an. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, was sued by the Justice Department after it refused to turn over information that may help the government monitor sexually explicit material on the Web.

The Justice Department said it asked for all Google queries for a week and for 1 million Internet addresses in the company's database. According to the lawsuit, other search engines have complied with similar requests, ``and have not reported that they encountered any difficulty or burden in doing so.''

They did what now! How many of you want anything you have ever typed into Google to be in the government's hands? How many of you are pissed that other search engines just said "Here!"

The information would ``assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current Web users, to estimate how often Web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches, and to measure the effectiveness of filtering software in screening that material,'' the government's filing said.

Now for the really scary part of this. I have read the above paragraph countless times before. The only difference is back then it said China instead of the government and people instead of minors. Why don't you congressional ass clowns try to "understand the behavior" of my right to privacy or the term of illegal search and seizure!

DoJ sues Google for failing to turn over records!

Irish scientists have discovered that three million men worldwide share a common ancestor - allegedly a fifth century Irish warlord rather splendidly called Niall of the Nine Hostages.

The revelation, Reuters reports, comes after a team from Trinity College Dublin tested the Y chromosome in 800 males across Ireland. The results showed that up to one in twelve Irish men has the same Y chromosome, with the highest concentration being in northwest Ireland, where an impressive one in five males boasts the same chromosome.

Irishman has three million kids

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

oh hell no!

Bush wants Google search data

A CNN/USA Today Gallup poll conducted over the weekend found his approval rating stood at 41 percent, while more than half, or 56 percent, disapprove of how the president is handling his job. A majority, or 52 percent, say it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq, and 61 percent say they disapprove of how he is handling Iraq specifically. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

But my words, like silent raindrops fell.

Poll: Iraq speeches, election don't help Bush

Underscoring the rising emotions of the war debate, Murtha rebuked Bush and Cheney for their aggressive new campaign to denounce war critics. Murtha compared his own combat experience with Bush's stateside service in the Texas Air National Guard and Cheney's draft avoidance during the Vietnam War.

"I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there," Murtha said. "I like that. I like guys who got five deferments [Cheney] and [have] never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done. I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he [Bush] criticized Democrats for criticizing them.

Questioning your government is the highest form of patriotism. Its nice to see someone hitting back.

Iraq war debate gets bitter, personal

U.S. Navy personnel cleared unexploded ordnance from a luxury cruise ship Monday, two days after pirates attacked the vessel off Africa, the U.S. military said.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

U.S. Navy boards ship after pirate attack

The analysis does some of what I would like to see: Take key events and produce a timeline of how FEMA was informed and what Brown's response was:

The e-mails reveal that Mr. Brown was apprised early on Monday of the levee failure and the
dire consequences for New Orleans. For example, Mr. Brown received the following stream of
e-mails on Monday, August 29:
• At 9:39 a.m., Mr. Brown received a message stating: “Report that the levee in Arabi has
failed next to the industrial canal.”21
• At 9:53 a.m., Mr. Brown received a message stating: “A LEVEE BREACH
OCCURRED ALONG THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL AT TENNESSE[E] STREET. 3 TO
8 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED DUE TO THE BREACH … LOCATIONS IN
THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO ARABI AND 9TH WARD
OF NEW ORLEANS”22
• At 10:20 a.m., Mr. Brown received a message stating:
From Marty Bahamonde in the New Orleans EOC (next to the superdome)
- Severe flooding on the St. Bernard/Orleans parish line. Police report water level
up to second floor of two story houses. People are trapped in attics.
- Pumps starting to fail. The city has now confirmed four pumps are off line.
- Windows and parts of the east side of the Amaco building blown out.
- New Orleans shopping center (next to superdome) destroyed.
- Windows and parts of the East side of the Hyatt Hotel have been blown out.
Furniture is blowing out of the hotel.
- Top floors of the Entergy building have been blown out
- Area around the Superdome is beginning to flood.
We should have pictures shortly.23
• At 11:57 a.m., Mr. Brown received a message stating: “New Orleans FD is reporting a 20 foot wide breach on the lake ponchatrian levy. The area is lakeshore Blvd and 17th
street.”

THE E-MAILS OF MICHAEL BROWN

The e-mails indicate that Mr. Brown responded to only one of these messages. At 12:09 p.m., Mr. Brown responded to the 11:57 a.m. report of the “20 foot wide breach on the lake ponchatrain levy” by dismissing the report. He wrote: “I’m being told here water over not a breach.” The e-mails do not indicate who told Mr. Brown this misinformation. There is also no indication in the e-mails that Mr. Brown recognized the seriousness of his mistake or took actions to correct it. There are no further e-mails from Mr. Brown that day about the levees.

Levy Timeline: FEMA's emails

Here are some of the email's former-FEMA directory Michael Brown sent during the crisis. I'm still reading. Congressioanl analysis about the email is here. To sum it up, Brown was full of crap at his appearence before Congress. He was not a good leader and utterly failed to response to the worsening conditions or act on opinions that fell into his lap.

Tom, Nick: Can we load the email senders/recipients into that social network mapping code you guys have to see who communicated with who and how strong the ties are. It could be cool to see if we can determine who picked up the slack and was making all the decisions. At the very least we can see who knew when and what they did about it.

Brown's emails during Katrina (PDF)

1 Some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter them without detection.

2 It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different candidate.

3 Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards.

4 Access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network.

5 Supervisory across to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords.

6 The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy.

7 One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail.

8 GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel.

Holy shit!

Daily Kos: Nonpartisan GAO Confirms Security Flaws in Voting Machines

Elonka wrote:

10.28.05 - As we near completion of our speaker selection process, we are excited to clue you in on the second round of selected speakers for ShmooCon 2006, which includes: Richard Bejtlich, Damin, Deviant Ollam, Elonka Dunin, HellNbak, Jason Scott, Hendrik Scholz, Eric Smith, Joel Wilbanks, and superstar of "The Matrix: Reloaded"... Fyodor!

Shaping up to be quite a con! Who else is planning on going? January 13-15, 2006, Washington DC.

Elonka :)

Hehe, I'm flying up Friday morning, my talk is friday night.

I'm trying to help out with Shmoo's Hacker Arcade which sounds cool as hell. I also plan to visit Abend's magstripe talk and see if he's doing anything cool.

ShmooCon 2006