Category: Things that matter

I’m not talking about the suits Ms. Grace wears.  The lawsuit against Nancy Grace over the suicide of Melinda Duckett is being allowed to go to trial.

A judge has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit claiming that CNN’s Nancy Grace pushed the mother of a missing toddler to suicide through aggressive questioning on her show will be tried in federal court.

. . .

Grace grilled Duckett on Grace’s CNN Headline News show in September 2006 about the disappearance of Duckett’s 2-year-old son, Trenton. Duckett fatally shot herself before the network aired the pre-taped interview.

This will be interesting to see how it turns out.  I thought Ms. Grace was unusually obnoxious, even for her, in this interview.  I don’t know that I would have killed myself over it, but for her and her producers to say they had nothing to do with adding to the stress Ms. Duckett felt is absurd.  And stress reaction is what suicide is all about.  Did Ms. Grace cause Ms. Duckett to suicide?  Well, we don’t know, but even I find that improbable.  Did Ms. Grace contribute?  It sure looks that way to me.  Now we’ll let it go through the court system.  At least, until CNN settles out of court while admitting no wrong-doing.

Thanks to reader/former cow-orker TG for the link to this story.  Apologies to him for the delay in getting it posted.
[tags]Nancy Grace, Melinda Duckett, Lawsuit over Melinda Duckett suicide, Nancy Grace in court over suicide contribution[/tags]

I do apologize to all harmed in this cowardly attack in in Scotland for using it to illustrate something. I felt it necessary to point out this example of why knowing who someone is does nothing for security because it in no way shows what that person plans to do.

British security sources tell NBC News that two of the five suspects in custody in connection with three recent terror incidents in Scotland and London are medical doctors and one may have assembled the bombs. Authorities also said they believe that most, if not all, of the suspects come from Middle Eastern countries, including one from Iraq.

. . .

Britain’s top-selling Sun newspaper identified one of those detained as an Iranian doctor who worked at North Staffordshire Hospital in central England. A spokeswoman at the hospital declined to comment on the case and police would not identify those detained.

I find it very difficult to imagine that being able to identify this doctor very precisely via RFID enabled federally mandated ID would have done anything to predict this attack on the airport prior to the act. Of course, that’s because knowing who someone is doesn’t indicate what that person plans to do. I keep repeating that when discussing the horribly useless Real ID because it seems to be a point that policy makers can’t understand even though it is excessively clear to security folks. Not that any policy workers waste their time here, but perhaps someone who knows a high-level policy maker reads my musings and could pass them along.

Continue reading “Scary news shows why Real ID won’t help security”

An interim report from the House of Representatives Oversight Committee is up concerning the investigation of White House officials’ use of Republican National Convention email addresses in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act. The committee is researching how much official government business was conducted using these addresses by White House staff members and how little of that business was preserved as required by the 1978 Presidential Records Act.

The number of White House officials given RNC e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed. In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a “handful of officials” had RNC e-mail accounts. In later statements, her estimate rose to “50 over the course of the administration.” In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President’s senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.

White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts. The RNC has preserved 140,216 e-mails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these e-mails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official “.gov” e-mail accounts. Other heavy users of RNC e-mail accounts include former White House Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 e-mails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 e-mails). These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.

There has been extensive destruction of the e-mails of White House officials by the RNC. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC e-mail accounts, the RNC has preserved no e-mails for 51 officials. In a deposition, Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that many of the White House officials for whom the RNC has no e-mail records were regular users of their RNC e-mail accounts. Although the RNC has preserved no e-mail records for Ken Mehlman, the former Director of Political Affairs, Ms. Ralston testified that Mr. Mehlman used his account “frequently, daily.” In addition, there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails. The RNC has preserved only 130 e-mails sent to Mr. Rove during President Bush’s first term and no e-mails sent by Mr. Rove prior to November 2003. For many other White House officials, the RNC has no e-mails from before the fall of 2006.

