It isn’t easy to convey the intricacies of class warfare, housecleaning, immigration, a sci-fi classic, and the lottery in a couple of index cards. But Jessica Hagy, the proprietor of Indexed, has done it.

What Do Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a Border Fence Have in Common?

"You're talking about creating (something) that knows no fatigue, no boredom and is absolutely focused."

"The eventual goal is to have elaborate video surveillance well in advance of the 2016 Olympics."

ACLU says: "It is incumbent on the city to ensure that there are practices and procedures in place to sort of watch the watchers."

For "elaborate" as an adjective, OAD offers this: "(of an action) lengthy or exaggerated : he made an elaborate pretense of yawning."

That sounds about right.

Chicago Video Surveillance Gets Smarter

Public servant is alleged digital stalker.

United States Attorney Scott N. Schools announced that a federal grand jury in San Jose indicted Benjamin Robinson, age 40, of Oakland, on September 19, 2007, with making a false statement to a government agency, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2) and (c)(2)(B)(ii).

According to the indictment, Mr. Robinson was sworn in as a Special Agent for the Department of Commerce, Office of Export Enforcement, Bureau of Industry and Security, on March 31, 1997. In November 2002, Mr. Robinson began a romantic relationship with a person identified in the indictment by her initials, S.S. The relationship lasted approximately seven months and ended acrimoniously. The indictment alleges that, during the course of their relationship and after S.S. tried to end it, Mr. Robinson made numerous threats to S.S., including threatening to have her deported and to kill her and her family.

The indictment further alleges that from approximately May 2003 through March 2004, Mr. Robinson accessed a government database known as the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) at least 163 times to track the travel patterns of S.S. and her family. Federal agents are authorized to use that database only in the performance of their official duties and not for personal reasons. In addition, law enforcement agents receive training in TECS security and privacy, and are issued unique passwords to access TECS so that their use of the system can be monitored.

The indictment further alleges that on June 1, 2004, agents from the Department of Commerce interviewed Mr. Robinson, and he admitted that he had accessed the TECS database approximately ten to fifteen times to track S.S.’s travel in and out of the United States. In fact, at the time Mr. Robinson made that statement, he was well aware that he had accessed the system at least 163 times between May 1, 2003 and March 22, 2004.

United States Attorney Scott N. Schools stated: "Those of us who are sworn to public service must continually strive to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct. Federal officers who violate the public trust by abusing their official positions to pursue a private vendetta must be held accountable for those actions."

Mr. Robinson is scheduled to make his initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Richard Seeborg on October 11, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in San Jose.

So what is TECS?

The TECS is a computerized information system designed to identify individuals and businesses suspected of, or involved in violation of federal law. The TECS is also a communications system permitting message transmittal between Treasury law enforcement offices and other Federal, national, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The TECS provides access to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the National Law Enforcement Telecommunication Systems (NLETS) with the capability of communicating directly with state and local enforcement agencies. The NLETS provides direct access to state motor vehicle departments.

Ex-Dept of Commerce Agent Indicted for Unauthorized Use of Government Database

On Saturday John Coatsworth, acting dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, made the remark that "if Hitler were in the United States and . . . if he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him." This was by way of defending the university's decision to host a speech yesterday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

An old rule of thumb in debate tournaments is that the first one to say "Hitler" loses. But say what you will about Mr. Coatsworth's comment, it is, at bottom, a philosophical claim: about the purposes of education; about the uses of dialogue; about the obligations of academia; about the boundaries (or absence of boundaries) of modern liberalism and about its conceits. So rather than dismiss the claim out of hand, let's address it in the same philosophical spirit in which it was offered.

Columbia's Conceit

Naomi Wolf's new book is The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot:

In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century’s worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile.

From the introduction:

I have written this warning because our country -- the democracy our young patriots expect to inherit -- is in the process of being altered forever.

Americans expect to have freedom around us just as we expect to have air to breathe, so we have only limited understanding of the furnaces of repression that the Founders knew intimately.

There are ten steps that are taken in order to close down a democracy or crush a prodemocratic movement, whether by capitalists, communists, or right-wing fascists. These ten steps, together, are more than the sum of their parts. Once all ten have been put in place, each magnifies the power of the others and of the whole. Impossible as it may seem, we are seeing each of these ten steps taking hold in the United States today.

But America is different! I can hear you saying.

Stephen Colbert Interviews Naomi Wolf

In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: I've got nothing to hide. According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy

Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance.

How fortunate we are:

Is more what we really need?

In my opinion not.

But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.

Yay!

Big Brother is watching us all | BBC

Al Gore's latest book opens with a rumination on the sad state of our body politic. "More and more people are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy," Gore writes, "and how we can fix it."

He offers a list of explanations that have also been put forward by others, from the increasing power of interest groups to voter apathy to excessive partisanship; but Gore sees those concerns, however real, as symptoms of the problem and not causes. More than any other public figure today, he fixes the blame on the power of television. His lament is not the standard one about the medium's superficiality. He argues that a discourse dominated by television — it is, he notes, now almost half a century since television replaced newspapers as Americans' chief source of information — inherently corrupts the Founders' notion of the reasoned deliberation in the civic forum that they judged essential to a republic's survival:

The present threat...is based on several serious problems that stem from the dramatic and fundamental change in the way we communicate among ourselves....

Consider the rules by which our present public forum now operates and how different they are from the norms our Founders knew during the age of print. Today's massive flows of information are largely in only one direction. The world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation.

Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but they do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience."

MemeStreams: Send. Share. Speak. Move.

Citizen Gore

As insurgent threats evolve and assume new forms, the United States must also evolve in its ability to counter potentially prolonged threats in several parts of the world.

Because of the potential for global reach in contemporary insurgencies, the ability to draw on lessons learned from past counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns using different historical cases can be valuable, helping current and future leaders prevent a repetition of mistakes and building a foundation on which to build contemporary responses.

To this end, six historic COIN operations from the 19th and 20th centuries are examined to determine which tactics, techniques, and procedures led to success and which to failure. The Philippines, Algeria, Vietnam, El Salvador, Jammu and Kashmir, and Colombia were chosen for their varied characteristics relating to geography, historical era, outcome, type of insurgency faced, and level of US involvement.

Specific issues examined include the counterinsurgents’ ability to innovate and adapt, the need to find a way to recognize the threat, and tactics for confronting it.

Click through for links to other papers in the series, as well.

Money in the Bank -- Lessons Learned from Past Counterinsurgency Operations | RAND

The scene, heavy with the sweet smoke of cigarillos and exploding with hip-hop’s unmistakable pounding bass, could be almost anywhere: New York, Chicago, Memphis, Oakland.

The only sign that this is Colorado Springs is that two churches sit adjacent to the club, La Zona Roja, in an empty strip mall.

The club is part of a thriving hip-hop community that has grown as Colorado Springs, known for its military installations and evangelical groups, has grown. But not everyone is happy that hip-hop has taken root here.

After a spate of shootings, and with a rising murder rate, the police here are saying gangsta rap is contributing to the violence, luring gang members and criminal activity to nightclubs. The police publicly condemned the music in a news release after a killing in July and are warning nightclub owners that their places might not be safe if they play gangsta rap.

The release mentioned an event planned at Eden, called a “Pimp, Thug and Ho Party,” as the “type of behavior that causes concern.” The club’s owners called off the party.

Colorado Police Link Rise in Violence to Music