/ politics
Monday, November 23
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»Petition to: abolish the proposed law that will see alleged illegal filesharers disconnected from their broadband connections, without a fair trial. | Number10.gov.uk
Sunday, November 01
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»Ministers face rebellion over drug tsar's sacking | Politics | The Observer
Wednesday, October 28
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»Schwarzenegger Lays An NSFW Easter Egg On Lawmakers
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“ French financial watchdogs slammed Nicolas Sarkozy for spending £160m during his country’s six-month stint in charge of the EU – including £250,000 on a personal presidential shower that he never used.
• Sarkozy spends £250,000 of EU budget on shower he did not use | World news | guardian.co.uk
Tuesday, June 09
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»Privacy: Scrap ID cards | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Monday, May 18
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»Somewhere to Run To: Where Deposed Dictators Have Settled - TIME
Saturday, May 16
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»Unsung hero | Politics | The Guardian

Interesting account of the battle to get MPs to ‘fess up to their thieving.

Sunday, May 03
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Most UK residents will have heard about Jacqui Smith’s proposal to create an Uberdatabase by now. This would mandate all UK data handlers retain all connections data for 6 years and provide instantaneous access and tapping facilities for government agencies. It should be noted that this will NOT be a database of content as such, just EVERYTHING else with an option of monitoring you live if so desired. In essence they would be making your technology providers keep records of everywhere you go (both physically and virtually) and everyone you have any contact with, just in case any government agency ‘needs’ it.

So, paraphrasing imbeciles nationwide - “If you’ve got nothing to hide what have you got to be worried about?”

Well quite a lot really but you can boil it down to 3 main categories of objection…
• TECHNICALBLOKE.COM - OPINION
Saturday, January 03
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“ For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.
• As if Things Weren’t Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. - WSJ.com
Friday, November 07
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“ Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps’ policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion.
• Highlights: Newsweek’s Special Election Project | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com
Monday, February 11
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“ The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.
• Bush orders clampdown on flights to US | World news | The Guardian
Monday, January 07
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“ Clive Thompson, writing in The New York Times: “In 2005, the state of California complained that the machines were crashing. In tests, Diebold determined that when voters tapped the final “cast vote” button, the machine would crash every few hundred ballots. They finally intuited the problem: their voting software runs on top of Windows CE, and if a voter accidentally dragged his finger downward while touching “cast vote” on the screen, Windows CE interpreted this as a “drag and drop” command. The programmers hadn’t anticipated that Windows CE would do this, so they hadn’t programmed a way for the machine to cope with it. The machine just crashed.
• Voting machine bugs - Joel on Software
Monday, November 19
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“ When the Spanish king Juan Carlos turned to Hugo Chavez and said to him, a touch irritably, “Why don t you shut up?”, little did he know that his breach of diplomatic protocol would become a smash hit across the country.
• King s outburst generates £1m-worth of ringtones | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited