The Presidents Technical Advisor

T.Hobbes writes "There's an interview with the president's advisor on technology, Floyd Kvamme, at news.com. Some of it is just general political pr, though he does touch on (and dodge, at times) touchy tech issues (privacy, copyright, censorware, carnivore, ..). " He doesn't seem to be as mentally broken as the man he advises. But (and I know you liberatarians will scream) his stance on to many issues is that "The Industry Will Sort it Out". Of course they will. And then we will all have to go start a new planet just to prevent the the glorious self regulated industry from implanting chips in our asses to know where we are, what we are doing, and with who.

Comments

politics

[Trepidity]

Taco, your extreme bias and general incomprehension of political issues is getting a bit annoying. It's ok to be completely ignorant about politics, but not when you constantly talk about them on a large site that purports to disseminate "news."

Oh, and while I'm not a big fan of Mr. Bush's and usually vote Democrat, I'm glad he won this election - I shudder to think of what it'd be like if Joseph "ban movies and music" Liebermann and Tipper "parental advisory label" Gore had any power.

corporate control

[Jamie Zawinski]

Corperations are made of people who are remarkable like you and I, and run by people who actually grew up pretty much the same as you did..

Yes, corporations are people, just like you and me! From Adbusters' history of the corporation :

President Abraham Lincoln foresaw terrible trouble. Shortly before his death, he warned that "corporations have been enthroned . . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the republic is destroyed." [...]

Then came a legal event that would not be understood for decades (and remains baffling even today), an event that would change the course of American history. In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a railbed route, the US Supreme Court deemed that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights. Suddenly, corporations enjoyed all the rights and sovereignty previously enjoyed only by the people, including the right to free speech.

This 1886 decision ostensibly gave corporations the same powers as private citizens. But considering their vast financial resources, corporations thereafter actually had far more power than any private citizen. They could defend and exploit their rights and freedoms more vigorously than any individual and therefore they were more free. In a single legal stroke, the whole intent of the American Constitution -- that all citizens have one vote, and exercise an equal voice in public debates -- had been undermined. Sixty years after it was inked, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas concluded of Santa Clara that it "could not be supported by history, logic or reason." One of the great legal blunders of the nineteenth century changed the whole idea of democratic government.

So by virtue of this VC being Bush's advisor, all the corporate ``persons'' his company funded get to have lunch with the president every day. But non-billionaire ``persons'' made of flesh and blood will never be heard.

"`I have great access,' said Kvamme."

hmm

[Phil-14]

I know it's your habit to knock Bush, but were things really that much better when it was a pretend liberal (Clinton) pushing things like Carnivore and the Clipper Chip? I'd rather have someone with a hands-off approach than an administration that was looking into giving the Clipper Chip Backdoors to China so they'd have incentive to use it too... all the governments ganging up on all the citizens?

What an informed guy! I'm so impressed!

[Jonathan]

Gotta love this quote from the interview.

Napster believes there is a legal precedent that has something to do with how radio...I guess when radio started to play songs, they had exactly the same problem. So this thing was set up. I can't even remember what the acronym is...this organization that now keeps track of which disc jockey plays which song

I thought this guy was supposed to *advise* Dubya -- not sound just like him!

Re:You'd prefer to be ruled by corporations?

[Jonathan]

>With companies, you can avoid doing business >with them.

It is the goal of all corporations to make themselves so ubiquitous so as to make avoiding them impossible. Take a look at Microsoft -- in their own words they want "Windows Everywhere".

>...whereas a corrupt government can *control* >the judicial system,

And corporations can't? Money controls everything ultimately, and many corps already have more money than some nations.

Gawd.

[Gray]

So, in your future, it's a big facist goverment which keeps corperations out of our asses? That's *so* much better..

Nothing like more laws to solve a problem..

Oddly, I'm a democrat, but this kind of thinking is so luddite.. Corperations are made of people who are remarkable like you and I, and run by people who actually grew up pretty much the same as you did.. Don't hate me for what you can't do..

Re:Gawd.

[rho]

My question to you is this: We can change the draft laws. We can get rid of the entire government. But the guys with all the money still have all the money. What do we do when *they* hold a gun to us and tell us to defend their property?

This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the market works. It's tempting to think of money and markets as a big pie -- i.e. if I have a big piece, you have a smaller piece. However, the reality is non-intuitive.

