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Because the FCC thinks giving the CPI the data will give a competitive advantage to the other broadband companies.

The FCC's behavior is pretty brazen; the CPI isn't a broadband service provider, so I suspect that other than verifying the FCC's results (or disproving them), the data is in pretty good hands.

I think you hit on the key point here; The Center for Public Integrity isn't an ISP. they're a watchdog group, so the FCC's objection is nonsensical.

It's like telling the police "I'm not going to honor your search warrant because it might give you an advantage over the other counterfeiting operations." Actually, it makes even less sense, because if you did this you could at least be setting yourself up for an insanity defense.

This is even worse than their claim that giving out cell phone service area / outage maps (so that people could tell if the vendors were lying to them before they signed a contract) would somehow help the terrorists beat us over here before they could beat us over there or something.

--MarkusQ

Here's a better link with more details... http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/report.aspx ?aid=837

Yes, but likening the neocons (with their tendancy to reduce civil liberties and centralize power) to historical fascists is reasonable because there's truth to it. Traditional conservatives aren't so bad -- at least they still believe in personal liberties[*]. The neocons are f'ing scary.

[*] - Except the personal liberties they don't believe in (abortion, sexual behavior among consenting adults, etc); that's still a big improvement on attacking freedom of the press, privacy rights, the Freedom Of Information Act, etc.

A few pages about the people from whom Stevens has been taking bribes.

1 News Corp $47,250
2 Boeing Co $41,900
3 Verizon Communications $36,550
4 Veco Corp $31,750
5 Viacom Inc $23,000
6 AT&T Inc $22,500
7 General Electric $20,000
7 Walt Disney Co $20,000
9 BAE Systems $19,000
10 Northrop Grumman $18,000
11 Cubic Corp $17,250
12 Mantech International $16,500
13 Intergraph Corp $15,600
14 Cassidy & Assoc/Interpublic Group $15,569
15 General Dynamics $15,000
15 Lockheed Martin $15,000
15 Northern Lights PAC $15,000
15 Teamsters Union $15,000
19 Science Applications International Corp $14,500
19 Sprint Nextel $14,500

Has all this corruption and ineptitude in our government caused anybody else to come to the conclusion that gun control is a bad idea?

http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pr o&ddlC=59
Does Unisys actually make any innovative products or provide useful services, or do they just drain money from corporations and governments run by foolish PHBs (Pointy Haired (Bosses || Bureaucrats))?

http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx? act=contrib
Just something I found, still looking for a better list. The point of that list is that if you ever wanted to find where our laws come from... look no farther than where the money comes from.

A.A

Congress stopped funding to Afghanistan in the mid-90's, according to this. By 1998, the US had an officially hostile posture to Afghanistan. I'm willing to be proven wrong; the US has certainly funded a lot of bad causes.

But I have never heard from any publication (right, left, or center) that the US under Bush funded the Taliban.

"After that, they tried to do a few things with more lights, using perhaps eight instead of ten." Is that like president Bush spouting coal as a replacement for oil? http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=80& sid=200

True, but Republicans also like to spend other peoples money. Mostly on "defense", much of it being wasteful or just plain pork*. I respect the Libertarian position, but the Republican position is pretty nasty in my eyes - they are happy to spend our money on killing people and pork projects but refuse to help people in need. That's just amoral in my eyes.
Not that I'm really defending the Democrats per say - when it came down to it, they chose to end social welfare as we know it but didn't cut back their own cronyism.

*references here and here and here and here and here

The more expensive the oil, the more money Bush and his cronies make.

Oh, really? Check the PFDR for FY2002 (the FY03 ones aren't available yet). The President doesn't get any income from any source that's affected by the price of oil. He has some interest-bearing investments, a couple of IRA's, some real estate, a stock portfolio and a boat-load of T-bills. You might as well say that the president's wealth depends on the price of routers because he owns stock in Cisco.

