Another bill's been put into circulation that I think everyone should know about. Representative Lamar Smith of Texas has put forth legislation that would require every ISP to keep records of what their users do on the Net to assist. For every customer an ISP has, every IP address they are given, every DNS request they make, every outgoing connection, and every incoming connection attempt would be recorded and archived on the off chance that a subpoena came in. Failure to do so would mean fines and jail time for not complying with this proposed law. On top of that …

Have you ever read an end-user license agreement before? I mean really sat down and read one, and not just scrolled through it just to unlock the little 'I agree' button at the bottom of the window so that you could install software that, legally you didn't really buy but actually bought permission to use for a while on your computer. There's some pretty scary stuff in EULAs these days, such as consent to have spyware installed on said box and dropping certain customer protection rights written into law, on the off chance that the software goes haywire and wrecks …

As more evidence in the Valerie Plame incident comes to light, it's looking more and more like Scooter Libby was set up to cover the ass of Karl Rove. No real surprise, there, given who was giving him orders.

With regard to the bill yesterday that either could or could not have forced webloggers to register as lobbyists inside the beltway, the bill didn't pass.

George W. Bush has deceed that all warrantless wiretaps now have to go through an independent court for review before they can be enacted. Congress seems to be of two minds about this: While they are no doubt relieved that there is now a control on this power, they also hastened to add that Bush still has the authority to order wirtaps regardless. It is also not yet known if the order covers all such surveillance actions or arbitrary ones to be named later. The legal body that will review all such orders is the FISC, the Foreign Intelligence Service …

Alberto Gonzalez has decreed that federal judges can't decide on matters of national policy, and though he didn't name any names he certainly made a couple of references that those in the know will get. In essence doing so is activism, and he's gone to great lengths to give his opinion of 'activist judges', which he seems to think are those who don't always agree with him.