You can create new wealth at any time, without taking from somebody else.

But to answer your question (What do we do when *they* hold a gun to us and tell us to defend their property?) We point a gun right back at 'em! Please tell me the last time Proctor & Gamble (or GM, if you prefer) made you go to war? (I mean directly, not "They bought senators who voted for the war")
"Beware by whom you are called sane."

Re:Gawd.

[Katravax]

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this issue... which is worse, big government or big business? Frankly, as anti-government as I am, I'm starting to think that big business is worse. The main reason is that because corporations have "personhood" under the law, but no one has to pay the price of any wrong they do. Also, these "persons" can afford the best lawyers and the best politicians to get their way. So they have the rights of normal people, but none of the responsibility, and the money to do pretty much anything they want. There's also no way to really attack them, because the corporation can just vanish, and the money it generated can go toward another different corporation with none of the liabilities of the first. Of course it's more complicated than all that, but bottom line is, a corporation is like a super-person... they're too difficult to stop when they're doing something wrong.

Government, on the other hand, is fairly easy to attack should that become necessary. Look at the number of revolutions going on at any given time for proof. They may not all succeed, but at least there are visible targets that once removed, will stop doing whatever it was that drove people to revolt in the first place. Laws can be rewritten and policies changed. In other words, I believe it's easier to dispose of a corrupt government than a corrupt giant business should the need arise.The main difference between them, in addition to one being easier to destroy, is that it is legal for government to have armed enforcers that actually kill you (police, military, etc). Businesses do the same with security guards, etc., but note that in this case, the guard as a person would be responsible for any killing they do in defense of the company, as opposed to the government that ordered the killing on the part of the military or police.

I haven't thought everything through (obviously), but bottom line, in my opinion, don't reject the original comment from a couple posts ago that we may need government to protect us from business. Businesses may be run by "ordinary people" like us, but they don't have the same liability for their actions like we do if those actions are carried out as corporate behavior rather than individual behavior. I think it boils down to which one is easier to make stop doing what it's doing that's causing problems.

Re:Gawd.

[LaminatorX]

YES!

"The main reason is that because corporations have "personhood" under the law, but no one has to pay the price of any wrong they do. Also, these "persons" can afford the best lawyers and the best politicians to get their way."

Corperations serve to shield the shareholders from the wrongs that are done on their behalf. If we got a group of people together and gassed a town in India, we would be extradited and jailed. When Union Carbide does it, the get a nice big tax write-off, err fine.

If our gas-gang were sued by the Indian government, we would all loose everything we have. The U/C shareholders would only have their stock devalued. The corperate veil is the ultimate tool of plutocratic supremacy. These pseudo-persons dilute the decision-making process so widely that the "normal" people involve can all feel like it's not their fault, or plausably deny knowlege or whatever. This is by design! This is how people who would not normally hurt anyone have turned blind eyes to every form of exploitation from slavery to unsafe SUV's.

Governments have this problem also, but there is at least some accountability. If we as citizens folow an imperialist dictator, we will suffer the inevitable wars and sorrows that would bring. As much of a sham as govt accountability is when barely half of us vote and 90% of those votes are for the entrenched interests/parties, corperations are far worse.

Noone ever voted for a chemical company, or signed a referendum on holding adjusted$ wages stagnant since the seventies while exexutive salaries go through the roof. Marketing infests our very minds. People describe themselves as "consumers" without a hint of irony or shame. If the government used the kind of marketing that businesses do, it'd be positively Orwellian.

Libertarianism and Fascism don't mix. Pick one.

[Sloppy]

Hey, the only reason you're feeling any real pressure to put a crypto chip up your ass, is the government, not the industry. None of the industry's bad decisions really start to have a severe effect until the government backs them up, by passing laws like DMCA and FCC directives.

The libertarian approach works great, but only when you don't mix it with fascism.

