Peter Fromherz and colleagues in the Department of Membrane and Neuro Physics at Munich's Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry have created the world's first living silicon circuit.

See the Popular Science article It's alive! Brain cells and silicon learn to get along, by Katie Green.

Mindjack has just published a great article by Bryan Alexander about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the complex issues surrounding Intellectual Property and fair use in this day and age: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act: Licensing the Commons.

Here's a chuckle to start off your day: BBspot - RIAA Wants Background Checks on CD-RW Buyers from BBspot's Technology news.

RIAA Wants Background Checks on CD-RW Buyers Washington DC - The RIAA is lobbying for vendors of CD-RW drives to conduct background checks and require a 3 day waiting period before the drive can be sold.

The extensive background check would include cross referencing credit card numbers with local merchants sales logs looking for purchases of dual-cassette decks between the years of 1980 and 1987. It would also include checking for installation of file sharing software, knowledge of the Internet, and the ability to hum. Any of which would bar the purchaser from receiving his drive.

"A CD-RW can be a dangerous weapon when it falls into the wrong hands," said RIAA President Hilary Rosen, "You wouldn't sell a gun to a convicted felon and you shouldn't sell a CD-RW drive to a Gnutella user. The 3 day waiting period gives us time to verify that no copyrighted material is on the purchasers hard drive and to make sure they have a membership in the Columbia House CD club."

Various members of our Military Infrastructure are starting to move forward with their own agendas, including the creation of a global command that would commit us to a War that may last longer than we do.

See Global command considered , by Rowan Scarborough for The Washington Times.

Giving Gen. Holland, or another four-star officer, command of the anti-terror war would avoid shifting responsibility from commander to commander as anti-terror operations move from region to region. The principal war-fighting commanders, known as commanders in chief, or cincs, are assigned their own turf, such as Pacific or European command.

The Bush administration is in the early stages of discussing covert intelligence operations or actions by U.S. commandos, or their foreign surrogates, around the world. These actions likely would not come until President Bush meets his first objective: ousting the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan and eliminating Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. The locations include:

• South America — The administration is collecting evidence of al Qaeda operatives involved in cocaine trafficking in Paraguay and Colombia. Islamic fundamentalist cells are operating in a tri-border area of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Evidence has been found of al Qaeda members in this no man's land, a senior administration official says.

• Philippines — Anti-government Abu Sayyaf terrorists are linked to bin Laden. Options discussed include an all-out conventional attack, the use of special operations troops or asking a surrogate to do the job. One candidate is Australia's Special Air Service, which has seen, or will see, action in Afghanistan.

  The United States believes the Philippines serves as home to scores of al Qaeda foot soldiers. Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo vigorously supports America's war on terrorism, but is cool to the idea of allowing U.S. commandos to fight Abu Sayyaf. The Philippines government does want American training and advanced equipment.

  U.S. military advisers have visited the Philippines to assess the capabilities of forces fighting the rebels.

• Iraq — Some Pentagon officials, notably Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, are advocating going after dictator Saddam Hussein. Saddam has not been directly linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but the State Department lists Baghdad, which plotted to kill former President George Bush in 1993, as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Administration officials said several Rumsfeld aides believe the armed forces need an anti-terrorist commander for a war that may last for decades.

"This is a global war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction," Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told ABC this week. "So Afghanistan is only one small piece. So of course we're thinking very broadly. I would say since World War II we haven't thought this broadly about a campaign.

The Air Force general added, "I think this is going to be a long, hard-fought conflict. And it will be global in scale. And it won't be, as I mentioned earlier, it won't be just military. It's going to be all the instruments of our national power, with our friends and allies. And the fact that it could last several years or many years, or maybe our lifetimes, would not surprise me.

This story provides a nice background on the subject of online music subscription services, If you've been wanting to catch up on the big music industry players so you can follow along in the Department of Justice's big anti-trust investigation, try MP3: Just Press Play -- The future of digital music is almost here. Please have your credit card ready.

