In a total affront to any and all privacy The North Carolina Department Of Revenue FLEW to Seattle to demand Amazon product all records for purchases by North Carolina residents from 2003-2010. Note I capitalized “FLEW” because instead of licking a stamp or using a courier service some enterprising soul in Raleigh figure out how to get a free vacation on you on me by hand delivering the demand letter to Amazon. So not only does the state want to know what you have been reading but they want you to pay for them to find it out while they take cross country flights, stay in hotels and have a nice dinner!

Amazon seeks a declaration that the DOR’s ongoing demand for information that will disclose the names, addresses and purchasing habits of Amazon’s North Carolina customers violates the rights of Amazon to sell, and its customers to purchase, books, movies, music, and other lawful expressive content free from government intrusion into the customers’ reading, viewing and listening choices.  These rights are secured under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Article I, sections 4 and 5 of the Washington State Constitution, and federal law.  The DOR’s demand for the identity of customers who purchased video material also violates the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, 18 U.S.C. § 2710.  Declaratory relief from this Court is necessary to avoid piecemeal litigation or inconsistent rulings in the event other states make similar demands for customer data.

Of course Amazon has turned around and filed an immediate suit to block this request as it flies in the face of any number of court rulings that such information is private however now guess what, we get to send lawyers and their team to Seattle to argue that North Carolina does have a right to this information. Not only are you being asked to provide the state with Federally protected information but your being forced to pay to argue against your own personal rights in a court clear across the country!

The DOR has no business seeking to uncover the identity of Amazon’s customers who purchased expressive content … let alone associating customers’ names and addresses with the specific books, music, and video content that they have purchased,” Amazon wrote. “The collection and disclosure of the customer data … will link those purchases directly to the customers’ names and addresses, exposing their otherwise private reading, viewing, listening and other personal choices to government scrutiny

Please everyone take the time to read this great post on cnet which highlights exactly why North Carolina has no legal right to this information and contact your Representatives in Raleigh immediately. This is not a Left or Right side of the issue debate this is your personal privacy, protected by multiple Federal laws and court cases which the fools in Raleigh don’t seem to care about. While you have your Representative on the phone ask them who went to Seattle, did they fly coach and at what cost, where did they stay and eat and what was the final tally for hand delivering a letter to Amazon.

ACTION ALERT…NC Gov Bev Perdue Demands To Know What you Bought at Amazon

Amazon: NC bid to track taxes violates free speech

To read the full complaint Amazon has filed click here: Amazon v. Kenneth Lay

In case you missed the news a Federal Appeals Court ruled this week on if the FCC has the authority to dictate to Internet Providers how the manage the data being sent through their networks. In 2007 the FCC judged that Comcast could not throttle or delay certain types of traffic such as Bit Torrent, a type of file transfer, however Comcast argued the FCC did not have the authority to make such a ruling or issue any fines. This week a D.C. Appeals Court agreed with Comcast that the FCC’s statutory authority does not extend into how ISP’s manage their network traffic or content.

Now on to why this has any bearing on your day to day life or business.

The term Net Neutrality in it’s basic form means all traffic on a public network (Internet) must be treat equally. This means your video watching of YouTube and your neighbors online gaming both must travel across the Internet unencumbered by traffic management which places one type of web use above another. Sounds simple and basic enough right? Well ISP’s argue that for one they need to manage their networks to provide quality service to all customers and if one customer or type of use is putting a strain on the system they need to be allowed to adjust that traffic so all users get acceptable access. Well that also sounds reasonable enough doesn’t it? Thus the problem, should all access be equal or should an ISP be able to control the bandwidth so all users get reasonable performance.

Now for the Dark Side. Let’s say ISPs such as Comcast and Time Warner have certain content on the web. As a Road Runner customer I find I can access that Time Warner content extremely fast but when I try to watch something Comcast is providing I find it’s horribly slow, hmm, is it fair for Road Runner to slow down access to competitive services or product? Better yet let’s say a Road Runner calls up Google who owns YouTube and says, “we need you to start paying for the amount of data people are using to view your content or we will start slowing that content delivery down. Don’t forget Google is saying they want to drop fiber in a couple of cities and those cities are bending over backwards to get Google’s money but what if Google did lay fiber in say Winston-Salem then turned around and only allowed high speed access to Google services and slowed down access to everything else? Well I think it would be easy to argue none of us think either of those situations would be a good idea.

