Archive for January 2nd, 2010
The TSA’s Intimidation Of Bloggers Over Leaked Security Rules Is A Disgrace
Shortly after the Christmas bomber tried to blow up a Delta flight into Detroit, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rolled out an emergency directive requiring airlines to implement draconian new security procedures.
Most travelers, unfortunately, had to find out about these new procedures from airline web sites or from firsthand accounts of those who had the misfortune to fly. Despite operating a consumer web site with a chatty blog, the TSA didn’t bother to tell the public about the new rules. Instead, the agency just distributed the new rules electronically to thousands of airline, government, and security employees and left the public in the dark.
Thankfully, someone leaked the rules, so Americans finally learned what we should have been told immediately. Thanks to bloggers like Chris Elliot and Steven Frischling, who published the memo, we got to read the whole directive.
Needless to say, the TSA should have made all of the new rules public from the get-go. The secrecy surrounding them was an insult to anyone affected–namely all Americans.
This insult was nothing compared to the TSA’s next move, however, which was to send agents to the houses of Frischling and Elliott (and presumably others) to slap them with subpoenas and demand that they immediately reveal the sources of the leaked directive.
Pause right there to appreciate how asinine and offensive this is.
A few days earlier, a bomber had almost succeeded in blowing a plane out of the sky. The airline in question, Delta, had followed the TSA’s procedures. The US government–and, presumably, the TSA–had been given some warning about this particular bomber, which it had declined to pursue. The TSA responded to what may have been a monumental screw-up by tightening security procedures (fine) and then not telling the public about them (outrageous). Then, far worse, when it discovered that someone else had told the public, the TSA sent the proverbial jack-booted thugs to threaten individuals into revealing who sent them a document that had been distributed to thousands of airline and government employees.
In what universe is this a good use of government resources?
Would it be too much to ask the TSA to use its agents to make Americans safer instead of threatening bloggers who publish widely distributed memos that should have been public anyway?
Talk about screwed-up priorities.
And what will the TSA do when it finishes analyzing the hard drive of one of the bloggers it threatened? Will it send jack-booted thugs to the house of the airline or government employee who dared forward the memo so the public could see what the new rules were? Will the TSA drag the employee out of his or house in the middle of the night and ship him or her up river for Treason?
Until we read about this bizarre behavior, we were willing to believe the government’s assertion that the tips it got about the Christmas bomber only look meaningful in hindsight. Now that we have seen firsthand some of the decisions being made within the TSA, however, we’re more inclined to believe that the cause of this near-tragedy was incompetence.
The threatening of bloggers, meanwhile, is a disgrace.
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See Also:
- FINALLY! The TSA Bans The Right Thing
- TSA Caves On Getting Up To The Bathroom In The Last Hour
- New Flight Security Rules Now Official: No Standing Up, Working, Or Holding Things During Last Hour Of Flights
AOL Social Media Dude Frank Gruber Leaves (AOL)
One of AOL’s more visible employees, Frank Gruber, is leaving the company’s Dulles office to focus on his own projects.
Frank’s new day jobs: His “Tech Cocktail” events business and Shiny Heart Ventures, an Internet startup he founded with fellow ex-AOLer Jen Consalvo.
Reached by IM, Frank tells us he is leaving AOL because he had finished up his most recent projects — including AIM Lifestream — and “thought it was good breaking off point.”
He explains more in a blog post:
This year my New Year’s resolution is to be bold and what better way to do that than to start the year off by leaving the solid paycheck, benefits and comfort of a job at Aol. Today is my last day as an Aol employee as I have decided to move on to pursue some of my own entrepreneurial endeavors. It has been just over 3 years since I joined Aol to help bring some “Web 2.0 & social media” perspective and expertise to the Aol team. In Internet years that is about 10 years. My first task was to join the product development team responsible for the myAOL triple threat including a personalized homepage, a feed reader with bookmarking and an innovate recommendation engine. We then went on to launch it in 28+ countries before it turned one. More recently with the launch of AIM Lifestream I saw about 18 months of planning and strategy come to fruition which included work on AIM buddyupdates and the acquisition of SocialThing. I have racked up a lot of airline miles bouncing between DC and the West Coast. It has been a good run and a great learning experience working in a large organization and I have met so many great people along the way. I am proud of our accomplishments at Aol. As anyone who has ever worked at a large company can attest, it is not easy to launch a product in a big organization and I did it a few times in just three years.