My own Turn About Is Fair Player provides a bit more detail on the history and politics of the subject.

Does Osama have nukes? Here's one perspective from the other side of the world.

See: US mulls neutralising Pak nuclear facilities from The Times of India. (Thanks Doug!)

Okay guys, when we said "a war against every country that supports terrorism" we didn't really mean to include the United States, did we? (albeit history will attest that it qualifies).

If you don't believe that airport security is getting a little out of hand, and quickly (although I personally have had nothing but easy going experiences myself even as recently as yesterday), read Homeland Insecurity : A Sacramento journalist is taken into custody by police and forced to destroy photos by an over-zealous National Guardsman. Apparently, the terrorists are indeed causing instability, by R.V. Scheide.

It was 5:15 pm on Wednesday, October 12, and we had call to be apprehensive. The previous day, the FBI had placed the entire nation on high alert, based on "credible" information that Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden, was planning reprisal attacks on U.S. soil for the coming weekend. The bureau urged Americans to report any suspicious activity. Friday morning, armed troops from the California National Guard were deployed at Sacramento International Airport.

America, as we've been told over and over since September 11, is forever changed. Nowhere is this change more evident than in our approach to national security. Practically overnight, major metropolitan airports across the country have been turned into militarized zones crawling with armed soldiers and police. Their presence is designed to deter terrorists and provide us with a sense of security, but as I was about to discover, that security has come at a high price.

I'd purchased a roundtrip ticket from Sacramento International to LAX to observe firsthand the unprecedented measures being taken to combat terrorism. There'd been more than a little fear and paranoia in Sacramento and I expected to find more of the same in Los Angeles.

I didn't expect to be ordered to destroy photographs by an irate National Guardsman. I didn't expect the Los Angeles Police Department to confiscate and read the notes I'd taken on my trip. I didn't expect to be questioned by the FBI and detained for nearly three hours for no probable cause.

I didn't expect any of these things, but that's what happened. As I followed my fellow passengers up the jetway and into the LAX terminal, I had no idea I was stepping onto the War on Terrorism's first domestic battlefield, where, as in all wars, truth was about to become the first casualty.

The FBI is toying with the idea of torturing suspects. See the article by Damian Whitworth for the Times of London: FBI considers torture as suspects stay silent.

Will the United States be the next country on Amnesty International's list of campaigns?

The world has changed immeasurably since AI first began denouncing torture at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, but torture continues and is not confined to military dictatorships or authoritarian regimes; torture is inflicted in democratic states too.

Like the United States of America, if we're not careful.

Here's an excerpt from the Times of London article:

Under US law, evidence extracted using physical pressure or torture is inadmissible in court and interrogators could also face criminal charges for employing such methods. However, investigators suggested that the time might soon come when a truth serum, such as sodium pentothal, would be deemed an acceptable tool for interrogators.

The investigators have been disappointed that the usual incentives to break suspects, such as promises of shorter sentences, money, jobs and new lives in the witness protection programme, have failed to break the silence.

"We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck. Usually there is some incentive, some angle to play, what you can do for them. But it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure . . . where we don't have a choice, and we are probably getting there," an FBI agent involved in the investigation told the paper.

If we allow our FBI to torture suspects in the cause of safeguarding our freedom, we'll be descending into tyranny even as we seek to defeat it.

These men are easy to hate because of the crimes they are accused, but remember, these men are not convicted felons. They are only suspects and in our country that means they are innocent until proven guilty.

Who will be the next suspect that the authorities will decide is witholding information? You? Me? The guy that the National Guard and United Airlines wouldn't allow to fly because he was readingi Harry Potter books?

Our due process should not be taken lightly. Its checks and balances were put in place to protect us -- not terrorists. We cannot yeild its protections for any reason.

We're talking about people who are only *suspected* of committing crimes and withholding information. Mistakes happen all the time. Are we ready to risk torturing innocent people? Of course not. That's why we are a civilized country that has laws against these kinds of practices. Right?

Right?

