Saturday, July 22, 2006

Life at Ground Zero

A poignant look at life in America today and how we got here:
http://www.fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=4037

In other news, I have started a new job. I now spend my nights answering the phones of the Unix tech support line at a web-hosting company. Not that that means much to you, but I thought that you might be interested in knowing a juicy little tidbit that I learned while at said job: big brother is watching more closely than you think. Sometime about a month or so ago, the FBI came in and talked to our Chief Network Architect. Their purpose was to issue a request for a dedicated fibre connection to our network, thereby allowing them to poke around the network and spy on tens of thousands of domains and literally hundreds of thousands of users, including yourself. Our CNA, ever the libertarian, politely refused. Fast forward to this week. Another visit by the Feral Brute Initiative, this time with a court order for the dedicated fibre connection. When told that he must sign the order or be jailed, poor CNA meekly obliged. But not before asking for a copy of the order. After all, how can our attorneys advise us on an order that they can't read. The answer? They can't. Which is why the ba$tard$ refused to give him a copy. I suspect that similar events have been happening at every other web hosting provider they can find. Folks, your rights are being taken away in momentous proportions, and I don't seem to see anyone who cares.