bill would give president emergency control of internet

from antifascist calling: You have to hand it to congressional Democrats. Mendacious grifters whose national security agenda is virtually indistinguishable from Bushist Republicans, when it comes to rearranging proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic, the party of "change" is second to none in the "all terrorism all the time" department. While promising to restore the "rule of law," "protect civil liberties" while "keeping America safe," in practice, congressional Democrats like well-coiffed Republican clones across the aisle, are crafting legislation that would do Dick Cheney proud!

As the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (S.773) wends its way through Congress, civil liberties' advocates are decrying provisions that would hand the President unlimited power to disconnect private-sector computers from the internet.

CNET reported August 28, that the latest iteration of the bill "would allow the president to 'declare a cybersecurity emergency' relating to 'non-governmental' computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat."

Drafted by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), "best friends forever" of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the telecommunications industry, they were key enablers of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping and privacy-killing data mining programs that continue apace under Obama.

defcon 8/26: citizen soldiers, social networks & criminal skills

dodbuzz originally called this piece 'citizen soldiers wage cyberwar',
but then they changed it later to 'russkie civvies waging cyberwar'...
from dodbuzz: A new report by the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit (USCCU) finds that citizens quickly became cyber warriors when the Russians started attacking Georgia. Our friends at AvWeek have a neat piece that includes an interview with one of the report’s authors, who says that the attacks “were carried out by civilians with little or no direct involvement by the Russian government or military, the researchers found. Most of those launching the attacks were Russians, but sympathizers from the Ukraine and Latvia also participated.” The other notable fact in this report: social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook were important tools in the struggle.

do we need a united nations cybersecurity council?*
google may erase images of switzerland*
social networks leak personal data to trackers*
jonesreport.com website blocked under filter for 'criminal skills' content*
mckinnon anti-extradition protest*
aclu calls pentagon hacker's extradition 'tragic'*
facebook meets rfid in marketers' dreams*
'moon rock' in dutch museum is just petrified wood*

building block of life found on comet

from reuters: The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday. Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004. Samples of gas and dust collected on a small dish lined with a super-fluffy material called aerogel were returned to Earth two years later in a canister that detached from the spacecraft and landed by parachute in the Utah desert. Comets like Wild 2, named for astronomer Paul Wild (pronounced Vild), are believed to contain well-preserved grains of material dating from the dawn of the solar system billions of years ago, and thus clues to the formation of the sun and planets.