Tuesday, September 30, 2008
traffic bypass…
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
The era of the American Internet is ending.
And the sky is falling.
Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.
Which was never that good an idea to begin with, even if it’s an understandable historical “accident”.
Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies.
News at 11. Nobody should doubt that since the end of WWII, the U.S. has wiretapped anything it technically could.
Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.
“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”
After the domestic spying scandals, there’s little doubt that client information isn’t safe in the U.S. and a deeper question is to what extend U.S. intelligence is in bed with whatever industry is left in America. Not that one should trust other nations on that score…
U.S. intelligence has long profited from the U.S. having been the backbone hub and from having had the majority of online entities. China has recently surpassed the U.S. in terms of online users and the American market is saturated, while the Asian market is barely tapped. It’s hard to see why e.g. Asian nations would want to route traffic to the U.S. and back instead of doing their own thing that’s matched to their own needs. Due to weird peering arrangements and strange business and political reasons, the U.S. has persisted as the hub for transit routing far longer than it should have. It’s inevitable, though, that with the growing number of Internet users elsewhere, less traffic will pass through the U.S. in both absolute and relative terms.
That’s bad if you’re the intelligence business, because there are only so many peering arrangements in that line of work to be had. Even considering the remaining allies of the U.S., I guess it’s an expected net loss for American spooks.
Monday, September 29, 2008
I didn’t see that one coming
Almost one-fourth of Germans believe the US was behind 9/11
Seven years after September 11, 2001, a new poll has found that 23 percent of Germans believe the US government was involved in a conspiracy to perpetrate the terror attacks in America.
The poll of 17 countries found that apart from in the United States, there was no real global consensus as to who was responsible for the infamous attacks that left 3,000 dead in New York and Washington DC. An average of 46 percent said that al Qaida was behind the attacks, 15 percent said the US had been responsible, 7 percent cited Israel, and another 7 percent cited another actor.
But the results of the poll in Germany stand out because they reveal that the concentration of conspiracy theorists is significantly higher than not only average opinion, but above that of the rest of the world - except for Turkey, Mexico and the Palestinian territories, where popular opinion tends to be anti-Americanism.
I didn’t expect the U.S. to have a monopoly on conspiracy nuts and you need to sit in on but one Stammtisch to know that conspiracy nuts are alive and well in Germany, but 23% is a bit much.
Pollsters said beliefs about the attacks seemed to correlate with respondents’ attitudes about the United States. “Those with a positive view of America’s influence in the world are more likely to cite al Qaida (on average 59 percent) than those with a negative view (40 percent),” a WorldPublicOpinion.org statement said. “Those with a positive view of the United States are also less likely to blame the US government (7 percent) than those with a negative view (22 percent).”
Put in this context, it does make sense. I don’t know that German’s attitudes towards the U.S. will ever recover to pre-Bush levels, but perhaps Hans Mustermann and Eva Musterfrau take an even dimmer view on the U.S. than I expected. It’s sad, but I can’t blame them—which is even more sad.
Posted by elwedriddsche on 09/29 at 10:19 AM
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an unusual case of DUI
Drunk Wheelchair Driver Banned from the Roads
A German court has banned the driver of an electric wheelchair from using his vehicle for a month after he was caught twice with a blood alcohol level well over the legal limit.
The verdict stems from two nights earlier this year when Michael S. partied a little too hard with his friends. On February 2, right in the middle of Carnival, the young man had a few too many and missed the last bus home, leaving him with no other option than to motor the distance in his wheelchair, which has a top speed of six kilometers per hour. A police officer noticed that Michael S. was weaving and stopped him. His blood alcohol level was found to be 1.82—well over the legal limit.
Two weeks later, the young man hit the town again, this time being stopped with a blood alcohol level of 2.06. In May, a local court fined him €100 and forbade him from “driving” his wheelchair for four weeks. The verdict has now been upheld after Michael appealed.
I suppose it makes sense—a drunken wheelchair driver is a danger to himself and others, even if the worst-case scenarios aren’t as bad as with the usual kind of drunk drivers.
According to German law, Michael would have been fine if he’d done without the last drink or two. Whereas those behind the wheel of cars and trucks in Germany can lose their licenses for a blood alcohol level of 1.1, cyclists and wheelchair drivers are allowed a level of 1.6 before facing stern punishment.
