Viewpoints: Monument needed for lives lost to killings by law enforcement

Special to the Sacramento Bee, Sept 10, 2014

"The unending succession of civilian deaths from lethal action by law-enforcement agents has created a national wound that seemingly cannot heal. Black males are obviously at particular risk, but homeless people, the mentally ill and targets of “no-knock” raids also appear particularly vulnerable."

When it comes to protecting its citizens' data, Europe is way ahead of the U.S.

Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2014

"Americans haven't had much good news about their privacy since Edward Snowden launched his soap opera of NSA revelations last June. True, the president, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Patriot Act co-author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner are finally distancing themselves from the most outrageous snooping. But it hasn't stopped..."

Privacy - Public and Private

Huff Post, July 29, 2013

"Privacy has been taking a beating lately. I mean the word itself, not just what it's supposed to designate.

NSA Director Keith Alexander struck some sort of low point, when he went before the Senate to insist, "We have great people working under extremely difficult conditions... [to] protect our civil liberties and privacy." This is the kind of pronouncement that George Orwell had in mind..."

The Price of the Panopticon

The New York Times Op-Ed, June 11, 2013

"THE revelation that the federal government has been secretly gathering records on the phone calls and online activities of millions of Americans and foreigners seems not to have alarmed most Americans. "

Call Me, Pay Fee

The New York Times Op-Ed, June 22, 2012

"WITH the fall elections looming, you may be reconsidering your relationship with your telephone. In states with intensely fought races during the primary season, phone subscribers have complained of receiving as many as 20 election-related calls — mostly automated “robocalls” — per week."

The Whole World is Watching

Democracy a Journal of Ideas, Issue #22, Fall 2011

"Being 'alone' is not what it used to be.   Our whereabouts, our financial transactions, our uses of the World Wide Web, and countless other data routinely register in the automated consciousness of corporate and state bureaucracies. More importantly, the results of such monitoring in turn shape the treatment we receive from these organizations – sometimes in ways that we know, and often in ways we hardly imagine."

Ten Yeats Later:Bringing out the Worst

Dissent, Sept. 2011

"The planners of the 9/11 attacks succeeded more than they could have imagined in changing the world – and above all, changing public life in America. The long-reverberating repercussions of those bloodthirsty assaults have brought out the worst in nearly all parties..."

A Privacy Right to Believe In

Huff Post, April 2012

"Unless you've spent the new millennium on another planet, you've noticed that details of your personal life are circulating more and more freely..."

Privacy Codes and Institutional Record
Keeping: Procedural versus
Strategic Approaches

Law & Social Inquiry Volume 37, Issue 1, 119–145, Winter 2012

"Privacy codes aim at protecting individuals' interests in the treatment of data on themselves held by institutions. One can distinguish between procedural and strategic principles underlying these codes. The former aim at shaping treatment of personal information, once compiled within data systems; the latter aim at limiting and dispersing personal information from the start. A historical view of the workings of these two principles gives more reasons for optimism in the case of strategic measures. In contrast,
procedural restrictions on access to personal information are evidently subject to erosion and reversal with changes in larger political climates."

An Invasive Trend? It's a Cultural Weed

International Herald Tribune, May 18, 2001

"It has taken some time to puzzle it out, but I have
come to recognize a variety of disturbing trends as symptoms of encroaching weediness.
The weeds in question are not just life forms but also institutions, technologies, social relationships and mind-sets."