[Really excellent article, and important. -egg]

I am mystified by the “privacy moderate” who yearns for a debate about the surveillance state without anyone being so transgressive as to leak the information without which there would be no debate.

What I sense, but cannot prove, is the privacy moderate’s desperation to avoid facing the full extent of the establishment’s extreme behavior. Americans once condemned such excesses. The Obama Administration is nowhere near as morally odious as, e.g., the bygone East German state. But Americans didn’t just criticize its surveillance apparatus, the Stasi, because the East German regime used it for evil. Quite apart from the character of the regime and its secret police, Americans found the very notion of secret, pervasive spying on innocent citizens repugnant. We found the notion of vast files kept on private citizens creepy, because that isn’t the role the state ought to play in a free society. Today, the American state is engaged in intentionally spying on tens of millions of innocent citizens. It did its utmost to hide the truth about that spying.

Civil libertarians are objecting as if this is a historic scandal of the utmost importance — and it is exactly that. Privacy moderates are obsessed with policing the objections for hyperbole. They can tell their grandkids, “When I found out America was secretly spying on tens of millions of innocents, I focused on criticizing the people who overreacted rhetorically.” It’s like the blogs that spent the run-up to the Iraq War obsessing about scattered Bush-Hitler signs at anti-war protest rallies, as if, absent push-back, the nation was ready to side with the sign-makers; or like a doctor who worries more about cosmetic scars than cratering white blood-cell counts.

via The Problem With the ‘Privacy Moderates’ – Atlantic Mobile.

America’s 11-judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has made more than a dozen classified rulings that vastly expanded the powers of America’s spy agencies, operating under an obscure legal doctrine called “special needs.”

Under this doctrine, established in 1989 in a Supreme Court case over drug testing railway workers, a “minimal intrusion on privacy” is allowed in order to help the state mitigate “overriding public danger.” FISC’s rulings have widened this ruling to allow for wholesale spying in the name of preventing “nuclear proliferation,” as well as terrorism.

The NYT calls this a “shadow Supreme Court” but notes that FISC proceedings only hear from the government — no one presents alternatives to the government’s arguments. Much of the expansion of surveillance turns on whether metadata collection is intrusive (I think it is):

The officials said one central concept connects a number of the court’s opinions. The judges have concluded that the mere collection of enormous volumes of “metadata” — facts like the time of phone calls and the numbers dialed, but not the content of conversations — does not violate the Fourth Amendment, as long as the government establishes a valid reason under national security regulations before taking the next step of actually examining the contents of an American’s communications.

This concept is rooted partly in the “special needs” provision the court has embraced. “The basic idea is that it’s O.K. to create this huge pond of data,” a third official said, “but you have to establish a reason to stick your pole in the water and start fishing.”

Under the new procedures passed by Congress in 2008 in the FISA Amendments Act, even the collection of metadata must be considered “relevant” to a terrorism investigation or other intelligence activities.

The court has indicated that while individual pieces of data may not appear “relevant” to a terrorism investigation, the total picture that the bits of data create may in fact be relevant, according to the officials with knowledge of the decisions.

In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. [Eric Lichtblau/NYT]

via Secret rulings from America’s shadow Supreme Court legalizes spying in one-sided hearings – Boing Boing.

I’ve just released my first new album in seven years: “Chronotope.” It’s moody, pretty, experimental electronic music, made for the dancefloor in your head. I hope you’ll check it out!
Please pass it along to anyone who you think might be interested 🙂
http://tinpanalgorithm.bandcamp.com/

[Helloooooooo future! -egg]

When eight-year-old Grady Hoffman went into the hospital for a bone-marrow transplant and a two month recovery, he stayed in touch with his family by means of a telepresence robot that rolled around the house, feeding him video and audio from home and his siblings, and letting him talk to them.

via Hospitalized kid’s telepresence bot roams at home – Boing Boing.

[Some nice hints here I didn’t know about. If anyone is interested in exchanging affiliate links, let me know. -egg]

Amazon is often our go-to place for buying things online, but the best deals aren’t always obvious. There are several ways you can save quite a bit of money when shopping on Amazon, but only if you utilize the right programs and strategies. Here’s how.

via How to Get Reduced Prices and Save Money When Shopping on Amazon.

Ephemerisle got its libertarian streak from its founders: the event was originally conceived of by the Seasteading Institute, a San Francisco nonprofit that supports the creation of thousands of floating city-states in international waters. After overseeing the first Ephemerisle in 2009, the Institute handed over responsibility for the festival to the community in 2010—it turns out a raucous floating party costs too much for a tiny think tank to insure—and last year, the group consisted of 300 amateur boaters, intoxicated partiers, and a committed clan of Seasteaders.

Seasteaders made up about a quarter of Ephemerisle’s attendees. If they took the operation somewhat more seriously than the young Californians who came just to party and build things, it’s because they dream of a day when they’ll have their pick of floating city-states to live on, work from, and eventually abandon in favor of a different platform when they get bored. Borrowing from the lexicon of evolution, the Seasteaders say that a “Cambrian explosion” of these new countries will bring about greater freedom of choice for individuals, stimulate competition between existing governments, and provide blank “nation-slates” for experiments in governance. Ephemerisle is supposed to distill the ambitious project into a weekend that would “give people the direct experience of political autonomy.” It combines its political ambitions with appeals to back-to-the-land survivalism, off-the-grid drug use, and a vague nostalgia for water parks. “There are no tickets, no central organizers, no rules, no rangers to keep you safe,” reads the Ephemerisle mission statement. It’s “a new adventure into an alien environment, with discoveries, adventures, and mishaps along the way.”

via n+1: Seasteading.

In honor of Julys resolution, “Focus on security,” Ive prepared this article on the basics of using encryption.

Encryption makes privacy a right that can be claimed rather than granted.

This article is a quick summary of basic encryption tools for protecting your data and your privacy. The goal is to raise awareness of these tools.

via Practicing privacy with encryption.

The dramatic nylon sculptures by Dutch artist Rosa Verloop are eerie and distorted representations of human heads and bodies. These three-dimensional bodies are held together by a series of pins and threads. The flesh tones of the nylons add a disturbing level of realism to these dysmorphic objects. Verloop is an artist based out of the Netherlands where she continues to create works that are both intriguing and at the same time grotesque.

via -| Foto-Jenn¡c |- – hifructosemag: Grotesque Nylon Sculptures by….

An estimated 10 million Britons still suck down cigarettes faster than a troupe of aging rockers in rehab straining to cough out another hit tune. In the UK, cigarette butts sully streets and parks everywhere. What if this nasty habit could contribute to, rather than subtract from, the beauty of outdoor spaces? Cigg Seeds aim to do precisely that. A variety of smokes outfitted with biodegradable filters that contain wild flower seeds, they sprout and blossom into wildflower meadows when finished and flicked, or deposited on the ground. Butts into blooms. Cigarettes into snowdrops—the floral not frozen variety, to be sure.

via -| Foto-Jenn¡c |- – sketchlynx: moshita: Cigg Seeds An estimated….

Until very recently the country’s incarcerated were still living in a world of Walkmans, radios, and cassette tapes. But finally, things are changing. SPIN goes behind bars to investigate how music makes its way inside prisons, who puts it there, and what it means to inmates.

via Captive Audience: The Music Business in America’s Prisons | SPIN.