I dare you to find any evidence of an actual financial incentive for the president, or anybody in the executive branch for that matter, to keep the price of oil high.

And yet, the exact same methods were used to claim the Saddam-Osama connection.

By whom? Nobody in a position of authority ever said there was a Saddam-Osama connection. There was, however, a rock-solid, no-questions, if-you-don't-see-it-you're-an-idiot connection between Saddam and Islamist terrorism. Which is why he had to go.

If you like the police state this country is in

Sigh. If this country were half the police state you accuse it of being, you'd be dragged off in chains.

Any attempt to retrieve information from them (flight data, schedules, FOIA requests) will result in total, immediate, and irreversable loss of data!

I have read through the actual act. It's 132 pages, but it reads fast, so anyone really interested could do likewise in a couple of hours. I have not read all the other laws and regulations it refers to. I have read through the 'Life and Liberty' summary of them though.

To answer your other question, it is my understanding that no, the FBI can not obtain library and customer records without a warrant. An investigator can ask but not demand the records without a warrant. There is something called a 'secret warrant' however, which does allow the investigator the ability to obtain the records and prevent the person(s) from whom they obtained the information from disclosing to the party whom they requested the documents on that they obtained the records. This is so that the person being investigated is not 'tipped off' that they are being investigated. It allows the investigator the chance to observe the person being investigated and further their investigation. These types of warrants have been in place at least since the 1970s (the USSC upheld their use in 1979)

There was a Draft proposal that never went before congress that would allow investigators the ability to obtain records without a warrant. That bill never became law and as I read it only applied to foriegners. I've read some very misleading statements on many sites that claim what you thought to be true. In the end, if you read the text and later interpretations of the act, a warrant is still needed. In the past couple of years the USSC has stated that a search of person or other material (read important to a case) is acceptable IF the material found would have been found anyway (such as a library willingly turning over the records upon being asked) or if a warrant would have been issued in any event and to obtained the warrant would have done irreparable and immediate harm to the investigation. In the case of library or customer records this could not be the case as the information would have been available after a warrant was obtained.

Here is the actual letter "denying" the request. The relevant bits are, IMHO:
"ITM advises that the current application was not designed for mass export of all stored images, and thus, the information is not readily available in the format requested." (emphasis added)

So it is not as simple as copying the database, but exporting a large number - thousands? millions? - of image records out of the DB into some format the requester asked for.

Also, "this is a new feature request which would be costly and take a considerable amount of time to implement."

So the requesters asked for something in some format the DB is not designed to deliver. I couldn't find the original request. They may have asked for all the documents in TIFF format sorted by dollar amount contributed, or any other thing.

So this is not a case of "we won't answer your question" but "what we have wasn't designed to answer your question the way you want it answered." By today's standards, the DB in question may be very lame, but that doesn't imply a conspiracy.

- Jasen.

The armaments race created an atmosphere which not only made it difficult to work for the promotion of disarmament and peace but also threatened to muzzle freedom of speech.

Inevitably, the crusade lost impetus and faded away.

But Linus Pauling marched on; for him, retreat was impossible.

I hope that after we determine that we are not going to 100% eliminate the "terror threat" and regain some sense (and abolish some laws), that our excesses are not forgotten.

Get a load of this.

(WASHINGTON, May 29, 2003) The nation's top broadcasters have met behind closed doors with Federal Communications Commission officials more than 70 times to discuss a sweeping set of proposals to relax media ownership rules, the Center for Public Integrity has found. The private sessions included dozens of meetings between broadcasters and the agency's five commissioners and their top advisors. A June 2 vote is scheduled on the controversial proposals, which critics fear will touch off a major new round of media consolidation. FCC officials held five private sessions with Consumers Union and the Media Access Project, the two major consumer groups working on the issue, since the proposals first surfaced eight months ago.