Here's a telling Economist article that provides a nice background analysis and a some accurate predictions about where Microsoft is headed with Windows XP and .NET: Microsoft Extending its tentacles.

The U. S. Department of Energy has issued a bulletin that warns its employees about Windows XP and explains how to protect themselves from allowing it to inadvertently send their private information to Microsoft.

Why should anyone else be less worried about their privacy being compromised by Windows XP?

Office XP Error Reporting May Send Sensitive Documents to Microsoft

Microsoft Office XP and Internet Explorer version 5 and later are configured to request to send debugging information to Microsoft in the event of a program crash. The debugging information includes a memory dump which may contain all or part of the document being viewed or edited. This debug message potentially could contain sensitive, private information.

Sensitive or private information could inadvertently be sent to Microsoft. Some simple testing of the feature found document information in one message out of three.

SOLUTION: Apply the registry changes listed in this bulletin to disable the automatic sending of debugging information. If you are working with sensitive information and a program asks to send debugging information to Microsoft, you should click Don't Send.

Microsoft seems to consider such compromises a feature of XP called "Corporate Error Reporting" and provides a full explanation of this feature and others like it on its web site. Here's how it works in IE5.

Steve Bonisteel also wrote a piece about it for NewsBytes.

Larry Ellison has gotten the Wall Street Journal's attention with his crackpot ID card idea. See: Smart Cards -- Digital IDs can help prevent terrorism.

Ellison thinks the "good news" is that we can all choose to throw both our privacy and our hard-earned tax dollars out the window and invest in a new series of completely untested database cross-referencing schemes that collectively impose a new identification system upon our own country's domestic air travellers:

The good news is that a national database combined with biometrics, thumb prints, hand prints, iris scans, or other new technology could detect false identities. Gaining entry to an airport or other secure location would require people to present a photo ID, put their thumb on a fingerprint scanner and tell the guard their Social Security number. This information would be cross-checked with the database.

The government could phase in digital ID cards to replace existing Social Security cards and driver's licenses. These new IDs should be based on a uniform standard such as credit card technology, which is harder to counterfeit than existing government IDs, or on smart-card technology, which is better but more expensive.

There is no need to compel any American to have a digital ID. Some Americans may choose to apply for a digital ID card to speed the airport security check-in process. Some states might use digital IDs for their next generation of driver's licenses. Companies might want to replace their current hodgepodge of IDs with the new system. In fact, a voluntary system of standardized IDs issued by government agencies and private companies could prove more effective than a mandatory system.

So I get it, we can replace the current hodge podge of IDs with a new hodge podge of IDs...And Oracle can be at the center of it all. Great idea Larry!

Oh no, it's happening already. Law-abiding Americans are being harassed and unnecessarily detained by the National Guard when flying. This time a Flight Attendant didn't like a passenger's chosen reading material (Heyduke Lives! by Edward Abbey).

Read about how Neil Godfrey got the third degree twice. The second time for carrying a Harry Potter book! (No kidding!) (Thanks Cory)

Another 10 minutes or so passed while he sat in the waiting area. A female United employee — Godfrey failed to jot down her name — came over and informed him that he wouldn’t be allowed to fly, "for three reasons."

The first reason, she said, was that Godfrey was reading a book with an illustration of a bomb on the cover. Secondly, she said, he purchased his ticket on Sept. 11. (Godfrey bought the ticket on Priceline.com shortly after midnight, at least eight hours before the World Trade Center was attacked).

And the final reason cited by the United employee was that Godfrey’s Arizona driver’s license had expired. The employee pointed to a date to substantiate this allegation.

"No," Godfrey told her. "That’s the day the license was issued."

The woman then pointed to another date on the card, Feb. 17, 2000, contending it was the expiration date. Godfrey countered that the date identified him as "under 21" until then.

"Too bad, it’s too late," the flight attendant informed him.

A defeated and disappointed Godfrey reclaimed his luggage and was escorted out of the airport.

