Well, it’s time to switch schedules. With the new job beginning tomorrow, I’m probably not going to have the time in the morning for these updates, so I’m going to start doing them the night before. Not sure exactly how it’ll sort out in the long run, but we’ll try this for a while, eh?
Not too much of note for the weekend. Friday and Saturday each had a few errands. Sunday was rainy and icky out and I mostly stayed in and got a couple last things crossed off the to-do list. Added about twice as many to the list, so it ends up not feeling all that productive, but I guess it’ll have to do.
- I haven’t been reading Maciej Ceglowski much recently, but Joey pointed to his essay on Secret CIA Prisons in Poland:
I expected better of both the US and Poland, too. Sigh. [accordionguy]There’s an almost absurdist irony to the situation. The reason Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe are so unabashedly pro-American is that for fifty years, America stood for the antithesis of this kind of behavior. Poles knew full well about secret prisons, torture, incarceration without trial, and secret services that operate outside the law, and they looked to the United States as a society that stood against this kind of arbitrary exercise of state power.
Fifteen years later, we have television shots of Polish and American generals standing side by side in in fraternal solidarity in Iraq, and now perhaps hosting a special little Polish branch of an American secret prison system. There’s a déjà vu to this that I hope other Poles will find as upsetting as I do. And I get to feel the shame from both directions, since my adopted country is colluding with my native one to break the laws of both.
- This year’s Dudley Hiibel is Deborah Davis. She was riding a public bus in Denver when ID was demanded of her by a security guard. She refused, and got roughed up and arrested by Homeland Security Officers for her impudence. The ACLU is helping her fight the jackbooted thugs in court. [claire]
- Wanna keep yourself out of databases that could be used against you (perhaps for identity theft)? Follow Hoofnagle’s Consumer Privacy Top 10 and you’ll be a little safer. [schneier]
- An irate Canadian gives Visa pennies for his thoughts, paying his bill in a series of 985 installments, which led to a half-inch-thick statement. Why? He’s upset that his Canadian bank is outsourcing credit-card-processing to the US, which doesn’t follow Canadian privacy laws. The bank’s response?
One option is to close the account, because we do get the message here…
[fark!] - Fox News runs down the Worst Ten Technology Products of the Year. And then backs up, and runs over them again, just to be sure. [fark!]