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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has declined a request by the ACLU to release court records for rulings that pertain to the NSA surveillance program. The secretive FISC, which has issued only three public decisions in its history, will not disclose the details or reasoning behind critical rulings that evaluate the legality of the NSA surveillance program because the court argues that doing so would endanger national security and hamper the federal government’s intelligence gathering abilities.

The classified status of FISC documents is dictated by the executive branch of the federal government. The ACLU’s request called for independent judicial review of relevant documents so that wrongfully classified material could be declassified and disclosed to the general public. It is important to note that the ACLU did not request unconditional disclosure of classified material. The ACLU’s request explicitly excludes material that, upon judicial review, is deemed to be properly classified.

The Government Accountability Office has just released a report to Congress (PDF) slamming the efforts of the FCC and the NTIA to alert consumers about the upcoming transition to digital television. The report finds that, despite plenty of work done by various agencies and private organizations, “no comprehensive plan exists” to manage the entire transition.

If it’s difficult to explain the February 2009 digital TV transition to consumers, it’s doubly difficult when hundreds of different groups are involved. The GAO points out that over 160 “business, trade, grassroots, and other organizations” are involved with the Digital Television Transition Coalition. The group, which is trying to get the word out so that angry seniors don’t beat down their doors, also needs to coordinate with the two government agencies involved with the transition.

And that level of coordination demands a Plan, a Plan complete with milestones, key goals, and risk mitigation scenarios. In other words, a long and boring document. But as FCC Chairman Kevin Martin admitted in an interview with GAO auditors, the FCC has no such formal plan. Instead, said Martin, “the various orders contained in the FCC dockets amount to a plan.”

When asked by the RIAA’s lead counsel whether it was wrong for consumers to make copies of CDs they have purchased, Jennifer Pariser replied in the negative. “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song,” said Pariser. Making “a copy” of a song you own is just “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’,” according to Pariser.

At least the recording industry is consistent. Last year, during the triennial review of the DMCA by the US Copyright Office, the record labels made the case that although consumers could freely and easily make copies of music on CDs, doing so is not explicitly authorized by the labels. Since they have not expressly authorized copying—even for the purposes of making backups—the ability to make copies should not be mistaken for fair use.

Based on the filing in Atlantic v. Howell and Pariser’s testimony, a lot of us have a bunch of “unauthorized” and “stolen” music on our hard drives—music that we’ve purchased ourselves.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—I don’t want to date myself, but when I was in high school, one of the things I remember was that, among the geeks like myself who hung out in the computer lab, a bit of a culture war was under way.

No, it wasn’t Macs versus Windows. But Apple was a player in this battle.

In fact, it was the Commodore 64 versus the Apple IIe, and while the school had a collection of Apples in the lab that all of us had to use, those of us who had C64s felt like we we owned the superior computer.

Maybe it was because the machine seemed pluckier. More accessible to the common man. Easier to use. Better looking. Whatever. We knew we were right. Those Apple owners were stuck-up elitists.

I suppose today some people probably feel the same about the Mac versus Windows stand-off, and, well, once again, as a Mac user this time, I’m on the right side of the fence.

But Monday, it was all about the Commodore 64, as hundreds of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest came out to the Computer History Museum here to celebrate the machine’s 25th anniversary. (via Silicon Valley celebrates Commodore 64 at 25 | Geek Gestalt - A blog by Daniel Terdiman - CNET News.com)