Your laptop will be seized at the border if we like it

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed to the Washington Post what many people have mentioned in recent months: DHS border guards are seizing laptops, Blackberries and other electronic items at the border with little or no probable cause of wrongdoing.

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies theDepartment of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The full policy is here. Interesting that they don’t actually cite any law as authority for the seizures, though the 9th Circuit of California (i.e. the ‘Whacky Circuit) has upheld the searches.

Typical ’security guard turned cop’ mentality going on here. My friends in the intelligence community really get tired of law enforcement stuff like this as the giant ‘hoovering’ effect of pulling in more and more intelligence yields very little nuggets but encourages the bad guys to find systems of communicating ‘off the grid’ which they simply cannot penetrate.

I suspect this policy will be changed soon.

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Shoutcast TV would be cool if the content wasn't so lame

I’m being a bit harsh, but when I flip on Shoutcast TV I’m constantly amazed by some of the content. Amazed in the bad sense.

When the first moving pictures came out, the people would just sort of stand there in front of the camera and ‘pose’ much as they would for a still camera. Now that we’re moving into the digital age, with live streams available from anywhere in the world (thanks in large part to Shoutcast & VLC) we have the opportunity to watch and hear music from a bunch of German guys sitting around posing in front of their record collections.

ShoutcastTV can be found under VLC. File–>Services Discovery–>Shoutcats TV. Most of the channels are just radio stations that add a video feed, that or video pirates showing reruns of TV or Japanese anime. Occasionally you find a channel that has some ‘adult content’ but most of it is music related. You can also access Shoutcast TV via Winamp if you have that player installed

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iPhone 2.1 firmware released to developers

So it looks like v. 2.1 of the firmware is coming very very soon. A new developers release was sent out to a select group of folks today who are making sure it jives with their existing apps and whatnot.

Apple has not announced a timeframe for the 2.1 release, but the included “Push Notification Service” was promised by September. Despite early hints of turn-by-turn GPS and Copy/Paste, further investigation indicates that these may not have been new findings in the 2.1 firmware (and had also existed in 2.0). References to a new iPod Touch model, however, suggests an iPod Touch hardware upgrade in the coming months.
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F-117 Stealth Fighters are retired

Wow, I’m so out of it sometimes. I guess I hadn’t really been keeping up with comings and goings, but the official retirement ceremony took place in the last few months for the F-117 Stealth Fighter. Made famous for the first strikes in Desert Storm, the F-117 is now antiquated with late 1970s electronics especially when newer aircraft with stealthy capabilities are now coming online.

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Bush asks Pakistan: Just who is in charge of the ISI?

In diplomatic language, that’s a pretty aggressive statement, but after a spate of bombings in Pakistan and more than a coincidental number of ‘last minute escapes’ of senior Taliban officials, the question is coming up more and more according to the BBC.

The burning issue of course is as to who controls the ISI,” he said.

“In their [the Americans’] view there are some people at some level in the ISI who tip off the Taleban at some level about impending missile attacks when these are shared with the Pakistanis.

“They [the Americans] have expressed displeasure over this.”

Mr Mukhtar also openly admitted that President Bush had asked who was really in charge of the ISI during the visit to Washington.

Pakistan is a nuclear power. The idea that the military, or more importantly, the intelligence services are not quite inline with the current government is yet another reason to be a bit fearful of things in the region.

And in case you are wondering what an airstrike looks like on the Pakistan border, here’s some footage of an attack on the Taliban that resulted in (at the same time, whatever) the deaths of several Pakistani border guards (there is a big debate on who is to blame).

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SWAT raids mayor's house. Finds 32lbs of pot

The part time mayor (Cheye Calvo) of the small town of Berwyn Heights, MD was awakened the other day to the Prince Georges County SWAT team kicking in his door after he brought in a package containing 32 lbs of marijuana addressed to his wife. They shot his dogs and interrogated him as if he was a drug dealer, but did not arrest him.

My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs,” Calvo said. “They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t think they really ever considered that we weren’t.”

Memo to mayor: anyone with 32lbs of pot should be thought of as a drug dealer first, innocent victim of a UPS error second.

God knows if that happened in DC they probably would have shot more than dogs.

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