Gotta love spring! [Dane County Farmers Market, on the square].
Passionate Service from AT&T Wisconsin
read with great interest the biggest issue burning up the internets today, a USA Today article about the National Security Agency (NSA) collecting a database of phone records with the assistance of AT&T, Verizon and Bell South. “For the customers of these companies,” USA Today reports, “it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.”
Having been an AT&T Wisconsin customer since it was named SBC, I take this news seriously and immediately thought of two questions I’d like my phone company to answer. Were records of my calls made via AT&T included in data provided to the NSA? If so, did this violate the company’s privacy obligations as a service provider?
More on AT&T.
Wal-Mart’s Site Selection Process & Distribution Economics
The placement of Wal-Mart stores has followed a spatial diffusion model. K-Mart, in contrast, scattered its stores across the country. Here is more. Here is a video showing the spread of Wal-Mart, well worth watching and short. It is the best single lesson in economic geography you will receive. Thanks to http://kottke.org for the pointer.
A Conversation with Galbraith
Welcome to a conversation with UC Berkeley’s 1986 Alumnus of the Year, John Kenneth Galbraith: Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics in 1934; Professor of Economics at Harvard for more than fifty years; writer and author of more than 20 books, including The New Industrial State and The Affluent Society, and one novel, The Triumph; price czar during World War II; Project Director in the strategic bombing studies after World War II; editor at Fortune magazine; advisor to President Kennedy; U.S. Ambassador to India during the Kennedy administration; a leader in the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War; past president of the American Economics Association.
I met Galbraith ever so briefly years ago.
William Gibson on the NSA Domestic Wiretapping
I can’t explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we’ve all got some…
The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don’t think species know what they’re about. I don’t think humanity knows why we do any of this stuff. A couple hundred years down the road, when people look back at what the NSA has done, the significance of it won’t be about terrorism or Iraq or the Bush administration or the American Constitution, it will be about how we’re driven by emerging technologies and how we struggle to keep up with them…
Large Telco Liability based on USA Today Facts?
This morning, USA Today reported that three telecommunications companies – AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth – provided “phone call records of tens of millions of Americans” to the National Security Agency. Such conduct appears to be illegal and could make the telco firms liable for tens of billions of dollars. Here’s why:
On Flint
B. Myrkle discusses growing up in Flint and General Motors.
The Problems With Massively Automated Domestic Spying
Noah, at DefenseTech, tapped Valdis Krebs for his analysis of the problems with the slowly leaked details on the NSAs domestic surveillance efforts. Valdis makes the absolutely correct observation that:
Bruce Schneier has more, as does David Isenberg.
Kristian Knutsen takes a useful look at the issue from a local perspective.
A Day in the Life of US Air Traffic Control
NASA, via Edward Tufte.
The Patent Trolls
Judy Newman takes a very useful look at the numerous and growing problems with our patent system.