I always thought the limit was 0.8 for drivers?! Typo or did they up the limit? I did not know how drunk you’re allowed to be on a bicycle, although I can’t figure how you could even keep your balance on a bicycle with a blood alcohol level approaching 1.6.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
it must be great to have no worse problem than fashion
Florida man nabbed for violating city’s new baggy trouser ordinance: Caught With His Pants Down
Florida crackdown nets 11 more perps for exposing their boxer shorts: The Baggy Pants Posse
Apparently the worst problem facing the Florida township of Riviera Beach are baggy pants that expose a guy’s boxers. Oh, the horror—it almost makes me faint.
Either the folks in that town are terminally bored or the town is starving for cash. Criminalizing poor fashion sense is ridiculous.
an anniversary I missed
Ramstein remembered...
I blogged about this before. I suppose it’s a good thing I got the air show out of my system ago when my father parked me on the observation platform of the control tower each year when I was a kid. Of course, I’ve always hated crowds and even had I cared, it’s not likely I would have gotten close to the runway in any case.
impossible
Friday, September 26, 2008
how to defy a judge
Be a grandmother and refuse to return a sex-ed book to the library.
A Lewiston grandmother who defied a judge’s order to return a children’s sex education book to the library will not face jail time after all.
JoAn Karkos called the book pornographic.
Late Friday afternoon, Lewiston’s city administrator stepped in saying the city will not file the necessary papers which would have found Karkos in contempt of court.
Karkos, meanwhile, said she would have gladly gone to jail to continue her cause.
It appears Karkos will get to keep the book.
Too bad. If she’s that desperate to martyr herself, why not let her have her way?
Come to think of it, why did she get that book from the library in the first place? Isn’t abstinence-only all the kids need to know? Then again, you need to tell them what it is they’re not supposed to do…
good news
Thursday, September 25, 2008
I hate anti-vaccination nuts
B.C. health official says mumps outbreak began with unimmunized religious group
A British Columbia health official says a spreading mumps outbreak began with a Fraser Valley religious group that shuns immunization.
“It’s part of their belief system that this is not the right thing to do,” said Dr. Elizabeth Brodkin, medical health officer for the Fraser Health Authority. Brodkin said Tuesday that people who aren’t vaccinated are at highest risk to contract the viral disease that’s passed from person to person through saliva.
“This outbreak at least got going because it took hold in an unimmunized community so they are the ones who are really sitting ducks for infection.”
She said 200 people have so far contracted the virus that has travelled west as far as suburban Burnaby, prompting the B.C. Centre for Disease Control to convene a provincial task force that will meet in two weeks to come up with a strategy to deal with the outbreak.
A two-fer: Religious and anti-vaccination. It’s so easy to forget that the diseases we vaccinate against have killed children (and adults) by the score and these misguided people (to put it very mildly) are putting others at risk.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
R.I.P.—or not
Plan to exhume cardinal is ‘homophobic’
The Catholic Church is under growing pressure to abandon the “homophobic” exhumation and reburial of the body of one its most famous cardinals, in defiance of his wish to lie for eternity next to the man he loved.
Gay rights campaigners have accused the Vatican – which has ordered the disinterment in the first step towards beatification – of attempting to cover up the sexuality of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who died in 1890.
Opposition to the reburial among some British Roman Catholics has been bolstered by a new poll organised by The Church Times which shows that a majority of Anglicans are now against the separation of Cardinal Newman, a former Anglican clergyman, and Father Ambrose St John who lived together as “husband and wife” for most of their late adult lives.
Yesterday, the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told The Independent: “The Vatican’s decision to move Cardinal Newman’s body from its resting place is an act of grave robbery and religious desecration. It violates Newman’s repeated wish to be buried for eternity with his life-long partner Ambrose St John.
“They have been together for more than 100 years and the Vatican wants to disturb that peace to cover up the fact that Cardinal Newman loved a man. It’s shameful, dishonourable betrayal of Newman by the gay-hating Catholic Church.”
The Church Times’ poll found that 80 per cent of responders were opposed to the Vatican’s decision to move Newman’s body.
Par for the course as far as the Vatican is concerned. Makes you wonder if the beatifications isn’t a pretense to disturb the peace of two deceased.
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