Insert Witty Comment Here

At some point, I'm going to be sufficiently in charge of my life that I will be active and accomplish things on both days of the weekend.

Saturday, I was up and about and out to meet Ell, Lady J and the English Sisters for breakfast at the Sunset Grill, all-time favourite Beaches brekkie hang. Then I tagged along as Ell took the ES up to Lake Simcoe to look at the snow (of which Toronto is somewhat lacking these days). As the Brits wandered about and commented on seeing more snow that ever before in their lives (about 15 centimetres), I took pictures and fell in a snowdrift, leading me to realize that I was, in fact, one of those people who would always fall in a snowdrift, get splashed by mud or otherwise wind up mucky and slightly damp when I got out into the outdoors.

After the snow, we introduced them to the delights of Timbits and had dinner at Lady J's - who whipped up a mean lasanga to feed us.

Sunday, I slept, read, slept, read, took a bath, had dinner at my parents', watched the Masterpiece Theatre version of "Dracula" and fell asleep on the couch. Not a productive day.

This morning, I hauled myself into work for the crack of 9:15, which officially made me 45 minutes late. O_o However, I have kicked my paperwork into shape, so I can spend the afternoon helping out with my officemate, who is about to drown in overdue files - I'm making a deposit to the Karma bank for future workload crises.

In the meantime: ( linky-linky )

This Is Bad: US Congress Wants to Monitor All E-Mails and IMs

From Crooks and Liars.com:

A bill introduced last week by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is beginning to raise eyebrows.

[It] would require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely.

The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term of one year on ISPs which failed to keep full records.

This is a terrifying development and it must be stopped before it gains any significant momentum. Background, Action items and contact information below the fold.

Under the guise of reducing child pornography, the SAFETY (Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act) Act is currently the gravest threat to digital privacy rights on the Internet. Given the increasing tendency of people, especially young people, to use the Internet as a primary means of communications, this measure would effect nearly all Americans in ways we are only beginning to understand. Also, given the fact that the Act requires all Internet Service Providers to record the web surfing activity of all Internet users, this amounts to the warrantless wiretapping of the entire Internet.

Does this worry you? Good. It should. If this continues, it is an OUTRAGEOUS violation of our privacy and civil liberties.

Looks like someone just turned the heat up under the kool-aid.

From The Agonist.org:

The original SAFETY Act, introduced in June of 2006 by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), was shot down due to free speech concerns over aspects of the bill other than the ones I've focused on here. ( At the time, the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote that the bill  )

In Not 'Cranky-Is-Screaming-Insane' News...

Wolfgang Peterson is releasing a Director's Cut edition of Troy - I'm actually verging on excited about this: kind of-sort of bad sword&sandal epics are better than no sword and sandal epics at all.

I'm less excited about the news that they're making a movie from Frank Miller's Ronin, which is my least favourite (save the last act of The Dark Knight Strikes Again - WTF Frank?!). Ronin is FM's homage to the classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub but it never gelled for me. I have the trade somewhere in Casa di Cranky - I'll probably pull it out sometime this week for a reread along with The Dark Knight Returns - "I know 62 ways to disarm a man from this position..." heh.

Also in comics, Birds of Prey writer Gail Simone answered 55 questions from fans at Newsarama.com. Not too much interesting for me personally over there - some confirmation that breaking up Nightwing and Oracle was a decision mandated by Dan Didio (not surprising, since he wanted to off Nightwing at the climax of 'Infinite Crapfest') and a surprising plug IMO for Marv Wolfman's run on Nightwing. ( thoughts on latest Nightwing arc )

I haven't seen either Battlestar Galactica or Rome yet (and let's add my addiction to TV not currently conveniently available in Canada to reasons why I think the legislation currently before the American House of Representatives to record all ISP traffic sucks ass) but I hope to tonight. Also, following blog reports this weeked, Michael Auiselllo is reporting (along with with the LA Times) that BSG's fourth season is a done deal (WARNING - spoilers in the link). The renewal is apparently for 13 episodes, which makes me happy because I think Ron Moore gets into trouble when he tries to expand the arc of each season out to 20 episodes. Having just rewatched season one, I'm can't honestly say that there's an episode that could easily be skipped over - possibly "Litmus" and "Flesh and Bone" could have been merged into a single ep - whereas in season two, just off the top of my head, "Black Market", "Sacrifice" and "The Captain's Hand" are all episodes that were so badly reviewed online that I never bothered to watch'em. At least one episode that I did watch - "Scar" - was a complete and utter OOC waste of time. And this season, as much as I enjoyed "Unfinished Business", the storyline did not requie and entire episode to itself whereas "Hero" should have been left on the drawing board. 13 episodes is a nice tight number that ought to give us maximum bang for our buck. Now, about Starbuck... .

