Paul's Web Space 2.1

Colbert Report on Protect America Act

Stephen Colbert once again hits the nail on the head regarding the power of telecommunications companies. This time, he skewers their request for retroactive immunity from prosecution for illegally wiretapping an unknown number of Americans in the aftermath of 9/11.

The House Democratic leadership must stand firm on their commitment to leave this clause out of the renewal of the Protect America Act. This would set a bad precedent, by essentially letting the administration and telcos off the hook for widespread disregard of privacy rights. If we give up our rights in the name of security, we've lost the war on terror.

It looks like they are holding fast for now. Read more on FISA.

Labels: aclu, amnesty, fisa, privacy, telco

   Link: http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=163287&is_large=true

¶ 11:32 AM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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'Net Privacy for Children; 4-year-old Fashionistas!

As I blog about my daughter, I'm suddenly thinking I shouldn't blog or tweet, etc. kids' names...so I'm going to stop naming any children in any of my public writing. Not that it will make a huge deal by itself, it's mostly the policy that's supposed to mean something. I'm a privacy advocate who lives my life on the 'net pretty much as an open book, both for professional reasons, and due to cynicism on my part regarding the privacy protections that remain (in tatters). However, I don't need to drag anyone else, especially kids, along with me into my public life on the web.

Henceforth, you'll more posts looking like this:

My daughter told me a story about her preschool class yesterday that I found surprising, and very funny. I don't know what we were talking about, but fairly unprompted, I found out that she suddenly wasn't the biggest fan of pink. Now to me, this was NEWS, so I explored the back-story behind this development, and discovered the following (pay attention if you want to stay abreast of the most avant garde fashion trends).

All of the girls in my daughter's class but two have left pink behind as last year's color; the current hot color among 4-year-old girls is purple. Likewise, for all the boys but two, black is the new brown. The exact wording was something like this (from a 4-year-old):

I used to like pink, but I don't any more. All of the girls, except for xxx and xxx, say pink is old, it's from last year. All the boys now like black except xxx and xxx; they still like brown, but all the other boys say brown is from last year.

From the mouths of babes...I mean the next generation of fashionistas.

Labels: children, internet, privacy, safety

¶ 12:55 AM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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Case Dismissed? The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want you to know about

This article from Newsweek's web site outlines a VERY scary lobbying campaign by the telcos to enlist the most connected lobbyists in Wasghington to push for a law immunizing them from lawsuits related to (illegal) wiretapping and their enthusiastic embrace of it. They seek to not only stop a class action lawsuit that EFF is pursuing against AT&T. However the immunity sought is so broad that it appears likely to protect phone companies from any action brought regarding surveillance, whether it is currently happening or occurred in the past.

Labels: att, eff, privacy, surveillance, telco

   Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884696/site/newsweek/page/0/

¶ 6:02 PM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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