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Official Summary

12/2/2010--Introduced.Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act or the SHIELD Act - Amends the federal criminal code to expand the prohibition against disclosure of classified information to include:

(1) disclosures of classified information that benefit a transnational threat; and

(2) any classified information concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government or concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the U.S. intelligence community. Defines "transnational threat" as:

(1) any activity, including international terrorism, narcotics trafficking, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the delivery systems for such weapons, or organized crime, that threatens the national security of the United States; or

(2) any individual or group that engages such activity. link

You know that hasn't become law yet, right? It passed the house, but never passed the Senate. It's been idle since last June.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h780/show

Doesn't matter. All the ISP's have been retaining for at least 2 years since it first was being talked about. Most ISP's retain between 3 and 5 years for web requests, just to be safe. It might have technically died this time around, but expect to see something in the future at some point.
Oh, and also FYI if you hit a flagged search term, it can trigger a longer retention-period as well.

( I work at a large ISP )

You know that hasn't become law yet, right? It passed the house, but never passed the Senate. It's been idle since last June.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h780/show

it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly.
A massive new agency, funding, private interests and new equipment, contracts to keep it all running and ongoing upgrades.
A new closed system with few new players. Make an issue about it as a contractor and http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3454/show Section 815 will see you blacklisted in other DoD contracts.
A few well connected people are going to get very rich, stay rich and move into other areas.

The basic intent of the bill was to wipe out the competition. All the problems with the food supply so far have been traced back to the big operators. And yet we see: "Outreach to food industry sectors.."

This poll (probably fairly accurate) shows 12% supporting the bill. Clearly it must pass :-/ Bad democrats! This is another trophy on the mantle for the republicans if they ever wanted to play it right.

More info

This is like health "care" "reform" for food. A bureaucratic wonderland to create a culture that could put us in danger of a real famine. Eh, time to cull the population, I guess. Drown 'em in paperwork. It's madness, I tell ya.. Madness!

From what I can gather from the amendment is that it only delays enforcement on small and "very small" business for one and two years respectively.

It's a very horrible bill, as toxic as anything that has passed over the last ten years, giving the feds permission to march onto your farm on any pretext of "food safety". You can bet this "cyber security" bill is no different in the draconian powers this gives to the government.

If this is really the full text of the bill, then it is way too vague. It uses terms like loudness without defining them. If most of the population can't hear above 12kHz because they listened to their iPods too loud when they were younger, then does the definition of "loudness" change? If it doesn't, then expect a lot of treble in the programs and bass in the ads ("When listened to by people without damaged hearing, they are equal loudness").

They've got no interest in singling out Wikileaks. They'd want to exclude anybody like Wikileaks.

Unfortunately, despite the confident tone of the headline, they haven't actually produced any legislation. The underlying story (four clicks-through-blogs down) says that they're "drafting" and amendment. So exactly how they intend to define journalism isn't clear.

The House bill (already passed) defines it as:

  person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such covered person.

followed by a bunch of exceptions for people designated as terrorists.

The Senate version is similar but more thorough:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s448/text

Which would probably include both professional bloggers and Wikileaks. So, they're gonna rewrite it, but they don't say how.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/all

It's went through several revisions as amendments were added and taken away. You're looking at a placeholder title that the house bill had at one point in time.

The final bill is called the "Aviation Safety and Investment Act of 2010"

It's not a secret. You can read the full text here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1586/text

Actually, I'm going refute your claim. Kucinich and Lee both voted for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which excepts the SEC from FOIA requests.

S3538 appears to be the bill in question. It would be nice if we could read it, but the text currently isn't public.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:1:./temp/~bdgRx1:@@@L&summ2
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3538/show

Anon because I've already moderated several times in this story thread.

MIT OpenCourseWare (That's their silly capitalization, don't blame me.)

Wired story about Flat World Knowledge, a company that provides free online and cheap printed copies of college texts that sells study aids and practice quizzes to support the business. Online browsing is free, PDF is about $20, and printed books cost about $60 or less if the pricing I read about is still current.

Wikibooks has books of several levels.

Here's a list of open books for undergraduate mathematics as recommended by Robert Beezer at University of Puget Sound

US House Bill 4575 is an attempt to authorize government grants to publishers of open-source college texts, as widespread affordable education is seen as good thing for the country as a whole. There's also a Senate version.

There's a consortium for Open Educational Resources among community colleges. They have lists of many titles under many categories. There's still a lot of work to be done, but some of the books have been peer-reviewed and they clearly mark which ones those are.

