meta-roj

since two little items came through my sphere of awareness, let’s go ahead and put them together.

item, the first:

Florida judge blocks abortion for 13-year-old [news.telegraph, 2005.05.01)

A pregnant 13-year-old has been blocked from having an abortion after state authorities in Florida won an emergency injunction against her, arguing that she was too immature to make such a decision.

…

“It would make no sense to have the baby,” said LG, who became pregnant after running away from her care home in January. “I’m 13, I’m in a shelter and I can’t get a job.”

sense, in this case, is not relevant to policy or law. apparently, the child in question (the mother) is a ward of the state, and her legal guardian, the state of florida, cannot consent to an abortion.

item, the second,

Kenyan Women Take Risks with Backstreet Abortions [reuters, 2005.04.29]

It was futile to keep on wishing that the baby would disappear, so Anne decided to take fate into her own hands and a kitchen knife to her belly.

The teen-age schoolgirl was rushed to a Kenyan hospital, her stomach a mess of stab wounds.

Surgeons struggled to patch up her shredded uterus and stem the bleeding, but Anne died on the operating table — another statistic in Kenya where up to 2,000 women die every year because of complications arising from botched abortions.

welcome to kenya, florida.

Kenyan Women Take Risks with Backstreet Abortions [reuters, 2005.04.29]

The picture is amplified across sub-Saharan Africa where 30,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions, and millions more suffer life-long problems.

…

For every death, 20-30 women suffer permanent damage to their uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, intestines or bladder.

this is not my culture.

update: there’s another story that managed to escape my attention. fortunately, there’s a lot of attention available on this internet, and ann bartow has it at sivacracy:

“Flores resorted to an abortion using illegal drugs sent to her from Mexico and wound up in jail for four months under a rarely used state law that makes it a crime for a woman to perform an abortion on herself.

update (2005.05.03): Fla. Judge OKs Abortion for 13-Year-Old and Florida ends fight against abortion for 13-yr-old.

in a sort of follow-up to this, we have another interesting police-tactics video to consider.

Video: Police Handcuffed 5-Year-Old Girl [ap via abc news, april 23, 2005]

A 5-year-old girl was handcuffed by police after she tore papers off a bulletin board and punched an assistant principal in kindergarten class, according to a video released by a lawyer for the child’s mother.

The 30-minute tape shows the child appearing to calm down before three officers pinned her arms behind her back and put on handcuffs as she screamed, “No!”

i haven’t seen the video, but you have to wonder how much of a threat a kindergardener really poses these days – they probably don’t even have scissors in the classrooms anymore or they wouldn’t be able to get insurance.

there’s trouble in river city, or, at least, in santa cruz.

the cameras are everywhere. everything is on the record. let the spin begin.

start here, and see if you’re comfortable in the new america.

[via boingboing]

carnivore is dead.

FBI Retires Controversial E-Mail Surveillance Tool [reuters, january 18, 2005]

The monitoring system developed to intercept the e-mail and other online activities of suspected criminals was not used in fiscal years 2003 and 2002, according to the reports obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act.

long live carnivore!

FBI Retires Controversial E-Mail Surveillance Tool [reuters, january 18, 2005]

According to the reports, the FBI used commercially available software to conduct court-ordered Internet surveillance in criminal investigations 13 times during that time period.

epic is the group on this story, with plenty of resources.

epic.org [january 14, 2005]

The reports suggest that the FBI’s need for Carnivore-like Internet surveillance tools is decreasing, likely because ISPs are providing Internet traffic information directly to the government.

this probably means the government has a huge penis, huge breasts and the lowest rate available.

just to take a moment to consider the kind(s) of test(s) that would be done with this data…

U.S. Wants Personal Data on Airline Passengers, reuters, september 21, 2004

The U.S. government wants airlines to turn over information on more than a million people who traveled in June to test a new system for identifying passengers who may pose a security risk, officials said on Tuesday.

what’s the methodology here? the feds know there were terrorists on airplanes in june, and knows who they are, so they want to check the known terrorists against what the passenger-screening system finds by going through all the june data? someone with more software-testing experience than i needs to help explain this to me… what testing methodology needs real data but works without prior knowledge of the targets?

ew jersey could learn a little from west virginia on this one…. we’ve been here before.

Laura Bush heckled during campaign speech cnn, september 17, 2004

The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested Thursday after interrupting a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush.

of course, sue niederer was doing a lot more than just wearing a t-shirt…and she’s been heckling and protesting all over the country since her son’s death in iraq. “defiant tresspass” is the best we can come up with for her? i’m disappointed. at least put her on a no-fly list or something.

in a followup to the , for which we’ve gotten an official apology from the state, we get two bits of information…

first, some details on the t-shirts – “Love America, Hate Bush” and “Regime change starts at home” – all very nice, but of course i was hoping it was this one… 🙂

and second, the ranks (that jeff and nicole rank, not the veterans playing with the truth) have filed suit against the director of the secret service and the director of the white house office of presidential advance seeking monetary damages and end to the policies that led to their arrest.

joi mentions that capps ii is back – and as someone who seems to spend most of is life at 30, 000 feet, it make sense that he pay attention to these things. this time around it’s called “secure flight” because america. is. safer.

i don’t get to fly very much, but i’m sure i’m on a list somewhere.

so for a perspective on the issue, i direct your attention to bruce.

U.S. ‘No-Fly’ List Curtails Liberties [bruce schneier, newsday, august 25, 2004]

Imagine a list of suspected terrorists so dangerous that we can’t ever let them fly, yet so innocent that we can’t arrest them – even under the draconian provisions of the Patriot Act.

…

It also has been a complete failure, and has not been responsible for a single terrorist arrest anywhere.

i sent my thoughts to my senators, and one actually took the time to reply (well, stick my name on the form letter, anyway). i thought the response was worthy of your review:

senator paul sarbanes, july 16, 2004, personal correspondence

Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to S. 2560, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004. I appreciate having the benefit of your views on this important matter.

I must frankly tell you that I am a cosponsor of S. 2560, which would expand the existing laws on liability for copyright infringement to cover those who intentionally induce others to violate copyrights. The bill specifically does not affect the common law doctrines of secondary liability and preserves the “fair use” rights of consumers. The term “fair use” refers to a limitation upon a copyright holder’s exclusive rights, which permits the public to use a copyrighted work for limited purposes, such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. On June 22, 2004, S. 2560 was introduced in the Senate and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it awaits further action.

While our views may differ on this issue, I certainly appreciate hearing your concerns. I hope you will not hestitate to contact me again about matters of importance to you.

with that statement, i’d like to solicit the greater blogosphere’s thoughts on some way to get the message in under the lobbyists. can you think of/suggest any particular cluesticks that might wake the good senator up?

i was thinking of organizing a group of people to mail free culture one postcard at a time. maybe a lawyer-type reader would be willing to cook up a mock lawsuit (like the eff’s fake apple complaint) that implicates the senator as an induce-infringer?

the 11th circuit court of appeals has issued its opinion [pdf] in the case of sherri williams v. attorney general of alabama.

the court upheld an alabama state law prohibiting the sale of sex toys in the state.

Alabama’s Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act prohibits, among other things, the commercial distribution of “any device designed or marketed as useful
primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary
value.”

sorry, alabamians… you’ll have to run your sex toys across state lines until your legislature overturns the law. and that is a debate i’d love to see on c-span.