White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail - NY Times

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

more ...

Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law: Why it's a lot worse than you think. - Slate

Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it.

more ...

Be quiet: the surveillance cameras might hear you - Ars Techinica

Although crime statistics point to the fact that law-and-order issues are actually less of a problem now than in the past, the general public's perception remains one convinced that muggery and buggery hides behind every street corner. Politicans and the media stoke these fears, and we get hastily made laws and policies enacted as a result. Over in the UK, the trend over the past two decades has been to abrogate day-to-day policing of the streets to an army of CCTV cameras. Soon, if scientists have their way, the cameras will be able to train their focus on suspicious sounds automatically with new AI technology.

more ....

Congress pats itself on back as it caves on telecom immunity - Ars Techinca

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," Rep Trent Franks (R-AZ) intoned on the floor of the House of Representatives, purporting to invoke the authority of Thomas Jefferson on behalf of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which passed the House by a 293–129 vote yesterday.

If we wanted to pick nits, we could note that this is a misquotation, that Jefferson didn't write it, and that the "eternal vigilance" alluded to in that hoary aphorism is most assuredly not the government's unfettered power to eavesdrop on Americans' international communications without a warrant. But forget it, he's rolling. Why spoil such a rare bipartisan lovefest with quibbling over details?

more ...

Deep packet inspection under assault over privacy concerns - Ars Technica

Add the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) to the list of groups concerned about the privacy implications of widespread deep packet inspection (DPI) by ISPs. CIPPIC has filed an official complaint with Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, asking her office to investigate Bell Canada's use of DPI (and we're flattered to be quoted as an expert source in the complaint). In addition, the group would welcome a wider investigation into possible DPI use at cable operators Rogers and Shaw, as well.

more ...

The computer security paradox - Raiden's Realm

One of the most prized rights of any American is the right to privacy and security. It's something people in some countries would kill for. Yet now there appears to be a very frightening trend growing. Your privacy and security are being thrown out the window wholesale in favor of easier access by law enforcement. A recent example of this can be seen with the announcement that Microsoft has been providing a tool to investigators that can effectively rip your Windows security to shreds in seconds, exposing all your private data to whoever wants to look at it.

more ...

IBM, Microsoft Trounce Apple on Climate Friendliness Scorecard - Wired

Scorecard IBM earned top honors among electronics manufacturers on a recently-updated climate friendliness scorecard (.pdf), earning 77 out of a possible 100 points to beat runners-up Canon, Toshiba, Sony and HP in a ranking of the companies' responsiveness to climate change. IBM, which makes big, hulking servers and mainframe computers, even beat out Microsoft (38 points) and Google (55), whose products are composed entirely of electrons. Apple, which has taken heat from Greenpeace for the allegedly toxic chemicals in its iPhone, scored a pathetic 11 out of 100.

more ...

Viacom, Google set for fight to bitter end over Safe Harbor - Ars Technica

It has been just over a year since Viacom launched its $1 billion lawsuit against Google for "brazen disregard of intellectual property laws" on YouTube. Although we haven't heard much news about the case as of late, some fightin' words have come out of both sides recently to indicate that the case is still going strong. There's no sign of an impending settlement, either, as Viacom is still beating the piracy drum and Google continues to stand its ground. Because of this, the eventual outcome of the Viacom suit may set a legal precedent that could send ripples throughout the entire Internet.

more ...

House to close its doors for spying bill - AP

House doors were locked Thursday night as lawmakers prepared for their first closed session in 25 years to debate surveillance legislation.
Republicans requested privacy for what they termed "an honest debate" on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.

more ...

Inspector general: FBI not embracing privacy safeguards - C|Net

The FBI has wielded the Patriot Act's extraordinary surveillance powers to unlawfully collect information about American citizens and has resisted some efforts to impose additional privacy safeguards, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general.

more ...

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier - Wired

Quantico A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

more ...

Free WiFi comes at a price in Denver International Airport - Ars Technica

The limitations of web filtering software have been extensively documented; most software arbitrarily excludes sites with educational or other sophisticated content, while clearly pornographic material sporadically slips through. Oddly, the limitations haven't stopped organizations or, in the case of Australia, an entire government from attempting to deploy them. The international airport in Denver recently took the plunge and started using filtering software when they converted their WiFi network to free access. The results are an excellent illustration of what leads an organization to choose a solution that's annoying, arbitrary, and ineffective.

more ...

