Who is Threatening American Democracy?

  This little story comes from a Swedish paper by way of one of my favorite sites, Watching America.

Who is Threatening
American Democracy?

By Andreas Gustavsson
Translated By Magnus Akesson
7 July 2008
Sweden - Kommentera - Original Article (Swedish)
Max Sanders, 19, just wanted to joke a bit when he posted a new “for sale” ad on eBay. There, he sold his vote in the coming American election. He wanted at least 10 dollars to vote according to the buyer's wish.
Now he is risking five years in prison. When attorneys in Minnesota heard about it in the bidding they invoked a 1983 law that makes it illegal to commoditize a vote.
"We are taking this very seriously. It is fundamentally wrong to sell your vote. People have died to defend this right. To then say 'I’m for sale' is shameful and wrong," a spokesman for the [Hennepin County] Attorney's Office stated.
True indeed, true indeed.
The bigger question is if the American Attorney's office is not trying to set an example with Sanders case. Wouldn’t it be better to save that energy to investigate how the American democracy is affected by powerful interests that spend an average of $16,279,069 (almost 100 million kroner) lobbying Congress every day they meet.

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Technorati Tags: America,Democracy,Max Sanders,elections

U.S. Military To Patrol The Internet

  Some of us already knew that this was coming, so we aren't a bit surprised at this latest development, what with the reading of our emails and the listening in on our phone chats, among other things.

  What is surprising about this development is that the Pentagon is going to contract this work out.

  What the contractor will do is to patrol the Internet looking of signs of an upcoming terrorist attack or some other kind of hostile web activity. This part of the deal is what has me concerned as our government can classify all sorts of activity as hostile. Free speech is one which comes to mind right off hand.

  U.P.I.

In a solicitation posted on the Web last week, the command said it was looking for a contractor to provide "Internet awareness services" to support "force protection" -- the term of art for the security of U.S. military installations and personnel.
"The purpose of the services will be to identify and assess stated and implied threat, antipathy, unrest and other contextual data relating to selected Internet domains," says the solicitation.

Hembrook was tight-lipped about the proposal. "The more we talk about it, the less effective it will be," he said. "If we didn't have to put it out in public (to make the contract award), we wouldn't have."

  Here comes the best part of this job.

The solicitation says the successful contractor will "analyze various Web pages, chat rooms, blogs and other Internet domains to aggregate and assess data of interest," adding, "The contractor will prioritize foreign-language domains that relate to specific areas of concern … (and) will also identify new Internet domains" that might relate to "specific local requirements" of the command.
Officials were keen to stress the contract covered only information that could be found by anyone with a computer and Internet connection.

   I seriously doubt that last comment.  I may just apply for the job myself since I spend time all over the Internet. Wonder if I could get the contract under a " no-bid " deal like the rest of Bush's cohorts?

Technorati Tags: Pentagon,Internet,U.S. Military,terrorist,4th Amendment