Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on an alarming increase in the use of cell phone tracking technology by federal law enforcement: Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry [...]

If you purchased a newspaper in the past week or so, you might have noticed a bunch of circulars advertising post-Thanksgiving sales. The stores publicize these sale prices in an attempt to attract customers for what is known as “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving which, by custom, is one of the largest shopping days [...]

In the end, it is quite clear to me that it is the hostility of these law-enforcement officers which is the problem. Confusing suspicion of the state with criminal intent, they are convinced that these institutions that have criminals as customers are in fact conspiring with the criminals. So they shut them down, ruining the guilty and the innocent indiscriminately. There is nothing precluding the FBI from reviewing e-gold or Norfed’s records while the firms continue to do business. Shutting them down is as absurd as shutting down the Motel 6 down the road, because it was the preferred resting place of mobsters visiting town.

As I’ve pointed out, I’m a believer in prediction markets. For me, though, it’s more of an intuitive expectation that markets (i.e. revealed preference) are likely to be more accurate than stated preference. The question has come up with Doug, who isn’t yet a believer in prediction markets, as to whether there is any empirical [...]

The Politico has an interesting profile today of the man behind Ron Paul’s record November 5th money haul, and it says a lot about how the internet has changed politics: Trevor Lyman came from nowhere this week to earn a spot in fundraising lore by engineering a reported $4 million day for Ron Paul’s dark [...]

As events in Pakistan continue to unfold, one thing is clear, the old dictator’s tool of shutting down the independent media isn’t working anymore: KARACHI (AFP) – Blocked by the government and facing harsh curbs, Pakistan’s private television channels have turned to the Internet to reach viewers starved of news about the state of emergency [...]

God help us if Hillary is elected… Congress approves Internet-tax moratorium The House unanimously approved a seven-year extension of a moratorium on Internet-access taxes, which the Senate passed last week. The move cleared the way for President Bush to sign it before the current ban expires Thursday. For consumers, the legislation largely maintains the status [...]

Earlier, Doug posted a story about an expansion of freedom in the taxicab market in Minneapolis. It seems that someone finally asked why it was necessary to set an arbitrary limit on the number of cabs operating in the city, and that someone was able to muster enough power to end the restriction. Perhaps NYC [...]

I recently discovered the thoroughly enjoyable podcast put out by Skepticality magazine, and was browsing through some past ‘casts, when I stumbled across an interview (in Podcast #59) with Lori Lipman-Brown, a lobbyist in the employ of the Secular Coalition of America. The interview was pretty wide ranging, but at one point it focused on [...]

Proving the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, and that misunderstanding the Constitution is something that both the right and the left are guilty of, the President of NARAL and the President of the Christian Coalition have a joint column in today’s Washington Post about the refusal by Verizon Wireless to allow broadcast text [...]

Today’s Washington Post reports that one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies routinely complies with requests for customer data from government agencies without requiring a warrant: Verizon Communications, the nation’s second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers’ telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times [...]

Tim Rutten, writing for the LA Times made several interesting observations regarding talk radio, MoveOn.org, and the way congress has responded to commentary coming from each. [T]he House and Senate censured the liberal activist group MoveOn.org for taking out a newspaper advertisement that characterized Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, as [...]

As a general rule, I believe that most police officers are brave, respectable, and truly do their best to honor their mission statement: to serve and protect. As with any organization, there are some bad apples, however. And what happens when a police officer abuses his or her badge to break the law or harass [...]

Some of you may remember this story, from mid-January (covered by Doug here). The tone of the story is that Bush backed down to pressure from Democrats and the American public, and realized that his program might be over the line. The Bush administration said yesterday that it has agreed to disband a controversial warrantless [...]

Okay, well maybe it’s not THAT bad… But it’s close: IRS employees ignored security rules and turned over sensitive computer information to a caller posing as a technical support person, according to a government study. Sixty-one of the 102 people who got the test calls, including managers and a contractor, complied with a request that [...]

Aaron, one of the bloggers over at autoDogmatic and the founder of the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, recently attended a Ron Paul rally in South Carolina, particularly looking for freaks and fringe groups. He found none: You see, I went in expecting an audience which was somehow “not normal”, indescribably; maybe quirky or geeky; paranoid; socially-awkward; [...]

On Friday, the Democratic controlled Senate voted down a bill that would have barred the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the so-called Fairness Doctrine without Congressional approval: WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Friday blocked an amendment by Sen. Norm Coleman that would have prevented the return of the Fairness Doctrine, a federal rule which required [...]

The Register (slogan “Biting the Hand that Feeds I.T.) is one of my favorite news sources on IT related matters. Skeptical, sarcastic, they do not suffer fools lightly. Today reading their rss feed, I came across this article: DHS: beware stink-bomb touting terrorists Unusual paranoia over chemical attack in the US takes many forms. It [...]

It is always depressing to see a political battle erupt where you know, no matter who wins, the average citizen will be screwed. One such slow motion train wreck is taking place in Massachusetts as we speak. I became aware of it when one of the groups put an ad on TV that was so [...]

The British have cameras, the Venezuelans have $465K dirigibles to do their surveillance: Venezuela launched a Zeppelin on Thursday to patrol Caracas, seeking to fight crime in one of Latin America’s most dangerous cities but also raising fears that President Hugo Chavez could be turning into Big Brother. Around the hot-dog stalls of the run-down [...]