Internal Surveillance, External Risks

I've enjoyed the regular back page article Inside Risks in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM) for a number of years. These short articles discuss various risks usually related to computer and information security. The December 2007 article by the equally fascinating collection of authors Steven M. Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau, Jennifer Rexford, and Peter G. Neumann (Google them to see who these folks are, if you don't know them already). The article is especially insightful about the risks of government wiretapping and how things can (and have) gone wrong with such systems. The upshot is that someone may be listening in, and it may not be who you think it is: Internal Surveillance, External Risks

Depleted Uranium Munitions

The US military has been using all sorts of bombs and bullets with highly radioactive U-238, mostly in Iraq. I was interested in what this all means for both soldiers and civilians. There are many sites talking about this issue, but most seem to be out of the mainstream. But there is a 2001 article in Counterpunch, which is always provacative. It claims nearly half of all Iraqis in places like Basra will get cancer from these munitions. And this was just from Gulf War I. Dirty Bombs, indeed: DU: Cancer as a Weapon, Radioactive War

Free Lunch

Another NPR article that caught my eye:

David Cay Johnston on How the Rich Get Richer
Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

CIA Agent-Turned-Critic Philip Agee Dies

I generally don't listen to National Public Radio, but I ran across this article about the recent death of Philip Agee: CIA Agent-Turned-Critic Philip Agee Dies He seemed to travel freely around the world, in spite of losing his US passport. An interesting story.