Chris Boese's Weblog

Update on the Google Hiccup

In a previous post, I wrote about some of my back blog archives falling out of my custom Google Adsense domain search.

I also opened at Help Ticket at Typepad and submitted a copy of my post to the Tech Support people there. As usual, I did get a helpful response. I've always had good contact with people from Six Apart and I appreciate that. I just wanted to share with others what Typepad had to say about the issue I raised:

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your feedback on this. While we did make the change you're referring to to help with performance, this should not have an adverse affect on how Google indexes older posts on a weblog.

The Recent Posts listing typically links to posts that most users still have on their index page and this is the case for your weblog as well. You may want to try contacting Google about this issue directly as they may have some insight on this for you. We have not made any changes in TypePad that would cause this.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

This is a bit of a relief, because I want to continue to trust Typepad to do right by me. And second, whenever one has a technical problem, it is good to eliminate the obvious technical glitches first, before jumping to those bigger philosophical issues.

Now I must contact Google with the same questions, probably through the inside of my Adsense account. However, in my response to the Help Ticket above, I thought of another possiblity that may explain why Google would do something so UN-Google-like.

Here's what I wrote:

I appreciate the clarification. I really did not want to believe that the indexing change on Typepad would make permalinks and the keyword indexes disappear from Google.

The thing is, Google is a Hoover. It hoovers up everything. It has designs on hoovering up all gmail email files. It wants a kitchen sink data set. Inclusive, not exclusive. We have to tell Google NOT to hoover up our sites, make our sites invisible to Google, for private family photo albums and such. So why would my back permalinks fall off the Google index if they are still out there for the Google bots to crawl? Could something be blocking Google's bots from crawling down some of Typepad's link paths?

The only other thing I could imagine is if Google thought my sites were a link farm. But my sites don't look anything like link farm sites. They have ideas, strung together, sense to be made, to the best of my ability.

Philosophically, I must admit I'm having this same problem on email, and I've written about it in a past CNN.com column: email spam filters think my emails are spam, and they are not. I'm not even forwarding silly jokes like my mother does. But I can't even send a colleague at work an article that may help him work on a story, because the email filter thinks sending a story is spam and not bona fide research. SINCE WHEN?

The only other thing I can think of is that I've seen link farm sites that are lifting whole posts off my site and republishing them on link farms. The only reason I find them is they show up on Technorati with my words on them. So if Google decided the content of MY POSTS are tainted by the link farms should be nuked them out of their Hoover system, then there have to be a ton of people being plagiarized by link farms who are being INCORRECTLY nuked out of Google.

I wonder if the link farm plagiarizers are themselves hoovering up older site archives, banking on the fact that the owners might not be paying attention, or that the sites might be inactive or abandoned.

Shades of the Chinese Cultural Revolution... online?

The sheer numbers of people in China make the prospect of this sort of mob/vigilante action even more frightening, I think. Shirley Jackson's "Lottery" mentality, writ large.

Link: Online Throngs Impose a Stern Morality in China - New York Times.

Online Throngs Impose a Stern Morality in China

By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Published: June 3, 2006

SHANGHAI, June 2 — It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of the country's most popular Internet bulletin boards from a husband denouncing a college student he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack.

"Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," one person wrote, "to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband."

Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.

It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.

[...]

While Internet wars can crop up anywhere, these cases have set off alarms in China, where this sort of crowd behavior has led to violence in the past. Many draw disturbing parallels to the Cultural Revolution, whose 40th anniversary is this year, when mobs of students taunted and beat their professors. Mass denunciations and show trials became the order of the day for a decade.

In recent years, the government has gradually tightened controls on the Internet, censoring popular search engines, like Google and Technorati; employing thousands of Web police officers; and requiring that customers at Internet cafes provide identification.

There has been recurrent talk by the government of registering all Internet users, and many worry that a wave of online threats and vigilantism could serve as a pretext to impose new limits on users.

[...]

In many countries, electronic bulletin boards hark back to the earliest days of the Internet, before Web browsers were common, and when text messages were posted in static fashion in stark black and white. In today's China, however, bulletin boards, or BBS's, have been colorfully updated and remain at the heart of the country's Internet culture.

"Our Web site is a platform, not a court," said Zeng Liu, a Webmaster for Tianya, which reports 40 million page visits daily and claims to be the world's largest BBS. "We cannot judge who is a good or bad person by some moral standard, but we have our own bottom line. If it's a personal attack on someone, we delete it, but it is very difficult, given that we have 10 million users."

Although concerned about online threats, advocates of free speech say that is no reason for the Chinese authorities to place further limits on the Internet.

"The Internet should be free, and I have always opposed the idea of registering users, because this is perhaps the only channel we have for free discussion," said Zhu Dake, a sociologist and cultural critic at Tongji University, in Shanghai. "On the other hand, the Internet is being distorted. This creates a very difficult dilemma for us."

[...]

Kevin Kelly: Scan This Book! - New York Times

Venerable Wired dude Kevin Kelly has a fun article that is near and dear to my heart in the New York Times, and I just can't pass up calling attention to it (although I think it is Most Emailed, so I'm hardly the only one).

