] A police officer stops you on the street, then taps
] something into a device in the palm of his hand.
]
] The next minute, he knows who your relatives are, who
] lives in your house, who your neighbors are, the kind of
] car you drive or boat you own, whether you've been sued
] and various other tidbits about your life.

"Sir, what is your name?"

CNN.com - Cop on the beat now a walking database - Jul 1, 2004

As U.S. Lt. Josh Rushing astutely notes in "Control Room," Al Jazeera is the Arab version of the Fox News Channel.

Al Jazeera: Out-Foxing Fox

Moby says of Public Enemy "I've always been a huge fan" and talking about the role of music and protest he states "we do still ostensibly live in a democracy, so my hope is that at some point the people will vocally rise up and let the current leaders know that they've had enough." Adds Chuck D: "The song is a request that being a citizen of the world should transcend nationality in the name of peace."

MKLVFKWR

] Our family of Indian Pale Ales includes the 60 Minute
] I.P.A. and the 90 Minute Imperial I.P.A.. Both feature
] our unique continuous hopping program, where they receive
] a single hop addition that lasts over the course of the
] entire boil (60 and 90 minutes respectively). This
] breakthrough hopping method makes for a beer that is
] extremely hoppy without being overly bitter.

This is the best IPA that I have ever had. It fucking rox!

Dogfish Head: 90 Minute IPA

] The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer
] Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week
] when it recommended for security reasons using browsers
] other than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer.

Ouch!

DHS/CERT: Don't use IE

] At the New Generation Internet Ten-Digit Network
] Industrialization & Development Seminar held on June
] 25th at Zhejiang University, it was announced that
] China's Internet technology, IPv9, had been formally
] adapted and popularized into the civil and commercial
] sectors.

What the fuck is this?

China deploying IPv9?

] And so it's come to this. The American people -- proud
] heirs of a bold revolutionary spirit now marking the
] 228th anniversary of its fiery eruption into the world --
] have been reduced to thanking the robed Olympians on the
] U.S. Supreme Court for preserving a few crumbs of the
] nation's once-vast ancient liberties.

Damn...

A Russian view of the Supreme Court Decision

] Today the Internet was pronounced dead. The immediate
] cause of death was universal disinterest.
]
] For decades, the Net had been a free and open network
] that allowed anyone to send e-mail, publish information,
] provide services or sell products. Internet fever fueled
] a stock market boom in the 1990s that made startup
] companies into household names. Then huge losses resulted
] when business dried up from declining Net use. The
] Internet auction business finally disintegrated because
] of persistent fraud.

Future history reports on Internet's demise

] Authorities charged Councilman with violating the Wiretap
] Act, which governs unauthorized interception of
] communication. But the court found that because the
] e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM,
] of the defendant's computer system when he copied them,
] he did not intercept them while they were in transit over
] wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act.

[ Is this total bullshit, or should they have gone after this guy under a different guise? -k ]

I made a comment about the ECPA yesterday. I'm not sure what the implications of that are here. However, I hadn't paid enough attention to this article at the time. I just read the summary.

Turns out, this IS total bullshit. Its one of those cases again where we are making laws that have to do with how technology is designed rather then how people behave. That is always the wrong approach.

The line between communications "moving" on a wire and communications "stored" in RAM is so gray in modern telecommunications networks that to draw a line between them is to, as one author effectively put it, eviscerate the wiretap law. Data moves in and out of RAM over and over and over again as it moves between point A and point B. As all networks, including the phone network, are digital, there essentially is no more wiretap law at all in any area where this decision is effective or affirmed.

This decision is an absolute nightmare scenario.

E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible

] The Israeli Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a
] contentious section of the barrier being built by Israel
] in the West Bank violates the rights of thousands of
] Palestinian residents by separating them from their
] farmland in "a veritable chokehold, which will severely
] stifle daily life."

This story includes a pretty amazing photo of Israel's Berlin Wall.

Israeli Court Orders Changes in Barrier (washingtonpost.com)