More FBI privacy violations confirmed - Associated Press

The FBI acknowledged it improperly accessed Americans' telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.

more ...

KY Rep. Seeks To Ban Anonymous Blogging - WebProNews

... Kentucky state representative Tim Couch (R-Hyden), introduced a bill to the General Assembly that would bar Kentuckians from anonymously commenting on Websites, or via their own blogs. The bill would require anyone leaving a comment to provide their real name, address, and email address to the website on which they wish to comment. Website operators would be required to enforce this policy or face fines.

more ...

Bugs Bunny vs. Daffy Duck: Why voters always choose the wascally wabbit for president - Slate

How did we reach the point at which Sen. Clinton, the clear Democratic front-runner six months ago, needs clear wins in Texas and Ohio to mute the calls for her to end her campaign?
... And here's another explanation for this remarkable reversal of fortune, one that represents for me one of the few really reliable rules of presidential political warfare: Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.

more ...

Spying Fight about Emails, Not Phone Calls, DOJ Reveals - Wired

In the end, it turns out it's all about the emails.

The fight in Congress and the big push for expanded wiretapping powers has nothing to do with intercepting foreign-to-foreign phone calls inside the United States without a court order. In fact, it turns out that the nation's secret wiretapping court is fine with that.

more ...

FISA and Total Online Awareness - MojoBlog

New questions have arisen about what, exactly, the government hopes to surveil.

... And indeed, that would seem to be a big problem. Back in August 2007, an extremely large, bipartisan majority in Washington sought to make an extremely small, technical change to FISA to account for the fact that the NSA can't know, a priori, where the recipient of a call will be located: Under the theoretical terms of the agreement, the NSA would be allowed to listen to calls of foreign origin making their way through a U.S. switch. If the recipient happened to be in a foreign country, surveillance could continue unmolested. If the recipient happened to be located in the U.S., then the NSA could either continue surveillance with a warrant, or minimize the data.

more ...

What piracy crisis? MPAA touts record box office for 2007 - Ars Technica

... But this sort of thing has become crucial to the MPAA. Take a look at the group's homepage; nearly everything is about copyrights and piracy. The MPAA routinely asserts that the movie business is being decimated by piracy, but the press release announcing the Weekly Reader deal sits just below a far more interesting piece of news (PDF): data that shows the US box office doing its biggest year of business ever in 2007, growing 5.4 percent over 2006 and bringing in $9.63 billion.

more ...

Comcast Must Die - MojoBlog

Comcast, the cable TV giant, has given its customers lots of reasons to hate the company. They've refused to embrace a la carte programming, charged people $2 to stop sending them junk mail, wrecked people's credit reports, falsely advertised its Internet speed and generally abused the people who pay for its services. Comcast's customer service problems are so acute that Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield started a blog called Comcast Must Die to compile all the gripes about the company from consumers. But Comcast doesn't really need any help generating bad press.

more ...

AT&T's degrading service and my landlord’s ban on Comcast - ZDNet

With all the negative attention headed towards Comcast lately, AT&T's problems seem to be slipping below the radar. Unfortunately for me, those problems are first hand for me as I'm personally suffering degradations in speed. As if getting 1200 Kbps downstream on a so-called 1500 Mbps service and all those outage problems (example here and here) weren't bad enough, my AT&T DSL service has declined. I suppose I could count myself lucky compared to my Mom's neighbor who only got 320 Kbps service after AT&T unilaterally and without permission "upgraded" his bill to the 1500 Mbps service without upgrading his performance.

more ...

Great news for Microsoft: Zunes stolen! - ZDNet

Providing yet another sign that Apple's iPod is the audio and video platform, a policy think-tank on Tuesday said that thefts of the media player have skewed crime statistics. Microsoft wishes it had that publicity.

more ...

The Gaza Bombshell - Vanity Fair

After failing to anticipate Hamas's victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

more ...

Could a Coffee Maker Be Worth $11,000? - Slate

The New York Times used words like "cult object," "majestic," and "titillating"; the Economist called it "ingenious" and "sleek." The subject of these encomiums is, incongruously, a commercial coffee machine—the Clover 1s, an $11,000 device that brews regular coffee (not espresso) one cup at a time. Could the Clover represent that much of an advance in the state of the coffee art? I had to try it for myself.

more ...