I'm just so easy. All you have to do is mention Alexandria and I get all a-quiver. I have my own theories about grand libraries, which I'll probably mention below, but suffice it here to say that a Library of Everything is one massive part of the reason I jumped into cyberspace with both feet in 1990 and never looked back. And for the record, that was long before I read about Neal Stephenson's Librarian in "Snow Crash."

What would Borges say? What would Confucius say?

I think Confucius would say "It is written... "

But the bigger question, I think, is "Will this Tower of Babel reach to the heavens?"

Link: Scan This Book! - New York Times.

May 14, 2006

Scan This Book!

By KEVIN KELLY

In several dozen nondescript office buildings around the world, thousands of hourly workers bend over table-top scanners and haul dusty books into high-tech scanning booths. They are assembling the universal library page by page.

The dream is an old one: to have in one place all knowledge, past and present. All books, all documents, all conceptual works, in all languages. It is a familiar hope, in part because long ago we briefly built such a library. The great library at Alexandria, constructed around 300 B.C., was designed to hold all the scrolls circulating in the known world. At one time or another, the library held about half a million scrolls, estimated to have been between 30 and 70 percent of all books in existence then. But even before this great library was lost, the moment when all knowledge could be housed in a single building had passed. Since then, the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it. For 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has been a mythical dream that kept receding further into the infinite future.

[You know, if they were going to build such a great library in Alexandria with all that very precious stuff, why did they have to put it in such a precarious location?! I've been mad about this as long as I've known about it, and I'm still mad about it. I WANT to go to Alexandria and I'm pissed off that I can't, dammit!]

Until now. When Google announced in December 2004 that it would digitally scan the books of five major research libraries to make their contents searchable, the promise of a universal library was resurrected. Indeed, the explosive rise of the Web, going from nothing to everything in one decade, has encouraged us to believe in the impossible again. Might the long-heralded great library of all knowledge really be within our grasp?

Brewster Kahle, an archivist overseeing another scanning project, says that the universal library is now within reach. "This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!" he shouts. "It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people of the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time, like putting a man on the moon." And unlike the libraries of old, which were restricted to the elite, this library would be truly democratic, offering every book to every person.

[And we an build this wonderful Tower that will reach to the Heavens! We will all speak the same language and nothing we plan to do will be impossible for us!

Until you look at the appropriate Tarot card, the Lightning-Struck Tower.

You say hey, it's a web, not a tower. Why are you going on and on about a tower? It's my theory, you see, a theory of the Web. In the Platonic sense, or Neoplatonic, if you will, this idea of a Library of Everything is technically an imitation, and perhaps a very pale imitation at that. The original "Library of Everything" supposedly exists as a great Ideal in the sky, in the Heavens, on some energy plane, or in Nirvana. It is called "The Akashic Records," or, to Hebrews, Muslims, I think, and Christians, it is called "The Book of Life."

It's the source of that "This Is Your Life" movie that St. Peter plays for you when you get to the Pearly Gates, before you get your harp and cloud and graduate to a New Yorker cartoon.

Edgar Cayce supposedly went to visit this library when he was asleep and found out all kinds of mysterious and secret stuff. I bet he's got a lot of overdue books by now, too. I usually think it is this library that Borges wrote of in his "Library of Babel" short story in the "Labyrinths" collection. His version is pretty twisted, though.

So what does this "Book of Life" have that our longed for Library of Everything doesn't have?

Some people imagine it as a Tapestry, with a thread for every life and a full record of each and all its intersections. This would be where the Three Fates of Greek mythology would hang out, the Three Norns of Norse mythology.

So the Akashic records would have not only every book, every image, an instantly searchable movie of every life, IT WOULD ALSO HAVE A FULL RECORD OF EVERY THOUGHT.

Stream of consciousness personal diary bloggers are working on uploading this part into the Web, but we're still stuck with a pale imitation of that panoptic record that Santa Claus clearly has access to as well, for checking to see if we've been naughty or nice. I bet the NSA is envious of HIM. Oddly enough, the Panoptic Eye appears to be just as much a part of the Neoplatonic imitation of the Akashic as it is in the "real" Akashic.

New Agers and others believe the Akashic Records are not confined to matter, but also include a record of all energy, which makes sense if matter and energy are conserved. Perhaps the Akashic is where all that dark matter goes that no one can account for. These people believe "Thoughts are Things" that send energy out in to the universe, whether in the form of prayers, wishes, curses (a panoptic and authoritarian god keeps track of sins of thought, word, and deed: God as Universal Accountant), lust in your heart, coveting, or the off-key internal singing of your soul.

So the Akashic Tapestry Record spreads out across the ethers like a giant web, just as our Internet weaves invisibly around our planet. You could make an argument that the Akashic Records are the Mind of God, and all of us (and our atoms and animating energy) make up that godhead at an atomic level as well, microcosm, macrocosm, as above, so below, or is that as below, so above? Ergo, the Akashic Records ARE GOD?

And what does that make our Platonic Imitation of an Imitation of the Akashic, the World Wide Web? The etchings of the Mind of Humanity? Humanity trying to make Itself God?

