The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution is the strongest statement therein that powers not expressly granted the State are retained as rights of the People. The State has misconstrued, misrepresented, ignored, and denied the People's rights by elimination of protections reserved alone to them, not recognized by the Supreme Court, the Legislative, and worst the Executive Branch in the illegitimate exercise of draconian powers which unlawfully disparage the inalienable rights of the People.
* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/technology/net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai.html Pai OK'd More Media Mergers, Killed Low-Income Fast Internet, Let ISPs Raise Business Rates, Refuses Request Of Dozens In Congress And 18 State AG's To Delay Net Neutrality Kill Vote Due To Evidence Millions Of Fraudulent ISP Comments
Sunday, 12 April 2015, SAN FRANCISCO - In the face of longtime U.S. government lassitude in enforcing privacy, anti-trust and other laws against giant technology firms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and a host of others big and smaller doubtless largely because of the documented complicity of most if not all giant tech firms in contributing data to continuing blatantly unconstitutional U.S. government domestic mass surveillance and data collection operations even as European regulators have pounded these tech behemoths with privacy and other violation rulings and huge fines to which big tech seems all but impervious, there is one most unlikely lawyer Jay Edelson, 43, and his most unconventional law firm Edelson PC (whose 20 lawyers reportedly wear hoodies sporting the firm's logo to work) which has been taking a leading role in class-action attacks using mostly older laws against these technology monsters based on their invasions of Americans' privacy and has earned Mr. Edelson the New York Times tribute (or condemnation depending on one's point of view) of being "if not the most hated person in Silicon Valley, very close to it" as well as earning Edelson PC an estimated $1 billion in recoveries from these companies for alleged privacy violations.
The class-action lawsuit brought most recently by Edelson against Facebook for its allegedly "private" data collection from use of widespread facial recognition biometric technology which as reported here in an earlier Ninth Amendment post immediately had European regulators up in arms long ago yet met with a resounding silence in the U.S. is but one in a very long series of Edelson class-action lawsuits against a virtual who's-who of tech companies which also recently saw the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rule that the named plaintiff had standing in another Edelson lawsuit claiming misinformation about him was sold by Spokeo a search engine that purports to sell all the (presumably correct) information it can gather on a person to whomever wishes to pay for it. Spokeo is appealing that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court with plenty of friendly firepower provided by lawyers for other big tech companies in the form of amici curiae (friends of the Court) briefs. Mr. Edelson noted that since the revelations of contractor Edward J. Snowden of massively unconstitutional privacy breaches by the National Security Agency (N.S.A.) that courts have been much more willing to allow cases to go forward for widespread abuses and violations of Americans' privacy rights. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reportedly finally also has picked up the pace of initiating some actions. (The unofficial U.S. government regulatory motto being: "We're slow, but we're here.")
Meanwhile Facebook unsurprisingly vigorously denies the charges filed against it claiming that Facebook users could turn off facial recognition biometric technology (if only they knew where to look in the notoriously confusing ever "evolving" user privacy controls of that Zuckerboy enterprise). This in fact also points to a bigger issue which may be facing Edelson in the future being that merely by clicking on a box users of many computer applications allegedly now are agreeing to the extremely lengthy "terms and conditions" which increasingly somewhere buried in them contain mandatory arbitration clauses as the days seem long gone when courts actually ruled in such cases for example against insurance companies that used such (once) obviously deceptive devices as "adhesion contracts" which virtually no one read and if they did found them essentially impossible to understand and digest much less being able to have them changed in any case if they did. Nevertheless Edelson PC reportedly took on one such matter with an arbitration clause against AT&T by filing dozens of arbitration cases just to "send a message" to other tech giants (although AT&T reportedly still does have the arbitration clause in its contracts which the Ninth Amendment thankfully has not had occasion to review).
