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

Hilarious Videos of Seattle Residents Who Have Never Driven In Snow Before

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Cars sliding down a snowy Seattle hill: crashing steel Ice Capades:

From BoingBoing.net:

Here's a brief, excruciating video of cars losing traction on Seattle's Capitol Hill during this week's snowstorm and caroming downwards, out of control (the clincher is a city bus, and what appears to be the same white SUV that just keeps on trying to make it, as though the owner can't believe that his giant ride can't contend with puny black ice).

As someone who's been in a couple of high-speed, freeway ice-accidents (including a childhood trauma in which I was thrown from the car!) this was nearly too painful to watch -- though, as the closing credits remind us, no one was actually hurt on Capitol Hill that day. Which, I suppose, makes this into a kind of crashing steel Ice Capades.

Another video posted yesterday from their apartment balcony of some similar crashes from earlier in the day.

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.

But Who Is Going To Setup Their Own Email Server?

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From The Old New Thing:

Many many years ago, back in the days when Microsoft's email address had exclamation points, an internal tool was developed to permit Microsoft employees to view and update their Benefits information from the comfort of their very own offices. Welcome to the paperless office!

One of my friends noticed an odd sentence in the instructions for using the tool: "Before running the program, make sure you are logged onto your email server."

"That's strange," my friend thought. "Why does it matter that you're logged onto your email server? This tool doesn't use email."

Since my friend happened at the time to be a tester for Microsoft's email product, he tried a little experiment. He created a brand new email server on one of his test machines and created an account on it called billg. He then signed onto that email server and then ran the tool.

Welcome, Bill Gates. Here are your current Benefits selections...

"Uh-oh," my friend thought. "This is a pretty bad security hole." The tool apparently performed authentication by asking your email server, "Hey, who are you logged in as?" The answer that came back was assumed to be an accurate representation of the user who is running the tool. The back-end server itself was not secured at all; it relied on the client application to do the security checks.

My friend sent email to the vice president of Human Resources informing him of this problem. "You need to shut down this tool immediately. I have found a security hole that allows anybody to see anybody else's Benefits information."

The response from the vice president of Human Resources was calm and reassuring. "My developers tell me that the tool is secure. Just enjoy the convenience of updating your Benefits information electronically."

Frustrated by this, my friend decided to create another account on his test email server, namely one corresponding to the vice president of Human Resources. He then sent the vice president another email message.

"Please reconsider your previous decision. Your base salary is $xxx and your wife's name is Yyyy. Would you like me to remind you one week before your son's tenth birthday? It's coming up next month."

A reply was quickly received. "We're looking into this."

Shortly thereafter, the tool was taken offline "for maintenance."