Interestingly, when you use a Kabala system of numerology (not the "Americanized" one), WWW=666. Those odd literalists, the fundamentalist Christian dispensational pre-millenialists, see three as the number of God, and six as the number of humanity, so they interpret this very famous and ominous symbol 666 (the movie previews are making such a big deal about an "Omen" remake coming out on 6/6/06, so maybe my ramble here is in honor of that) as three times six, or man trying to make himself god, repeated without question in pulpits across the U.S. I don't know if it is really an accurate interpretation, as some Hebrew sites also list six as a holy or "god" number, instead of seven, which I had always heard.

My Neoplatonic argument isn't really that compelling, if you look at the actual text that mentions it, because it is a WEB, not a man, unless the Web is the Mind of Man.

In the New International Version Bible, Revelation 13:18 reads:

This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

And here's a neat tidbit, care of Wikipedia: The fear of the number 666 is known as "Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia". Say that three times fast.

Now about that Tower of Babel, reaching to the heavens, is the Web another instance of man trying to make himself like the gods, to reach into the heavens? The cautionary tale here is the lightning-struck tower, the blow to the head, a fall from a high place. The Tower is a nearly universal cultural symbol of hubris, of pride going before a fall.

Something to look forward to! Anyway, let's get back to Kevin... (grin)]

But the technology that will bring us a planetary source of all written material will also, in the same gesture, transform the nature of what we now call the book and the libraries that hold them. The universal library and its "books" will be unlike any library or books we have known. Pushing us rapidly toward that Eden of everything, and away from the paradigm of the physical paper tome, is the hot technology of the search engine.

1. Scanning the Library of Libraries

Scanning technology has been around for decades, but digitized books didn't make much sense until recently, when search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN came along. When millions of books have been scanned and their texts are made available in a single database, search technology will enable us to grab and read any book ever written. Ideally, in such a complete library we should also be able to read any article ever written in any newspaper, magazine or journal. And why stop there? The universal library should include a copy of every painting, photograph, film and piece of music produced by all artists, present and past. Still more, it should include all radio and television broadcasts. Commercials too. And how can we forget the Web? The grand library naturally needs a copy of the billions of dead Web pages no longer online and the tens of millions of blog posts now gone — the ephemeral literature of our time. In short, the entire works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages, available to all people, all the time.

This is a very big library. But because of digital technology, you'll be able to reach inside it from almost any device that sports a screen. From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world. When fully digitized, the whole lot could be compressed (at current technological rates) onto 50 petabyte hard disks. Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow's technology, it will all fit onto your iPod. When that happens, the library of all libraries will ride in your purse or wallet — if it doesn't plug directly into your brain with thin white cords. Some people alive today are surely hoping that they die before such things happen, and others, mostly the young, want to know what's taking so long. (Could we get it up and running by next week? They have a history project due.)

[Kevin! You of all people know we won't need that white cord into our heads, iPod reference not withstanding. The library of all libraries will of course either be transmitted wirelessly, or hell, it'll probably be implanted into our heads directly! Instantaneous interfacing, always on, ubiquitous. Neal Stephenson's Librarian, beamed directly to gargoyles everywhere.

Surely Plato has reincarnated around here somewhere at this time. He pre-dates Alexandria (Aristotle was Alexander's tutor, so I imagine Plato had been dead a while) but he actually wanted Greeks to keep things in their amazing big Greek memories. Plato had his toga in a twist because this new thing, WRITING, was creating cheat sheets, so to speak (cheat scrolls?). If you could write something down, your brain, your big-Greek-reciting-Homer memory didn't have to work so hard, and you started keeping fewer things INSIDE your head, storing them so much more effectively in written form, which could then be assembled into a library.

Just as most of our math skills have withered in this age of the calculator, poor Plato was watching the decline of Greek oratorical skills based on memory. Was the trade-off worth it, Plato? Could Alexandria be the consolation prize?

And now, if we can have a Library of Everything implanted in our heads, does that mean we're returning to the days when people will be able to recite Homer without a teleprompter or PowerPoint? Will we get those big Greek memories back, augmented and more complete with access to everything that was ever written? Would Plato reincarnated feel redeemed at long last, or would it be the final betrayal?]

[...]

But because of copyright issues and the physical fact of the need to turn pages, the digitization of books has proceeded at a relative crawl. At most, one book in 20 has moved from analog to digital. So far, the universal library is a library without many books.

But that is changing very fast. Corporations and libraries around the world are now scanning about a million books per year. Amazon has digitized several hundred thousand contemporary books. In the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University (one of the five libraries collaborating with Google) is scanning its eight-million-book collection using a state-of-the art robot from the Swiss company 4DigitalBooks. This machine, the size of a small S.U.V., automatically turns the pages of each book as it scans it, at the rate of 1,000 pages per hour. A human operator places a book in a flat carriage, and then pneumatic robot fingers flip the pages — delicately enough to handle rare volumes — under the scanning eyes of digital cameras.

[Boggles your mind, doesn't it? All those texts, all those words, keyword-searchable, context-searchable. But still, not enough of those texts in the public domain.]

[...]