Whatever the case Mr. Edelson and his firm would seem to be undaunted based on his interview in San Francisco in the article linked to below as well as in viewing the photographs therein showing lawyers and/or staff from Edelson PC back in Chicago engaged in a seemingly casual untroubled game on a ping-pong table which apparently occupies one corner office of the most colorfully decorated firm of the "Billion Dollar Man" who some believe a chamption of privacy rights and others just another class-action scoundrel. In full disclosure Mr. Edelson is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School which also was attended by a member of the Ninth Amendment's editorial board albeit in a different time period with no compensation sought nor provided for the publication of this post. Readers interested in more information concerning the above including some of the more obscure statutes relied on in lawsuits brought by Edelson PC can go to the link below.
Monday, 26 January 2015 - The Ninth Amendment editorial board urges that all readers and Americans strongly consider taking this one historic opportunity to save "Net Neutrality" as supported by President Obama and demand in huge numbers that the FCC not cave to ALEC, the Koch Brothers, AT&T, Verizon,Comcast, Time Warner, other big telecommunications and cable nor anyone else by letting them grab publicly-owned internet bandwith. For the reasons set forth below by CREDO Action it is vital that open public access for all people regardless of wealth, position or power be preserved or restored where it already has been "awarded" to a single provider locally as to all public bandwith at a reasonable and fair price because if it is lost history shows there will be no going back once big money interests become entrenched in their "life in the fast lane" paying off politicians with the same money that pours in to them from their latest monopolistic grab of public bandwith that those same politicians would unfairly award them. Readers might as an analogy conceive of other public utilities such as water or power were consumers regularly have to endure on a daily basis "brownouts" of electricity or unavailability of the public water supply daily during peak hours of need by the biggest businesses, the richest and the most powerful.
The historic actions of the FCC as to public airwaves available for broadcast radio and television are instructive here as they were put in place seeking to prevent single entities from taking over large swaths of publicly owned airwaves across the country by periodic public bidding as well as limits on ownership so that the voices of many could be heard rather than just a few dominating the public airwaves. Nevertheless all are familiar with the takeover by single entities forming "networks" or even ownership of very large local stations such that they have became too rich and powerful at the public's expense to ever be displaced from those limited public airwaves again. If not for the foresight and tenacity of Clifford Durr in particular member of the FCC at that time there may not even be the one true radio and television station serving the public interest that Americans still have today, that of course being the non-commercial NPR and PBS owned by the People.
All the American people should not settle for spending the rest of their lives looking at a spinning arrow as they endlessly wait at their computers while the communications of the richest people and biggest corporations speed past at up to 100x that in the"priority" lanes that belong to and must be bandwith forever available to every American including all individuals and small business at a reasonable and fair price regardless of wealth or power.
Americans must make their voices heard now at this one historic opportunity to save their bandwith preserving the opportunity for reasonable and fair access to broadband for all or they may find themselves so fed up watching the circle of frustration spinning endlessly on their computer screens that they end up going down to the pony express station to send and receive their private communications the "fast way".
Stop AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from blocking fast and affordable Internet access.
Sign the petition to the FCC: “Americans want more access to fast and affordable Internet service, not less. The FCC must preempt state laws that ban municipalities from selling Internet service.”
Add your name:
Dear Ninth Amendment Readers,
Imagine having affordable, lightning-fast Internet access at your home that is 50-100 times faster than the national average.1That could soon be a reality, but the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is working to make sure it never happens.2
Nearly 20 states already have laws on the books stopping cities from providing fast, publicly-owned Internet access – and other states could soon follow suit.
President Obama just urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make it illegal for states to block cities from providing affordable and fast Internet access – and the FCC is expected to make a decision very soon.
ALEC – a shadowy corporate front group that works to enact discriminatory voter ID laws, weaken gun safety laws and eliminate environmental regulations – is now pressuring state legislatures around the country to ban cities from offering broadband Internet access. ALEC is pushing its anti-municipal broadband agenda through model legislation it has developed, which one municipal broadband advocate described as “the kind of language one would expect to see if the goal is to protect politically powerful cable and telephone company monopolies.”3
Many perennial funders and members of ALEC, including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner,4 stand to gain financially from these state laws because they eliminate the possibility of competition from city-run broadband services.
