more on obama and wiretapping

The other day I mentioned that Obama was blocking challenges to Bush's wiretapping program, even though these are things he campaigned against. I came across some more discussion on the subject. Keith Olbermann did a great segment covering the issue with law professor Jonathan Turley. More great commentary from Olbermann, who is one of the very few people in the 24-hour news media who addresses these issues. I'm glad he doesn't fold over for Obama like most people do. 'It was horrendous when Bush did it, but Obama's a good person, so it's ok.' An interesting argument is presented at Sensen No Sen, a great blog I've found and have started following, saying that Obama might be trying to push illegal wiretapping so far that Congress and the Supreme Court will be forced to shut it down. Obama needs the backing of the intelligence community and this way he can play them to gain there support and at the same time stop expansion on illegal wiretapping. The blog continues that we shouldn't count on this being the case. The bottom line is that Obama is continuing the unconstitutional tactics that the Bush administration used. From the Electronics Frontier Foundation:

Sad as that is, it's the Department Of Justice's second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes."

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.


Obama may have announced closure of Guantanamo Bay but that doesn't mean his policies differ radically with the Bush administration on overseas detainees. The Bush administration used a prison camp in Bagram, Afganistan where the Supreme Court has no rule. The Obama administration has embraced Bush policies on this topic as well. From the Salon article:

Remember: these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield. Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country -- abducted from their homes and workplaces -- and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned.

I think these issues really need to be brought to light. Too many people still have Obama fever, and even given these facts will say he has his reasoning, or he's a better person than Bush, so he'll use this power for good. The truth is he should be held to the same standard as any president.


On another note, my old roommate posted an article discussing how soy isn't as good for you as you probably think it is on his facebook. Unfermented soy which is used in soy milk, tofu, and veggie burgers is actually bad for you in quantity. Worst, this includes soy baby foods, which effect children at a crucial age in development.

police shoved heard attack victim in g20 protests

If you were following the G20 protests in London earlier this week, you probably heard of the man who died of a heart attack during the protest. It turns out minutes before his heart attack Ian Tomlinson, 47, was walking home from work with his hands in his pockets when police struck him from behind with a baton. See the chilling video below.



I watched a very interesting documentary on the Seattle WTO protests from 1999. It showed more of the same, police initiating a lot of brutality against mainly peaceful protesters.

This Saturday April 11th there will be a series of protests throughout various cities against the banking system. Here are the details on the protests in San Francisco. Unfortunately I'll be out of town.

In happier news Vermont proves it self to be better than California.

spell check

auto correct options for mamczak in open office are mammary, mamma's, mammoth, mammal, mexican, and mexicali

news bits

Found a few interesting articles on The Raw Story today. The first two pertain to the drug issues. Portugal decriminalized drugs back in 2001 and since then drug use in Portugal has fallen below the rest of the EU. This is a perfect example of how decriminalization works. From my visit to the Netherlands I was told the same thing by locals. I wonder what the effect decriminalization has on violence and the money it saves, since those are most likely reduced as well.

Felipe Calderone, Mexico's president, blames U.S. authorities stating just as in Mexico, corruption is complicate to drug trafficking. The truth is that the billions of dollars in drug trade don't simply disappear. Authorities could easily interfere to stop all this laundering. This isn't to mention the CIA's involvement of cocaine trafficking under the Reagan administration. And I'm sure that's just one example. On this note, I'd like to recommend a good documentary on the War on Drugs called American Drug War: The Last White Hope.

Even though Obama is a change from the Obama administration I can't say I'm impressed with the way his administration has been handling things so far. Major case in point, Obama has moved to block challenges against Bush's illegal wiretapping program. Back when Obama voted for the current FISA act I thought it was a political move since he acted to change the legislation and when that failed it would have passed with or without his vote. Had he voted against it, he would have surely been criticized for being soft on terror. But he's currently following the same line as the Bush administration. A few years ago Frontline did a very good documentary on the NSA's wiretapping called Spying on the Home Front.

Going back to Europe, the EU issued a directive for ISPs to start storing details of e-mails and phone calls. Content of e-mails and calls are not recorded, but can be accessed with a warrant. Sweden has decided to ignore the directive (must be all those pirate) and German courts are contesting it.

some diy projects for my camera

When I was in San Diego a couple weeks back I made a few things for my camera since I had access to all my tools. I've been wanted to make an off-camera flash cable for a while. Browsing the internet I also got the idea to make an L-bracket tripod mount. After making those I decided to make a cable shutter release as well.

I've got quite a few boxes of old photo stuff laying around my house. I found two 10 foot PC cables, that plug into my camera's external flash trigger, a PC attachment for Metz flashes, and the bracket arm in the picture below.



I was initially going to use the hotshoe off the bracket and modify it for my off camera flash, but then I found some hotshoe to PC adapters. I just had to convert them to a PC to hotshoe adapter.