The idea is to seed the bookless developing world with easily available texts. Superstar sells copies of books it scans back to the same university libraries it scans from. A university can expand a typical 60,000-volume library into a 1.3 million-volume one overnight. At about 50 cents per digital book acquired, it's a cheap way for a library to increase its collection. Bill McCoy, the general manager of Adobe's e-publishing business, says: "Some of us have thousands of books at home, can walk to wonderful big-box bookstores and well-stocked libraries and can get Amazon.com to deliver next day. The most dramatic effect of digital libraries will be not on us, the well-booked, but on the billions of people worldwide who are underserved by ordinary paper books." It is these underbooked — students in Mali, scientists in Kazakhstan, elderly people in Peru — whose lives will be transformed when even the simplest unadorned version of the universal library is placed in their hands.

[Democratizing, yes, I suppose, if people are still reading these books. If they one day become inert material, like the quartz crystals New Agers think are embedded storage devices holding the wisdom and all the knowledge of Atlantis, about as useful to us as that funky vinyl record the post-apocalyptic kids spin on the end of a forked stick in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome." Gotta watch out for the Pocky Clips, or your giant Atlantis pyramid shaped quartz crystal Library of Everything gets as wrecked as Alexandria, and then where are you? Standing in front of a frame of branches and "telling the tell" through a memory of television?

I'm still chuckling at the idea of lesser university libraries getting to make huge leaps in how many "volumes" they supposedly have, simply by downloading a big old mess of these public domain texts from those famously massive major university libraries. Will they use the new numbers to adjust their budget requests? Will university administrators realize they don't have increased heating and lighting costs for all these new "volumes?"]

[...]

Yet the common vision of the library's future (even the e-book future) assumes that books will remain isolated items, independent from one another, just as they are on shelves in your public library. There, each book is pretty much unaware of the ones next to it. When an author completes a work, it is fixed and finished. Its only movement comes when a reader picks it up to animate it with his or her imagination. In this vision, the main advantage of the coming digital library is portability — the nifty translation of a book's full text into bits, which permits it to be read on a screen anywhere. But this vision misses the chief revolution birthed by scanning books: in the universal library, no book will be an island.

[Aha! Decontextualized Library of Congress notation, The Dewey Decimal System, arbitrary shelving, or even mis-shelving, a black hole that books sometimes disappear into in some libraries, even the venerable card catalog, will they all become irrelevant? Remember those dreary library classes where you were drilled in when to use the Author's name, when to use the Subject Index, when to try to find the Title? And even early databases used in libraries preserved this quaint eccentricity long after it was necessary, in some cases, is present still, although I have no idea why we need separate fields for Author, Subject, and Title, when Keyword ought to catch everything just fine.

I remember an argument I had with a librarian once, and I remember the exact year: 1990. I was bringing my research paper classes to the library for their regular library orientation sessions. After class, I questioned the librarian about the new InfoTrax database system for periodicals that she was happily touting. It was pretty neat, and I was ready to go to town with it, but as a usual dyslexic, I was frustrated when it couldn't find things I didn't type precisely, or in the correct Subject, Title, or Author field.

Why can't it all be keywords I asked her? Oh, that's coming soon, she said, and went on to explain what it would do. But no, I wanted keyword searching of ENTIRE TEXTS, just of magazine, journal, and periodical articles, which I thought was perfectly reasonable. Why wouldn't it do that? I wanted to be able to run Boolean combinations through this jackpot, just to see what would turn up. The librarian's eyes went wide, and then she got angry. How dare I even expect such an impossible thing! The absurdity of it. THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN, she pronounced. Don't even think about it.

Meanwhile, I got to graduate school three years later and eventually encountered my future dissertation adviser, a hypertext theorist who imagined a world where EACH AND EVERY WORD is a hypertextual link to somewhere else. Even "a" "an" and "the." Ted Nelson's "docuverse" indeed!]

Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before. In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages.

In recent years, hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs have written and cross-referenced an entire online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. Buoyed by this success, many nerds believe that a billion readers can reliably weave together the pages of old books, one hyperlink at a time. Those with a passion for a special subject, obscure author or favorite book will, over time, link up its important parts. Multiply that simple generous act by millions of readers, and the universal library can be integrated in full, by fans for fans.

[I just can't wait. Not only will the future be hyperlinked, but it will also spin out into recombinant document DNA, and we don't even need plagiarizing Harvard sophomore novelists to start us off on the right/wrong foot.

Imagine recombinant Faulker and parody Faulker, the novelistic version of "filksongs."

Interweave Emily Dickinson's 1,775 quatrain-driven poems with 1,000 "Centuries" of Nostradamus quatrains! Ooh oh! Hold me back, hold me back! Audio track them all over the midi-tune of Gilligan's Island.]

Must-read story in USAToday - NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

One section in particular just jumped out at me... anybody besides me wishing we could all switch over to Qwest?

[...]

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.

[...]

Here's some other important bits from the story that should not be missed (bold emphasis mine). This link below has a really comprehensive bunch of sidebar, timeline, and background information, as well as the Bush administration response so go take a look for yourself.

Link: USATODAY.com - NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls.

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

Updated 5/11/2006 10:38 AM ET
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

[...]

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

[...]

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

[...]

This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

[...]

In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.

Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.

Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of "data mining" — sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.

Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. "FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining," said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.

The caveat, he said, is that "personal identifiers" — such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses — can't be included as part of the search. "That requires an additional level of probable cause," he said.