According to recent surveys, nearly a quarter of Americans don’t have broadband Internet access at home.5 By pre-empting state laws that block municipal broadband, the FCC could help cities and municipalities provide fast Internet access to millions of Americans who don’t have it, and help create less expensive and faster Internet access options for tens of millions of others.
The FCC is planning to make a decision on President Obama’s proposal to protect municipal broadband in February.6 Before then, let’s make sure Chairman Wheeler and the other commissioners know that Americans want more access to fast and affordable Internet service, not less.
Friday, 1 November 2013, WASHINGTON, D.C. - The secret fact for the day is that in much of the world Halloween although officially over is still being "partied". With even lucky New York Wall Streeters still able to get in a $100 steak and a few good hours or so trick-or-treating in the hottest club restrooms "for the good old days" while the kids hit friends' penthouses under the watchful eyes of the au pairs. Plus some of that world-famous next phase New York late night partying once your significant "whatother" goes home with a headache.
Just imagine how good it must feel to stay up all night drinking $1,000 bottles of champagne and going straight via your $200 breakfast into your skyscraper corner office in a genuine office tower built for the ages (such as the Empire State Building where a B-17 could REALLY hit it in the fog and just BOUNCE OFF IT). Where they really are not yet ALL now designed by the architects to be faux corner offices so the CORNER PARTNERS really still do have the CORNER OFFICES. Have your fresh shirt put on and into your private bathroom with your next day's shoes shined while you read the funnies. You are shaved with a super-sharp straight edge by an escort you once dated whom you trust with your life (so long as you keep hinting her those tips "you would play yourself were you still working the trading down the ladder ha! ha! where it made any difference at all whether you came out ahead or behind because now it is all the same it IS ALL AHEAD).
Lickbacks For Order Flow
Oh what fun it is to ride where every day is a winning day. However one bets and whether one loses or wins numberswise you always win moneyswise. As we saw with "litttle shrub" Bush and yes again President Obama once Goldman, Sachs shared the imminent (as in at the close of business) evidence of its collapse and thus of its cronies, the Country's and inconsequentially must-not-forget least of all its clients to its former and future bosses through the federal government banking revolving door, that Federal Government sure could move fast for once, as in fat hands reaching for hundreds of billions of dollars in pockets as fast as they could ("the paperwork could be worked out later").
Candidly this meaning everyone else's money, including the whole Country's, by the way being sold to their fine clients that garbage you would not even take out for the stink and look at that, what did your clients do but go and BEAT YOU with your own ROTTEN ADVICE WHICH HOW DARE THEY SINCE EVEN YOU BET AGAINST THEM. Oh well, as we said, you are where EVERY DAY is a winning day, especially a losing day and a "conflict of interest" is just another trading technique kind of like "lickbacks for order flow"
And presto! chango! look at that just as we were taught in school. "How A Bill Is Made." And, boy, it sure is made fast! (Government's not closed that day!) And slipped right there (along with everything else) right in Uncle Sam's pocket and look out comes a fresh new shiny "bill", only this one is straight from the mint, and this one is a WINNER! Winner, winner, chicken dinner! There we go what we intended to say a bit more concisely. About as good odds (for BlackJack our very favorite) as in our TOTALLY UNINFORMED opinion one might expect on an Indian Lands (owned not "managed" please), say eight-deck continuously shuffling shoe where we can only split tens and double down on twenties. . . .
Sign Credo's Petition For The USA Freedom Act
All kidding aside the truth is this post has been drafted and lost and pummeled and back again. Speaking of our lead heading NSA CREDO Petition post title readers actually may be interested to learn that the Ninth Amendment's recent informational CREDO Working Assets mobile telephone service apparently has generated a significant amount of interest amongst Ninth Amendment readers as evidenced by an originally strong reader "pageview" showing followed by sustained higher levels than average of return readers to that post in particular.
