BoomFlag

While I’m on the subject of Michael Chertoff, here’s a scary comparison…

Now that the so-called “liquid terrorists” (who came up with that description?) have been foiled, it must be time to increase our security measures yet again. Never mind that almost all forms of liquid– as well as common carry-on items like laptops, cameras, and iPods– are now banned from airline flights. That’s not enough, oh no.

Secretary of Homeland Insecurity Chertoff said this:

Warrants, ha ha! That’s so antiquated, so “Twentieth Century”. Who needs ’em?

Never mind that the British intelligence service had been following these guys for almost a year, and only (grudgingly) made the sting last week at the insistence of the Bush administration. Chertoff’s assertion that they were “nimble” makes it seem like they received a tip and immediately scrambled the Harriers or something. Not true.

It’s also worth mentioning that the British obtained warrants for their work, are required by law to do so, and unlike their American counterparts, don’t seem to feel the need to flaunt the law and go behind the curtain to do their dirty work. And yet… somehow… they were still able to apprehend these terrorists… within the bounds of the law.

For Chertoff, Bush, Gonzales, and the rest of the jolly crew to continue insisting that the federal government requires more latitude, less oversight, and no warrants is nothing short of an obvious abuse of power at this point. The British have shown us how it can be done… and to use their long, hard work as an example of why we should ignore the laws is insulting.

Bruce Schneier, a widely-read and respected author who writes lately about terrorism and related security issues, put together an excellent condemnation of the recent ban of all liquids from airline flights. I’ll quote a portion of his op-ed piece:

This is what I’ve been saying for years, and is really the fundamental problem with the way our government– and, indeed, many of our citizens– view the terrorist threat. Security and the appearance of security are completely different things. We seem to have a lot of appearances, but very little real additional security.

The Department of Homeland Insecurity has actually declared an entire state of matter to be a national security risk.

Here’s a simple diagram to assist those who may be flying sometime soon– to ensure only the proper types of matter are brought aboard the airplane.

I predict that the next terr’ist plot will involve some quantity of solid matter, and from there it will only be a matter of time before solids are banned from airline flights as well. When will the madness end?

Ted Stevens continues to get hammered (and rightfully so) for his awful portrayal of the internet as “a series of tubes”. You can buy everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs containing his catch phrase, and now I saw a hilarious “404 page”, which is what you see when the web server can’t find the page your browser has requested:

The tubes have been filled
The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Someone has put into the tubes enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Please try the following:

• Click the Unclog button, or try again later.
• Make sure that the web site address displayed in the address bar of your browser is spelled and formatted correctly, including all stutters.
• What has happened to your personal internet? If your staff sent you an internet Friday, you got it yesterday. Why?
• The internet is not a big truck; Windows can check your Tube Connection Settings to make sure that your computer is set to put your message into the tubes, and not to dump.
• Click the Back button to try another tube.

Full tubes or big truck error.

What an amazing photo.

Whether it’s true or not, this “letter” from a Maryland resident to his Senator is hilarious.

It’s funny– I play ultimate more or less year-round (weather permitting), but only during the summer do I get the full-blown intense workout that makes me feel like I’m really in shape. And I can almost feel myself improving each month, until I hit some kind of peak physical state where I’m “in the zone”.

This week I reached that point.

I played four games (a fairly standard week) and just seemed to slide into the right places at the right times. I made defensive plays I normally miss by a step, I threw dead-on fifty-yard passes, I caught ankle-high swill at a full run. I was in the zone, and it was great.

Hopefully it will continue– at least until late fall, when the weather makes it hard to play several times a week, and I lapse back into my winter state of lethargy.

AOL did a very foolish thing last week– they released information about the web searches (using their search engine) performed by 650,000 people. It was an enormous database where each user was assigned a unique number (to prevent anyone from knowing their true identity) and then all searches performed by that user were listed.

Aside from the obvious privacy implications, there’s the troubling fact that given a list of several months’ worth of searches by a single person, it’s possible to build a rudimentary profile of that person. In some cases it’s even possible to identify him or her. Take the examples of several users who searched for their own Social Security number. Perhaps they wanted to be sure the number wasn’t “in the open” in order to protect themselves from identity theft. Their reasons, whatever they may be, are their own. But now that AOL has released that information, without the permission of the users, researchers, hackers, and people who are just plain bored are having a field day with it.

Despite the fact that AOL realized their mistake and removed the data from their web site, the damage had been done. The data is everywhere already– mirrored around the world, available for download to anyone who can run a couple of quick searches (on Google, hopefully, not AOL).

I’ve read a few things about this, but the most interesting one deals with user #17556639 (again, an anonymous ID number). These are the searches this user entered:

Let’s ignore the fact this guy can’t spell “decapitated”, and for some reason searched for “poop” and, later, “steak and cheese”. There’s clearly a disturbing theme to these search terms. Is it some guy who wants his wife dead? That’s certainly the immediate thought. If it’s true, and he’s planning something, should AOL take some kind of action?

It’s obvious this opens up a barrel of monkeys the size of the Empire State Building. Even if this guy does want to kill his wife, he has (as far as we know) not yet committed a crime. There’s nothing illegal about searching for things like this, nor is it illegal to view– for example– photos of car crashes or decapitated people. Although I would argue this person has some scary interests, the searches themselves are within the bounds of the law.

The most frightening thing– to me– is the thought that the Government will see things like this (heck, let’s face it: they probably already have, since they commandeered searches from major players a few months ago), and their knee-jerk reaction will be to require the search-engine providers to implement some kind of algorithm to look for patterns in searches. Patterns like the one above would trigger an alarm, the FBI would be sent to investigate, and things would go south from there.

One hates to compare this to, say, Minority Report or 1984, where thoughts can be criminal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some idiot congressperson decides to take action on it. I suppose we’ll wait and see.

“We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.”

— Dennis Miller