1. segregationist there is a two tiered legal system for "in-groups" and "out-groups". these groupings can be religious, racial, ethnic.
2. expansionist usually through direct force of state (viz. war). but also via economic imperialism.
3. ultranationalistic some sort of mystical, mythical or quasireligious importance is placed on the nation.
4. capitalist contrary to the nsadp's name, there ain't no socialism in national socialism.
5. reactionary makes policy based upon current circumstances rather than creating policies to prevent problems.
6. repressive all the secret police stuff that we associate with fascism.

so...

1. iraq wins (treatement of kurds worse than treatment of african americans. hands down)
2. u.s. wins (have you been listening to the "pax americana" stuff from pearle &co? that plus the habit of the u.s. running "proxy wars" to expand their influence (hussein was a pro-us proxy warrior to fight iran once) gives this to the u.s. hands down)
3. tie. maybe down in the states you don't see it, but from the outside american nationalism looks really scary! i can't speak for iraqi nationlism - but i am willing to wager it's pretty hefty
4. u.s. wins - although not socialist, iraq is not as ideologically committed to laissez faire capitalsim as the u.s. is.
5. tie - iraq has been struggling to avoid internal collapse for twelve years. survival struggles are by definition reactionary. the us has based it's entire foreign policy in response to s11 - a reactionary stance.
6. iraq wins - well, duh. in the united states the cops don't shoot you without trial... well sometimes but not very often... but homeland security may be looking to change that( here, here, here)

fascism comes in 31 different flavours. feel free to oppose them all.

Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness likes to say that these guys are playing in a rigged game. And when they play in a rigged game they get arrogant and careless because they aren't used to playing on a level playing field. We can beat these guys.

Here's some more info on Patriot II: Center for Public Integrity -- pdfs available there.

Here's a Mike Ruppert Article "Five to Ten Times Worse Than the Patriot Act"

Just for general verification purposes and ease of grabbing a PDF: PDF of Draft Legislation

( www.publicintegrity.org) Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee minority staff have inquired about Patriot II for months and have been told as recently as this week that there is no such legislation being planned.

The Center for Public Integrity has intercepted a sequel to the Patriot Act that is being called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Here are a few mirrors to the document... (we will need more): one, two, and three. A notable part of the prospective legislation is that a new federal felony is created for willfully using encryption during the comission of a felony and that a judge in a different part of the country can issue a search warrant for another part of the country for terrorism or "computer crime". Why should you care if this isn't even close to law yet? 1) It's written by John Ashcroft and 2) The Bush administration is great at getting these things passed during emergencies (wasn't the homeland color just kicked up a notch?)

The Center for Public Integrity has intercepted a sequel to the Patriot Act that is being called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Here are a few mirrors to the document... (we will need more): one, two, and three. A notable part of the prospective legislation is that a new federal felony is created for willfully using encryption during the comission of a felony and that a judge in a different part of the country can issue a search warrant for another part of the country for terrorism or "computer crime". Why should you care if this isn't even close to law yet? 1) It's written by John Ashcroft and 2) The Bush administration is great at getting these things passed during emergencies (wasn't the homeland color just kicked up a notch?)

The Center for Public Integrity has intercepted a sequel to the Patriot Act that is being called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Here are a few mirrors to the document... (we will need more): one, two, and three. A notable part of the prospective legislation is that a new federal felony is created for willfully using encryption during the comission of a felony and that a judge in a different part of the country can issue a search warrant for another part of the country for terrorism or "computer crime". Why should you care if this isn't even close to law yet? 1) It's written by John Ashcroft and 2) The Bush administration is great at getting these things passed during emergencies (wasn't the homeland color just kicked up a notch?)

All they need is another conveniently timed terrorist attack, and the gestapo will be even more powerful.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?R eportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/St ory_01_020703_Doc_1.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis 2.html

Section 501, "Expatriation of Terrorists": This provision, the drafters say, would establish that an American citizen could be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization'." But whereas a citizen formerly had to state his intent to relinquish his citizenship, the new law affirms that his intent can be "inferred from conduct." Thus, engaging in the lawful activities of a group designated as a "terrorist organization" by the Attorney General could be presumptive grounds for expatriation.


