Adam Fields (weblog)

The big news this week – video that Bush knew that Katrina would destroy New Orleans a day before the storm hit:
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm
http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/apbushkatrina512K.mov

Asking for complaint forms in Flordia Police stations gets you harassed and threatened:
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_033170755.html

Greek cell phone taps of high officials were enabled by embedded surveillance tech:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/more_on_greek_w.html

Zogby poll shows 72% of troops want to get out of Iraq in the next year, but also that 85% of them think they’re there to retaliate for Saddam’s attacking us on 9/11. So, there’s that:
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=35385

Human rights abuses in Iraq are worse than under Saddam (oops, Freudian slip – I typed Bush there first):
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3696105.html

Daily Kos is mumbling something about State-initiated impeachment:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/1/235828/9378

And, a kitten:
http://www.dailykitten.com/archives/340-Poppy.html

Tags: outrage fatigue, news, depressing, makeitstop

We watched the broadcast, and thought it was stupid, and didn’t give it an adequate chance. Turns out the part we watched was the worst 15 minutes of the series. I was prodded by a few people to give it another try, and was pleasantly surprised.

If you haven’t watched it, you should. Amazon has the DVD series for $20:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=as2&path=ASIN/B0000AQS0F&tag=buyadam-20&camp=1789&creative=9325

Tags: firefly, amazon, dvd, on sale, serenity

Power, once given, will be abused. And not necessarily by those it’s given to.

Bruce Schenier has a blog entry about the Greek cell phone tapping scandal – about 100 cell phones of politicians and officials, including the American embassy, have been tapped by an unknown party since the 2004 Olympics.

Bruce points out that the “malicious code” used to enable this was actually designed into the system as an eavesdropping mechanism for the police.

“There is an important security lesson here. I have long argued that when you build surveillance mechanisms into communication systems, you invite the bad guys to use those mechanisms for their own purposes. That’s exactly what happened here.”

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/more_on_greek_w.html

Tags: surveillance, greek, wiretapping, security, privacy