Ethan Zuckerman:

The NSA documents Edward Snowden leaked have sparked a debate within the US about surveillance. While Americans understood that the US government was likely intercepting telephone and social media data from terrorism suspects, it’s been an uncomfortable discovery that the US collected massive sets of email and telephone data from Americans and non-Americans who aren’t suspected of any crimes. These revelations add context to other discoveries of surveillance in post 9-11 America, including the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, which scans the outside of all paper mail sent in the US and stores it for later analysis. (The Smoking Gun reported on the program early last month – I hadn’t heard of it until the Times report today.)

The Obama administration and supporters have responded to criticism of these programs by assuring Americans that the information collected is “metadata”, information on who is talking to whom, not the substance of conversations. As Senator Dianne Feinstein put it, “This is just metadata. There is no content involved.” By analyzing the metadata, officials claim, they can identify potential suspects then seek judicial permission to access the content directly. Nothing to worry about. You’re not being spied on by your government – they’re just monitoring the metadata.

Tom Foremski:

In 2005, Mr Engelbart confided to me: “I sometimes feel that my work over the past 20 or so years has been a failure. I have not been able to get funding and I have not been able to engage anybody in a dialogue.”

Power to be people…

His funding was based on the use of large computers connected to personal workstations that looked very much like PCs, a computer architecture called time-sharing. But the microcomputer and its promise of being self-sufficient, unconnected to anything, was thought to be the future at the time. And the counter-culture with its hatred of “the Man” and centralized systems of power and oppression, rejected the time-sharing mainframe based computer architecture that underpinned the work of Mr. Engelbart and his colleagues. Big centralized systems were out.

The promise of the individual, power to the people, the ideals of self-sufficiency that ruled the counter-culture movement became enshrined in the promise of the stand-alone Personal Computer. It’s an example of how popular culture can affect something as seemingly distant and unconnected as computer architecture.

Associated Press:

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday that “whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers.”
Friedrich says German officials are in touch with their U.S. counterparts “on all levels” and a delegation is scheduled to fly to Washington next week to discuss the claims that ordinary citizens and even European diplomats were being spied upon.

Bad for US Tech firms and political leaders to sell out on privacy. Big Government + Big Tech firms = Big Contract$. Not necessarily good for global business.

Slavoj Žižek:

In his early writings, Marx described the German situation as one in which the only answer to particular problems was the universal solution: global revolution. This is a succinct expression of the difference between a reformist and a revolutionary period: in a reformist period, global revolution remains a dream which, if it does anything, merely lends weight to attempts to change things locally; in a revolutionary period, it becomes clear that nothing will improve without radical global change. In this purely formal sense, 1990 was a revolutionary year: it was plain that partial reforms of the Communist states would not do the job and that a total break was needed to resolve even such everyday problems as making sure there was enough for people to eat.

Where do we stand today with respect to this difference? Are the problems and protests of the last few years signs of an approaching global crisis, or are they just minor obstacles that can be dealt with by means of local interventions? The most remarkable thing about the eruptions is that they are taking place not only, or even primarily, at the weak points in the system, but in places which were until now perceived as success stories. We know why people are protesting in Greece or Spain; but why is there trouble in such prosperous or fast-developing countries as Turkey, Sweden or Brazil? With hindsight, we might see the Khomeini revolution of 1979 as the original ‘trouble in paradise’, given that it happened in a country that was on the fast-track of pro-Western modernisation, and the West’s staunchest ally in the region. Maybe there is something wrong with our notion of paradise.

Jeremy Korzeniewski:

It’s cheaper to drive a diesel-powered vehicle than a gas-powered vehicle over the course of three to five years, according to a new study commissioned by Robert Bosch LLC – a company that makes plenty of diesel engine parts – using data compiled by The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. The savings stem not just from improved fuel efficiency but also overall fuel costs and better retention of value, and take into account the added purchase price of a diesel engine over its gasoline counterpart.

According to the study, “most of the savings are in the $2000 to $6000 range.” The highest return on investment comes from the Mercedes-Benz GL-Class. Buyers of a diesel GL will save a shocking $13,514 over the course of three years and $15,619 in five. Another star performer is the Volkswagen Golf TDI, which can save its owner more than $5,000 over three years. The full study can be found in PDF form at this link, and a press release with a summary of some of its findings can be seen below.