Slashdot Mirror

http://www.fas.org/news/reference/lexicon/aca.htm

And that's just for A.

TimedArt

The RFID blocker appears to be, as I see it, mainly for the benefit of those with RFID passports.

The vast majority of access-control systems, that I know of, do not employ RFID chips in any case. The most popular proximity system that I'm aware of uses cards and readers made by HID Corporation.

Said readers depend, typically, on either a 125kHz LF or 13.56Mhz HF signal to read a unique pattern coded into each card. Considering the penetrating power of LF and VLF signals (the Navy uses VLF to communicate with submerged subs), I'm curious to see how such a product will affect my own access card (I just ordered one of the wallet/passport case combos).

Once I get the thing, I will conduct a few experiments and post the results here.

Keep the peace(es).

... you could probably design the loop on an incline, say up the side of a mountain ...

Brilliant! Stand the whole thing up vertically inside a mountain. Dig it out of nice, solid granite. The mass of a mountain would surely withstand the large g-forces such a thing would generate. Plus, you could have multiple launch tunnels for when the projectile leaves the ring; to the East and West, for instance. Keeping the launch ramp on the same plane as the ring would also avoid any issues with a change in the centrifugal force vector as a projectile transitions from the ring to the launch ramp as depicted in the artist's conceptual drawing.

What? Its not like the government doesn't have any experience digging tunnels in mountains...

All anti-air weapons come with radars these days, you're not going to hit a UAV with an AK-47 no matter how good of a shot you are.

All anti-air weapons come with radars these days, you're not going to hit a UAV with an AK-47 no matter how good of a shot you are.

Back during the 2004 debates, President Bush was hit with the question to name 3 mistakes he had made. He offered up only a vague answer that he might have picked different people for some of his appointments.

More than anything, this Washington Post rambling chronology (story?) screams very loudly at one of George Bushs's largest mistakes - letting George Tenet (and Richard Clarke) stay on from the Clinton administration. At least in part, I believe the reason Condoleeza and Rumsfeld did not do what they wanted was because she didn't trust their judgement. Colin Powell and his buddy Richard Armitage are surely on that list now, too.

For those who skipped reading the article, here are some of the "on one hand, and then on the other hand" qualifiers to the central assertion:

"Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser"

Note that in July, 2001, Condoleeza Rice was the "Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs" - which while it is an important position, did not make her part of the Cabinet. The National Security advisor is just that - a staff advisor to the President heading the national security council. The Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are "statutory advisors", but -not- members of that council . Just to remind you that now she is the Secretary of State - and not to confuse those two roles.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm
(that is the order where Ms Rice reforms the NSC under her management)

"For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden."

Unless I wasn't listening clearly, former President Clinton has stated that he did *sign* a finding specifically authorizing the CIA to kill (not just capture) Bin Laden. When? Is there any proof of that? Why wasn't it carried out? Is Bob Woodward fact checking this for his next book deal?

Well, ask Richard Clarke, the now authority on all such matters:

From that right-wing propoganda machine, the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/030 804fa_fact

"Clarke told me that in the mid-nineties "the C.I.A. was authorized to mount operations to go into Afghanistan and apprehend bin Laden." President Clinton, Clarke said, "was really gung-ho" about the scenario. "He had no hesitations," he said. "But the C.I.A. had hesitations. They didn't want their own people killed. And they didn't want their shortcomings exposed. They really didn't have the paramilitary capability to do it; they could not stage a snatch operation." Instead of trying to mount the operation themselves, Clarke said, "the C.I.A. basically paid a bunch of local Afghans, who went in and did nothing."

Continuing with the Post story...

"Two weeks earlier, he [George Tenet] had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

In writing? Any recording? Any proof? What did he mean by "it"?

"On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real.""

Hmmm... "top secret"? That has a specific meaning in government circles - beyond comic book characters. Should we look for the NY Times to be leaking this document before the upcoming election?

"Tenet [...] had two main points when they met with her [Rice]. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself."

-possibly-

This is not news. Everyone agreed that he probably was going to do something somewhere at some time.

"Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the prob

Guidance is accomplished via the tight coupling of an accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) with a 3-axis Inertial Navigation System (INS).
30 meter CEP on INS alone, 13 meters with GPS. Enough to make a militarily significant difference.

>They forget to mention that we would probably do the same (if not worse) to deter spy satellites over our own country.

