Pentagon expands domestic surveillance.

And Bruce Schneier weighs in as well...

Not only does involving the military in domestic surveillance mean bluring the line between citizens and enemies, it also means applying the 4th amendmend to military operations. What is the FBI not doing that you need them to be doing?

Pentagon Expands Domestic Surveillance

People don’t engage with each other in order to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other.

Observe yourself the next time you’re listening to a joke. You may start by listening to the joke for the humor - because you really want the belly laugh at the end. But chances are, a few sentences in, you will find yourself not only listening, but attempting to remember its whole sequence. You’ll do this tentatively at first, until you’ve decided whether or not it's really a good joke. And if it is, you'll commit the entire thing to memory - maybe even with a personalized variation, or a mental note to yourself to fix that racist part. This is because the joke is a gift - it's a form of social currency that you’ll be able to take with you to the next party.

At the Industrial Memetics talk at PhreakNIC I used a joke as an example of a meme. It remains the best example I've been able to come up with. There are many similarities between what I said and what he said here. I will have to remember his take on it, and incorporate it into my own. Key thing about memes is that they are mutually supportive.

Douglas Rushkoff on Memes

JS/UIX is an UN*X-like OS for standard web-browsers, written entirely in JavaScript (no plug-ins used). It comprises a virtual machine, shell, virtual file-system, process-management, and brings its own terminal with screen- and keyboard-mapping.

File under "stupid web tricks". This is neat, but I can't think of a single useful application.

A more advanced security model for Javascript in web browsers is necessary. I have no idea what this adds to the argument.. Aside from the fact that it's a good example of how you can do much more with Javascript then is widely understood. Acidus has been doing some interesting research in this space. I look forward to the point when he can quit being tight-lipped and share some of the stuff he has come up with. It's the kind of stuff that will send a shockwave through the security and web development community.

JS/UIX - Unix implemented in Javascript

The 6th Amendment right to legal representation did not afford everyone "the most resourceful defense attorneys with bountiful investigative support."

"The 6th Amendment is satisfied when [defense] counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, thereby ensuring that criminal defendants receive a fair trial," he said.

This case is interesting... Muddy... IMHO If the state is going to kill you it ought to consider all of the evidence. The idea that it need not seems ignorant of the finality of death.

Alito and the Death Penalty

This is some beautiful stuff someone captured. Apparently someone at CNN trying to put together a map of the areas of France not currently in flames and bursting with rioters managed to really screw up using Google Maps.

Check it out, it's almost like a public school student's attempt at making their own map of a country they know nothing about.

The World According to CNN

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

The situation with NSLs has always gotten me riled up. I think giving the investigative agencies a license to request information without any type of review is a disaster for civil liberties happening silently.

I do understand the value of having as much information on hand as possible to do link analysis. It's a subject I might even qualify as an expert on. Let's just say you are pulling telephone call records for a suspect, and the records of everyone he was in contact with. You certainly do have a good pool there to do link analysis. Going out another level would be pointless, but from what you find at the first level, you may decide to expand certain specific people who show connections or become of interest. It's a very reasonable way to conduct a non-intrusive investigation. That's exactly the type of thing going on, I'm sure of it, and it has a hell of a lot more to it than phone records.

However non-intrusive that may appear at first glance, some review is still necessary. There is a big difference between a directed and scoped search, and trying to find needles in a haystack by x-raying the haystack. We do have this thing called the 4th amendment. I would like to think that our right to privacy extends to data of ours that we entrust to others, like our banks, schools, libraries, service providers, etc.. I fear that rather than privacy, we only simply have the right to be left alone. Which when put that way, doesn't say anything against ransacking your digital records, as long as you don't know about it.

Is the citizens' duty in the Global War on Terrorism to submit to being a node in a big graph? What kind of node are you? What kind of nodes are your friends? All mine are hackers, and we are nervous. Nodes can easily look nefarious when that's what you are looking to find.

I strongly suggest reading this entire article.

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny (Washington Post)

If, based on their zip code, voters could access wiki based information about upcoming local and federal races and referenda items relevant to their districts, working families would have a powerful and democratic information resource at their disposal in the ballot box.

I've discussed this idea with Decius in depth. A Wiki voter guide would be possible, but extremely hard. In terms of spam and attacks, this would pose the greatest challenge to the Wiki format either of us can think of. No content would be as charged as a voter guide.

Even seeding the Wiki would be tough. Just finding out who is running in what district and what zip codes cover a district is non-trivial.

A wiki voter information guide | SinceSlicedBread.com

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

While I believe in the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don’t think that we’ve found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far.

Sony has gone very far over the line here. I will happily join in the chorus of people screaming lawsuit. Letting this one go would establish the premise that it's acceptable for the media industry to violate your property in order to protect theirs. That approach can only lead to worse problems.

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Tim O'Reilly, Malcolm Gladwell, Clay Shirky, Mark Dery, Esther Dyson, David Brooks, and Moby.

There is not an easy way to sum up this interview. This is my best attempt:

The world is flat, but planes still fly in arcs, and golf scores are staying the same. We think the center is bigger than it appears. We are optimistic. It's all one big evolving intelligent grand design. Breakfast is rad.

TIME.com: The Road Ahead -- Oct. 24, 2005 -- Page 1

EULAlyzer™ 1.0

Analyze license agreements for interesting words and phrases.

This is a very good idea. I've wondered before about the idea of making a parser to sum up legal contract text. It always seemed like something that was possible, even if way outside my personal coding skill level.

I hope they release a OSX version of this.

EULAlyzer