Terrorists have officially won.

27BStroke6: "The Senate overwhelming voted Tuesday evening to legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and grant amnesty to the phone companies that helped out with the domestic spying..

The 68 to 29 vote is a major step in radically re-configuring 30 year-old limits on how the nation's spying services operate inside America's borders. The vote also deals a severe blow to civil liberties groups that are suing companies such as AT&T and Verizon for turning over millions of American's phone records to the government, and for helping the government wiretap American's phone and internet communications without a court order."


Sad. Predictable, but sad.

So Democrats and Republicans both hate freedom after all...

27bStroke6: "A new law expanding the government's spying powers gives the Bush Administration a six-month window to install possibly permanent back doors in the nation's communication networks. The legislation was passed hurriedly by Congress over the weekend and signed into law Sunday by President Bush."

"In short, the law gives the Administration the power to order the nation's communication service providers -- which range from Gmail, AOL IM, Twitter, Skype, traditional phone companies, ISPs, internet backbone providers, Federal Express, and social networks -- to create possibly permanent spying outposts for the federal government."


Let the Noise to Signal ratio increase in 3...2...1... now. Not even going out on a limb to say that this infrastructure will absolutely be used in routine wholesale surveillance of US citizens, our actions, our thoughts, and our interconnections.

So the meta-theme is that people want freedom, and governments want control. Looks like we're well on our way to joining the ranks of nations we would have ridiculed as being 'not free' even 20 years ago.

Question: Why do we feel like the 'war on terrr' is merely a pretext? Why do those charged with preserving individual freedom seem driven to curtail it at every available opportunity? Republican. Democrat. Doesn't seem to matter. The motivations and actions of our elected representatives appear counter to what they should be as leaders of a free society.

Unless we're over that?

Terrorism stats database - moving beyond hype

LiveScience: "The majority of terrorist attacks result in no fatalities, with just 1 percent of such attacks causing the deaths of 25 or more people.

And terror incidents began rising some in 1998, and that level remained relatively constant through 2004.

These and other myth-busting facts about global terrorism are now available on a new online database open to the public.

The database identifies more than 30,000 bombings, 13,400 assassinations and 3,200 kidnappings. Also, it details more than 1,200 terrorist attacks within the United States.

The unclassified Global Terrorism Database (GTD) will give anyone interested the opportunity to peruse through the actual details of global terror attacks. The online terror rap sheet is expected to be a critical tool for researchers and policy-makers who can use it to improve responses to terrorism."


Objective reality should get more airtime... Link to the database web-front-end...

Total Information Awareness - more lives than a cat.

Washington Times: "Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations.

The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations. "

" The ADVISE and TIA data-mining projects rely on personal data to track individual behavior and consumer transactions to develop computer algorithms that create a pattern that some behavioral scientists say can predict terrorist behavior. Data can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information"


Notice a pattern here? Aside from the academic and civil rights arguments against pervasive monitoring of pretty much everything, and aside from the 'bad science' behind this approach as a preventative security apparatus, we're seeing a pattern of disregard.. Executive branch starts it up, Legislative shuts it down. Executive branch moves it to another agency, gives it a new name. Legislative shuts it down. Ad infinitum.

It's a bad idea, open to massive abuse, inaccuracy, and is unlikely to be effective at much more than wasting time and money - at least in the 'war on terrrr'.. Human intelligence and traditional law enforcement is a better bet here.

The information that one is missing a kidney, makes occasional trips to Cleveland, and prefers Colgate toothpaste in no way susses out criminal or terrorist intent. It's all noise, no signal. But it's a great tool for traditional crimes, drug crimes, etc - that happens to bypass due process protections and thresholds for probable cause. (you know, one or two foundational Constitutional amendments...)

It's also a great way to keep tabs on affiliations, dissidents and those who disagree with the those in power. Opinion crimes.

It's just a question of 'what kind of society do we want'... What freedoms do we value? And even if we trust the party in power not to abuse the systems, what about your least favorite party? Going through mail, monitoring phone calls, tracking behaviors. Not to mention insiders... individuals with searchable access to every fact on everyone. Bah.

Justice Dept.: FBI Misused Patriot Act

AP: "The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances."


No big surprise here. Law enforcement has a job to do, and will use whatever tools are available to them to do so. The problem is a policy level issue, and is a good example of the need for checks and balances between branches of government -- back to the framer's intent to prevent abuses of individual rights. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

US Military rolling out new drones with anti-crowd tech

The Register: "The US military has taken another step forward with its research into 'non-lethal crowd control systems' after reaching back into the disco era for inspiration.

The US Army is looking to deploy a powerful strobe searchlight mounted in a pilotless drone aircraft. The strobe is intended to cause 'immobilisation to all those within the beam'.

Earlier this year the US Marines tested a vehicle-mounted directed microwave cooker which is intended to lightly grill the outer skin layer of troublemakers, causing an 'intense burning sensation' which is nonetheless harmless – or anyway, less harmful than other things which the US Marines might do."


...does make you wonder what they're anticipating.. A crowd abroad, or at home?

Nebraska finds a way to measure the emotional state of non-living substances

NewsNet5: "OMAHA, Neb. -- Area drivers will soon be able to fill up with gasoline made from 'terror-free oil.'"


So.. does that mean that the oil was slaughtered humanely? Or just by surprise?

RFID passports less useful to machines too...

EPIC: "A document obtained by EPIC from the State Department reveals that 2004 government tests found passports with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that are read 27% to 43% less successfully than the previous Machine Readable Zone technology (two lines of text printed at the bottom of the first page of a passport)."

"Recent reports by the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee and European experts also recommend against the use of RFID tags in identity documents."


Not particularly surprising on the face of it. What is surprising is that in spite of the above reports (even within DHA), we're all marching headlong into requirements for a fundamentally flawed and insecure system in the name of theater. Blech.


(link via Schneier)

File under "WTF?"

Chron.com: "WASHINGTON - Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne.

'If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,' said Wynne."


There's so much wrong with this one, I'm not even sure where to begin...

US Citizens more likely to die at the hands of law enforcement than terrorists...

Wired News:: "Al-Qaida's attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center killed 2,976 people, and the country recoiled in horror as we witnessed the death of thousands of Americans when the towers fell.

In the five years since that shattering day, the government has spent billions on anti-terrorism projects, instituted a color-coded alert system that has never been green, banned fingernail clippers and water bottles from airplanes, launched a pre-emptive war on false pretenses, and advised citizens to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting.

But despite the never-ending litany of warnings and endless stories of half-baked plots foiled, how likely are you, statistically speaking, to die from a terrorist attack?"


Fascinating return to rational thought... Victims of terror aren't the actual targets. We are. Live, love, laugh, and their power dissapears. The handy reference guide above (courtesy Wired) illustrating number of deaths per cause over the past 11 years should help put things back in perspective... How to win against terrorists? Simple. Don't be terrorized.

Security Theater: Shoe-scanning x-rays cannot detect explosives

AP: "X-ray machines that screen airline passengers' shoes cannot detect explosives, according to a Homeland Security Department report on aviation screening.

Findings from the report, obtained by The Associated Press, did not stop the Transportation Security Administration from announcing Sunday that all airline passengers must remove their shoes and run them through X-ray machines before boarding commercial aircraft."


This is just dumb. Why inconvenience millions for no good purpose? Theater.

Al-Quota -- innocents landing on 'terror' watchlists...

TheDenverChannel.com : "You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

'Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong,' said one federal air marshal."


Lovely. Not like the watch list data was clean to start with, but whatever. Effective use of tax dollars for theater...