There is evidence that the Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales may have known that White House officials were using RNC e-mail accounts for official business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records. In her deposition, Ms. Ralston testified that she searched Mr. Rove’s RNC e-mail account in response to an Enron-related investigation in 2001 and the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later in the Administration. According to Ms. Ralston, the White House Counsel’s office knew about these e-mails because “all of the documents we collected were then turned over to the White House Counsel’s office.” There is no evidence, however, that White House Counsel Gonzales initiated any action to ensure the preservation of the e-mail records that were destroyed by the RNC.

Information is also available in the article from a deposition made by Susan Ralston, former Special Assistant to the President and deputy to Karl Rove. She is questioned about Rove’s use of email for official business, his use of a Blackberry, conversations he had with Scooter Libby, and more.

I believe the ultimate focus of this investigation is whether White House staff members were intentionally skirting Presidential Records Act record preservation requirements, what happened to all the missing records, and whether this is a Watergate erased-tape style cover-up (well, all those things and a vindicative strikeback at President Bush by the Democratic majority). This is worth keeping up with to learn a little more about how the White House has handled official business during the current administration.

We all expect politicians will hide their activities on occasion – some politicians more than others. It is worth learning if this is Watergate scandal level coverup, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” coverup, accidental mishandling of official business and associated records, or something else all together. As much as this is likely driven in part (maybe even largely) by opposing political party sniping issues, it is important no matter who is in charge of each branch of government that we investigate questionable behavior by our leaders. The higher the level of responsibility and the greater the power wielded by those at the top (of all branches) necessitates extra scrutiny.

[tags]Presidential Records Act, Senate investigation of White House business, White House use of unofficial communication channels, Who watches the watchers?[/tags]

Now it isn’t often that I’ll be in favor of the government encroaching more into the affairs of businesses (a trait that makes the liberals disown me, but not an important enough trait for the conservatives to embrace me), but I do think that news of House Financial Services Committee hearings in credit report inaccuracies is a good thing. The full text of the hearings is not available at the time of this writing, but you can view the archived video from the hearing while you wait for a transcript. (via Consumerist)

[tags]Credit report inaccuracies, House Financial Services Committee hearings, Correcting your credit report[/tags]

Old news, but I hadn’t paid attention and realized that, unemcumbered by patents finally, the GIF format is truly free.

I am sure a lot of you remember the great “GIF fiasco”: more than a decade ago, Unisys decided to make money out of the most used image file format on the Internet: the GIF format. To be more precise, Unisys announced that they would go after developers of programs able to load and save GIF files (never mind the fact that even back then there was plenty of free software which wouldn’t have been able to pay).

To make the short story shorter, the PNG file was invented as a reaction to Unisys’ move; although it was never wildly successful, PNG did manage to make Unisys’s threat very much irrelevant. Unisys took their time, but eventually realised that if they had seriously sued people over the GIF patent, the days of the GIF format would be over.

. . .

1. We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan the patent expired on 20 June 2004 and in Canada it expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent expired 11 August 2006, The Software Freedom Law Center says that after 1 October 2006, there will be no significant patent claims interfering with employment of the GIF format.

So between Unisys giving up on suing (what with that probably killing the format, leaving Unisys in charge of absolutely nothing) and the expiration of the patents which caused the ruckus, we can finally use GIF without fear of problems from the patent police.

[tags]Old news, GIF patent free, Unisys gives up suing for GIF[/tags]

Right up front, I’ll point out that this could be very useful in political discussions about the current state of American. However, until I’ve had time to view more of the data and get an idea of what’s in there, I’ll avoid any actual discussion of political implications. That out of the way, now is a good time to read up on the global terrorism database put together with funding from the Department of Homeland Security.

The majority of terrorist attacks result in no fatalities, with just 1 percent of such attacks causing the deaths of 25 or more people.

And terror incidents began rising some in 1998, and that level remained relatively constant through 2004.

These and other myth-busting facts about global terrorism are now available on a new online database open to the public.

The database itself is accessible through a University of Maryland web site.

Continue reading “Terrorism database”