Man About to Reveal All about Bush Administration Dies

'Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport.'

from here

Well, what an unbelievable coincidence! Someone who was being threatened by Karl Rove, et al gets killed right before he divulges any incriminating information on them. Something here stinks of elephant. Kind of reminds me of Bruce Ivens.

Rumsfeld linked to Torture by Senate Armed Services Committee

And, not surprisingly, the mainstream media did not care and no meaningful action to ensure discontinuation of these practices and policies is going to be taken. A microcosm of the last eight years, indeed.

Coverage:
Greenwald
Reuters

Another NSA Data-Mining Site Being Built

Seems that the Virgina site was just getting way too crowded with all of our phone and email records, so the NSA is building a new data-mining operation in Texas. As luck would have it, this facility is right next to Microsoft's immense data center there, and the NSA wanted assurance that Microsoft's data would be in the area before choosing to move in next door. As if crappy products weren't enough of a reason to not use Microsoft stuff.

Trials Of Henry Kissinger Video

A video version of the great book by Christopher Hitchens:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2815881561030958784

Government can Track your Location Without Telco Help

Law enforcement agencies have been installing "Triggerfish" cell phone tower simulators which force cell phones to reveal unique identifiers. In other words, they now have the ability to track your location if you are carrying a cell phone. This requires a court order, but we all know how that story goes -- nowadays those are viewed as completely optional by those in power (not that they are all that hard to obtain anyways).

This wouldn't be all that significant (compared to other things we know about government surveillance) except that this monitoring technology is unique in that the government does not require the cooperation of any telco company to use it.

Coverage:
Daily Kos
Schneier

New Apple Computers have DRM

Seems like Apple wasn't content to only enforce DRM in its software; Apple has now put DRM in its hardware as well. New Apple laptops ship with HDCP, which disallows playing of video on all but approved devices (that is, devices that make certain types of copying more difficult). See the Ars Technica report on the subject.

French 3-strikes Copyright Law

A new, terrible law is making its way through the French senate right now. It requires ISPs to disconnect a user after three alleged copyrighted content downloads. This is an insanely terrible law for many reasons, including:

• Virtually everything on the internet is copyrighted in some form, and any "visit" to a web page requires a download of HTML, so this effectively outlaws the entire web.
• The bill, of course, is intended to apply mainly to video and audio bits. Since everyone effectively becomes a criminal under this law, selective enforcement will be the name of the game. Media companies, who are behind the whole initiative in the first place, will move to enforce the law's provisions against those who they feel are most threatening to their profits. That is, users of peer-to-peer networks.
• There is no due process mentioned in the article, (not to mention that a constant due process procedure for every internet user is way too costly for the bureaucracy) so we can only presume that these 'strikes' will be tallied at the whim of the ISPs and media companies.
• Internet access is becoming more and more of a necessity as more functionality moves on to it (communication with friends and family, banking, shopping, employment, etc.)

A commenter on Slashdot points out that this law is supported by a corresponding business interest for basically every layer of the network stack:

This law was mainly pushed by Vivendi but there are powerful backers from all across the spectrum:

* Telecoms firms that want a mandate to filter all Internet traffic so that they can block all P2P, and then VoIP, and then video streaming and then anything which competes with their monopoly products.
* Large ISPs, because these are now all owned by the telecoms firms.
* Vendors like Cisco because they want to sell loads and loads of expensive filtering equipment.
* The music industry, because it still thinks it's going to sue its way back onto the right side of history. Stupid kloten, when will they learn?
* The movie industry, because they've drunk the music industry koolaid.
* The TV industry, because they want to sell more DVDs and because their distributors in the digital age are, of course, the ISPs.
* And finally, certain software firms, because the only way to implement this law, finally, is to use a fully locked down operating system that only runs authorized software, so no Linux.

The French tried so hard to get this same law pushed through the European Parliament, but that seems to be saner.

There are similar legislative pushes all around Europe, at the national level, and for the same reasons.

