(Image is in the Public Domain)

So the House has confirmed that FISA is the ONLY way that surveillance can be secretly done in the US. Um… duh?

Is there anyone that understands this whole mess? Bush breaks the law along with the Telecommunication companies. He gets away with it because no one seems willing to challenge him. He tries as hard as he can to get immunity for the Telco's too.

Congress has repeatedly rejected all attempts to circumvent FISA in new bills, but even if they HAD passed a new law, Bush is still guilty of violating the first one! I just don't get it.

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Assuming the bill is written well, this is a very good thing. Congress is pushing through a law that would prevent discrimination based on genetics. If you don't understand what this means, check out Gattica, a movie that explains the risks better than any other I've seen.

Brilliant Plan

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Congress is now considering a bill similar to the CAN-SPAM act for spyware. Like the CAN-SPAM act, it doesn't actually stop anything, but rather legalizes it instead.

Let's sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers' use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC. Gee, what's not to like in that deal?

Real ID rejection is the right choice

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According to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) newsletter, Washington state has also rejected REAL ID. More info on REAL ID and why it's bad here.

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So they're finally going to try and do something about the e-voting disaster.

HR 811 features several requirements that will warm the hearts of geek activists. It bans the use of computerized voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. It mandates that the paper records be the authoritative source in any recounts, and requires prominent notices reminding voters to double-check the paper record before leaving the polling place. It mandates automatic audits of at least three percent of all votes cast to detect discrepancies between the paper and electronic records. It bans voting machines that contain wireless networking hardware and prohibits connecting voting machines to the Internet. Finally, it requires that the source code for e-voting machines be made publicly available.

There's not one thing in there that's wrong! If they actually implemented all those provisions, e-voting might actually work!

The proposal wasn't without its detractors, however. Several state election officials testified about the practical challenges of implementing the new requirements. Chris Nelson, South Dakota's secretary of state, warned that many of the requirements in the legislation would conflict with the states' own election procedures.

Cry me a river. "Oh it's too HARD to implement security! We need to have less restrictions so we can do this cheaper!"

The law allows flexibility in how some of the auditing is done as long as it's NIST approved and the states always have the option of keeping the optical current methods if they decide that the regulations for e-voting are too strict or too expensive to implement at this time.

Of course, this almost sounds too good to be true. I'll have to read the law later, but I'm betting it has some terrible hidden catch like it legalizes eating little puppies or provides millions of pork dollars for human RFID implantations.

Update: It looks like the guys over at Slashdot feel the same way I do.

Out with the old...

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Did you know that the government is discontinuing broadcast television? At least the way we know it. That means that for any TV you own that you want to be able to receive television over the air (with your rabbit ears or whatever), you will need a digital converter.

"If we don't get this transition right, then (we will be) dealing with constituents," said Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa. "The government has broken their TV sets."

The government is offering incentive discounts for people to get the converters:

To help consumers absorb the cost, Congress set aside $1.5 billion to subsidize converter box purchases. Every household, regardless of whether it needs a box, will be eligible to receive two coupons, each worth $40, that can be used to buy two converter boxes. The coupons, to be distributed on a first-come first-serve basis, must be requested between Jan. 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

This story is hilarious! In short:

1. John McCain, Senator and Presidential hopeful, set up a Myspace page to "connect with younger audiences"
2. He used a default theme created by the author of this prank
3. He not only didn't credit the author of the theme, but one of the images in the theme was being pulled from the author's webservers costing him money every time someone loaded McCain's page.
4. The Author, to teach him a lesson, changed the picture to a joke political message

Anyway, read the details for a much better description by the author himself.

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Senator Barak Obama, not to be outdone by Hillary, has posted some questions to Yahoo Answers.

Technically, Hillary has been on Yahoo Answers since last fall, but she's only asked three questions

Hillary's Questions

1. How can we help to prevent and someday eradicate breast cancer, which has touched the lives of so many people?
2. Based on your own family's experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?
3. How can we as a country promote alternative energy, use less foreign oil and reduce global warming?

Barack's Question

His specific question, which I find far more useful than Hillary's so far, was "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?" I hope he reads my answer. (Barack's profile here). Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Yahoo Answers

Reaching out to the public openly is a good leadership trait

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I've seen this before with other famous people like Shigeru Miyamoto, but this is the first member of Congress I've seen. Perhaps this marks a shift in our leaders to using technology to help us interact with them. We can hope.