LibrarianChick links to all sorts of books and all sorts of sites that links to all sorts of other books. Some of these are texts, but there's also reference, fiction, tutorials, and more. Several of the linked works are university-level. There are also links to non-books, like search engines, research results pages at places like Harvard, and open online encyclopedias other than Wikipedia.

Textbooks Free is a fairly ugly site with beautiful content: links to textbooks by subject, links to other open textbook projects, and even an Amazon affiliate link so when you buy what non-open books you want you can support open textbooks. They also have links to open course materials like audio and video lectures. Their links include material from MIT, Johns Hopkins, University of California at Irvine, Tufts, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon.

Bookboon has ad-supported free textbooks. For those of you who won't get too distracted from studies by the ads, I think that's not a bad model. These are free but not open and you have to give them your email address to download the books.

Free Book Centre has links to lots of open and public domain texts. They are mostly CS, engineering, and mathematics but they have some medical books too. There are some books linked that are free-but-closed, and some of those are only free for non-commercial use or only in electronic format (sometimes only by browsing the book on the author's web site without even saving a local copy). Some of the links are currently broken, too. Overall, it's a pretty useful site if you're looking for CS/math/EE/medical materials. One additional note of caution: at least one "book" is just a detailed ToC for a book by someone else, some "books" are just sample chapters for closed books for sale, a few are lecture notes for specific courses collected but not necessarily edited into textbook form, and there are a handful that seem to be pirated copies of commercial books from the likes of O'Reilly. You have been warned.

Creative Commons has a tag for news items about open textbooks to help us k

Anon because I've already moderated several times in this story thread.

MIT OpenCourseWare (That's their silly capitalization, don't blame me.)

Wired story about Flat World Knowledge, a company that provides free online and cheap printed copies of college texts that sells study aids and practice quizzes to support the business. Online browsing is free, PDF is about $20, and printed books cost about $60 or less if the pricing I read about is still current.

Wikibooks has books of several levels.

Here's a list of open books for undergraduate mathematics as recommended by Robert Beezer at University of Puget Sound

US House Bill 4575 is an attempt to authorize government grants to publishers of open-source college texts, as widespread affordable education is seen as good thing for the country as a whole. There's also a Senate version.

There's a consortium for Open Educational Resources among community colleges. They have lists of many titles under many categories. There's still a lot of work to be done, but some of the books have been peer-reviewed and they clearly mark which ones those are.

LibrarianChick links to all sorts of books and all sorts of sites that links to all sorts of other books. Some of these are texts, but there's also reference, fiction, tutorials, and more. Several of the linked works are university-level. There are also links to non-books, like search engines, research results pages at places like Harvard, and open online encyclopedias other than Wikipedia.

Textbooks Free is a fairly ugly site with beautiful content: links to textbooks by subject, links to other open textbook projects, and even an Amazon affiliate link so when you buy what non-open books you want you can support open textbooks. They also have links to open course materials like audio and video lectures. Their links include material from MIT, Johns Hopkins, University of California at Irvine, Tufts, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon.

Bookboon has ad-supported free textbooks. For those of you who won't get too distracted from studies by the ads, I think that's not a bad model. These are free but not open and you have to give them your email address to download the books.

Free Book Centre has links to lots of open and public domain texts. They are mostly CS, engineering, and mathematics but they have some medical books too. There are some books linked that are free-but-closed, and some of those are only free for non-commercial use or only in electronic format (sometimes only by browsing the book on the author's web site without even saving a local copy). Some of the links are currently broken, too. Overall, it's a pretty useful site if you're looking for CS/math/EE/medical materials. One additional note of caution: at least one "book" is just a detailed ToC for a book by someone else, some "books" are just sample chapters for closed books for sale, a few are lecture notes for specific courses collected but not necessarily edited into textbook form, and there are a handful that seem to be pirated copies of commercial books from the likes of O'Reilly. You have been warned.

Creative Commons has a tag for news items about open textbooks to help us k

The constant 'public service' messages about the death of radio I hear on my local stations if congress passes a law requiring them to pay performers for the airing of their works.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h848/show
is the bill that would provide performers compensation parity.

(c) Except as provided in subdivision (h), any person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of a public offense:
...
(5) Knowingly and without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer system, or computer network.
...
(h) (1) Subdivision (c) does not apply to punish any acts which are committed by a person within the scope of his or her lawful employment. For purposes of this section, a person acts within the scope of his or her employment when he or she performs acts which are reasonably necessary to the performance of his or her work assignment.

