Former militiaman unapologetic for calls to vandalize offices over health care

// March 26th, 2010 // Comments Off // Cross Posting, Google

Smells like Tea Spirit: Mike Vanderboegh, the anti-health-care Libertarian blogger who urged people to vandalize Democratic offices around the country lives on federal government disability checks. Washington Post has the story.

Airport worker caught photographing screen as female worker passed through naked scanner

// March 24th, 2010 // Comments Off // Cross Posting, Google

You know those airport scanners that render you essentially naked? The ones that don't catch bomb-making materials? The ones that are supposed to be staffed by infallible and absolutely trustworthy airport workers who'll never, ever abuse your privacy with them?

Turns out they're vulnerable to a sophisticated, impossible-to-predict technical attack: a guard was caught taking pictures the screen while a female colleague was passing through the scanner. Who'd have guessed that was possible?

Woah.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Police received an allegation regarding an incident that happened at Heathrow Terminal 5 on March 10. A first-instance harassment warning has been issued to a 25-year-old male."

The BAA employee took a photo of his co-worker, Jo Margetson, when she inadvertently went through a scanner.

"I can't bear to think about the body scanner thing," she told the Sun. "I'm totally traumatised. I've spoken to the police about it. I'm in too much of a state to go to work."

Airport worker given police warning for 'misusing' body scanner (Thanks, Marc!)

(Image: Der Spiegel)

Entertainment industry sours on term “pirate” — too sexy

// March 18th, 2010 // Comments Off // Cross Posting, Google

After years of trying to cloud the public mind by calling it "piracy" instead of "unauthorised downloading," key copyright industry reps are starting to realize that "piracy" actually sounds kind of cool. So now they're lobbying for the even less intellectually rigorous term "theft," which describes an entirely different offence, enumerated in an altogether different section of the lawbooks.

This has all the dishonesty of calling everything you don't like "terrorism" (or as my friend Ian Brown says, it's like rebranding jaywalking as "road rape").

"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders

(Image: Pirate Cory, taken by Gordon Doctorow, Hallowe'en 1974)