While the United States currently plays host to anywhere from 12-20 million illegal aliens, and states and cities are being forced to handle the problem themselves, it seems that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is playing games instead of focusing on more pressing matters. According to an August 1 press release (hat tip to GamePolitics):

… agents from 22 offices assisted by representatives of the electronic industry today executed 32 federal search warrants in 16 states as part of an investigation into the alleged sale and distribution of illegal modification chips and disc copyright circumvention devices. This investigation represents the largest national enforcement action of its kind targeting this type of illegal activity.

Having researched the immigration issue far more than most people would ever care to, I hate to say that this doesn’t surprise me. While ICE has upped its enforcement action this year, I’ve felt it’s largely due to political reasons. With President Bush having tried to pass “comprehensive immigration reform,” he needed it to look like ICE was doing all it could to arrest and deport those here. He’s been trying to change his image so it appears he’s tough on border security, while allowing him to slip in the call for amnesty as a way to fix the problem the “comprehensively.” Considering that the Secretary of Homeland Security was Bush’s personal lobbyist on the issue, I’m most likely correct in my assumptions.

However, since ICE was created in 2002 and assumed some of the former INS’s functions in 2003, it hasn’t exactly had a successful track record of strong enforcement. In fact, in 2004, only three employers were fined for hiring illegal aliens. Now, ICE appears to be diverting resources to going after people with mod chips instead of dealing with the illegal alien influx that’s actively encouraged by the Mexican Government and aided by the Mexican drug cartels. How wonderful. It’s great to know our government is looking out for us. Next time I hear someone complain about illegal aliens in their town, I’ll just remind them that ICE has more important things to do. They’ll understand.

There have already been some stories showing up online from people who have been targeted by ICE. According to GamePolitics, an Ohio man was raided this week and is now living out of his car. Xbox Scene posted his account of what happened:

When ICE hit me, they had a warrant for my grandma’s house where I had all my packages sent. They had a picture of the house, and a description of it, meaning they were ready to come find me. When they were there, they didn’t find much, since I hadn’t had my computer and most modding stuff there for a while, but I continued to have the orders sent there for security of the packages. They went in the house and woke everyone up and watched them get dressed and started going though everything that was in my old room, and the stuff I had in the garage. They took anything that was related to gaming. They opened all the mail I had waiting for me there (which included someone’s Xbox and $150 for a mod and 400gb), and took all the consoles and all console parts that I had stored there they even took my original xbox1 games, that were in retail cases. They took my 360, power brick and video cable, while its modded with xtreme 5.1b, it has never had 1 single burned game booted on it. They also felt it necessary to take all my old Xbox parts, mostly dead, my controllers for the 360 and Wii (?) and packed it in a box, and left.

They got my phone number from my grandma and they called me, but I was sleeping, just like everyone else in Ohio. They eventually figured out where I was, and came to find me at my girlfriends’ house. They asked me about modding and what I did, and how I did it. They showed me the list of modchips that they collected, and asked me if I ever imported modchips from Canada. I told them I did, but I didn’t know it was a Canadian site until after I made the order. They asked me how much money I made, and how many mods I’ve done, and how many chips I still had, and where they were and where my computers were.

I wasn’t forced to turn over my stuff since they didn’t have a warrant for where it all was, but they told me that if I volunteered it, it would look better when the case is reviewed. They also said that I would have a better chance of getting it back (at first, they promised that I would get it back in 10 days, but once we got to the location, that was changed to “better chance” and “looks better in the eyes of XX”. I did the only thing I felt I could do, I let them take what they wanted. We went to where I had my workshop area. They took my laptop, and desktop, and the soldering iron (which was one of their main things to find for some reason). All the chips and relative parts were taken on the recommendation of the computer forensics guy who was to be doing the analysis on my things.

