March 2, 2010, 11:00 PM ET

Details of “Einstein” Cyber Shield Disclosed by White House

The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary.

This episode of Jesse Ventura definitely does deserve to be posted and discussed here, as domestic spying is obviously directly related to 9/11 and its aftermath. Watch and discuss!

The most disturbing quality of this story, IMO, is the surveillance grid made possible by GPS devices in every car.

By-the-mile road tax could replace by-the-gallon federal fuel tax
By STEVE EVERLY
The Kansas City Star

The year is 2020 and the gasoline tax is history. In its place you get a monthly tax bill based on each mile you drove — tracked by a Global Positioning System device in your car and uploaded to a billing center.

What once was science fiction is being field-tested by the University of Iowa to iron out the wrinkles should a by-the-mile road tax ever be enacted.

Besides the technological advances making such a tax possible, the idea is getting a hard push from a growing number of transportation experts and officials. That is because the traditional by-the-gallon fuel tax, struggling to keep up with road building and maintenance demands, could fall even farther behind as vehicles’ gas mileage rises and more alternative-fuel vehicles come on line.

It seems like privacy no longer exists in America.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8130969589921300720

Political commentator Peter Hitchens takes a look at how the recent avalanche of security legislation has affected the civil liberties of ordinary people in Britain. He argues that the government's measures, designed to protect us from crime and terrorism, are in fact a menace to freedom and not a threat to criminals.