I'm on the record as not having been impressed with Bradley Manning for turning over thousands of classified diplomatic messages to Wikileaks: Then, of course, there’s the anonymous asshole who was trusted with access to all this stuff and decided to leak it. Leaking this stuff might have been justified if it contained the shocking truth behind the Kennedy assassination, or … [Read more...] about Edward Snowden’s Leaks Hit a Little Closer to Home
NSA Surveillance – Some Technical Speculation
The NSA story is still breaking, so almost anything I write may soon be overtaken by new information, but I thought I'd address one aspect that involves an area in which I have some expertise: Although whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that major tech corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have given the NSA direct access to information on their servers, … [Read more...] about NSA Surveillance – Some Technical Speculation
In Which I Decline a Prospective Content Partnership
The Popehat folks are far better at this sort of thing, but let me give it a try. I got this email with the subject "Content Partnership": Hey there Mark,My name is Sladen West and I wanted to discuss the possibility of some sort of content partnership with you and windypundit.com. I do a lot of writing in the automotive space and thought my articles could be a great fit … [Read more...] about In Which I Decline a Prospective Content Partnership
Nuclear Terrorism Espionage
In the early days of the Usenet distributed bulletin board system, some of us used to include random collections of suspicious-sounding keywords in everything we posted (usually in the signature block). We did this because we were paranoid enough to assume government agencies were watching everyone's posts, and we thought it would be funny to sneak tons of spurious messages … [Read more...] about Nuclear Terrorism Espionage
Why Routine DNA Gathering Is a Dangerous Change
When I read that the Supreme Court had decided it's okay to take DNA swabs from people who are arrested but not yet convicted, I was a bit peeved because it seemed they had chipped away one more bit of our Fourth Amendment rights.Still, it seemed like a relatively small thing. After all, they already take fingerprints when you're arrested, and DNA is kind of like a newer, … [Read more...] about Why Routine DNA Gathering Is a Dangerous Change