The reason to stay off of slippery slopes is that once you start sliding down them, it is very hard to return to the top of the slope. The new guidelines from the FBI are a perfect example of how civil liberties erode.

You would have to have been f&#%ing r#*&rded to believe that in an era of unprecedented intolerance for press leaks of any kind, that the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the FBI, the NSA, the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Cyber Defense Crime Center knowingly and willingly not only allowed convicted hacker Adrian Lamo to hold on to chat logs that contained sensitive classified information, but to distribute them unexpurgated to the press.

I only see two possibilities. One, Wired had the chat logs before Lamo made any calls to authorities, and was a party to whatever subsequently happened. Or two, the copies of the chat logs that have been given to the press have been done so at the instigation of the US government, and with their full approval.

Of course there’s always c) all of the above, which is what I’m guessing is the most likely scenario.

In Congressional testimony today, two FBI officials said that “marijuana is the top revenue generator for Mexican DTOs [cartels]“, calling it “a cash crop that finances corruption and the carnage of violence year after year.” Of course, nowhere does the FBI make the obvious connection that if you want to stop the cartels from financing their operations with marijuana, you can make marijuana legal and cut out their legs from under the cartels.

A few minutes ago, at approximately 2:25 am, I was awakened by a tweet from the ColdSnap Legal Collective. According to the message, police are raiding a house at 1162 Juliet Ave. in St. Paul.

I had a whole post ready to go. But Marcy Wheeler is already on the case. And as usual, she nails it.