My buddy Bill Lazar had the guts to use a word to describe the RIAA I consciously decided against when I wrote my latest weblog for O'Reilly and Associates:

RIAA Threatened By Anti-Terrorist Law.

But hey, if the shoe fits :-)

Dianne Feinstein is at it again. This time she's teaming up with Larry Ellison to impose national ID cards on all of us. See:

Hey I've got an idea: how about we use the ID card system we already have in place! We each already have Social Security numbers, Drivers Licenses, State-issued ID cards and Visas, Passports and Green Cards to identify foreigners.

Implementing a National ID card system is a lose-lose situation for Americans that would drain millions of dollars from our budget without actually providing the American people with any additional protection.

At least Ellison is finally admitting that he's not really agreeing to donate much of anything. I hope our government doesn't fall for this shenanigan, or we'll all pay the price.

Here's an excerpt from the story mentioned above where Ellison tried to defend himself:

Shalini Chowdhary, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said the U.S. government could end up spending more than $3 billion on computer chips, hardware, software and services that go into creating so-called ``smart'' ID cards.

Ellison said that if he does donate the software, maintenance and upgrades won't be free.

``I don't think the government has any trouble paying for the labor associated with the software,'' he said. ``I made this offer not because the government can't afford to pay for the software, but because I shut up the critics who were saying, `Gee, Larry Ellison wants to build a national database because he wants to sell more databases,' which is pretty cynical and bizarre. What's in it for me is the same thing that's in it for you: a safer America.''

It's starting already, the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act sounds like it's targetting terrorism, but the real targets are Americans. (See Terror Bill Limits Gambling, Too .)

Democrats were similarly split, with ranking member saying that college students must be shielded from gambling's lure. "The chief users of Internet gambling are not terrorists, they are our youths," said Rep. John LaFalce (D-New York). "Lots of different kids are given credit cards -- not one -- multiple cards. It's easy to gamble from dormitory rooms, or with wireless connections from campus quads, or with Palm Pilots any place."

During the 90-minute debate, liberal icon Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) sounded almost libertarian. "Too many people who disapprove of gambling want to ban it," Frank said. "It's not generally been the policy of the U.S. government to tell people how to spend their money."

The bill would ban credit card companies from issuing card numbers to be used on gambling websites. Credit card firms and banks would be liable if they have "actual knowledge" that they may be providing services to online casinos, a penalty that some members said went too far.

"The problem with actual knowledge is that a court can assume this," said Castle, the sponsor of the unsuccessful amendment.

The only committee member who voted against the final bill was Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Texas.

Paul said the anti-gambling sections were about "whether the government should try and mold behavior. Over centuries governments have tried to do this.... Gambling is entertainment. We should not allow government to regulate entertainment."

The highly controversial USA Act passed today by a 96-1 vote. The lone dissenter was Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin.

Feingold had attempted to amend the bill, but unfortunately, he was unsuccessful. (See: A Senator's Lonely Privacy Fight .)

Here are a few excerpts from one account -- Terror Bill Clears Senate, by Declan McCullagh for Wired News.

During the three-hour debate, the Senate voted to table -- effectively killing -- Feingold's amendments, which would have:

• Still allowed police to perform "roving wiretaps" and listen in on any telephone that a subject of an investigation might use. But cops could only eavesdrop when the suspect is the person using the phone. The amendment was rejected, 90-7.

• Preseved the privacy of sensitive records -- such as medical or educational data -- by requiring police to convince a judge that viewing them is necessary. Without that amendment, the USA Act expands police's ability to access any type of stored or "tangible" information. The amendment was rejected, 89-8.

• Clarified that universities, libraries and employers may only snoop on people who use their computers in narrow circumstances. Right now, the USA Act says that system administrators should be able to monitor anyone they deem a "computer trespasser." The amendment was rejected, 83-13.

• Barred police from obtaining a court order, sneaking into a suspect's home, and not notifiying that person they had been there. The "secret search" section currently is part of the USA Act -- and is something the Justice Department has wanted at least since 1999, when they unsuccessfully asked Congress for that power at the time. The amendment was not introduced.