The invasion of America: Creeping intrusions against our privacy rights are an assault on the Constitution.
By Andrew P. Napolitano

When President Nixon was in his pre-Watergate heyday, he ordered the FBI and the CIA to electronically monitor the private behavior of his domestic political adversaries. Shortly after Nixon resigned, investigators discovered hundreds of reports of break-ins and secret electronic surveillance. None of it was authorized by warrants, and thus all of it was illegal. But it had been conducted pursuant to the president's orders. Nixon's defense was, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

He made that infamous statement in a TV interview years after he left office, but the attitude espoused was obviously one he embraced while in the White House. He, like his present-day successor, rejected the truism that the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from conducting electronic surveillance of anyone without a search warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause of a crime, restrains the president.

In response to the abuses during the Nixon administration, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in 1978. The law provides that no electronic surveillance may occur by anyone in the government at any time under any circumstances for any reason other than in accordance with law, and no such surveillance may occur within the U.S. of an American other than in accordance with the 4th Amendment.

Read on ...

Andrew P. Napolitano, a New Jersey Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His latest book is "A Nation of Sheep."

RIAA, MPAA: Be Careful what you Wish For - ITWire

Schemes are being hatched to make it harder and harder to download copyrighted material across the internet. Seems they will be just as successful as the method to stop people recording CDs to tape in the "old days." And just as ludicrous.

Fat Chance: Obesity, genetics, and responsibility - Slate

"Nature tops nurture in childhood obesity," a wire story announced last week. The article's first sentence reported that according to a new study, "Diet and lifestyle play a far smaller role than genetic factors in determining whether a child becomes overweight."

Glitch lets FBI look at slew of e-mail - SFGate

A technical glitch gave the FBI access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network - perhaps hundreds of accounts or more - instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

Whistle-blower site taken offline - BBC

A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Inside the Bizarre World of Japanese Pickup Schools - Wired

Satoshi Fujita is not a good-looking man. He has oily skin, beady eyes, short legs and a boy-band wig to cover his balding head. But that hasn't stopped him from becoming Japan's most sought-after dating coach for geeks.

Many, Perhaps Most, Nearby Sun-Like Stars May Form Rocky Planets - NASA

Astronomers have discovered that terrestrial planets might form around many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in our galaxy. These new results suggest that worlds with potential for life might be more common than we thought.

The Washington Post printed a nice piece of FUD in it's Opinion page today. They allowed Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, to write an opinion piece expressing his concerns about how FISA has not passed and what it means to America. The Daily Kos has a good point by point rebuff of the opinion piece.

What appalls me is that basically McConnell wants retroactive immunity for the telecoms He doesn't want AT&T and Verizon to be held accountable for breaking the law.

Under fire, Democrats seek end to spy law feud - C|Net

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have already stood up to President Bush this week, refusing to approve a controversial Senate bill that would immunize telephone companies from lawsuits alleging illegal spying. Now they're being forced to defend their actions against those who contend that inaction endangers national security--and who wonder what happens next.

Get Ready for a Crackdown on Broadband Use - PC World

As traffic increases, experts say ISPs may start charging by the gigabyte, limiting use of some services and snooping at the data passing through their networks.

If they did, it's about damb time. What the hell have they been waiting for?

Eavesdropping Law Is Likely to Lapse - NYT

Broad spying powers temporarily approved by Congress in August appear likely to lapse this week after a daylong game of chicken on Wednesday between the White House and House Democrats produced no clear resolution.

Bush, GOP Rebuke House Democrats on Surveillance Bill* - Washingon Post

House Democrats have decided to leave Washington today for a one-week recess without any further action on a terrorist surveillance bill set to expire Friday night, drawing protest tactics from Republicans and a sharp rebuke from President Bush.

House set to let warrantless eavesdropping law lapse - CSM

Neither the White House nor House Democrats blinked in a standoff over renewal of a controversial eavesdropping law, now on track to expire at midnight Saturday.

President Bush said Thursday that failure to update the Protect America Act will "harm our ability to monitor new terrorist activities and could reopen dangerous gaps in our intelligence."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in response, dubbed such talk fear-mongering. The president has every authority to continue needed eavesdropping under another law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), she said. Moreover, the authorities granted under the temporary surveillance law enacted in August will carry on for a year, she added.

