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Jamie Leigh Jones, a contractor for KBR (which was then part of Halliburton) was drugged and sexually assaulted in Iraq last year, and forced to spend a day in a cargo container so that she wouldn’t report her attack.  Her employers insist that as part of her agreement with them, any such issues should go to arbitration for a third party to decide; thankfully, a judge has seen fit to let the rape case go to trial.

“From the article at Wired Blog: “The Internet Archive’s case is only the third known court challenge to an NSL, all of which ended with the FBI rescinding the NSL, according to the ACLU’s Melissa Goodman.”  The FBI brought a national security letter to the Internet Archive, and Brewster Kahle (pictured, from Wired) with help from the EFF, not only successfully challenged the FBI, but also got the court case unsealed so that documents could be made public.

The bottom line here is that while the sample size is small, every challenge to an NSL has been successful.  When people stand up for themselves, the results are often favourable for Liberty!

As we’ve seen that lollipop ladies are now getting cameras, it would seem that things must be going pretty well with the CCTV system the UK has in place.  However, a senior Metropolitan policeman in the UK calls the system a “fiasco” with only “3% of crimes being solved by CCTV”.  (Apparently the UK cops don’t want to look through the images taken by the cameras because Read more

The article says it best: “Your tax dollars at work. On one side, subsidize more roads, sprawl, and related infrastructure, on the other, subsidize various approaches to try to convince people to keep off the roads.”

As if there weren’t enough CCTV cameras in Britain already, now the crossing guards will be equipped with them.  (They’re called “Lollipop Ladies” over there, as the signs they carry obviously resemble lollipops.)

They’re ostensibly going to be used to ensure the safety of the crossing guards themselves, which is admirable and a worthwhile goal - but of course, such goals can never be separated from the fact that this is now another set of government “eyes” trained on the populace.

In the “more reasons not to be running Windows” department, it seems that Microsoft has given a tool to law enforcement that:

“…contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer’s Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.”

As a person who does computer forensics for a living, Read more

A Federal appeals court has said that Customs can do whatever they want with your electronic files when you cross the border.  The ruling extends to all electronics: laptop, cell phone, digital camera, calculator - you name it - if it’s got a file system, it’s fair game.

Update:  It will come as no surprise that millions of dollars of military expenditure is simply wasted.

Alternet has an excellent story on how “60 years of enormous military spending is taking a dramatic toll on the rest of the economy“.  It goes through several points, all of them excellently detailed with numbers, showing how our defense spending is simply crippling us.  We are spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, a feat certainly unsustainable, but mostly ridiculous when you actually stop and think about it.    Here’s the chart they use:

The article is a long one, but well worth the read!

While it may not be an immediate prelude to an actual fight, it seems that the US is drawing up plans on how to go to war with Iran.  As if spending 12 BILLION dollars a week in Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t enough, they are now making contingency plans for attacking yet another country that’s never attacked us.  There is speculation that General Petraeus’s promotion may be because he favours the hard-line, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs isn’t helping matters.

 Update:  The New York Sun has a similar story.

With the clearest numbers yet, we can see the ugly toll that inflation is taking on this country.  As the government continues to print money (with nothing backing it) the value of the dollars that exist continues to go down, and prices go up.  Here are the figures from the Wall Street Journal, who are urging Americans to stock up on food:

“And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.” Read more

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