The Final Tally

The final tally, counting trackbacks and comments that weren’t mine, was $65. There were a couple of trackbacks that I found on Technorati that don’t show in the comment section for some reason, but I think I caught them all. But here’s something even better: Because many of you not only participated here but also made your own contributions, the amount is really much, much higher. Go look at Scout’s blog post: 44 commenters who all donated! Even if each one gave $1, that’s another $44 over my $65. That ROCKS! And if the meme spreads, think of how much help could go her way and also to help others caught in the same kind of idiotic judicial trap, since that’s what they plan to use any funds they don’t use for her defense. Which leads me to the rest of what I want to tell you all…

Why this case has me so outraged, beyond the obvious reasons

I’ve had some people ask me via email why I feel so strongly about this case when there is injustice happening every day in our society. Why Julie Amero and not Genarlow Wilson, whose sentence is outrageous in proportion to his “crime” (and I use the term loosely). Why THIS case?

Starting with the obvious, I hate injustice.
We have one of the most elegant legal systems in the world, yet it will only work when all parties exercise good judgment, prudence, and approach the law with respect and seek the truth. There wasn’t any truth-seeking in this case at all. It was, as many commenters noted, a witchhunt in a Yankee court with no regard for getting to the heart of the matter. It was an exercise in shirked responsibility on the part of the school district, who should have stood up and defended her to the hilt instead of pandering to the girdled, constipated parents who were calling for heads to roll because Little Johnny might’ve looked at (SHUDDER) ‘bodily fluids’ on the screen.

It could just as easily have happened to someone I love.
In the past three years, I’ve disinfected machines, reinstalled operating systems and locked them down by paying out of pocket for antivirus software for: My mother, my father-in-law, my pastor, our music minister, my uncle, the Eldest, Sticks, DG, and my husband. The worst times were the end of 2004 and beginning of 2005 — the same time frame Julie Amero found herself in this mess. Can you imagine what would have happened if porn started popping up on a CHURCH computer?

What kind of world are we living in where someone who is victimized by rogues on the internet becomes the criminal? How can we stand for that? And why would we stand for ANY trial where the defendant was not permitted to defend herself properly. What if it were YOU?

We live in a world where fear threatens to overtake good judgment permanently.
This witchhunt gained traction because a group of ‘outraged parents’ called for the head of Julie Amero on a platter. Never mind that their precious Johnnies and Janes go to school in a place where violence is escalating. Never mind that the largest group of pornography consumers on the Internet today are those same precious babies age 12-17 and I assure you the Preciouses are viewing their pornography on screens that aren’t in school. Just never mind all that, because somewhere in the last couple of years a group of Cowboy Congressional Crusaders led by the likes of Ted Stevens and his ilk have cropped up and decided that Big Brother USA must watch us, and must watch our children.

Yes, it’s all about the children, isn’t it?

Hey. Just last week I mopped up a porn mess on Sticks’ computer — one of his own making, and I’m a savvy parent who monitors Internet use regularly, updates the firewall and antivirus definitions daily, and has a hardware firewall on the wired and wireless network blocking IP addresses known to be pornographic sites. You know how he got around ‘em? He just logged off our network and onto the neighbors’ open wireless connection. Simple as pie. And it cost him $125 and a pile of embarrassment when he had to admit to me that there had been no hack, no malware, no spyware, nothing other than his own choices. Poor ones, I might add, but certainly not choices that will damage him for life or endanger him (other than possibly infecting our network when he logged back on — that’s how I discovered it). 

As I explained to him firmly, calmly and without hysterics, the problem with pornography is that it leaves the wrong impression in so many ways. At 30, he’ll get that. At 17, it’s just about getting off and having something to look at, but those images are not real any more than Superman is. You’d be amazed at how many kids think it is, though. That’s really my biggest beef — pornography marginalizes relationships and leaves false impressions. We certainly don’t need to call out the Congressional Cowboys and ban all social networks because Janey and Johnnie might see breasts and genitalia and wonder if they measure up. (and oh lord, am I going to have to lock this post down to the spammers…LOL.)

You know what scared me the most about that incident? Not Sticks’ foray into viewing erotica, not the fact that he willingly opened his debit card to it, but the thought that I could go to jail because my son figured a way around our firewall. That scared the living hell out of me. Moreover, it made me FURIOUS. Why do I need Tubal-Man Stevens in my kid’s bedroom? If Sticks got hammered, it was on that point and that one alone — that he could have set up a situation which could have sent ME to jail. 

