Category — Uncategorized

Steve Bates found a gem of an essay by Bruce Schneier on privacy.

I’m sick of this “if you have nothing to hide” attitude. We all have something “to hide”: our real feelings about people we deal with every day.

Do you really want people to know what you really think of their children’s behavior? Do you want people to know whether you really think they’re “good looking”? Do you want people to know what you really think of their gifts?

There are a lot of “white lies” in this world that make society possible. Being “brutally” honest is just that, brutal.

Most of the time only feelings would be hurt, but the fact that you think your boss is an obnoxious jerk with the IQ of a brick could result in homelessness if it became public knowledge.

This case is an extreme example of what happens when private information is available to the wrong people. This happened is spite of all of the changes put in place as a result of a 1989 case, to protect privacy.

When do they outlaw curtains and blinds?

As Publius points out so well, carbon dioxide is a Waste Product, whether it’s created by the digestion of carbohydrates or the combustion of hydrocarbons.

You’ll see another corporate ad on many of the big blogs asking: “Do you want the government to regulate the Internet?”

Well, no, I don’t, but I’d be very happy if they’d regulate the telcos and cable companies who are planning to plunder the Internet.

The basic research and structure was created with tax dollars. Let the people who risked the capital, the taxpayers, enjoy the benefits.

Today on All Things Considered they had a conversation with Carol Wilson, editor at-large for Telephony magazine.

Her explanation triggered two memories that are making me uneasy about what we really know about the NSA data collection program.

She reminded me that when you pick up your telephone you are connected to a control circuit or channel that is outside of the voice channel. That channel is where the accounting takes place: the numbers of both ends of the conversation are recorded, the caller id information is retrieved, and the timer starts.

If the phone being called is busy, or needs to be forwarded, or any of the other “housekeeping” operations takes place, it is on that circuit, not the main voice trunks. If you tap that circuit you will get all of the accounting information, but none of the actual conversation.

So now we know that it is the accounting circuits that are being tapped wholesale, and we have a grip on the situation – except, those circuits may not involve the telco.

By now you have probably noticed that if you have a problem with your cable or telephone service, the technician who shows up is not an employee of the company. They are generally guys who have a contract with the company. The telcos and cable companies have just about eliminated their repair people to save money. Well, the repair service isn’t all that gets split off.

When they started the utility deregulation in California a number of electric companies started reducing their expenses by outsourcing everything they did. I know for a fact that some of outsourced their billing, because I had a client who printed and mailed utility bills from computer tapes, and the tapes weren’t coming from the utility.

If the telcos have outsourced their billing, the government would go to the billing company, not the telco, for the information. In the same way, they would go to the company that publishes the phone book for the names and addresses that go with the numbers, which, again, may not be the telco.

Update: TPM Muckraker in their article, Did Telcos Hire “Scapegoat” To Give NSA Phone Records?, has the same suspicion.

Shakespeare’s Sister, among others, reproduces this statement: “I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties, but you have no civil liberties if you are dead.” This was said by Senator Pat Roberts [R-Kansas], Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in explaining why he refuses to do anything about the illegal activities of the Shrubbery.

Pat, as many of your chosen pundits would be more than happy to explain to you, the Munich Agreement did not provide Conservative Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, “peace in our time.”

Benjamin Franklin noted: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” And at the conclusion of his best known speech Patrick Henry intoned: “…Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Now that is has been determined by your own words that you feel no obligation to “support and defend the Constitution” as required by the oath you took when you entered public service, why don’t you stick your tail between your legs like the whipped hound you are and crawl home?

In case you don’t understand, Pat, your personal choice about which of your rights you would give up is of no interest to me.  You have chosen to represent the interests of the citizens of Kansas and the state that produced Amelia Earhart and Dwight Eisenhower might not share your cowardice.

Everyone has probably seen the picture, Watertiger titles “Gidget Goes Gobi”, of the Shrubbery in a Border Patrol Chenowth Exodus sandrail¹ in violation of the Arizona seat belt law.

[Of course they need a custom-made vehicle from a company in Duncan Hunter’s [R-CA-52] district, don’t be silly]

He apparently has nothing better to do for his $400K/year.