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

[...]

The NSA's domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.

Ma Bell's bedrock principle — protection of the customer — guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. "No court order, no customer information — period. That's how it was for decades," he said.

The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.

[...]

The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.

The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.

The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.

With that, the NSA's domestic program began in earnest.

[...]

The domestic and international call-tracking programs have things in common, according to the sources. Both are being conducted without warrants and without the approval of the FISA court. The Bush administration has argued that FISA's procedures are too slow in some cases. Officials, including Gonzales, also make the case that the USA Patriot Act gives them broad authority to protect the safety of the nation's citizens.

[...]

One company differs

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.

Contributing: John Diamond

Public Citizen: "One of the biggest con-jobs in recent history"

Are 18 of the richest families in the United States trying to create a feudal aristocracy, a private "club" that will only accept them as elite members?

I'm finding this on the Public Citizen (www.citizen.org), a public-interest watchdog organization founded by Ralph Nader. I'll dip back and forth from the press release and parts of the full report.

Link: Public Citizen | Press Room - Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy Expose Stealth Campaign of Super-Wealthy to Repeal Federal Estate Tax.

April 25, 2006

Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy Expose Stealth Campaign of Super-Wealthy to Repeal Federal Estate Tax

Report Identifies 18 Families Behind Multimillion-Dollar Deceptive Lobbying Campaign

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax has been aggressively led by 18 super-wealthy families, according to a report released today by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy at a press conference in Washington, D.C. The report details for the first time the vast money, influence and deceptive marketing techniques behind the rhetoric in the campaign to repeal the tax.

It reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.

The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo wine, Campbell’s soup, and Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms. Collectively, the list includes the first- and third-largest privately held companies in the United States, the richest family in Alabama and the world’s largest retailer.

These families have sought to keep their activities anonymous by using associations to represent them and by forming a massive coalition of business and trade associations dedicated to pushing for estate tax repeal. The report details the groups they have hidden behind – the trade associations they have used, the lobbyists they have hired, and the anti-estate tax political action committees, 527s and organizations to which they have donated heavily.

In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups.

[...]

“This report exposes one of the biggest con jobs in recent history,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “This long-running, secretive campaign funded by some of the country’s wealthiest families has relied on deception to bamboozle the public not only about who must pay the estate tax, but about how repealing it will affect the country.”

[...]

While they extol the hard work of individual farmers and small businesses, most of the 18 families have been wealthy for generations; only five still include the people who first earned the family fortune. Members of the families are far less likely than most Americans to have paid taxes on their wealth; to a large extent, that wealth lies in assets that have appreciated but, unlike paychecks, have never been taxed.

These super-rich families have spent millions in personal wealth and used their companies’ resources and lobbying power in repeated attempts to influence members of Congress to repeal the tax.

[...]

The stakes of the campaign are great, not only for the super-wealthy families, but for the public. If the families’ repeal bid succeeds, it will cost the U.S. Treasury a trillion dollars in the first decade – roughly what it would cost to provide health insurance for every uninsured person in the United States.

“The estate tax should be regarded as just paying back to the country for all the wonderful things it’s made possible for the people who have that wealth,” said Bill Gates Sr. in an audio statement played at the press conference. “I don’t think there’s any great societal goal being served by inherited wealth. And certainly there’s no sensible argument that I can think of for insisting on being able to pass the last penny of $100 million on to your three kids.”

[...]

Paul Newman, actor and founder of Newman’s Own food company, agreed in a separate statement: “For those of us lucky enough to be born in this country and to have flourished here, the estate tax is a reasonable and appropriate way to return something to the common good. I’m proud to be among those supporting preservation of this tax, which is one of the fairest taxes we have.”

OK, so I'm wanting to see some proof of these allegations, so here some from the Public Citizen report. It's 58 pages, so I'm still just skimming and cherry picking, but here's some bits that jump out at me.

First, I wanted to see the names of the 18 families profiled in the report. I also like to see all in a group the people who are so rich they think they can buy entire nations, like the air breathes differently around them or something. (I've actually been in a classroom with one person from a family on this list, and the air breathed normal just like you'd expect it to. Imagine that.)

1. Allyn-Soderberg Family (Welch Allyn Inc.)
2. Blethen Family (Seattle Times Co.)
3. Cox Family (Cox Enterprises, Inc.)
4. DeVos and Van Andel Families (Alticor/Amway)
5. Dorrance Family (Campbell Soup Company)
6. Gallo (E&J Gallo Winery)
7. Harbert Family
8. Johnson Family (BET, RLJ Development Co.)
9. Koch Family (Koch Industries).
10. Mars Family (Mars Inc.)
11. Mayer Family (Captiva Resources)
12. Nordstrom Family (Nordstrom Inc.)
13. Sobrato Family (Sobrato Development)
14. Stephens Family (Stephens Inc.)
15. Timken Family (The Timken Company)
16. Walton Family (Wal-Mart)
17. Wegman Family (Wegmans Food Markets, Inc.)

OK, so why are there only 17? I must be leaving someone out. Oh, I got it. This is from the Appendix, but in the body of the report they count DeVos and Van Andel Families as two different families, even though they're both Alticor/Amway.