Extreme? A year ago, I would have said it was. Today I don’t think it is at all. Paranoia strikes deep. There are way too many holes in our Bill of Rights, thankyouverymuchGeorgeBushwithyourHomelandSecurityCrap, that leave me vulnerable to actual criminal charges.

Baloney, you say? Well, get a load of THIS.

Jeremy and Amber are going to directly to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.   Thou shalt register as sex offenders at the ripe old ages of 17 and 16.
Via BoingBoing this story from CNET:

Two Florida teenagers, Jeremy and Amber, ages 17 and 16 respectively, boyfriend and girlfriend — snapped digital photos of themselves engaged in sexual activity. They were prosecuted under state child porn laws, and convicted.

Snip from CNET story:

Each was charged with producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child. Based on the contents of his e-mail account, Jeremy was charged with an extra count of possession of child pornography.

Jeremy and Amber are caught in the ultimate catch-22. Boyfriend and girlfriend, children prosecuted as child pornographers for snapping digital photos of themselves. Catch this reasoning from the court if you can:

…the photographs which were taken were shared by the two minors who were involved in the sexual activities. Neither had a reasonable expectation that the other would not show the photos to a third party. Minors who are involved in a sexual relationship, unlike adults who may be involved in a mature committed relationship, have no reasonable expectation that their relationship will continue and that the photographs will not be shared with others intentionally or unintentionally. One motive for revealing the photos is profit.Unfortunately, the market for child pornography in this country, according to news reports, appears to be flourishing.

So if I read this right, Jeremy and/or Amber could really be child porn predators snapping lascivious photos in order to profit from them? What the HELL? What planet are we living on that two kids, impulsively shooting and sharing photos with each other via email turn into child pornographers? They’re victimizing themselves? Oh, my.

This is such a complete misapplication and unjust interpretation of the law that it defies all reality, much less logic. These two kids will forever be branded as sex offenders because they thought they were enjoying a private moment of sexual play.

When did our society turn back to the 19th century with Victorian values? When did the flower children become tight-assed prudes? Do I agree that kids should be having sex? No, of course I don’t, but I’m not stupid, either. They do and they will, just like we did when we were teenagers. I was the exception, waiting till I was 18. The rule was much younger and that was 30 years ago. It hardly warrants a criminal conviction of a couple of wide-eyed teenagers who live in a society where they document their lives, their identities, their social status with their digital cameras and MySpace profiles.

One question came to mind as I read this: How did this come to the attention of the court in the first place? Wanna bet that a tight-assed mommy or daddy called the cops? I wonder if they knew what slippery slope they would slide down.

Here’s a question for the idiot judge in this case: What do you suppose is worse? The possibility that these photos might be shared with third parties after the relationship dies, or being branded as a sex offender? How do you justify such nonsensical applications of the law as to prosecute CHILDREN under CHILD PORN laws?

The Real Predators Walk Free
The real predators are the ones sending our kids to die in Iraq, saber-rattling with Iran, tapping our phones and reading our email, getting into bed with us at night “for the children”, wasting time and court bandwidth with non-criminals in criminal applications of the law. The real pornography is the images of dead soldiers, Iraqi, American and others, blown to bits on the side of the road because of our ill-advised choice as a nation to intervene in their business. Those are the villains, not Jeremy and Amber and certainly not Julie Amero. It’s time for pushback. It’s time for someone to give the zealots a reality check and tell them to get the hell out of our bedrooms and our lives, to make peace with technology and take responsibility for their Johnnies and Janeys and stop expecting Congress to do it for them.

For the children. Really.

Technorati Tags: justice, law, injustice, Florida, Jeremy and Amber

From today’s newspaper: License ID rules to stiffen in 2008

Like it or not, beginning 2008, 23 million licensed California drivers and 3 million state identification card holders will have to report to the DMV to prove their identity with at least three different documents before they are issued a federally approved state license. Applicants would only have to do this once; renewals could be done by mail.

In May 2005, the House of Representatives approved an $82 billion military spending bill with an attachment that would mandate electronically readable identification cards. Under the Real ID Act, applicants must show up to a DMV branch and provide their birth certificates and another photo identity document such as a passport.

