Now that Martins is back from Latvia I shall return to my valiant efforts to post on a regular basis. And since my elephant jokes were so utterly and thoroughly dissed last night by both other members of the household, I shall keep them for personal use and hilarity and not allow anyone else to share in them. EAT IT, BOYS!! You are giving them up for a sad life of humorless sorrow.

OK, I know this subject has probably been beat to death now, but since I told Martins I would post, I've got to post about SOMETHING, and so let's talk about the NSA and eavesdropping. No, I don't think it's ok. IN THE WAY THEY'VE GONE ABOUT IT.
Because let's think about this. Under FISA, you can do a warrantless search or wiretap. And you have 72 hours to get a retroactive warrant. Really, can you not find a moment to call the judge? If you can find time to pee in those 72 hours i think you can call the judge. Second, the fact that the NSA is not just listening to calls of known suspects, but compiling data on ALL calls and screening them through phrase-recognizers to look for suspicious calls. And I bet a lot of false positives were made. My friend and I used to send each other emails back and forth just with lots of random phrases that we hoped would trigger something, because we were bored. Never did though, although today...
Anyway, so say I'm a terrorist. Do you really think I'm not going to know how to speak in code? And it's not like you sit down on the telephone with someone and say, "ok, for our next conversation: al-Q = Big Bird, UBL = Cookie Monster, and bombs = pixie sticks." Uh-huh.

So, it's kinda the principle of the thing, the lack of checks and balances that Bush is claiming is treasonous to question in a time of war...if he can justify this, what's next? It's not up to him to interpret the law, that's what the JUDICIAL branch is for. So don't give me this bullshit, Bush. At least put it out there straight for us, don't pretend everyone's as stupid as you (pretend to be?)


OK, another thing though, that maybe you guys HAVEN'T seen yet: Apparently the NSA has also been installing 'persistent' cookies on people's computers who visit their website, so they can tell where they go. Most of the cookies expire in 2035, meaning they're rather permanent. The NSA claims that it was an 'inadvertent mistake' having something to do with a software upgrade, but that's just a little weird. Not that I really care that much, I mean, do terrorists really visit the NSA site often and then go off to their al-Q cave blog? Mmmm...doubt it. More likely it would be people like me who would visit the NSA site and then the CIA site and then go off hunting for al-Q websites before they are shut down because it is something that i like to do. is all. and people are free to be interested in stuff that other people find weird. anyway, i'm just wondering what use this information is to anybody at the NSA. whatever.