bucy wrote:

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

Honestly, at this point closing Gitmo is silly.

The problem with Gitmo is not the physical prison. Its that it was designed as a legal black hole. After Boumediene that is no longer the case, and so Gitmo is no longer a problem in my view.

As a prison its not a bad place to keep terrorism suspects. Its a modern facility which is physically separate from the US mainland, so you don't have to worry about escapees. Surely building a new facility and moving all of these prisoners is more expensive than keeping the place open.

At this point its closure is almost entirely symbolic, which makes it a really easy thing for Obama to do. I'm not saying symbols aren't important. But they aren't more important than Supreme Court decisions about Habeas Corpus. There is an element of partisanship in the fact that people care more about the end of the symbol than the end of the policy. Focusing on the wrong things teaches the wrong lessons about how our system works. A preferred policy by a President can be reversed by another President. Constitutional law is more concrete.

Obama has more difficult choices ahead of him.

RE: Obama to Close Foreign Prisons and Guantánamo - NYTimes.com

In the aftermath of the crash, the US Airways pilot, Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III, was praised for his efforts at landing the plane softly on the river's surface, allowing rescue crews to get to the passengers before the plane sank.

"It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river, and then making sure everybody got out," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference late today.

The mayor said Sullenberger "walked the plane twice to verify if anyone was onboard" before exiting himself.

Hats off to you, sir!

Three Cheers for Mr. Sullenberger

Privacy advocates say prosecutors are misusing child pornography laws by turning them against the very people they are meant to protect.

The accusation comes following a raft of recent child pornography cases against juveniles accused of photographing themselves in the nude.

This week, prosecutors in Greensburg, Pennsylvania charged six teens ranging in age from 14 to 17 with creating, distributing and possessing child pornography, after three girls were found to have taken photos of themselves in the nude or partially nude and e-mailed them to friends, including three boys who are among the defendants.

More evil visited upon innocent people at the hands of an overreacting state.

Child Porn Laws Used Against Kids Who Photograph Themselves | Threat Level from Wired.com

It was funny. It really showed me the power of gradualism. It’s hard to get people to do something bad all in one big jump, but if you can cut it up into small enough pieces, you can get people to do almost anything.

Another choice quote:

Of course, nobody reads EULAs, so a lot of people agreed to that... At the time there was basically no law around this. EULAs were recognized as contracts and all, so that’s pretty much how distribution happened.

I'll try to remember that the next time some idiot is insisting that contracts no one reads should be enforceble. EULAs are a criminal infrastructure!

The power of gradualism

A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem, despite years of parental anxieties and media hype.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report compared such fears to a “moral panic” and concluded that the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

Sounds like this story might give the wrong impression. Click through to the thread.

Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown - NYTimes.com

Ghosts I-IV is ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon's MP3 store.

NIN wasn't always considered mainstream, but any way you slice it, a long, ambient industrial album like Ghosts I-IV is not pop music. Its amazing on a cultural level that this is the most popular MP3 album on Amazon. Is this really what people are listening to these days, or is this some sort of statistical anomaly?

Granted, *I* like this kind of stuff a lot. Ambient Industrial is probably my favorite musical genre. But I always figured I was the sort of jerk who was qualified to wear this t-shirt. I never thought an album I really liked would top Amazon's sales charts.

If an anomaly, is it due to the album's price? Its a bit cheaper and a lot longer than most of the MP3 albums on Amazon but its only cheaper by a few bucks. Are Amazon shoppers more likely to be into Nine Inch Nails? Some people are arguing that Nine Inch Nails fans are more likely to spend money on their band's work, rather than download it from a torrent, because they are a loyal fan base, but as a loyal NIN fan I bought my copy from NIN's website, rather than Amazon, when it was announced on their mailing list, so I'm not sure these sales reflect that core fan base.

If this isn't an anomaly, are people seeking out more ambient industrial music in general? Has there been a surge in interest in Square Pusher? Autechre? Logikal? Or is it Trent Reznor's fame that has put this album out in front? Are people snapping up this album not because its the sort of stuff they are really into but because they kind of like NIN and there just isn't anything better out there in 2008?

I have a deeper worry that I've been mulling over for a few months...

