Excellent. His brother, John Negroponte, implemented a similar exchange via Honduras (into Nicaragua) in the early 1980's: ORPI (One Rifle Per Iranian) for TDPDS (Ten Dollars Per Dead Sandinista).

This. Couldn't have said it better or more simply myself. Since 9/11 some agencies have the collective decency of a perverted peeping Tom. Remember how controversial FISA was, an insipidly weak accountability organization? No one else remembers it either. Their ridiculously low level of probable cause was still far too high for the cowards in the Bush administration. They bypassed it with Executive Orders and the Patriot Acts. Good luck ever restoring even ridiculously low thresholds of oversight to the current monitoring structure.

This is what law enforcement should be doing. Not really happy about the entire domestic monitoring of all us innocent folks' emails. Indeed, as far as i can tell, some gov't agencies have had the decency level of a peeping tom since 9/11. But this bust appears to be a legitimate use of intelligence resources. It legitimately protects our economy. Our economy is what supports our military and engineering superiority. IP related to product manufacturing needs to be protected (as opposed to, say, RIAA/MPAA grandstanding about entertainment IP in a manner which only sours international relations). If we switched the resources we currently waste on domestic monitoring, the War on Drugs, and RIAA/MPAA/BSA related lawsuits into producing -- education and R&D -- and protecting manufacturing IP, we'd have a national surplus and 1950's percentages of disposable income within about 10 yrs. It's the economy, stupid.

I actually believed Bush and company that we shouldn't trust the science and I was entirely in favor of all the related political firings from NASA, the NOAA and so on without cause. And also I was entirely for funding an unnecessary war on credit to the point where it bankrupted our country to such a degree that the following administration essentially has no way to fix it except to commit political suicide a la Jimmy Carter measures. I was right on the bandwagon for torture and illegal domestic monitoring of our citizens. Dang, but now it turns out I was incorrect, that some of these scientists who are analyzing maps are correct? Well then, they need to be fired. Alternatively, we can declare the receding ice photos a "national security" issue, in the same manner we deal with any information we think might embarrass us these days. I can't take photos of certain buildings in my own country anymore but I am certainly free to be surreptitiously videotaped and so forth. Since I live in this manufactured ignorance world created by spin doctors, this ice information is very surprising to me. I really thought we had these scientists under proper control, but here they go telling home truths yet again. Boy do I feel foolish.

The RIAA has prevailed in nearly every single case it's brought! Where are you getting the idea they are failing to establish precedent? The only thing they've lost is the amount they've asked for. On occasion, juries or judges have reduced the damages ("excessive"), the RIAA has fought for. But they are getting plenty of precedent. And don't forget ACTA, on the legislative tip. They are alienating people, but my guess is their research shows they can win that back with some insipid, hyperbolic PR campaign after full dominance has been established.

When a person comes before a non-tech savvy judge with their two-bit attorney, and is facing millions of dollars in firepower that will win at any cost, much of it more highly-educated than the judge him/herself, who do you think has the odds? The RIAA cherry picks each case too, nearly ensuring they will win, not to mention their jury experts and private detectives, working behind the scenes, if needed. Although nothing is perfect, and the RIAA or MPAA might lose one or two cases to every hundred they win, they are establishing a mountain of precedent, making it incredibly difficult for any judge to rule against the RIAA position. They are not spending millions for no reason. They also lobby like hell to keep legislators from changing laws in a way that might overturn decisions. And don't forget ACTA. The system is thought to be slanted toward wealth for good reason. I'm not saying that it's wrong in all cases either, but this is one time where, right or wrong, RIAA has gained the upper hand, and will continue to solidify that, unless something changes.

Exactly. I say this every time these stories come out and some make fun of the RIAA. The RIAA is setting precedent at any cost. This tactic, and the dollars behind it, is the reason the legal system is heavily biased toward corporations (in this case, the RIAA) over the little guy. Of course, all of it could be overthrown by statutory changes, but the RIAA and MPAA make certain they lobby the hell out of Congress and the Executive branches to prevent just that, Anyone hear of ACTA? Additionally, the large organizations the RIAA represents also own many media outlets which can influence news story tone and content. So the RIAA is not "losing" at anything except short-term public relations, something their research likely indicates can be repaired downstream, following their complete unethical domination of world IP processes.

Might as well. Our voluminous amounts of tax dollars go only to overpaid public servant salaries these days. There is no money left for license plates, parks, schools, etc. Public employee unions (cops, public office workers, prison guards) will accept furloughs (can sue for back wages later) and layoffs, but never accept wage cuts those of us in the private sector are forced to take during economic contractions. If they would accept wage cuts, there would be far less layoffs, even during these tough times. As for schools, and (underpaid) teachers, wasn't the lottery supposed to ensure 34% of the take went to schools and was never otherwise touched? Yeah, except they passed a different law earlier this year. They're "studying" it now. Hahahah.