So you see, it was actually extremely relevant whether the acts were "reasonably necessary" for his job. The jury had to decide if following the written policy in that case was "reasonable," but they thought (perhaps rightly) that Childs was a paranoid whackjob. I don't think there is any question that he thought it was reasonable, though. Depending on what the judge said about this, Childs may have grounds for appeal...assuming he can afford it now. Since he's already spent two years in jail, he may very well be sentenced to time served, which is going to make appeal even less...appealing.

Regardless of whether he is guilty or not, consider that he has now been jailed for two years for having a snit with his boss. Laws really do cover nearly anything; "computer crime" laws seems particularly heinous in this regard (e.g. "sexting," or felony prosecution for violating the MySpace EULA). We are all at the mercy of prosecutorial discretion. God help us (metaphorically, of course).

I leave you with the Megan Miers Cyberbullying Prevention Act, introduced by a representative from California. So short. So broad.

Sorry, that's the 2009 bill. The 2010 version -- the one relevant now -- is here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1258/show

As with the "1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance"
Read what President Carter had to say:
http://www.cnss.org/fisa.htm ftp://cnss.org/Carter.pdf
Its interesting how todays pundits, talking heads and NSA types seem to have missed the 'all', 'US persons' and 'electronic' part.
But never fear Mr or Ms NSA worker, the US gov will cover you by changing the definition of a US person to a domestic terrorist.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3081/show
With the magic T word, all domestic US protections are off :)
Its like Tbilisi or Budapest in 1956 - everybody needs a telco tap and a drone.

My thoughts? What do my thoughts matter? You brought up many good points, but are *any* of them addressed in the 2000+ pages of the bill?

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3590/text

The text of the bill:
http://www.opencongress.org/senate_health_care_bill

The economy of the bill:
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=508

Congrats from Europe :)

It's a 4 page bill that basically proposes to extend Medicare benefits to everyone from age 0 to age 64 with a simple 'buy-in.' You buy in at cost and you're covered.

That means no Cigna Corporation sitting around denying you a liver transplant - which cost at least one girl her life.

Spread the word. This bill got 50 sponsors in 2 days.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4789/show
http://www.open.salon.com/blog/brinna_nanda/2010/03/10/a_public_option_we_can_all_love_hr_4789

I believe it's nearly time to upgrade our old outdated operating system controlling our laws when we ourselves can't vote each day, like checking e-mail on whatever's current, old outdated laws and reform them, and of COURSE future laws as 360,000,000 North Americans (330 America, 30 Canada, keep it simple. :D)

I'm just a garbageman but Love Firefox for web browsing.

Then I loved Ubuntu Linux for an operating system.

Just figured the next step along the path of:

What's important to me?

I could give a shit about a vote every 5 years, most likely rigged, and once in WHOEVER it is, even the "good ones" are most likely given 2 choices, briefcase full of money, and, well, you don't want THE OTHER ONE. ;)

So in tribute to Linux I made a crappy website, http://www.opensourceg.com/

I'm not sure it could handle slashdotting but I think the cause is just. I've posted it on torrent freak, http://torrentfreak.com/ , cbc (deleted or buried in oblivion of other people, ALL SCREAMING AT YOU, WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN??? DAMNIT! AHHHHHHHHHHHH

:P

So ya, the very laws we obide by are in no control over. It's messed up with all this Internet we don't got an organized government to do daily online polls. Surely there are white hats up to the challenge (and black hats to cause troubles. :D, i'm sure everyone'd still get paid, lmao, point is everyone then "has a say" on a national website, federal white hat guys. I don't even KNOW, I just know Firefox and Ubuntu ROCKED.

Ubuntu's got a live add remove programs for God's sake! The swarm is the most powerful. More then anything. Even p2p can't be shut down even if the guys buying the laws say it's illegal.

So I spent 15 bucks and thought the idea was great. Rather pick Open Source distros then politicians . The ground rules should be set like Linux stuff is. You guys will get it (if anyone has, it's been a crappy website for so long and a buddy helped me get a blogging feature so I can rant in a corner of the Internet)

Far as building a voting site, don't think "I'd" be able to. I'll sure as hell link to it if one get's built.

Closet things I found in my quest were: http://www.opencongress.org/ - American one, just liked the voting, just kinda wish a 3rd party does it, like, "here, were not rigging those electronic numbers". Protect a country militarily but the management needs an upgrade. Doing all THEY can in a restrictive environment. Imagine the 1 GOOD congressman pretending to be bad just to TRY and help their country? (or maybe they are all good and just fighting each other instead of the issues)
http://www.mysociety.org/ - UK based, they fix road problems or organized a nice "email your politician" thing.

Granted I'm a complete idiot who shouldn't even vote, I'm pretty ignorant to current politics b/c of lack of faith. No public trust from me. Enhancing people's lives instead of beating them down would be a GREAT start.

