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The internet backbone — the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels — went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active weapon for attacks.
According to revelations about the QUANTUM program, the NSA can “shoot” (their words) an exploit at any target it desires as his or her traffic passes across the backbone. It appears that the NSA and GCHQ were the first to turn the internet backbone into a weapon; absent Snowdens of their own, other countries may do the same and then say, “It wasn’t us. And even if it was, you started it.”
If the NSA can hack Petrobras, the Russians can justify attacking Exxon/Mobil. If GCHQ can hack Belgicom to enable covert wiretaps, France can do the same to AT&T. If the Canadians target the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Chinese can target the U.S. Department of the Interior. We now live in a world where, if we are lucky, our attackers may be every country our traffic passes through except our own.
Which means the rest of us — and especially any company or individual whose operations are economically or politically significant — are now targets. All cleartext traffic is not just information being sent from sender to receiver, but is a possible attack vector.
Here’s how it works.
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Amazon Web Services is now offering up free access to three NASA datasets from the NASA Earth Exchange project about the world’s weather, geology and vegetation.
The cloud is a natural place to house large datasets that many people or institutions might want to analyze without requiring everyone to download, store and analyze the data locally.
Scientific data has proven particularly appealing early, with numerous cloud providers already hosting various datasets, often in the fields of genomics and biology.
Internet giants continue to increase their commitments to using clean power to run their data centers. On Wednesday Facebook will announce that when its fourth data center is built in Iowa, and starts serving traffic in 2015, it will be entirely run off the power of a nearby wind farm.
Local utility MidAmerican Energy will build, own and operate the 138 MW wind farm, which will be built in 2014 in Wellsburg, Iowa. The data center, which will be built close by in Altoona, Iowa, will use a similar energy efficient design as Facebook’s other data centers based on its Open Compute architecture in Oregon, North Carolina and Sweden.
Facebook said one of the reasons it chose Iowa as a good location for the data center is because of the ability to use local clean power in the state. Iowa has strong wind resources, and around a quarter of the power in the state comes from wind. Using clean power as a determining factor for siting the location of a data center is an new and just emerging trend.
Facebook has a goal to have a quarter of its global data center energy consumption come from clean power by 2015. Google, Apple, Microsoft, eBay and many others are experimenting with various ways to add in clean power, too.
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Labor will demand a four-month inquiry into the cost and effectiveness of the Coalition’s Direct Action climate plan, delaying until next March a Senate vote on the new government’s top-priority carbon tax repeal bills.
The Senate inquiry – to run throughout the long summer break – would play into the political arm wrestle between the major parties in which the prime minister, Tony Abbott, is pressing Labor to back the repeal by maintaining public attention on the hip pocket costs of the carbon tax, while Labor and the Greens seek to raise concerns about the viability of the Coalition’s alternative climate policy.
The inquiry is likely to win support from the Greens, and if Labor sticks with its current stand, means the final decision on the carbon repeal is likely to be made by the new Senate which sits from July, where the businessman Clive Palmer – who said Tuesday the government could sue him if it wanted payment of a $6.17mn carbon tax bill owed by his company Queensland Nickel – is likely to control crucial balance of power votes.
Abbott will personally introduce the eight repeal bills on Wednesday morning, and has used almost every public appearance since the 7 September election to demand Labor accept the government’s mandate and pass them. Labor insists it will not.
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Data centers powered by fuel cells, not the public power grid, could cut both capital and operational costs, improve reliability, pollute less and take up less space, according to Microsoft researchers.
This technology could make data center expansion possible in regions where utility-supplied power is tapped out but natural gas is abundant, according to a paper posted by Microsoft Research. Also, since the reliability of gas supply is better than that of electrical power, these data centers would suffer less downtime.
The researchers say there are many variables that need to be taken into account in engineering these facilities, but overall they hold potential for greener data centers.
