antimeria

Google has removed its filters on Google.cn, its China portal, due to “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” The upshot, of course, is this:

Google’s action and accompanying blog post strongly suggests that they believe the hack was directed by the Chinese government:

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.

You could argue that not having a presence in China, even a censored one, would ultimately contribute to the government’s stranglehold on the people, given that the Green Dam and Great Firewall (which, as far as I know, still doesn’t care for yours truly) are still standing tall, but I commend Google’s willingness to take a stand, especially considering the money they could have made in China.

Thanks to BB, Erin, and everyone else who highlighted the story.

You can’t make this stuff up:

While explaining his opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, [Utah Senator Chris Buttars] told the press… “I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid’s face.”
[...]
In the past, Buttars has said that gay men and women are “the greatest threat to America going down.”

That said, I want to give him credit for backing the Mormon Church’s surprising push to bar employers and landlords from discriminating on the basis of sexuality, even if the thought makes him gag. So kudos to two overlapping groups of people (the Mormon Church, old white men) that I don’t often mention favorably in this space.

* “2M4M” was the ironic acronym used for National Organization for Marriage’s gay-marriage-bashing campaign.

1. It’s been floating around the blogosphere, but this NYer article about Cameron Todd Willingham’s execution after being conviced of arson and murder is a monster. Read it.
2. I joined a fantasy football league. My goal is to not finish dead last.
3. If you haven’t read it yet, point your RSS reader at the Best of Wikipedia.
4. If you use Google Reader, may I suggest replacing its screenful of bag-over-the-head-ugly with Helvetireader? For Gcal fans, Helvitical provides similar serif-free sexiness. (Firefoxers will need Greasemonkey)
5. I need some more reading recommendations. Fiction, this time.

Radley Balko linked a great Popular Mechanics article on the dubious accuracy of forensics:

On television and in the movies, forensic examiners unravel difficult cases with a combination of scientific acumen, cutting-edge technology and dogged persistence. The gee-whiz wonder of it all has spawned its own media-age legal phenomenon known as the “CSI effect.” Jurors routinely afford confident scientific experts an almost mythic infallibility because they evoke the bold characters from crime dramas. The real world of forensic science, however, is far different. America’s forensic labs are overburdened, understaffed and under intense pressure from prosecutors to produce results. According to a 2005 study by the Department of Justice, the average lab has a backlog of 401 requests for services. Plus, several state and city forensic departments have been racked by scandals involving mishandled evidence and outright fraud.

There’s no reason to trust the police one iota more than you would trust a complete stranger, and there’s every reason to put very severe restrictions on what we consider “evidence.”

Radley Balko has a good post on abuse of police power at Reason:

The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It’s taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights.
[...]
Deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.

Police officers deserve the same courtesy we afford anyone else we encounter in public life—basic respect and civility….Verbally disrespecting a cop may well be rude, but in a free society we can’t allow it to become a crime, any more than we can criminalize criticism of the president, a senator, or the city council. There’s no excuse for the harassment or arrest of those who merely inquire about their rights, who ask for an explanation of what laws they’re breaking, or who photograph or otherwise document police officers on the job.

As an aside, I feel a little bad for taking this long to start reading Balko’s Agitator blog.

Going even further afield, the title comes from this t-shirt I saw in China. And for the record, it should be.