In case you missed the reason I think this is important, it’s because last October I nearly went to jail after inadvertently letting my drivers license expire. Well, I didn’t think I let it expire at the time — I paid my fees and sent in my verification of Social Security Number and forgot about it until I was pulled over by a cop with an attitude who decided I should be treated like a terrorist for not following up when I didn’t receive my renewal stickers.

So I went to court after literally bowing and scraping and bursting into tears in the Social Security office as a last resort, but the DMV had not yet recorded the SSA verification of identity so they were going to convict me of a misdemeanor and refuse the plea bargain. The stern-looking MALE DA couldn’t figure out why I was having so much difficulty. However, they gave me a 10-day reprieve to prove that I was who I claimed I was.

Finally, just one day before that court date, the connection was made, my status as a legal YOU-NITED-STATES citizen was resolved, and when I appeared in court before the FEMALE judge and told the story she waived all the fines and reduced the charge to a fix-it ticket so it wouldn’t appear on my record.

It’s women who will end up screwed by this “REAL ID” act. They change their names. And lots of times they do it more than once. Sometimes they change it when they marry, and then they divorce and take back their old name. (ME) Sometimes they change it when they marry, divorce and remarry, taking on their new husband’s name (ME). Sometimes those things happen in rapid succession so that the Driver’s License changes twice but the Social Security number doesn’t, and without that matchup, you can find yourself in a mucky, muddy, frustrating and identity-robbing mess.

If you are a woman, and haven’t aligned your Social Security number with the name on your Driver’s License and/or Passport, I suggest you start working on it now. Make sure you have documents proving the name on your Social Security Card — a birth certificate is not enough, nor a marriage certificate. You have to have 2 documents proving your old name and your new name, so the marriage certificate is applied to the new; the birth certificate to the old name, meaning you still need one more for each name. Follow that? Read it again and it will start to make sense, at which point you should be afraid for your sanity.

Seriously…make sure you don’t have to navigate these waters. Bad enough that we’ll all have to go to the DMV in person for this, so make sure all the names are changed to match real persons.

Update: via Wired News: Hackers Clone E-Passports

Technorati Tags: Real ID Act, DMV, identity

…if you were a respected professional serving a (relatively) small community…

…with a given name that was the same as a high-profile official in another country…

…that would be easily recognized by a largely Asian immigrant community…

…and your name was used as a masthead on a clinic allegedly created to commit Medicare fraud?

This is what is happening to our family doctor. I am not going to link to the articles or name him here, for our own privacy and also for his.

He is devastated by this. When I read the first article two weeks ago I was appalled, and my first reaction was utter disbelief. So I started doing some research, and the more I read, the less things made sense.

In the meantime there were some awful comments attached to the articles published on the newspaper’s website by anonymous commenters who didn’t know him at all, and I felt compelled to respond. With my real name. Since then my phone rings off the hook daily with blocked phone numbers and hangups. The same is true for the business phone.

I stand by what I said. In the 12 years that I have dealt with this doctor and his office there has never, ever been even a hint of dishonest insurance billing. In fact, they are meticulous in that office with the detail and making sure that everything balances out. You would have to stretch a long way to convince me that there was any Medicare fraud committed by this man or his office or his staff.

On the other hand, he is an extremely trusting and open person in addition to being an excellent doctor. I could envision a scenario where someone with less than ethical motives set up a situation where he ends up with his identity used for their fraudulent purposes.

According to newspaper accounts, the government alleges receipt of $120,000 in Medicare reimbursements for office visits that didn’t happen. According to the office staff the newspaper accounts don’t even approach accurate reporting of what’s going on. Every person on the staff is firmly behind him. His staff has very low turnover, which also says something of the man.

I know that there are people out there who can have us all fooled, but in my heart of hearts I do not believe this man is one of them. What scares the hell out of me is that the government does, and they can and do run amok in the name of “enforcement”. In their zeal, they overlook facts, fail to disclose evidence, and generally weight the playing field in their favor.

Over the course of my career I have had to deal with government agencies regularly. I was advised by mentors early on that when I was challenged, I should plan a strategy of what I was willing to give up to settle things, because the challenge would not go away without some concession.

I’ve never operated that way unless my client instructs me to. I always give them the option and will fight to the end to defend what they did and how it was done. If they choose not to fight, we don’t. But in situations where they were willing to go the distance, I have won it for them every time. Make no mistake, if you ever come under scrutiny by the government, they will expect you to give them something to go away. Even if it’s $50 to buy your way out of a ticket when they make it impossible to prove your identity in a timely fashion.