The first Soviet spy satellite (Zenit) went up in freaking _1962_. Of course it was for photographing the US.

The US signed treaties (SALT, START) binding it not to interfere with spy satellites. Those treaties were with the USSR, but do you have *any* evidence the US has interfered with the FSW-1?

The Cold War was too recent to be completely forgotten like this.

(The military's side of the GPS signal IS encrypted, by the way. Jamming means raising the noise floor so the signal can't be heard).

"A theocracy that needs nukes certainly has a faith problem. "

What about a theocracy (Iran) which is situated rather near a theocracy which already has nukes and has refused to sign non-proliferation treaties or allow inspection of its nuclear program(Israel)?
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

If the United States would like Iran to stop trying to arm itself, maybe we should stop arming their neighbors.

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/slbd. jpg (From: http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/mirac l.htm)

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/slbd. jpg (From: http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/mirac l.htm)

...are financing most of our balance or payments thanks to Bush

The growth of China to an economic power did not happen overnight. Continued trade with China, despite attempts to tie trade to mitigating its human rights situation (e.g., Tianamen Square 1989), has been going on for at least two decades - well before the current administration. Here:

http://www.itds.treas.gov/mfn.html

If you want to read up on the impact of the Most Favored Nation trading status, you will find a solid evaluation here:

http://www.fas.org/man/crs/92-094.htm

Check the facts first before making sweeping announcements. Don't let your Bush Derangement Syndrome get the better of you.

grounding all the Blackbirds and relying on Satallites was a really good one.

Be assured that the SR-71 was replaced with a more capable spacecraft. It is likely that the Chinese only shined lasers on the satellites they could see. Meanwhile the US has nasty laser weapons of its own.

No, I just ignore "facts" from right-wing websites with as much credibility as Baghdad Bob. Which is about all that turns up if you Google for "saddam hussein terrorism".

• The UN Security Council ("Deploring threats made by Iraq during the recent conflict to make use of terrorism against targets outside Iraq" and "Requires Iraq to inform the Security Council that it will not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory")
  
• President Clinton ("In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists")
  
• President Clinton's State Department ("Iraq continued to plan and sponsor international terrorism in 1999").
  
• The Council on Foreign Relations ("Saddam Hussein's dictatorship provided headquarters, operating bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist groups...")
  
• President Jimmy Carter, who placed Iraq on the State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in 1979
  
• Vladimir Putin, who warned us in 2002 that Iraq was plotting terrorist attacks against the United States

Fantastic idea. I'd personally like to know where the $507 billion since 9/11 through FY2007E was and will be spent - with breakouts by mercenary wages, secret prisons, black operations, etc. Given how forthcoming this administration isn't with everything else it is doing from NSA spying on U.S. citizens to the use of the state secrets priviledge to fend off lawsuits aimed at getting them to provide more information, this can only be posturing for the upcoming election. Check out the Secrecy Report Card 2006 for an eye-opening discussion.

Later planes probably use a phased array radar which has no moving parts. It varies the phase of the outgoing signals in each mini-antenna in the array to determine which direction the signal fires out from the overall array. No moving parts so it can track and be redirected instantly. I suspect the F-14 was one of the first planes with a phased array radar (which would've been a rather impressive feat in the 1970s with nowhere near the computing power we have today).

Looks like I was right. Search for AWG-9 in this link.

The US navy at one point had at least 699 F14's in service or on order (that sounds incredibly high, is it a typo on fas.org?), at a per-copy cost of $38,000,000, plus maintainence costs with exceed procurement costs over the lifetime of each aircraft. So figure $56,000,000,000.

Now here's a little quiz for your flight-sim jockeys out there. Guess how many bogeys the F14 shot down 34 year run, in total? Guess before you read the answer.

Answer: 4 jets and 1 helicopter.

...They do have a web of trust, right...?

It's not like they haven't tested things on US citizens before. For example simulated biological weapon dispersion on US cities:

Cities were unwittingly used as laboratories to test aerosolization and dispersal methods; Aspergillus fumigatus, B. subtilis var. globigii, and Serratia marcescens were used as simulants and released during experiments in New York City, San Francisco, and other sites. Concerns regarding potential public health hazards of simulant studies were raised after an outbreak of nosocomial S. marcescens (formerly Chromobacterium prodigiosum) urinary tract infections at Stanford University Hospital between September 1950 and February 1951, following covert experiments using S. marcescens as a simulant in San Francisco. A report from the Centers for Disease Control completed in 1977 found no association between reported morbidity and mortality from pneumonia and influenza and local simulant experiments.