Kinda like sending out an email to get Google doing real tv. They are big enough to make it happen and I just want some smart dude to make the ir remote work as standard on websites. :) Anyways trying to get them doing it b/c they COULD and maybe make ad money, voip the cable tv market even. I just want things done by people willing to exploit me for money. Here's my 200 bucks/month, where's my fiber optic options? I'm alright /w being a slave. It's cool. Just pimp my slavery already.

Any way to port Linux to our govt? Format whatever junk was on the drive, install, reboot (once, ever, :D). I'm sure all KINDS of awesome ideas could be done. I'd like to at least link to em.

Yahoo Answers, the 2 that replied both said no. Wouldn't work f

This is the bill the telco's are strongly opposed to, the one we need to pass:
h3458

I'm over 40. Please kill me.

You'll get your wish soon.

Nope, that wasn't it. Here it is:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3962/text

Getting nit-picky about the page count is silly though, since obviously font size matters. I think the comment on redundancy is a good point though, so maybe its not *that* big, assuming nobody snuck anything in the sections that were supposed to just be redundant modifications to existing legislature.

Is this HR3200? Then you would be correct, it is not 1,990 pages long. Here I am counting ~730 something pages long:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

Still, the context of a lot of these modifications don't make any sense without the original document side-by-side.
 
 

SEC. 1601. INCREASED FUNDING AND FLEXIBILITY TO FIGHT FRAUD AND ABUSE.

            (a) In General- Section 1817(k) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395i(k)) is amended

                        (1) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

                                '(7) ADDITIONAL FUNDING- In addition to the funds otherwise appropriated to the Account from the Trust Fund under paragraphs (3) and (4) and for purposes described in paragraphs (3)(C) and (4)(A), there are hereby appropriated an additional $100,000,000 to such Account from such Trust Fund for each fiscal year beginning with 2011. The funds appropriated under this paragraph shall be allocated in the same proportion as the total funding appropriated with respect to paragraphs (3)(A) and (4)(A) was allocated with respect to fiscal year 2010, and shall be available without further appropriation until expended.'.

                        (2) in paragraph (4)(A)

                                    (A) by inserting 'for activities described in paragraph (3)(C) and' after 'necessary'; and

                                    (B) by inserting 'until expended' after 'appropriation'.

Um, no, that's another program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System [wikipedia.org] or CARS. THATS cash for clunkers.

Yes, please read that link. Scroll down to section 'legislative history', fourth paragraph. Notice this is Betty Sutton's bill. She got it passed on HR2454 on May 19th. Here's John Dingell congratulating her about "Fleet Modernization/Cash for Clunkers". Check that previous link I sent you to her website - as of May 21st, it was pulled as an amendment and offered as its own bill, HR 2640, which was re-introduced as HR 2751, which Wikipedia verifies as the CARS program. Go ahead and compare the bills, there are some minor changes (always are if the bill number changes), but it's the same bill.

The full title of HR2751, aka CARS aka C4C, is: To accelerate motor fuel savings nationwide and provide incentives to registered owners of high polluting automobiles to replace such automobiles with new fuel efficient and less polluting automobiles.

But please, feel free to check out the offical site and show me where it says businesses are eligible for the rebate: http://www.cars.gov/ [cars.gov]

Who ever said anything about businesses?

If you've been curious, why have you wanted until now to search?

Eh? I'm well aware of the issues, I was giving you some links since you couldn't find the first hit on Google.

But let me do some searching for you and point you to an article thats NOT three months old already: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQcFan9QMe0k [bloomberg.com]

Do you understand that article? It says that the booked revenue in GDP was inflated due to the Cash for Clunkers sales. It does not refute the source I showed you that the auto manufacturers were ramping up production to back-fill inventory due to C4C, which was counter to your claim. Manufacturing activity would not be booked as GDP revenue.

Um, no, that's another program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System [wikipedia.org] or CARS. THATS cash for clunkers.

Yes, please read that link. Scroll down to section 'legislative history', fourth paragraph. Notice this is Betty Sutton's bill. She got it passed on HR2454 on May 19th. Here's John Dingell congratulating her about "Fleet Modernization/Cash for Clunkers". Check that previous link I sent you to her website - as of May 21st, it was pulled as an amendment and offered as its own bill, HR 2640, which was re-introduced as HR 2751, which Wikipedia verifies as the CARS program. Go ahead and compare the bills, there are some minor changes (always are if the bill number changes), but it's the same bill.