---

US Privacy Regulations are the Main Problem

[billstewart]

The US government* already has extensive regulations about privacy for US citizens. With few exceptions, they're the main problem, and adding Band-Aids to the system without addressing them is at best a pretense of a solution. The requirements that cause the problems are the ones that create common identifying numbers and databases and require businesses and individuals to use them, which provide the tools for privacy-problematic activities by business and make it economically necessary for businesses to use those tools to be competitive. Some examples:

• Same Social Security Number for All Tax Records - By forcing everybody to collect your SSN, everybody who pays you wages or dividends or bank interest has to have that number, and has a relatively strong belief in its uniqueness and long-term persistence, so they can use it as a database key. This is cheaper than doing their own unique keys, and it means that organizations like credit reporting companies can use that one number to track all your bank accounts. That wasn't a big problem in the 1930s-1950s, when records were kept on paper, with occasional help from Business Machines that sorted punch cards that disliked being Bent, Folded, Spindled, or Multilated. Around the 60s, computers started becoming affordable to medium-large businesses that could correlate information with them, though it was still pretty tedious using magnetic tape to handle large quantities of records. By the early 90s, anybody could afford computers faster than the government used in the 60s, and by the late 90s, anybody could afford high-speed storage on their desktops bigger than the off-line storage government could afford in the 60s, and could carry more CPU in their shirt pockets than the government could afford in the 60s, and database queries are no longer an arcane process requiring extensive development budgets - they're just something you type into websearch engines or your PC.
  
  
• An alternative - Suppose you had a stack of Taxpayer ID numbers, and could give a different number to everybody who needs to know. The Tax Agencies would still be able to coordinate them, since computers and databases are affordable and cheap, but nobody else could.
  
  
• Medical Records keyed on Taxpayer IDs - In the US, the government provides medical insurance for old people who've paid into the Social Security tax system, and they use the Social Security Number as their database identifiers, and force any medical providers to use that number to be reimbursed for the costs of medical services to old people. Therefore, almost all medical insurance companies use that as their database keys, and the insurance companies and government force doctors to use them as identifiers as well. Furthermore, tax policy strongly encourages businesses to provide their employees with medical insurance, and therefore employers need to use SSNs as their interface to medical insurance companies. And increasing social pressure about making employer-funded medical insurance pay for drugs makes pharmacies use SSNs as well. Do you really want your employer to know what medicines you're taking? It's much harder to solve this one than the tax issues, because the insurance process is very deeply tangled, and because even aside from the money there are medical benefits to sharing of information between anybody who a given patient interacts with.
  
  
• Driver's Licenses tied to SSNs, Citizenship Papers. The Feds first permitted the states to use SSNs as a database key, and since then they've essentially made it mandatory. This does reduce the extent to which bad drivers maintain multiple licenses so they can still drive after being convicted of bad driving, but it's increasingly being used for enforcement of social policy. For instance, the State of California believes that Driving While Speaking Spanish is unsafe, so they've been requiring citizenship documentation to discourage Un-Americans from getting drivers' licenses. To some extent, this decreases the number of immigrants who get CA drivers' licenses or car insurance, which is directly counter-productive, but it also increases the financial advantage to Motor Vehicle Department employees to accept bribes in return for otherwise-unavailable paperwork services.
  
• Permission To Work Tied To Centralized Databases - First there was the reprehensible policy of requiring anybody who wants to work as an employee in the US to provide Citizenship Papers and fill out forms with the Immigration Cops, but that was basically a one-way information flow. Since then, the Deadbeat Dads law has created a requirement that you not only tell the government you're hiring somebody, but ask permission first, in case they might be a father who's criminally failed to pay child support - even if they're not a Dad, or a Dad Required By A Court To Pay Child Support, or a Deadbeat, you're still required to treat your potential employees as if they might be, and get the government's permission first. This means there's a centralized database of US Citizens Not Permitted To Work, which is relatively simple to query, and it's probably possible for non-government employees to access the database of people who are known to be working - it's certainly simple for government employees to query the database, whether they're from the tax agencies or other parts of the government. This radically increases the consequences of inaccuracies in government databases, and also creates a strong incentive for identity theft by Personna Not Grata, while increasing the bribery potential of people who have access to the data.
  
  
• Professional Licenses Tied To Central Databases and Social Policy - The Deadbeat Dad stuff has also spawned a requirement that cities and states which grant professional licenses withhold them from anybody who might be Listed, which has similar effects to the other privacy-reduction regulations. The intent is to force any Deadbeat Dads who are actually making money to pay up, which is fine, but the consequences for non-deadbeats can be significant.
  
