TIA reborn?

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Data on Americans mined for terror risk – U.S. Security – MSNBC.com

If you remember DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program, the FBI’s “STAR” program (System to Assess Risk) should look familiar. An article in the August 2004 edition of Federal Computing Week has some details on the short lived TIA program and what brought about its demise in case you don’t remember. The STAR program looks like TIA with a new name and it should be shutdown for the very same reasons. Some of the reasons are spelled out in the MSNBC story linked above. Even if the information came only from government or just law enforcement sources, quality would still be an issue. When you put commercial databases, which are rife with bad data into the mix, as the old saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

Lela is 3 months old!

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Our daughter Lela turned 3 months old today. She’s changed a lot over the last month. At 2 months she was cooing and attempting to talk. Now instead of cooing, she likes to make gurgling sounds. It’s practically her favorite thing to do now. You can still get some talking out of her if you make her laugh or do something funny that she likes. The laughing is the best though. Lela has also discovered the magic of TV in the last few weeks. She particularly likes things with lots of bright colors. Her favorites are the Qubo claymation ‘Dragon‘ (NBC), the puppet show ‘It’s a Big Big World‘ (PBS) and Baby Einstein (Disney).

Decision a catch 22 for domestic spying case

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Court throws out spying lawsuit – Politics – MSNBC.com

An appellate court has essentially thrown out the case brought by the ACLU against the federal government for warrantless spying on American citizens. Not surprisingly the decision was split down party lines with the Republican majority voting to deny the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs had no evidence that they had been spied on. (since the program and any information related to it are secret, there is no way to know for certain who has been spied on) The fact that it was thrown out on those grounds leaves the question of legality open for a future court to decide. The ACLU expressed their disappointment with the decision in a press release, but did not specify whether or not they would pursue the case.