President Bush is putting a lot of FUD out there about how our country will be in danger because of this impass. Harry Reid and Silvestre Reyes have written letters to the President concerning his recent remarks. Read them here.

* Be sure to read the comments - there are some really good ones.

With one vote, Senator Ken Salazar (D - CO) has lost my vote and gained my angst. The Senator recently voted for FISA bill, which gives amnesty to the telcos and legalizes President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

In the Senators news release on the passage of the bill, he talks about how he "supported several amendments that would have gone further in protecting civil liberties and would have limited the immunity protection provided to telecommunications companies involved in helping the government collect intelligence". I believe if he truly was concerned about these items he would have voted no for the bills passage. To me his statement is just more hot D.C air.

It galls me to believe I voted for him. I expected more of him rather than just being a Democratic pushover who is only concerned about being re-elected in this rather conservative state.

Senator Salazar, shame on you for not caring about nor protecting my civil liberties. Be sure to expect me to do whatever I can to prevent you from being re-elected in the next election if you chose to run. Hopefully you will chose not to run again.

A secret to drying clothes? Liquid. - C|Net

Clothes dryers are the second biggest hog of household energy, according to the Department of Energy. Most are so similar in terms of power hunger that the Energy Star label of efficient appliances doesn't even mark dryers.
By this fall, however, consumers could enjoy faster, greener and safer clothes dryers that draw half the power of conventional models, according to Hydromatic Technologies Corporation.
Its Dryer Miser technology would dry garments 41 percent more quickly without shrinking as much or stinking them up with the odor of burnt lint, said Michael Brown, the inventor and company president.

U.S. Plans to Shoot Down Broken Spy Satellite - Washington Post

President Bush, acting on the advice of his national security advisers, has decided to attempt to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite that is expected to crash to the Earth by early next month.

Senate Approves Telco Amnesty, Legalizes Bush's Secret Spy Program - Wired

The Senate overwhelming voted Tuesday evening to legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and grant amnesty to the phone companies that helped out with the domestic spying..

Comcast: Bloggers keep us honest - C|Net

After months of lying and evading our questions, Comcast seems to have developed a love affair with the blogosphere. Is this an early Valentine's Day present for bloggers, or is the company up to its usual tricks?

The day the wiretaps go dead - C|Net

With all of the attention that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) update (and the administration's vigorous attempts to immunize the criminals telcos), it seems like a good time to explore the issues surrounding surveillance and privacy in America today.
While there are so many scary things being done by intelligence and law enforcement, hope is not far away. Easy to use privacy technologies are upon us, and with them, comes a radical shift in the balance of power. As this article will explain, the scalable techniques with which the NSA, FBI and other agencies can spy on innocent Americans may soon be made useless - forcing them to go back to the old school (and labor intensive) black bag job.

The Tao of ScreenIn search of the distraction-free desktop - Slate

If your computer desktop is anything like mine - and, brother, it is - you've paved over every spare pixel in an iconistan of clutter. Desktop design originated in a wistful visual metaphor, the clean, still work surface, encouraging users to productive ends. Leaps forward in computing horsepower and the rise of constant Internet use has transformed the tabletop terra firma into a cockpit, an antic terminal for the networked self. Our desktops are now a thick impasto of tabbed windows, pull-down menus, dashboard widgets, and application alerts. No possible distraction gets left behind, no link, feed, IM, twitter, or poke unheeded.

Senate Delays Eavesdropping Vote - AP/US News

The Senate granted at least a temporary victory to the White House on Thursday, turning back an attempt to increase court oversight of the government's surveillance of phone calls and e-mails that involve people inside the United States.

Rising Anti-Americanism in Russia - US News

Vladimir Dobrovinsky, 33, a teacher at a design school in Moscow, says he's not interested in politics. But bring up America and the well-traveled, university-educated Dobrovinsky holds forth. He criticizes Washington's "crude interference" in world affairs. He complains that Russia is not treated as an important partner by the Bush administration. "A lot of Russians," he says, "are angry that America deals with us like we're Thailand."

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs? - NY Times

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment - NY Times

A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.

Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo model - Reuters

Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis as soon as next year.

