zen.org Communal Weblog

/. linked to the IMDB entry for it.

Sometimes the Chinese are just genus: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6178659.stm

At work I subscribe to about 60, mostly music, podcasts. Some of which probably don’t actually produce shows anymore, but I don’t often notice it. Usually I just let them play in the order they download. For weeks, nay months, all has been well. I pop on the ear phones and away I go, but today I’m running out of shows. Even though Trance Tuesday in three hours long, it’s going to run out soon. Sure tomorrow there will be more shows, but enough for most of a work day?

I guess in the mean time I’ll to run a sort of best of in my head tomorrow.  So No me gusta la Coke, No me gusta la Coke. That you Quiero Club.

Just one more illustration of the increasingly glaring fact that “The Land of the Free” is anything but … the Paranoid-in-Chief and his toadies strike again!

from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

American Travelers to Get Secret ‘Risk Assessment’ Scores
Washington, D.C. – An invasive and unprecedented data-mining system is set to be deployed on U.S. travelers Monday, despite substantial questions about Americans’ privacy. In comments sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the agency to delay the program’s rollout until it makes more details available to the public and addresses critical privacy and due process concerns.The Automated Targeting System (ATS) will create and assign “risk assessments” to tens of millions of citizens as they enter and leave the country. Individuals will have no way to access information about their “risk assessment” scores or to correct any false information about them. But once the assessment is made, the government will retain the information for 40 years — as well as make it available to untold numbers of federal, state, local, and foreign agencies in addition to contractors, grantees, consultants, and others.

“The government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens ‘risk assessment’ scores that will follow them throughout their lives,” said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. “If that wasn’t frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it. Homeland Security needs to delay the deployment of this system and allow for an informed public debate on this dangerous proposal.”

Earlier this month, EFF’s FLAG Project submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to DHS seeking more details about the ATS data-mining program, but the agency has not yet disclosed the requested information.

For EFF’s full comments to DHS: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/ats/ats_comments.pdf For the DHS Federal Register notice announcing ATS: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2006/06-9026.htm