] Proponents of the machines assert that any invasion of
] privacy is not alarming because there's not much privacy
] left to invade. Grocery stores already track customers'
] personal information with loyalty cards, for example.

Bars in Northern California start collecting your detailed personal information in the process of doing an age check. The arguement above is particularly disturbing.

SacTicket // Nightlife // Taking license

] Cool, yet slightly disturbing.

Running totals of the world's total population, births, and deaths. And yes, it's a very odd sensation to watch the numbers change, and contemplate the human realities that are occurring each second. Speaking personally, it gives me an intensified sense of just how *many* different people and families and societies and cultures are on this planet at any given moment.

For some reason, this page totally peaks my CPU..

Worldometers

I saw Bumfights about a week ago and its been itching at the back of my skull since. I can honestly say that Bumfights has made me more _angry_ then anything else I have seen in quite awhile. To the best of my memory, I have not seen another video that made me feel like I needed to shower repeadly after watching. I had trouble sitting through it. I'm not even sure why I didn't stop it half way thru. I wanted to. Maybe it was because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Or that I needed to see and end to it, possibly something redeeming might happen.. Or at least I might gain some understanding or perspective about this evil shit I was seeing..

And I am a sick fuck, ask anyone I know. Its hard to offend me. Very hard. I like art that confronts me. But this has really got me going.. In an effort to get this out of my head, I must rant.

For those of you who are not familar with this pile of shit (which I refuse to link to on my blog), its the clearest example of an act of class warfare you will ever see. In Bumfights, you get to see homeless people paied to beat the hell out of each other, run into walls, spray painted while sleeping, and generarly abused for your "entertainment". But wait! thats not all! If that was all, it would be _so_ bad..

Between the footage of street bums being abused, you get to see white rich kids beat the shit out of each other around their backyards and their hot cars. You get to see several segments called "Bumhunter" where an idiot imitates Steve Irwin (Crocodile Hunter) as he wrestles and ties up homeless people trying to sleep in alleys and under bridges. You get video segments of crack dealers ranting about how cool crack is, how cool selling crack is, how great doing crack is, etc.. And through the entire video, the people making it do a pretty good job of obscuring most of their identies, rendering them faceless pricks who are clearly concerned with people coming after them. This includes the segment where the "Executive Producer" beats the shit out of someone labeled a "random crackhead".

This is crap. Now, if it was simply people running around paying homeless people to fight each other or do dumb stunts while they film it, it would be one thing.. Jackass stuff.. Thats tasteless, but not this far over the line.. Its the thrust of this video thats its poison. The contrast between the abuse of the homeless, the glorification of violence between stupid white rich kids, and the downright exploitative elements to it... Its clearly trying to drive a wedge between the poor homeless and the white middle-class youth, saying something to the effect of "they are different, they are less then human.." There was defintally a white/back thing in play here, along with the prementioned poor/rich thing.

Its reminiscent of Hitler Youth style dehumanization. It strikes you within 10 min that you are watching the propaganda of the new American fascist youth. At least, I ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

] To some extent, journalists have felt obliged to tone
] down criticisms because of the sense of shared national
] purpose after September 11. Even that cannot explain how
] the papers cravenly ignored the Trent Lott story. Lott,
] the veteran senator from Mississippi, made his pro-
] segregation statement on a Thursday, in full earshot of
] the Washington press corps. The Times and Post both
] failed to mention it. Indeed, it was almost totally
] ignored until the following Tuesday, kept alive until
] then only by a handful of bloggers. If there is a
] Watergate scandal lurking in this administration, it is
] unlikely to be Woodward or his colleagues who will tell
] us about it. If it emerges, it will probably come out on
] the web. That is a devastating indictment of the state of
] American newspapers.

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Bushwhacked

] In other words, e-marketplaces are media as much for
] social interactions as they are for financial
] transactions. That is, who you are and what you're doing
] are as important as what you want to buy or what you want
] to sell. It's no accident that eBay is still around and
] making money for both itself and its, ahem, community of
] auctioneers. Your reputation on eBay can--and often
] does--matter far more than what you are attempting to
] either buy or sell.
]
] "Reputation marks the spot where technology and
] cooperation converge," Rheingold writes. "The most
] long-lasting social effects of technology always go
] beyond the quantitative efficiency of doing old things
] more quickly or more cheaply. The most profoundly
] transformative potential of connecting human social
] proclivities to the efficiency of information
] technologies is the chance to do new things together, the
] potential for cooperating on scales and in ways never
] before possible."

/me waves his arms around as if he is casting a spell.

Preferential Attachment and the Rising Meme

If you are an ISP, big or small, you have dealt with issues tracking attacks. Its fustrating as hell. It usually takes hours to get talking to someone with clue sitting on top of the network the attack is coming from. Sometimes it takes hours for someone to talk to you.. :) When language barriers or large time differences come into play, it gets even harder. Attackers can use this to their advantage, especially if they are limiting themselves to a small time window for their attack. Everyone who has spent time working at ISPs has dealt with this, myself included.

A solution to this problem _is_ necessary. Its a "facilitation of communication" problem at its heart, not a "monitoring" problem. At the molment, I still have the taste in my mouth given by the Barlow articles I blogged earlier, so I have my doubts as to the intelligence community ability to solve this problem for us given their past record and methods of operations. The better route may be for the ISP/communication providers to come up with a cross-communication strategy themselves.