Needless to say, the online response to ICE’s actions has generally not been in their favor. MAXCONSOLE wonders if modders are really on par with child exploiters and cocaine traffickers:

On August 1st 2007, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claimed a great victory over so called gaming pirates. Websites across the world picked up on a press release which indicated that ICE had conducted 32 search warrants across sixteen U.S. states in a bid to clamp down on the distribution of modchips and disc copyright circumvention devices. Glorified headlines rang in such as ‘US storms homes to snag gaming pirates’ (MSNBC) and ‘Homeland Security Makes US Safer From Gaming Pirates’ (TechNewsWorld) providing an even bigger tangent on the alleged illegal activity. Throw in some irrelevant ballpark figures about how counterfeiting and piracy costs the U.S. economy between $200 billion and $250 billion and the issue rockets into new territories. Beyond all the sensationalism, one must ask whether the sole activity of those in the U.S. distributing modchips itself warranted such an operation…

Over at Gearlong, reader Matt S comments:

Sigh. This is really what ICE chooses to do with its limited resources? Like there isn’t enough child pornography and other, actually dangerous people and things crossing the border to keep them busy.

Rob R gives his 2 cents worth at Dvorak Uncensored:

Julie Myers, assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security? You know, defending copyright protection isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about “Homeland Security”. So, we can’t keep 12M Mexicans from coming here illegally, but we’ll make sure Sony is taken care of…..

Julie needs to get a real assignment over at Homeland Security, like working on actual security.

According a CyberNet News reader:

You should have the right to mod your system. Technically, you paid the system manufacturer before you modded it. Editing your Hardware in the system is also not only be to play pirated games! You could add several features to your expense and your convenience! it is your decision. Not all system modders are bad.

Overall, this whole thing just makes one wonder what really goes on at ICE. With problems like mass illegal immigration and drug trafficking, both of which are encouraged by our southern neighbor and its drug cartels, why ICE is all of a sudden convinced that resources must be diverted to go after mod chips is beyond me. It seems that our government needs to stop playing games and start focusing on more important things.

Over a mere trailer, the race card is now being played in response to Resident Evil 5.

According to Kym Platt at Black Looks (hat tip to GamePolitics):

The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. “I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.”

This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.

Later, Platt decided to post more on her own blog, Ask This Black Woman:

Last night I posted a short piece on the new video game Resident Evil 5. I linked an article in the Village Voice by Bonnie Ruberg, a self-proclaimed white person, who questioned the possibility of racially problematic images (racist?) in the game. I also posted the piece at Blacklooks. Never before have I received more hateful comments by angry gamers who called me everything from a “nigger” to a “black hooker” for agreeing with Ruberg that these images of Black people (Black zombies) are problematic.

The response from gamers around the world was shocking. While I think we could have an intellectual debate about racist imagery in video games, there is no debating the blatant racism from many of Resident Evil 5’s supporters. Their comments were hostile and violent…much like the game itself. The ability to post comments, both on ATBW and Blacklooks, had to be disabled. Here’s a direct quote from a gamer who disagreed with my post: “Get back into the cotton fields, you filthy nigger.”

I am not the first or the only person to question the imagery in Resident Evil 5. Check out this post by blogger Jason Ellis at microscopiq. Ellis’ post is an interesting look at the images of Black people throughout modern time.

I confess I don’t know much about video games, gamers, etc. I don’t play video games, but I occasionally play solitaire on my gfs PC. However, given the response from gamers… I think we should all be very afraid. Many of these folks seem like the type who would try to reenact scenes from Resident Evil 5. Can you say Columbine?

I’m sorry Ms. Platt, but as much as you’d like to think so, there is no giant conspiracy out to get you. In fact, you should really think about what you’ve said. Resident Evil games have featured players shooting white zombies for years. Now all of a sudden when the scenery changes to Africa and the skin color to black, it’s supposed to be racist? You’re greatly over-playing the victimization card here.

Zombies are zombies regardless of skin color. When one comes at you, you don’t discriminate - you simply unleash total pwnage.

In addition, while the some of the emails Ms. Platt claims to have received are obviously out-of-line, drawing a parallel between video games and Columbine is uncalled for. Need I remind Ms. Platt that video games don’t cause real-world violence?

In conclusion, while Kym Platt wants to think this game is putting her down as a black woman, Resident Evil 5 is a video game about killing zombies - nothing more, nothing less. Anyone who makes this into a race issue needs to get out of the past. How can we get over race issues and move on if we interpret things the way she does?

Perhaps Archgabe says it best in a comment on GamePolitics:

Black this, White that… Blah, Blah, Blah.

They are Zombies! RE1-4 had white zombies. This one has black zombies. Does it matter? No! They are zombies! Zombies are not people and they should be put down regardless of the race they happened to be in life. What does this person want? The game is set in Africa. I think it would be pretty stupid to have an all white cast (zombies included) in an area that is known to be the location for one race. What’s next? French zombies in Tokyo? Russian zombies in Brazil? Japanese zombies in India?