If you can’t prove it they come after you. If you have it stolen they come after you. Are we really comfortable with the notion of allowing the government — particularly the FEDERAL government — the role of being the guardians of our identities?

What would you do?

Technorati Tags: identity, identity theft, medicare fraud, government power plays

…to any of you who I may have annoyed with my anonymity and annoying comments past, present and future.

Yes, they actually spent time deciding that they can prosecute me for being annoying on the Internet. Will my family be the first to turn me in?

One of my favorite Hurricane Katrina bloggers has posted something that has my mind boggled completely.

You can read the history on his blog, but basically Tim, his wife and daughter are living in a rented apartment because their house was decimated by Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath.

From his entry:

The FEMA lady was very nice and explained the application process step by step, including the Housing Assistance Rejection letter they would be sending me.

Come again?

Yes, she kindly told me, everyone will get a letter that says their request for Housing Assistance is denied. This same letter will explain how to appeal this decision, which she encouraged me to do because I’m probably eligible.

HUH? Yes, this country really is in the hands of buffoons. This surpasses the you-must-have-a-photo-id-for-a-name-you-haven’t-used-in-nearly-thirty-years Catch-22.

Hey, don’t we all feel good knowing how efficiently our taxpayer dollars are working for us?

This entry has inspired me to make a separate “Catch-22″ category for this blog and put all the stupid stuff in there.

The only good thing about stories like this is that we all can feel a little bit smug about the fact that we aren’t as stupid as these bureaucracies are.

…if my story wasn’t bad enough, and yesterday’s story of the El Al flight even worse, wait till you read Dr. Marks’ story about his old pickup truck, expired tags, and the Airport Police.

Even scarier? Dr. Marks is a terrorism preparedness educator who does seminars for the FBI, local police and airport authorities. Oh, and he’s also vice-chair of the Tucson Police Foundation. Whoa, THERE’S a threat to national security…

I feel so much safer knowing that the cops are onto him. Please God, will someone teach these folks who the good guys are?

The story of a flight from LA to Toronto, Delta, El Al, and one harmless Canadian guy with a new router….

The burly policeman standing at my door asks me to step outside, leaving The Frantically Barking Pug behind the door…

I comply and proceed to explain the whole stupid situation, my warts and all. Ultimately he decides that the $150 bail bond isn’t worth the arrest, writes me an extension to my appearance date to 12/29 (yesterday) and tells me to have a good night.

After he left, I couldn’t decide if I was more relieved at the reprieve or pissed about the whole stupid situation, but the one thing I did know is that I needed to wrestle this beast to the ground and lay it to rest.

I got on the Internet and started to do the research to figure out what I needed to get my name changed, and also to try and figure out why it didn’t “take” the first time. SSA’s website said I needed to fill out a form SS-5 and produce 2 forms of ID. The first needed to be my marriage certificate. The second needed to be a photo ID with my OLD name on it (e.g., the one they had on file).

Ummmm, that was a problem. I haven’t used my maiden name on any official documents that would include a photo ID since I graduated from high school. I was married for the first time in 1978, divorced in 1988, remarried in 1989. The court restored my maiden name when I was divorced, but I never had it put on any documents, drivers’ license or otherwise because I remarried so soon after the divorce was final. About the only thing I had was a high school yearbook. I was starting to suspect that this might be the reason my name hadn’t been changed in 1989. I had the divorce decree, but it wasn’t acceptable because there was no photo.

Figuring I’d better make an in-person appearance, I made the first of four separate trips to the Social Security office. Now this is an adventure in itself. Here are a couple of tips for anyone who needs to go there: Go right when they open or right when they close. Do not, under any circumstances, go in the middle of the day. You will wait 2-3 hours longer that way. It took me two visits to figure this out. Whatever you do, take some reading material or your iPod so that you are not completely out of your mind with boredom waiting.

To further aggravate things, the cop that gave me the ticket kept my drivers’ license, so the only photo ID I had for my CURRENT name was a 5-year old expired license. She shouldn’t have kept that license, but she did and it really made things tough for me.