The Internet is, really, under attack from concerted and powerful forces that hate what those free packets represent.

A New Vanguard in Internet Censorship: Austrailia

Australia's Labor party has plans to censor the entire Internet based on a new "cyber-safety" initiative. Additionally, if you want your Internet even more watered down than that, you can opt in to an additional blacklist that will block content "inappropriate for children." Who elects these bozos?

Chinese surveillance one-ups itself

Chinese citizens must now must have their picture taken and id card scanned when entering an Internet cafe. This in addition to, you know, being constantly monitored by their government while on the internet, being monitored by big mamas and the whole blocking access to any kind of information that interferes with the regime's dogma thing. Oh, and these details are entered into a city-wide database. Just when you thought Chinese surveillance couldn't get any more intrusive...

eBay linked to Chinese text-message surveillance

Man, if one Silicon Valley giant after another isn't caught red-handed aiding Chinese government evildoers. This time it is eBay, who in a joint venture with a Chinese company owns the company that operates the Tom-Skype text messaging system. Apparently the Tom-Skype system was logging user-identifiable messages that contained certain topics that might be critical of the Chinese government. Luckily, the New York Times article that mentions it at least has the decency to mention the NSA is doing the same thing over here, avoiding the rank hypocrisy that permeates much American coverage of Chinese government policy.

Coverage:
Seth Finkelstein
New York Times

Military assigned to Domestic Post

Prepare for martial law. A portion of the military has just been assigned to the homeland for no apparent reason, and totally in violation of some of the most fundamental tenets of our democracy. I wonder how long it will be before this unit feels compelled to use deadly force on citizens.

Man Foils DHS Dragnet via Name Change

A Canadian recently circumvented the crack teams at DHS by changing his name to avoid being flagged at airports because his name was (previously) on the no-fly list. It's a good thing that the barrier to not being flagged as a terrorist is so high... no terrorist would ever have the resources to change their name. As we've seen in the past, this kind of incompetence at DHS only prevents stupid terrorists from flying, and if these terrorists are so dumb, what's the worry?

What is the real reason lists like these exist?

GOP on Quest to Disenfranchise Voters... Again

Apparently Republicans are attempting to exclude people that have had their houses foreclosed from voting. Perhaps it is not just coincidence that these are the very people that would be the most likely to vote against the ruling regime in an important election swing state?

FBI, Police Detaining GOP Convention Protest Group Members

Glenn Greenwald is covering the FBI and Minnesota Police's raids of protesters houses ahead of the Republican convention. This is without any probable cause and mostly without warrants. Hopefully someone in the political establishment will object to this unlawful and un-American treatment of citizens, but who am I kidding? What's the chance of politicians sticking up for democratic freedoms? Slim.

FBI involvement:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html

Police raids:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html

At Least Some Good News this Week...

The woman with the baby dancing to Prince on YouTube is cleared of wrongdoing, the court ordering that fair use must be considered in the sending of a DMCA takedown notice.

People on the No-Fly list can sue to have their names be taken off the list, a court rules.

FBI Pushing for Warantless Investigations

Oh gawd, is this really happening? (Link to NY times version)

Nike tries to out anonymous Chinese blogger

This is quite an interesting interplay indeed going on between China an US Corporations. Some, such as Yahoo, are taking fire for outing formerly anonymous Internet commentators and do so only when they have to. Others, such as Nike, jump at the chance to subvert freedom of speech. Nike is trying to co-opt the Chinese government to out an anonymous blogger who said some not-so-nice things about their brand. It's sad to see American corporations to stoop to the level of an oppressive authoritarian state, but I guess I should have seen it coming. Something tells me China won't have much a problem complying with Nike's request, given all the other ways in which they mistreat their citizens.

"We want to act to protect our brand reputation in the same way as any corporation would want to if people were posting or writing false accusations," [the Nike spokesperson] said. "This isn't about a debate on freedom of speech. It's simply helping us to identify the person who posted it."

Sure this isn't about freedom of speech... if you're brain dead.

