January 2014

Unreasonable Search

Can someone double check my logic here because the math I’m doing is freaking me out and I need someone to tell me I’m reading something wrong. This is where I’m at:

A. Yesterday a Federal court ruled that no suspicion is needed to search electronics at the US border. According to the ACLU press release, this“allows the government to conduct intrusive searches of Americans’ laptops and other electronics at the border without any suspicion that those devices contain evidence of wrongdoing”

This is of course in relation to the Border Search Exception which “allows searches and seizures at international borders and their functional equivalent without a warrant or probable cause” – The ACLU hard argued this violated the Fourth Amendment which guards against unreasonable search and seizures. The court decided that it did not.

So there’s that, but what are we talking about when we say “border” exactly?

B. According to this piece from 2008, the Government considers a 100 mile zone from any international border or coastline to be “the border” even if that coastline isn’t butting up against another country. Drawing a border like this designates the entirety of the states of Florida and Hawaii as “border” as well as most major cities in the US – All of NYC, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, etc.. all considered to be “border.”

Which leads me to think about A + B, do the combination of these rulings suggest that the government can decide my house, located in Los Angeles and within 100 miles of the coastline, is on the border, and thus available to be searched without probable cause? Can govt agents show up at my doorstep and demand I hand over my computers for them to inspect? The piece seems to talk about checkpoints rather than door to door searches, but is one so far from the other? But even if it’s checkpoints, could these be set up all over Los Angeles and all laptops carried by people be subject to seizure? I think that’s what this means – that it would be legal at least.

Wired wrote a piece about the newest ruling and causally mentions the 100 mile zone issue but glosses past it – seems to me like this should be THE major issue at hand.

Someone please tell me I’m misunderstanding this…

I did stuff in 2013

It’s easy to look back on a year and write it off as good or bad based on a quick feeling, and I’m certainly no one to argue against gut judgements – but sometimes when you stop and take stock things are a little different than you remembered. I came face to face with that realization the first time I did my year in photos review back in 2007 (will get this years together soon) and since then I’ve tried to make an effort to break things down a little more before throwing everything in the same bucket. 2013 was weird for sure, a lot of people have a lot of negative things to say about things that happened and I’ll let them do that as much as they want, but I wanted to take note of a few things I did this year that I’ve never done before:

  • Wrote and published a original fiction book
  • Contributed text to a non-fiction book authored and published by someone else.
  • Recorded and released an EP with my art collective/project
  • Rode Space Mountain with my son Ripley when he was finally tall enough
  • Went to Costa Rica* (furthest south I’ve ever been in the Americas)
  • Went to Hawaii* (which, if you count a layover in Anchorage once as I do, completes a visit to all 50 US states)
  • (*related) Vacationed in beachy paradise like locations with my family
  • Started a personal mailing list (which, from a zero starting point, now has over 300 subscribers)
  • Started a podcast (and told some great stories with friends)
  • Went to the Bujinkan Honbu dojo and trained directly with Hatsumi Soke
  • Took Pilaties class (for 2 months)
  • Along with Tara, was the Hacker(s) In Residence at Sparkfun in Boulder, CO – the first invited for their newly launched HiR program

I’m sure there are more, but those immediately jump out in my head as milestones -many of them full on bucket list items. And if, with no real effort I can think of 12 things that I did – one a month for the entire year – that I’m proud of and will look fondly on and remember for the rest of my life, well, that’s hard to complain about. Even better is that at least half of them I had no plans or intention to do this time last year. I don’t yet know what 2014 will bring, but I can’t wait to find out.