Some scientists were very concerned the first atomic bomb would produce so much heat it would ignite the atmosphere and burn the entire surface of the earth.

If by very concerned you mean they had an office pool betting on the yield of the first atom bomb, then you would be correct, 'ignite the atmosphere' was a longshot, nothing to be seriously concerned about.

They wrote a paper on it in 1942 http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/003 29010.pdf

Some scientists were very concerned the first atomic bomb would produce so much heat it would ignite the atmosphere and burn the entire surface of the earth.

Under traditional US law, "worth a try" isn't enough reason to break someone's door down and seize their equipment. The standard is "probable cause", an idea the Founders considered so important that it's enshrined in the Constitution where even "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" isn't explicit ("due process" probably implies it). Some senior US officials, however, don't understand the idea of probable cause

The real question is, are muslims more likely to be terrorists?

Actually the answer is no too.

Tell us, oh wise one: Just how many of those UN resolutions were based in part on intelligence provided by the United States? Hmm?

Are you trying to imply that it was faulty US intelligence that led to the UN Security Council passing these resolutions? Because you could only imply this out of ignorance, here is a brief timeline of events, starting with Resolution 687:

• April 1991: The UN Security Council passes 687 that, among other things, requires Iraq to "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision," of its WMDs, and "all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities". This requirement explicitly carries with it the authorization (given in 678) to use military force to achieve compliance. Iraq was required to submit within 15 days a "full, final and complete disclosure" of all of its weapons programs.
• April 1991: Iraq submits its first declaration that is pitifully incomplete and is denounced by the UN.
• June 1991: UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors try to stop an Iraqi vehicle carrying nuclear equipment, and Iraqi soldiers open fire on them
• June 1991: UN Security Council unanimously passes resolution 699 to confirm to Iraq that UNSCOM and IAEA have the legal authority to carry out inspections.
• August 1991: UN Security Council unanimously passes resolution 707 chastising Iraq for their incomplete declaration and demanding full compliance.
• September 1991: Iraq blocks UN inspectors from using helicopters. The UN condemns the action.
• September 1991: UN inspectors uncover large amounts of documentation about Iraq's attempts to aquire nuclear materials, but Iraqi soldiers immediately confiscate and destroy many of the documents and hold the UN inspectors hostage for 4 days trying to obtain the rest of them.
• October 1991: UN Security Council unanimously passes resolution 715, condemning Iraq for their illegal detention of the inspectors and demanding cooperation. Iraq immediately rejects the resolution.
• February 1992: The Security Council releases a presidential statement condemning Iraq for their failure to comply and re-affirming that UNSCOM has the authority to conduct inspections.
• March 1992: Under pressure, Iraq declares previously some undeclared chemical weapons and missile programs, and claims that they were unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991 in violation of resolution 687, but does not offer any verifiable proof of this.
• April 1992: Iraq threatens to shoot down UNSCOM surveillance flights. These threats are condemned in a Presidential statement from the Security Council.
• May 1992: Iraq provides another "full, final and complete disclosure" of it's weapons programs, admitting for the first time that they were researching biological weapons- for "defensive" purposes only, of course.
• June 1992: After inspectors uncover more hidden programs, Iraq updates its "full, final and complete disclosure" againto include more previously undeclared chemical weapons.
• July 1992: UN inspectors are refused access to the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture after the UN uncovered reliable evidence that documentation of more hidden programs were located there. The Security Council condemns the action.
• October 1992: Iraq issues a statement threatening the UN inspectors again. The Security Council condemns the action.
• January 1993: Iraq refuses to allow a UNSCOM aircraft to take off. UN Security Council issues a Presidential statement condemning this as a "material breach" of 687.
• January 1993: Iraq starts sending troops into the DMZ between Iraq and Kuwait

After being elected in November, he opened back channel negotiations with the Ayatollah. The gist is Reagan offered to supply Iran with arms on the condition that Iran held our hostages until he took the oath. That's two months those innocent people had to live in captivity so Reagan could score political points.

