the gookins dot net

O’l Georgey didn’t waste any time getting his Get Out of Jail Free card signed into law. One possible bright spot is that the ACLU has already filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law in regard to the surveillance powers it gives the president, and the EFF is planning to challenge the retroactive telecom immunity portion. One interesting possibility is that the federal court judges, or possibly even Supreme Court Justices who will hear these cases, may end up being appointees of the new president. You would expect Obama appointees to be more liberal than McCain appointees, but than again, Obama has been full of surprises lately.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t trust that the government will refrain from spying on you regardless of what the law says. Well, there’s some promising news on that front too. The guys behind the Pirate Bay have plans to encrypt the internet. The idea is to use encryption at a network level rather than at an application level. If this were to be used by enough people/webhosts/ISPs, virtually all of your internet traffic would be encrypted. Where do I sign up?