Feingold's amendments would have rewritten only a tiny portion of the vast, 243-page bill. Even if they had been added, the USA Act still allows police to conduct Internet eavesdropping without a court order in some circumstances, lets federal prosecutors imprison non-citizens for extended periods, and expands the duration of an electronic surveillance order issued by a secret court from 90 to 120 days.

I saw Senator Barbara Boxer on television this morning talking about the Airport Security Bill that has been working its way through Congress. She described two key issues that have been holding things up. Issues that I personally hope she and other members of Congress keep fighting for:

1. "To make sure that those screeners at the airport are really professionals," and not unqualified people hired quickly and trained poorly in haste.

2. To have extended unemployment benefits for the displaced airline workers. "Since we've helped the airlines keep flying, we feel that we should help the airlines people that have been laid off."

   Boxer is worried that if this issue isn't dealt with now, it may never be dealt with. That would be bad for the thousands of Americans that have been laid off as a result of this tragedy.

   "We can't get agreement to do it," Boxer said. "Sometimes you have to stand up and fight for people that maybe don't have the same voice as the airline executives."

She also noted that, presently, the biggest problem is the Fillibustering going on that's getting in the way of even taking a vote.

Posted by Lisa at 09:25 AM

Dianne Feinstein thinks our already strained National Guard should be patrolling the highways and bottlenecking imported goods: Feinstein wants security role for National Guard - Senator would expand duties far beyond airport protection.

Feinstein's proposal, if put into effect, would result in the largest call- up of the National Guard in more than 50 years. The last time units were used in such numbers was during the Korean War, when the 40th Division of the California National Guard was sent into combat.

"Five million cargo containers entered the United States last year," she said, "and only 2 percent were inspected. We have always put trade ahead of the security of our nation."

Hmmm. Seems like a funny time for confessions.

I wonder who the "we" is. I guess the only thing we know for sure is that Dianne was speaking for herself.

Even more frightening is the idea that the government could use its new, expanded role for subtler purposes than accusing someone of breaking a law. Consider the case of Bill Maher, who made a controversial comment on his Politically Incorrect show, which now faces cancellation. Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the White House, condemned Maher's statement, then uttered this chilling remark: "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." Whether or not you agree with what Maher said, his right to free speech is one of the essential principles on which our country was founded. Fleischer's threat that Americans always need to watch what they say and do addresses my fear: that security measures put into place to catch these terrorists could eventually be used to silence dissenting voices within our media and populace. To surrender the right to say what we think is to give up what we're trying to defend in the first place.

Assuming for the moment that the civilized world is not about to come to an end, we must be careful not to grant our government too much power, because it will be nearly impossible to reclaim what we've given away after the current threat is dealt with. If the government installs its Carnivore surveillance machines in our ISPs now, it could be hard to get them removed once everything (hopefully) returns to normal. Given what happened 17 long days ago, it seems a bit strange to write about holding onto our freedom to exchange the odd MP3 over the Internet. There are so many more serious issues at hand. But with any luck, we will again start caring about the things that concerned us before that tragic morning changed everything. When that day comes, I want our civil liberties to be as strong as they are now. The combination of the Internet and computers could be the perfect tool for control and surveillance of our citizens. In our quest for justice and security, let's try to hold on to some measure of our freedoms.

This September 14, 2001 letter from Dr. Anthony T. Kern, a retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and a former Professor in Aviation Studies and Director of Military History at the USAF Academy, courtesty of the Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War (Colonel of Truth), provides some great insight into the physical and psychological battles we can look forward to in the future if we actually go forward with this thing.

Here's the introduction a friend of mine received with it: "This was written by my academic advisor at the Academy. He was not only one of the most brilliant men I've ever met, but also an individual who combined that brilliance with common sense to lead others. His words are the ones that haven't been heard yet but I believe will come to be true before we have the chance to recover from this initial tragedy."

Hmmm. What would Thoreau think of this National Review online article by Jonah Goldberg about the situation with Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher.