One writer using the pseudonym 'Le_SigNagE' on the Santarchy! (or also known as the Santacon) website commented, "... after all, this is what Christmas is really about… mindless vandalism and petty theft."

Amen.

40 alleged drunken Santas accused of running amok

It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year.

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist

Was the secret NSA surveillance program legal? Was it constitutional? Did it violate federal statutory law? It turns out these are hard questions, but I wanted to try my best to answer them. My answer is pretty tentative, but here it goes: Although it hinges somewhat on technical details we don't know, it seems that the program was probably constitutional but probably violated the federal law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

This is a detailed analysis. The Administration's Position is also available.

Legal Analysis of the NSA surveillance program

That's why Clark argues that it's time to rethink the Internet's basic architecture, to potentially start over with a fresh design -- and equally important, with a plausible strategy for proving the design's viability, so that it stands a chance of implementation.

This is an interesting, if odd set of articles. The author argues in favor of IP addresses that don't change when you roam, something that I did a bunch of work on a couple of years ago. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how he gets from this to an Internet that doesn't need security patches...

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Internet Is Broken

President George Bush at a news conference today announced creation of a new website which allows people to voluntarily exclude their phone numbers and email addresses from NSA wiretap lists.

The new National Do Not Wiretap Registry (DoNotWiretap.gov) follows the successful DoNotCall.gov model of allowing citizens to opt-out of harassment by electronic means.

Bush Announces Do-Not-Wiretap List

Letter from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Vice President Cheney regarding NSA domestic wiretapping, July 17th 2003.

Bush's Congressional oversight concerning whatever the hell the NSA has been up to included breifing Rockefeller, who just leaked this memo (which was obviously kept around as an insurance policy in the event this went public). Unlike other observers, I'm not at all suprised that this stuff was both technically and legally over his head. I could build some really bad ass snooping tools if I had an unlimited budget, and all this stuff about Article II and the AUFM is about as clear as mud.

The Talking Points Memo DOCUMENT COLLECTION

This is clearly intended to be a scare story. I'm sure, lots of information was left out - especially about his 'time abroad' and other associations. I assure you that DHS does not have 'agents' that investigate people who check out library books.

I thought this was obvious but I didn't say it because I thought it detracted from the humor of the story. Apparently it isn't obvious.

[IP] DHS response to story of UMass senior who requested book

Mike the Usurper wrote:

More American women are having babies they didn't want, a survey indicates, but federal researchers say they don't know if that means attitudes about abortion are changing.

This is something that people should look at. There are a couple of very interesting numbers that tell me something is very, very wrong. In 1995 it notes 26% of conceptions ended in abortion, and 9% of births were unwanted. In 2002, 24% of conceptions went via abortion, but 14% of births were unwanted.

These statistics are worth observing. The rise of "conservative christians" has resulted in fewer abortions, but also in more unwanted children. Is this really a net-positive result that is likely to make society more healthy? I don't think so. There are smarter ways for the anti-abortion movement to achieve the results it wants (fewer abortions). The use of abortion as a political football actually harms people. (A complex explanation of exactly how and why is too much to write at this hour. Someday....)

RE: Survey Shows Unwanted Births Up

Mike the Usurper wrote:

Gonzales said that while FISA prohibits eavesdropping without court approval, it makes an exception where Congress "otherwise authorizes." That authorization, he said, was implicit in the authorization for the use of military force in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks.

If someone would like to explain how NSA doing wiretaps is use of military force, this argument would have a better chance of floating.

The argument is that military actions involve communications intercepts, and so this is just as much the use of force as, say, capturing POW's and transporting them to Cuba, which the administration successfully argued was covered by the AUMF. Congress clearly authorized the President to intercept battlefield communications in Afghanistan. Congress clearly understood that some Al'Q people where in the USA and some might be US citizens....

But, there are problems. The opinion on whether the AUMF covered long term detention of combatants was not unanimous by any means. Conservative lawyers have argued that these intercepts might not be covered. Furthermore, perhaps without considering the implications of this, the Administration had Congress modify the FISA rules in the Patriot Act. This clearly sends a signal that Congress intended those rules to be in effect. Clearly the FISA court has been used for some intercepts. Its really not clear where the Administration determined the line was. (The troubling thing is that the likely answer to that question is that stuff the FISA court would approve got sent to FISA and the other stuff didn't.) It seems difficult to me to accept that domestic civil liberties were lifted by the AUMF without explicit mention from Congress. This is the point Scalia raised in the Hamdi trial that I found resonated with me. Its a big damn assumption.

Frankly, the line is anything but clear. I do not think the Administration should be taking a hard line with Congress about what Congress did or did not authorize. They've also argued that these intercepts are Constitutional regardless of FISA, which is a big line in the sand as it essentially argues that Congress did not have the right to establish FISA in the first place. This is a radical legal position that is very vulnerable. If I were the President I'd have addressed this in a more conservative way, explaining that my lawyers agreed that this was OK due to the AUMF and allowing that the matter will be reconsidered with broader Congressional outreach.

Declaring war on Congress, while simultaneously exclaiming that the dialog itself threatens national security, has the paradoxical effect of raising the profile of the issue, requiring Congress to react, and making you look like you're trying to cover up a crime by shaming people for discussing it openly. This doesn't seem like a shrewd reaction, and it leaves Congress with little choice but to drop the matt... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Bush Defends Eavesdropping Program

Of course, we want this to be solved diplomatically, and we want the Iranians to hear a unified voice.

What Bush actually said...