The LA Times has an article about technology outpacing privacy laws and the bewildered technology companies who aren’t quite sure how to keep up.

“It’s so easy to say yes,” said technology security expert Bruce Schneier. “The government sings a patriotic song, and you want to do what’s right. We all want to band together.”

The Boston Globe reports that President Bush has declared himself beyond the reach of several hundred laws. The President has never vetoed a bill, which would give Congress an opportunity to override him; instead, after the signing celebrations have ended and media people have left the building, he appends statements to bills he signs to law specifying his own interpretation of the Constitution and how those laws are to be executed:

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills – sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

Among these many laws, several have involved privacy, “whistle-blower” protections, and various civil liberties:

In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold all the information sought by Congress. [...]

On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating ”whistle-blower” job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing. [...]

Bush’s statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.

The entire article is worth reading.

Several politicians and groups advocating for law enforcement officials have spoken out against 25 to Life, a cops-and-robbers game that allows players to act as a good cop hunting down evil criminals – or, alternatively, a drug dealer with a heart of gold battling against crooked cops. Some legislative bodies have proposed bills to publicly condemn (but not outlaw) the game, including one signed to law in Pennsylvania. Laws to restrict the sales of violent games, including games that specifically depict the injury of law officers, have so far been overturned as unconstitutional.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, however, that all the “outrage” has actually boosted the sales of an otherwise “boring” and poorly-rated game.

In London, a British man was escorted from a plane by police because a tip from his cab driver indicated he could be a terrorist. Who knew it could be so dangerous to sing along to the Clash’s “London Calling”?

Ars Technica has a nice report on Microsoft losing a font trademark in the EU. Officers of the Invalidity Division of the Office of Harmonization agreed that Microsoft’s Segoe, to be used in its new Vista operating system, is actually Linotype’s Frutiger LT 45 Light. The funny thing about this, of course, is that this wouldn’t matter in the U.S. – you can defend the rights to font names here, but not their appearance.

(Thanks to Dan and Tony for … well, pretty much the whole post, except for the weak typographer in-joke in the title.)

Every once in a while, some legislator tries to argue that games are not protected speech because they have no narrative or message. To them, I offer Patriot Act: The Home Version, a parody of Monopoly. The Philly Inquirer reports:

Designed by a New Jersey graphic artist and Arab civil-rights advocate, Patriot Act: The Home Version pokes fun at “the historic abuse of governmental powers” by the renewed antiterrorism law.

While the game may be fun, creator Michael Kabbash of Green Brook is serious about how he feels the law has curtailed freedom. The object of the game is not to amass the most money or real estate but to be the last player to retain civil liberties.

“I’ve had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins. They say, ‘We’re all in Guantanamo, and nobody has any civil liberties left,’ ” he said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s the point.’ “

The board game is available for free download at the designer’s site.

Sometimes it is easy to forget just how much control over information graphic designers really get to exercise.

This is new to me: in an op-ed titled “This Essay Breaks the Law,” Michael Crighton states that the Supreme Court will soon be reviewing a case involving some company’s claim on a patent on a form of medical treatment. The patent in question can apparently be violated just by thinking about the correlation between elevated homocysteine levels (an amino acid) and vitamin B-12 deficiency; Crighton offers another example to illustrate how mind-boggling this is.

For example, the human genome exists in every one of us, and is therefore our shared heritage and an undoubted fact of nature. Nevertheless 20 percent of the genome is now privately owned. The gene for diabetes is owned, and its owner has something to say about any research you do, and what it will cost you. The entire genome of the hepatitis C virus is owned by a biotech company. Royalty costs now influence the direction of research in basic diseases, and often even the testing for diseases. Such barriers to medical testing and research are not in the public interest. Do you want to be told by your doctor, “Oh, nobody studies your disease any more because the owner of the gene/enzyme/correlation has made it too expensive to do research?”

Just to be clear, this isn’t about patenting tests. We’re really talking about patenting little bits of the human body, which are apparently exempt from the patent office’s refusal to deal with “products of nature.”

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, a bill to be proposed in the senate would criminalize any attempts to reveal information on government eavesdropping. An aide to the bill’s author insists that reporters would be exempt, but presumably their sources would not.

Here’s an interesting article through Wired about The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search/tracking site that has successfully defied all attempts to shut it down. Apparently, the pro-piracy site has even inspired a “Pirate Party” making a bid for the Swedish parliament.