In PBS's epidose of Frontline entitled "Spying on the Home Front", a good primer is developed for anyone who is interested in just one example of how the executive branch has ram shod over the Constitution and used every IT trick in the book to help them do it. If you haven't seen this episode, you need to watch it and think long and hard about the next time you use a credit card, do a search online, or browse alt.binaries.pictures.preteen. If you are already up to date on this topic, I still suggest you watch the episode for some interesting interviews. There's even additional footage that should make up anyone's mind about whether Al Gonzales is a slimeball or not.
Ironically, I'm not in the infosec biz, not even tangentially, but I counted no less than three people in this program that I know personally. Cindy Cohn, from the EFF, who was very helpful to us at the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network when we resisted some MPAA injected legislation back in 2003. Jeff Jonas, who's now at IBM, but had developed some of the best pattern recognition software in the world which we've used in health care claims analysis. And my good ole friend Steve Bannerman, now at Narus, but formerly at Apple Computer back in the day. Such a small world, even more painfully obvious after watching this program.
I've been told to watch this. The first few seconds of the linked additional footage are apropos to the present Gonzales controversy. I'm not sure whether or not it means that Gonzales is a slimeball. What is seems to mean is that Comey was not talking about the Terrorist Surveillance Program. He was talking about some other program. Something so serious that a large number of DOJ officials were ready to resign over it.
