As famous boxing promoter Don King would say: “Only in America” and what could be more true than illegal immigrants forming a mass march day — during work hours — for many of them. As a small business owner who only employs legal citizens I’m even more disturbed by this spectacle.

Bankok Post:

An informal internet poll on the MSNBC television showed that 67 per cent of those surveyed wanted illegal immigrants at the rallies to be arrested.

We have brave men and women dying over in Iraq, gas prices going up, and this is supposedly good timing for illegal immigrants to rise up and march? Screw that. I wish INS would be standing by with plans to deport these people (not going to happen). Also, employers impacted that don’t realize they’ve got illegals working for them (wishful thinking, I know) will label these walkouts voluntary terminations and replace them with legal American citizens.

And before anybody thinks I have something against mexicans who reportedly make up some 60% of the illegals in the US, don’t even go there. I have a lot of hispanic blood in me with my great grandmother being 100% mexican. Love to eat hot, spicy food, especially authentic mexican food, not the crap being packaged up at many of these wannabe mexican restaurants. I don’t care where these immigrants are from as long as they are illegal, I want them deported. Enforce the borders. Cork the genie.

And as for the argument that Americans won’t do the jobs these illegal immigrants are doing my response is to raise the freaking pay and let’s see what happens. If this means as consumers we end up paying more for goods/services, fine I’ll do it. I’ll pay more for produce. More for construction. More for a sticker that says Made In America (by legal citizens). We’re already paying more for gas and that has nothing to do with illegal immigrants.

Deport these people back to their homelands. They couldn’t march there or they wouldn’t be here. I love America, but I don’t like how we’ve become the welfare system for anybody that can smuggle themselves across the border or on a boat.

What is so difficult to understand about legal vs. illegal here? Argh. So many better things to march for than what this group of people cares about who is illegally here now.

We try to let other websites save the world and champion causes but earlier today heard on the radio about the savetheinternet.com coalition fighting to preserve net neutrality and wanted to comment.

If there is any web-related cause to take up for on this blog, this could be the one:

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet’s First Amendment — a principle called “Network neutrality” that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most.

Let’s continue to keep the internet bits and bytes open to all, not just those who pay the most. Whatever it’s worth, the coalition has my vote.

I’m not sure how many examples we need of the Department of Justice saying they are focusing on cracking down on the reprehensible presence of kiddy porn (KP) on the web and yet lumping in adult sites, but here’s yet another one (emphasis mine):

Gonzales called for additional measures against child pornography and adult-themed material in general. He asked Congress to prohibit the practice, common at some sexually explicit Web sites, of hiding innocuous terms in a site’s code so that search engines will point to them. The DOJ initiative would make it illegal for a person to knowingly deceive others into viewing obscene materials.

Look, I’m all for going after child pornography on the internet but why does almost every story have to lump in “adult-themed material in general” in with this? Don’t take my word for it, open your eyes and follow the stories about KP and watch how many have subtle references like the one above that I spotlighted which suggest tougher rules or tightening the screws on legal adult material. Comparing that with KP only angers people and muddies the importance of that issue. The two are not the same, were never the same, but it’s done constantly. And quite intentionally.

Somebody get Janet Jackson on the line, there’s a scandal abreast in an India fashion show.

Last week, model Carol Gracias’s skimpy halter slipped down to her waist showing her breasts to snapping photographers and rolling TV cameras during a fashion show in Mumbai.

This was followed by another sensational “wardrobe malfunction” when former Miss India Gauhar Khan’s skirt zip split, revealing her bottom to the media and Mumbai’s smart set.

Of course the morality police, er politicians, in India are outraged. They shut down Mubai’s famous dance bars leaving thousands of dancers unemployed. There is the travesty, not a few seconds of breast or butt exposure.

I haven’t been to a dance club in years, but if I wanted to go to one, I would. I don’t understand why politicians feel the need to grind an axe against these businesses. Ok, I do, it scores them points with the hardcore conservatives. Some may think these businesses aren’t legitimate, but isn’t this really about personal freedom and expression? They are making some of the rules in these establishments so difficult that’s it’s putting them out of business. It’s more of the not so secret war against sex. It’s like the politicians can be crack smoking whore toting in their own free personal time and to our faces be the exact opposite in public. What a crock. Just once I’d like to see a politician who says: enough of this BS. Put me in office for real values: better education and schools, better roads, lower taxes and less stupid anti-business legislation and if I like prostitutes, heavy metal and gambling, that’s my own damn business.

