Election and The World Wide Web

This upcoming election has become more or less a major problem. There have been massive reports done with the idea of "middle-man" hacking that the Republican party allegedly has been involved with. It has extenuated to the extreme of a man who they say is behind all of this is being subpoenaed to testify in open court. The Republican party has funded legal aid and are trying to push back the hearing until after election day. If this isnt enough I recently came across an article on BNA's internet law news that deals with this "joe the plummer" character and the controversy surrounding it. The article goes on to explain how the Democratic Party illegally accessed this mans information and they breached legal code. This Joe the Plummer character has been a hot topic as of lately and all it does is distract the masses from what each canidates views and beliefs truly are. I have chosen not to vote in this upcoming election and it is because of these ideals that surround voter fraud and the ways that it is handled. It is tough to understand the magnitude of which this can cause, and no one truly can understand what can come of this. These many situations and the many others that cause for impartiality in this current system truly show how this current system does not value canidates equally or each persons single vote. Regardless, measures need to be taken to ensure each persons true vote and maybe switching to computer devices can only add to the mass scare of identity theft.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10075746-38.html

Supreme Court and Identity Theft

Within the past week, news has surged that the US supreme court is hearing a case that involves an illegal immigrant. The case involves a man who worked for six years under a false name, green card, and social security number and than apparently unknowingly changed these and passed in different numbers. Well these numbers were that of a US citizen and thus this man was prosecuted. The controversy surrounds the theme of if a person did not intentionally steal ones identity than how can he be held responsible for such. In my person opinion it is tough for the courts to determine if a person knowingly or unknowingly stole a persons identity to use for their ability to work. Therefore each case should be thought of as the offender knowingly stole the persons identification for even if they didn't mean too, they still put themselves in a position where they had to. The bigger problem may be the idea that these immigrants need to falsify their identifications in order to work, but with regards to this case it cannot be a determinant. I think that the supreme court should and will rule in the lower courts decisions to incarcerate this man and even extending two years onto his sentence in what seems that increasing penalties will decrease the amount of these crimes committed. All in all this is an extremely relevant topic to society and there have been multi-million dollar illegal trades occuring around identity theft and the courts and the legal system need to find a way to cut down on this type of crime.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/20/AR2008102000883.html

You Tube and Congress

I recently read an article on BNA's Internet Law News and it was related to the recent decision on the dilemma of whether or not congressman can post on YouTube. It will essentially be the first time government officials will be able to post outside of the .gov domain realm. It seems as if this will allow too much leniancy with what will be allowed to be posted by these officials anywhere else in the cyber world. I do agree though that allowing videos on youtube will make it so anyone can access debates or speeches to help further their knowledge with regards to the election that is coming up. Another problem I forsee is internet hackers are going to change speeches or debates through illegal computer programming that will cause for the idea of not knowing whats real and not. Before this bill passed it was widely known that congressman were not able to post this way and one would know that many of the videos can be seen as a farse or a joke. Regardless of the situation it needs to become aware what is real and not through various government seals or some type of firewall system. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying, "a significant step forward toward bringing House rules into the multimedia age and allowing for members to effectively communicate with their constituents online."I agree completely with this statement and in an ideal world it sounds great, but realisitcally speaking it doesnt seem as if this is going to work as well as planned and it could cause controversy and the idea of not knowing what to believe. The link for this article is: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10058034-38.html.