Among the general population, there seems to be no question over immunity for the telecoms. Either the public is unaware of the scope of the story or they believe - erroneously - that any domestic spying undertaken has actually kept us safer and not diminished our rights, or even inconvenienced us.
Knowledgeable readers have been following this since the Mark Klein, an AT&T whistleblower, broke the story broke nearly two years ago. To briefly surmise, the ENTIRE internet passes through the NSA. They grab huge chunks of it - your emails, Amazon purchases, credit card transaction, web browsing, instant messages, Facebook stalking - and then winnow it down to find what they are looking for. The presumption is that everyone could be guilty, and that we don't need probable cause to monitor communications and go on fishing expeditions.
Even worse still, much of that actionable intelligence is no longer processed and disseminated by Federal employees, who behavior is governed by law, legislation, and the threat of losing a well-paying government job, but rather outsourced to private industry, outside of Congressional oversite.
The President's call for immunity hints at the 'alleged' law breaking that industry 'might' have done in 'cooperating' with law enforcement, promising to veto legislation that does not tender complete retroactive immunity to the industry, all the way back to September 11th, 2001 (Which is interesting, since they started their efforts on 2/27/2007). He uses "complicated language" as reported by Crooks and Liars:
“When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001[.]”
It's very difficult to wrap your head around the technology and legal concepts surrounding the issue. Fortunately, Senator Chris Dodd, the first Presidential candidate willing to go to the mat over telecomm immunity, has posted this short video with Klein breaking down the issue [via EFF]:
There's a lot of hubbub over Rapleaf, a company that datamines email addresses from MySpace, Facebook, and other places. They are "supposed" to be about reputation monitoring (kind of like eBay's seller and buyer reputation) but they are also affiliated with another company, Trustfuse, that sells aggregate data but not emails. You can view a sample of a typical Trustfuse-Rapleaf report here (PDF). After they got spanked by the blogosphere, they altered their privacy policy and softened the language regarding the sale of data, but I suspect at this point the damage is done. They have the following info regarding removing your profile on their privacy page:
America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.
What would sew us back together?
Another 9/11 attack.
[…]
Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?
If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.
The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.
This last 6-years has been a slow-motion train wreck. OBL is still on the loose. The Anthrax attackers are still on the loose. We're stuck in a quagmire in a war of choice in Iraq, losing a winnable war in Afghanistan, and then contemplating opening a third front of the Great War on Terror in Iran (and Pakistan).
I'm tired of staring into the abyss. In addition to the 3000 lives lost on 9/11 and the near 5000 (3600 military deaths, and an estimated 1000 contractor deaths) in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can chalk up threats to free speech, habeas corpus, our own privacy, and any semblance for advocacy for the middle class in Washington. We are distracted from true threats like class inequality, our aging infrastructure, precarious financial environment, and global warming with bright and shiny objects like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and divisive social wedge issues like abortion, gay marriage, and evolution.
Although Bykofsky takes the easy way out and (correctly) states that another 9/11 would finally unite us, he's correct, but I hope he's thinking of the wrong outcome. He thinks that another 9/11 would would cause us to put aside our partisan differences to get "it" done - I'm assuming by "it" he means the War on Islamofacism. But there's danger in these thoughts. With the right proudly proclaiming that we are safer BECAUSE there have been no new attacks, another 9/11 might have the complete opposite consequences - reinforces the disgust and despair many of us are feeling towards our media and political institutions.
The next-9/11 will preceed one of two outcomes - either the police state, or the beginning of the American Renaissance, where we cast of the dead weight and corrupt institutions of the past and become the America we thought, hoped, and dreamed we were.
Should Bykofsky get fired? Should free speech have consequences? Vote here.
It confirmed what most people long ago concluded: that Mr. Gonzales is more concerned about doing political-damage control for Mr. Bush — in this case insisting that there was never a Justice Department objection to a clearly illegal program — than in doing his duty. But the White House continued to defend him.
As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.
Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.
If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.
Ironically enough, Bush's nickname for Abu Gonzalez is "Fredo".
I've added a goodly number of apps, primarily to see what they do (with the F8 developer network) and get some insight as to how Facebook and their partners are going to monetize them. The moves Facebook is making at the least makes them a serious threat to MySpace, and possibly even to bigger targets like Yahoo. No, really.
Have you found anything cool, or wish for something that isn't here yet?
Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking a resumé application, something maybe off the back of LinkedIn; a weather widget that cycles through various places; a webcam widget that shuffles through various webcams, a blog discovery widget, and the killer app of all, maybe even better than Google, would be Facebook Office.
Recently, Facebook has added an Election section, presumably to provide a platform for civic action as well as generate income from candidates via their purchase of voter profiles and demographic information - ie. users who supported Candidate B also supported Issues X, Y, and Z.
Sometime soon, Facebook will start allowing anyone to join directly into a geographic network, regardless of whether or not they are already a member.
Melanie Deitch, Facebook’s director of marketing, told me today that the feature would be released sometime soon, “probably in the next month, but no firm date has been set”. She also said that there are currently 530 geographic networks, including some non-U.S. areas such as Paris and London.
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.
Gotta jot this down quick today, as I'll be unplugged and doing Daddy Daycare, which is astory not suitable for blogging…
So, as detailed yesterday, Facebook did a Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, and unveiled a Mini-News Feed which provides you with a convenient digest of all the activities of your friends. The problem with that being that it provides you with a daily digest of all the activities of all your friends.
I am pleased to have been part of the original blogstorm - I promptly emailed everyone I knew on Facebook around 10am on Tuesday, and I am also pleasantly pleased to see consumer activism being taken up by the Facebook users.
Facebook got a facelift [rimshot] last night (story with details on Techcrunch). There are some good changes, notably the ability to collapse sections you don't really care about. But what is big news is also a little troubling…
The new Facebook home page has a newsfeed section which tracks what the people on your friends list are doing, at a very granular level. Things it tracks include…
The BE-friending, DE-friending, making and breaking up of relationships
Adding or Removing Group Membership.
Changes to your status.
Additions, deletions, and changes to your books, movies, and TV-Show changes.
Your RSVPs to Events.
A quick email out to my student staff and the responses tells me that users aren't necessarily aware of the privacy concerns, their implications, and what control they have over them.
Wow. That is way TMI. That is pretty scary. Now to limit myself in using facebook.
I just looked…that is too creepy. I wonder if people can still see all that when you block your profile?
I don't like it. Is there a way to prevent your friends from seeing this info?
It looks like a good idea is to restrict everything to friends - it looks like the default is to let Everyone or Friend-of-Friends to see everything.
The "My Account" and "My Privacy" settings are on the right-hand side. Go through each setting on your networks and make everything "restricted" and "friends only". It's also a good idea to review the TOS (Terms of Service) which was updated today. Based on what I see in the TOS, they do have a pretty good idea of privacy control.
There's only one issue I take make objection to - why are users defaulted to allowing everyone to see everything? The American idea of individualism and privacy, or more appropriately, my idea of individualism and privacy is that everything should be transparent about one's personal, professional, and private life, but that I should be able to have the choice as to who I let to see what. I would much rather it be phrased as allowing to "opt-in" friends who I chose to see my profile, with the default being private, rather than having everything be public, and only allowed to blacklist individuals.