No such thing as 'Typical Terrorist'

Bruce Schneier says that the Guardian says:

MI5 has concluded that there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism in Britain, according to a classified internal research document on radicalisation seen by the Guardian.

Don't inform your local Republican... you might cause him significant embarrassment. As if we needed any more proof that profiling/data mining/whatever techniques would never yield any promising results. Turns out profiling is just another excuse to invade your privacy and infringe on your civil liberties... as if the 'war on terror' were anything else.

Update: The NRC says the same thing.

Anthrax and ABC and unsolved mysteries

Anyone who cares about how journalistic ethics have deteriorated and/or the disquieting cooperation of government and press in this country needs to read Glenn Greenwald's two articles on the unsolved 2001 anthrax case. The big questions are: 1) Who sent the anthrax and why? 2) Why did ABC news report it had sources that claim the anthrax was from Iraq and why are they trying to retreat from that now? 3) Who are those sources and why were they misleading the public?

Posts:
Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News
Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation

Your laptop will be detained at the border, without reason, forever

The Washington Post does a nice job of translating DHS policy

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period
of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent
individualized suspicion."

into plain English:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an
off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of
wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland
Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's
contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data
decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued
by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.

Nevermind that any of this data can be transferred just as easily over the internet (which I highly advise for all travellers, btw), this is a scary and stupid policy. DHS is one-upping other sectors of government in the 'arbitrary and indefinite detention' genre by not even requiring suspicion to detain items. Michael Chertoff is the most dangerous man in America and needs to be stopped. Thank goodness there are a select few people in government (Sen. Russell Feingold, mentioned in the article) that still care about the Bill of Rights. See also Schneier's post.

Next battleground in the copyfight: textbooks

Great site: textbooktorrents.com

How long until publishing houses come along and engage in that time-honored tradition of copyright holding organizations: suing already penniless students?

Found via this ars technica article

FBI amassing eye scan database

And the new personal information that the government is vacuuming up this week is... eye scans! It appears that the FBI is adding information about people's eyes to the already existing biometric databases of the populace. Great.

NY Attorney General Pressures US ISPs to filter content

And this is how it all begins... under the guise of "protecting the children" and other such claims, the New York Attorney General has pressured several major US ISPs into filtering traffic. At least one ISP, Time Warner, has blacklisted all of USENET.

There can be no justification for this kind of behavior. What will happen we have seen a million times when a clueless administrator tries to close down an open network:

1) The people that this law is supposed to stop will use other channels (proxies, other USENET servers, encryption, etc.)
2) Everyone else will suffer the brunt of censorship and surveillance, until they decide to make like a child pornographer and circumvent the restrictions themselves.
3) The ad-hoc, secretive blacklist expands without notice or warning or opportunity for review by anyone, an increasing number of non-kiddie-porn sites get caught up in the filter, including sites that may be politically inconvenient for the Government (Wikileaks, Pirate Bay, etc.).
4) Government realizes it can get away with this kind of behavior, starts pressing for more elimination of "bad" things from the Internet.
5) Free speech plummets.

News coverage:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/nyregion/10internet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/10/1819200&from=rss

There was an interesting comment on Slashdot, revealing that one can tell when Google has received a takedown notice for child porn relating to a search. Check out this search for an example (look at the bottom of the page): http://www.google.com/search?q=4chan

More airport madness

It appears now that you can be prevented from boarding an aircraft simply for wearing a designer T-Shirt -- this shirt (hilarious comments in the Boing Boing thread, btw) got someone banned from a flight because it depicts a transformer brandishing what looks like a cartoonish gun.

In other news, the EU is testing a flight system installed in every passenger seat that monitors your facial expressions for hints of terrorist inclinations. False positives, anyone?

Genetic Nondiscrimination

Don't let anyone tell you that the Bush administration was all bad. It actually did do something incredibly far-sighted and significant recently: the President signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) into law. This means that when everyone has their genes sequenced, the insurance companies don't own your soul.