It's a touch ironic that the secret hold issue was taken up back in March with the Wyden-Grassley amendment to prohibit secret holds (SA 2944), which passed with a Yea-Nay vote of 84-13. It was an amendment to S.2349, Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006.

It's a touch ironic that the secret hold issue was taken up back in March with the Wyden-Grassley amendment to prohibit secret holds (SA 2944), which passed with a Yea-Nay vote of 84-13. It was an amendment to S.2349, Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006.

As far as the non-TEMPEST compliance goes--I don't know. As I understand it, TEMPEST is literally tin-foil hat paranoid, but honestly there's no reason not to use something as simple as shielded cables is that's all that's preventing compliance.

He said "We found out the FLIR system would not survive temperatures below -5". There is a vast chasm between saying "this FLIR is not rated for -5" and saying "the FLIR would not survive temperatures below -5". I'm not sure on FLIR sensitivity to cold weather, but he is implying it would then break.

Oh another point, all tactical systems that handle classified material and are not in special facilities, e.g. a SCIF, need to be protected against TEMPEST / COMSEC & all that jazz. This is common knowledge for anyone with a SIGINT background in the mil/intel arena.

Obviously a cutter is built for shallow water work. That means near to shores not way out in the Atlantic Ocean. Big Antenna on the shore, camo'd in the trees, picks up classified comms - not unrealistic.

There is no such thing as paranoia when it comes to protecting classified material.

Initially, I was considered as written by an amateur, but then I noticed that part about you being a Marine. Figures!

It's called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed.

Sun Tzu wrote military strategies for armies just prior to the consolidation of states during what is now called the Warring States period. Machiavelli wrote in the hopes of a Prince that his strategies would enable a Prince to unify Italy under a single government - despite the fact he preferred a republican form of government. Neither is particularly insightful on guerilla warfare.

You want to know how the U.S. government approaches this kind of war? Try reading the manuals that the CIA, Marine Corps, U.S. Army and others have put together on the topic.

While these are fairly large to summarize, let's just say that comments like these are not unusual:

Because America retains significant advantages in fires and surveillance, a thinking enemy is unlikely to choose to fight U.S. forces in open battle. Opponents who have attempted to do so, such as in Panama in 1989 or Iraq in 1991 and 2003, have been destroyed in conflicts that have been measured in hours or days. Conversely, opponents who have offset America's fire and surveillance advantages by operating close to civilians and news media, such as Somali clans in 1993 and Iraqi insurgents in 2005, have been more successful in achieving their aims. This does not mean that counterinsurgents do not face open warfare. Insurgents resort to conventional military operations if conditions seem right, in addition to using milder means such as nonviolent political mobilization of people, legal political action, and strikes.

My point is that this is not an issue of fresh troops and a quick in and out strategy. Winning these kinds of wars means living with people, sharing their lives and commitment. It is very much what the original poster was getting at that it requires a completely different frame of reference to "win" a conflict like this one and the military is only one part of many that needs to be brought into play - and they need to think about their jobs differently as these manuals will attest.

While it is possible to use a strategy like the Romans did with their legions where you have quick strike capability (by building roads) that maintains a certain level of discipline throughout an empire, this was used in conjunction with other political and social strategies. Ultimately, it was Rome's dependence on the legions and the use of mercenaries that eventually was the undoing of that empire - a lesson the U.S. would do well to learn.

Sun Tzu wrote military strategies for armies just prior to the consolidation of states during what is now called the Warring States period. Machiavelli wrote in the hopes of a Prince that his strategies would enable a Prince to unify Italy under a single government - despite the fact he preferred a republican form of government. Neither is particularly insightful on guerilla warfare.

You want to know how the U.S. government approaches this kind of war? Try reading the manuals that the CIA, Marine Corps, U.S. Army and others have put together on the topic.

While these are fairly large to summarize, let's just say that comments like these are not unusual:

Because America retains significant advantages in fires and surveillance, a thinking enemy is unlikely to choose to fight U.S. forces in open battle. Opponents who have attempted to do so, such as in Panama in 1989 or Iraq in 1991 and 2003, have been destroyed in conflicts that have been measured in hours or days. Conversely, opponents who have offset America's fire and surveillance advantages by operating close to civilians and news media, such as Somali clans in 1993 and Iraqi insurgents in 2005, have been more successful in achieving their aims. This does not mean that counterinsurgents do not face open warfare. Insurgents resort to conventional military operations if conditions seem right, in addition to using milder means such as nonviolent political mobilization of people, legal political action, and strikes.

