All of a sudden it isn't as horribly hot and humid outside any more. We haven't quite gotten to the blissful time of year when it's just great out, as it's still too hot in the middle of the day and too humid all day long, but the summer heat has definitely broken. It's nice in the shade; a week ago it was awful.
In honor of this joyful annual event, I've added a weather report to the margin of the blog. Eat your heart out in January. Or come visit.
Internet journalist (and nice guy) Declan McCullagh received a remarkable letter recently from FBI Supervisory Special Agent Howard Leadbetter II. The letter demanded that Declan “preserve all records and other evidence” relating to interviews of a computer hacker. According to The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press other journalists have received similar letters too.
It seems that the FBI's New York field office has decided that internet journalists are really ISPs and thus subject to § 2703(f) of the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act”:
(f) Requirement to preserve evidence.—
(1) In general.—A provider of wire or electronic communication services or a remote computing service, upon the request of a governmental entity, shall take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process.
(2) Period of retention.—Records referred to in paragraph (1) shall be retained for a period of 90 days, which shall be extended for an additional 90-day period upon a renewed request by the governmental entity.
The Retreat was an occasion for introspection. This impulse leads naturally to meaningless online personality quizzes. Here's one result:
Which OS are You?
While I'm not in a position to vouch for the accuracy of this analysis of my personality, the list of possible answers is pretty funny.
I survived the retreat. Based on this experience, so far I think neither my fears nor Eric Muller's enthusiasm were justified, as we didn't really do anything except brainstorming. If, however, there is meaningful followthrough on a few of the more substantial ideas brainstormed, then I'll have to admit that Eric was right.
Day One of the Retreat went better, on the whole, than I had feared.
Unlike the icky retreat Daniel Drezner recalls, we didn't have “bad pizza, bad flourescent lighting, and bad pontificating”—or at least very little of the latter. Nor did we have Prof. Bainbridge “Bad coffee, bad food, uncomfortable folding chairs, bad PowerPoint” that he says probably “cut at least two millenia off [his] stint in Purgatory.” In fact, we had no PowerPoint at all. The meeting was held in a lovely resort (not hard to find in Miami), and had good food plus a lovely view of the resort's pool and the ocean beyond it. There was an absolutely gorgeous sunset. We even got them to turn off the horrible Muzak that comes standard in the conference room.
And at dinner I learned that my collegue Alan Swan has an operatic-quality voice and is a fairly serious singer.
Eric Muller is blogging from a conference I wish I could attend, the UNC Law Review's symposium on Law, Loyalty, and Treason. Instead I'm about to leave for our Retreat.
His second meaty post is about a paper by Marion Crain of UNC Law School and Ken Matheny of the Social Security Administration which shows that worplace disloyalty has often been treated by those in power as subversion and disloyalty akin to treason.
Does this mean that deep in their hearts Big Employers are basically feudal?
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