Like fetuses, corporations are only people sometimes in the eyes of this Supreme Court

The idea of personhood is clearly somewhat fluid on the right. We know how the right worships not just fetuses, but zygotes; not just zygotes, but fertilized eggs -- to the point that some of them want to make miscarriage a felony. We also know how once fetuses find their way into the world, they're on their own.

Last year the Supreme Court decided in the Citizens United case that corporations are people who can contribute as much as they like to political campaigns without attribution. But yesterday, in a completely inconsistent decision with their lean towards unfettered corporate power, the Court decided that corporate personhood only goes so far, and doesn't include the ability to claim "personal privacy" and bar release of federal documents about corporate activities from Freedom of Information Act requests:

Corporations do not have a right to "personal privacy," the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, at least when it comes to the Freedom of Information Act and the release of documents held by the government.

Last year's ruling giving companies a free-speech right to spend money on campaign ads prompted liberal critics to say the court's conservatives were biased in favor of corporate rights.

While not alluding to the criticism, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took a scalpel to a corporate-rights claim from AT&T Inc. that its "personal privacy" deserves to be protected. The ordinary meaning of "personal" does not refer to an impersonal company, he said.

"We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence or personal tragedy as referring to corporations or other artificial entities," he wrote. "In fact, we often use the word 'personal' to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company's view."

The decision means the Federal Communications Commission may release documents that were compiled during an investigation in 2004 over whether AT&T had overcharged schools and libraries for use of the Internet. The company paid a $500,000 settlement.

No right to privacy for corporations? Perhaps the Court thinks corporations are female.

I'm short, I'm overweight, and I have green eyes and brown hair. Next!

Still think that fears of Big Brotherism are just so much dystopian paranoia?

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

Sometimes I worry that if I ever have to find another job, my writings here will cause a problem. But that fear may be overblown, because if everything about us is in a single database, it will give employers ever-more excuses not to hire us and instead outsource our jobs to low-wage countries, where they don't care about the employees' backgrounds, as long as they're cheap.

A beleaguered president grows more paranoid

I used to say that George W. Bush is so bad he makes me nostalgic for Nixon. As he grows more isolated and more beleaguered, as military generals abandon him and members of his own party start to show some rumblings of jumping ship, he is not only responding by throwing the tantrums of which we've seen more and more lately, he's also responding by consolidating power -- still claiming it's about "keeping us safe."

New York Times editorial, today:

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.

To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.

The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, said yesterday that the evidence of what is wrong with FISA was too secret to share with all Americans. That’s an all-too-familiar dodge. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is familiar with the president’s spying program, has said that it could have been conducted legally. She even offered some sensible changes for FISA, but the administration and the Republican majority in the last Congress buried her bill.

Mr. Bush’s motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

According to the administration, the bill contains “long overdue” FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.

Moreover, FISA has been updated dozens of times in the last 29 years. In 2000, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency then, said it “does not require amendment to accommodate new communications technologies.” And since 9/11, FISA has had six major amendments.

The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens’ e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.

With his refusal to do the people's will and accept mandatory benchmarks as a condition of remaining in Iraq; with his insistence on a blank check for this war so that he can run out the clock, and now, with his attempt to gut whatever privacy rights we have left so that he can monitor anyone who dares to oppose him, George W. Bush, the President of the United States, has declared war on his own country.

But al-Qaeda gets to regroup without being hassled

I don't know how I missed this story last week:

A House Republican is pushing a measure that echoes a long-sought Bush administration goal: to require all Internet service providers to keep records on their subscribers.

The measure, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) last week as part of the larger SAFETY Act, would give the attorney general broad discretion to write the rules on what information companies have to retain and for how long.

It is aimed at protecting children from predators, but privacy advocates say its privacy and civil-liberties implications are huge, and industry is concerned about the costs of compliance. News of the measure has spread around the blogosphere, as critics seek to mobilize opposition to the SAFETY Act.

The provision would require Internet service companies to provide at a minimum the Internet subscriber's name and address, which can be linked to an Internet protocol address -- an identification number associated with a particular computer at a given time. Law enforcement officials would have to obtain a subpoena to have access to the records and could not use the tool to track law-abiding citizens on the Internet, Smith said.

Riiiiight. And I am Marie of Rumania. It's amazing just how much Republicans focus on child porn, isn't it? For that matter, it's amazing how much they focus on everything having to do with sex. Let's not forget that in the summer of 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was focused like a laser beam on cracking down on a New Orleans brothel while the 9/11 attacks were being plotted.

I'm not trying to belittle the problem of child pornography. But passing legislation demanding that ISPs conduct dragnets of all internet users is once again -- and I keep coming back to this, don't I -- conducting government like the old Franken and Davis sketch in which Tom Davis' character promises to "kill 'em BEFORE they can commit a crime."

The Bush Administration is all about "guilty until proven innocent." Every policy it has instituted or advocated in the name of national security is less about stopping terrorists, or chid pornographers, or drug dealers, than it is about monitoring the activities of ordinary Americans who might have the capability of waking up a sleeping population to the danger presented by its own government.

(hat tip: Lynn)