The full title of HR2751, aka CARS aka C4C, is: To accelerate motor fuel savings nationwide and provide incentives to registered owners of high polluting automobiles to replace such automobiles with new fuel efficient and less polluting automobiles.

But please, feel free to check out the offical site and show me where it says businesses are eligible for the rebate: http://www.cars.gov/ [cars.gov]

Who ever said anything about businesses?

If you've been curious, why have you wanted until now to search?

Eh? I'm well aware of the issues, I was giving you some links since you couldn't find the first hit on Google.

But let me do some searching for you and point you to an article thats NOT three months old already: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQcFan9QMe0k [bloomberg.com]

Do you understand that article? It says that the booked revenue in GDP was inflated due to the Cash for Clunkers sales. It does not refute the source I showed you that the auto manufacturers were ramping up production to back-fill inventory due to C4C, which was counter to your claim. Manufacturing activity would not be booked as GDP revenue.

Thanks for pointing out HR3458! A read the whole bill (it's really short). I find it hard to improve upon. It requires non-discrimination against packets based on source or destination, which I consider the minimum requirement for network neutrality. It goes further to exclude discrimination against specific applications, but specifically leaves the door open for "reasonable" network management that is required in specific cases.

So, for example, it would clearly be reasonable to minimise latency of UDP packets, at the expense of overall throughput, while maximising overall throughput of TCP packets at the expense of latency. Exceptions for speeding up video applications would almost certainly be allowed, so long as competitor's video was also sped up.

For me, this non-discrimination against specific applications is hardest to swallow. It sounds great, but I can see cell phone companies wanting to ban Skype over their cell network, for example. It might be reasonable, because it effects their entire business model, and may cause congestion on a network already expected to be massively congested. On the other hand, if I write a new Internet application for my phone, it should not be blocked by default. That would hinder innovation. I think, however, that if it's simple for companies to gain exceptions from the FCC in such cases, then the bill is good as written. Perhaps the bill should provide more details of cases that are considered "reasonable"?

I generally support a more libertarian (small 'l') view of government intervention - less is more. But the ideas of 'Net Neutrality, when it was being proposed, seemed to me to be one of those "necessary evil" things that government needs to do. Much of that has to do with the current landscape of Internet providers, where in most places it's a monopoly or near-monopoly of 1 or 2 providers. (What government policies, or lack there of, encouraged or allowed that situation to unfold is up for debate).

But this seemed reasonable. Internet access is now part of our critical infrastructure. Allow ISPs to shape traffic, sure, but provide some rules to prevent them from discriminating based on content, providers, applications, or end-points. All very reasonable. If ISPs want to get in the content business, fine, but don't allow them an advantage over other providers.

That is, I used to be all for it. But now I'm nervous. I want the Internet to be free from interference - that's the goal. But I'm afraid the administration wants more than just to keep ISPs from interfering - they want to take control themselves. They've already started creating rules for bloggers. Sure, they are reasonable rules that almost everyone can agree are useful. This time. And I'm not a blogger that accepts gifts, so I didn't speak up. Then there's the Cybersecurity Act, which seems reasonable on the surface, but is also pretty far-reaching, and could be interpreted to give some Federal bureaucracies some pretty onerous powers. You know, kind of like that Patriot Act that's about to be extended.

And then there's this HR 3458, which goes way beyond what we have traditionally supported for 'Net Neutrality. It's a big, new licensing regime putting the government thumb on every ISP, large or small, and regulating everything they do - it'll be like starting a new TV station if you want to offer Internet access.

So I have to re-think my stance on this. Maybe we're better off with what we have right now.

I'm tired of this. Have you read the bill?

The President-- ...

(2) may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;

It's the "United States critical infrastructure information system or network" part that's concerning, and admittedly needs definition or excision from the bill, but somehow republicans have morphed it into "the entire internet". Anyone who knows anything about how TCP/IP works knows that the internet will simply route around shut down systems automatically.

Second, the system must be compromised in order to declare such an emergency. Personally, I think it's a good thing for the government to have control over its own systems.

Third, this bill was not written or sponsored by Barack Obama.

Somehow extending it to "Obama wants to shut down free speech on the internet!" is, well, quite simply lying.

As many have said, the health care bill is very poorly written.

Excerpt from the section, SEC. 1173A. STANDARDIZE ELECTRONIC ADMINISTRATIVE TRANSACTIONS [My punctuation standard]: "(6) IMPLEMENTATION AND ENFORCEMENT: Not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a plan for the implementation and enforcement, by not later than 5 years after such date of enactment, of the standards under this section."

Translation: "Please support a very expensive bill that fundamentally changes something very important. It is certain that you will pay. It is uncertain what we will do."

