Tuesday, April 13, 2004

I just saw House of Sand and Fog on videotape. It's a very good movie staring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly, with a very believable story and a realistically grim ending. The story also has a very strong libertarian message without being preachy or obtrusive about it. 11:25:42 PM    comment () IM Alert. Via Slashdot comes a report of a New Hampshire Superior Court ruling holding that under the state's "two-party consent" wiretap statutes, the fairly routine practice of logging an IM chat may be as illegal as surreptitiously recording a phone conversation. Or as the author of the piece linked above somewhat melodramatically puts it: You are engaged in a chat session with some friends and colleagues, when one of them makes a witty remark or imparts a pithy bit of information. You hit CTRL-A and select the conversation, then copy it to a document that you save. Under a little-noticed decision in a New Hampshire Superior Court in late February, these actions may just land you in jail. [Hit & Run] As one of the comments points out, ICQ automatically logs all instant messages. Does that mean that it's now illegal for people in New Hampshire to use ICQ? 1:44:21 PM    comment () Present Your Papers. Bruce Schneier on the perennial proposal for a national identification card: [M]y primary objection isn't the totalitarian potential of national IDs, nor the likelihood that they'll create a whole immense new class of social and economic dislocations. Nor is it the opportunities they will create for colossal boondoggles by government contractors. My objection to the national ID card, at least for the purposes of this essay, is much simpler: It won't work. It won't make us more secure. In fact, everything I've learned about security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure. To see his argument, go here. [Via bOING bOING.] [Hit & Run] I agree with is arguement, but unfortunately I don't think it's relevant. The national ID card isn't about security, that's just a gimic being used to sell it to the ignorant. It's really about giving the government another tool to help them track anyone, anywhere, anytime. To the extent that Feds care about a national ID card making us less secure, they probably consider that a bonus. Remember, these are the same people who would order a fighter pilot to murder hundreds of civilians because an airliner had a broken radio rather than allow American citizens to exercise their Constitutional right to bear arms. 12:23:12 PM    comment () Our Ba'athists. The poor performance of the new Iraqi army has U.S. commanders mulling putting some of Saddam's former officers in the mix. I literally cannot wait for the White House spin on this development. But a Ba'athist infusion does make some sense in that the new army lacks leadership, which is another way of saying the men in leadership positions are not respected, or feared, by their troops. [Hit & Run] The White House probably won't bother with a spin. When they started hiring former members of Saddam's secret police, they just didn't say anything about it, and the US media barely mentioned it. Why would this be any different? 12:09:51 PM    comment () For Our Anarchist Readers. Tonight on American Experience, PBS airs a documentary about a woman who would have hated the idea of PBS: Emma Goldman. The program's well-crafted website includes a full issue of Goldman's monthly magazine Mother Earth. [Hit & Run] From the example issue it appears that Goldman was actually not an anarchist at all, but a socialist. 10:53:25 AM    comment () Neocon Hubris. They're going to remake an ancient people through fire and sword, they proclaim. Time to reread what Edward Gibbon had to say about the Arabs in chapter 50 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "The perpetual independence... [LewRockwell.com Blog] 9:39:55 AM    comment ()

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