People are surprised to learn this?
In the end, it turns out it’s all about the emails.The blogger goes on to point out that almost all of the recent fearmongering, which has been about telephone calls, is just plain wrong. Duh! Half the fearmongers don’t understand what they’re talking about (e.g., Continue reading— Spying Fight about Emails, Not Phone Calls, DOJ Reveals, By Ryan Singel ThreatLevel, Wired, March 04, 2008 | 4:47:36 PMCategories: NSA
What a reputation:
So that’s that. Register your domain name through a U.S. company and your business goes kaput if the U.S. Treasury Department decides it doesn’t like you. It doesn’t matter if you’re based in Spain, your servers are in the Bahamas, your customers are mostly European, and you’ve broken no laws. No warning. Just kaput.This blogger bases his opinion on a NYTimes story: Continue reading— Just Kaput, Kevin Drum, Political Animal, 4 March 2008
Creeping ahead:
A study from Texas-based research firm Parks Associates predicts that 33 million US households will have broadband connections of 10Mbps or faster by 2012. As of the end of 2007, that figure stood at 5.7 million, which means that a lot of change will have to occur in the US market for that 33 million figure to become a reality.Meanwhile, Japan is already doing 100Mbps. But in Japan there is real ISP competition. Unlike in the U.S., where, as shown in the pie chart by Park Associates (via DSL Reports), each of Comcast and AT&T have a fifth of the broadband market, followed by Verizon and Time Warner each with 13%, plus Cox with 7%, and that’s 3/4 of the total market served by only five companies, of whom most people have a choice of only two in any given locality. That’s not competition.— Report: 10Mbps broadband in 33 million homes by 2012, By Eric Bangeman, ars technica, Published: March 04, 2008 – 10:20PM CT
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This is what the supporters of retroactive immunity think wasn’t sufficient:
EPIC compiled a table of FISA Court cases.
From 1979 through 2006, FISC heard thousands of cases and rejected
only 5.
Retroactive immunity isn’t about protecting telcos: it’s about hoovering up everything, and it’s about a completely unconstrained “unitary executive”.
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Ed Black by Declan McCullagh |
CCIA dismisses with contempt the manufactured hysteria that industry will not aid the United States Government when the law is clear. As a representative of industry, I find that suggestion insulting. To imply that our industry would refuse assistance under established law is an affront to the civic integrity of businesses that have consistently cooperated unquestioningly with legal requests for information.CCIA represents many of the corporations that are called upon by FISA.— To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Edward J. Black, President & CEO, Computer & Communications Industry Association, 29 February 2008
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