Stripping Terrorists of American Citizenship

In the article, Bill aims to strip certain Americans of their citizenship, by Ed Hornick of CNN on May 7th, 2010. There is a bill being introduced to Congress that would allow the government to strip people of their citizenship if they are believed to be involved in terrorist actions. The bill is being introduced by a bi-partisan group, some of which are saying that they are simply updating the 1940 bill, the Immigration and Nationality Act, to fit the present times. There are critics of the bill who say that this is a direct reaction to the attempted car bombing of Time Square. The group claims that their actions are based on the current situation with the wars we are fighting, and the world we live in. This bill could violate a citizens civil liberities, by going against the framers original idea of any citizen guilty or innocent to receive due process of the law. The bill includes clauses that could potentionally violate the original intent of the constitution involving how treason should be viewed. In our opinion this bill could be potentionally dangerous to civil liberties. While we think the idea behind the bill would be helpful, like the Speaker of the House, we would like to know what consistutes terrorism, we would like to see the definition of what would strip someone of their citizenship to the United States.

Posted by TFavaron and EMckee

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boyds/1266529437/sizes/m/

Facebook Privacy Doesn't Exsist

In the Inquirer article, Bad Week for Facebook Privacy, by Asavin Wattanajantra on May 7th 2010, Wattanajantra talks about how Facebook has failed at protecting the possibly sensative information of their users, unlike what they have advertised. For example Facebook has been giving, "users' personal information to companies like Microsoft, Yelp and Pandora without first obtaining their consent," allowing these companies to advertise to certain individuals based on their interests posted on Facebook. All of these privacy violations are recent (which comes weeks before this article was written), but unfortunately this is not the first time that Facebook has had questionable ethics with people's privacy, "three years ago, [where] it disclosed personal information, including video purchases and rentals, without users' knowledge or permission." Facebook, the company, has made clear to its users that it is content with disregarding all privacy issues to expand their bussiness. Facebook has violated the people's right to privacy given by the penumbra of rights implied by the Bill of Rights. Chief Justice Warren, laid down a court decision reenforcing this unenumerated right. In our personal opinions, we see that Facebook has possibly let down its users by disclosing more of their personal information than they lead them to believe. While we personally are somewhat dissappointed by this, we mantain that Facebook is still a reasonably satisfactory social networking experience, and while we may monitor our profiles more closely, we don't plan to delete them.

Posted by: TFavaron and EMcKee

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mightykenny/2399895472/sizes/m/