Geophysicists Urge Steep Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Scientific American

The scientists of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) warn that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be slashed in half to keep temperatures from rising 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius)—or else. "Warming greater than 2 degrees Celsius above 19th-century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity and - if sustained over centuries - melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea levels of several meters," the AGU declares in its first statement in four years on "Human Impacts on Climate."

US intel chief wants carte blanche to peep all 'Net traffic - Ars Technica

In a long profile published by The New Yorker this week (not yet online, but there's an audio interview with the profile's author at The New Yorker's site), Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell discusses a plan in the works to dramatically expand online surveillance. As The Wall Street Journal sums it up, "in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse."

Analysis: Metcalfe's Law + Real ID = more crime, less safety - Ars Technica

"We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'" Thus spake security consultant Ed Giorgio in a widely-quoted New Yorker article on the US intelligence community's plans to vacuum up and sift through everything that flies across the wires. But Giorgio is wrong—catastrophically wrong. The story of Fidencio Estrada, a drug runner who bribed Florida Customs agent Rafael Pacheco to (among other things) access multiple federal law enforcement databases on his behalf, suggests that when it comes to the government collecting data on innocent civilians for law enforcement purposes, privacy and security are essentially the same thing.

Promises They Can't Keep - Washington Post

The big lie of campaign 2008 - so far - is that the presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, will take care of our children. Listening to these politicians, you might think they will. Doing well by children has now passed motherhood and apple pie as an idol that all candidates must worship.

License and (Voter) Registration, Please - MotherJones

Washington Dispatch: On Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear what may be the most significant voting rights case since Bush v. Gore—and it could affect the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

RIAA Still Thinks MP3s Are a Crime, Despite Post's False Correction of File Sharing Column - Wired

Following a crusade on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America by News.com journalist Greg Sandoval, the Washington Post posted a correction to a column about a file sharing lawsuit which was misleading headlined "Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use."

Unfortunately, the correction is actually wrong ...

Red Wine Drug Shows Proof That It Combats Aging - Wired

For the first time, scientists have proof in human subjects that a derivative of an ingredient in red wine combats some symptoms of aging. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announced the results here on Monday at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.

New Government Openness Law Not All That Open - Wired

Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists points out that an Associated Press story that appeared in top newspapers recently -- including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal -- was wrong in its assessment of a new law that President Bush signed on December 31 that purports to promote more open government.

A sled, a cow, the future - Mountain Gazette

Few people may believe that at age 57, I recently T-boned, so to speak, a pregnant, 1,000-pound cow while riding my Flexible Flyer sled down the steepest county road in western Montana. To rural sledders, this is plausible, but perhaps not to adults of my generation. The mean age for the 55,000 sledders injured badly enough last winter to need an ER visit is 9.9, a dismal statistic that reveals a paucity of Baby Boomers still willing to have fun hurtling down mountains with a minimum of control. Sledding down icy back roads is a pure and noble calling that offers countless opportunities for high-speed rides on metal-runners that are only somewhat steerable. Obstacles to doing so abound, from so-called common sense, to cows, like the one I collided with.

Foolproof Online Dating Tips for Desperate Guys - Wired

There are a lot of guys out there on the internet who desperately want to find a woman to share their life with, and who don't want to have to go outside to do it. If you're one of them, you may find yourself wondering why the women you meet in chat rooms, discussion groups and online games have so far failed to love you.

California Sues EPA; Says State Law Greener, Cleaner Than Feds - Wired

California today sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency today for preventing the state from reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its cars.

Big Brother gets bigger, says global privacy study - C|Net

According to a new international privacy report, governments around the world are increasingly invading the privacy of citizens with surveillance, identification systems, and archiving of private data.

US Near Bottom of Global Privacy Index - AP/Wired

Individual privacy is under threat around the world as governments continue introducing surveillance and information-gathering measures, according to an international rights group.

Journey to the Dark Side: The Bush Legacy (Take One) - TomDispatch

If you don't mind thinking about the Bush legacy a year early, there are worse places to begin than with the case of Erla Osk Arnardottir Lilliendahl. Admittedly, she isn't an ideal "tempest-tost" candidate for Emma Lazarus' famous lines engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. After all, she flew to New York City with her girlfriends, first class, from her native Iceland, to partake of "the Christmas spirit." She was drinking white wine en route and, as she put it, "look[ing] forward to go shopping, eat good food, and enjoy life." On an earlier vacation trip, back in 1995, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks, a modest enough infraction, and had even returned the following year without incident.

