A while back, I wrote about the Million Dollar Homepage, where Alex Tew, a student, created the idea of selling a million pixels on a website to advertisers for $1 each. His plan was successful, and he recently reached his goal of raising a million dollars in just a few months.
But the story attracted some unsavory criminals bent on ruining Tew’s enterprise. From the BBC:
In an interesting interview at Reason Online, NSA surveillance whistleblower Russell Tice explains what prompted him to speak out about the program:
MSNBC journalist Bob Sullivan, in his blog Red Tape Chronicles, writes:
Ask Americans something like, “Should the government be allowed to read e-mails and listen to phone calls to fight terrorism?” and you’ll get a much different result than if you ask, “Should the government be allowed to read your e-mails and listen to your phone calls to fight terrorism.” . . . .
In 2002, The Pew Research Center for People and The Press asked just those questions — and by simply dropping the word “your,” the number of people willing to support such government snooping jumped by 50 percent. Only 22 percent were willing to let the government peek when it was personal, but 33 percent were willing when it sounded like only someone’s else privacy was at risk, said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for Pew.
There is a lot of discussion about the lack of meaningful revelations in the Alito confirmation hearings. The Roberts confirmation hearings were also devoid of much meaningful substance as well.
Basically, the nominee must say that he’ll have an open mind, that he will decide cases according to the “rule of law,” that he has respect for precedent, and that he won’t be a “judicial activist.” The nominee must sit calmly while Senators bluster and wait out the storm.
The Chicago Sun Times reports:
The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone — for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. . . .
To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent’s cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said. . . .
How well do the services work? The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter’s company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. . . .
On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.
A recent article in the LA Times discusses the ongoing debate about whether to remove J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI building. J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI from 1924, its early days before it was even called the FBI (it used to be called the Bureau of Investigation), until his death in 1972. Throughout his career, Hoover engaged in a massive array of abuses. According to the LA Times article:
The DOJ has launched a probe into the leaking of the NSA surveillance program to the New York Times:
“The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that al-Qaida’s playbook is not printed on Page One and when America’s is, it has serious ramifications,” Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the holidays.
There’s been some terrific analysis in the blogosphere about whether President Bush is correct that he had the power to authorize warrantless surveillance. (See here and here for a roundup of posts.) The arguments thus far focus on what the President has already done, but the President has stated that he will continue the warrantless surveillance [link no longer available] “for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens.”
Judge Richard Posner has written an op-ed in the Washington Post today where he calls for a massive program of surveillance of U.S. citizens — their email, documents, phone conversations, nearly everything they say or do — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing or not. Posner’s argument is quite startling and troublesome. Posner writes:
A story in Wired reveals that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has been editing his own Wikipedia entry: