Obama is on a roll.
Intentionally or not, gov’t lawyers put language in the Cash for Clunkers user agreement for car dealers denying them any privacy on the computer used to log into the gov’t’s system. Then, we have an announcement on the White House web site asking people to report anyone spreading “disinformation” about Obama’s health care plan.
Now, we have this. http://tighturl.com/md6
I suggest two things: burn up the phone lines to your congress critters and learn how to use Truecrypt. http://www.truecrypt.org/
Hope and change.
To be clear, I'm against this treaty, but I don't like the was Atlas Shugged tries to blame it on Obama.
First of all, the negotiations for ACTA started long before Obama took office or even won the nomination. Nice how that link tries to say that Obama Administration is working on it as if it was their own idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
"In October 2007 the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan announced that they would negotiate ACTA."
"The ACTA negotiations have been conducted in secrecy until on 22 May 2008 a discussion paper about the proposed agreement was uploaded to Wikileaks, and newspaper reports about the secret negotiations quickly followed"
It was made public over a year ago. Hmmm…
Also "Some countries already conduct border searches of electronic devices without probable cause. In July 2008, the United States Department of Homeland Security disclosed that its border search policies allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to conduct random searches of electronic devices for "information concerning terrorism, narcotics smuggling, and other national security matters; alien admissibility; contraband including child pornography, monetary instruments, and information in violation of copyright or trademark laws; and evidence of embargo violations or other import or export control laws.""
So Bush's Department of Homeland Security already claims to have the rights that you are afraid of losing, previous to 2008. Before Obama was elected.
If you dig a little deeper it becomes rather obvious that it is the different companies that own the rights to music and software who are behind the push to develop these laws. Like the RIAA.
I think I recall you not trusting WiKi so a quick search of "anti-counterfeiting trade agreement" finds sites like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that is very concerned about the discussions as well and are fighting for our civil liberties in this area.
http://www.eff.org/issues/acta
I distinctly recall our current president campaigning on a platform of vaguely defined "hope and change" which included breaks from Bush's policies. Now that Obama is in, he seems to get a pass for continuing policies from the previous administration. In this case, he could simply stop pursuing ACTA. I guess Obama can blame Bush for starting the ball rolling, so the poor guy is helpless to change our direction on this.
I know that the recording industry is one of the major players behind ACTA. I also know that Obama and his minions employ tactics of intimidation and consider average citizens to be political enemies if they hold differing political views. Listen to what the DC dems are saying about the tea parties and the people who are ripping their congresspeople new ones in the health care town halls.
As further proof of this, beyond what you see on conservative blogs and news sites, a friend of mine went to the town hall meeting yesterday in Little Rock held by two Arkansas democrat congressmen. Members of the SEIU were video taping any non-union member who dared pose a question from the audience. The union thugs with the video cameras weren't some distance away, either. They were quite close to the speakers, so that person would know he/she was being taped. The goal is to intimidate Obama's political enemies and have a record of who they are.
ACTA would just give Obama and his goon squads more latitude to seek and destroy anyone who dares to call him a liar.