Here's the report's Executive Summary. So only those of you who are executives are allowed to read it, OK? (bold emphasis mine)

One of THE most pressing issues in academia

Link: To: [email protected] Subject: Why It's All About Me - New York Times.

I made a prediction in 2000. It was depressing, and few of my colleagues believed me. I'd always been an early adopter of classroom uses of technologies, since 1990. So at that time, with 10 years of what I'd hoped were innovative uses of electronic pedagogies behind me, I was dying, just dying. Why? Because many of the things I'd been doing were being adopted and entrenched university-wide (and I'd often helped with those initiatives). The biggest thing was email. Email and file-sharing with class projects, essentially groupware applied to the classroom. That's what I did. Collaboration and writing, writing writing (hey, I was a writing teacher, what do you expect?)

I'd done it in hopes that a more comprehensive electronic peer review process could/would lighten the grading load that had first started oppressing me as a teacher of first-year composition as a graduate assistant teacher at the University of Arkansas in the late 1980s.

By 2000, on my own personal bleeding edge of technology, I'd become so overwhelmed with student email, department memos and correspondence, research correspondence, the early onset of spam, and so on, that important things were falling through the cracks. I was like George Jetson on that treadmill, never able to keep up and soon to be eaten alive, with the family dog watching as I got sucked into its conveyor belt.

My colleagues were understandably concerned when I sometimes didn't respond to some things, or just didn't respond quickly enough. When I told them I got 200+ emails a day, they sort of blanched, but assumed I was an unusual case, the department techie.

But all of that paled in comparison to the attitudes of students, who viewed my email responses as entitlements. They sent email in the middle of the night, asking "what's tomorrow's assignment again?" and got angry if I didn't respond before the morning class, giving them at least a half hour before so they'd have time to prepare.

And worst of all, as the article below points out, students won't hesitate to trash you on evaluations if you don't respond to their email quickly, even if it comes in the middle of the night.

I told my colleagues at the time, in that prediction I'll never forget: Where I am right now is where you will be in five years. "No, no," they said. "That's an extreme case, very unlikely."

Maybe its one of those things like hard drive space, that gets larger by huge increments, from 40 mb on my first Mac, to 80 when that hard drive fried. To 4 gigs on my first big external SCSI hard drive I thought I'd never fill up, to the 60 gigs on my Mac G3, to the dual external hard drives I have now, with 160 gigs each.

The article below shows how fully my prediction has come to pass, but it raises a lot more troubling issues than that. At one time I'd feel smug that what I'd said came true, but after teaching again last semester in Montana and working HARD to keep my email load managable with all kinds of new tech tricks with blogs that I was eager to try (and I had an extremely managable student load as well), I have to note that I had an emotional reaction to student email that was very difficult for me, sort of like post-traumatic shock syndrome.

In the years since unplugging from George Jetson's treadmill and getting my email down to say 20-30 messages a day through strict partitioning of accounts etc., I began to jealously guard my email space. But I still hear from folks who fall through the cracks, folks I really want to respond to in a more timely manner. My motivation is high, yet some things still get away from me. Maybe my motivation is lower, being off the tenure track. I do find it remarkably liberating to be my own email master, that's for sure.

I do a much better job of keeping up than I used to, but an emotional barrier comes up against the kind of replies that require more thought or reflection, often the emails I'm most interested in, as opposed to the ones that require only a functionary response, "yes we are confirmed for a meeting at 10 a.m."

And I find that the email In Box starts feeling like a place I go where squirrels nibble little pieces off me. I suppose that's a better feeling than being on George Jetson's treadmill, but it still isn't entirely comfortable, because I really LOVE corresponding with people by email, and as many friends know, I can get pretty long-winded. And I still manage a listserv, I value electronic discussions so much.

I don't say this to deter people who might otherwise email me, but are offended at being characterized as squirrels. I don't see things that way at all. I like getting emails. I just don't like the cumulative effect of the list of email in the In Box biting off little bits of me so that it turns into a To Do list of obligations. It's not my correspondents' faults that I went into a kind of shock for a while because of an overwhelming email load in the late 1990s. I just have some emotional baggage from dealing with it back then, baggage that sometimes turns into a barrier to replying very quickly.

Maybe the article below explains it better. It's terrific. And I've gotten examples of every single type of email situation cited below, and one not mentioned, the drunken student love letter sent in the middle of the night. Bold emphasis added below is mine.

Link: To: [email protected] Subject: Why It's All About Me - New York Times.

February 21, 2006

To: [email protected] Subject: Why It's All About Me

By JONATHAN D. GLATER
Correction Appended

One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade, and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking too much at a wild weekend party.

Jennifer Schultens, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, received this e-mail message last September from a student in her calculus course: "Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I'm a freshman, I'm not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!"

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

[just to clarify, I'm all for deconstructing professorial authority in the classroom and outside of it, to encourage student questioning and critical thinking. I'm not invested in keeping an intellectual distance of "sage on the stage," and I tried to become the "guide on the side" many years ago.]

These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages — from 10 a week to 10 after every class — that are too informal or downright inappropriate.