Continue reading at Somewhat Frank >
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See Also:
- Rebuilding AOL, The Apple Tablet, And 2010′s Other Huge Stories
- AOL’s Seed.com Pays Well, But Feels Like "A Black Hole"
- Meet AOL’s Fresh-Faced Future Of Local News
New TV Show To Make Lives Of First Year Associates Look Sexy And Exciting
Somehow we have missed this gem from the upcoming new television season…
It’s a show focused on the lives of five brand new big firm associates! The creators of hospital soap opera Grey’s Anatomy are apparently diving into the law firm pool.
While we doubt anyone — lawyers included — would want to watch a show about the usually miserable lives of young firm associates, it looks like it will have little relation to actual work. Instead, The Deep End will attempt make that grinding first year look glamorous in a way all law students once dreamed those late nights at the office would be.
Here is the intro description of ABC’s The Deep End:
In a city where wealth and power rule, everyone strives to make it to the top. For five eager and attractive law associates, being accepted into one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious law firms is the first step on their way up. But as they soon realize, the law offices of Sterling are far more cutthroat than they could have ever imagined and they must fight for themselves and their clients to stay afloat in these shark infested waters.
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- The Gay Marriage Trial Could Be Televised
- How Law & Order Might Handle The 9/11 Trials
- New York Startup Howcast Hits ABC News
Bloggers Have A Duty To Protect Their Sources — Even If It Means Going To Jail
From TechCrunch: Last week two bloggers, Steven Frischling and Chris Elliot, were visited by TSA agents and threatened with jail time if they did not reveal their source of the TSA Travel Directive that they each published shortly after the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day.
Frischling caved immediately …
Continue reading at TechCrunch »
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See Also:
- FINALLY! The TSA Bans The Right Thing
- TSA Caves On Getting Up To The Bathroom In The Last Hour
- Terror And Heroism On Airbus As Nigerian Tries To Blow Up Plane
Judges Argue For Assistance For The Do-It-Yourself Lawyer
The recession has flooded the courts with foreclosure cases, small business disputes and the dozens of other types of lawsuits that spring up when money woes result in people not being able to meet their obligations.
Of course not being able to afford to pay your bills often means not being able to afford a lawyer.
The chief justices of New Hampshire and California have an opinion piece in today’s New York Times discussing how to make the court system more user-friendly — and less lawyer-dependent.
They argue for allowing an “unbundling” of legal services where a lawyer handles only part of the case — drafting integral documents or answering certain questions — but does not stay with the client from start to finish, as is usually required.
What would of course be better than that is a system where free legal help is available to anyone who needs it, civil cases included. But considering the constantly decreasing budgets of legal aid organizations, that is not likely to happen.
Law firms can always do better in encouraging young associates to take on pro bono work like divorce cases; perhaps one of the results of deferred associate spending a year doing public interest work will have mean more dedication in general to taking pro bono cases. We shall see.
But until sweeping changes in the system are made — or divorces and foreclosures actually become significantly less complicated (not likely) — maybe this is the next best option.
Read chief justices John Broderick (New Hampshire) and Ronald George’s (California) article here.
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See Also:
- Judge Slams "Fat Cat" JP Morgan’s Copy Bill, Disgusted By 25 Cents Per Page
- What To Do While You Wait For Your Law Firm To Need You
- The Economy Is Too Bad To Get A Divorce