My point is that this is not an issue of fresh troops and a quick in and out strategy. Winning these kinds of wars means living with people, sharing their lives and commitment. It is very much what the original poster was getting at that it requires a completely different frame of reference to "win" a conflict like this one and the military is only one part of many that needs to be brought into play - and they need to think about their jobs differently as these manuals will attest.

While it is possible to use a strategy like the Romans did with their legions where you have quick strike capability (by building roads) that maintains a certain level of discipline throughout an empire, this was used in conjunction with other political and social strategies. Ultimately, it was Rome's dependence on the legions and the use of mercenaries that eventually was the undoing of that empire - a lesson the U.S. would do well to learn.

Sun Tzu wrote military strategies for armies just prior to the consolidation of states during what is now called the Warring States period. Machiavelli wrote in the hopes of a Prince that his strategies would enable a Prince to unify Italy under a single government - despite the fact he preferred a republican form of government. Neither is particularly insightful on guerilla warfare.

You want to know how the U.S. government approaches this kind of war? Try reading the manuals that the CIA, Marine Corps, U.S. Army and others have put together on the topic.

While these are fairly large to summarize, let's just say that comments like these are not unusual:

Because America retains significant advantages in fires and surveillance, a thinking enemy is unlikely to choose to fight U.S. forces in open battle. Opponents who have attempted to do so, such as in Panama in 1989 or Iraq in 1991 and 2003, have been destroyed in conflicts that have been measured in hours or days. Conversely, opponents who have offset America's fire and surveillance advantages by operating close to civilians and news media, such as Somali clans in 1993 and Iraqi insurgents in 2005, have been more successful in achieving their aims. This does not mean that counterinsurgents do not face open warfare. Insurgents resort to conventional military operations if conditions seem right, in addition to using milder means such as nonviolent political mobilization of people, legal political action, and strikes.

My point is that this is not an issue of fresh troops and a quick in and out strategy. Winning these kinds of wars means living with people, sharing their lives and commitment. It is very much what the original poster was getting at that it requires a completely different frame of reference to "win" a conflict like this one and the military is only one part of many that needs to be brought into play - and they need to think about their jobs differently as these manuals will attest.

While it is possible to use a strategy like the Romans did with their legions where you have quick strike capability (by building roads) that maintains a certain level of discipline throughout an empire, this was used in conjunction with other political and social strategies. Ultimately, it was Rome's dependence on the legions and the use of mercenaries that eventually was the undoing of that empire - a lesson the U.S. would do well to learn.

I think maybe you should do a little research, FISA was set up expessly for that reason. http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/ The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 prescribes procedures for requesting judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power. Requests are adjudicated by a special eleven member court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The ruling won't stand...here's why from someone who knows what they are talking about.

The Honorable Anna Diggs-Taylor probably means well. The lone judge in American history to order a president to halt in wartime a foreign-intelligence-collection program that has undoubtedly saved lives probably sympathizes with the journalists, and others, who are suing to stop the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) in which NSA intercepts foreign-U.S. terrorist communications. She probably feels in her heart the program is wrong, and undoubtedly hears the footsteps of the federal judicial panel moving towards taking this case away from her and consolidating it with others.

We can sympathize with her motives, and even share some of her gut feelings of uneasiness about the program. But we cannot accept the stunningly amateurish piece of, I hesitate even to call it legal work, by which she purports to make our government go deaf and dumb to those would murder us en masse. Her bosses on the Court of Appeals and/or the United States Supreme Court will not accept it.

Much will be said about this opinion in the coming days. I'll start with this: I wouldn't accept this utterly unsupported, constitutionally and logically bankrupt collection of musings from a first-year law student, much less a new lawyer at my firm. Why not? Herewith, a start at a very long list of what's wrong with Judge Taylor's opinion.

Process Fouls. When you sue your plumber over a disputed $50 invoice, before deciding who wins, the judge is required to jump through some minor constitutional hoops like actually hearing evidence (as opposed to press reports), holding hearings, and reading and understanding the briefs filed and the laws at issue. Judge Taylor appears to have taken none of these rudimentary steps before issuing one of the most sweeping wartime legal rulings in our nation's history. Experts on both sides agree it is impossible to decide the crucial Fourth and First Amendment issues in this case without detailed, factual knowledge of precisely what the government is doing (see, e.g., the brief I filed with the Washington Legal Foundation, at www.morgancunningham.net, and the excellent testimony of David Kris, at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/index.html ). Judge Taylor apparently needs no more facts than what she reads in the papers.

