Wired gives us a bit of background on everyone’s favorite anti-DRM duo, Princeton prof Ed Felton and researcher John Halderman.

Halderman, you may recall, is the guy who noticed that Sunncomm’s first stab at copy protection could be circumvented by turning off AutoRun in Windows — or by holding down the shift key when the CD was inserted. He published a paper including this finding, and was promptly threatened with a $10M lawsuit and felony prosecution under the DMCA (the company backed down in the face of widespread outrage).

Felton and Halderman remain the go-to men for information on DRM and copy protection schemes and how they’ll invariably screw up either your CDs or your computer; we here at Heathen love their work and are very thenkful they’re doing it.

Wired has a piece on millionaire John Gilmore’s fight against the Feds’ insistence on papers checks when we travel. Even more disturbing is that the actual rule — which isn’t a law — the Feds cite is classified, so they maintain we have to live by it, but they don’t have to show it to us. How’s that again?

So far, the government has refused to show Gilmore the order compelling airlines to ask for identification, saying that the rule is “sensitive security information,” a security designation that was greatly expanded by Congress in 2002, allowing the Transportation Security Administration wide latitude to withhold information from the public.

Via BoingBoing:

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday. According to the officials, the head of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

Speaking to reporters, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeatedly contradicted Sec. Rumsfeld on what, exactly, was the obligation of US forces if they observe or hear of prisoner abuse. General Pace’s position is that they must intervene; Rummy just wants them to object.

The larger issue here is that Rumsfeld, ostensibly Gen. Pace’s superior, tried to correct the Marine, only to get stuffed in the process. In front of the press.

Awesome.

Rude Pundit points out what useless and vile jackasses the folks at Newsmax are; they’re running an editorial called “John McCain: Torture Worked On Me” whose thesis is that McCain ought not be opposed to torture since, you know, he eventually cracked under NV torture as a POW.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

We don’t know if WaPo got it wrong, or the cops backed off, but the revised story states clearly that no random ID checks will be done after all.

Cops in Miami have a disturbing plan to remind citizens of police power:

MIAMI –Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant. Article Tools Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats. “This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It’s letting the terrorists know we are out there,” Fernandez said. The operations will keep terrorists off guard, Fernandez said. He said al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plot attacks by putting places under surveillance and watching for flaws and patterns in security. Police Chief John Timoney said there was no specific, credible threat of an imminent terror attack in Miami. But he said the city has repeatedly been mentioned in intelligence reports as a potential target.

Borat has responded (video link; coverage also at CNN) to the Kazakh government’s threats to sue British entertainer Sacha Baron Cohen over Borat’s depiction of Kazakhstan.

Somebody oughta tell the Kazakhs that suing a comedian is unlikely to have the desired effect.

Via Democratic Veteran, who’s quoting from the Post:

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world. The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts — including protecting military facilities from attack — to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage. The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

The Post continues:

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the data-sharing amendment would still give the Pentagon much greater access to the FBI’s massive collection of data, including information on citizens not connected to terrorism or espionage. The measure, she said, “removes one of the few existing privacy protections against the creation of secret dossiers on Americans by government intelligence agencies.” She said the Pentagon’s “intelligence agencies are quietly expanding their domestic presence without any public debate.”