MOYERS: Do you see any protection in here against potential abuse?

LEWIS: I don't think there's very much -- there's a lot more authority and power for government. There's less oversight and information about what government is doing. That's the headline and that's the theme. And the safeguards seem to be pretty minimal to me.

MOYERS: I just go through here, you know? "Will give the Attorney General the unchecked power to deport any foreigner?"

LEWIS: Right.

All they need is another conveniently timed terrorist attack, and the gestapo will be even more powerful.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?R eportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/St ory_01_020703_Doc_1.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis 2.html

Section 501, "Expatriation of Terrorists": This provision, the drafters say, would establish that an American citizen could be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization'." But whereas a citizen formerly had to state his intent to relinquish his citizenship, the new law affirms that his intent can be "inferred from conduct." Thus, engaging in the lawful activities of a group designated as a "terrorist organization" by the Attorney General could be presumptive grounds for expatriation.


MOYERS: Do you see any protection in here against potential abuse?

LEWIS: I don't think there's very much -- there's a lot more authority and power for government. There's less oversight and information about what government is doing. That's the headline and that's the theme. And the safeguards seem to be pretty minimal to me.

MOYERS: I just go through here, you know? "Will give the Attorney General the unchecked power to deport any foreigner?"

LEWIS: Right.

Check Open Secrets, they break things down by industry. The media industry has a special relationship with politics because politicians have to pay for advertising time. Its huge money for them, $billions. Off the Record is a great report that looks at the media industry and politics.

here:

More Harken Documents Here

Thank you and have a marijuana induced weekend!!

The US Military and CIA are funding the drug and tantalum murders, providing weaponry and equipment for guerrillas throughout Latin America, as well as electronic monitoring equipment that allows right wing candidates to monitor their opponents.

Link to CIA/Military involvment on The Center for Public Integrity.

The US Military and CIA are funding the drug and tantalum murders, providing weaponry and equipment for guerrillas throughout Latin America, as well as electronic monitoring equipment that allows right wing candidates to monitor their opponents.

Link to CIA/Military involvment on The Center for Public Integrity.

You are right. The FCC had a proposal to grant thousands of low power licenses and the NAB poured millions into quashing this. Right now a bill that will kill this is on an appropriations bill, waiting for Congress to resume.

For more info see on the bill see this article.

For more on the media industry's lobbying to take away your airwaves see this report from the Center for Public Integrity.

Actually, I don't think they really have to even bother hiding where they get their money for the most part. That's what is scary.
Most of the big money for commercials and such comes from the party organizations, who can accept as much as they want from pretty much anyone
I don't think the "real" records would be that much different than what's already available at a place like this

Right, blame it on the fan sites, who usually start their sites out of love for the product.

Hmm... ya, that sounds like journalistic ethics.

[quote]
Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.

Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

[...]


Act Independently

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.

Journalists should:
Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

[unquote]

source: http://www.publicintegrity.org/ethics.html

And that's why I said this kind of thing wouldn't be a problem if the sites had any kind of independence (which equals ethics in this case).

I've got one of those Intellimouse Explorers (the huge silver ones with the superfluous tail light and like three extra buttons; well, what the hell, here's a http://www.microsoft.com/Mouse/explorer.htm link) and sites that won't let you back out are an incredible annoyance. See, two of the buttons on there serve as Forward/Back (respectively) while browsing the web, and after about 20 minutes of using them, I was hooked. You wouldn't believe how simple (and remarkably intuitive) to navigate with your thumb. Now if I could just find a good use for those buttons in Half-Life... I mean, sure, it's easy enough to hold down the back button and select the page before the offending site, but that would require moving my cursor over six or so linear inches of desktop space. Isn't that just a little bit unreasonable? No? Ah well.