Readers may recall that "CREDO Action from Working Assets" apparently follows in the tradition of Working Assets which we recall as originating at the time of the advent of fierce long distance "landline" telephone service competition. Working Assets set itself apart by characterizing itself as socially active (like CREDO today) at that time allowing customers monthly opportunities to make free calls for allotted time periods to designated numbers choosing from a selection of causes to support by volume of mostly "personal" directed telephone calls.
In any case we do NOT ourselves currently have any staff members whom we can consult personally as to the quality and reliability of CREDO service which apparently follows in the Working Assets tradition of setting itself apart by social activism such as demonstrated here in "Reining In The NSA" along with incentives such as assurances of the refunding of "contract service charges" for readers who decide they wish to try a CREDO telephone contract mid-stream in another but not suffer a financial setback (being held hostage) for doing so.
In any case we received the below e-mail from CREDO Action which is pertinent to news covered and/or followed here in that it links to a Congressional petition signature drive in SUPPORT of the "USA FREEDOM ACT" to reverse portions of the "USA PATRIOT ACT" and its ilk. Apparently the sponsors of this Bipartisan Bill (which even INCLUDES one of the Patriot Act's co-authors) could not resist the temptation in the naming of the new bill of flaunting what we can only hope HERE is a like-minded name directed in response to the very widely remarked cynicism in the naming of the Patriot Act. Only one one learns here that in this case the name truly a sincere step in the slow processing step in the process of restoring our constitutional rights.
Hopefully the urged passage of the USA Freedom Act is but one component in many pieces of legislation, judicial opinions and myriad other steps needed not a moment later to help clean up the detritus of the U.S. Constitution with enough left intact to continue to cleanup the United States Constitution with enough of that great document intact to enable the American people to reclaim it to its original glory consistent with legitimate amendment. Readers please find below the petition circulated to the American people for their signature in support of the USA Freedom Act and more generally to express their support of these great efforts to save our Country from anything but change by legitimate peaceful process as set out in the U.S.Constitution itself.
The editorial board of the Ninth Amendment log reminds readers that any suggestion, endorsement, recommendation or like support of whether it be a product, candidate, idea, position or whatever, the Ninth Amendment log accepts, receives, discusses nor in any other way communicates with the subject of the body of a post nor receives any of the above nor any remuneration, money, payment or whatever for what the Ninth Amendment posts here.
The Ninth Amendment is not responsible nor does it have any communication likewise with any such material which may appear outside the body of a post as these materials are arranged and displayed solely by Google, Google's Adsense or some affiliated Google advertisers. To date in several materials appearing in the Google's arrangements the Ninth Amendment to date has not received any money nor remuneration whatsoever.
CREDO Petition For Circulation To Members Of Congress Linked Below For Signature:
The NSA has become a rogue agency and Congress needs to rein it in.
The petition to the House and Senate reads:
"The NSA has become a rogue agency and
Congress needs to rein it in. The USA Freedom Act is a much needed first
step that would stop the bulk collection of Americans' telephone
records and provide some needed transparency about National Security
Letters and other forms of warrantless spying. Please support this
important legislation, and oppose the competing bill proposed by Sen.
Dianne Feinstein that is reform in name only and would do nothing to
stop the rampant and unconstitutional abuses by the NSA and other
intelligence agencies."
Automatically add your name:
Dear martin,
The NSA has far too much power to spy on innocent Americans without any meaningful oversight.
It's gotten so bad that even one
of the original ultra-conservative authors of the Patriot Act, Rep. Jim
Sensenbrenner, joined with progressive stalwart Rep. John Conyers and
Senator Patrick Leahy in introducing a bipartisan NSA reform bill.
This
bill, which they named the USA Freedom Act, would end the bulk
collection of Americans' telephone records and provide a modest measure
of needed transparency to the use of National Security Letters and other
forms of warrantless wiretapping.
It's a good first step, and we need to show the
House and the Senate that there’s popular support for Congress starting
the process of restoring our constitutional rights. Tell Congress: Rein in the NSA to stop its unconstitutional spying. Click here to automatically sign the petition.
