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 According to the officials, the head of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.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.”

Ladies and Gentleheathen, condom-in-a-can.

Ew.

It’s happening again.

TechDirt tells us that apparently the TV goons are irritated about the “Tivo To Go” feature allowing users to download Tivo’d programs to their iPods. Er, what?

There’s been some news buzz lately about the nonstop flight from Hong Kong to London put on by Boeing to demo a new long-range plane. When we first heard about it, we opined to Mrs Heathen that presumably that was the distance over land, i.e. flying west out of Hong Kong. In fact, we were wrong (we blame Mississippi public schools).

Salon’s Ask the Pilot has a great piece on this today. Hong Kong to London is not a new route, and in fact typically takes more like 12 hours — and, as we expected, goes in a westerly direction, not east over two oceans (for reasons discussed below, using either basic compass point is a gross oversimplification, but you get the idea). This new Boeing flight is notable not because it went from Hong Kong to London, but because it took the long way around as a distance demo (and in so doing covered something like 11,664 nautical miles, a commercial record). As the world is “only” about 21,600 nautical miles around, a flight of better than half the planet’s circumference means any two cities are now easily connectable by the Boeing jet.

Of course, connectable and financially feasible are two different things; plenty of routes are theoretically possible, but lack passenger volumes to justify them. No airline will be adding the HKG-LHR route Boeing used, but there are 10K+ routes that might make sense. The Pilot (linked above) has more.

Also, if, like us, you are amused by the prospect of considering whether east or west is the best route for these long flights, you’ll probably also enjoy his earlier discussion of Great Circle navigation. Remember, our mental images of the world are utterly broken, since almost everyone studies flat maps. These work if you’re driving, or flying from Houston to Dallas, but when you start covering thousands of miles the straight line routes mapped on globe start differing dramatically from those foolishly plotted on planar representations thereof. (For example: the route from New York to Hong Kong goes not west or east but north.)

Slashdot is running a piece on a New Scientist story reporting that researchers have created mice without fear.

TechDirt has a great post explaining YET AGAIN (a) how technologically ignorant congresspeople tend to be and (b) why DRM is pretty much doomed to failure.

It’s a long article (NYROB, so that comes with the territory), but it’s worth reading.

This Administration, particularly on the point of torture and detainee homicide.

A newly discovered species of lemur has been named after John Cleese: avahi cleesei.

Wingnutbird Pat Robertson has warned Dover, PA, that they may face God’s wrath for voting all 8 ID wackjobs off the local school board.

Hey, Pat? Don’t you EVER get tired of being wrong, wrong, wrong?

Fuck you.

If you voted for this monstrosity, you’re no friend of mine. I’ve said for years the climate would run me out of Houston, but it looks more like the wingnut right will do it first.

Update: My friend Lisa points out that what I really mean is “Dear 74% of 15% (who voted) of 84% (who are registered) of Texas…” Which, I think, is actually more damning.

According to DeepSeaNews, scientists now believe that sightings of “sea serpents” may well have been, well, whale dicks.

Techdirt notes that part of Sony’s response to the outcry over their rootkit DRM was to say “Hey, most people have no idea what a rootkit is, so why should they worry about it?” What a fucking tool.

Remember: Sony uses CD copy protection that will fuck up your Windows box; do not buy Sony CDs.

Two Carolina Panther cheerleaders were arrested in a Tampa bar over the weekend after causing a bit of a ruckus having sex in a bathroom stall. (Widely blogged.)

Remember that anti-copying rootkit foolishness? Yeah, turns out it also phones home. There are lawsuits brewing. We hope this gets very ugly for Sony.

PATRIOT Act secret-superwarrant use is up 10,000 percent. These are the warrants that require only a cop’s say so, with no judicial oversight.

We heard yesterday about the high-end cruise ship that escaped an attack by pirates off the Somalli coast; what didn’t hear until today, though, was that they repelled said pirates with a nonlethal but powerful sonic blast weapon. (Via BoingBoing)

Cheney Seeks OK To Torture. Excerpt:

November 05,2005 | WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in a closed-door session

As it turns out, the military has been dumping dangerous weapons and waste off our coasts for years, usually without anyone in the local or state governments knowing anything about it.

The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste – either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

Security expert Bruce Schneier has yet another column about the hazards and probable failures of the new RFID passport design.

Coffeebeer.

They’re using black-hat rootkit techniques to install and hide their copy protection scheme on CD purchasers’ systems. Lovely. (Via BoingBoing.)

(Translation for nongeeky readers: When bad people try to intrude on and take control of other people’s computers, they sometimes use a class of software package called a “rootkit,” which is named for the “god” level account present on Unix-like operating systems (“root”). Rootkits typically modify the system to achieve whatever theintruder’s goal might be AND conceal the hack from the computer’s rightful owner by deleting log entries, hiding files, and modifying the programs a user might use to detect the intrusion. If this sounds like serious electronic breaking & entering, that’s because it IS.)

So, once again: Leave Windows if you can, and do NOT buy copy-protected CDs. Ever. As we see here, putting a copy protected CD in your Windows box may well do serious damage to your computer’s software — damage that is not accidental.

More on Sony DRM, wittily and scathingly written.

