It seems like all you ever hear today is bad news. The age old battle between might and right continues on. Paying too much attention can make you really pessimistic and thinking about it too much can make you plain paranoid. In the past few days a lot of things have been happening and I’ve also come across some other interesting news.
I was under the impression that the CIA was prohibited from spying on its own citizens. Evidently this is no longer the case. If THEY decide you’re involved in ‘espionage’ or ‘terrorism’ they can spy on you. The term terrorism is thrown around easily these days. People who have subscriptions to certain magazines are terrorists and individuals who read certain books are terrorists. I wonder if they’ve got a file on me. See, that’s what I mean by paranoid.
By the way, anyone interested in these issues should regularly read Cryptome. It’s a great site on all these issues.
A Russian programmer has been arrested in the US by the lame asses at the FBI. His crime: writing software. Hopefully one day the FBI and other such organizations will be distant bad memories. As an optimist, you have to believe in progress. Anyway, an article about his arrest can be found here and another article at the NYTimes. He was arrested for violating the DMCA, The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, by authoring a program that breaks the encryption on the Adobe E-Book. Here’s a good quote on this subject: Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer who has written a popular textbook on the subject, agreed. “Trying to secure this is like trying to make water not wet,” he said. “Bits are copyable by definition.” Everyone should boycott Adobe, especially their crap e-book that’s sold at Barnes and Nobles.
More evidence of a lack of brain power at the FBI. The Keystone Kops lose their own guns.