  
• Draft Registration - yes, it's been decades since the US government got into a war that required more cannon fodder than the politicians have been able to get volunteers for. But after the Vietnam Police Action ended, and the authorization for a draft ended, the Pentagon was able to talk Congress into re-creating the regulation for universal registration of young men, and they do extensive work with external databases that may provided pointers to non-registrants. Bill Clinton had the opportunity to end the draft, given one bill (military budget, I think) that got through Congress, but because of his Personal Background Problem he wasn't politically well-positioned to get rid of the draft that he'd had enough sense to dodge for himself. Phat chance that Bush will drop it.
  
  
• Telecom and postal regulations allowing collection of user information without wiretap authorizations - The Feds and local police generally don't need specific wiretap authorization to collect telephone billing records or record who you receive Post Office mail from. There've been cases where they've subpoenaed phone bills from hundreds of thousands of non-involved people to find out if any of them might have called the person they _were_ authorized to surveil. And y'all know a lot about Carnivore and its friends The fun of being a leftover monopoly is that the government can do all sorts of things they couldn't get away with in an independent industry.
  
• Add your own favorite example here!
  

There are lots of things the government can do to help privacy, but the first step has to be reducing the number of ways that the government is harming privacy. It's a slow process, and there are some regulatory steps they can take that may help while they're getting their act together on the real issues. I personally expect most of those regulations to cause some harm along with any good they cause, and the good parts of the regulations can be repealed while leaving the harmful parts as legal precedent, but hey, that's cynicism for you.

* Harassing the Europeans is a job for a separate posting. They've got similar problems with common identification numbers and the economics of computers, and while European Data Privacy Laws may be slightly larger bandages, they also provide government visibility into privately held databases (your pocket organizer or mobile phone's number list are databases, and they can go fishing in your machines for other data you might be suspected of having), they've decently demonstrated a continuing
Willingness to Throw Them Over When Their Police Ask Nicely.

STFU Taco

[AntiBasic]

He doesn't seem to be as mentally broken as the man he advises.

Ok Bush may be stupid, he flunked out of college once. But I never see you bash Al Gump who flunked out of college twice.

You're just another one of those conformist rebels who love to hate capitalism yet love the life it is providing you. You hate capitalists but love capital.

Re:STFU Taco

[jacobito]

So we're measuring intelligence with grades? I've been measuring Bush's intelligence by his ability to compose a coherent thought extemporaneously, and by my measure, he's failing....

Rob, get a clue about libertarians!

[browser_war_pow]

That is exactly what we want. We want the "industry to sort it out!" As for your ignorant rant about planting chips in the hind quarters of the population, as a libertarian I just want to know one thing.... what corporation will legally be able to do that? Yeah that's right Rob, no corporation can legally do that, that is an initiation of force. We don't tolerate that, that is what the government is here to stop. Corporations cannot legally force you to do that. But oh wait, you're a Gore supporter that means that anything that corporations do that you don't like is a fundamental violation of your "rights." Don't criticize Bush for being ignorant about politics if you confuse liberals with libertarians. Liberals want active intervention, not us. The only exception to that is spam and only because it is theft of someone's resources.

And for those of you that think the government has all the makings of being the great champion of privacy remember that it started the war on drugs, and created wiretapping

Re:At least the guy is smart

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I'm not sure how smart he really is -- or, more importantly, how well he chooses to use his intelligence. He admits to being uninformed, by choice, on the Napster case, which is surely one of the major intersections of law and technology in our time. And he cites an MBA as proof of Dubya Bush's intelligence, which is sort of like citing a drunk driving conviction as proof of an interest in addiction-related issues. He also seems blind to the enormous role government played in the early growth of Silicon Valley; I suspect that in this case his political ideology has overridden his common sense.

You'd prefer to be ruled by corporations?

[Von Rex]

So, in your future, it's a big facist goverment which keeps corperations out of our asses? That's *so* much better..

It's infinitely better. The government must at least follow the pretense of examination by a free press. Ultimately we get a chance to throw them all out if we don't like what we're doing.

Contrast that with corporations, which are accountable only to their shareholders. If you're not one of them, you're shit out of luck.

Government also has to weigh the total good of the people when it makes policy. This includes public health and the environment. A corporation isn't bound to consider any of these things. They'll cheerfully put more mercury in your food if it makes them an extra dollar. You'd really prefer to put your fate in the hands of such people?