Offensive and rude as always, his Samuel Alito: Another Motherfucker for America tell us much about Bush’s latest nominee:

Samuel Alito is such a motherfucker that he supported the rights of cops to strip search a ten-year old girl who was not named in a search warrant because, as he stated, “[I]t is a sad fact that drug dealers sometimes use children to carry out their business and to avoid prosecution,” which also means that it’s a sad fact that the girl’s got no rights to unreasonable search and seizures. Which means, really, none of us do if we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. [Note: I belive the child was in her own home.] […] And, according to the Washington Post, on September 24, 1986, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Sam “Motherfucker-in-training” Alito helped author a Justice Department policy that “said that discrimination based on insufficient medical knowledge was not prohibited by federal laws protecting the handicapped. Employers, it said, may legally fire AIDS victims because of a ‘fear of contagion whether reasonable or not.'” The Justice Department’s position was rejected by many states, including some that reacted by barring discrimination against people with AIDS. Alito, whose work helped foster some of the hysteria about AIDS during the Reagan era, said, “We certainly did not want to encourage irrational discrimination,” but the reaction to it “hasn’t shaken our belief in the rightness of our opinion.”

Forbes has published (use Bugmenot or this local PDF) an astoundingly, resoundingly stupid piece on how to “punish bloggers” — or any internet site — when they run afoul of your corporate talking points. Nowhere in their recommendations do we find “don’t be a dick,” which is kind of surprising considering the content of most of these “brand-bashing” sites. Instead, Forbes focusses on silencing critics without regard to the content of the criticism. Lovely.

Included in their “blog defense” plan are such gems as digging up dirt on the blogger to discredit him or her as well as blatent misuse of the DMCA to intimidate ISPs and hosting companies into taking the blogger’s site down. We suppose simply NOT operating in a way that inspires sites like Untied.com is just not in the cards. BoingBoing has an excellent collection of rebuttal links, including a fine piece by Dan Gillmor.

It’s worth noting, too, that the author is a well-known anti-Open Source bigot, and was one of the lone voices defending an article about Pamela Jones (local PDF) of Groklaw that was little more than thinly veiled attack-and-intimidate piece. Jones’ site covers the SCO-IBM trial, and while Lyons attempts to paint her as a partisan IBMer, the facts of the case have always been on her side (as is evidenced by every single ruling in the years-long case so far). From Gillmor’s piece:

One sidebar, attacking a pro-Linux blogger, inveighs against bloggers’ alleged attacks on free speech because they complained about journalism they found wanting. This could have been an interesting story to cover, but Forbes turns something fairly subtle into a cartoon. One of the problems with the story the Linux folks were attacking was some unsupported innuendo, which the Forbes piece actually repeats in an especially slimy way. (Perhaps it’s worth noting that the Forbes reporter [Daniel Lyons] has a long history of jabbing at the open source folks.)

One word? Cretin. Way to go, Forbes!

George Takei is gay.

The creepy slashfiction fringe of Trekkie fandom is now nearly drowning in its own froth.

Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the SCOTUS. Frankly, this makes me think more highly of her than anything else I’ve heard, as she is manifestly unqualified for the job.

In Raleigh, NC, a Pet Cemetary is being, um, evicted so they can build a hotel.

Security maven Bruce Schneier has a bit to say on FBI abuses of the PATRIOT act. You, the abuses we were told not to worry about. Turns out, there have been a bunch.

Tropical storm Tammy — with a T, for crying out loud — has formed off the coast of Florida.

Can anyone remember any other storms beginning with T? The above-linked story notes that this is the 19th named storm of the year, two shy of the record set in 1933.

Delay has been indicted on two additional charges.

No judicial experience necessary.

Gators 3, Crimson Tide 31.

Roll Damn Tide.

Michael Brown has been retained by FEMA as a consultant.

(More at Electrolite.)

The MPAA/RIAA are still trying to restrict what you can do with your TV.

According to the Observer, Katrina caused the accidental release of some Navy-trained, armed-and-dangerous dolphins into the Gulf of Mexico.

Via JWZ:

FEMA Sends Trucks Full Of Ice For Katrina Victims To Maine The trucks started arriving this weekend, and they’re expected to keep coming through Sunday. City officials say they have no idea why the trucks are here, only that the city has been asked to help out with traffic problems. But the truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice — stayed for a few days — and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it. The truck drivers, who are from all over the country, tell us they were subcontracted by FEMA. They started arriving over the weekend, and city spokesperson Peter Dewitt says as many as 200 trucks could come to the city by the end of the week. The trucks are storing the ice at Americold, a company with a warehouse on Read Street in Portland. People who live nearby say all the traffic has been baffling them for days. The trucks can only unload 4 at a time — so the city is allowing some of them to sit at the International Marine Terminal and at the Jetport’s satellite parking lot. No one NEWSCENTER talked to has any idea when, or even if the ice will go back to the gulf coast. cite

The Feds have incinerated tons of rations sent over by the Brits to help Katrina refugees because they’re “unfit to eat.”

The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed. Scores of lorries headed back to a warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, to dump it at an FDA incineration plant. The Ministry of Defence in London said last night that 400,000 operational ration packs had been shipped to the US. But officials blamed the US Department of Agriculture, which impounded the shipment under regulations relating to the import and export of meat.

The FBI is ramping up an anti-porn squad to pursue material marketed for and by consenting adults. The title is an anonymous agent quote from the linked story.

Popular acceptance of hard-core pornography has come a long way, with some of its stars becoming mainstream celebrities and their products — once confined to seedy shops and theaters — being “purveyed” by upscale hotels and most home cable and satellite television systems. Explicit sexual entertainment is a profit center for companies including General Motors Corp. and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (the two major owners of DirecTV), Time Warner Inc. and the Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt hotel chains. But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called “a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general.”

Fear anyone that the FRC claims “a growing sense of confidence” in.

They’re pushing Reefer Madness again in an attempt to demonize marijuana and, presumably, reverse the public trend toward tolerance for medical and/or personal use. Must! Have! Control!

It turns out that, according to Electrolite, that the citizens of Gretna are no better than their law enforcement in re: denying aid to their floodstruck neighbors in New Orleans with firearm-toting bridge-guarding redneck cops.

Redneck wears racist t-shirt to (integrated) high school. Madcap hilarity ensues.