Bob Cefail on the wiretapping of American citizens

Here's what the buzz today is about followed by my comments.

From wired magazine;

"A federal judge rebuffed an effort by media organizations, ranging from the Associated Press to Wired News, to unseal whistleblower documents in a civil rights group's case against AT&T for allegedly helping the government's warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

Those documents include technical diagrams provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in January 2005 by former AT&T engineer Mark Klein, a written declaration by Klein, and an evaluation of the documents by former FCC employee J. Scott Marcus."

There is a lot more on the actual page here http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/02/spy_docs_stay_s.html

I left my comments there, but in short, it is time for judges, especially federal judges to start standing up to the Bush administrations heavy handed tactics in citing "national security" to justify many things that have never been considered "American" True American values are the preservation of liberty, and pushing for an open, honest, and above all, ACCOUNTABLE government

Bob Cefail

Second Life Presidential candidates by Bob Cefail

From Slashdot today we have the following

politics 2.0 writes "It may not be an official effort "yet” but thanks to a grass-roots effort, John Edwards has become the first presidential candidate to set-up-shop in Second Life. Jerimee Richir, whose avatar is called Jose Rote, paid-for and developed Edwards' virtual headquarters, and, on a voluntary basis, is managing the in-world campaign. Considering that Second Life's user numbers are much smaller than other social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook ”aside from generating press coverage” will campaigning in Second Life actually win many votes? Rote says yes, and that "Second Life users are a unique audience, in that, they are first adopters. It is a smaller community, but I would argue it is a more influential community.'"

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/91149879/article.pl

This may or may not have a huge effect on elections in two years, but it is a sign of the times that blogging, the internet, and the blogosphere are having a huge impact on what once was "business as usual"

In the last election, none of the experts could calculate the influence of the internet on politics but I would argue that it is a growing force, and in a few years, a force to be reckoned with.