w1ld wrote:
] ] "Today, at the Justice Department, some laws are more
] ] equal than others.
] ] One 36-year-old U.S. law can be broken, it seems.
] ] Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who is sworn to
] ] enforce all laws, has told federal employees that they
] ] can bend -- perhaps even break -- one law, and he will
] ] even defend their actions in court.
] ] That law is known as the Freedom of Information Act."
]
] Ashcroft chars my feathers...

Hrm... Perhaps, more appropriately, Ashcroft should be tarred and feathered??

RE: At Justice, Freedom Not to Release Information

] "The Justice Department has broad discretion in the use
] of wiretaps and other surveillance techniques to track
] suspected terrorists and spies, a federal appeals court
] panel ruled Monday."

Bogus...

Appeals panel upholds wiretaps

The FBI maintains a list of people who are basically not allowed to fly. There have been complaints that this list is politically motivated. Thus far, most of the people that I've seen complaining about being on this list actually ARE commiting serious crimes for political purposes. Whether or not its reasonable to be afraid of flying with someone who is burning university research farms because they oppose genetic engineering is certainly questionable, but the people in question are far from innocent. Either way, I agree with the ACLU that such a list should be a matter of public scrutiny, and there should be clear public guidelines on what it takes to get on the list. The potential for abuse is extremely high. I don't execpt that anyone on this site has been barred from flight, but its a reasonable idea to keep a note of this link in the back of your mind in case you run into someone who is.

ACLU of Washington Take Action [No Fly List Complaint Form]

w1ld wrote:
] ] "
] ] WASHINGTON--A last-minute addition to a proposal for a
] ] Department of Homeland Security bill would punish
] ] malicious computer hackers with life in prison.
] ]
] ] The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday evening
] ] voted 299 to 121 to approve the bill, which would reshape
] ] large portions of the federal bureaucracy into new a
] ] department combining parts of 22 existing federal
] ] agencies, including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard,
] ] and the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center."
]
]
] This better not even make it to a vote.

The U.S. Congress is clearly made up of ignorant luddites.

RE: Proposed bill could jail hackers for life - Tech News - CNET.com

] "Last June, President George W. Bush signed the Economic
] Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001
] (EGTRRA). This policy brief provides an assessment of the
] tax cut. Our findings suggest that EGTRRA will reduce the
] size of the future economy, raise interest rates, make
] taxes more regressive, increase tax complexity, and prove
] fiscally unsustainable. These conclusions question the
] wisdom and affordability of the tax cut and suggest that
] Congress reconsider the legislation, especially in light
] of the economic downturn and terrorist attacks that have
] occurred since last summer. "
] ...
] Thus, the principal distributional effect of EGTRRA is
] a tax cut for the top 1 percent of households that is
] disproportionate relative to every criteria noted in
] table 1. This tax cut comes immediately after a
] twenty-year period in which the both the pre- and
] post-tax income of the top 1 percent grew much faster
] than for any other group of households.

I love the way Americans blindly put their faith in the illiterate ramblings of a religious fanatic like Dubya.

The Bush Tax Cut: One Year Later

This flyer was found in Baltimore...

How to convince poor people not to vote...

This law was always a bad idea created by politicians as an election platform. As usual, the incredibly intelligent U.S. populace fell for it.

Justices debate three-strikes law

Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that large-scale organised crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of the regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions, increase their profits, withstand or crush the competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and finance their illicit operations. Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning.

...

Interesting read.

[ Who says crime doesn't pay?? --Rek ]

Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise

Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.

...

Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself.

...

I'm trying to think of the small things we can do to get the word out about TCPA. Taking an ad out in the Nashville scene and writing to all of the TCPA board members are the first two things that come to mind.

If you didn't already know, this so called "trusted computing" initiative is a very bad thing. If we start to allow it into our computers, we start to lose the war.

[BEGIN RANT]

The digital world has been here for a while now. How do you like it so far? I started exploring it in 1981 with a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. Things have changed a lot over the last two decades since.

I read the book '1984' in 8th grade as required reading. This was the same time that the Gulf War was being played 24/7 on the Channel One provided televisions in my high school. Two minute hate, anyone?

Being a tech head, the most striking feature of '1984' was the memory hole. History could be created, edited, revised, and destroyed at will by the state. The parallels between what Orwell envisioned and my BBS were too striking for me to ignore. The ephemeral nature of electromagnetic charges as opposed to the physical construct of ink and paper. I took solace in the fact that I could back things up and make perfect copies instantly.

If the TCPA folks get their way, all that goes out the door. Your computer becomes a closed system meant for one purpose: Consumption. Want to develop an application? Pay your fare.

TCPA stands for Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. The Steering Committee consists of Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. There are over 170 member companies.

Their website is www.trustedcomputing.org. I suggest learning as much as you can about their initiative. The PC is only their first stop, they are after all consumer electronics. Learn the enemy, become the enemy, think like the enemy, befriend the enemy. This is the only way to subvert the enemy.

Oh, and by the way, AMD and nVidia are playing ball too. Sleep tight.

Richard Stallman writes about TCPA, aka Treacherous Computing

Let the censorship begin!

University bans controversial links - Tech News - CNET.com