Does the popularity of this sort of music reflect a dark undercurrent in American culture at the dawn of a serious economic cataclysm? I recall feeling that the new Batman movie was, well, a bit too intense. It was, in fact, exactly the Batman movie that I always wanted them to make - serious and complicated, but suddenly it made me uncomfortable to find THAT movie as THE summer blockbuster... I looked around myself in the theater and I thought "they've gone too far... these people aren't supposed to be into this kind of stuff."

The counter culture is supposed to be dark, brooding, complicated, and intellectually obtuse. Normal people should be downloading Pop Tarts and watching Indiana Jones. When they turn to this kind of thing instead, in huge numbers, what does it mean? What makes for a cool anti-fashion on the fringes is positively disturbing when it goes mainstream. What are we becoming?

re NIN best selling cc-licensed music (Lessig Blog)

I've never read Bamford, which is odd in retrospect, I guess. Has anyone looked at this latest?

Bamford argues that the N.S.A. in 2000 and 2001 had not only the means, but also the actual information necessary to prevent the attacks on New York and Washington. The agency had been monitoring communications out of an Al Qaeda command center in Yemen, and those had pointed squarely to the presence of two key plotters in California. Yet Hayden at that moment didn’t want to risk any semblance of monitoring people in the United States, even though there was plenty of latitude to tap those two terrorists under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Was this in the 9/11 report? If true, this would underline the argument that "pre-9/11" US Intelligence was skittish to a fault about the appearance of targeting Americans. But the mentality in US Intel circles was not the same as the mentality in the general populace. Al'Queda had already attacked US interests. They knew Al'Queda was plotting further attacks. The idea that they'd leave two known Al'Queda agents unmolested in Califoria out of a sense of respect for people's feeling about Posse Comitatus strains credibility. Were they also in the habit of ignoring Russian Spies in New Mexico? I presume something is being oversimplified here.

Book Review - 'The Shadow Factory,' by James Bamford - Review - NYTimes.com

The author of this essay was a senior editor at a newspaper in Sri Lanka. He was assasinated on January 8th. I presume he had pre-written this essay with the intent that it be published in the event he was murdered.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

Sri Lankan News Paper Editor Assasinated

The National Safety Council is all over the press calling for an immediate ban on the use of cellphones while driving. News media reports typically quote a representative of the NSC claiming that cellphones have been shown to be distracting. Thats not enough in my opinion. I frequently use my phone while driving as do 100 million Americas per the NSC's own data, and I do not think it's risky behavior. I could be convinced otherwise only if there was a showing that a cellphone ban will cause a substantial reduction in the number of accidents. This "fact sheet" is a bit more substantive than what is being quoted in the press, but it still doesn't provide a satisfactory answer to this question, mostly because it fails to actually cite the studies it makes reference to, and so its impossible to tell whether or not these results are being spun. The only study that is referenced is a study on texting while driving which is substantially different. They do cite this statistic:

Cell phone use contributes to an estimated 6 percent of all crashes, which equates to 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries, 12,000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year. (Harvard Center of Risk Analysis).

Thats a start, but wait, what does "which equates to" mean? It sounds like they are assuming that all crashes are equal, and 6% of crashes result in 2,600 deaths, and so cellphone use is implicated in 2,600 annual deaths. But you can't just extrapolate like that. Are cellphone related accidents more or less likely to be fatal than other kinds of accidents? What does "estimated" mean? Are these real numbers or not? What about "contributes to?" What percentage of these are cases where the driver was drunk and on the cellphone, or speeding and on the cellphone?

Unfortunately, I can't tell, because no actual study is referenced. When I google around for the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (SIC) I get studies that have very much the opposite conclusion:

Study Finds That Restricting Cell Phones While Driving May Be Premature, That Benefits May Be More Compelling Than The Risks

Are they citing a newer study? What study?

Many of the other claims made in this fact sheet are also questionable or involve studies that reach conclusions which have been contested by other studies which aren't mentioned here.

The fact is that you have a ban in California. Has there been a decrease in the number of automotive fatalities since in the ban was put in place? This is a very simple piece of data to collect. The fact that these people aren't trumpeting it leads me to suspect that it doesn't reveal what they want it to reveal.

Cell Phone Use While Driving Fact Sheet

In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The next time someone tries to tell you that there is no relationship between US anti-soviet efforts in the middle east and our present terrorism problem reference this story.

From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad (washingtonpost.com)