I strongly support improvements in health care in the United States. I believe that those who propose the bill have our best interests in mind. But they haven't finished their thinking.

The bill [PDF] is 1,017 pages long, and affects everyone in the U.S. enormously. Every part of it requires public discussion.

The bill makes changes to other laws that are themselves EXTREMELY complicated.

Another quote [My punctuation standard]: (3) DEVELOPMENT OF DATA REPORTING STANDARDS: (A) IN GENERAL: The Secretary shall develop and implement standardized data elements and definitions for reporting under this subsection, for contract years beginning with 2012, of data necessary for the calculation of the medical loss ratio for MA plans.

Translation: "We will tell you later how it will work."

Very few who comment on this bill have read and fully understood the implications. I haven't. Have you?

Is it unreasonable for some people to oppose important changes when they don't understand those changes?

For those who want to protest, Representative Blumenauer's phone number is (503) 231-2300. Anyone can protest, but this is Blumenauer's district.

More about the bill: H.R. 3311.

Blog coverage: OpenCongress.

More coverage: H.R. 3311 is an oxymoron.

If their message is clear, concise and not disagreeable, why can't they convince us with a logical argument?

Silly rabbit, their trix aren't for you. Their plan is to help grease the path for the fuckers in Congress trying to get this POS Cybersecurity Act of 2009bill passed. Once a good portion of the Internet structure becomes nationalized, any full disclosure of vulnerabilities could be considered as posing a national security threat and thus would have to be kept secret. What this means, of course, is that any software vendor providing a product that constitutes a major portion of the federal government information infrastructure as well an the internet commerce and banking, will be protected from full disclosure of vulnerabilities in their product by the federal government based on national security policy.

As this relates to "anti-sec", they want to build the impression that will be amplified by a scaremongering media that the Internet is being besieged by warring factions of evil hackers. There will even be some useful idiots pointing to the ramblings of these assholes as proof that even the sec community is divided on issue of FD. Which it is, but mostly debate revolves around the timing of disclosure and not whether to disclose at all. This is a sham war designed to put pressure on Congress members to pass a really, really, bad bill.

I think the timing of this incident, along with recent botnet attacks and other media grabbing "cyber" events within the few months just before this bill was introduced, couldn't be more perfect to create a campaign to justify the takeover of the Internet infrastructure by the federal government. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/cybersecurity-act

Here's the actual legislative language of the IP provision: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2410/text?version=rh&nid=t0:rh:985

This is also being pursued on the federal level by the Congressman who can code assembly.

"I don't know of any moves afoot to restrict gun rights."

If you actually care to learn, check out HR45: Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h45/show

I assumed there was some sort of API anyway, I assumed thats what sites like opencongress.org were using:

http://www.opencongress.org/

Sort of. Thomas outputs all of it's bill data in XML and all URLs are in a nice predictable form(okay, not so nice). It's basically a big REST API in it's own right. Quite easy to parse.

An easier to use API would be an improvement, but congress already puts it out there and makes it quite simple to take and use. What I really want to see, is some sort of standardization of state legislatures. In the organization I work for, state legislation has to all be pulled by hand. Lots and lots of man-hours.

I assumed there was some sort of API anyway, I assumed thats what sites like opencongress.org were using:

http://www.opencongress.org/

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-436

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1076/show

Well at least they got rid of the $246Million gift to hollywood. (no thanks to you kennedy/kerry!)

Still a ways to go though.

How do I keep Obama + Congress from handing them money?

Write.

Write to your congresscritter. Every chance you get. Add the email address to your congressperson and your two senators to your address book.

Go to OpenCongress to see what bills are coming up, which ones have been introduced, which ones are headed for debate, which ones are headed for a vote.

Tell your reps what you think about the bill and why it's a bad idea. If they don't hear from us, they start operating in a vacuum. They start guessing. And there's a 50-50 chance that they're NOT doing what you want them to do.

And after the vote is over, send another message. If they voted the way you wanted, thank them. If they voted against your wishes chew them out.

Write letters to the editor. True, you can usually get published only once every 30 days with most papers but hell, that's 12 letters a year. If you make them cogent and well written you can make friends with the editor, who's looking for good stuff. (My last letter got printed just today as the leadoff letter, which means it was printed in a gray box with an attention-getting border.)

I have had it up to here. I will NOT go gently into that good night. At the very least, people will know where I stand on something. It may not do any good but the more people who do this the more our government will work the way it's supposed to.

There really isn't that much evidence to support the idea that legalization is the appropriate course of action.

