Dr. Drew's Infrequent Blog

20 December 2005

Military Intelligence

I was struck by Friday's report that President Bush signed executive orders instructing the National Security Agency to monitor communications of American citizens, in violation of Congressional action limiting presidential rights to conduct electronic surveillance without going through the FISA Courts. I picked up the New York Times to read the original story. It is even more amazing that the Times held on to the story for over a year. There was an interesting discussion of this and the NSA on Monday's Democracy Now broadcast, including James Bamford, who wrote a fascinating book about the NSA called The Puzzle Palace. The same Democracy Now broadcast included claims by an Mt Holyoke Professor Pyle that Homeland Security investigated a U Mass student for borrowing the original Chinese edition of Mao's Little Red Book. He wondered if this was done under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. He pointed out that this was exactly what Congress' Church Commission had tried to stop. I wondered about this, and found the following from ACRL's blog
"Interlibrary Loan Causes a Stir".

NPR recently had an interesting story, "The Secret Court of Terror Investigations."

The Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday had a good story highlighting the dangers of military intelligence going amuck. It excerpted from "FBI's Cold War Files Question [Senator Patsy Takemoto] Mink's Loyalty". It then followed this up with nice editorial.

This certainly has been an interesting period in terms of Intellectual Freedom, and the withering away of civil liberties. Sigh.

18 December 2005

Graduation

I added the photos online today from today's Commencement to my Kodak site. You don't need to pay for them or register to use the site. Just click on the photograph, and wade through the photos from the Hui Dui dinner. It was great to see so many graduating students, as well as a few current students and alumni (especially our cohort who survived the flood).

Papers are all corrected. It is time to celebrate the holidays!