A CYBER-HOLE IN HOMELAND SECURITY?

Despite a recent high-profile vulnerability that showed the net could be hacked in minutes, the domain name system — a key internet infrastructure — continues to suffer from a serious security weakness, thanks to bureaucratic inertia at the U.S. government agency in charge, security experts say.

If the complicated politics of internet governance continue to get in the way of upgrading the security of the net’s core technology, the internet could turn into a carnival house of mirrors, where no URL or e-mail address could be trusted to be genuine, according to Bill Woodcock, research director at the nonprofit Packet Clearing House.

“The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the Department of Commerce, is the show-stopper here,” Woodcock said.

At issue is the trustworthiness of the domain name system, or DNS, which serves as the internet’s phone book, translating queries such as wikipedia.org into the numeric IP address where the site’s server lives.

Bureaucracies tend to move slowly, which is not an asset here. Bring back Janice Obuchowski!

LOTS OF SOLAR SYSTEMS OUT THERE, but probably not many like ours: “The researchers ran more than a hundred simulations, and the results show that the average planetary system’s origin was full of violence and drama but that the formation of something like our solar system required conditions to be ‘just right.'”

G.M. ROPER is photoblogging from Bermuda.

LOOKING FOR GOOD KIDS’ BOOKS? Check out the Books for Kids Blog.

HOW COLLEGE GENDER IMBALANCES impact the social scene. (Via Volokh).

MORE THUGGISH BEHAVIOR FROM PUBLIC “SERVANTS:”

Police detectives seeking the identities of bloggers who criticized McAlester officials on an online message board delivered a subpoena to the site’s operator, who says he won’t cooperate with investigators.

Two police detectives delivered the subpoena Tuesday to Harold King, who operates the Web site www.mccooler.net. The subpoena orders him to provide details by Saturday on 35 bloggers posting under pseudonyms on King’s site.

King said he researched posts under those pseudonyms and found one common denominator: All had written critically about Pittsburg County District Attorney Jim Miller.

Well, count me among the critics, too, I guess . . . . And, yeah, people who post comments aren’t really “bloggers.”

A NEW BREED OF “Obama progressive.” “One who decides what the right position is for progressives based on what Barack Obama does.” I nominate Keith Olbermann!

AUSTIN BAY: Texas Hold ’em vs. Russian Roulette. “Heavy divisions take time to deploy and move either by land through Europe or by sea. . . . As a retired military friend of mine says, in a Georgia-type scenario the US can execute a minimal show of force mission (airborne brigade plus) or launch nuclear strikes. Ouch.”

PEOPLE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT JOHN EDWARDS.

UPDATE: Er, except at the vanishing websites, I guess.

SHANGHAI LIL NEVER USED THE PILL — she said that it just weren’t natural. She may have been onto something: “A study by British scientists suggests that taking the Pill can change a woman’s taste in men — to those who are genetically less compatible. The research found that the Pill can alter the type of male scent that women find most attractive, which may in turn affect the kind of men they choose as partners. It suggests that the popular form of contraception — used by a quarter of British women aged between 16 and 50 — could have implications for fertility and relationship breakdowns.”

REMEMBERING THE Chrysler Turbine Car.

TRACKING SUSPECTS WITH G.P.S.: “Across the country, police are using GPS devices to snare thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators and killers, often without a warrant or court order.”

Question: If sticking a device on someone’s car — which is a trespass to chattels in tort — is okay without a warrant, then is it okay if I stick a device on a police car so I can track where the cops are going, and index it against a list of known donut shops? Or would they find something to charge me with? And if the latter, then why doesn’t the creativity go both ways?

UPDATE: A reader emails: “You ask the question about tracking cops… Well, about 5 or so years ago, I worked on a project developing a sort of a mobile lojack/home security system meant for boats. The easy way to test was to put these on street vehicles. A local police department volunteered to test the system. The way it worked, when the patrol turned on their siren, it sent a “distress” signal to a tracking command center. Turned out, the PD used it to monitor their officers that had complaints from citizens for using their sirens to get through red lights, then shuting them off. After a few bad cops were fired, the union stepped in and testing stopped.”

Well, most cops are fine. But I repeat, there’s a huge double-standard in the way we treat police intrusions on citizens versus the reverse.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

MORE: Apparently, when a private citizen does it it’s just a crime: “Man gets 16 months in prison for GPS stalking.”

EVAN BAYH, Iran hawk.

SETH LEIBSOHN: “I think it should be noted that nothing McCain has said is as aggressive as the actions of Russia. It strikes me odd right now to complain of aggressive words in the defense of democracy rather than condemning aggressive actions against a democracy.”