And as for any of these “wardrobe malfunctions” being intentional or accidental? What’s the big deal, really? Shocking, we see a hint of naked breast pop out (sarcasm). Is this the end of life as we know it? We didn’t come into this world wearing suits and dresses.

Even if one or more breasts or asses becomes exposed during a freaking fashion show, is this some sort of crude sexual act? I mean, come on, isn’t some fashion supposed to be erotic? But oh no, not if any flesh is showing, that’s immoral. This is happening in India, not here in the US, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing happened here. A sorry statement to admit.

Let’s focus on the things that really matter in the world: poverty, hunger, environment, health care, peace. If politicians want to go after a real racket, go after health care or why the hell our men and women are over there in Iraq right now. Get them out of there, already, they are getting maimed and killed for .. what? Bush sucks, I’m sorry. He is the worst President we’ve had in my lifetime and maybe ever. This Iraq war was a total sham. Saddam’s trial lingers on while Bin Laden laughs away in some cave. The national debt is going through the roof. Who is going to pay for all of this horrible money mismanagement in the US?

We are.

And these clowns toting their $1,000+ MRIs which insurance companies and ultimately all of us end up paying. My wife has now had 4 MRIs for an accident 2 1/2 years ago and the doctor’s keep requesting more … each time a $1,000+ charge. It looks like she is going in for an operation on her neck and spine and they want yet another MRI, the 5th one. Isn’t there a buy one, get one free plan or something? Who’s ultimately paying for this?

We are.

And what about ambulances? An ambulance ride for my wife and son cost nearly $2,500 for a 7 mile trip to the hospital. Are you kidding me? Almost $2,500USD! Even though they both went in the same ambulance they charged for two trips. The attitude seems to be oh, the insurance will pay it. The insurance will pay it. What are you worried about, the insurance will pay it.

Don’t some of these people realize how insurance works? Insurance companies spread the risk in premiums over a wide group of people. So if the insurance company pays too much, guess who that cost gets passed along to? Policyowners. Who is paying for this?

We are.

I better not get really started, I’m only half warm in this post and there is a good reason I rarely write about politics and religion: both subjects are extremely combustible. I will write about the third combustible topic: sex. Worrying about wardrobe malfunctions here, in India or anywhere, is such a collosal waste of energy, effort and time. Just look around out there. So many other worthwhile battles to fight.

Maybe my brief write-up earlier this week on the DOJ / Google conflict wasn’t fully explained, but I understood exactly what the government is up to with their continued assault on porn in the guise of it being to protect children. This might seem a bit conspiracy theorist but I don’t believe for a second their principle interest is keeping chilren away from accessing adult material. That’s the cover story. Phillip Lenssen takes exception to the various news reports being twisted into this being about kiddy porn (KP), but the reality is a high percentage of porn-related stories — just watch Google news, Phillip — have some sort of KP reference in them. There is a huge difference between children accessing porn and KP, but I’ve seen this happen many, many times before.

Why didn’t I edit my original post to make it clearer that these were two separate issues? It’s simple: because I don’t think they are. Yes, they are different issues logically, of course they are, but tangentially they have a huge amount of relevance. One is the inflammatory cover story for expanding government.

It’s my perspective that the government — and those who write about porn with an accusing finger — want people to be confused by the two so that they will get more inflamed about the subject and agree to vote for laws that expand federal power. It’s political spin, it bleeds and leads. It sounds a lot more exciting to play that card instead of the truth which is the government would like to take away adult’s right to view pornography.

Parents are the ones who need to monitor what their children do on the internet, not the government, not you, not me. Parental responsibility in this country is more to blame than anything or anyone else. Why don’t more parents give a damn about what their kids are doing on computers? I’ll tell you why: the internet is the new TV babysitter. Only, instead of plopping kids in front of the TV where content is primarily one way, the internet comes with much greater perils left completely unmoderated. It’s not the government’s responsibility to do this though, it’s the parents.

Stop trying to raise our children for us, President Bush!