"The tone that they would take in e-mail was pretty astounding," said Michael J. Kessler, an assistant dean and a lecturer in theology at Georgetown University. " 'I need to know this and you need to tell me right now,' with a familiarity that can sometimes border on imperative."

He added: "It's a real fine balance to accommodate what they need and at the same time maintain a level of legitimacy as an instructor and someone who is institutionally authorized to make demands on them, and not the other way round."

While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor's time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.

For junior faculty members, the barrage of e-mail has brought new tension into their work lives, some say, as they struggle with how to respond. Their tenure prospects, they realize, may rest in part on student evaluations of their accessibility.

The stakes are different for professors today than they were even a decade ago, said Patricia Ewick, chairwoman of the sociology department at Clark University in Massachusetts, explaining that "students are constantly asked to fill out evaluations of individual faculty." Students also frequently post their own evaluations on Web sites like ratemyprofessors.com and describe their impressions of their professors on blogs.

[...]

Professor Ewick said 10 students in one class e-mailed her drafts of their papers days before they were due, seeking comments. "It's all different levels of presumption," she said. "One is that I'll be able to drop everything and read 250 pages two days before I'm going to get 50 of these."

[if I had a nickel for every time this happened!]

[...]

Alexandra Lahav, an associate professor of law at the University of Connecticut, said she felt pressured by the e-mail messages. "I feel sort of responsible, as if I ought to be on call all the time," she said.

[...]

Meanwhile, students seem unaware that what they write in e-mail could adversely affect them, Professor Lahav said. She recalled an e-mail message from a student saying that he planned to miss class so he could play with his son. Professor Lahav did not respond.

"It's graduate school, he's an adult human being, he's obviously a parent, and it's not my place to tell him how to run his life," she said.

But such e-mail messages can have consequences, she added. "Students don't understand that what they say in e-mail can make them seem very unprofessional, and could result in a bad recommendation."

[...]

Electronic Frontier Foundation warns consumers off Google Desktop

As much as I am genuinely fond of Google in spite of myself, I have to say it seems to be a good idea to draw lines of boundaries between independent machines and the network. I don't want to blur the desktop machine and bleed it into the network.

I have the same issues with Apple's .Mac accounts that people are supposed to use for backing up one's hard drive. The accounts aren't big enough to be useful backups, imho.

If I were to make an analogy, I'd say it's the difference between keeping a safe in your house for your tax papers or whatever, vs storing that stuff somewhere else. Sure, you could store it just anywhere, but I'd bet you'd be more likely to go to a bank with good safe deposit boxes.

The stuff on your hard drive should only be stored off-site in the equivalent of a safe deposit box. If the place you're thinking of storing it isn't that safe, don't do it.

Link: EFF: Breaking News: Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation.

Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation

Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop

San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.

"Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "If you use the Search Across Computers feature and don't configure Google Desktop very carefully—and most people won't—Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn't even be notified in time to challenge it. Other litigants—your spouse, your business partners or rivals, whoever—could also try to cut out the middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files."

The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers—much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.

[...]

ACLU sues Homeland Security over Vegan Protester Surveillance

This one caught my attention because I'm still technically a resident of this county in Atlanta. Can't think of where that Honey-Baked Ham place is, tho.

Link: American Civil Liberties Union : Homeland Security Officials Wrongly Arrested Peaceful Protesters in Georgia, Charges ACLU.

Homeland Security Officials Wrongly Arrested Peaceful Protesters in Georgia, Charges ACLU

September 22, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: [email protected]

Vegans Targeted for Protesting Outside Honey Baked Ham Store

ATLANTA, GA -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia today filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two vegan protesters who were subjected to false imprisonment, false arrest and harassment by officials of the Homeland Security Division of DeKalb County and the DeKalb County Police Department.

"All across the country, the ACLU is uncovering information about Americans engaged in peaceful protest being spied on by Homeland Security, the FBI and local police," said Debbie Seagraves, Executive Director of the ACLU of Georgia. "It is deeply disturbing that the government would use resources intended to protect national security to instead spy on innocent Americans who do nothing more than express their opinions on social and political issues."

The lawsuit stems from an incident on December 20, 2003, when Caitlin Childs and Christopher Freeman were participating in a peaceful animal cruelty protest on public property outside a Honey Baked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County. After the protest, Childs and Freeman noticed that they were being observed and photographed by a man in an unmarked car. They approached the car and wrote down the make, model, color and license plate number on a piece of paper. After leaving the protest site, they noticed the unmarked car was following them so they pulled over into a parking lot.

According to the lawsuit, both a uniformed police officer and the man in the unmarked car, who was later identified as Detective D.A. Gorman of the Homeland Security Division, pulled in behind Childs and Freeman and ordered them to exit their car. Detective Gorman then demanded that Childs turn over the piece of paper on which she had copied his license tag number. Childs refused to hand the paper over to him, and was handcuffed and searched by a male officer, despite her request to be searched only by a female officer. Both Childs and Freeman were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and police confiscated the piece of paper and Childs' house keys. Both individuals were released from custody, but neither the piece of paper nor the keys were returned to Childs.

[...]