Let's be clear. We support the full repeal of the Patriot Act and the
FISA Amendments Act. The only legislative vehicle for that is Rep. Rush
Holt’s Surveillance State Repeal Act, which we will continue to fight
for.
But until we succeed in repealing the Patriot Act and the FISA
Amendments Act, we should support anything that will start the process
of reining in the NSA without making anything worse.
The Sensenbrenner-Leahy bill is a good move in that direction. It
will at the very least stop the kind of bulk surveillance dragnets that
allows the government to spy on millions of Americans who are not
suspected of any wrongdoing. And it will take a minor step toward
transparency by allowing companies to disclose the number of requests
they get from the government that force them to turn over the private
information of their users and customers without a court order and under
a gag.
It's important to note that this is far less than what we truly need
to rein in the NSA. But it's a good start. The bill preserves much of
the status quo. Let's remember, the problem of overbroad and
unconstitutionally intrusive government surveillance is so vast that
even the president didn't know that the U.S. was tapping the phones of
allied world leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But while the Sensenbrenner-Leahy bill is a good first step,
the same cannot be said for the bill proposed by Senator Dianne
Feinstein, which in the name of reform would simply codify the
ability of the government to spy on innocent Americans without doing
anything to prevent the rampant abuses that have become routine
practices of a rogue NSA and other intelligence agencies. That's why we’re asking Congress to support Rep.
Sensenbrenner and Sen. Leahy’s USA Freedom Act, and oppose Senator
Feinstein’s sham bill which is meant to make the public think oversight
is being strengthened over the NSA when there will be no meaningful
reform established in the legislation. Tell Congress: Rein in the NSA to stop its unconstitutional spying. Click the link below to automatically sign the petition: http://act.credoaction.com/go/2449?t=5&akid=9307.5397176.GtsyYU
Thank you for taking a stand against unconstitutional government spying.
Friday, 4 Octobeer 2013, WASHINGTON, D.C. - Superstupid Senator Ted Cruz (R- Texas, surprise, surprise) what more perfect de facto voice of that awesome phenomenon in the United States come to be known as the "Tea Party". The name evokes richly textured small-town communities of mostly more mature thoughtful women discussing topics in knitting circles with others they may have known for decades, not to mention of course the seminal American historical Revolutionary event which started the United States on its long and hard-fought road to independence.
Only fitting that Cruzian "Tea Partiers" of today distort that essential foundation of our Nation's history to debase it to a series of meaningless noisemaker events worthy of nothing more than the decimation of a collapsing country. Only this country to be rendered once again into the Republicans' timelessly failed recipe for repeated homeland economic disasters a la "Apocalypse Now", copyright the Doors, is our own fault.
As usual the big-slime corporate donors want readers wrongly to believe "they are helpless" but to keep dumping money in the coffers of social pariahs like ATT and Verizon busy using confused callers perpetually extending "contract fees" (i.e. their latest consumer ripoffs) vying for those coveted front tables at the latest iteration of their "Tea Party" luncheon where they can sit just feet (oh boy!) from the Superstupid Tea Partier Supreme (yesterday dragged from the House of Reprsentatives because he did not know which house of Congress to which he belonged blabbing his phony filibuster). Sentaor Cruz may have his no doubt gathering henchman explain to him who is giving what so that it is easier to keep it straight on "payback" day, which in the Republican spirit unabashedly was cemented by former movie star and poster child for the disadvantaged Ronald Reagan.
As best we recall before his Presidential inauguration speech had even begun Reagan's staff already had started working the front rows assuring luminaries such as then Searle President ("Pigheart") Cheney that that pesky aspartame ruling (causes brain cancer, does not everything?) would be reversed as soon as "Big Ron" could be taught to sign (no, NOT PRINT) his name to the orders to the FDA Administrator. No need to wait even until the Administrator could be replaced with someone more "enlightened", or should we say "encumbered" with the famous Cheney signature pallets of crisp new stacks of $100 bills straight from the mint press to the helipad do NOT pass time-consuming bill serial number recording.