The researchers looked at distributing relatively small fuel cells – similar to those used on propane-powered buses - around data centers to power a rack or two of servers each and found several potential benefits. It eliminates the need for the wired electrical distribution system in a traditional data center. If a fuel cell were to fail it would affect a limited number of servers, which data center management software could handle. Since the power is DC, the AC to DC converters in the servers could be eliminated.
In that configuration the power supply would be nearby each rack so there would be no need for a data center-wide electricity distribution system with its attendant transformers, high-voltage switching gear and distribution cabling. Pipes to distribute natural gas and leak sensors cost less. The tradeoff in the amount of space the gear occupies means a 30% reduction in the required square footage for a data center as a whole, the researchers say.
The fuel cells emit 49% less carbon dioxide, 68% less carbon monoxide emissions and 91% less nitrogen oxide, than traditional power methods, the researchers say.
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The Internet Archive is a jewel of the digital world:
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.
Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes: texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.
Here's the amazing scale of the project today:
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress. The Internet Archive is the world's online memory, holding the only copies of many historic (and not-so-historic) Web pages that have long disappeared from the Web itself.
Bad news:
This morning at about 3:30 a.m. a fire started at the Internet Archive's San Francisco scanning center.
Good news:
no one was hurt and no data was lost. Our main building was not affected except for damage to one electrical run. This power issue caused us to lose power to some servers for a while.
Bad news:
Some physical materials were in the scanning center because they were being digitized, but most were in a separate locked room or in our physical archive and were not lost. Of those materials we did unfortunately lose, about half had already been digitized. We are working with our library partners now to assess.
That loss is unfortunate, but imagine if the fire had been in the main server room holding the Internet Archive's 2 petabytes of data. Wisely, the project has placed copies at other locations:
We have copies of the data in the Internet Archive in multiple locations, so even if our main building had been involved in the fire we still would not have lost the amazing content we have all worked so hard to collect.
That's good to know, but it seems rather foolish for the world to depend on the Internet Archive always being able to keep all its copies up to date, especially as the quantity of data that it stores continues to rise. This digital library is so important in historical and cultural terms: surely it's time to start mirroring the Internet Archive around the world in many locations, with direct and sustained support from multiple governments. They can also help provide the Internet Archive with a wider, more international range of content, to make an even more representative store of the world's digital activity.
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CityLink and Noviflow today announced their agreement for the supply of Software Defined Networking (SDN) equipment, which will be deployed in New Zealand’s Internet Exchange Points (IXP’s) around the country.
Chief Technology Officer Jamie Baddeley said that “..the agreement is the conclusion of an exhaustive set of tests of key SDN switching vendors that has taken place at CityLink over the last 12 months. We have very exacting requirements when it comes to SDN and the IXP. Noviflow clearly demonstrated their capability and commitment to very high performance Software Defined Networking, and because of that we’re innovating the future architecture of Internet Exchange Points with them..”
According to Dominique Jodoin, President and CEO of NoviFlow Inc: “CityLink is the perfect partner and New Zealand is the ideal market for NoviFlow to do pioneering work in SDN: big enough to make things happen, and small enough to make things happen fast!” He adds: “NoviFlow is very pleased that our OpenFlow 1.3 compliant switches will be a key element in CityLink's implementation of SDN into their network. NoviFlow delivers the capacity needed by CityLink’s flow intensive innovative intelligent edge applications.”
This evolution of the IXP architecture with SDN technology (SDX) is centred on delivering a more secure, stable and visualized Internet Exchange Point, with an embedded traffic forwarding policy, offering 100% predictable behaviour and better compliance with Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) best current practice recommendation 38 amongst other things. Mr Baddeley says that this approach is the first of its type in the world, with all IXP architectures worldwide facing similar challenges.
Today, 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents. Significantly, the released text includes the negotiation positions and disagreements between all 12 prospective member states.
The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China.
Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.
