The Quantico Circuit

The Quantico Circuit sounds like the title of a sloppy noir pulp novel. Perhaps the plot would be as follows: intrepid gumshoe smokes out nefarious crime syndicate's spy organization.

It's really the name of the project wherein a "major wireless carrier" allows an "unnamed source" to look at ALL the motherfucking info. In this case it's been suggested AT&T or Verizon as the "major wireless carrier" and the FBI as the "unnamed source." The government has been allowed freely to listen in on, record, track, and trace all calls, texts, emails and bills. This was why Bush wanted telco immunity. This is why I want to vomit.

In the fall of 2003, Pasdar was hired by a major telecommunications carrier to overhaul its security. He discovered a mysterious “Quantico Circuit” with access to the entire mobile network that didn’t have any security controls. Nor did it have any usage logs making a record of what information flowed through the system. The security breach was unheard of, abandoning basic industry norms.

Despite half-hearted protests by Congress, the FBI's budget for these operations have increased significantly.

And in the one story running from a national news outlet, the story that started it all, congratulations to the Washington Post.

"When you're building something like this deeply into the telecommunications infrastructure, when it becomes so technically easy to do, the only thing that stands between legitimate use and abuse is the complete honesty of the persons and agencies using it and the ability to have independent oversight over the system's use," said Lauren Weinstein, a communications systems engineer and co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, a group that studies Web issues. "It's who watches the listeners."

I am a Verizon customer. I am a Verizon customer because from Ohio to Iowa to Minnesota, their coverage was best four years ago. I did re-up about 2 years ago because nothing was different. My agreement is up and I'm running month by month. What now? The articles and interviews created after the Wash Post story ran seem to agree that the culprit here is Verizon. I'm not yet convinced this is fact, but. This on top of the capitulation demanded and received post 9/11. The company is rotten. Am I wrong in remembering that there was one national carrier President who showed the fed the figs when they demanded access in the name of National Security? Was it Alltel? Concerned customers (without an early end of contract fee looming) want to know.

Not related: were books like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Chill actually any better than the similar stuff being spewed forth?

Greenwald

I've held him up as a shining example before, but I think there might be a bit more of politics on this blog. Glenn Greenwald writes at Salon. He may have single-handedly prevented Telco immunity to pass the House. From his latest post:

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

Wise Up.

Driving home from dropping Haley off in Mesopotamia, OH after Easter dinner, my mom had me stop at the Ashland exit GOasis on 71. Gas is always cheapest in NE Ohio at this particular gas station. It was about 20cents cheaper than anywhere else we had seen in about 6 hours of driving.

The sign on the pump said all the gas was 10% Ethanol. After refueling, I got in and told my mom not to waste her effort trying to get to this gas station.
Ethanol is bad.
I am no peak-oil denying, oil company invested, promoter of petroleum's choke-hold. Big Oil is a corporate hellhole of war instigating profit seekers.
But ethanol is not one iota improved.

The main source of power for ethanol might be the sun, true, but then maybe not.
The seeds are shipped - gas
The seeds are planted - gas
The seeds grow - sun
The corn plant is sprayed with herbicides - gas and gas
The corn plant is sprayed with pesticides - gas and gas
The corn plant makes corn kernels - sun
The corn is harvested - gas
The harvested corn is shipped to an ethanol plant - gas
The plant alcohol is recovered - electricity (gas)
The fuel is shipped - gas

The only way that growing this corn for fuel can possibly make sense financially for the farmers who do, is that the Federal Gov't subsidizes these farmers. I personally don't believe a free market can solve all ills, but this, this is something else entirely. Subsidies for sustainable fuel sources? Fuck yes. But we're talking corn here. Corn is food. Corn is all food at this point. All the food we eat, corn.
Cornland, other crop land, farmers time and money, taxpayers time and money, oil, all these things going to create a fuel source that is the most temporary plug in the rush for the energy the world craves.
Ethanol is bad.