So should we be upset that the courts ruled the FCC doesn’t have the right to say no to either of the above thus giving the FCC carte blanche to be the sole authority on how network bandwidth is provided? To steal a movie line from a great movie , “I Think NOT!” and the reason is simple, the so called Fairness Doctrine and it’s new Obama appointed Czar, The Chief Diversity Officer. Now I’m not going to get all political in this however it should be noted that if the court had let the FCC’s argument stand then there is absolutely nothing to stop the FCC from saying there has to be not only equal access to the networks but the content on the web must also be equal in it’s “diversity”. Now this is a very scary thought that a group of unelected officials could in fact determine if you get to listen to Rush Limbaugh online because there would have to be an equal liberal voice so as to keep the Internet “diverse”.  Let’s bring it even further down to the local level let’s say you run a website where you share your political views but to keep things “diverse” you would be forced to have an equal amount of opposing content. Okay you think that’s absurd the FCC could not ever do that however if the ruling had stood they could have in fact done just that. Your church website could have been ordered to put up links to gay websites, local bars, Las Vegas casinos or anything else because everything had to be equal and “diverse”.

Sure, sure the above would have hopefully never happened however by allowing a commission to expand it’s powers beyond what our elected officials have given them we have to assume the worse since who knows what could happen and we would have had no recourse. By the courts stepping in the concept of Net Neutrality is now tossed back to Congress where hopefully we will have public and well as industry input to come up with rules which are fair but more importantly have a system of checks and balances. Should Road Runner be able to slow down Skype because Road Runner sells VOIP or should you be able to watch MSNBC or FOX at equal speeds and who is to be the judge and jury of that is not something we want a few beltway insiders to determine.

I was browsing around and found a recording of FDR’s 1942 State Of The Union Address which then lead me to look up the entire address. The speech as a whole was of course about the current World War with Germany and Japan however certain parts of the address certainly would seem to apply to 2010 as much as they did to 1942.

We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for peace, not only for ourselves but for all men, not only for one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills.

Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: "God created man in His own image."

We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image—a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom.

That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives.

No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been, there never can be, successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, January 6, 1942

I’ll let the legal types dig into the exact ruling but in a case brought by Janet Joyner and Constance Lynn Blackmon the courts have ruled the County Board of Commissioners is violating the law in holding invocation or prayer prior to County meetings. Of course it looks like the county gets to pay the legal fees associated with this as well.

 

Relief
Plaintiffs seek relief in the form of a declaratory judgment, an injunction prohibiting Defendant from allowing sectarian prayers at its Board meetings, nominal damages, and the payment of reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees.  (Id. at 15.)  This Court should declare that the effect of Defendant’s policy is to violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and allow the recovery of nominal damages and attorney’s fees as part
of the costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.  The Court should enjoin the continuation of the Policy as it is now implemented.

Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket No. 63) be granted.

Former Governor Easley had his day before the North Carolina State Board Of Elections and the results could lead to Easley joining the long list of NC jailbird politicians. From House Speaker Jim Black to former Whip Frank Ballance or former Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps the list of political figures in this state that have been sent to the big house is growing daily.

The State Board Of Elections found former Governor Easley  guilty of not reporting campaign use of private jets and submitted there findings and evidence to the Wake County District Attorney for further investigation. The board fined Easley $100,000 and suggested that campaign finance laws were violated. Furthermore there are ongoing state and Federal investigations into Easley for a land deal and attempts to hide campaign uses of private jets.

So Mayor Joines has told Dell he expects them to repay some 26.5 Million Dollars in direct payments and expenses linked to bring Dell to North Carolina and in theory it appears Dell has agreed in their reply letter. Of course this does not include any of the cost associated with road projects completed for Dell, wine and dines that surely took place, travel by city and county officials, etc, etc.

Probably not the attention Greensboro or this officer wants but the video is making the rounds on multiple websites that have a very large viewership. Basically it appears a small group was holding a “peaceful assembly” when Officer Miller approached the group accusing them of trespass when he saw a handgun on the videographer that submitted uploaded the video. The office then demands to see a State Issued Drivers License, demands to know the age of the person and so on including threatening to detain him. After it appears he understood he wasn’t going to bully the videographer or because of the camera he walks off and appears to radio somebody. Afterwards he returns the group, explains why he has concerns about the assembly and the gun then leaves without further mention or demand for any identification. Clearly if there was any violation of the law the officer would have acted or is he not enforcing the law because he didn’t want to be on camera?

I can’t say enough on how technology is turning the average person into a field reporter with the advent of camera phones, the Internet and sites like Posterous, or Qik which allows for live broadcasting direct from the iPhone in real or near real time.

In what was repeated over and over by every news source in the state Governor Bev Perdue was quoted as saying she expected Dell to pay back every “red cent” when in fact she never said that but rather she would “will go to bed every night hoping to get every red cent back that Dell has received.” Slight difference in the two which is neither here or there as the Governor now understands this is not the case and Dell will pay back on 1.5 Million of the 8 Million or more the state gave away. Of course this just refers to the money the state gave away and not the millions both Winston-Salem and Forsyth County handed over.

Governor Perdue may need to wake up to the real world.