Welcome to the "Iraq budget."

Daily Kos: Already a record deficit, and year not over

] It's against the law for police to set up narcotics
] checkpoints to check whether any randomly passing
] motorists happen to have illegal drugs.
]
] But it's not illegal for the police to pretend that's
] what they're doing, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled
] Thursday.

I think this is seriously suspect. What is the difference between this activity and a real search checkpoint? That the suspect was pulled over for littering? You have to have a serious problem contemplating the big picture to fall for such an arguement. The intent of the forth amendment is to prevent the police from randomly sweeping people in search of crimes they can prosecute. The intent of this operation is to randomly sweep motorists in search of crimes to prosecute. This is, frankly, obvious.

This ruling should be overturned, and this judge should be removed.

Questionable rulings...

bucy wrote:
] ] Internet users fed up with the seemingly endless flow of
] ] spam should pin their hopes on a technological solutions
] ] rather than legislative ones, a top U.S. regulator said
] ] this week.

When government officials say "its a software problem" I tend to think of hardware vendors. This article was very short winded. There was no detailed explanation of exactly what problems the FTC has in prosecuting this stuff. Its hard to tell if its the article that sucks, or if the FTC statement was intentionally vauge.

Anonymnity is not the problem. The company whose product is advertised should bear full liability. No one is advertising your product without your knowledge.

Bust one company and the amount of illegal spam will drop dramatically. Sending spam out will mean sending out millions of messages that say "send the police here."

] Like I keep saying, most spam is already illegal under the
] fraud statutes. New laws absolutely will not help, especially
] considering that a huge volume of spam comes from overseas --
] pac rim, eastern europe, etc.

I agree with your first conclusion. Most of the spam I get seems to be coming from compromised machines/open relays and has forged headers. Its not just fraud, is computer fraud and abuse. However, my friend Cyan has spent a lot more time then I have looking at this stuff and has told me that statistically most spam is not sent out using those methods.

Either way, I can see the potential for legal fixes, for example, in the case of spam that is not fraudulently sent, but which you cannot unsubscribe from, and also in the case of open relays. (Someone could easily argue that running an open relay is giving permission to email senders, and reference toad.com as an example. Legislation needs to clarify that.)

However, no amount of legislation is going to have an impact if there is no enforcement, and I agree that there is NO enforcement, and this is a huge part of the problem.

However, overseas should not be seen as an inpenetrable barrier. Its merely a reality of the changing nature of government. As it becomes easier to commit "petty" crimes across international lines, it will become more important for law enforcement to develop the capability to respond to "petty" crimes across international lines. This means getting rid of the old chain of command, where huge beaurocratic barriers existed to international cooperation between local police forces. These barriers existed because of the expense and political issues involved. Those issues don't exist in the modern world. You can pick up a phone and call Korea for less then 25 cents a minute. Local police in Korea ought to be in communication with local police in the United States. Directly.

I think that is what will happen over time. I don't think that spam will spurn it. I think that more serious crimes will... Ultimately, however, law enforcement must become a distributed, many to many system, where the people on the ground are empowered, and can work seamlessly with collegues from other countries, just as the military is currently reorganizing. Its only a matter of when.

RE: FTC chief says antispam bills won't work

] "Initial analysis would suggest that Sobig.F is a
] mass-e-mailing virus that is spreading very vigorously.
] Sobig.F appears to be polymorphic in nature. The address
] is also spoofed and may not indicate the true identity of
] the sender," a MessageLabs statement said.

I've been getting bounce messages today from gateway anti-virus systems claiming I sent them this virus. I haven't. I use MacOS. I've you've been getting similar messages, this is the reason.

World squirms as Sobig returns | CNET News.com

] The Bush administration, under increasing criticism over
] its terrorism policies, is beginning an unusual
] counteroffensive this week in an effort to shore up
] support for the prized legislation that grew out of the
] attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
]
] The pitchman for the campaign-style initiative is
] Attorney General John Ashcroft, a politically divisive
] figure who plans to deliver more than a dozen speeches
] around the country beginning on Tuesday in defense of the
] administration's terrorism efforts.

Bush Administration Plans Defense of Terror Law

] SPRAY-ON computers the size of a grain of sand are set to
] transform information technology across the world thanks
] to pioneering research at Edinburgh University.

Edinburgh Evening News - Top Stories - A spray-on computer is way to do IT

] The Recording Industry Association of America says it
] will not go after small violators when it sues people who
] illegally share songs on the Internet.

CNN.com - Will you be sued by the music industry? - Aug. 19, 2003

] "In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your
] gross,' " said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at
] Miramax, referring to the millions of dollars studios
] throw at a movie to ensure a big opening weekend.
]
] "You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome
] bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out
] into the general audience," he said. "Those days are
] over. Today, there is no fooling the public."

High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies in a Flash

] A new Internet worm emerged today that is designed to
] seek out and fix any computer that remains vulnerable to
] "Blaster," the worm that attacked more than 500,000
] computers worldwide last week.

'Good' Worm Fixes Infected Computers (TechNews.com)

] By emptying the /dev/random, and then timing the moments
] when data becomes available, we can precisely determine, at
] what intervals those events occur. While we can't determine
] what data is being added to the entropy pool, we can rather
] easily tell a situation when a keystroke data is added
] due to a specific pattern triggered by it.

A nice hack: short, and smart...