Speaking of brain cancer why not FINALLY ALREADY turn our attention back to today and the selfless generosity of ATT and Verizon wireless extended to the "Tea Party" morons and most of all their self-styled brainless leader Senator Ted Cruz, hear the tea spoons clanking around in his empty noggin?). The link below will help fill in those "interested" (or shall we just say "thoroughly nauseated" readers) with fascinating key participation of these well-practiced sleight-of-contract cellphone grifters ATT and Verizon whom we might thank our lucky stars do not get in the automobile sales, leasing and repair business (as far as we know, that is) were we not reasonably confident that they left no stone unturned getting a hand in EVERYONE's pocket except maybe in those countries which do not yet have pockets.
The reported facts are presented in the CREDO cellular service advertisement set out below but are worthy of brief empahsis here. CREDO by the way is the modern-day mobile iteration of Working Assets which was the pioneer in social activism amongst long-distance landline carriers which monthly let its callers make free long-distance telephone calls directly to provided direct-dial numbers of callers representatives in Washington.
The Ninth Amendment log does not take any money or remuneration whatsoever for any commercial interest that we on a unanimous vote of the editorial board believe worth of presenting in the body of a post. We have never spoken or communicated in any way with any such entity when we have made recommendations solely on the basis of our own observations and opinions. Likewise no guarantees, although we try to be sparing with only those recommendations we deem most worthy of mention in hopes that they may raise readers knowledge base and standard of living as better, more broadly informed consumers. The Ninth Amendment does not however exercise any control over advertisements in the borders of this log chosen through an auction process by Google adsense, and on which we give no input. Readers are encouraged as always to do their own research. For allegedly untracked and unrecorded queries on subjects with a secure connection when available the Ninth Amendment frequently does "searches" with qrobe.it (HTTPS) which is so described by Mozilla.org for its Firefox browser as an additional search engine which can be added to the drop-down search box list by going to the term "Manage Search Engines" after which point it remains available on the drop-down list. The link below the CREDO notice contains the terms of the CREDO mobile offer.
Copyright 2014 Big M All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to CREDO material)
Senator Ted Cruz is the ringleader of the current government
shutdown—taking millions of Americans hostage in an attempt to thwart
the will of voters in the 2012 election by defunding or delaying
Obamacare. He even sought to thwart the will of his fellow senators by
staging a rambling 21-hour faux-filibuster when he couldn't get enough
colleagues to join a real filibuster.
Thanks to the shutdown, more than 2 million federal workers won't get
paid on time—and 800,000 furloughed employees may never get paid for the
shutdown period. The CDC has halted its flu program, just as flu season
kicks into gear. National parks have closed, which is expected to cause
the communities around them to lose an estimated $30 million a day.
If the shutdown lasts more than a few weeks, millions of veterans may
not get their disability claims or pension payments, and low-income
pregnant women and new moms may stop getting the help they need to buy
healthy food for their families.
And who helped Mr. Cruz go
to Washington? Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Both telecom giants
contributed thousands of dollars to his 2012 Senate campaign.
On top of that, Verizon has contributed $220,600 and AT&T a whopping $1,093,000 since 2009 to members of the House and Senate Tea Party Caucuses, who have pushed Republicans in Congress to hostage-taking extremism.
At CREDO, we don't fund radical right politicians like Ted Cruz—we fight them. We fight through our powerhouse network of 3 million activists
at CREDO Action. Over the past week, we rallied more than 13,000 of our
activists to call Republicans and demand that they vote against the
shutdown. And another 9,000 called Democrats, urging them not to cave to
outrageous Republican demands.
We also donate millions of dollars each year to nonprofit groups working
for progressive change. Since 1985, we've raised $75 million for groups
like Planned Parenthood, Democracy Now! and 350.org.
The more members we have, the harder we can fight back against extremists like Ted Cruz.
