I love this! The headlines are pretty much uniformly saying the same thing in much of the blogging world today - put best* (well, at least politely... heh heh!) by Nurse Ratched in her Notebook:

It's official: Pentagon leaders have lost their freaking minds
http://www.happyvalleyasylum.com/ratched/

Great stuff from my new favorite Nurtz! "Gambling on Terror" - what a story for the Pentagon and administration to live down. Er - I HOPE that they are having one heckuva spin party going on now. A peek through the pages of Nurse Ratched's notebook. Has she noticed YOU misbehaving?

Happy Valley Asylum ... "Where the patients are in charge."
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Home | Group Therapy | Day Room | Patient Journals | Medicine Cabinet | Voices In Your Head | Nurse Ratched's Notebook | Library
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Is there a place I can get some drugs? Really, I have a 'scription, too! I need 'em relly relly bad...
I was reefered by Doc Feelgood...

I read all three of these articles today - the timing chance. However taken together, I think that the Total Information Awareness project of the US Dept. of Homeland Security is quite pervasive. And chilling.

http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2240921
internetnews.com

July 28, 2003
Bush Promises Cyber Intrusion Reporting Standards
By Roy Mark

"The Bush Administration is expected to give federal agencies specific instructions on how to report computer security incidents to the Federal Computer Incident Response Center (FedCirc) within the next six weeks. FedCirc is the incident response center where federal civilian agencies report computer security incidents.

The purpose of FedCirc is to ensure the government has critical services available in order to withstand or quickly recover from attacks against its information resources. On March 1, the agency officially became part of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) Directorate. DHS's National Cyber Security Division hosts FedCirc."

I'll bet the tendency to NOT report is a clear possibility, just as commercial businesses have NOT leapt forward to report their own problems with cybersecurity. Or, perhaps there could be a different twist for the federal "civilian" agencies? Read on:

---and then there's "Technical McCarthyism" from the MIT Technology Review:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/buderi0703.asp
Technological McCarthyism
From the Editor in Chief

By Robert Buderi
Leading Edge
July/August 2003

"Almost 50 years ago, in April of 1954, Vannevar Bush testified before a government review board in defense of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It was the heyday of McCarthyism, and Oppenheimer, an atomic-bomb pioneer, was being investigated for his opposition to the hydrogen bomb and his alleged left-wing associations. Bush, who had headed virtually all civilian military research during World War II, warned that the hearing ran the danger of “being interpreted as placing a man on trial because he held opinions, which is quite contrary to the American system.”

"...in response to terrorism, the United States government is increasing restrictions on foreign students and limiting the access of both foreign and U.S. citizens to various materials and lines of research—mostly biological. While some of these changes are reasonable, I fear that on the whole we are coming perilously close to something similar to McCarthy’s 1950s."

and now, remember hearing about this?:

"Under the latest controls, all foreign nationals from 25 countries entering the U.S. to study anything, not just biology, must be registered in the government’s new tracking system."

This article in the MIT Technology Review was prompted by this essay noted here, in the same online journal:

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/kevles0703.asp

Essay: Biotech’s Big Chill
"Government efforts to keep science and technology out of terrorist hands conjure images of the Cold War. But it’s biomedical researchers in the United States who could be frozen out."

By Daniel J. Kevles
July/August 2003

Of Kevles, editor Buderi writes:

“Biotech’s Big Chill” is written by Daniel J. Kevles, a noted Yale University historian and a contemporary observer of science and technology in society. He is also a member of the Science, Technology, and Law Panel of the National Research Council (the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering), which has considered some of the emerging issues in science and national security.

So, after three articles, I finish up with reading a Special Report called "Surveillance Nation":
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/farmer0503.asp
Surveillance Nation—Part Two
"In pursuit of security and service, we are submitting ourselves to a proliferation of monitoring technologies. But a loss of privacy is not inevitable."

By Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann
May 2003

"Whether these tools are actually used, though, will depend on what citizens want and believe"

So, to summarize, I think that this last statement quoted is the key to many issues. What the citizens want and believe is directly related to the Bush administration politics and spin. So far, the citizens have been voting based on fear and there may little to stop that headlong rush over the cliff as lemmings, we are, perhaps?

From the Washington Post today: details Americans should hear about. "Nimble" is the word by the author to describe new US tactics. i can think of other words... Read the full story for details that will make many Americans pleased yet cause many (hopefully) to continue questioning whatever they hear from the media and the US government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54345-2003Jul27.html

Thank you to T. Rex's Guide to Life
http://quinnell.blogspot.com/

U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
Intensified Offensive Leads To Detentions, Intelligence
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.

As Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.