One of the best pieces I feel I’ve written here to date was on freedom and 2257 Our freedom is under assualt thanks to the Bush administration. You don’t think so? Do a lot more digging.

You don’t have to care about or even like porn to understand the greater risk of this kind of government intrusion. Sure, it starts with porn, something that is becoming more mainstream, despite hard right sentiments, but what is next? Where does it end?

Do not believe everything you read from here or anywhere else. Do the research yourself. Educate.

MSN General Manager Ken Moss explains what they really provided the DOJ when asked (emphasis mine):

Over the summer we were subpoenaed by the DOJ regarding a lawsuit. The subpoena requested that we produce data from our search service. We worked hard to scope the request to something that would be consistent with this principle. The applicable parties to the case received this data, and the parties agreed that the information specific to this case would remain confidential. Specifically, we produced a random sample of pages from our index and some aggregated query logs that listed queries and how often they occurred. Absolutely no personal data was involved.

What bothers me most about the MSN response to this whole DOJ situation was brought up by one of the anon’s in their post (lots of anons in that post, curiously enough). Why didn’t MSN disclose this sooner? This happened last summer and they didn’t feel that people using their search service would care that the government wanted this information?

With all that Microsoft tries to do right, with all the blogging, with Scoble travelling the globe spreading the Microsoft message, the fact that they can’t cobble together a blog entry like this last summer when this all happens and query and/or at least notify folks about the situation is very telling.

Did MSN have to tell their search users anything about this DOJ request? No. What harm would it have caused to have said something back then? Now, it looks like they were hoping nobody would ever find out.

Rest assured that high on my list of things to take to Search Champs v4 next week will be much more transparency about privacy issues and clearer privacy policies for MSN Search. Google may have lost 9 percent of their market share yesterday for standing up to the government, but I think in time they will score many, many more points with people sick and tired of intrusive government activity. I’m glad I bought more Google stock this month and am supporting a company with the stones to stand up and say: we don’t think that’s right, and willing to go to court to fight for what we feel is reasonable access to information via subpoena.

Ken Moss concludes his post with: “Now that you have more information, you can be the judge.”

Ok, here’s my judging, Ken: a prime opportunity was missed last summer. Back then there was a chance to come out at a time when Google was being pounded over privacy concerns and stand up to the government instead of folding like a cheap lawn chair and working out some technical response that we would only learn about months later when the heat was on and they had to say something. Shameful, really.

I’m glad to hear that Google will fight the government’s efforts to subpoena information related to their battle to crack down on porn under the guise of the protecting children on the internet.

The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The government doesn’t need Google’s data to go after child porn (KP) sites. They can work even more closely with groups like ASACP (Adult Sites Against Child Pornography) which I did the Blogathon for here a couple years ago. They can add more staff to follow up on these reports and work to shut down these illegal sites.

They could also get a Google API key and run their own searches on various child-related keywords and see what’s returned. They could also get the entire five billion websites dump from Alexa and go hogwild.

There are plenty of ways to identify and get rid of these lowlife scum KP sites but using children as an excuse to go after legitimate adult websites is — just as the courts have already confirmed — too wide reaching. Don’t tell adults what they can and can’t look at, as long as the willing participants are adults.

Just in case I haven’t said this enough in this piece, I’m all for the feds cracking down on KP, just don’t try and take away the adults ability to find and enjoy movies like Pirates.

Google has my support 1000% on this one.

No, this isn’t humor. Apparently one of the numerous taxes on our cell phone bills here in the states, which I complained about a couple years ago on this blog — the Federal Excise Tax — actually originates from the Spanish-American War some 107 years ago:

This tax, imposed by President William McKinley in 1898 to help fund the Spanish American War, was originally a luxury tax, at a time when only wealthy Americans had phones. The war lasted only four months, but the “Tax on Talk” is still around more than 100 years later. Today, every person who makes a phone call pays 3% on every monthly phone bill for this outdated tax.

Cell phone companies would like this repealed but the IRS needs to tell them to stop collecting the tax, which they haven’t yet done, writes newsnet5.com:

According to the Web site www.mywireless.org, you can ask the IRS for a refund of up to three years of past taxes. You can also contact members of Congress to ask them to repeal the tax altogether.

