70:

"...the compelled purchase of health insurance also constitutes the "taking" of private property under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  Requiring Plantiffs to devote a penalty or a percent of their personal income for a purpose which they otherwise would not voluntarily choose based on individual circumstances is an arbitrary and capricious "taking" of property."

74:

The Feds are still pushing for the clear legal ability to track your cell phone without a warrant.  Many people thought that, with the election of Barack Obama, that is issue would be over.  After all, it was supposedly struck from being explicit authorized by Bush's PATRIOT Act.

However, the Obama Administration takes the position that Americans have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in their whereabouts, and therefore warrantless tracking of American citizens subjects should be permitted.  U.S. Dept. of Justice lawyers contend that your rights, which should be protected by the Fourth Amendment, are not violated when a phone company reveals records of your whereabouts to the government at their warrantless request.