With each new iteration of Facebook, most of us who value privacy recoil into yet another way they have devised to track you either by your own admission to where you are (the new GPS capability) or through your connectivity to your so-called “friends” on the site.
Now comes the news that in some states it is perfectly legal for “authorities” to slap a GPS device onto someone’s car sitting in their driveway without a search warrant.
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html#ixzz0xikN8v53
Now before you cringe, think of this. The government wants us to lose weight, right? You and I want to lose weight, right? Well, then, I want a GPS device on my refrigerator door. Whenever it moves, it activates a small screen in my kitchen and Michele Obama comes on to say: “Drop the door. Stand away from the refrigerator. Put your hands in the air. Now just what are you doing at the refrigerator”? Of course this will be a taped message from the fat free First Lady but the information will be recorded in the new Government Office for Human Consumption, created when an amendment to the new health care act was passed.
But my life is more controlled than that. I drive over to see my friend Mary at her house. The government office within Facebook already knows Mary is my friend. But if I drive to a different location, a screen pops up on my dashboard with Rahm Emanuel pointing his finger at my chest and saying: “This destination has not been approved by the White House Czar for Technological Travel and Virtual Vacations. Stop the engine. Stand away from the car. Explain yourself in 30 words or less in the comment field of your Blackberry White House Commandant Calling application.”
As you are completing this field, a pop up warning appears on the screen: “Your car is due for its 40,000 mile check. Please drive immediately to your repairman. The Office of the Czar for Community Scheduling will contact your grocer to let him know you will be late picking up your pre-ordered dinner. A copy of our notice will be sent to all members of your family.”
You get into your car and drive immediately to the car repair. You stop, open the door, get out and slip on a banana peel, falling on your Blackberry. As you make it back to your feet, your Blackberry screams from the pavement: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” You don’t answer and walk away. This is the car repair. No one said anything about the Blackberry. You smile. At last, a rogue response to a rule. The human spirit has been restored and it wasn’t even scheduled.
©On My Watch…the writings of SamHenry. Registration pending.
DarcKnyt
August 26, 2010
OH, SamHenry. You’ve only gotten part of the ending right.
See, when the Blackberry hit the dirt and didn’t get picked up after the first distress beacon, it sent a second — to the Government. When their mainframe received it, it transmitted a Re-education Sentence Signal — or RSS, ha! — to the secret installation closest to the repair shop.
As you walked away, smiling about your loophole exploitation, a Blackhawk helicopter in full stealth mode appeared over the tops of the local business buildings and spat cables all around you in a cage. Men in black body armor and face paint bearing assault rifles — now outlawed to all by their agency — with night-vision goggles rappel down the cables and surround you, screaming “ON THE GROUND! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!”
You’re cuffed, your head covered with a velour bag, and you’re forced into a large, unmarked SUV which screeches around the corner of the street. Twenty minutes later you’re being held underwater and forced to confess to crimes against the state.
No one hears from you again.
Pick that Blackberry up, okay?
samhenry
August 26, 2010
Au contraire, I think I’d like the adventure you so vividly outline! You are THE writer of fiction.
DarcKnyt
August 26, 2010
Or something like that.
DarcsFalcon
August 30, 2010
Michelle in the fridge? Aaacckkk! Instant bulimia!
samhenry
August 30, 2010
You silly old bird. You’re just jealous she’s a cool chick.