We’re going to check into this and see if we can get any money back for this utterly pointless tax. Some of taxes sure seem like a one way door. Just how often do we hear about taxes being repealed and/or decreased?

The refund claim form required is available via the following PDF file which mywireless.org describes: “The process is lengthy and confusing, not to mention time-consuming.” Apparently a form is required to be filled out for each calendar quarter that the bogus 107 year old Federal Excise tax was paid. Why am I not surprised that the refund process isn’t simple? Red tape alert!

Anybody else tried getting their money back on this one yet? Let me know how it goes for you. My wife is on the case for us.

This data mining 101 article by Tom Owad shows just how much information is available and easily accessible online. He takes a few lines of custom code, a bunch of free scripts, a Mac and his home DSL line to do the mining and then closes with an unsettling thought:

… imagine if one had access to Amazon’s entire database - which still contains every sale dating back to 1999 by the way. Under Section 251 of the Patriot Act, the FBI can require Amazon to turn over its records, without probable cause, for an “authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” Amazon is forbidden to disclose that they have turned over any records, so that you would never know that the government is keeping records of your book purchases. And obviously it is quite simple to crossreference this info with data available in other databases.

Privacy — or the lack thereof — is one of the reasons I try my best to not follow patterns online. I’ve bought some books at Amazon, but I tend to spread purchases around. I’m a firm believer in avoiding predictability and patterns with buying habits, schedules and road travels. Structure is unavoidable with some things, but adding some unpredictable activity is wise. Eventually everything becomes a pattern, I suppose with a large enough data set — or wide enough popularlity — there is a point at which it becomes futile to try and protect your privacy but along the way if you try and do the following the leaks will at least be minimized:

1. spread online purchases around and be careful about what’s shared publically, specifically purchase history
2. if you blog it or share it with someone else who blogs it, then it’s no longer personal, always keep that in mind. Since I blog a lot of my new purchases here (they often become detailed reviews), I’m already making a lot of my purchase data well known. At least I know what I’m doing with this information and how it’s archived instead of wondering what Company ABC is doing with it.
3. watch out for public RSS feeds of your own data. Share only what you want to share when you fully realize the ramifications of sharing. Assume the FBI, your best client, parents and grandparents will be able to find and read anything you share and/or publish on the web.
4. do include privacy message in your emails if you don’t want this information shared. Yes, it should be obvious that email information is inherently private and personal, but some folks need it in their face next to your names to drive this home
5. robots.txt and .htaccess can be useful for helping to prevent third party access to data but they are not fullproof solutions.
6. always edit your profile — if you have one — after you register online. Sometimes information you fill out during registration is made public by default. Don’t be caught in this privacy trap.
7. do not use mother’s maiden name or other personally identifiable information for password retrieval. Choose vague options like favorite food or create your own unique and vague fact that only you and people very close to you would ever know.
8. don’t auto-save credit card information unless there’s no other way. It’s not that big of a hassle to retype a credit card number but it’s a big hassle if the company’s card database is breached.
9. always, always, always ensure sensitive information is being transferred over an https:// secure connection. Look for the lock in the browser. If you don’t see it, don’t shop there.
10. don’t link to your email address unencrypted in profiles, web pages, blog entries or otherwise.
11. use your nick/handle, not your legal name whenever possible online
12. read, yes, really read the privacy and terms of service (TOS) policy of sites you sign up. I’m guilty of not doing this sometimes and those are usually the sites that end up whoring out my information

Got other online privacy tips/tricks to share?

Just yesterday I was writing about China and their actions against adult websites, cell phone text messaging and blogging. Today, one of the stories is about Chinese blogger, Zhao Jink AKA Michael Anti having his MSN Spaces China blog removed. What some are finding sizzling is that this doesn’t appear to be the handiwork of China but of MSN Spaces China. This might seem reminiscent of when Yahoo handed over IP addresses at China, but it sounds different.

Scoble is fired up and extending an invitation to Michael Anti to use his blog instead (Anti has since changed to a different third-party hosted blog service — why doesn’t this guy buy his own domain and host this himself?):

OK, this one is depressing to me. It’s one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It’s another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger’s work.

