Saturday, December 7, 2002

2600 News: photographer arrested for taking pictures of vice president's hotel As a news photographer myself, I gotta say this is damn chilling if the anecdote is true. I copy sections here simply in the interests of spreading awareness. Miasma "photographer arrested for taking pictures of president's hotel" [Daypop Top 40] An amateur photographer named Mike Maginnis was arrested on Tuesday in his home city of Denver - for simply taking pictures of buildings in an area where Vice President Cheney was residing. Maginnis told his story on Wednesday's edition of Off The Hook. Maginnis's morning commute took him past the Adams Mark Hotel on Court Place. Maginnis, who says he always carried his camera wherever he went, snapped about 30 pictures of the hotel and the surrounding area - which included Denver police, Army rangers, and rooftop snipers. Maginnis, who works in information technology, frequently photographs such subjects as corporate buildings and communications equipment. The following is Maginnis's account of what transpired: As he was putting his camera away, Maginnis found himself confronted by a Denver police officer who demanded that he hand over his film and camera. When he refused to give up his Nikon F2, the officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him. After being brought to the District 1 police station on Decatur Street, Maginnis was made to wait alone in an interrogation room. Two hours later, a Secret Service agent arrived, who identified himself as Special Agent "Willse." The agent told Maginnis that his "suspicious activities" made him a threat to national security, and that he would be charged as a terrorist under the USA-PATRIOT act. The Secret Service agent tried to make Maginnis admit that he was taking the photographs to analyze weaknesses in the Vice President's security entourage and "cause terror and mayhem." When Maginnis refused to admit to being any sort of terrorist, the Secret Service agent called him a "raghead collaborator" and a "dirty pinko faggot." After approximately an hour of interrogation, Maginnis was allowed to make a telephone call. Rather than contacting a lawyer, he called the Denver Post and asked for the news desk. This was immediately overheard by the desk sergeant, who hung up the phone and placed Maginnis in a holding cell. Three hours later, Maginnis was finally released, but with no explanation. He received no copy of an arrest report, and no receipt for his confiscated possessions. He was told that he would probably not get his camera back, as it was being held as evidence. 2:51:05 AM    Comment [] Arthur C. Clarke on CNN Arthur C. Clarke. "CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power." [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 2:42:35 AM    Comment [] PGP 8.0 released in several new editions "Network World Fusion" - PGP 8.0 released in several new editions. PGP Corp. Tuesday introduced several new products, 16 weeks after it acquired the software portfolio based on the Pretty Good Privacy security technology from Network Associates Inc. The Palo Alto start-up released PGP 8.0 in Enterprise, Desktop and Personal versions, as well as a new freeware version and the PGP 8.0 source code for peer review, the company said in a statement. PGP software's main function is to encrypt e-mail messages and files on a PC. Just in case you missed the other post. [Privacy Digest] 1:38:36 AM    Comment [] New Scientist: Radioactive patients set off subway alarms "New Scientist" - Radioactive patients set off subway alarms . Americans undergoing radioactive medical treatments risk setting off anti-terrorism sensors in public places, and subsequent strip searches by police, warn doctors at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. A 34-year-old patient who had been treated with radioactive iodine for Graves disease, a thyroid disorder, returned to their clinic three weeks later complaining he had been strip-searched twice in Manhattan subway stations. Christopher Buettner and Martin Surks report the case in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Police had identified him as emitting radiation and had detained him for further questioning. This patient's experience indicates that radiation detection devices are being installed in public places in New York City and elsewhere," the doctors write. [Privacy Digest] 1:34:12 AM    Comment [] Too bad for Ted Nelson, but I guess he got one concept, the nonlinear link, but missed the larger idea, the link ecosystem Patent lather. In case you've forgotten why software patents suck, here's a nice piece by Mamading Ceesay on the U.K. Patent Office site. An excerpt: A good example how software technology is adopted is the relative success of the World Wide Web (invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a Briton) versus Xanadu (invented by Ted Nelson, an American). These are both systems of hypertext, allowing the authoring and publishing of linked documents via networked computer systems. The Web is now ubiquitous as evidenced by the UK Patent Office web page that this is a response to, whereas Xanadu is a footnote in history known only to a relative few. Why was this? In 1991, Berners-Lee (via his employer CERN) published the specifications of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the HyperText Transfer Protocol on the first public Web server in order to promote wide adoption and discussion. In 1993, CERN's directors declared that Web technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees payable to CERN. This altruistic treatment of a clearly patentable technology, has lead to the creation of an entirely new sector of business, the e-commerce sector and enormously benefited other sectors, such as software/computer services, hardware, telecommunications. This has fuelled the creation and growth of multi-million pound enterprises that are now household names like Amazon, Netscape, AOL, Yahoo, Lastminute.com, created new opportunities for companies like British Telecom, Microsoft, banks and travel firms. It has also made new forms of communication, entertainment, information and services available to the consumer. In contrast, Xanadu technologies were treated as a trade secret and the specifications were not available until this year, so they were never widely adopted and now they never will be. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 1:31:57 AM    Comment [] kuro5hin on a roll: Cruise missiles mean never having to say you're sorry. Cruise missiles mean never having to say you're sorry. The US has no qualms about firing missiles into cars believed to contain alleged al-Qaida members. The Bush Administration has directed the CIA to seek out and kill those associated with al-Qaida anywhere in the world, apparently using any means necessary. Are you frightened? [kuro5hin.org] 1:05:04 AM    Comment [] From kuro5hin: Is This the America I Love? Is This the America I Love?. I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them. I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution. In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice. I loved America for what it stood for. [kuro5hin.org] 1:03:37 AM    Comment []

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