1. A sandrail has a manufactured tubular frame, while a dune buggy uses a modified Volkswagen Beetle body. Get with it, Dude. [What some people think is important is a “puzzlement”.]

CNN has an overview of the hearings, which is painful for anyone with a memory to read.

NTodd focuses on the most egregious lie about the effectiveness of Hayden pet project, and Larry Beinart expands on the point.

This is my take:

Get real, you sniveling little twit. You were a three-star flag officer and a staff weenie, which makes you a busboy at the Pentagon. No matter what you had, no one in this administration was listening. Rumsfeld barely acknowledges the existence of four-star flag officers, and then, only if they agree with him and his magic plans to “reform the military”. You wouldn’t even have been able to get a memo past a receptionist at the Pentagon.

[Read more →]

Kevin Hayden at The American Street has been busy lately. He just finished changing servers and revamping the line up on the “Street” and now he has launched an Oregon-centered site: Wagontongues.

He was also kind enough to consider me someone who is fighting against the repression and criminal acts.

When you first read the article, U.S. Offers Anti-Proliferation Treaty, it seems reasonable, but the devil is in the details.

This treaty will take affect when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council [US, Russia, China, Britain, France] approve it. There is no provision for verification in the treaty. It is designed to produce an automatic Security Council resolution. It doesn’t address current stockpiles of weapons-grade material.

My guess is that the US has figured out that Russia and China are not going to go along with the US plan to get UN cover for an attack on Iran, so they are trying an end around to generate an automatic UN excuse.

The way this turkey is worded, the US claim of Iranian production of weapons-grade material is all that will be needed to get an automatic resolution.

The US might have more standing on this issue if the Shrubbery hadn’t violated the old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by cutting a deal with India to supply nuclear material.

Oriskany, New York is the site of one of the bloodiest and most significant battles of the Revolutionary War. A group of primarily Dutch and German colonists stopped a force of British troops, Tories, and their Native American allies, blocking the Mohawk River valley. The casualties were so great that there weren’t enough men left in the valley to bury the dead.

As a result, when the Lexington-class of carriers were being built, ships that carried the names of important battles, one of them was designated the USS Oriskany.

Oriskany is my Mother’s hometown and where I happened to graduate from high school, [military brats see a lot of schools].

The Pensacola Beach Blogger reported the Oriskany was sunk off the coast of Pensacola yesterday to become an artificial reef. He also has links to the museum in the village and to pictures of the sinking.

In the BBC article on the Oriskany there is a link to video of the sinking.

Like many who saw service on the “O” in Korea and Vietnam, she was buried at sea, now she will be reborn as a habitat for fish.

Lance Mannion is subbing over at Michael Bérubé’s blog and he has a great comparison between the current US government and the government of Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel: Guards! Guards!.

I’m a fan of Pratchett and have read all of the Discworld novels. This one has a 1989 copyright and is a great fit to our current situation. It’s hard to accept that there’s little difference between the US and a pizza-shaped world of witches, wizards, and dragons.

With these people in charge, you can forget political science research and turn to the fantasy writers to understand what’s going on.

CNet reports: Labels sue XM over music-storing ‘mothership’

XM said the Inno, which is manufactured by Pioneer, is a legal device that enables consumers to listen to and record radio, just as the law has allowed for decades.

While the labels are asserting that the device has transformed radio broadcasts into a download service, XM said the device does not allow consumers to transfer recorded content. XM also said content recorded from radio broadcasts like XM’s is not on demand, in contrast to the content people buy from online music stores like Apple’s popular iTunes service.

The Inno allows you to record the song that is playing on XM satellite radio and to play it later. It is stored on the device and royalties are paid when the songs are played over the radio.

Greed, plain and simple. They view their customers as criminals.

A married couple of some renown is separating, but that is no reason to either report on it or to pollute the world with bad puns of Beatle song titles.

It might shock the media to find out, but they are correspondents in many of these failed marriages.

Via TBogg we are reminded of the burgeoning sentience of machines: Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis.

Laura Rozen has discovered that Congress only plans to work 97 days this year.

I guess that’s why they can’t do any oversight, it would interfere with their four day weekend when they are in session. I think it’s time to look at their compensation package, including health care and retirement.