As long as the intelligence people have a way to request/demand information from the ISPs/comm providers (given some sort of thumbs up from a judge) about activity of a given user/ip/whatever, and get it fast, then they will most likely be happy. If they cannot achieve their end goals, they will create a solution for us. They would be very happy if the commercial sector solved the problem for them. It would remove their incentive to turn the screws.

If there was some central US NOC structure.. And it had a staff that rotated between people working in all the ISPs that parcticipated, the government had its folks there, and it was open for review.. And it acted as a communication center between ISPs and not just the ISPs and the TLAs. That would be sweet! Now, on the other hand, if there was some NOC in Langley connected to a bunch of sniffers sitting in every ISP, that was clouded in secrecy, that would not be nice. That would suck. If the latter would up happening, I picture people like Decius, Renka, and myself standing between racks of core/access routers and a bunch of spooks with black boxes going "No! No! Fuck you! This is bullshit!" and getting arrested cognitive dissident style, and being proud of it. I have no fear of that happening really. Not only would be be completely unconstutitional, but I am confident there are more then enough people in the ISP community willing to take a personal blow to keep it from happening.

So, while the users get pissed about this.. The ISPs should be communicating with each other, about how to communicate with each other. I'm sure there are a bunch of NANOG people coming to the same conclusions.

All the comments below are from Decius. They are in line with my views, and they point several things I don't, so I'm just going to leave them appended to this.

This is where I would normally put a page break.. :)... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]

Draft of National Stratedy To Security Cyperspace (RE: Bush Administration Propose System for Monitoring Internet)

] You are a member of the Settlement Group if you are a
] person (or entity) in the United States or its
] Territories and Possessions who purchased prerecorded
] Music Products, consisting of compact discs, cassettes
] and vinyl albums, from one or more retailers during the
] period January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000.

The music industry might owe you $20, no joke.

] New Jersey's brewing gang war is no longer a gang vs.
] gang battle for turf.
]
] It pits "supergangs," such as the Bloods and Crips
] and the Chicago-based Latin Kings, against a growing
] army of Garden State gang investigators, task-force
] members and intelligence gatherers.
]
] The Internet has allowed the tentacles of the supergangs
] to extend deeper into suburban neighborhoods, according
] to Keith Bevacqui, a New Jersey State Police detective
] sergeant and gang investigator.
]
] But there is something else that has fueled their
] emergence.
]
] "There's a lot of denial of gang activity," said Sgt.
] William Paglione, deputy commander of the Middlesex
] County Violent Gang Task Force.
]
] "Nobody wants to admit we have a problem, and the truth
] is every town in America has a problem," said Assistant
] Middlesex County Prosecutor Cindy Glaser. "It's
] everywhere. It's just that epidemic of a problem."
]
] About two dozen gangs, including the Bloods, La Mugre,
] Almighty Latin King/Queen Nation, 18th Street, MS-13, and
] three motorcycle groups affect that county. Some are
] stronger than others, but all are considered active,
] task-force members said.
]
] The Latin Kings, the Wild Chicanos, MS-13, Bloods and
] Netas are among the gangs operating in neighboring Union
] County, according to Manahan. They're committing a
] spectrum of crimes everything from drug peddling to
] murder.
]
] Local police, however, do not routinely mention whether a
] crime was gang-related. And the State Police are pushing
] for increased reporting.

Asbury Park Press | NJ is battleground in supergang war

] New Jersey has become a garden spot for the
] international drug trade.

"become" ??? Just the wording of this proves to me that most of this state in in denial..

] Marijuana is trucked in from Mexico and Canada. Cocaine
] and heroin, largely from Colombia, arrive in cargo
] containers at seaports. Ecstasy pills are smuggled from
] Europe by passengers landing at airports.
]
] The common thread, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
] Agency, is that most drugs are distributed through
] ethnically oriented channels: local Dominican and
] Colombian organizations supplying Puerto Rican, black and
] white street gangs who then sell directly to users from
] Camden to Newark.
]
] "You've got an ethnic melting pot, which has lasted
] hundreds of years, and you've got easy access to
] important transportation routes," said Newark-based DEA
] agent Mark Moger, explaining why drugs are prevalent in
] New Jersey. "It's logical that it's easier to get heroin
] here than in Pittsburgh."
]
] Heroin, in particular, has become a significant problem
] in the Garden State, Moger said.

"become" used again... s/has become/is/g

] Sold in $10 packets and locally marketed under such
] chilling brand names as "Drop Dead," "Overdose" and "Bin
] Laden," the heroin peddled to users in Newark, Paterson,
] Camden and other cities is strong, he said.

The heroin problem in Jersey has been compltely out of control for years now. A friend of mine pointed out last night that he knew at least 30 people who have died (not OD'd, died) in the past 5 years due to heroin. Hell, one of the high schools in the area I grew up in is commonly referred to (by students, parents, teachers, and police) as "Heroin High".. Its really sad.

What really shocks me is every time I see this mentioned in the local media, its as if its a "new thing".. This state is in denial. It makes me feel sick inside.

Considering you hear so much about AIDS, lung cancer, etc.. You figure I'd know at least one or two people dead due to them. Don't hear too much about heroin other then that its "become" a problem. Maybe its because most of the people who wind up riding the horse are kids noone gives a shit about.. This problem is social, and this is a very sick corner of society.

Asbury Park Press | NJ, drug central

BTW, this is why feds always advocate biometric technologies even though they aren't cost effective.

TIA Flowchart