Monthly Archives: August 2013
Long exposures are cool.
Long exposures taken from space are even cooler.
Stop shopping at Kroger
In case you missed it: Kroger lobbied Governor Perry to veto a fair-wage act here in Texas.
The only reason to shop there is if you believe women should be paid less than men for the same work. Govern yourself accordingly.
Sometimes, you can almost forget the precious, condescending, smug, entitled-ness of the dot-com era
Fortunately (?), we still have Anil Dash to remind us of the unremitting fucktardery typifying that era.
Oh, just go read it: Schneier on trust and effectivness
Bruce Schneier on the state of public trust.
And, while you’re at it, take in this Ars Technica article where they ask him how HE would run the NSA. It’s illuminating:
“There’s a fundamental problem in that the issues are not with the NSA but with oversight,” he told Ars. “[There’s no way to] counterbalance the way [the NSA] looks at the world. So when the NSA says we want to get information on every American’s phone call, no one is saying: ‘you can’t do that.’ Without that, you have an agency that’s gone rogue because there is no accountability, because there is nothing checking their power.”
The way Schneier sees it, in an attempt to keep the operational details of the targets secret, the NSA (and presumably other intelligence agencies, too) has also claimed that it also needs to keep secret the legal justification for what it’s doing. “That’s bullshit,” Schneier says.
The famed computer scientist wants to apply traditionally open and public scrutiny to how the NSA operates.
“How much does this stuff cost and does it do any good?” he said. “And if they can’t tell us that, they don’t get approved. Let’s say the NSA costs $100 million annually and that an FBI agent is $100,000 a year. Is this worth 1,000 FBI agents? Or half and half? Nowhere will you find that analysis.”
For the record: the size of the NSA’s budget is officially classified as secret, but estimates put it at at least $8 to $10 billion annually—but his point stands. It’s nearly impossible to judge the effectiveness of federal spending of an unknown sum, whose tactics, legal justifications, and most importantly, outcomes, are completely hidden from the public.
Goddammit, Facebook.
No what are we gonna do?
The TSA is an aggressive, metastatic administrative CANCER
They’re expanding to Amtrak — and this time, their doofuses will be armed.
“Our mandate is to provide security and counterterrorism operations for all high-risk transportation targets, not just airports and aviation,” said John S. Pistole, the administrator of the agency. “The VIPR teams are a big part of that.”
Some in Congress, however, say the T.S.A. has not demonstrated that the teams are effective. Auditors at the Department of Homeland Security are asking questions about whether the teams are properly trained and deployed based on actual security threats.
Civil liberties groups say that the VIPR teams have little to do with the agency’s original mission to provide security screenings at airports and that in some cases their actions amount to warrantless searches in violation of constitutional protections.
“The problem with T.S.A. stopping and searching people in public places outside the airport is that there are no real legal standards, or probable cause,” said Khaliah Barnes, administrative law counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “It’s something that is easily abused because the reason that they are conducting the stops is shrouded in secrecy.”
T.S.A. officials respond that the random searches are “special needs” or “administrative searches” that are exempt from probable cause because they further the government’s need to prevent terrorist attacks.
Emphasis added. So, the TSA can search when and where they deem necessary, and the Boarder Patrol can search you without probable cause as long as you’re within 100 miles of the border. Oh, and in case you missed it, it turns out the NSA dragnet data is used by the DEA, too.
T.S.A. officials would not say if the VIPR teams had ever foiled a terrorist plot or thwarted any major threat to public safety, saying the information is classified. But they argue that the random searches and presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent that bolsters the public confidence.
Really? No, what I see is a bunch of tinpot jackasses jumping at every opportunity to parade around playing soldier.
So long, Fourth Amendment!
Things you may enjoy
The entire Nine Inch Nails set from Chicago’s Lollapalooza Friday night is online at YouTube.
Today in dirty-sounding sentences
“I just heard back from the mudjacker.”
Oh, Suck, we miss you
The best site on the then-young Internet of the late 1990s was, undeniably, Suck.com. Full of snark and verve and piss and vinegar, the single column of text on that proto-blog pulled no punches. So enamored was I of their wit that, frequently, I’d copy bits into a text file to save for posterity.
Here is one such bit, now almost old enough to drive, from a file that came up in an unrelated search on my laptop today:
When children have no access to narrative except through the unfettered imaginations of account executives and copywriters, they become even more attuned than their elders to the machinations of the culture around them. We’ve set the stage for a generation that will never ever feel betrayed by sell-out because the sale is all they know. The good news? A 2010 Rage Against the Machine comeback tour is unlikely.
Suck, 11 August 1997, which is (astonishingly) still online
Sadly, well, it turns out they were wrong:
The Rage Against the Machine Reunion Tour was a concert tour by Rage Against the Machine from 2007 to 2011. It was the first tour for the band since they broke up in 2000.
Sigh.