The TPP negotiations are currently at a critical stage. The Obama administration is preparing to fast-track the TPP treaty in a manner that will prevent the US Congress from discussing or amending any parts of the treaty. Numerous TPP heads of state and senior government figures, including President Obama, have declared their intention to sign and ratify the TPP before the end of 2013.
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Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) has approved a long-term cooperation agreement between Versatel and Telefonica Germany (O2) that was announced by the two companies last month. The deal will see Versatel acquire the Spanish-owned company’s Hamburg fibre network, boosting the length of its entire fibre infrastructure from around 52,000km to 93,000km.
In return, Telefonica ensures itself long-term access to the Versatel network, enabling it to connect its UMTS and LTE base stations to fibre infrastructure.
Alongside the Hamburg network, Verastel will also buy a new data processing service centre, allowing the company to offer its business and wholesale customers better network coverage, as well as the possibility for more comprehensive housing services.
With the Federal Cartel Office’s approval granted, the purchase is now expected to be completed by the end of 2013.
Swiss fixed line incumbent Swisscom has begun offering 1Gbps broadband services to residential subscribers, the company announced in a press release. Previously limited to corporate and business users, the expansion of Swisscom’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network has enabled the telco to offer the service to more than 650,000 potential customers.
The telco claims to have invested CHF1.75 billion (USD1.9 billion) on infrastructure developments this year, in a bid to stay ahead of growing demand for data services and bandwidth-intensive applications such as video-calling and streaming high definition (HD) movies. Supporting the 1Gbps tariff, Swisscom has launched a new ‘Internet-Box’ wireless router with an interactive display, parental controls and easy access for guest users.
The high speed package is available to users of the telco’s premium double-/triple-play package, Vivo Casa (Five Star) for an additional CHF100 per month. Customers on the package can also bump up speeds to 300Mbps for CHF20 per month, or have guaranteed speeds of 100Mbps (currently the theoretical maximum on the tariff) for CHF5 per month.
The problem with creating Stuxnet, the world's most sophisticated malware worm, is that it could eventually go rogue. Which is precisely what has happened. The US- and Israeli-built virus has spread to a Russian nuclear plant — and even the International Space Station.
Stuxnet is an incredibly powerful computer worm that was created by the United States and Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. It initially spreads through Microsoft Windows and targets Siemens industrial control systems. It's considered the first malware that both spies and subverts industrial systems. It's even got a programmable logic controller rootkit for the automation of electromechanical processes.
Let that last point sink in for just a second. This thing, with a little bit of coaxing, can actually control the operation of machines and computers it infects.
For more on Stuxnet, I highly encourage you to watch this sobering TED talk by Ralph Lagner where he describes it as "a 21st century cyber weapon."
Click headline to read more and watch the video of the TED Talk--
As data centers grow in size, their owners have become acutely aware of the cost both in dollars and carbon emissions. Microsoft and other large data center providers have placed a lot of their monstrous facilities in the Pacific Northwest because they could get plenty of cheap, clean hydroelectric power that way.
But they can’t place every data center in the Pacific Northwest. The more hops you create for people around the country and the world, the more latency you get. So it helps to place data centers in different locations.
There's not much for hydroelectric in Texas, but there's plenty of wind. So Microsoft is teaming up with a Texas wind farm, committing to a 20-year clean energy purchase contract. The electricity from this project will be sent to the local grid that serves Microsoft’s San Antonio data center. The wind farm itself, however, will be some distance away: it will be some 70 miles northwest of Ft. Worth, Texas, near the town of Jacksboro.
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UK cableco Virgin Media has unveiled plans to introduce downlink speeds over its hybrid-fibre coaxial (HFC) infrastructure of up to 152Mbps next year, while it also plans to ‘significantly boost speeds for existing customers’. With the new top-end speeds to be made available from February 2014, Virgin Media has said it will embark on a programme to increase customers’ speeds by at least 20Mbps, depending on their current service.