Worse, the judge clearly failed to do enough homework to understand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act itself, much less the Fourth Amendment. She gets basic provisions of the statute itself wrong, e.g., apparently believing that a provision explicitly dealing with foreign agent/non-U.S. persons communications constitutes an "exception" to FISA's warrant requirements. She also seems to make the elementary and fatal mistake made by many commentators, that the government can, under FISA, listen in on conversations for 72 hours without meeting FISA's substantive and procedural tests. This is simply false. NSA cannot lawfully, under FISA, listen to a single syllable of a covered communication until it can prove to the Attorney General (usually in writing) that it can jump through each and every one of FISA's procedural and substantive hoops. These basic errors could have been corrected had the court bothered to gather any evidence or hold substantive hearings.

More worrisome still are the judge's breathtaking mistakes in analyzing the Fourth and First Amendments--errors that would earn our first-year law student an "F." Here's one of several examples: The judge asserts that the Fourth Amendment, in all cases, "requires prior warrants for any reasonable search, based upon prior-existing probable cause." She cites no legal authority whatsoever for this colossal misstatement of the law, because none exists. Instead, there are numerous situations where our courts have found no prior warrant is required, so long as a search is "reasonable." Fatal to her position is the very Supreme Court case she

What made-up statistics? Israel's number of nuclear weapons? Actually, "100-400" better represents the range. Check out the Federation of American Scientists discussion of the topic. They low-ball the number compared to other's that I've read, but they have a pretty nice discussion of the issue.

For some background on the subject, you might find the history of Mordechai Vanunu interesting. The capture was especially interesting.. He was quite clever, apart from his weakness for women. Because he did this while being moved, Israel had to change their prisoner transportation policies.

Unless your house is a big steel ship you won't have much to worry about.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/dega ussing.htm

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m61.htm

*Shrug*. My country has been targetted by Islamic terrorists for about two decades. They are backed by a Chinese/US/Saudi Arabia supported, armed and funded nuclear power. The Islamic terrorists already have nukes. Believe me, it really can't get worse from where I sit.

http://www.kashmir-information.com/Terrorism/
https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/pipermail/ornet/2002 -June/004544.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Kashmir
http://www.kashmirherald.com/january2002/kashmirte rrorismupdate.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10958641/
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/fellows/beher a_20020525.htm
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlin es/volume16/Article1.htm
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index. html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/12/terror/m ain648733.shtml
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1577.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_ of_mass_destruction
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/000575.html
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040104-102921-916 6r.htm

And you think I worry about teeny little things like giving nukes to Lebanon forcing Israel to openly declare its nuclear status? I suspect you need to learn a little bit more about the rest of the world.

-Eric

"Rockets" have no guidance system. They are purely ballistic. The various "Katyusha" Hezbollah fires are not noticably different from the types the Soviets fired at the German in WWII. Hezbollah does have a few cruise missiles and medium range missiles with inertial guidance systems, But I have not seen evidence that they have been using them against Israeli cities. They did successfully attack an Israeli warship with a cruise missile.

Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun. Nazi rockets -> USAF rockets -> NASA. We were able to make ICBMs because we hired the guy who had learned the hard way how to make them (it's said more people died building the V2 rockets that were killed by them), and we were able to do early spacflight because we had ICBMs worked out.

The technology to go to orbit and return safely (or, at least accurately) is the technology to put a payload down anywhere on Earth.

Sure, the trip from LEO to the moon was just showing off, but Gemini was proof that our ICBMs really would work, and of course most of the rocketry components were built by the same companies that made the rocketry components for ICBMs. Gemini was certainly a spin-off from the nuclear arms race, as were the satellites of the era.

See Executive Order 13292, signed into law by George Bush, which governs classified information. For the changes he made to Clinton's classification policies, see here.

See Executive Order 13292, signed into law by George Bush, which governs classified information. For the changes he made to Clinton's classification policies, see here.

The responsibility for deciding questions of privilege and access to evidence is central to the role of a judge in conducting a trial.

