The WaPo Reports:

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

This is the work of a state employee who's tasked with maintaining ballot security. He's showing that vote-hacking is emminantly possible. Maybe if enough of these sorts of stories get out, election officials will fix their systems before this fall's balloting. However, I still think the threat of a widespread "hack the vote" activist effort would spur them to get their rears in gear.

Fascinating, if poorly-fonted account of many anti-choice women who go ahead and opt for abortion when confronted with an unwanted pregnancy. Over at Pandagon, where I caught the link from, the tag is "The only moral abortion is my abortion," which is a pretty good dig, and certainly on point in terms of addressing the cognitive dissonance at work here, but I think there's more.

This is another example of the right-wing tendency to seek a Daddy State. In essence, these people are not able to lead lives in accordance with their own moral code, and so they want the state to force them to do the "right" thing, or at least outlaw the "wrong" one.

On the emerging libertarian left, where we value our freedom and privacy, it's up to the individual (ideally supported by his or her community) to keep their karma right. That's one of your responsibilities as grown human being.

It's getting radical out there. As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, the Bush Administration is essentially taking the Judge Dredd approach to the Constitituion: I am the Law:

The truly radical nature of the Administration's position is illustrated by the fact that it is forced to argue that FISA itself – to the extent it "impedes" the President's power to eavesdrop on American citizens – is unconstitutional. For 30 years, FISA has existed as the framework for regulating eavesdropping by the Government. It was enacted by Congress as a response to serious abuses of this power, signed into law by the President, and nobody serious ever argued that it was unconstitutional. Indeed, the working assumption of both the Congress and the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11 was that FISA would continue to regulate the Administration's eavesdropping, which is why The Patriot Act amended FISA in the aftermath of 9/11 (p. 27, fn. 13).

But the Administration is engaged in a full-frontal assault on anything which can be used to argue that George Bush's wartime powers are limited in some way. That means that if FISA is seen as such a limitation, then the Administration asserts that it can ignore and violate FISA because it suddenly believes it to be unconstitutional.

It seems like they're going to go to the mat on this one; the President can do anything in the name of defending the Nation. Anything. And any law which might stand in his way is constitutionally invalid. Somehow this isn't what I imagine Jefferson, Madison and company really had in mind. Then again, they never wanted us to have an empire either, so we've been off the rails for a while now, but I digress.

While I don't really think this shit will fly, it's indeed depressing to see how poorly the Press deals with the issue, and how weak Bush's political opponents remain even in the face of his striking unpopularity and obvious wrongness.

So we'd better get started moving those goalposts, because this game we're playing here is for suckers.

Really good episode, interesting plot progression, getting nearer to jumping the shark but not too close yet.

I'm very much enjoying America's fictional excursion into the state of nature. I'll start sharing some of my bittorrent secrets soon for all you who want to join me in enjoying television on demand without commercials for free.

It's happening. Feds after Google data:

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The auspice here is kiddie porn -- which is a great angle for facists to use: so you don't want google to turn over its data? what, you like looking at little boys? -- but I fully expect homeland-security to do a turn on this cycle sometime soon.

Here's some music that I've been considering pulling from for creating a theme-song-type audio environment for my dark future radio play idea. It's from the extended mix of Orbital's The Box, a 28-minute track. This is about a 5 minute excerpt, does a nice job of creating tension, paranoia, etc:

The Box - Excerpt

Now, if I want to really do this thing, I'll try to use some original music, but part of my idea is to weave in whatever works, and if it's actually already released/copyrighted to do the Dawson's Creek thing and include links to buy the album, claim fair use. Should work unless we get hugely popular, which is a good problem to have.

Here's some music that I've been considering pulling from for creating a theme-song-type audio environment for my dark future radio play idea. It's from the extended mix of Orbital's The Box, a 28-minute track. This is about a 5 minute excerpt, does a nice job of creating tension, paranoia, etc:

The Box - Excerpt

Now, if I want to really do this thing, I'll try to use some original music, but part of my idea is to weave in whatever works, and if it's actually already released/copyrighted to do the Dawson's Creek thing and include links to buy the album, claim fair use. Should work unless we get hugely popular, which is a good problem to have.

Things are pretty good. I got the latest episode of BattleStar Galactica to watch tonight. I think this weeks projects will come in smoothly under deadline. I feel a sort of steady rhythm picking up.

Hoping to make some changes on this old website soon. First off is getting drupal 4.7beta up and running, making myself a nice little theme, migrating old content. Should be exciting.

Another opinion, this from the NYT; the situation should be well known by now:

Even as Internet use explodes in China, Beijing is cracking down on free expression, and Western technology firms are leaping to help. The companies block access to political Web sites, censor content, provide filtering equipment to the government and snitch on users. Companies argue that they must follow local laws, but they are also eager to ingratiate themselves with a government that controls access to the Chinese market.

I'll continue to track what I see about this. I found this to be especially interesting:

Recently Yahoo admitted that it had helped China sentence a dissident to 10 years in prison by identifying him as the sender of a banned e-mail message.

That sent me to google looking for some context, which I found here from the BBC:

According to a translation of his conviction, reproduced by Reporters Without Borders, he was found guilty of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal Communist Party message.

Reporters Without Borders said the message warned journalists of the dangers of social unrest resulting from the return of dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in June 2004.

The actual mechanics here -- someone leaking an internal government communication that the government would rather not have as public knowledge -- has rather obvious and ominous paralells on our side of the Pacific.

The temptation to turn the internet into an apparatus of State control will be no less strong for greedy States than is the temptation for greedy media companies to try and monopolize it. Hopefully the Public will coalesce to resist the inevitable attempts which will come in the 21st Century. This suggestion in the NYT editorial is a good one:

Reporters Without Borders, a group advocating press freedom, recommends that Internet companies also adopt a good conduct code, pledging not to filter out words like "democracy" and "human rights" from search engines and maintaining their e-mail and Internet servers outside China.

Western businesses have always overestimated the price of defending human rights in China. Some have done it effectively - privately and respectfully - and paid no cost. But the beauty of such an industrywide code of conduct for Internet companies is that it would put no company at a disadvantage.

In light of all the web 2.0 hype -- for those who don't know, this is why it's BS -- I'd like to invite anyone and everyone to take a trip to Zombocom.