Ministry of Intrigue

This is absolutely hilarious. Funny enough to make me break my personal rule about embedding video in blog posts.

I’ll be back to regular blogging soon, I promise.

Via Boing Boing:

I’m a little late on this one, especially since I took my unplanned blog vacation.

If you haven’t seen the footage of Jon Stewart intellectually pounding conservative pundit Bill Bennett, you are missing out. Bennett appeared on the Daily Show to discuss his opposition to gay marriage as part of the current hoopla in Congress. Stewart works his magic and makes the pundit really look like a fool. Crooks and Liars has posted video footage of the smackdown, which has also been mirrored on You Tube as well as residing at Comedy Central.

The best bit:

Bennett Look, it’s a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women. Stewart:I disagree, I think it’s a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

It is frustrating that Congress is wasting time on this issue once again, although the reasons behind it are most lucidly spelled out by Greg on his blog. All the same, if the conservatives insist on fighting this ridiculous battle, it’s fun to watch people like Stewart smack them back into place.

Despite my poking fun in the title, this is really serious stuff.

As a nation, we have all heard about the NSA tapping our phone lines for the administration’s domestic surveillance program. We have all heard how these warrant-less wiretaps were not processed by the courts but in secret, as well the president’s ridiculous assertions that this is completely legal and for the greater good. Investigation into these activities has proved difficult, if not impossible. In fact, government agencies have gone to great lengths to stifle such inquiries.

For example, the Justice Department recently dropped its inquiry into the matter of wiretaps as the NSA refused to grant their lawyers the necessary clearance to perform their investigation. Although that is far from the only legal setback in holding our government accountable for this program.

The EFF filed a class action suit accusing AT&T of colluding with the NSA to facilitate the extensive and illegal monitoring of American phone conversations. On May 1st, the Justice Department indicated its intention to make use of the State Secrets privilege, which would effectively quash the lawsuit. Of course, the government claims that this should not be seen as an admission of guilt, as they state in their official filing.

When allegations are made about purported classified government activities or relationships, regardless of whether those allegations are accurate, the existence or non-existence of the activity or relationship is potentially a state secret. Therefore, the assertion of the state secrets privilege, as a general matter, does not mean that any particular allegation is true but is a reflection of the subject matter at issue.

This reeks of dictatorial lies and the security blog, 27B Stroke 6 has posted a very good rebuttal.

All these facts are quite troubling. However, it seems the more we learn the worse and more far-reaching this domestic surveillance program turns out to be.

On top of all of above, we have now learned that the NSA, with the cooperation of AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, has been data-mining company records to build a database of every phone call made within to and from callers in the United States. While this particular part of the program does not include the monitoring or recording of the phone conversations, the program logs the calls made of “tens of millions of Americans” (Source: USA Today) regardless of whether or not they are suspected of a crime. According the USA Today article, this program has been actively collecting data since the September 11th attacks of 2001.

Only one of the companies approached by the NSA refused to cooperate, and that was Qwest, who refused on grounds of legal and privacy concerns. According to USA Today’s sources, Qwest requested an official court subpoena, which the NSA refused to acquire.

From USA Today:

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest’s lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA >court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA’s explanation did little to satisfy Qwest’s lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn’t want to do that because >FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s >suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this >version of events.

27B Stroke 6 points out that under the circumstances, Qwest had good reason to refuse:

Qwest had good reason to be queasy. Federal telecommunications law imposes harsh financial penalties on disclosing calling information without a proper subpoena or letter from the attorney general. Fines can be as high as $130,000 a day per violation.

By this standard, AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon might be in for a hell of a loss if this ever makes it to the courts. Although under this administration, they might avoid the legal system all together.

Members of Congress have expressed their outrage and their intention to investigate further into this matter.

Just this morning, President Bush read a prepared statement regarding this story, virtually confirming the existence of the program. 27B Stroke 6 has posted a rush transcript of the president’s remarks with some insightful annotation. It is well worth your time to read. What amuses me is that as is typically the case when one of the administration’s illegal programs is revealed to the public, the president cautions how publishing information can damage national security.

Finally, as a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy. Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack and we will do so within the laws of our country.

Apparently, if the American people learn how their government is illegally spying on them and infringing their rights, then it can only help the terrorists. We all know what a danger truth, civil liberties and the upholding of the law can be to our freedom.

