Archive for December 20th, 2005

Get Those Boxes Moving

Posted December 20, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Checking in on the last of my Christmas orders from Amazon, and all of a sudden it looks like they’re in overdrive. I had a few preorders set up from way back, and everything just slammed into shipping soon status. Amazon warns me they’ll get here after Christmas. (Which is mostly OK, since most of ’em aren’t gifts . . . most of them, anyway.) I’ll be interested in seeing if any of them do sneak in under the wire.

Good luck to everyone on their last minute holiday arrangements.

Filed in Life in Practice

Eavesdropping Technicalities

Posted December 20, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Following up on the warrantless wiretapping issue, it seems like more details are starting to circulate. I think maybe warrantless surveillance might be a more accurate description, since more than wiretapping seems to be in play. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo and emptywheel at Next Hurrah both have posts up trying to fill in some of the information that suggests that the government was trying to use new technologies to cast a wider net. The letter that Jay Rockefeller wrote to Dick Cheney, complaining that he could not get technical assistance from his staff to understand the scope of what was going on, also points in this direction.

Now, maybe this is the reason why FISA wasn’t sufficient. It’d be nice if someone in the Bush Administration would say so if that’s the case. But it seems to me that the issue of when and how to use new technology to observe people’s activity is precisely one that should be subject to some public deliberation by all of our leaders.

Filed in Public Policy

Red Fleet Launches Blog

Posted December 20, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Chris Gossett, whose Red Star is one of my favorite comics ever, has just launched the Project Antares blog to keep folks up to date on the status of Red Star-related projects. Since it’s Goss, and the man has a bit of a verbose streak, you can also expect plenty of personal anecdotes and political observations. Check it out.

Filed in Comics