Homeland Reading List

Monday, February 16, 2009

An American Foreign Legion?

DOD plans to recruit temporary immigrants who've been here as little as two years. I assume that means kids with student visas and temporary H-1-b workers. Citizenship can follow in six months. The program's meant to bring in native Arabic speakers and other translators. Says one member of the military “[N]ow that we have soldiers as translators, we are able to trust more, we are able to accomplish the mission with more accuracy.”

Terrorism meets chick lit

Marie Claire <a href="http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/international/malika-el-aroud-female-terrorist">profiles</a> the Belgian woman whose husband killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, on September 10, 2001.  Some samples:

"She was a single mom; he was divorced and searching. Together they kindled an epic passion for each other — and jihad."

"One can only imagine the sense of satisfaction she feels, having advanced the work of her beloved Abdessattar. Helping each other realize their dreams — that's just what true lovers do....As Malika put it in her memoir, "Ours was the most beautiful love story that any woman could dream of.""

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Canadian federal government falls victim to Patriot Act Derangement Syndrome

Canada is reclaiming a British Columbia drivers license database from DHS. Privacy advocates in Canada fear that the data will be misused under the Patriot Act. Of course all the data is already captured by DHS when Canadians cross the border. Except, apparently, for those passport-type photos. And that's what Canada wants to keep out of the US government's hands.

Listen, I understand. I've had passport photos I wanted to keep private too. But it never occurred to me that evil governments might be storing them in order to blackmail me.

Makes sense; I'm guessing the Canadians have been blackmailing Norm Coleman over his high school yearbook photo for years. http://www.vetocorleone.com/2009/02/norm-colemans-yearbook-photo-is-your.html

Plus, it's more fun to administer than a shot ...

Herpes virus may protect against bacterial pathogens:

A major point of discussion between the two groups concerned the implications of such research for the development of vaccines against herpes virus infections. Dr. Virgin suggested that "decreased infection may be associated with unintended negative consequences for vaccinated individuals." In response, Dr. Blackman argues that possible transient protective effects did not outweigh the already recognized pathological consequences of herpesvirus infection. Both groups agreed that the protective effects of herpesvirus infections merit further study.

More thoughts on a secure Internet

David Isenberg and David Aken have a sweet, old-timey vision of the Internet.

Even their bad guys are a bit old school -- virus writers who just want to degrade your machine for fun or who hope to steal your credit card number by extracting one number from one machine. But credit card numbers are easy to steal in bulk, and that's where the thieves are going. Invading individual machines is much more likely to be for the purpose of botting them on behalf of a spam or DDOS network. And once they've been botted, the machines' new overlords will take good care of them, even installing antivirus software to keep other malware out.

It's probably true that most of us who are moderately careful have not noticed a serious intrusion into our computers from the Internet. But we wouldn't, would we? Unfortunately, the users who have the sophistication to identify intrusions -- and the users who have something worth stealing -- have noticed, a lot, and they've run out of easy fixes.

I'm nostalgic for the old Internet too, but I already live on the new Internet, too. So do you if you use a corporate network. What's wrong with letting the two models compete?