One of the saddest things in this, is that I don’t find any of it surprising. It is a thing to mourn that we have come to expect this kind of twisted thinking from our government, and I shudder to think of how much farther things can go before we as a people can turn the tide back. How much worse do things have to get before we demand that the eroding of our civil liberties stop? How much longer will we agree to participate in this administration’s culture of fear?

I don’t have any answers for you, but maybe it is enough to start with the questions.

If you haven’t heard about Stephen Colbert’s scathing performance at the Annual Correspondent’s Dinner, I’m not surprised. As near as I can tell, the traditional media isn’t really covering it in much detail. This may be due to the fact that he ruthlessly tears the President and the press a new one. You can tell from some of the uncomfortable laughs from his audience that a lot of his presentation cut a little too close to home for them. But the important thing is, continuing the tradition of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report he did not relent and he said the things that the traditional media should have been saying all along.

You can watch the movie here or you can download a high quality video of the whole dinner via BitTorrent.

You owe it to yourself to watch this. I concur with Dan that this is an example of a comedian providing the real journalistic traits this country needs in its media.

Check it out.

UPDATE: When you’ve seen the video, and if you feel the way I do, join the crowd thanking Mr. Colbert.

Via /.:

Wisconsin may soon become the first state to ban the practice of mandatory microchip implants in human beings. State Representative Marlin Schneider has authored a proposal that will make it illegal for governments and companies to require RFID chips, or implanting them in employees without their knowledge. (Granted, I’m not sure how an agency would perform a stealthy implant procedure without an employee noticing, but then again, who knows what kind of technology we will see in the future?)

Apparently, Governor Jim Doyle has said he will sign the bill, which isn’t really a surprise as this is the man who has mandated that all our electronic voting machines be run on open source software.

For those of you unfamiliar with this technology, RFID is a technology where a tiny chip can be embedded in either a living being or inanimate object and it will broadcast an encoded identification signal to any receiver that requests such information using the right key. Most chips do not require a power source, although there are “active” tags (which constantly broadcast) that do require some sort of battery. This technology is already beginning to be used for a number of products or security systems, and there are even some clubs in Europe that require such an implanted chip to access VIP areas. Unfortunately, this technology has also been shown to be insecure and many (including myself) consider it to be a great danger to the privacy and security of individual citizens. For more information on RFID, I recommend you check out its Wikipedia entry, and also make sure to check out the external links referenced on that page.

As to the ban, I think this is a great idea as RFID technology is becoming more and more popular everyday. A large number of companies are already employing biometric identification (which I don’t have a problem with as long as such it is limited in scope) and requiring this kind of implant is really only a tiny step away. In a lot of ways, this proposed ban is actually somewhat visionary as it is anticipating the dangers to personal privacy in the future uses of this technology, and instead of reacting at that point when it has already become widespread, it is taking action to eliminate that threat now. Admittedly, the ban will still allow optional implants, and I can see a few ways companies will be able to finagle around this ban by using that loophole, but really RFID technology ( if it is used appropriately) is just too damn useful to outlaw completely. However, I think Wisconsin is taking a step in the right direction by protecting its citizens.

Read about the proposed ban here.

The Bush administration has a new version of DMCA to offer you, and it’s so much worse.

In this article, Declan McCullagh of CNET news describes the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 that the administration plans to propose via their lackey Representative Lamar Smith. It’s extremely broad in range; so here are a few highlights from the original article.

The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Rep. Smith also does the following:

• Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret theft and economic espionage. It would establish a new copyright unit inside the FBI and budgets $20 million on topics including creating “advanced tools of forensic science to investigate” copyright crimes.
• Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
• Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10 years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos, videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.
• Creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in copyright piracy. Computers or other equipment seized must be “destroyed” or otherwise disposed of, for instance at a government auction. Criminal asset forfeiture will be done following the rules established by federal drug laws.
• Says copyright holders can impound “records documenting the manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in” infringements.

This bill has been endorsed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who claims that this law will help the justice department to… wait for it… fight terrorism.

During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is “encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft,” Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, “quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities.”

You can read the soon to be proposed bill for yourself here. It has the RIAA and MPAA’s dirty fingerprints all over it.

This is just a disgusting strike against consumer rights, and if you feel about it as I do, I strongly urge you to contact your elected representatives and tell them how you feel. Urge them to instead support the Digital Media Consumer’s Rights Act (article | bill) instead.

If you would like additional resources on what you can do, you can check out IPAC’s post on this issue.

If you need further evidence on the insanity of the DMCA, the RIAA is now trying to sue a family that doesn’t even own a computer. Read about it here.