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The New York City Police Department is definitely going overboard In in their crackdown on the Critical Mass rides, I wonder if more news coverage like this New York Times article will get them to back off, or if it will take legal action - more than just losing their case to stop the rides.
The New York Times had an article about the quite late New York City Department of Transportation truck study, which says without giving many details how out screwed up the freight delivery situation in this region is. Sure, things get to where they need to go, but transport costs are very high, pollution is a big problem, and in many places the system is set up so that trucks have an incentive to drive on local streets instead of major thoroughfares or expressways. One particularly good quote from the article:
The police are not known to be tough on truck drivers. Inspector McCarthy testified yesterday that the police issued more than 13,000 summonses for truck infractions last year. By comparison, officers issued more than 40,000 citations to bicyclists, according to Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for pedestrians and cyclists.
The Transportation Security Administration Secure Flight program has been suspended, supposedly because they have found a number of security vulnerabilities in it. Maybe they are suspending it (for now) because it does not seem to be working - $150 million spent and only lots of unhappy false positive matches (ordinary people who can't fly because they are matched for the wrong reasons). Not a very good benefit-to-cost ratio.
Bruce Schneier has said many things better than I could about how little this program would do to enhance our security.