Commenting on the plans, Virgin Media’s chief executive officer Tom Mockridge noted: ‘We are boosting speeds again and ensuring our customers can get even more value from their Virgin Media subscription. Our top speed will be twice as fast as BT and all the others reliant on their old copper telephony infrastructure as we extend our lead as Britain’s ultrafast broadband provider.’
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A pro-drilling landowners group says it will sue Gov. Andrew Cuomo, claiming he has arbitrarily delayed a decision on hydraulic fracturing for no “valid, rational or legally defensible reason.”
In a newsletter sent to its members Tuesday, the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York sent out the lawsuit it intends to file against the state, Cuomo and the commissioners of the Health and Environmental Conservation departments. But the group is trying to raise money to pay the legal costs before the lawsuit is filed, according to the letter.
The legal document takes Cuomo to task for repeatedly delaying a decision on large-scale fracking, claiming the delays violate state law and amount to an unconstitutional government “taking” of land rights.
Fracking has been on hold in New York since 2008, when the state Department of Environmental Conservation first launched the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, a lengthy review process that is meant to guide a drilling decision. That document is currently under review by state Health Commissioner Nirav Shah.
“Governor Cuomo has arbitrarily prevented the DEC from issuing the final SGEIS and granting permits for (high-volume hydraulic fracturing) for reasons based exclusively on political concerns and without any good faith, valid, rational, or legally defensible reason,” the draft lawsuit claims.
The Binghamton-based landowners group has threatened the lawsuit for months as the state’s fracking review has stretched into its sixth year. Earlier this year, the coalition hired Robinson & Cole LLP, a national firm that specializes in eminent domain cases.
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Techdirt has often written about CCTV surveillance, and its many pitfalls. But according to this story in the South China Morning Post, the provincial capital Harbin, in north-eastern China, has a very particular problem in this regard:
Last month visibility in Harbin dropped to below three metres because of heavy smog. On days like these, no surveillance camera can see through the thick layers of particles, say scientists and engineers.
To the authorities, this is a serious national security concern. Beijing has invested heavily to build up a nationwide surveillance network that lets police watch every major street and corner in main cities.
But with smoggy days becoming more frequent, the effectiveness of the system has been greatly compromised. Some fear terrorists may choose a smoggy day to launch attacks.
It's hard to believe that terrorists will hang around, checking the local visibility, before deciding to launch their attacks. It's more likely that the issue here is the local police freaking out when they find they can't spy on what ordinary citizens get up to. But never fear, the Chinese government is on it:
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French design studio Bruit du Frigo has drawn inspiration from fallen down tree trunks, which often provide shelter for small animals, to create an eco-shelter for humans in the forests of Bordeaux. Dubbed Le Tronc Creux, which means "The Hollow Trunk," the low impact shelter is roughly the same size as a shipping container and can easily be transported by truck to different locations when required.
The shelter was built using a metal frame and features thermal insulation made from recycled wool. Both the interior and exterior are covered with wooden panels and the facade has been weather-proofed with a water-resistant membrane. Stepping inside the shelter the facility is quite bare, there is no electricity or access to water, just a quiet space to rest and reflect.
"Le Tronc Creux is a new type of model for a new public exchange. It embodies and promotes the practice of hiking and more widely the rediscovery of the Bordeaux landscape," says Bruit du Frigo.
Accommodating nine guests, the shelter is equipped with three double beds and three single beds. There is a foldable table, camping seats, small porthole-like windows and an an ecological toilet not too far away from the shelter.
Click headline to read more and view pix--
Irish councils have suffered more than any other part of the public sector during the economic downturn. Since 2008, staffing levels have been reduced by 24%, central government funding has decreased by approximately 36% and other sources of income have been decimated.
Despite the difficult financial climate, however, they are fighting back and playing innovative roles in economic development and recovery. Below are some examples of incremental innovation; some are radical and systemic but all exhibit the relentless pursuit of improvement in public services, the tailoring of services to individual and local needs and value-for-money.