The ACLU launched its national "Spy Files" effort last year in response to widespread complaints from students and political activists who said they were questioned by FBI agents in the months leading up to the political conventions. The FOIA requests seek two kinds of information: 1) the actual FBI files of groups and individuals targeted for speaking out or practicing their faith; and, 2) information about how the practices and funding structure of joint task forces between the FBI and local police may be encouraging rampant and unwarranted spying.

[...]

You can check out the Homeland Security surveillance photos here.

Also, more information on ACLU's FBI "Spy Files" section, look here.

I'm learning all kinds of interesting things about Montana

Jonathan Weber, a colleague here in Missoula, has a New York Times Op-Ed on some of these interesting land use issues. Great column!

Link: A Class War Runs Through It - New York Times.

September 6, 2005

A Class War Runs Through It

By JONATHAN WEBER
Missoula, Montana

JAMES COX KENNEDY, the head of Cox Enterprises, the Atlanta media company, was just doing what lots of modern media moguls do when he bought nearly 4,000 acres in Montana's Ruby Valley: transforming remote Western ranchland into a private hunting and fishing retreat, and doing some commendable habitat conservation and restoration work in the process.

Perhaps unwittingly, however, Mr. Kennedy has walked into the middle of two separate but closely related controversies, one having to do with Montana's stream-access laws - that one will be the subject of a mediation session next week - and the other relating to conservation easements.

[...]

Montana's 20-year-old stream-access law, which declares that the state's rivers and streams are public property up to the high-water mark, provides a clear window into land-use battles. The law, among the strongest in the nation, has survived numerous legal challenges and become a source of pride for many Montanans (including Gov. Brian Schweitzer), though it's still fiercely opposed by property-rights advocates.

The law does not require property owners to provide entry to waterways through their own land, but it does permit access from any public property. As a result, among the most common access points are county bridges. That's where Mr. Kennedy has run into trouble: his ranch includes all or parts of two bridges that cross the Ruby River, and he has blocked access by reinforcing old fencing along those bridges. Stream-access advocates have sued the county for allowing the fences, setting the stage for a showdown on a controversy that has raged for almost a decade.

Mr. Kennedy claims that the bridges are neither safe nor legal river-access sites. More to the point, though, he says allowing public access would damage the riparian habitat and destroy a fragile fishery that he has spent a lot of time and money nursing back to health. That's a similar argument to one being made by the brokerage mogul Charles Schwab, the rock musician Huey Lewis and others who are fighting to keep the public off a waterway south of Missoula where they own property.

And that brings us to the second controversy. Much of Mr. Kennedy's Ruby Valley property is in a conservation easement, an arrangement under which property owners receive tax breaks for forgoing development on ecologically sensitive lands. Easements have been under fire in Congress in the wake of revelations that some developers were claiming conservation easements for golf courses (hey, it's open space, right?) and otherwise gaming the system.

[...]

Easements have proved to be a very effective means of encouraging land conservation and habitat preservation. But there's something wrong when a billionaire buys a ranch, gets a tax break for an easement and then chases the locals off the river in the name of conservation.

Class, of course, is an issue here. Consider the people who are fighting for access to the river: retired miners and schoolteachers and other working folk, some of whom grew up fishing the local waters and some of whom couldn't give a hoot about fishing but hate seeing the landscape walled off. But there's also wider a social issue involved: if land and water conservation and wildlife protection come to be seen as things that only benefit the rich, it will reinforce the perception that conservation is a luxury of the elite rather than a universal concern.

[...]

Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, an online publication about the Rocky Mountain West.

Go read the whole thing.

CNN.com - U.S. won't ban media from New Orleans searches

I couldn't let this slip by unnoticed, and I want to mark it for my memory. Whooo hooo, CNN! Way to go!

Link: CNN.com - U.S. won't ban media from New Orleans searches - Sep 10, 2005.

U.S. won't ban media from New Orleans searches

CNN filed suit for right to cover search for bodies of Katrina victims

Saturday, September 10, 2005; Posted: 8:11 p.m. EDT (00:11 GMT)

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans.

Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts," said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force.

U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order Friday against a "zero access" policy announced earlier in the day by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

[...]

The judge was to consider granting a permanent injunction Saturday when the government announced its decision not to enforce the "zero access" policy.

In an e-mail to CNN staff, CNN News Group President Jim Walton said the network filed the the lawsuit to "prohibit any agency from restricting its ability to fully and fairly cover" the hurricane victim recovery process.

"As seen most recently from war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, from tsunami-ravaged South Asia and from Hurricane Katrina's landfall along the Gulf," Walton wrote, "CNN has shown that it is capable of balancing vigorous reporting with respect for private concerns."

CNN filed suit against Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, arguing that the officials who announced the decision were acting on FEMA's behalf.

"For an agency to unilaterally ban all coverage of a major component of its governmental function, that is, recovery of the deceased victims of the tragedy, is unprecedented," CNN argued in its legal brief. "Instead, the agency has made a subjective, content-based determination that publicizing the operation would be 'without dignity.'"

CNN's brief argued, "It is not the place of government to replace its own internal judgment for that of a free and independent media."

Because of controversy about how FEMA and other agencies handled the disaster response, CNN lawyers argued, "it is even more vitally important for the public, Congress and the administration to have an independent view of the conduct of this important phase of the operation."