voltage: April 2006

Spying by the Rules

We know that the Bush administration authorized the NSA to spy domestically against federal law. It's an open question how useful this really was (and is). Seems like they were using some of the technology from the "it didn't actually die" Total Information Awareness data mining/spying program that Congress had supposedly killed funding for in 2003. The more interesting question is why if the administration felt the need to go around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court to get permission to wiretap people, why did it not just attempt to change the rules of the court in light of what could most likely be viewed as new and different technology?

Posted by Chris at 04:04 PM in Politics, Security | Comments (0)

Coachella Time-Lapse

Coachella is this weekend. The festival web site has a cool time lapse video from the 2005 main stage.

Posted by Chris at 07:10 PM in Music | Comments (0)

Legislation Information

Govtrack.us is a relatively well organized site where you can find out about all the latest legislation in Washington. It claims to be a non-partisan just-the-facts site and it pretty much seems to be that way.

Posted by Chris at 08:00 PM in Politics | Comments (0)

1906 earthquake damage to Stanford

Stanford has an online (and downloadable) photo exhibit about damage to the campus from the 1906 earthquake.

Posted by Chris at 06:54 PM in Art, Environment | Comments (0)

Where is the NYC DOT going?

Part of the mission of the NYC DOT is to "enhance mobility," but does it always have to be via the motor vehicle? 8 million people in New York City, a constrained amount of land, and the densest built environment in the country -- and still a transit and pedestrian focus seems alien to the DOT.

Seems a few people have been noticing lately. The New York City Streets Renaissance group is trying to push a pretty good agenda. Gotham Gazette ran a good article by a former professor of mine at Hunter College on Livable Streets. The Tristate Transportation Campaign has been following the controversy over the new Yankee Stadium planning proposal and the extra parking that the city cannot prove that it needs. Recent patently false or completely misguided statements by officials at the DOT make one wonder what hidden agenda they are following or what drug is in the drinking water at the agency.

New York City Councilwoman Gale Brewer has introduced a bill to have the DOT's performance measured against real-world performance goals:

the bill would supplement these statistics with a set of measures whose aim will be to assess and reduce “the amount of traffic citywide and within each borough.” Specific aims of the new data would be to “reduce commute time citywide,” reduce household exposure to street emissions and reduce driving’s share of travel to central business districts while increasing those of mass transit, cycling and walking.

Sounds like a good piece of legislation, however unfortunate since the agency can't seem to get itself going and actually helping out all the people of the city.

Posted by Chris at 04:57 PM in Politics, Transportation | Comments (0)

The IRS and Your Personal Information

A recent report by the Electronic Privacy Information Center has some troubling information about personal data collection methods and oversight at the Department Of Treasury/Internal Revenue Service. The most troubling was the recent news that the IRS (and from this report it seems they control the ability of independent tax preparers also) would start selling taxpayer data to other companies. Maybe generalized reports might not be a bad thing, but you just know that they would end up selling detailed individual reports with Social Security numbers because no one would notice or care to take them off.

Posted by Chris at 05:12 PM in Politics, Security | Comments (0)

The Prominence of Intolerance

American society has become more tolerant of many things over the years. We have even inscribed that tolerance into law. In many places that tolerance has recently included the sexual preference of people - you cannot be discriminated against if you are gay or straight or whatever. Now we see people whose religion dictates against alternative sexual preferences interpreting a passive tolerance as an active assault on their values, and they are fighting to overturn that rule of tolerance. Where does this logically end? Next in line, maybe, will be the people who believe that miscegenation was always evil?

Posted by Chris at 08:12 PM in Politics | Comments (0)

What is the definition of lying?

So apparently president Bush knew about and directed the Valerie Plame leak. Didn't he previously say he wasn't involved? ("If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.") Or maybe he was just interested in finding out what was going on, knowing that might not happen - hoping that might not happen? Former President Clinton had to get into semantics to attempt to not admit directly fooling around* and the Republicans picked on him mightily for it. I would say that President Bush would be defending himself in the same manner now, but for one big difference - he and his administration don't even bother to defend themselves. They just pretend as if they have done nothing wrong. My guess is that history will not treat them as kindly.

(* Compared to authorizing spying on Americans and now this business with lying about knowledge of the leaking of classified CIA information, what exactly did former President Clinton do wrong?)

Posted by Chris at 09:16 PM in Politics | Comments (0)