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The term “airpocalypse” has been widely and fittingly applied to Beijing. Images of barely visible skylines, masked citizens and uncannily quiet streets, where pollution levels surge beyond dangerous to “off index,” have shown the pervasiveness and virulence of the problem.
In many respects, the tale of Beijing is a variation on industrialization themes that go back to the origins of the industrial revolution. A “green” industrial revolution has never occurred anywhere on Earth.
Although comparisons can be tricky, Beijing is roughly to the 21st century what London was to the 19th – the capital of the world’s fastest-rising industrial power of its time.
Death by outdoor air pollution in the U.K. was not solely a plague of industrializing Victorian England or Charles Dickens’ London. Suffocating smog, or “peasoupers” as they were often called, gripped London and claimed lives until at least the 1950s.
The Great Smog of 1952 is believed to have caused as many as 4,500 deaths in one week at its peak and about 12,000 in the following months.
The West therefore should be very careful when chastising China (and other emerging economies) over their pollution levels, at the risk of being guilty of double standards.
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The Obama administration is rushing to reach a new deal intended to lower barriers to trade with a dozen Pacific Rim nations, including Japan and Canada, before the end of the year.
But the White House is now facing new hurdles closer to home, with nearly half of the members of the House signing letters or otherwise signaling their opposition to granting so-called fast-track authority that would make any agreement immune to a Senate filibuster and not subject to amendment. No major trade pact has been approved by Congress in recent decades without such authority.
Two new House letters with about 170 signatories in total — the latest and strongest iteration of long-simmering opposition to fast-track authority and to the trade deal more broadly — have been disclosed just a week before international negotiators are to meet in Salt Lake City for another round of talks.
“Some of us have opposed past trade deals and some have supported them, but when it comes to fast track, members of Congress from across the political spectrum are united,” said Representative Walter B. Jones Jr. of North Carolina, who circulated the Republican letter.
Without fast-track authority, however, the other countries in the negotiations might balk at American requests since they wouldn’t be sure the final deal would remain unchanged. And getting both houses of Congress to agree to the final deal might be close to impossible without the fast-track authority, which the Obama administration has requested and which is being pursued in the Senate by Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, along with the top Republican on the committee, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.
“This could be the end of T.P.P.,” said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen, a watchdog group that has opposed the deal, formally called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “All these other countries are like, ‘Wait, you have no trade authority and nothing you’ve promised us means anything? Why would we give you our best deal?’ Why would you be making concessions to the emperor who has no clothes?”
Michael B. Froman, the United States trade representative, said that he continued to work with Congress on fast-track authority, also known as trade promotion authority.
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Belarusian state-owned PTO Beltelecom says that the country has expanded the capacity of its international internet gateways by 40Gbps to a total of 450Gbps. In a statement on its web site, the fixed line operator notes that the latest increase marks an 80% boost in capacity when compared to the same time a year ago.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, in September this year Beltelecom announced that it had upped the country’s external internet gateway to 390Gbps, from 350Gbps, having previously boosted bandwidth by 60Gbps in late December 2012.
Mauritius-based Liquid Telecom Group has announced the construction of Somalia’s first cross-border fibre-optic connection to the rest of the world, ending the country’s dependence on slow and expensive satellite links. The new fibre connection has been built across the border with Kenya and then links directly into the fibre network of Hormuud Telecom (HorTel) for local termination. HorTel’s fibre network will provide Liquid Telecom’s customers – fixed and mobile operators, wholesale carriers and enterprises – with reliable, robust and fast connectivity in southern and central Somalia.
Meanwhile, HorTel’s customers now have access to Liquid Telecom’s pan-African fibre network which spans more than 17,000km across Botswana, the DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and provides connectivity onto the five main submarine cable systems landing in Africa: West African Cable System (WACS), Eastern Africa Submarine System (EASSY), SEACOM, SAT3 and The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS).
Nic Rudnick, CEO of the Liquid Telecom Group, said: ‘We will be providing the people of Somalia with access to the global internet at higher speeds and with more capacity available than ever before. Our goal is to connect every person and business in Africa to the internet and to each other. We are an agile and entrepreneurial company which is investing heavily in building our pan-African fibre network.’
