”including information not concerning United States persons, obtained or derived from acquisitions using targeting procedures that the FISA Court later found to be unsatisfactory of any reason.”

Amazing. No oversight.

I have to say, in college, I would have been in DC in a heartbeat and would have rallied many fellow students to join me. I want to be there now…

I’m sure your daughter is “taking in” what you stand for bmaz. It will just take time for her to understand the relevance…in time…

The implication at the WaPo link is that gaming and virtual worlds are mostly dangerous, most of the time. I’m not discounting that these technologies can be misused. Nevertheless, ill-informed, thoughtless, fear-driven policymakers could easily hamper, or shut down, the online resources that people need for ‘cognitive exploration’ and the types of learning that are necessary in order to solve extremely complex, ominous problems that REQUIRE collective problem-solving. (These resources take the form of Second Life, online games, and virtual environments.)

Anyone interested might like to contrast that WaPo article with the following link about what educators are facing as they try to prepare today’s US school population for the future: http://www.slideshare.net/jbre…..pens-33834

Random tea leaves from the ’shift-happens’ slideshare:
1. ‘China will (soon become) the #1 English speaking nation in the world.’
2. ‘Today’s learner (as of 2006) will have 10 – 14 jobs by the time they are 38 years old.’
3. ‘In 2002, Nintendo invested more than $140 million in R&D; the US federal government spent less than half that on Research & Innovation in education.’
4. ‘If MySpace were a country (as of 2006), it would be the 11th largest in the world.’

So from an educational perspective — completely apart from whether the new FISA regs will even work in collecting necessary info — one ought to ask how FISA changes will impact resources that are NECESSARY for practicing and developing skills related to complex problem solving that requires collective intelligence and social interactions. That kind of learning can’t happen on a blackboard, and it can’t happen on a baseball field, and it can’t happen even by reading books.

And from the standpoint of ‘usability’, this FISA legislation looks like it is DESIGNED for people to make mistakes. Toss in the US citizen data with ‘non-US citizen’ data, and they blur. People will not have the cues they require in order to make distinctions between A and B; everyone, everywhere becomes ‘the enemy.’ This is cognitively toxic.

It’s terrible, wretched design. It’s designed to be user-confusing.
Which makes mistakes inevitable.

If BushCheney sent out design specs for this FISA mess, and it took the form of a car, they claim that they need: 42 steering wheels, 800 engines, 6 gas tanks (20 gals each), 1200 back seats, 200 windshields, and three axels. The botched design of this whole FISA mess just makes me shake my head.

Mukasey and McConnell need a few Ed Psychs on their team, or a few interface designers to talk some sense into their heads.

Entirely apart from the civil liberties issues, it’s very hard to see how they could even make this thing work — it’s too complex, too confusing, and it blurs too many tasks. What a mess!

Bush and Cheney are lost causes; but if form follows function, then it only goes to reason that the functions are deceptive; therefore, the forms will be unworkable.

Not surprising, really.
But frustrating, and sad.

I’ll say this much for ‘honesty’ — it’s a basis for making things that work, and that function for the tasks they need to perform.
Dishonesty, not so much.

Some Democratic Senators are lining up to carry water.

The way I see it, a veto is a veto and you might as well go in with the strongest position possible (ie. no telecom immunity whatsoever).

EW, my 15 year-old son had an assignment for his Modern World History class. He had to pick a newspaper article, summarize it and write his opinion on the article. He selected the 6 inch AP article from last Tuesday regarding the vote last Monday regarding FISA. He did a great job on writing his opinion and I referred him to your writings and Christy’s. No one at his school had any knowledge about FISA. He educated the masses so to speak…

He is home sick today. I had him read the CQ article on Lawrence Wright and your postings. He cannot understand why every single college student within a three hour drive of DC isn’t sitting in the Mall right now as a statement of protecting the rule of law. “Where’s the outrage and desire to protect our rights? Probably sitting in the bottom of people’s stomachs because they are afraid they will never get a job if they protest,” he said.

Then he added, “If the presidential candidates are worth their weight and have worked so hard to win the youth vote, why aren’t they contacting their base to tell them to stand against this like John Edwards did? Otherwise, any wonderful speech platitudes on freedom and liberty are hollow and empty. When are they going to stand up for what is right?”

Good question kiddo. We need some patriot courage…