CALEA suits filed
A great group of companies and organizations filed with the D.C. Circuit today a petition for review challenging the FCC's CALEA order.
The case will be called COMPTEL v. FCC, and the petitioners are the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, COMPTEL, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Pulver.com, and Sun Microsystems.
The American Council on Education yesterday filed a separate petition for review of the same order.
It's great to see this initiative get under way. The FCC has arguably overstepped its statutory authority, likely under extreme pressure from law enforcement. More fundamentally, it's time to address whether the extraordinary costs of surveillance to innovation and economic growth are always worth it.
There's been no demonstration that the FBI is having trouble implementing wiretaps, and it cannot be that every other interest in America comes second to security — particularly when the government agencies involved don't appear to be skilled at actually working with the data they already gather.
New meme: catalysis
A catalyst reduces the activation energy needed for reactions. How does it do that?
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It forms bonds with one or more of the reactants and so reduces the energy needed by the reactant molecules in order to complete the reaction
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It brings the reactants together and holds them in a way that makes reaction more likely. When molecules come together in the correct orientation for reaction there is a big reduction in entropy.
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In other words, catalysts change the path of a reaction; they change its mechanism.”
Hmm. If catalysts reduce the energy needed to get a reaction going, and all spheres of human endeavor require speedy reactions in order for evolution to occur, we'd better be looking for catalysts in new places. What's a “catalyst” for music? Could it be rhythmic proximity? What's a “catalyst” for economic growth? (Let's assume catalysts are different from conditions, and worry about how to show that later.) What's a “catalyst” for creativity online?
I'm on a hunt for catalysts.