I found this swipe by Greenwald against liberal yammering about corporate personhood to be refreshing.

All 9 justices of the Supreme Court — from the most liberal to the most conservative — believe, and in Citizens United said, that corporations have free speech rights under the First Amendment, and that restrictions on how they spend their money for political advocacy can violate the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

As Justice John Paul Stevens, writing on behalf of the liberal dissenters in that case, wrote (emphasis added): “of course . . . speech does not fall entirely outside the protection of the First Amendment merely because it comes from a corporation,” and ”no one suggests the contrary“ (the debate in Citizens United was not whether corporations have First Amendment free speech rights — everyone on the Court agreed they do — the question was whether it was Constitutionally permissible to limit those free speech rights in order to achieve a compelling state interest). The notion that Citizens United turned on whether corporations are “persons,” and that the majority and dissent disagreed on this, is pure and total myth.

Chicken and the Constitution

Advertising revenue continues to sink at the New York Times Company, which reported a second-quarter net loss of $88.1 million today. But a glimmer of hope can be seen in circulation revenue, which has actually gone up through print subscription price increases and the online paywall.

If the people pay for the press then the press will serve them.

The New York Times Is Now Supported by Readers, Not Advertisers -- Daily Intel

"Ultimately the ethics of this don't really matter – the decision has been made and this kind of stuff is going to be unavoidable."

Stuxnet: 'Moral crime' or proportionate response? • The Register

Hijexx wrote:

Decius wrote:

Caleb Medley was shot in the eye at the Aurora movie theater mass shooting.

Like a number of people injured in the Aurora shooting, he is uninsured. His family has been told that the cost of his medical treatment may exceed $2 million.

The shooting is a tragedy. I know the correlation Xeni is making is a double edged sword. On the one hand it's bringing visibility to an aspect not many people would otherwise think of, mainly the financial aftermath. On the other hand, it feels like using the tragedy to grind a political axe.

There have been a bunch of discussions about gun control in the wake of the this shooting. If you genuinely believe that gun control would make a difference in cases like this, perhaps you are likely to feel that its a legitimate response - you're not grinding a political axe so much as you're pointing out a solution to a real problem.

The issue that I have with it is that I don't think gun control would make a difference when it comes to this kind of incident, so I think emotional appeals for gun control that reference the incident do lean in the direction of political football spiking.

Where this really becomes a problem is when the solution you're proposing has nothing to do with the problem but you're trying to take advantage of people's feelings about the problem anyway.

I don't think that accusation is fair with regard to the healthcare discussion.

All insurance is redistributive. We all put money in a pot and one of us gets to take that money because he or she got sick. The debate in the US over healthcare is about who is allowed to access the pot and how much their access should cost.

Opponents of national healthcare frequently make the argument that people get sick because they are irresponsible. They smoke. They drink. They don't eat healthy. They ski. Giving them free health insurance just enables them to be irresponsible with their behavior. Honest tax payers should not have to foot the bill for that - these people should be responsible for themselves.

The problem with this logic is that expensive health problems can strike at random. This is a perfect example. Caleb Medley was not shot in the face because he was being irresponsible.

Should Medley have access to care? This is a real world scenario. If one's views on the healthcare issue don't anticipate situations like this, they are wrong.

Should Medley have had insurance? Yes. He would have had access to care if he had insurance. However, anyone could have been in that theater that day. There is not a single human being in this country for whom that answer is no, so there should be no problem making insurance compulsory, just as education is compulsory, because the answer for everyone is always yes in every circumstance.

Even if we decide that Medley made a mi... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Uninsured Aurora shooting victims face financial devastation - Boing Boing

Caleb Medley was shot in the eye at the Aurora movie theater mass shooting.

Like a number of people injured in the Aurora shooting, he is uninsured. His family has been told that the cost of his medical treatment may exceed $2 million.

Uninsured Aurora shooting victims face financial devastation - Boing Boing

In regards to cybersecurity legislation, I often hear statements like "we could make progress if it weren't for special interests". I always jump in at that point to say "but cyberscurity is a special interest". I never convince anyone of this, because of course, no special interest thinks of themselves as such.

Errata Security: Myth: that secret coffee slush fund

Some bad ass surf rock - saw these guys live at Atlanta Rollergirls.

Kill, Baby...Kill! AL | Anniston, AL | Instrumental / Surf / Rock | Music, Lyrics, Songs, and Videos | ReverbNation

I will veto any bill that lacks strong privacy and civil-liberties protections.

Obama has taken a stand on Internet Civil Liberties a few times this year. Is it because this is an election year? Will Obama have "more flexibility" on these issues after the election?

(At least with the Democrats I get civil liberties once every four years...)

Barack Obama: Taking the Cyberattack Threat Seriously - WSJ.com

By me:

I have no doubt that we will see more password compromises in the future. Passwords are the oldest security control that we have, and they are probably the least understood. It would be nice to imagine that these breaches will result in the universal adoption of two-factor authentication technologies, or at least password vaults, but those changes are not going to happen everywhere for both economic and usability reasons. The fact is that passwords are here to stay, and it is time to get serious about modernizing the approach that corporations take to password security.

Technology News: Network Intrusion: Our Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Password System

The Internet Defense League is a network of people and sites who use their massive combined reach to defend the open internet and make it better. Because it can sound the alarm quickly to millions of users, people are calling it “a bat-signal for the Internet”.

For the launch, two ideas seemed awesome: 1) Launch on the night the new Batman movie comes out (the midnight showings for hard-core fans) and 2) have launch parties in cities around the world with real-life bat cat signals.

This idea is silly but on some level it is also awesome. Imagine the protest impact of actual cat signals being put up over major cities whenever some assholes decide to fuck up Internet civil liberties for their personal financial interest.

The Internet Defense League - Protecting the Free Internet since 2012