This and That

FYI: Border Crossing

U.S. tracking citizens’ border crossings

The U.S. government has been using its border checkpoints to collect information on citizens that will be stored for 15 years, raising concern among privacy advocates, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

[…]information may be shared with federal, state and local governments to test “new technology and systems designed to enhance border security or identify other violations of law,” the Post reported.

[…]

Information on international air passengers has long been collected this way but Customs and Border Protection only this year began to log the arrivals of all U.S. citizens across land borders, the Post said.

Privacy advocates raised concerns about the expanded collection of personal data and said safeguards are needed to ensure the system is not abused.

[…]

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke told the paper that the retention period was justified.

“History has shown, whether you are talking about criminal or terrorist activity, that plotting, planning or even relationships among conspirators can go on for years,” he said. “Basic travel records can, quite literally, help frontline officers to connect the dots.”

Update: Russia vs Georgia

US military surprised by speed, timing of Russia military action

The US military was surprised by the timing and swiftness of the Russian military’s move into South Ossetia and is still trying to sort out what happened, a US defense official said Monday.

[…]

That the two countries were on a collision course was no surprise to anyone, but the devastating Russian response was not expected, officials said.

“We were tracking it earlier in that week and we knew that things were escalating,” said a military official, who asked not to be identified. “I can tell you it moved quicker than we anticipated that first day.”

So the US military was surprised. Was the CIA or any other intelligence agencies? If you’re among those that put your trust in these institutions, you’ve misplaced your trust. Look to the Lord Jesus!

Read it all

Six Degrees of Separation

Instant messaging world confirms six degrees of separation

A social graph derived from billions of instant messages validates folklore that there are about six degrees of separation between any two strangers on the planet.

Any two? 😯

So Bin Laden isn’t all that far removed from President Bush after all. And neither of them is so far from me. Weird.

A research team at US software giant Microsoft studied 30 billion instant messages sent by 240 million people in June of 2006 and determined that, on average, any two could be linked in 6.6 steps.

"Weve been able to put our finger on the social pulse of human connectivity – on a planetary scale – and weve confirmed that its indeed a small world." Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz told AFP on Monday.

[…]

Horvitz and colleague Jure Leskovec estimate that the Microsoft Messenger chats they studied amount to half of the instant messages sent worldwide in June two years ago.

That’s a staggering amount of messages!

(What a boring job.)

The researchers stress that they were not privy to the contents of messages and that information indicating peoples identities was removed.

Yeah. Sure. 🙄

Olympics: Something Big Coming Down?

I thought of that earlier this morning when I first saw this story.

Item Number One:

Attackers with home-made bombs and knives killed 16 police in a restive western region of China on Monday, state media said, in just the sort of violence Beijing had hoped to avoid four days before the Olympics.

The attack, which occurred about 4,000 km 2,500 miles from the capital in the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, was a reminder of internal tensions in China, especially in its ethnically mixed and largely Muslim west.

Police said they had information separatists from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement had been planning attacks in the run-up to the Games.

I wonder if this is the forerunner to a Big Event masterminded by Big Terror.

Item Number Two is more benign in nature:

American swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps slipped into town to begin an Olympic adventure that could end with him breaking Mark Spitzs record of seven golds in a single Olympics.

[…]

Phelps won six gold and two bronze medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics and will get a $1 million bonus from sponsor Speedo if he can equal compatriot Spitzs haul from the 1972 Munich Games.

I remember Spitz.

Note to Phelps: Stay off the dope.

Anabaptist Cave

Thanks to Google Alerts, I came across this a bit ago:

Tauferhohle, or the Anabaptist Cave

But I have to say that the beauty of this Tauferhohle is beyond anything else that I experienced. I thought about the irony of the Anabaptists needing to meet here because it was so isolated and so safe for gatherings. But at the same time finding such a beautiful and peaceful place to meet. There is a water fall that goes over the front, so there is the soft noise of water the whole time you are there. And if the preacher is standing at the front, you would have the beauty of God’s creation to meditate on as you look past him or her. It is a holy and beautiful place.

Amish Mennonite Blog: Tauferhohle (Anabaptist Cave)

Sounds like a pretty (and potentially peaceful) place.

Above all, love God!