Actually, there is. If you look at the studies, including the one commissioned by Richard Nixon of all people - most find it pretty harmless (it does impair driving ability slightly - though at least one study finds that the impairment is slightly offset by a tendency to drive slower and stay further back).

Then look at the studies on alcohol and tobacco. Then take the numbers of deaths in which alcohol use is a direct cause of death, tobacco use is a direct cause of death and compare them to the number of people who have died as a direct result of their marijuana use (hint: 0 - ever - in the history of mankind). The answer is obvious.

Keeping it illegal costs us the taxpayer. It takes money to enforce insane laws like this. Think of the money that could be saved by not having to pay for the enforcement of these laws, as well as the cost in time and attention as well as ancillary "costs".

ways it hurts
$ to investigate
clogs court systems
costs $ to try defendants
$ to house and feed marijuana law offenders
$ to provide supervision upon release(probation, parole, drug tests)

It also hurts in that you provide the black market scum with another money maker which contributes to real crimes against persons and property besides the persons and property of the users themselves. Have you ever heard of a Jim Beam distributor doing a drive-by on a Jack Daniels distributor?

If Ron Paul (R- TX) and Barney Frank (D- MA) can get together on the issue You would at least have to admit there is some evidence aside from the basic constitutional arguments. They are not mainstream politicians, but they are also not about to commit political suicide for no reason.

Plus there's the part where pot smokers are willing to lie cheat and basically make up evidence to justify things like medicinal marijuana. Yes it does work, but come on, pretending like Marinol doesn't exist and insisting on useless and vague regulations is just immature.

To what useless and vague regulations do you refer, exactly?

As for Marinol, many patients report that the effectiveness of Marinol is much less than that of the actual cannabis flower.

Sure, I'm a person who thinks all victimless crimes should be made legal anyway (drugs, prostitution, gambling) but I have actually looked into these areas and think that the cost (in all aspects aside from just $) of enforcing these laws are much worse than any possible costs of legalizing them would be ( you never did even mention any possible costs of legalizing it - why?).

Not to mention the possible revenue it could generate for the state/fed through legalization (want to grow 10 marijuana plants? $1000/yr for the permit - want to sell it? $10,000 + tax on the sale - regulated same as tobacco - no one under 18) of them. That may mean less of the income tax coming out of MY POCKET (it's nice to dream).

Hopefully I've piqued your interest enough to go and look for yourself, make up your own mind rather than expecting people to spell it out for you, read you the studies, gather the links. It's all been done and the answer is obvious even to those of us who have never smoked it, or only tried it a few times.

Just legalize it already.

The Sunlight Foundation recently launched a project called Public Markup that is a model for allowing citizens to comment on legislation. There are also Congresspedia.org and OpenCongress.org, both aimed at putting more information into the hands of citizens, and allowing them to participate more directly, in the lawmaking process.

> Dude, did you read TFA? Because, if the way ars describes it is accurate, the whole law is pretty much inflammatory.

Feel free to read the EIPA for yourself. Anyone who says I'm making this up is encouraged to cite whichever part of the law they think I got wrong.

I mean, this *is* a bill that contains this statement in its "findings" --

"(20) The Department of the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence would be an effective tool in combating intellectual property theft."

That's right. They want to use the people who fight terrorism for this. Shouldn't they, I don't know, worry more about terrorists than infringement?

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s3325/show
Sponsor
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D, VT]

Co-Sponsors:
and 7 Co-Sponsors
Sen. B. Evan Bayh [D, IN]
Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D, MD]
Sen. John Cornyn [R, TX]
Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D, CA]
Sen. Arlen Specter [R, PA]
Sen. George Voinovich [R, OH]
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D, RI]

I can't find who in the committee voted for it or against it. It passed committee 14 - 4.

Members on the committee:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm

Committee Members
Patrick J. Leahy
Chairman, D-Vermont

Edward M. Kennedy
D-Massachusetts

  Arlen Specter
Ranking Member, R-Pennsylvania

Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
D-Delaware

Orrin G. Hatch
R-Utah

Herb Kohl
D-Wisconsin

  Charles E. Grassley
R-Iowa

Dianne Feinstein
D-California

  Jon Kyl
R-Arizona

Russell D. Feingold
D-Wisconsin

  Jeff Sessions
R-Alabama

Charles E. Schumer
D-New York

  Lindsey Graham
R-South Carolina

Richard J. Durbin
D-Illinois

  John Cornyn
R-Texas
Biography

Benjamin L. Cardin
D-Maryland

Sam Brownback
R-Kansas

Sheldon Whitehouse
D-Rhode Island

  Tom Coburn
R-Oklahoma

Unless there's a new EP Act

Why yes, there is. The house bill only applies to PHEVs, but A) there is a movement to try and get pure BEVs covered in the senate version, and B) cars with solar panels could possibly qualify as a solar-electric hybrid.

