Photo: President Obama meets with Tech Luminaries

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President Barack Obama joins a toast with Technology Business Leaders at a dinner in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011.

Here’s the full list of attendees according to the NY Times, LA Times and SF Chronicle:

  • John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
  • Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!
  • John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
  • Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
  • Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
  • Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix
  • John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
  • Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
  • Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
  • Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
  • Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
  • Mark Zuckerberg, founder, president and CEO, Facebook

Going around the circle, starting from the President's right: Mark Zuckerberg, Unknown, Dick Costolo, Carol Bartz , John Hennessy, Reed Hastings, Larry Ellison, John Doerr, John Chambers, Art Levinson, Eric Schmidt, Unknown, Steve Westly, and Steve Jobs.

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Also posted to the official White House Flickr account, a photo of the President speaking with Mark Zuckerberg.

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Justice Department Report Notes Defense Department Sucks At Protecting Whistle Blowers

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As large segments of the US government go ballistic over the Wikileaks issue -- potentially caused by a military whistleblower -- is it any surprise to find out that the government is admitting it sucks at protecting whistleblowers? The Justice Department has put out a report saying that the Defense Department has pretty much failed in its effort to protect whistleblowers in the military. The report also found that the military has also seen nearly double the amount of "retaliations" for whisleblowing as it had in the past.

Of course, what's most interesting about this is that this is the sort of thing that leads to situations like Wikileaks. If the Defense Department can't protect whistleblowers who go through the official process to report problems, those whistleblowers are going to go to third parties... like Wikileaks.

Underclothes That Display The 4th Amendment When X-Rayed by TSA

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4th Amendment Wear is a series of underclothes that have the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution printed on them with metallic ink that so that it will show up when worn through a TSA X-Ray machine.

The clothes are designed as a silent protest against the new reality of being searched to the point where we’re basically naked. We don’t intend for this to be anything more than a thought-provoking way to fuel the debate about safety vs. civil liberties. If we sell a few items, great. But the main intention is to open more dialogue. It’s more of a conceptual piece than anything else.

via Laughing Squid

Newspapers Say: Shut Up And Get Scanned And Groped

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Mike Masnick, writing for TechDirt:

Matt Welch has a nice post over at Reason, highlighting numerous editorials from some big time newspapers mocking people who are concerned about the TSA's naked scans and/or groping procedures, beginning with the LA Times' perfectly obnoxious shut up and be scanned. Most of the editorials take on the typical apologists' line that "this is what we need to do to be secure." This can be summarized by the claim in the Spokesman-Review, entitled "Discomfort a small price for security on airplanes."

Note the implicit assumption: that being scanned or groped somehow makes the planes safer. The problem here is that no one has presented any evidence to back this up. Instead, TSA head John Pistole says "trust us." Yet, when people ask for evidence, they're told it's a state secret. This country (last we checked) has a 4th Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, which tends to have a high bar on what is a reasonable search. "Trust us" without any proof doesn't cut it. No one is arguing that we should make planes less secure, as these editorials suggest. We're arguing that security theater without evidence that it does anything valuable does not help anyone.

Similarly, random appeals that we should be scanned and groped for patriotic purposes, rings hollow as well. The Baltimore Sun mocks those who are protesting the procedures by calling those people "short-sighted" and arguing:

Whatever happened to the notion that we need to stick together to overcome extremists? U.S. soldiers are still dying for that cause in Iraq and Afghanistan on a regular basis. Under the circumstances, it seems a small sacrifice for the citizens back home to keep a stiff upper lip and voluntarily agree to measures that experts believe are needed -- at least until better technology and security techniques are developed.

Similarly, the Springfield Republican claims that this is just the cost of war, like rationing food during World War II:

For nearly 10 years the U.S. and its allies have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan to defeat the terrorists. But Americans at home haven't been asked to forego an ounce of sugar in this fight. Let's consider these searches the 21st-century equivalent of a WWII rationing card.

Without even getting into the reasons why the US has soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's incredibly deceitful and disingenuous to claim that because we're fighting a war, we should automatically give up on the basic 4th Amendment principles in the Constitution. Does this mean if we weren't fighting over there we could keep our Constitution as is? And if it's okay to obliterate the 4th Amendment without providing any evidence (beyond "trust us") that it actually helps, why stop with the 4th Amendment? Why not toss out the First. Our soldiers are dying, so the government should ban free speech. After all, speaking up might encourage terrorism.

Blind subservience based on vague "trust us" claims, that don't seem to have much basis in reality, is hardly a reason to give up basic freedoms.