The flash is triggered by shorting the center pin on the hotshoe connector with on on the side so I had to drill a hole through the dummy hotshoe and somehow isolate the wire going to the center pin. I found some rubber hose and a rubber screw. I used JB Weld to hold it all together, which is one of the strongest epoxies out there. Just has a really long cure time of about a day.









I also found a nut that was the same thread as a tripod mount so I JB Welded that to the casing.



I cut off the Metz connector from the cable I found and soldered the hot wire to the bolt and the ground to the base of the hotshoe. Since these weren't the best surfaces to solder to and my good soldering iron is up in the bay I decided to use some JB Weld for this as well. It didn't help that I was using some old solder that didn't hold very well either. The connections on the off cable flash have held up, but I have to warn that the JB Weld must have expanded when it dried because I had some problems with my solder joints with my remote shutter release and had to cut off some of the JB and resolder the connections, which included replacing a switch.

Here is the final product. After a bit of use one screw mount broke and the other stripped so I just JB Welded the whole thing together. It should last a while now although if my connections come loose I won't be able to take the thing apart. I used some JB on the cable, too, so that should prevent the connections from giving with a yank of the cable.



Next was making the L-bracket. The bracket arm I found earlier was easy to modify for this. The plan was to remove the handle and drill and tap a hole in the base to mount to the tripod. The thread size is 1/4"-20.



The nice thing about this is that I can always attach the handle again and it'll be as if I never modified anything. Here is the camera mounted on the L-bracket.



And the setup in action.


The next thing I wanted to built was a remote shutter release. I searched around online and found a few ideas. This one does a good job of explaining what I want to do. The only problem is that Canon Rebels use a 3/16" headphone jack which is easy to come by, while my 20D used an proprietary N3 connector. Fortunately I found this site which says that the N3 plug has the same spacing as a VGA adapter for a monitor and pins that are the same size as in a PS2 mouse or keyboard connector. The electronic store where I normally get this kinda stuff was closed (for good) so I went to a random computer store in Kearny Mesa asking for any similar stores. I told the guy what I needed and he gave me two, presumably fried, motherboards. I removed the VGA connector, which was a huge pain, and then got to sawing and filing it down to three pins. This was quite a bit of work, especially getting the pins to make good contact with the camera. The pinouts are on the website I mentioned before. In the end I built the connector and decided to add a 1/8" headphone jack plug. That way I can just use a regular 1/8" jack cable if I need to make it longer and so I can use the connector for future projects (like the intervalometer I'm making for time lapse photography). I ripped the female 1/8" connector off the motherboard I had.





I decided to make the switch housing out of a film canister. I looked for a two stage push button switch (half push for focus, full push for shutter) but couldn't find one so decided to use two switches. I also added a toggle wired to the shutter for bulb exposers. I had issues once I put everything together most likely because the JB Weld expanded and broke some of my solder joints. My advice is to just use a good soldering iron in the first place. I had to replace the toggle switch but eventually I got everything working.





My current project is building a shutter timer (intervalometer) for time lapse photography. It's almost done but the timing on the circuit is off so I have to work that out. Once I work it out I'll post how I made that one, too.

more diy photo

marginalizing the g20 protests

I've been following the protests surrounding the G20 Summit more than the summit itself (although conclusion of the summit is that the IMF gets a lot of money, some solution). Like anytime a group of people get together and demonstrate against the powers that be, the media does what it can to marginalize them. This includes greatly underestimating the number of protesters (I usually see in the thousands in the main stream media, while indy media and blogs from first hand accounts puts the numbers in the tens of thousands and more), focusing on the violence of the few (nothing like a photo-op of one guy smashing a window while surrounded by a brigade of reporters taking pictures), and even this NY Times blog focusing on the costumes of the protesters. The last article is particularly interesting at how the wording uses questions to assume the protesters a bunch of costumed freaks who "would not have seemed out of place at a rave." The article ends "What do readers think, is the media to blame for focusing so much on what is most visually arresting, or are the protesters at fault for spending too much energy attracting attention and not enough articulating practical steps that might actually change the system?" Even though these protests aren't as organize as they could be, many of these people are trying to articulate a point, it's just they have no outlet since the media obviously won't give them one. I wish I had saved the links I read earlier but there were reports of London Metro police blockading in the protesters and not letting them leave and using other aggressive tactics. Don't trust corporate media, informing you is not in their agenda.

sensible drug policy?

Obama's nominee for drug czar might actually bring reason to drug policy in this country. The former Seattle police chief wants to focus less on incarceration and more on "evidence-based" methods such as treatment. It's probably too early to signal the end of the war on drugs, especially with all fear mongering dealing with the drug war at the Mexican border, which might lead to unconstitutionally deploying US troops on national soil and militarizing the border. The DEA hasn't gotten the memo yet, though. Even though Obama said raids on medicinal facilities would stop, a dispensary in San Francisco was recently raided.

On a side note, I've decided to revive this blog and use it for a variety of topics. Pretty much whatever is on my mind at the moment.