A federal appeals court in California is reviewing a lower court's definition of "interception" in the digital age.

The case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America, involves a hacker who in 2005 broke into a file-sharing company's server and obtained copies of company e-mails as they were being transmitted. He then e-mailed 34 pages of the documents to an MPAA executive, who paid the hacker $15,000 for the job, according to court documents.

The issue boils down to the judicial definition of an intercept in the electronic age, in which packets of data move from server to server, alighting for milliseconds before speeding onward. The ruling applies only to the 9th District, which includes California and other Western states, but could influence other courts around the country.

In August 2007, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, in the Central District of California, ruled that the alleged hacker, Rob Anderson, had not intercepted the e-mails in violation of the 1968 Wiretap Act because they were technically in storage, if only for a few instants, instead of in transmission.

The redacted brief can be found here. Here is a story from CNET News on the appeal. See also, EFF's amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs-appellants.

"It could really gut the wiretapping laws," said Orin S. Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and expert on surveillance law. "The government could go to your Internet service provider and say, 'Copy all of your e-mail, but make the copy a millisecond after the email arrives,' and it would not be a wiretap."

This case is a perfect example of how the 4th amendment has been twisted in the context of computer networks by those who have an interest in being able to spy without probable cause.

E-Mail Hacking Case Could Redefine Online Privacy

The Transportation Security Administration suspended Verified Identity Pass from enrolling any new passengers in its get-through-security-faster program on Tuesday, after the company lost (and then oddly found) a unencrypted laptop containing personal information of 33,000 people who had applied for the so-called Registered Traveler program.

Well, that didn't take long, did it.

Registered Traveler Company Frozen After Losing Flier Data -- Updated | Threat Level from Wired.com

CypherGhost wrote:

The bottom line is that in blind wine tastings, there is a zero or even slightly negative correlation between the ratings of regular people and the price of the wine they are drinking; for experts the relationship between rating and price is positive.

I enjoyed this short article, and the first blog post it links.

When my friend Mark first started exposing me to decent wine I was subject to numerous blind taste tests in which I was asked to select the more expensive bottle. I was consistently wrong when I first started. I am fooled less easily today, but wine is a very complicated thing and it takes a long time, and a lot of bottles, to get good at it and to have a good appreciation for a wide array of variatals. Thats part of what makes it fun. There is always something new to discover. Something else to learn.

There are some potential problems with running these kinds of blind taste tests particularly with two decanters that contain the same bottle. The first is that the character of a wine changes as it oxidates. If you had the same bottle appearing twice in a taste test, and you tried it first, just after it was opened, and then again after it had been sitting out for half an hour, it would taste much better the second time, particularly if it was higher quality or older.

The second is that your perception of wine is contextual. This is why people pair particular foods with particular kinds of wine, and why wine in general goes well with some kinds of food (like pasta) and terrible with other kinds (like hot wings). What you have tasted before tasting the wine effects your perception of how the wine tastes.

My advice is to always drink your cheapest bottle first. (More expensive does not always mean better, but it often does.) You'll appreciate a really good wine after a glass of average wine even more than you would if you started with that good bottle and you had nothing to compare it to. In the blind taste test if you had tried the repeating bottle first, with no context, you might have given it a medicore rating, and then if you tried it again immediately after having tried a cheap wine, you might have found it singing!

Of course, my sister suggests that I am more impressed with the quality of my wines as the evening goes on and I get more drunk. I insist that this cannot be the case. :)

The economist's suggestion, that ignorance is bliss, is a perfect example of why accounting is the opposite of art. I've found getting better at drinking wine to be very fun and rewarding. Really great wine and really great gourmet food can provide an experience that is completely different than ordinary eating -- its not about satisfying hunger but more about experimenting with the range of flavors that you are capable of experiencing... Its worth knowing why cooking can be considered an art, but you can't just roll up to an ex... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Keep the Cheap Wine Flowing - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

In October, the house sold at auction for $304,500.

It resold in January for $625,000.

"They lied to us," he said of the sellers. "They said the house was really $500,000, but when I bought it, the papers said $625,000."

Gomez said someone else – he's not sure exactly who – paid the $125,000 down payment.

"I didn't pay any money down," Gomez said. "The man who sold it to me said, 'No money, no problem.' And later he told me I would get $30,000 for buying the house."

From an envelope containing his loan papers, Gomez produced a two-page document titled "Addendum to contract" signed by Praslin. The memo, mostly handwritten, said that if the purchase went through, Praslin would pay Gomez $30,000, cover the first three mortgage payments and throw in a 52-inch LCD television.

How people flip houses.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue).

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein....

I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it....

That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack?

The 9/11 truthers may now have something a bit more substantive to sink their teeth into. I have to say that I am not convinced that there is nothing to this connection.

Its worth noting that people who knew Ivins aren't buying the story. Its not clear what evidence the FBI actually has.

WaPo says:

The claim , as we discussed in first posting, is that he was upset about the lack of research into anthrax, the development of a vaccine, and fear about the country's vulnerability. And this mailing certainly did terrify Americans, so it could help alert the public to this weakness on biological weapons.

This was one of the FBI and investigators' early theories from the start: a disgruntled scientist upset about lack of focus on bio-weapons.

Apparently Ivins would have benefitted financially from a decision to manufacture vaccines.

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

It occurred to me when driving home that there are two assertions made in this editorial that aren't true.

As a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary when there is some level of suspicion.

That is a lie. Customs selects people at random and they have quotas for secondary screening that they must meet. I know this because I was personally selected for secondary screening at LAX and the officer who did so indicated to another officer at the time that they had met their quota.

Yet legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers' often split-second assessments are second-guessed.

That is also a lie. Reasonable Suspicion is a standard that is so thin that really any rationalization that an officer had for flagging someone would likely be upheld. The reason it ought to be required is so that they cannot perform searches at random and they cannot operate quotas.

Chertoff's lies

Here is Chertoff's USA Today editorial. It provides a lot of explanation of the "broad" authority that they have and the importance of being able to search things but at no point does it directly engage the need for random searches without reasonable suspicion.

We cannot abandon our responsibility to inspect what enters the U.S. just because the information is on an electronic device. To do so would open a dangerous window for terrorists and criminals to exploit our borders in new and unacceptable ways.

And that is why we are now randomly inspecting international internet traffic! Oh, wait, we aren't, and in fact we just agreed to a new FISA bill that would require a warrant to do that... It turns out I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Opposing view: Searches are legal, essential - Opinion - USATODAY.com

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices.

I agree. The policies are linked from this CNET article. Consider this comment:

In the course of every border search, CBP will protect the rights of individuals against unreasonable search and seizure.

It is deeply insulting to see such an obviously frivolous and sarcastic reference made to constitutional rights in official policy. Literally every imaginable kind of search of electronic equipment is authorized by this policy without any individualized suspicion. Exactly what kind of unreasonable searches or seizures are CBP protecting individuals from in this context? The answer is that there are none, absolutely none, and the inclusion of this statement makes a mockery out of the idea!

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy."

Its like these people don't even understand the meaning of the words they are saying.

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border - washingtonpost.com

There is no single answer to this question. A number of factors contribute to the price of oil:

Fantastic infographic!

Why Does Gas Cost $4 or More a Gallon? - washingtonpost.com

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

The end of western civilization