PREPARING FOR DNC PROTESTERS with stun guns and steel cages.

GATEWAY PUNDIT HAS A ROUNDUP on the Arkansas Democratic HQ shooting. And Bob Owens has more.

ESCAPE FROM THE UNDERNEWS! Stephen Green hosts the latest PJM Political, which is now online in case you missed it on XM earlier.

THE “DUNCE OF WALES.” Heh. I like that.

AUSTIN BAY ON Russia, Georgia, and “the international community.”

A PEW POLL: “With less than two weeks to go before the start of the presidential nominating conventions, Barack Obama’s lead over John McCain has disappeared. Pew’s latest survey finds 46% of registered voters saying they favor or lean to the putative Democratic candidate, while 43% back his likely Republican rival. In late June, Obama held a comfortable 48%-to-40% margin over McCain, which narrowed in mid-July to 47% to 42%.”

OBAMA AND MCCAIN AS CEOS: “Obama, born just after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, would have a hard sell to convince a board of directors at a big company that he’s not unseasoned. McCain would have a tougher sell as someone so seasoned that he was born before pilot Amelia Earhart vanished trying to circumnavigate the globe.”

WHAT AMERICA NEEDS: kinder, gentler Hulk Smash Hands.

SILLY SENATOR, CORN IS FOR FOOD! Reason TV on ethanol subsidies. Note, of course, that non-food biofuels are a different story.

AND I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE IGNORING THE OLYMPICS: “Two weeks after announcing they had sold every one of the record 6.8 million tickets offered for the Games, Olympics officials expressed dismay at the large numbers of empty seats at nearly every event and the lack of pedestrian traffic throughout the park, the 2,800-acre centerpiece of the competition.” I’m not watching on TV, either, and at least then I don’t have to worry about having my laptop infected with spyware. But don’t worry: “To remedy the problem, officials are busing in teams of state-trained ‘cheer squads’ identifiable by their bright yellow T-shirts to help fill the empty seats and improve the atmosphere.”

SO THE PHONE RANG JUST A BIT AGO, AND IT WAS SEN. BOB CORKER, calling to talk about the “gang of ten” energy compromise plan. That’s gotten some flak from Republicans, but Corker called to say that it’s unfair. He was fired up — by contrast to his laid-back persona the last time we spoke, during the campaign — and says that in fact, the bill that he’s a co-sponsor of is a better — more pro-drilling and pro-energy — bill than the McConnell bill that garnered 44 Republican votes in the Senate. Here are some of his points:

1. The “gang of 10” bill unilaterally opens up drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, with no state veto. The GOP bill didn’t do that, because Mel Martinez and Charlie Crist didn’t want it. Non-Gulf states Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas can opt-in if they like; the old GOP bill was opt-in everywhere, allowing Florida to block drilling in the Gulf off of its shores.

2. The bill also allows for seismic exploration along the entire continental shelf.

3. The ban on drilling within 50 miles of the coast was also in the GOP bill.

4. Contrary to many commentators’ claims, the “gang of ten” bill is not a lifeline for Obama: “What a bunch of C-R-A-P. ” (Yes, he spelled it out like that) “If Obama embraced this, he would be the biggest flipflopper ever.” A lot of the opposition to the bill is really a case of trying to keep drilling as an election issue instead of getting more drilling.

5. The bill includes a Zubrin-like flex-fuel provision, requiring that 75% of cars by 2015 and 85% by 2020 be capable of running on something besides gasoline.

6. “Our bill also opens up coal-to-liquids. We couldn’t have gotten 44 Republicans for that.”

7. The bill is “incredibly aggressive” on nuclear power, including accelerated-depreciation provisions like those for solar and wind power, more NRC resources to speed licensing, and an end to the Carter-era ban on nuclear fuel reprocessing. “We couldn’t have gotten 44 Republicans on this.”

8. The bill also promotes cellulosic ethanol.

I confess that I haven’t followed this as closely as I probably should have, but anyway, that’s the pro-bill side. He didn’t say this, but my guess is that if he’s calling bloggers, it probably means that he doesn’t think his side is getting a hearing in the traditional media, or in the talk-radio part of alternative media.

UPDATE: Here’s their statement.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ace comments: “Worth reading, but the Gang of Ten compromise keeps all Pacific drilling off-the-table, and as I understand the matter, not only is that a lot of oil, but it could begin producing oil within the year. . . . Corker may think he’s gotten a lot in exchange for this enormous compromise, but I think he’s given away far too much. It’s bad enough that the huge reserves of ANWR remain off the table; now we’re going to permanently declare most of the Pacific off-limits as well?”