This time - with the President's Global War on Terror in full swing - she was pulled aside at passport control at JFK Airport, questioned about those extra three weeks 12 years ago, and soon found herself, as she put it, "handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep... without food and drink and... confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned." It was "the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected."

By her account, she was photographed, fingerprinted, asked rude questions - "by men anxious to demonstrate their power. Small kings with megalomania" - confined to a tiny room for hours, then chained, marched through the airport, and driven to a jail in New Jersey where, for another nine hours, she found herself "in a small, dirty cell." On being prepared for the return trip to JFK and deportation, approximately 24 hours after first debarking, she was, despite her pleas, despite her tears, again handcuffed and put in leg chains, all, as she put it, "because I had taken a longer vacation than allowed under the law."

Read on ...

Feds lose bid for Amazon.com customer records - C|Net

Federal prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to force Amazon.com to identify thousands of innocent customers who bought books online, then abandoned the idea after a judge rebuked them.

In an order that was sealed but has now become public, U.S. District Judge Stephen Crocker rejected the Justice Department's subpoena for details on Amazon's customers and their purchasing habits. Prosecutors had claimed the details would help them prove their case against a former Madison, Wisc., city official charged with tax evasion related to selling used books through Amazon.

"The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their prior knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote in June. Amazon filed the lawsuit to quash the grand jury subpoena.

The case is reminiscent of last year's attempts by federal prosecutors to wrest sensitive search-related information from Google through a subpoena. A California judge eventually rejected the request for users' search queries (and allowed only an excerpt from Google's index of Web sites).

Read on ...

* I can't take credit for the title, I saw it on C|Net, but I once knew Charley MacArthur who is the son of James MacArthur who played Danno

What's at Stake in the Surveillance Debate in Congress - Wired Commentary

Over the next few weeks and months, civil libertarians and consumer advocates will wage a battle against the telecommunications companies and the Bush administration to preserve some semblance of privacy rights in Americans' communications.

Congress will be considering several versions of bills that will, one way or another, expand government access to phone calls and e-mails. These legislative proposals are complex and in flux, but there are two main issues at the center of the debate that citizens can focus on. One is whether eavesdropping on millions of Americans simultaneously is acceptable. The second is whether communications companies should get a free pass for breaking the law by allowing illegal warrantless surveillance of all Americans' communications.

In the 1960s and '70s, several Supreme Court cases held that citizens can reasonably expect that the government will not eavesdrop on their personal communications without first demonstrating to a court the need for this privacy invasion. Congress passed the Wiretap Act of 1968 to regulate eavesdropping for law enforcement purposes, and added the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 to establish procedures for the president to follow when conducting surveillance for national-security purposes. FISA established a "secret court" -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC -- to review applications for national-security warrants. These could be obtained merely by showing that the target was an agent of a foreign power.

Read on ...

Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions - Washington Post

A federal judge struck down controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act in a ruling that declared them unconstitutional yesterday, ordering the FBI to stop its wide use of a warrantless tactic for obtaining e-mail and telephone data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York said the FBI's use of secret "national security letters" to demand such data violates the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have little opportunity to review the letters.

The secrecy provisions are "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values," Marrero wrote. His strongly worded 103-page opinion amounted to a rebuke of both the administration and Congress, which had revised the act in 2005 to take into account an earlier ruling by the judge on the same topic.

Read on ...

via cnet.com

Last week, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper threw out the lawsuit TorrentSpy brought against the Motion Picture Association of America last year for allegedly purchasing copies of private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy executives. Robert Anderson, a former business associate of one of TorrentSpy's founders, acknowledged "hacking" into the company's e-mail systems and rigging it so he would receive a copy of all outgoing and incoming e-mail correspondence. He later sold the information to the MPAA for $15,000.

Read on ...

Think about this, the judge says it is legal for someone to hack into your system, have emails sent to themselves and them sell them on the open market.

Not only does this open the door to privacy abuses in civil cases but it also could lead to abuses by the government...It's an incredibly dangerous decision.

