I think I'll put this one on my business card... (2007-03-14)
"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
- Frederick Douglass"

Beware Cops With Computers (2007-03-13)
The ACLU recently filed suit against a Denver cop who got a warrant based only on a single, non-criminal database search for a person's name.

The cop used a database name search to investigate a complaint that a person named Valerie Rodriguez hit someone. He entered the name into the database, found a person with that name, and then wrote up a criminal complaint and warrant application with her date of birth, social security number, and driver's license number. The hitch? The woman he found had nothing to do with the crime and didn't even live in the area.

It gets worse --the officer obtained an arrest warrant by falsely stating that the victim had identified the innocent Valeria Rodriguez as the person responsible for a criminal assault. He did not show any photographs to the victim or check out the nearby address of the suspect that the victim provided.

The innocent Mrs. Rodriguez didn't know anything about the warrant out for her arrest until she got turned down for a job at the post office because of it. When she went to the Denver Police Department to straighten it out they threw her in jail.

Privacy advocates point to just this kind of police misconduct as one (of many) reasons we should be worried when the government collects and stores information on us. Valerie Rodriguez isn't that common a name. I pity Joe Smith.