The New York Times reported yesterday that law enforcement requested cell phone customer records 1.3 million times last year. Did they need all that information, or did they violate your privacy? While police at federal, state and local levels don't seem to be listening to cell phone calls without a warrant, they do appear to be harvesting locations, texts, and other information from cell phones without a warrant -- apparently because laws aren't explicit enough. I figure that the cell phone isn't some inexplicable alien technology about which current law just can't guide legislators and judges, but the courts might not agree (though the Supremes have ruled that placing a GPS device on a suspect's car violated said suspect's Fourth Amendment rights). Hence H.R. 2168/S. 1212, the GPS Act, a Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)/Ron Wyden (D-OR) production, which would set some limits on what information law enforcement could harvest from your cell phone. The ACLU helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the GPS Act.
Meanwhile, the Senate passed its version of the Farm Bill, and it's a stinker in many ways, but the House aims to write a version that stinks even worse. The House Farm bill would prohibit any agency but the USDA from reviewing the effects of genetically-modified crops (which would, for example, prevent the EPA and wildlife agencies from weighing in on GM crops' effects on wildlife), and it would also force the USDA to approve any GM seed it can't properly review within an artificially short period of time. Wouldn't conservatives want to prove agencies don't work by letting them work as well as they can and fail on their own? Why would conservatives want to stack the deck against our efforts to ensure GM crops are safe? The answer, of course, is that conservatives wouldn't -- which would compel one to accept that the politicians pushing these restrictions aren't actually conservative. Just Label It helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose the anti-regulatory riders in the Farm Bill.
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