DC Comics Solicits for May

My thoughts (such as they are) on DC's offerings for May:

All-Star Batman and Robin has been resolicited.

O_o

Dare I believe it? I've been burned by Jim and Frank before...

Oh, dear - the spiky crystals are back. Why doesn't that kill her?

People might start buying Hawkgirl again if they stopped letting Howard Chaykin do the cover art *shudder* The fug! It burns, master! It buuuurrrrrns!

Why doesn't anyone working on Supergirl ever look at Kitson's work to see how Supergirl should be done?

Robin should lay off the 'roids. And,

For thems as care: cover art to Supernatural: Origins #1.

Not surprisinly not solicited this month: Wildcats #2. sigh.

On the Subject of Wikipedia & Essays

Apparently tonight is spam night. And thus I present a short snippet of awesome from the FAQ of Karen Healey of Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed):

Q) I'm writing a paper. Will you tell me what you think of the history of women in comics/feminism/the portrayal of X character as opposed to the Butler theory of gender performativity? Make it about 1500 words long, double-spaced, with one-inch margins.

Certainly not! Why, in my day, when I had a research paper to write, I didn't harrass some blog writer, even if she was endlessly witty and erudite. No! I sat in the university library on the night before it was due, chasing down journal articles and playing games of Solitaire on the lab computers until panic and the vending machine soda prompted the final bout of frenzied typing while I chanted "Done badly is still done!" to the rhythm of the clattering keys.

Then I stumbled home at 6 am, slept for two hours, got up, hid my greasy hair under a hat, and walked to the English department to deliver my paper. Barefoot! IN THE SNOW.

And in my day we didn't have Wikipedia.

Do your own damn research.

The US House of Representatives May Want to Read Your E-Mail

Further to my earlier post about HR 837, the "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act of 2007", or the SAFETY Act, it appears that, contrary to the report from Crooks and Liars.com (originally posted on The Seminal.com), the SAFETY Act would not "require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely" as I previously posted. Not quite anyway.

An American friend who's a lawyer IRL dropped me a line after reading my LJ today to point out that the bill, HR 837, didn't say what Crooks and Liars, Seminal, The Agonist and other blogs who had picked up the story said it did. According to my friend, the SAFETY Act, if passed, would require ISPs to maintain permanent records of customers buying webspace or Internet access from them so that if a law enforcement agency discovered, for example, that the computer with the Internet protocol address 127.0.0.1 hosted kiddie porn, they could go to the ISP's records and find out that IP address 127.0.0.1 belonged to Joe Smith, of 123 Some Street, Someplace, Some State/Province/Territory.

I thought this sounded eminently reasonable since presumably most ISPs would keep these records anyway for billing purposes, therefore, the SAFETY Act was essentially proposing to require ISPs to maintain these records in perpetuity - annoying but not necessarily a greater threat to privacy than already exists by virtue of paying a company to access the Internet through their servers. I told my friend that I would read the text of the bill and post corrected information from home tonight.

Well, after managing to navigate the Library of Congress's online archive (called Thomas after Thomas Jefferson - sidebar: I will never bitch about Hansard again), I found a text of the proposed bill. Turns out that my friend the lawyer and the bloggers are both right - sort of.

While the SAFETY Act, as written, would not "require ISPs to record all users' surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely," Section 6 of the proposed Act reads as follows:

SEC. 6. RECORD RETENTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS.

(a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations governing the retention of records by Internet Service Providers. Such regulations shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders that may require production of such information. [Emphasis mine]

As my friend the lawyer correctly notes, the Act does not mention maintaining records of e-mails, instant messenger conversations or websurfing activity. However, the Act would authorize the Attorney General to make regulations that would "at a minimum" require ISPs to keep permanent records of your IP address and user ID. The phrase that freaks me and the blogosphere out is "at a minimum" - my understanding of American regulatory process is negligable at best but this would seem to me that, if passed, the SAFETY Act would give the US Attorney General the authority to make regulations requiring ISPs to keep permanent records of an unlimited variety of types Internet activity, which could potentially include e-mail and IM traffic - and jail and/or fine ISPs for failing to do so.

So the current blog reports about the SAFETY Act that I linked to this morning are factually incorrect - it's not the content of the SAFETY Act that is troubling - IMO, it's what the Act doesn't include, like a limit on what information the Attorney General could require ISPs to keep on file if the Act is passed that's troubling. And it is particularly troubling given this administration's far from stellar record when it comes to privacy rights (domestic wiretapping, anyone?).

It's not quite a case of the bloggers who cried wolf - more the case of the bloggers who cried "that pregnant wolf over there could give birth to pups who will come and eat my sheep." I'd still write the Judiciary Committee, were I a citizen of the Republic.

Gah! With a Side of Ack!

Remind me to never, ever voluntarily review and attempt to analyze American legislation ever again.

Brain mellllllllted.