President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies -- including ones they have not previously monitored.

The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems -- traditionally overseas. The prospect of aiming that power at domestic networks is raising concerns, just as the NSA's role in the government's warrantless domestic-surveillance program has been controversial.

This continues to be like watching a worst case scenario play out.

Supporters of cyber-security measures say the initiative falls short because it doesn't include the private sector -- power plants, refineries, banks -- where analysts say 90 percent of the threat exists.

"If you don't include industry in the mix, you're keeping one of your eyes closed because the hacking techniques are likely the same across government and commercial organizations," said Alan Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda-based cyber-security group that assists companies that face attacks. "If you're looking for needles in the haystack, you need as much data as you can get because these are really tiny needles, and bad guys are trying to hide the needles."

So we want the NSA to monitor private sector domestic networks too?

What kind of crack did everyone start smoking?

Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring - washingtonpost.com

Via the Democratic Caucus...

Click through for a large version:

The Legacy of George W Bush's Presidency

Thousands of legitimate Web sites are hosting an infection kit that evades detection by attempting to compromise each visitor only once and using a different file name each time, Web security firm Finjan warned on Monday.

The attack, dubbed the "Random JS toolkit" by the security firm, currently uses dozens of hosting servers and more than 10,000 legitimate domains to attempt to exploit the systems of visitors to the sites, the company said in an analysis posted to its Web site. The compromised sites host the malicious code -- foregoing the iframe redirect that has increasingly been used by attackers -- and serves up the attack to each visitor only once using a random file name each time. The two techniques, along with more traditional code obfuscation, makes the attack difficult to find, said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer for Finjan.

"This attack uses three different methods to go undetected by signature-based or URL-based defenses," Ben-Itzhak said. "If you realize that you've been infected, and you go and search sites, you will not be able to find the site that infected you."

The actual malicious code served to visitors by the sites compromised by the Random JS Toolkit attempts to exploit computers using 13 different vulnerabilities, the company said. The Trojan horse program steals the victim's login credentials to access online banks. The software uses encrypted communications to a number of sites hosted in the United States to return the information to the criminal group behind the attack, the analysis found.

Legitimate sites serving up stealthy attacks

Japan's Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering how his Self-Defense Forces could respond to an attack by space aliens while adhering to limits on military action under the country's war-renouncing Constitution.

Ishiba said yesterday a Japanese military response, such as those in the Godzilla movie series, would require legal review and said he is studying ways Japan could deal with an attack. Ishiba said his comments represent a ``personal view,'' and not Defense Ministry policy, according to the transcript of the press conference published on the ministry's Web Site.

``There are no grounds for us to deny there are unidentified flying objects and some life-form that controls them,'' Ishiba said. ``Few discussions have been held on what the legal grounds are'' for a military response.

What can be said about this?

Bloomberg.com: Defense Minister Ishiba Considers Japan's Options in UFO Attack

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A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers don't have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.

AT&T's plans would turn the nation's largest telephone company into a kind of network cop, a role that some say could turn dangerous for the company. For one, filtering packets to determine whether they contain copyrighted material raises privacy concerns. And AT&T customers who have already been concerned about the company's alleged role in the National Security Agency's domestic spy program, could take their broadband, TV and telephony business to a competitor. Also, AT&T could be opening itself up to a mountain of legal troubles.

Cue the outrage.. Prepare the backlash.

Should AT&T police the Internet? | CNET News.com

Contrast this:

With this:

Authorities have fired an official in central China after city inspectors beat to death a man who filmed their confrontation with villagers, China's Xinhua news agency reports.

"Wei is the first 'citizen journalist' to die in China because of what he was trying to film," the group said in a statement.

"He was beaten to death for doing something which is becoming more and more common and which was a way to expose law-enforcement officers who keep on overstepping their limits."

China blogger beaten to death - CNN.com

The Hamilton method, used from 1850 until 1900, is the simplest. In this method, an 'ideal' district size is determined by dividing the US population by 435 (the number of seats). The state populations are then divided by this ideal size to find their deserved fraction of seats. In 2000, for example, California was entitled to a quota of 52.44 seats. The states are then ordered by the size of their fractional remainders. Those with the biggest remainder are the first to be rounded up and given an extra representative. Remaining seats are distributed, down the list, until all 435 seats are meted out.

The other methods round up or down without regard to rank. But this can easily result in a total of more or less than 435 seats. So then the 'ideal' district size is adjusted and the numbers re-crunched until the right number of seats comes out of the mix.

These methods — Jefferson, Webster and the current one, Huntington-Hill, which has been in effect since the 1940 census — use different rounding points. For example, the Huntington-Hill method rounds up or down from the geometric mean of the nearest integers (so if California deserves 52.44 seats it is rounded down, as the geometric mean of 52 and 53 is 52.4976). Since the geometric mean is proportionally larger for higher numbers, the current method has an inherent bias towards giving small states a boost up — something Edelman and others have criticized.

Edelman's method is instead designed to minimize the difference between the most over-represented state and the most under-represented one, in terms of the difference between the actual number of people per representative and the ideal number. This is done through an iterative process that evaluates 385 scenarios to find this minimum total deviation. He argues that this comes closest to matching the ideal of “one person, one vote”.

Using his method for populations in 2000, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Utah and Mississippi would each gain one seat; Texas, New York, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina would lose one; and California would lose three. “That could very well freak people out,” says Edelman.

Mathematician proposes another way of divvying up the US House : Nature News

APOD posted a high-resolution version (2400x1586) of this photo a few years back. It's one of my favorite desktop backgrounds.

High Resolution Sandia Z Machine Photo

New Jersey became the first Northern state to apologize for slavery, as legislators approved a resolution Monday expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in the practice.

Well, there you have it. "Oops! My bad.."

My Way News - New Jersey Apologizes for Slavery