Government has plans for martial law

Radar is reporting that the government has (not so?) contingency plans to round up suspicious individuals in the event of declared martial law... 8 million suspicious individuals, that is.

The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Michael Chertoff wants your fingerprints

Michael Chertoff, head of DHS, wants to build a "server in the sky" of all fingerprints from all citizens of a variety of countries. When questioned about the potential for privacy invasions, he answered, "A fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private." Nevermind that fingerprints can be used as unique identifiers for a person, nor that government-managed databases have huge potential for misuse, theft, misidentification, leaks, etc. Great, this idiot is in charge of keeping us "safe?"

Via thinkprogress, Schneier

Military news correspondants far from impartial

The New York Times reports that many former military officers that appear as commentators on news networks are not held to the same impartiality standards as other pundits. These analysts regularly had conflicts of interest, including lucrative government contracts for businesses that they were involved in. Furthermore, not towing the Pentagon's line would result in that commentator getting cut off from insider information in the future. As a result, these analysts opinions were almost always in line with the Pentagon's story, misleading the American people about the true nature of the news.

Government to collect DNA samples from arrested persons

More great news! It now seems that the DHS wants to to build a gigantic DNA database of everyone even arrested (not CONVICTED) relating to a crime, regardless of the person's innocence.

This has huge implications for privacy and presumption of guilt. As the Council for Responsible Genetics puts it:

DNA databanks are not required in order to use DNA testing to establish evidence of guilt or innocence when there is a known group of suspects for a crime: a DNA sample can be taken from each individual and compared directly with a crime scene profile. Few people have problems with this use of DNA.

The permanent retention of DNA in a database for use in future investigations, however, is another matter. An individual captured in a police database becomes an automatic suspect for all future criminal investigations where database searches are performed. This undermines the presumption of innocence that is central to criminal justice systems in the US, UK and most democracies around the world.

Setting aside this fundamental problem, benefits of the use and expansion of these databases must be weighed against their societal costs. While the temptation on the part of law enforcement to put more and more people into the database seems logical (i.e. one would assume the more inclusive the database, the more likely a positive identification can be made), in practice, the benefits of expansion may be limited. In the UK, despite the large number of people in the database, DNA profiles are obtained from the examination of less than 1% of crime scenes, so that in 2002/3 only 1.6% of all crime detections were attributed to DNA database matches (including only 0.3% of all detections for violent and sexual offenses). Such a small contribution to crime detection may not warrant the onerous financial costs of large DNA databases, not to mention the dilatory effect backlogs have on crime solving.

At the same time, there are many reasons to be concerned about the use and expansion of police databases.[11] These include: impacts on people's privacy, potential for misuse by governments, discrimination, and the possibility of error and wrongful conviction.

Joe Biden is an Internet Idiot

Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) thinks that you can 1) monitor all P2P traffic easily 2) pick out files that are illegal or infringe copyright by looking at their file names. Idiot.

US to have aircraft spy on its citizens

Surveillance isn't just limited to the Internet and the NSA. Looks like the DHS is going to get in on the party as well by using satellites to monitor citizens. Awesome. Slashdot. Post. Also see Naomi Wolf's Ten Steps to Close Down an Open Society.

Monsanto = Evil

Vanity Fair has a lengthly article on Monsanto called Monsanto's Harvest of Fear. The first part discusses how they are using patent law and mafia-like extortion tactics to support their business. Nice. Found via Slashdot.

RIAA trying to institute ISP surcharge

Just like with blank CDs and digital music players, the RIAA is trying to make money off of something that has little to directly do with its business. It is now pressuring ISPs to add a surcharge to internet access fees that would go directly to the music executives' pockets. The rationale, they argue, is that... well, there's really no rationale, just another typical RIAA money-grab justification. Read about it at Wired and Slashdot.

FBI Abusing NSL

The FBI has been found to have been abusing National Security Letters, aka warrants sans judge. Here is the article from Wired and Slashdot. Is anyone surprised that when you give an investigative agency license to investigate anyone at the drop of a hat, it will (a lot)? I guess I just have more foresight than Dick Cheney, et al. Either that or they hate due process and privacy. Probably the latter.

