officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

Man those Democrats sure defend our civil liberties!

U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet - NYTimes.com

The EFF writes:

As you may or may not be aware, there is an extremely bad Internet censorship
bill that is going to be passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee this Wednesday. Senators are claiming that they haven't heard any opposition to this "COICA" bill, and it is being sponsored by 14 of the 19 committee members.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has some heavy guns - having this bill come up this way means there is a serious possibility of passage.

The EFF further writes:

The bill creates two blacklists of censored domains. The first is longer, and includes any sites where the DOJ decides that infringement is "central" to the purpose of the site. The bill gives ISPs and registrars strong legal incentives to censor the domains on that list. The Attorney General can also ask a court to put sites on a second, shorter blacklist; ISPs and registrars are required by law to censor those sites.

The bill provides that the Attorney General can get a court order forcing domain name registrars or registries to pull a particular domain. It also provides that if they don't want to go through that process, they can publish the domain name in a list. DNS registries are strongly encouraged to go ahead and pull any domain on that list if they want to avoid being held legally liable for the content on that domain.

Because DNS registries are implicated, and not just registrars, this could have significant and extremely destructive implications for US control over the DNS systems. This is really very bad.

Very, very bad Internet Censorship bill makes Senate

At its meeting, the committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 18 months, which makes it the longest of any recession since World War II. Previously the longest postwar recessions were those of 1973-75 and 1981-82, both of which lasted 16 months.

Good news, the economy is slowly growing...

Its Official: Recession Ended June 2009 | The Big Picture

This is stuck in my head - its a good thing - it motivates me to work on my new project...

YouTube - Constitution Preamble - Schoolhouse Rock

We entrust Google with our most private communications because we assume the company takes every precaution to safeguard our data. It doesn't. A Google engineer spied on four underage teens for months before the company was notified of the abuses.

GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)

noteworthy wrote:
In the short run, the only way to avoid a deep slump when almost everyone in the private sector is trying to pay down debt simultaneously is for the government to move in the opposite direction—to become, in effect, the borrower of last resort, issuing debt and continuing to spend as the private sector pulls back. In the heat of a Minsky moment, budget deficits are not only good, they are necessary.

Is there any credible economist who disagrees with this? If not - why has the Republican party aligned their entire strategy in opposition to this idea?

RE: Further Down The Spiral

We are not saying that the government can never search or seize electronic devices at the border, but only that border agents should have some suspicion that the search will turn up evidence of wrongdoing before looking through all the private information that people have stored in their devices. Americans travel internationally more than in the past, and usually with private information and intimate details of our lives condensed in small, electronic devices. We hope that the court will recognize that Americans don't give up their right to privacy at the border, and strike down the DHS's policy as unconstitutional.

This is it - the final Constitutional showdown. I wish I wasn't sitting on the sidelines but I'm not sure how to get involved in a meaningful way. Anyone know how to submit a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court? Can anyone do that?

ACLU Challenges Laptop Searches and Seizures at the Border

Righthaven acquires the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission.

Righthaven usually demands $75,000, but will settle for a few thousand dollars.

More hazards of thinking outloud.

Second Newspaper Chain Joins Copyright Trolling Operation | Threat Level | Wired.com

Rattle wrote:
I am seriously disheartened by what I'm seeing take place in Murfreesboro. It's a town that I love, but I'm ashamed of what's going on down there.

The arson in Murfreesboro was an act of terrorism. These people are moving in a direction which will ultimately make them just as evil as the people they oppose.

Beyond what this says about how people don't get the 1st amendment, it's also helping our enemies recruit:

What Bin Lauden wanted to spark was total conflict between Islam and the west. People who believe in such a conflict walk with him, regardless of what side of it they think they're on. The politicians who have pushed this issue ought to know better.

RE: Taliban Using Mosque Controversy to Recruit

Mr. Shiller also said he thinks the U.S. economy is "teetering on the brink of deflation." Deflation occurs when the general level of consumer prices falls, as was the case in the Great Depression. He said the U.S. is ill-prepared for such an event because of the lack of "indexing" in contracts.

In addition, the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index said he is worried that housing prices could decline for another five years. He noted that Japan saw land prices decline for 15 consecutive years up to 2006.

Mr. Shiller said the biggest problem for the economy and the national psyche currently is unemployment, and he called on the federal government and local government to create jobs. Specifically, he suggested that schools employ an additional person in each class room as a teacher's aide.

Thats exactly the opposite of what most school systems are doing...

Economist Shiller Sees Potential for 'Double Dip' Recession - WSJ.com