Via the Chronicle of Higher Education, Caught in the Network — how campus cops tried to pressure Prof. Paul Cesarini to stop using TOR, an anonymizing proxy.
(I tried TOR a while back and found it a bit clunky.)
Prof. Cesarini did not give in to their suggestion that he avoid teaching about TOR in his classroom, although he expressed some sympathy for the campus IT folks' worry about what it might do to their network.
Even given the soft bigotry of low expectations that prop up the Bush administration, this has to be just a little shocking, doesn't it?
Rice Denies Seeing Iranian Proposal in '03: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was pressed yesterday on whether the Bush administration missed an opportunity to improve relations with Iran in 2003, when Tehran issued a proposal calling for a broad dialogue with the United States, on matters including cooperation on nuclear safeguards, action against terrorists and possible recognition of Israel.
Although former administration officials have said the proposal was discussed and ultimately rejected by top U.S. officials, Rice, who was then national security adviser, said she never saw it.
Either as a lie, or as a screw-up, or as a plot to keep her in the dark, this is fairly major, right? Especially if the administration plays Mid-East double or nothing by starting a war with Iran…
Buried deep, deep inside the New York Times, right at the bottom of a page, is this little bombshell: the paranoids were right.
Records Show Extra Scrutiny of Detainees in '04 Protests: When more than a thousand people were swept up in mass arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention, defense lawyers complained in court that the protesters had to wait much longer to see a judge than those accused of far more serious crimes like robbery or assault.
Now, newly released city records not only put precise numbers to those claims, but also show the special scrutiny the New York Police Department gave to people arrested in or near the convention protests.
At the height of the mass arrests, on Aug. 31, 2004, demonstrators — and some people who said they were bystanders just swept up by the police — were held for an average of 32.7 hours before they saw a judge, according to city statistics. For people charged with crimes that the police decided were not related to the convention, the wait to see a judge was just under five hours.
…
The vast majority of those arrested were held on charges of roughly the same weight as a traffic ticket, and the law does not require fingerprinting for those offenses. However, the Police Department determined months before the convention that no one would be given a summons; instead anyone taken into custody would be sent through a full arrest process, including fingerprints and criminal record checks. Police officials said that for public safety, it was important to use fingerprints to confirm identities.
Not to mention that the special detention facility the protesters (but not the murders) were shipped to was so unhealthy that 40 cops have “submitted medical reports, saying they became ill after working there.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has posted its list of Criminals and Scoundrels: The 25 Most Corrupt Officials of the Bush Administration. Someone seems to be missing….
More seriously, I think that including petty thieves like Claude Allen on this list cheapens the effect — the real problem with the Bush administration is not that there is the occasional shoplifter or petty fraudester in private life but rather the institutionalized corruption amounting to kleptocracy.
My father is having his 80th birthday today, and has taken himself and my mother off to Paris to celebrate, which seems like a pretty good idea (except that the rest of us have to stay back here and work or go to school).
I hope you have better things to do today than read this, but just in case, Joyeux anniversaire dad!
U.S. Declines to Join Accord on Secret Detentions:
Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations.
…
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment, except to say that the United States helped draft the treaty but that the final wording “did not meet our expectations.”
The Associated Press reported that McCormack declined to comment on whether the U.S. stance was influenced by the Bush administration's policy of sending terrorism suspects to CIA-run prisons overseas, which President Bush acknowledged in September.
…
The convention defines forced disappearance as the arrest, detention or kidnapping of a person by state agents or affiliates and subsequent denials about the detention or location of the individual.
Recent Bluessky Posts
Jotwell Blenderlaw