If you're one of these "free market is all" people, perhaps you should consider the United States of America as a corporation where we're all shareholders.

I'm not bashing business. It's a businessman's job to maximize profit. But it's the government's job to make sure that the population as a whole isn't screwed by corporations, because the government is the only institution which has the power and resources to stop a corporation which is out of line.

We can argue about the yardstick a government should use when considering intervention in a corporation's affairs if you wish, but don't try to tell me that government shouldn't have the controlling interest here. I'd much rather be ruled by politicians, even ones I despise like George Bush, than be ruled by GE, Ford, Coke, etc.

And the matter gets even worse when you consider multinational corporations. Would you expect a foreign corp to look out for your interests better your own elected representives?

Individuals are answerable to the government, and we call that "the rule of law". Yet when someone says that corporations should answer to the goverment too, people like yourself gleefully throw themselves down the slippery slope and start tossing around words like "fascism". It's tiresome, it's contrary to your own interests, and it sure as hell isn't "insightful".

"The Industry Will Sort it Out"

[legLess]

We've already given industry the chance to "sort it out themselves," and it wasn't exactly paradise. In England, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, there were no real restrictions on the behaviour of industry. Ever heard of chimney sweeps?

Contrary to what you've seen in Mary Poppins, chimney sweeps were not happy little boys and girls singing in the streets. They were sold to chimney sweeping companies by their poor parents for less than a month's wages. Older, bigger kids couldn't fit in chimneys, so they had to use little ones (often as young as 2). If a child got stuck inside a chimney they'd just turn the furnace on. Children were cheap, and the poor kept having more. Don't believe me? Here's one source; a Google search turns up more.

This is industry unchecked: a machine with no regard for humanity. Corporations are smarter now, but don't believe for a second that they're any more concerned about human welfare. Nor are they obligated to be. Only one organization has a publicly and legally recognized obligation in this arena, and that's a government.

Most reading this in the US had an opportunity to vote several months ago. Maybe half of you did. If you don't like the President's technical advisor, get off your ass and vote next time

question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes

Re:"The Industry Will Sort it Out"

[Skald]

Only one organization has a publicly and legally recognized obligation in this arena, and that's a government.

Certainly not. The public expects certain standards of conduct from businesses, which is why the businesses are so often worried about "public relations". A company's image has a very real effect on their bottom line. Imperfect as this may be, it is very hard to see that those who make the decisions in government embody a higher standard of public obligation than those who make decisions for private businesses.

Your latter point is wholly circular. The government is under fewer legal obligations than anyone. Obviously. They make the laws, and, without exception, can change them.

This is industry unchecked: a machine with no regard for humanity.

*Industry* unchecked is a machine with no regard for humanity? In case you missed the news last century, governments turned the furnaces on more people than a couple of chimney sweeps. Links available upon request, if you actually need them.

Who posted this?

[sphix42]

Upon reading the summary here, I was astonished to see it wasn't Katz that posted this.

Way off base

[shanek]

And then we will all have to go start a new planet just to prevent the the glorious self regulated industry from implanting chips in our asses to know where we are, what we are doing, and with who.

Taco, corporations cannot force anything on an unwilling person. Only the force of law can do that.

We complain about the problems "big corporations" are causing by trying to prohibit P2P sharing, DeCSS, etc., yet the thing that makes this possible--the DMCA--was an act of Congress.

Big corporations can intrude on our rights only if the government passes laws allowing them to, or giving them loopholes to wriggle through so that they can get away with it. The solution is to elect a Libertarian government. Libertarians would remove the laws that enable them to do harm while restoring the barriers preventing them from inflicting force or fraud on the public.

"But not all of this.."

[FirstOne]

"On another topic, around here, as you've seen--as we've all seen--with the dot-com bust, a lot of people lost their jobs, lost their options. What role do you think government should have in that, in boosting the tech sector? Is there a role there? "

"But not all of this falls into the administration's responsibility. Clearly, the Federal Reserve has a role to play here in terms of the amount of money in circulation and the interest rates."

Let's review the Fed's tech record....

