Year: 2013
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPT.
Does the NSA Have a CA?
Since Edward Snowden started leaking secrets to the media, we’ve learned that our government has been up to all kinds of sneaky things — surveiling our allies, getting call records from big telecom providers, retrieving information from online services about our online activity, building massive databases, keeping data about Americans for years. One of the… Read more
CREEPING TOTALITARIANISM DEPT.
Checkpoints And Despotism
So this story just makes me feel miserable: The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London’s Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio… Read more
SCIENCE DEPT.
From DNA to Questionable Science
It’s my understanding that DNA matching is arguably the best and most reliable of the forensic sciences. One reason is that it’s based on scientific knowledge and ideas that were developed independently of its forensic uses. Scientists spent decades studying DNA: How it’s structured, what it’s made of, how it replicates, how it combines in… Read more
LEGAL DEPT.
Sophisticated Jurors Or Vigilantes
So I’m working through my feeds (I’m getting used to Feedly now that Google Reader is gone), and I see an article at In These Times titled “The Illusion of Juror Sophistication,” and I know — just know, without even looking — that it’s going to be more complaining about the outcome of the Zimmerman… Read more
FREE SPEECH DEPT.
“Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head…”
“…I think Ima shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent rain down and eat the beating heart of one of them. lol. jk.” — Justin Carter, on Facebook, March 2013. Because today, August 1, is Quote Justin Carter On Social Media Day, as promoted by Jack Marshall on Ethics Alarms. According… Read more