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Posts Tagged ‘freedom of speech’

Why We Show Your IP Address

October 13th, 2010 3 comments

If you are like some of our readers, you may have been wondering why we show your IP address in the control bar on the website. Some of our readers feel their privacy is being violated by this. On the contrary, it is intended to assist them in preserving their privacy. Here’s why.

Widespread Monitoring Of Your Computer Usage

Every time you use your computer to access a web site, there are several, likely even dozens, of pieces of software running on computers spread across the Internet that log bits and pieces of information about you. Such information typically includes your IP address as the unifying element to glue it all together. Other bits of information include the web browser your are using, the operating system your computer is running, web sites you visit, comments you post, email addresses you use, and questions you answer in surveys of demographic information that may not seem at first glance to be related to your web browsing at all. They might be software registrations, surveys for “free coupons”, “free email newsletters”, or something else. Your IP address can be used to tie it all together, to track your “Internet identity” and the usage of the Internet associated with it. Such information is being collected about you all the time. Every day, it is bought and sold routinely as a matter of regular business practice by many of the top brand names in the Internet world.

Have you installed any of those popular browser toolbars from Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft? Such software can log similar information about your usage, too. So can Flash, Java, and other apps that are common on many popular websites.

Your Internet Service Provider (Cox, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc.) probably logs a substantial amount of this type of information and retains it for multiple years. Some countries actually have laws requiring this. Even if they don’t, the ISP and hosting providers for any websites you visit log and save similar information for years, too. Your web browser also retains such information, too, and it will persist for months or years unless you take steps to erase it. Even if the company, organization, or people running the website you are visiting go to great effort to discard that information, virtually nobody else is going to do likewise. Like it or not, you are creating a great big trail that others can use to find and track you, be it for reasonable or very hostile purposes. Your IP address is often the single most important piece of information typically used to glue together the bits and pieces of your Internet trail into a cohesive whole that somebody can portray as representing you, rightly or wrongly.

Why We Show Your IP Address

We show you your IP address for two primary reasons:
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Tamworth, NH Shows Why You Should Stay Anonymous

July 13th, 2010 3 comments

Tamworth, New Hampshire, resident Scott Finman was upset with a local law banning citizens from carrying guns on town property. In the “Live Free or Die” state, it was an offensive law. Rather than just being upset, he took action. He blogged against the firearm restrictions that violated New Hampshire state law. He even drew cartoons and posted them on the Live Free and Comply website to poke fun at the illegal law at the tyrannical behaviors of the town government. The town’s volunteer firefighters and other residents joined him in his criticisms.

This was too much for town tyrants John Roberts, Willie Farnum, and Cassandra Pearce to tolerate. Recently, the Tamworth Selectmen (the local government council) decided to get even with Finman. They reassessed his home for $4 million and issued him a $70,000 tax bill, reasoning that since he didn’t let an assessor enter the home to inspect it that they could apply whatever valuation they wanted. This is at least the second time this year they have reassessed a property to punish a critical local resident. They did this earlier to former Selectman Tom Abugelis for writing a letter-to-the-editor criticizing the attitudes and actions of the town government.
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Crimes Against Children: “Zero Tolerance” and “Kids for Cash”

October 29th, 2009 No comments

Our nation’s children are no longer safe in their homes, schools, or anywhere they go. Far too often, the threat is not from traditional miscreants such as school bullies, class-cutters, and neighborhood drug-dealers but rather from the adults entrusted with the care of our children. Intolerant and extremist teachers, school administrators, police officers, district attorneys, and judges are a serious and growing threat to our children. They believe that children who make a minor mistake or dare to express an opinion or personal preference that is not in compliance with government thought control and anti-free-speech policies should be treated like felons. Even having to attend to basic bodily functions like using the bathroom and eating in schools controlled by these extremists can be a threat to the safety of our children.

Our friendly faced jackbooted government goons have made up euphemisms for their agendas. Given their limited intelligence, their choice phrases must be succinct.

“Zero tolerance” is one catch-phrase invented by “safety minded” school employees. No tolerance for dissent, suppression of individuality, banning freedom of speech, enforcement of dogmatic thinking, and criminalization of opinions that are counter to the teachers unions is what it objectively means. Coming from a more sensible age in which I could chose the color of my clothes and a pocket knife was not a weapon of mass destruction but rather a basic tool that many kids carried to school, it seems to me that kids today should be raising civil disobedience groups and learning guerrilla warfare tactics after they have been exposed to this extremism. But oddly it seems to be gradually zapping many of them into mind-numbed drones. Or maybe they are too busy playing Grand Theft Auto and Halo to know that sometimes criminals and conflicts are real.

“Kids for Cash” is another catch-phrase invented by somebody in the government, quite possibly by thousands of them at about the same time. They realized that when they see smiling little kids, they think of $$$ MONEY $$$ in their pockets, so it was a natural expression of their intent to use other people’s children for their own economic security. Although it’s not clear which government agency invented it first, many of them, from the courts to “CPS” to schools, are living by it. Seldom is anything done to distract the government from viewing our children as money sources and pawns for profit except in the most bizarre and extreme cases that even the goons are embarrassed by it. I suspect when something is done to temporarily divert the greedy goons from monetizing our children, it is only because these extreme examples are getting so far out there that it’s amazing that parents and grandparents who love their young ones are not storming courthouses with automatic weapons to protect their offspring from true evil. You’ll see some of these cases below.

Teacher Will Kick In Your Face If You Use the Potty!

If you’re a kindergartener in Miami, Florida, and go the the bathroom without permission, you might get your face kicked in by your teacher.

(from From Sex to Assault: What’s Up With America’s Teachers? Teachers Busted for Kicking Students, Showing Up Drunk, Having Affairs With Pupils)

For a 5-year-old Miami student who came home from school with a cut lip from being kicked in the face, the bully wasn’t a playground menace — it was, she alleges, her teacher.

The preschooler’s offense? Using the restroom without permission during naptime.

Miami police arrested Head Start teacher Jean Dorvil, 56, on child abuse charges. Miami-Dade Schools Police Sgt. Ivan Silva told ABCNews.com that detectives found during the course of their investigation that Dorvil had allegedly kicked two other students during the school year.


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Sotomayor Nomination Focus on Abortion Rights is Misguided

May 29th, 2009 No comments

Mainstream media and political pundits are winding up their broken record players to interrogate Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with the inevitable and unending question: “What are your views on abortion?”

It’s time to get off this broken-down bandwagon. Her views on rights of due process, parental rights, 2nd amendment gun rights, freedom of speech, illegal government law enforcement tactics, and many other civil rights issues are far more pressing than her views on abortions. Yet abortion questions seem to be the the majority of the discussion on her qualifications for a seat on the US Supreme Court.
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