Also, you ignore state and local incentives.

but you're fooling yourself if you think any of these cars will result in saving consumers money.

Yeah, it's not like I spend a couple thousand dollars per year on gasoline. Oh, wait, *I do*.

vehicle cost

$27k. Plus taxes (like on any car), minus incentives.

taxes

Covered.

fuel cost

A savings of a couple thousand dollars per year. So even if you're comparing the Aptera to a *free car*, just from the fuel cost savings alone, you have a ten year or so payback. Which equals 14 or 15 years when adjusted for interest -- still less than the average car's lifespan. And this is ignoring maintenance (see below). Let me reiterate: you ultimately end up saving money *buying a new car with luxury features and a miniscule environmental footprint* than driving a *free* car over the lifespan of both, ignoring maintenance (and if you get a car for free, it's probably old and a maintenance nightmare).

maintenance cost

Already covered. Battery maintenance should be similar to or less than maintenance on a transmission (the batteries should last the life of the car, but even if you had to replace them once, you're only looking at a couple thousand). There are about 10% of the moving parts in an EV drivetrain as in an ICE drivetrain, so for everything else, you're looking at a major maintenance reduction.

insurance cost

Liability coverage will be lower due to the motorcycle classification and light weight. Hard to say whether comprehensive will be higher or lower (depends on whether the extra vehicle coverage costs beats the decreased liability costs).

infrastructure cost to provide electrical outlets to parking lots/garages

The Aptera, by default, charges from a normal household power outlet, which can be found in almost every home in the US. If garages want to make extra money installing them, that's their business, but one thing is for sure: they'll be an order of magnitude cheaper than gas pumps to install. Even fast chargers would be cheaper than gas pumps when you factor in the cost to install things like the underground gas tanks and the extra amortized costs of fuel delivery (compared to easier electricity delivery).

and any unforeseen costs that such a change to our current system will incur.

Yeah, you mean like all of those "costs" associated with reducing gasoline consumption, such as long-term energy independence, a lower dependence on countries that hate us, more predictable energy costs, reduced air pollution, reduced healthcare costs from said reduced air pollution, reduced spoiling of wilderness lands for oil extraction, and so forth?

You can follow the progress of the bill at opencongress.org.

The full text is actually very short so I encourage you to read its entirety.

It has three main points:

First to amend the 1934 Communications Act to include some policies which state that "to maintain the freedom to use for lawful purposes broadband telecommunications networks, including the Internet, without unreasonable interference from or discrimination by network operators" is a good thing. And similar statements.

Second to require the FCC to assess various things such as how harmful the restrictions providers apply to a user's network connection are. F'ex Comcast forging 'reset' packets to break BitTorrent.

Third to require the FCC to hold multiple summits on the topic, include a wide range of input (including on the internet as well as live events), and report the results to congress.

I actually think it's a reasonable conservative step forward on what is an extremely complicated issue. I'm for it.

So, apparently my original post dealt with something called the "Protect America Act", which is different than the ongoing immunity for the telecoms due to illegal wiretapping. But it turns out that the "Protect America Act" is related (in the sense that it deals with the power of government to spy on people without court authority) and relevant (because they are currently talking about it in Congress to get it extended).

Fact Sheet: The Protect America Act of 2007
Dateline: August 7, 2007

This Act of Congress made it legal to wiretap lines OUTSIDE of the US.

Original vote of Aug 4, 2007

A recent vote extended the Protect America Act (originally intended to expire on Feb 1, 2008) to be good until the end of this current week.

Just thought I'd pass along these links to more info about some of the pending video game legislation in Congress right now::

H.R.1531 - Video Game Decency Act of 2007 http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h1531/show
S.568 - Truth in Video Game Rating Act http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s568/show
H.R.2958 Children Protection from Video Game Violence and Sexual Content Act http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h2958/show

And you grab an rss feed to monitor congressional activity related to video game legislation here::

http://www.opencongress.org/issue/show/5675_video_games

Just thought I'd pass along these links to more info about some of the pending video game legislation in Congress right now::

H.R.1531 - Video Game Decency Act of 2007 http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h1531/show
S.568 - Truth in Video Game Rating Act http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s568/show
H.R.2958 Children Protection from Video Game Violence and Sexual Content Act http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h2958/show

And you grab an rss feed to monitor congressional activity related to video game legislation here::

http://www.opencongress.org/issue/show/5675_video_games