This authority is well established. In his well-known 1940 treatise on evidence, John Wigmore recognized the existence of "state secrets" but also concluded that the scope of the privilege had to be decided by a judge, not executive officials. He agreed that there "must be a privilege for secrets of State, i.e. matters whose disclosure would endager [sic] the Nation's governmental requirements or its relations of friendship and profit with other nations." Yet he cautioned that this privilege "has been so often improperly invoked and so loosely misapplied that a strict definition of its legitimate limits must be made."

Wigmore considered the claim of "state secrets" so abstract and useless that he divided it into eight categories, including exemptions from giving testimony, attending court, providing evidence by deposition, and disclosing communications by informers to government prosecutors. But on the duty to give evidence, he was unambiguous: "Let it be understood, then, that there is no exemption, for officials as such, or for the Executive as such, from the universal testimonial duty to give evidence in judicial investigations." An exemption from attendance in court "does not involve any concession either of an exemption from the Executive's general testimonial duty to furnish evidence or of a judicial inability to enforce the performance of that duty."

Wigmore came down clearly on which branch should determine the necessity for secrecy. It was the judiciary: "Shall every subordinate in the department have access to the secret, and not the presiding officer of justice? Cannot the constitutionally coördinate body of government share the confidence? The truth cannot be escaped that a Court which abdicates its inherent function of determining the facts upon which the admissibility of evidence depends will furnish to bureaucratic officials too ample opportunities for abusing the privilege . . . Both principle and policy demand that the determination of the privilege shall be for the Court."

The responsibility for deciding questions of privilege and access to evidence is central to the role of a judge in conducting a trial.

This authority is well established. In his well-known 1940 treatise on evidence, John Wigmore recognized the existence of "state secrets" but also concluded that the scope of the privilege had to be decided by a judge, not executive officials. He agreed that there "must be a privilege for secrets of State, i.e. matters whose disclosure would endager [sic] the Nation's governmental requirements or its relations of friendship and profit with other nations." Yet he cautioned that this privilege "has been so often improperly invoked and so loosely misapplied that a strict definition of its legitimate limits must be made."

Wigmore considered the claim of "state secrets" so abstract and useless that he divided it into eight categories, including exemptions from giving testimony, attending court, providing evidence by deposition, and disclosing communications by informers to government prosecutors. But on the duty to give evidence, he was unambiguous: "Let it be understood, then, that there is no exemption, for officials as such, or for the Executive as such, from the universal testimonial duty to give evidence in judicial investigations." An exemption from attendance in court "does not involve any concession either of an exemption from the Executive's general testimonial duty to furnish evidence or of a judicial inability to enforce the performance of that duty."

Wigmore came down clearly on which branch should determine the necessity for secrecy. It was the judiciary: "Shall every subordinate in the department have access to the secret, and not the presiding officer of justice? Cannot the constitutionally coördinate body of government share the confidence? The truth cannot be escaped that a Court which abdicates its inherent function of determining the facts upon which the admissibility of evidence depends will furnish to bureaucratic officials too ample opportunities for abusing the privilege . . . Both principle and policy demand that the determination of the privilege shall be for the Court."

In most cases they never know. Of the thousands of Microsoft programmers in China, what are the odds that not one works for the PLA or of the thousands in India workingn for any of these agencies. I bet every one of those agencies has at least one Microsoft employee, at least some of which are interested in back-doors.

What is Microsoft getting out of the deal?

The only thing Microsoft knows is that they hired a top security expert for less than market rate -- which is exactly what they wanted when they were looking into offshore employees to begin with.

The U.S. government financed development of 'remote viewing' for over 20 years. It's said that the spooks hated the program, but because they got results, right from the start, they allowed it to continue until the soviet union broke apart.

Or there is an alternate explanation... Like maybe the researchers involved were scientologists, most of the supposed psychics were too, and this was just a clever project to milk the public for a few million dollars.

Hmm...the military has been working on this for years to destroy tactical missiles and artillery rounds in flight. I'd be very surprised if it shows up at airports before it shows up in air defense artillery units.

(The links I provided describe intermediate systems. One is a developmental laser. The other is not capable of engaging aerial targets).

How long before one of these things mistakes a passenger jet for a rocket? Who's going to man the thing? I mean, Aegis Combat System is more or less the same thing and it shot down a passenger jet and there's relatively few Aegis systems. Imagine having these things at every major airport. I dunno, I don't think I'd be very comfortable flying with these things up and running.