And, lest we forget, since most already have, how did California get into debt? Governor Wilson (R), relaxed the PUC rules in 1996, under the customary & mistaken Republican impression that ALL government regulation and public services, not just unnecessary government regulation and public services, are bad. A little company called "Enron" came around in 2000, and within 2 years, California was billions in debt due to Enron's (illegal) market manipulations. What state do you think they were from? Sound familiar? We've never seen a dollar of that returned, since Bush was running the country. Yep, I can hardly wait for annoying e-ads on underfunded plates. Nice work, guys.
California Energy Crisis

QFT. Not only that, the same was true about 9/11. These agencies seem to want to continuously expand their turf and substitute greater monitoring for poor police work. Look at the DEA budget in its inception year of 1972 or 3, and compare it with their budget today. Careers get started and people understandable want to grow their careers and the importance of their agencies. Ironically, most of this is supported by "right wing" types. The same right wingers who ofter want a leaned down government almost always want to eliminate constructive regulations, but almost never want to eliminate wasteful, unchecked redundancy in law enforcement or intelligence. Again, we had all the stuff we needed to stop 9/11 at the very time it happened. We don't need anything else other than better cooperation between agencies and continuing tactical and engineering developments.

Incidentally, the way this is headed, it's not going to just be the DHS. Note the recent Federal ruling protecting local police department intelligence files in NYC, a city level of law enforcement. Dukes of Hazzard podunk police departments can presumably gather significant intel without release, and they, like all other agencies, will simply grow in areas that don't have resistance. The law-enforcement, intelligence bloat is far out of hand and there is no way to reel it back in. What's the drawback, other than moral? Well, our economy is down the sh*tter. There's a reason why our Western economies beat Communist controlled economies back in the time that they were total-surveillance societies. We are killing our economy and our future by killing our freedoms. Police and intel play an important role in their place, but they don't produce anything for our economy. Let's get back to pre 9/11 transparency and prosperity.

And be done with it. Sick of the facade. Actually, it's not just that crew. Any organization with the money to work all three branches plus media; $$ for attorneys to set precedents, $$ for lobbyists to work congress, $$ for executive campaign contributions, and $$ for advertising, is eventually going to get what it desires. The only group after all of them are the voters, and we are way down the food chain. All that stuff about suing their own customers indicates these organizations consider consumer opinion last and believe we will continue to keep buying their products even though they sue us. We very well might.

Instead of doing their work under the name of our country. The citizens of the US don't agree with this garbage, so let's keep things clear.

It's true government needs to step-in, on occasion, with monopolies. Sometimes, it's required because of the concentrated lobbying dollars, attorney dollars (litigation), and position of market power a monopoly may hold, other times it's for other reasons. It's not helpful though, when some people discussing a market situation, let's say ISP's, go too far with their characterizations of regulation or de-regulation. Those who say that market regulation is "like communism" seem as unhelpful as those who go the opposite direction and say we need to regulate everything. Although they may have different motivations, both sides red-herring the argument by generalizing when we are discussing a specific situation. Imagine Joe needs heart surgery. Now imagine a group of crazies on one side screaming that everyone in society needs heart surgery. Imagine another group of nutballs going the other direction and shouting that no one should ever have heart surgery because not everyone needs it. What happens to Joe? Yet, that's what a lot of these regulation arguments apparently become. The ISP situation appears to require measured government intervention and fast, or we're losing comparative advantages that we want in our country. Intervention could be accomplished by the FCC, it could be by legislation, or it could be by a mix. And of course, we have other issues, ACTA/DRM, multi-billion dollar corporate bail-outs, electoral college reform, etc, getting the same "all or nothing" argument from extremists. Meanwhile, these situations continue to require specific solutions for their problems which are not going to happen. It makes me despise what some people are doing to our country via obsfucation and grandstanding.

Exactly. If anything what needs to be done is to create incentives for Comcast to build-out their monopoly with FiOS and so on. For that, the FCC or a solid law from Congress are arguably the only solutions. Rulings like this take away that incentive. With more and more ISP users and bandwidth use increasing (Hulu) etc, rulings like this allow Comcast to keep it's current hardware in place, charge top fees for the best access, and turn their back on residential customers annoyed with taking left-over bandwidth speeds. I think we'll notice it first on digital services like Hulu and so on, which only compete with Comcast TV product$ anyway. Net-neutrality regulation does not guarantee rates won't rise (Comcast profits would continue unabated), but rates would rise for the right reason; bandwidth build-out costs. This ruling instead leaves a loophole for price gouging. Whomever above quoted PG&E oversight has a reasonably good, though not perfect, analogy. When California de-regulated energy providers, Enron stepped in and bilked billions from the electrical grid by artificially cutting supplies of power and raise prices. Comcast, as another semi-monopoly, is now in a similar position of power; build-out costs no longer make sense, Comcast makes more money jostling rates for different levels of access. That is, they can leverage their monopoly status because, even as more and more people come online, the poorest customers will likely still pay some amount for old dial-up speeds in addition to their outdated Comcast cable tv account. Congress has an interest in seeing that we keep-up globally. Our information infrastructure is important nationally. Comcast can raise its rates, but Comcast should be required to meet the standards of net-neutrality where the rising rates would be tied to bandwidth build-out (see also "jobs"), not to sitting on their ass while charging more. Everyone loses in the long run from this ruling. Follow the money.