Ultimately, it was dumb luck with a touch of mercy that got things resolved with the SSA. They accepted my marriage certificate and the temporary license that the DMV had issued. They weren’t supposed to, but what the heck else were they going to do? There was no way I could possibly produce what they needed and I couldn’t even go back to DMV and change my name back to my maiden name there because I had no documents supporting such a change. It was a Catch-22 that in my eyes was insurmountable, and the SSA clerk who was anxious to leave at 5:30 on 12/21 (the fourth visit) must have seen my extreme frustration and decided to give me a break.

The fun with California was just beginning, however. DMV will NOT accept a certified document from SSA nor will they accept a Social Security card as evidence that the names match. It MUST be a computer-to-computer match, theirs to ours, with no outside intervention.

Since December 21st, I have made five trips to our DMV office. This is because there is no way to simply ‘call it in’ — It is a requirement to appear in the office, ask them to check the computer, and if the names match up, they can clear the new license for release. Since I had a 12/29 deadline, it was imperative that they clear this so that I’d have the documents in my hand to clear things. As of 12/28, that hadn’t happened.

Yesterday morning, I went to court with no evidence that I had a valid drivers’ license. When I got there, I was offered the opportunity to speak with the public defender. Geeeeeeeeez. The bubble of frustration and anger that I had about this whole mess was really beginning to well up — was I seriously going to be jailed for California’s failure to communicate with the SSA? Did I need a defense against bureaucratic idiocy?

After watching a 10-minute video on what my rights were, what the penalties for DUI were, and what I could expect if charged with a felony, I was an interesting bag of fear, loathing and anger. I’m sure I must’ve conveyed this to anyone within about 20 feet of me. Right after the video, my cell phone rang.

It was the nice lady at the DMV who had offered to try the computers again first thing this morning to see if they finally jived. She was glad to inform me that they did, and I could come any time and pick it up.

I wished she could’ve been there to tell the DA that. He didn’t want anything but a valid license in front of him. Had I produced that, he would’ve agreed to reduce the charge to an infraction, and I could pay the $150 fine and call it a day. Because I didn’t, I will be required to appear on January 12th to pony up the fine and clear things for good.

Now….my ADHD-ness aside for a moment, as I see it, there are some serious flaws in this system. Yes, I should’ve been more diligent about following up on my mail-in renewal when I didn’t receive anything. Yes, I shouldn’t have missed that first court date. Perhaps that is in itself enough to justify paying some kind of a fine.

Taking those errors away for a minute, doesn’t it seem a bit unfair that someone who for over 16 years has had no problem with their license, is offered a mail-in renewal because of that, and has a clear driving record should be fined for bureaucratic screwups outside of their control, Catch-22 requirements that cannot be complied with, and made to navigate a complete maze of nonsensical requirements in the name of “homeland security”?

The fact is, this set of requirements discriminates against women and minorities. Men are not going to have this problem, period, because they don’t change their names when they marry. Women do. Not all women, but most do. Minorities, particularly Hispanics, often have more than one surname.

One final observation came out of this for me. I had to go to court with the Eldest twice when he was caught with less than an ounce of pot. There was far less hoo-ha associated with that, despite my view that there should have been much more. I was even told by the cop that “ticketed” him that it wasn’t any big deal, I shouldn’t worry or overreact to it.

What the hell? I’m almost hauled off to jail for computers’ inability to communicate with me or each other, made to blow off the better part of five separate days in DMV/SSA hell, will be made to pay a fine for their errors, and yet a minor possessing less than an ounce is “no big deal”?

Here’s my bottom line on this: 1) Legal priorities are seriously screwed up; 2) The PEOPLE who work in agencies like DMV and SSA are for the most part, caring and anxious to assist (and some even go above and beyond…); 3) Our governmental agencies, federal and state, are in serious need of major geek intervention to bring them into this century; 4) Whatever you do, always, always do your best to fly low under the radar, because if you’re in their sights for whatever reason, you may find yourself in a situation you cannot control and “they” will view you as lower than the lowest, despite the positive contributions you may ordinarily make to this place we call “society”.

It isn’t quite the end of the story, either. Dancergirl’s passport application is currently being held up, because I cannot produce a current photo ID with which to certify that I give permission for her to travel out of the country. If my license does not arrive by Tuesday, we will need to come up with an additional $80 processing fee to expedite it so that she can travel the first week of February to Ireland with T and his dad for the All-Irelands.

Homeland Security, my ass.