- Kevin Bankston, EFF staff attorney

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations - Washington Post

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.*

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have.* It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The acts recounted in the FBI reports included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect, the documents show. Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated.*

Read on ...

Note: * - my emphasis

Did you know? It's fair use day - ars technica

July 11, 2007, will mark the third-annual global "Fair Use Day," but chances are this is the first you've heard of it. Started back in 2005, "Fair Use Day" (project website) was created by Eric Clifford to raise awareness of the shifting balance in copyright laws around the world. Clifford acknowledges that Fair Use Day hasn't become the biggest advocacy day in existence, but perhaps the third time is the charm, as the Pirate Party of the United States has announced its support of the effort to raise awareness about copyright issues. As Clifford says, "Garbage had a day, taxes have a day, why not fair use?"

As we have chronicled here on Ars for years, copyright laws are increasingly being rewritten, modified, or tossed out in favor of new laws which grant copyright holders extremely broad powers over how you use content you pay for. Both Clifford and the Pirate Party hope that July 11 will serve as a day to remind users across the globe that fair copyright laws are essential to culture.

Read on ...

Matt Davies - 11 July, 2007

~ Life, Liberty and the Pursute on Happiness ~

Schoolhouse Rock! - 'There are going to be fireworks' on YouTube

~ Quotes ~

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it - Mark Twain

... how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! - Thomas Jefferson

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. - Edward R. Murrow

"My country, right or wrong" is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober." - G. K. Chesterton

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. - H. L. Mencken

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. - John F. Kennedy

The government is merely a servant - merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. - Mark Twain

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. - William O. Douglas

~ Almost Nation Anthem ~

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimm'd by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

- Katharine Lee Bates

~ The Written Word ~

Unfree Speech - By Robert J. Samuelson - The Washington Post

The Fourth of July is an apt moment to reflect on one of the great underreported stories of our time: the rise of speech regulation. Glance at the First Amendment, but do not think it still applies. Large bodies of political speech are now governed by laws, agency regulations, court decisions and lawyerly interpretations. Speech has become unfree.

This does not mean that we don't have vigorous debate or that most points of view aren't represented. But in and around elections, what can be said, by whom and under what circumstances, is now a tangled web of legal qualifications -- all justified as campaign finance "reform."

Read on ...

~ Editorial Cartoons ~

Cagle Cartoons collection for Independence Day

Check out this "poster" of quotes, actions and info on the Bush administration on Jim Hightowers HightowerLowdown.

The New York Times reported this June that Bush was running another spy program. This one was snooping through international banking records, including millions of bank transactions done by innocent Americans. George reacted angrily to the exposure, branding the Times report “disgraceful” and declaring that revelation of his spy program “does great harm to theUnited States.” The White House and its right-wing acolytes promptly launched a “Hate-the-Times” political campaign.

Name the guy who was the first to reveal that such a bank-spying program was in the works: George W. Bush! At a September 2001 press conference, he announced that he’d just signed an executive order to monitor all international bank transactions.

Reporter Without Borders has published their fifth anual Worldwid Press Freedom Index this week and it shows the U.S. dropping 9 spots to 53rd on the list. We are now tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga.

The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April this year.

With the Military Commissions Act waiting for Presdident Bush to sign, a few people have spoken up.

Senator Barack Obama - Remarks on the Military Commission Legislation

Global Politician - Scrapping the Geneva Conventions

The Washington Times - Habeas Corpus Sellout

Keith Olbermann - Why does habeas corpus hate America

The Village Voice - Congress Bows To Bush

From Wired

Legal experts begin to decipher a federal judge's ruling ordering the administration to stop its secret wiretapping. A Supreme constitutional battle may be at hand. In 27B Stroke 6.

Decoding Judge's NSA Injunction

From N.Y. Times

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap the international communications of some Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution, and she ordered it shut down.

The ruling was the first judicial assessment of the Bush administration’s arguments in defense of the surveillance program, which has provoked fierce legal and political debate since it was disclosed last December. But the issue is far from settled, with the Justice Department filing an immediate appeal and succeeding in allowing the wiretapping to continue for the time being.

Judge Taylor ruled that the program violated both the Fourth Amendment and a 1978 law that requires warrants from a secret court for intelligence wiretaps involving people in the United States. She rejected the administration’s repeated assertions that a 2001 Congressional authorization and the president’s constitutional authority allowed the program.