H1-B, el cheapo imported tech labor program, (currently set at 250K+ new bodies per year), is federal subsidy for corporations at the expense of U.S. tech workers. DCMA is a federal law protecting corporations lame ass IP implementations at the expense of the consumers. A Patent Office which does NOT know the difference, between a hole in a ground and a flush toilet, (subsidy for lawyers/big corporations). IRS 1776 tax code change, which forced most independant workers into cheaper W2 (employee) positions. The 1986 labor ruling which decided employees making more than ~27 dollars and hour are not entitled to over time pay multipliers. Do you see the pattern yet!

Yes, the Fed's have been screwing around the tech industry for a LONG.... time.
Each time they act, you can bet, the U.S. worker will get screwed.

The worst of the lot, is the current "H1-B" program, which is corrosively destroying our tech industry infrastructure from the inside out. Do you think it was an accident? That the tech industry started collapsing at an ever increasing rate, after the FED's more than doubled the yearly H1-B quotas? When you answer the question, who really drove U.S. tech sales forward, and who are the same people getting displaced by the H1-B's, then you will have found enlightenment about the current tech crash.

Yep, great job..NOT!! I think we would be better off, if monkey's ran the U.S. government, at least they would be a little more consistent.

Oh.. one last thought.. Greenspan's attempt to boost what remains of our economy, is going to trigger a serious bout of stagflation. Have a nice day..

I've got yer ass-chipping right here, pal.

[Vassily Overveight]

So the eeevil corporations want to chip our asses, huh? Well, here's a great example of our kind and benevolent government doing exactly that. Here's the relevant part:

But there's a darker side. Several government agencies are claiming that the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act lets them use this technology to track you legally, without a warrant or even probable cause, in what it deems "emergencies." Do you trust these clowns?

They're talking about a requirement that phone companies be able to geolocate wireless phones, not just to find you when your car has run off the road, but for 'tracking' purposes. Now who's doing the ass-chipping?

"I'm for the people."

[hyrdra]

All through the interview I got the general feeling this guy doesn't know anything about any of the major issues in the tech world right now. Don't confuse this with avoidance, because it's complete ignorance.

He may hold two engineering degrees, but he stumbled over all the major questions in the interview, without adding any information either way and basically not saying anything.

Like my Grandfather always said, politicains are all the same, they say: "Some people are for [it] and some are against [it], and I'm for the people.". Absolutly nothing.

I guess you have to realize politics is a profession, and to keep your job you gotta have the most people that like you...so don't do anything. Don't agree, disagree, and when an interviewing asks you questions, go into rhetorical mode. This will keep people on either side happy because you're technically not for the other guy, and people like me who realize what's going on (e.g. 1%) just don't know what to think.

This guy also seems to think just by providing power to an industry you're going to get results. Someone should explain the difference between an economic industry and a vacuume cleaner to him. Industries need monitoring, they need guidance just like a three year old around a cookie jar. You can't let an industry self-regulate...this is what's happening in California right now, which ironically doesn't even have power.

I also love the fact he thinks privacy isn't important and giving up some of our privacy can be a good thing. Well, it can be good in that it saves lives and it saves money, but it also decreases the value of human life as set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. But what is the inverse? Does such a system of complete non-privacy impact the citizens as having privacy at the cost of loss of information? People will always be killed and people will always kill people. It's the human way. We're violent and destructive. You can try to buffer all that by spying on everyone on the off-chance they might do something in hopes of preventing it, but at what cost overall. You have to look at the big picture and not just one output.

I hope we get a tech advisor who at least does more than read the news paper clippings on the subject he is advising the nation in. Maybe someone with real interest in something who is not just doing the job because the country's been good to him, someone who has a vested interest in the safe progression of technology in such a way as to benefit people and not just corporations. We need someone who recognizes people are and own the country, not large corporations and ideas should be the medium of transaction, not money. Here's hoping for a better future ~

Rob

[Patrick McRotch]

"then we will all have to go start a new planet just to prevent the the glorious self regulated industry from implanting chips in our asses to know where we are, what we are doing, and with who."

Rob, why would they need to put a chip in your ass to know what you're doing? What exactly ARE you doing? Oh and the last sentence should read "with whom".

Well.. not like Carnivore's already having trouble

[GearheadX]

• This about it, can you imagine how much havoc All Your Baseisms have been wreaking on programs that scour the net looking for words like 'bomb'?

  Somebody set up us the bomb!!

Berk Watkins