Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

Christian Science Monitor: Secret 9/11 case before high court. The case is significant because it could force a close examination of secret tactics that are apparently becoming increasingly common under Attorney General Ashcroft. In September 2001, he ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly. In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged that at least nine criminal cases related to the Sept. 11 investigation were being cloaked in total secrecy.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Bush administration is pursuing all of its cases in absolute good faith — though that’s a stretch and a half. But even if you believe that, are you sure that some future administration won’t abuse the precedents being created here?

If the Supreme Court rules, as I suspect it will, that the White House is free to tear up the Bill of Rights under the guise of fighting terrorism (or fighting illegal drugs, the pretext that was used to basically destroy the 4th Amendment under previous administrations), then no one is safe from the predations of a rogue government in the future. That’s what is at stake here.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) – A security scare over a .38 revolver possibly brought into a congressional office building in Washington ended when two people came forward saying it was only a toy gun that was part of a Halloween costume.

After a massive search for two people who allegedly ran through a security checkpoint at the House Cannon Office Building, possibly carrying a revolver, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said the search and suspicions of danger were over.

The building was put into lockdown during the room-to-room search prompted by fears that someone had tried to smuggle the gun into the building. Charles Cooper, a congressional aide, said people in the building were notified over the intercom system that the suspected gun was a toy that was part of a Halloween costume.

During the scare, people leaving the building, near the Capitol, were searched, said police spokeswoman Jessica Gissubel.

The Capitol itself was not evacuated, but the House went into recess 40 minutes after the incident.

The incident happened shortly after 1 p.m. when an image that appeared to be a revolver was detected at an X-ray machine at the building’s southeast entrance, Gissubel said.

Police were saying a man grabbed a backpack and went through the crowded checkpoint, triggering a security alert.

The Cannon building is one of three House office buildings. The buildings are connected by tunnels, and police feared that the other buildings were in jeopardy.

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MARION, Louisiana (AP) –A 14-year-old boy brought a semiautomatic pistol to school on Wednesday, robbed his teacher of his car keys and took a classmate hostage before leading deputies on a high-speed chase.

Police said the SUV with both boys inside was stopped without incident within 20 minutes, after a chase through northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas reaching speeds up to 90 mph.

The teen, whose name was not released, was arrested in Arkansas, where he was being held until Louisiana authorities could question him. He waived extradition at a hearing in El Dorado, Arkansas.

“There’s no rhyme nor reason nor anything that goes together on it,” said Union Parish Sheriff’s spokesman Carlton White.

Police and school officials at Marion High said the seventh-grader brought the gun into class in a backpack, and apparently hadn’t had any earlier problems with the teacher or 12-year-old boy he abducted.

Authorities said the boy pulled out the gun during the day’s first class, forcing the teacher to hand over the keys to his 1997 GMC Jimmy.

Teachers “went into emergency procedure …and, gathered the children together” immediately after the holdup, school superintendent Tom Snell said.

The boy drove into Arkansas and sped away when a deputy tried to stop him, police said. He was stopped at the state line when deputies created a roadblock using two tractor-trailers and as many as eight patrol cars.

Marion High, which includes preschool through 12th grade, has a total of 218 students.

The boy faces felony fleeing charges in Arkansas, but a warrant in Louisiana lists aggravated kidnapping and armed robbery.

Marion, a town of 775, is near the Louisiana-Arkansas state line.

(Read the article)

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And Other Current TV Commercials of Note

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President Bush said: the United States will continue “to build on the success” of the military operations there

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Looks like Microsoft is headed for more trouble with the European Union. European Commission officials today said they were looking into the company’s licensing policies, which they fear may impair competition by restricting the hardware manufacturers ability to enforce patents of their own. The EC has sent 20 equipment manufacturers formal inquiries concerning their licenses with Microsoft, among them, IBM, Hitachi and Toshiba. “The purpose of these requests for information is to enable the Commission to assess the conditions offered by Microsoft for the licensing of their IT-related technology to original equipment manufacturers,” regulators said in a statement. “We do this because companies have expressed concern about their licensing conditions. But we have not reached any conclusions yet. We have not contacted Microsoft now because we are still at the preliminary fact-finding stage.” Microsoft, for its part, disputed suggestions that its licenses might be anticompetitive, saying its policies are “appropriate, pro-competitive and in compliance with the law.”

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Hoping to put an end to software piracy, a rampant problem that threatens to derail the country’s economic aspirations, Vietnam is promoting a plan that would curb the proliferation of unlicensed Microsoft products in the country by requiring all state-owned companies and government ministries to go open source by 2005. Moreover, all computers assembled in Vietnam would have to be sold with open-source products installed on them. “We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft,” said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology. “We can’t totally sweep out Microsoft. But we hope that new users will start using open source.”

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Microsoft’s rat’s nest of legal entanglements is growing less complicated by the day. On Tuesday, the company announced it had agreed to pay roughly $200 million to settle consumer class-action lawsuits in five states and the District of Columbia. Microsoft has now settled 10 of 15 state-level suits filed against it, as well as private suits brought by AOL Time Warner’s Netscape division and the now defunct Be. Still pending are private antitrust suits filed by Sun and Burst and Massachusetts’ appeal of the federal antitrust case. And there’s that European Commission investigation to contend with as well. Still, Microsoft has come a long way since those days when there were more than 130 private, class-action antitrust suits pending against it across the country. “This means we are well over halfway toward resolving our consumer class-action lawsuits,” said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, in a teleconference with reporters and analysts. “Obviously, we still have some antitrust issues that remain but we’ve made important progress.”

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Today brings with it news of vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, one of which can be exploited to execute some arbitrary commands as a root user. According to an @stake advisory, there are three flaws in OS X 10.2.8 and below, and the only way to address them is to upgrade to OS X 10.3. Simple enough. Still, some in the Mac community are questioning the integrity of the advisory. After all, @stake is a consulting company that works closely with Microsoft. And it did recently dismiss one of its marquee security researchers for calling “the ubiquity of Microsoft software a hazard to the economy and to national security” (see “And he who blasphemes against the Great Benefactor shall be struck down”).

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Among the gadgetry on display at an exhibit marking the 40th anniversary of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology are a laser-guided robotic dragonfly and a 24-inch-long rubber robot catfish named Charlie. Charlie is capable of swimming inconspicuously among other fish. Why the CIA needs a 24-inch rubber catfish is anyone’s guess. “Charlie

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HARRY POTTER AND THE CAULDRON OF SCAMS…..Scam O Rama

I couldn’t quite believe how long this 419er to catch on.

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FROM THE DESK OF DAVID POGUE

Customer-Service Cluelessness

ntil a few years ago, my wife was a plastic surgeon. She quit for a lot of reasons, but one was the frustration of getting reimbursement from the HMOs.

As I understand it, after sewing up, say, a car-accident victim, she would submit the proper forms for payment to the HMO. After a couple of months, she

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