“It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly when his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote. “The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another.”

Read On

There is a new Circumventor site at:
http://www.ChemistryNerds.com/
(Note that unlike some other recent ones, this URL begins with 'http' not 'https'.)

This one *does* load images. They're hoping they've secured enough bandwidth to get it to work.

As always, if you find that these sites are too slow or are getting blocked too quickly, you can go to http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumventor-instructions.html for steps to set up your own Circumventor site on your own home computer. If you are in a country where all Internet access is censored, you can send that URL to a friend outside the country and ask them to set up a Circumventor for you.

The FCC chairman has written a letter to Rep. Edward Markey refusing to investigate possible violations of the Communtications Act citing the Bush Administration's likely claim of "states secrets privilege."

More info:
Rep. Edward Markey
Red Herring
The FCC responce (pdf)

Wired News has published "set of documents from the EFF's primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein"

"The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can't be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents."

Why We Published the AT&T Docs - The public's right to see the documents provided by whistle-blower Mark Klein trumps the telecommunications giant's secrecy claims. By Evan Hansen, Wired News' editor in chief.

Whistle-Blower's Evidence, Uncut - Former AT&T technician Mark Klein's firsthand account tells how he discovered a secret room routing American internet traffic straight to the NSA -- along with all the documents he says prove his case.

Supporters of wholesale government surveillance are fond of saying that only the guilty should be worried about spying. Let's put that spurious argument out to pasture once and for all
Wired Commentary by Bruce Schneier.

© Drew Sheneman - 05.18.2006

© Mike Luckovich - 05.19.2006

I guess they are going to hit us over the head with the rock if we object to what they are doing with the paper and scissors.

© Dana Summers - 05.19.2006

© Jack Ohman - 05.20.2006

I do know a few people who are considering changing their phone services based on what has been coming out in the media as of late, . The ironic part of this is, here in Denver, QWEST has fought the handing over or records, but at the same time the CIA and NSA are planning on moving operations to this area from D.C. Go figure.

AT&T / NSA and the spy rooms:
Whistle-Blower outs NSA Spy Room
Judge denies AT&T request for closed hearing
The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool
What the NSA Secret Surveillance Mess Means to Google

In the most recent NYTimes article on the developing NSA domestic phone eavesdropping program, officials say that no home addresses are included in the data mining. Come on folks, if they have a phone number they sure as hell have an address for that phone. Granted, there are those out there using disposable cell phones, but with the open door provided by AT&T, Verizon and Bell South I seriously doubt there is not much info the NSA isn't getting.

Here is asuggestion, let's change the NSA from National Security Agency to Now Spying on Americans. I think it fits their profile better.

Oh, by the way if you are interested in your civil liberties and are wondering what Dick Cheney and Gen.Hayden, who President Bush has nominated to head the CIA, think of them, read this NYTimes article.

From Reuters:

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, President George W. Bush's nominee for CIA director and architect of his domestic spying program, appears to favor changes in federal law that would allow judicial oversight of the program, a Democratic lawmaker and his staff said on Wednesday.

Sen. Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, said Hayden told him in a private meeting he was concerned when he set up the highly secretive program that approaching Congress could reveal tactics, techniques and procedures used by U.S. intelligence to track al Qaeda suspects.

Read On

According to one of Keith Olbermanns stories tonight, U.S. News and World Report will publish a story that White House and Justice Department lawyers argued for warrantless searches on U.S. soil.

Here is the transcript via Raw Story:

Soon after the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, lawyers for the White House and the Justice Department argued that the same legal authority that allowed warrantless electronic surveillance inside the United States could also be used to justify physical searches of terror suspects' homes and businesses without court approval.

According to two current and former government officials, the Bush Administration lawyers presented the arguments to senior FBI officials who expressed strong reservations about the proposal.

It could not be determined whether any warrantless physical searches had been carried out under the legal authority cited by the Administration, but at least one defense attorney representing a terrorism suspect has alleged that his law office and home may have been searched without a court warrant.

Read the transcript of Keith and GW Law School Professor Jonathon Turley discussing this at Daily Kos where there is also a video link.

This White House is getting scarier by the day.

--Update--

Amendment IV reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.