Hack t3h heart

Ghee whiz, the future is here:

To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart.

The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.

They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person.

Artists contemplating suing RIAA

So where does all the money from those lawsuits against grandmothers, students and dead people that the RIAA brings go? Not to the artists, apparently. Artists are now contemplating taking legal action against the RIAA for their "fair share" of the winnings.

I don't know whether to cheer because the RIAA might be losing some money, or cry because the artists are just as shortsighted. Anytime you hear a group complaining that the money it receives is not "fair," you know the lobbyists and lawyers can't be far off...

So this is the future of music? Artists suing the RIAA? The RIAA suing everyone else? Everyone bickering over the winnings? And what about all of the other "collection" agencies? How depressing. At least I have isohunt.

RIAA affiliates hijack Shareaza.com, threaten suit

There's bad, there's low, and then there's RIAA and friends:

"Late last year a company affiliated with the French RIAA hijacked the Shareaza.com domain name from the original, open source project's owner. They are passing off their own for-pay software, which violates the GPL, as the real thing. Now, having stolen the Shareaza project's identity, the scammers are threatening legal action to shut down the real open source team."

Kind of sad, kind of funny

This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it'll lead them to "everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana," not to mention terrorists and murderers!

The whole video is over 60 minutes long—these are just two of the more outrageous minutes with Jim Dedman, from the NDAA, interviewing Deborah Robinson and Frank Walters from the RIAA about the benefits of going SWAT on music pirates. At one point, Walters says the piracy/drug connection can be so bad that you get asked "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or without—the with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be.

http://gizmodo.com/358648/leaked-riaa-training-video-find-pirates--find-crack+dealing-terrorist-murderers-too

DHS and more domestic spying

Yet again, the government has decided that it's a good idea to spy on its own citizens. This time, it's not via wiretapping but by satellite. Apparently, DHS is going to be able to peer into my house via infrared technology whenever they want. My favorite quote from the story, however, is this irrelevant point:

The new plan explicitly states that existing laws which prevent the government from spying on citizens would remain in effect, the official said. Under no circumstances, for instance, would the program be used to intercept verbal and written conversations.

And I promise not to manufacture munitions with this banana. These satellites take pictures, they don't tap phone calls.

NYC Subway Police with Machine Guns

My life keeps looking more and more like the society in Half-Life 2. Police in the New York City subway are apparently now carrying machine guns and wearing full body armor all over the place. Great, this CLEARLY protects us from those equally heavily-armed terrorists that are running around America's transit systems. I wonder how many innocent commuters are going to be riddled with M-4 bullets after the smoke clears.

RIAA, again, fights to lower artists' royalties

Well, look who isn't sticking up for those starving artists (again). It's their old "friend" the RIAA. The spin the RIAA is putting on this issue is making even me dizzy:

"Record companies are suffering a contraction of their business at a time when music publisher revenues and margins have increased markedly," the trade group wrote. "While record companies have been forced to drastically cut costs and employees, music publisher catalogs have increased in value due to steadily rising mechanical royalty rates and alternative revenue streams made possible, but not enjoyed, by record companies."

Sharia death sentance in Afghanistan for man supporting women's liberation

This from a country that we have "liberated?" From Slashdot:

"A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to Reporters Without Borders, sixty people are currently in jail worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using the internet. Internet censorship is on the rise worldwide, according to The OpenNet Initiative."

NFL and copyright vs. The Faithful

So it seems that the NFL has convinced legislators to put its ridiculous preferences into law. Case in point: a law the NFL was trotting out recently to disallow anyone other than sportsbars from showing an NFL broadcast in public on a screen larger than 55 inches across. The NFL is making this somewhat of a habit, preventing church-goers from gathering to watch the Super Bowl in their houses of worship this year as well as last. The copyright insanity continues...