In fact, if you look at it. Zombies are the ultimate in equality. They don’t care about race or religion. They don’t care what country you are from. They are equal opportunity eaters and are all equally (un)dead.

So what if they are African zombies? The race card is the only card too eager to be played in any given situation. A zombie is a zombie and there is only one way to deal with it. Kill it for good. Hell, it is a Resident Evil game, so the chances are that you are going to have to end up trying to save some local anyway. Zombies are never about race. Zombies are a story of humanity. Watch any of Romero’s zombie films and you will see that point being abundantly clear.

Republican online media strategist David All recently gave a PowerPoint presentation to a group of young conservatives at the Leadership Institute regarding the importance of having an online presence. I hope they paid attention because conservatives are behind in this area.

While this issue has been a frequent subject of discussion lately, I feel that one problem is almost always overlooked. As I have observed for a while, far too many conservatives tend to treat different internet technologies like a child who just got a new toy. They can’t wait to show them off to everyone (look, look at me, I have a Twitter account AND Facebook!!!111). Often times tools like MySpace and Facebook are viewed by conservatives as more of an end instead of a means to an end. Many seem to feel that they only need to have accounts on different sites and that’s it, nothing more. I see this a lot with Twitter. I can’t begin to recall how many times I’ve heard people say “everyone should get a Twitter account, it’s a great technology.” Perhaps for some, but simply having a Twitter account is rather useless unless you’re sending updates to a large blog or something similar.

Overall, each technology needs to be evaluated in terms of how it can further one’s objectives and subsequently used for those specific purposes. Take Facebook for example. Creating a Facebook group for an organization or website is a great way to expand a member base. In addition, it’s an excellent way to keep people up-to-date with current information via mass messaging (provided that your Facebook group has less than 1,000 members) and posts on the group’s discussion board. However, Facebook requires a good amount of time and strategic action to be a successful tool. I have a Facebook group with close to 20,000 members and it took me a lot of time and work to get that many. Simply making a profile/group with no further interaction will get you nowhere.

When conservatives begin to treat the different internet technologies as familiar tools and properly use them to achieve specific results, then we’ll start to see a more effective conservative online presence. Until then, getting googly-eyed over simply having accounts on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter isn’t going to cut it. In addition, the strategy of hiding from the rest of the internet world by making sites like QubeTV and Conservapedia is another poor choice. However, that’s a different discussion for another day.

I’ll admit, I’m a complete Harry Potter fanatic. I’ve read each one of books 1-6 more times than I can count on a hand. Eagerly awaiting the arrival book #7, I was thrilled when Amazon.com and UPS had my copy on the porch of my house at 10:30am. After finishing around 2am Sunday morning, I was struck by what an amazing series J.K. Rowling had produced. While I had predicted parts of the ending, I have to say it was one of the best I’ve ever read.

Other bloggers had some interesting things to say. As Dr George Borjas writes:

I was very impressed with the book. The ending flowed naturally from the rest of the series–and parts of it were quite moving. I was truly amazed at how small–seemingly trivial–details first revealed earlier in the series (even in Book 1) come to play a crucial role in the denouement.

There’s one more Potter-related thing to do at my house. I started reading the book aloud to my children when my oldest twins were in first grade and the series had just begun. Luckily, they still want to hear me read this final volume–and I am more than willing to oblige. So I started reading the book last night before bedtime–as I used to in the old days. I’m afraid the opportunity will never come again.

Redstate’s Jeff Emanuel weighed in on Human Events:

Chief among Rowling’s many achievements in this series is her success in making Harry a real teenage boy, with very real concerns, fears, and emotions. He is no more a cardboard construct than the reader is, and as a result, an entire generation of readers has been drawn to him and to his story.

Its been a long journey, but Harry Potter has finally come to an end. However, the books will surely continue to live on as legions of fans pass them down to new generations of readers. I know I will.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to create a blog that provides commentary on politics, technology, and the electronic entertainment industry. While I’m a gamer at heart, I’ve also spent time working in Washington DC with various conservative organizations. Unfortunately, conservatives and many on the right largely ignore gaming issues. It’s my hope that through this blog I’m able to provide not only good commentary, but also questions that provoke thought and stimulate discussion.