Scoble’s post dragged an acidic comment response (”this post seriously makes you come off as a jack ass”) from another Microsoft employee, Dare Obasanjo who works on the MSN Spaces team:

Given that you work at Microsoft and know folks on the Spaces team, isn’t the intelligent thing to do to get the facts straight first before faning the flames of speculation and making inflammatory comments (e.g. “state run thug”)?

Dare’s blog, however, remains silent on the issue. He’s currently not at CES at CES though (Update: looks like I may have been wrong on this one, but Scoble is there [?], my apologies, Dare), so I wonder how much of his feelings will be delivered to others face to face and never be blogged?

Mike Torres, MSN Spaces PM for here in the US, last blog post was about King Kong (which he liked).

I sat next to Mike at Seattle Mind and he seemed like a cool guy. Though I never met Dare, I can see why Dare (and Mike too?) might be miffed at Scoble who can’t seem to wait to hit the blog post button on some of these Microsoft-related hot issues, when it doesn’t seem like he always has all the facts. In his defense, sometimes he does, like the reporting/blogging he’s been doing on this WMF vulnerability mess.

Perhaps somebody needs to reel Scoble in for a refresher course in teamwork. Of course he probably hears that often so who am I to ask for that, but being the lone gunman blogger doesn’t work so well unless you’re a company of one. These folks are supposed to be a team, aren’t they? I don’t work for Microsoft, just go up there and beta test once in awhile, but man, Robert, it sounds like you screwed this one up.

More facts needed first. Details. Quotes from people working there. Tell us what you’ve done to follow up on the story rather than wait until the rest of the blogosphere — myself include — pontificates on what we think are the facts, Scoble is in the unique position of being able to deliver the actual non-filtered facts. That type of information is well worth waiting to see. I get the impression Scoble and some other prominent bloggers out there think getting the story first is more important than getting the story right.

Now from what I know about this story — and it’s no more than you can read from what’s out there on the blogs at this point — I think MSN Spaces China took the right action considering where they are doing business. If/when more information comes out that shows this blogger didn’t violate the TOS I reserve the right to change my opinion.

In the meantime, I’ll say this again, despite how distasteful this might sound: their country, their ballgame.

If MSN, Yahoo, Google, you or I want to do business in China we need to operate by Chinese rules, regulatations and beliefs. We have democracy here in America and so it’s only natural not to understand or like the fact that Communism exists but we do have a choice: don’t do business there.

And if not doing business there costs billions … well, there is still a decision not to business there, isn’t it?

The minute you open up a business in somebody else’s country, you have to abide by their rules and regulations. This isn’t about freedom of speech for this blogger. Look, he doesn’t have the First Amendment, he lives in China. Like, dislike, whatever, that’s just the way it is in his country.

(cue Bruce Hornsby piano)

Seriously, I just don’t like it when people try to change other countries beliefs, rules and regulations. Yes, we have to be alert and concerned that some radical country (I’m speaking generally now, not of China) isn’t building nuclear or biological weapons that will threaten all of mankind so don’t anybody get derailed thinking I’m all giddy about Communism. We must find some way as a society to stop trying to jam our beliefs down others throats. Tolerance for others, instead of intolerance. If China doesn’t want to allow bloggers in their country to say certain words or speak out against the establishment, that’s their decision, their soil.

Too bad Mr. Anti had his blog taken down, but he doesn’t get four outs when the rules say it’s a three out ballgame. Readers know I try to steer clear of most political topics but this one crosses into technology boundaries and has me annoyed. Not that MSN Spaces China took this blogger down, but the most popular response I’m reading so far is how MSN Spaces in China are cold-hearted bastards for enforcing their TOS.

They aren’t evil, they are acting within the rules and regulations in that country. Also, Mr. Anti agreed to the Terms of Service when he setup an MSN Spaces blog, yes? What did he violate there? My guess is at the end of the day, when facts come out that there were several TOS violations and MSN Spaces China was well within their rights to take down his blog. I believe the MSN Spaces China team will be vindicated from a business and legal standpoint.

The court of public opinion might deal them harshly for another business cycle or two, at least until Bill Gates announces something tomorrow night (he is is going to announce something new, isn’t he?).

Time for Gates to pull a joker out of his sleeve. Microsoft could really use one of them right about now. Really.