HorTel’s Chairman and CEO, Ahmed Yuusuf, commented: ‘The connection of the HorTel network to Liquid Telecom’s international fibre network is a landmark for Somalia and will provide our customers with the fastest and most cost effective communications speeds available.’
Qatar National Broadband Network (Qnbn) has reached a milestone in its mission to bring high speed fiber optic broadband infrastructure to the country with the opening of two state-of-the-art Central Offices which will improve the digital connectivity of 30,000 residences and businesses in the West Bay area. The announcement coincides with ‘Gimme Fiber Day’, an annual international event held on November 4th to promote the use and development of fiber optics in telecommunications networks.
The Central Offices are a major boost to the fiber optic infrastructure made available to Qatar’s Service Providers. By providing a local-loop for more effective optical transfer of data, known as a ‘backhaul facility’, the central offices enable faster data transmission and efficiency in service continuity.
As part of Qnbn’s government mandate to improve ICT capabilities and user choice, the company deploys a Next Generation high speed fiber optic infrastructure Network in an open-access model which enables service providers to co-locate and operate their network equipment within Qnbn’s Central Offices, utilizing services available in the facility.Ahmed Al-Sulaiti, Qnbn’s Chief Technology Officer, commented, “We are making Qatar’s fiber optic future a reality with the opening of these two Central Offices which are the backbone of a knowledge economy and act as catalysts to connectivity:
it is a win-win scenario which means service providers have open access to new fiber optic infrastructure; customers have more choice in selecting operators to provide faster, next generation internet services; and businesses benefit from an enhanced broadband network which fuels economic growth via superior connectivity.
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Power companies and utilities the world over are beginning to get new options for low cost batteries used for the power grid. This week New Jersey-based startup Eos Energy Storage announced that it will soon ramp up manufacturing of its inexpensive zinc-air batteries in conjunction with manufacturing company Incodema Group.
Eos Energy has been planning to start delivering its first batteries to market in 2014, and its first pilot project will be with utility Con Edison in New York. The batteries are meant to be used on for the power grid to help customers add in solar and wind energy and produce other services like frequency regulation.
Scientists have been working on using air as the cathode for batteries for half a century. A battery is made up of an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, with an electrolyte in between. Air, of course, is abundant, light weight, and doesn’t require a heavy casing to contain it inside a battery cell. Also theoretically air can achieve a high energy density, or amount of energy that it can store.
Eos Energy’s zinc-air battery innovation comes from founder and inventor Steven Amendola who discovered a breakthrough with his original design of the bi-directional air cathode that could last for 10,000 cycles (or around three decades). The company has told me that its initial battery could cost $160 per kWh, lasts 30 years and be made up of everyday benign materials.
Other startups like Ambri, which sells a competitive battery, have recently kicked off manufacturing, too. Ambri is backed by Bill Gates, Vinod Khosla and oil company Total, among others. Eos Energy is backed by NRG Energy and others.
It's already strange enough that the author of the PATRIOT Act, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, has come out strongly against the NSA's mass spying, said that James Clapper should be fired and prosecuted, and introduced sweeping new legislation that would significantly curtail the NSA's activities. If you've followed civil liberties issues over the past dozen years or so, Sensenbrenner used to be very much in the camp of folks like Rep. Mike Rogers and Senator Dianne Feinstein -- seen as carrying water for the intelligence community (and industry). The change of heart (even if he claims the original PATRIOT Act was never meant to allow this stuff) is quite impressive.
Even so, it's perhaps even more incredible to see that Sensenbrenner has now gone over to the EU Parliament to admit that the NSA is out of control and needs to be reined in. While it doesn't sound like he got all the way to a complete apology, he appears to have come pretty close. According to Bridget Johnson's writeup at the PJ Tatler:
Click headline to read more--
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