Facebook Sending Couples to Splitsvile

Christmas often comes a bit later for divorce lawyers. It is often said that attorneys who handle divorces get to cash a lot of checks in January from new clients. Once spouses with serious relationship troubles make it past the holidays, "it's a land rush," to quote Seinfield's Kramer (in another context).

But the January reverse nuptials may be on the way out. According to London's Daily Mail, there is something else in play beyond a couple on the verge of a breakup possibly feeling obligated to hold on on through the holiday season for the sake of the family. Apparently people are liking each other a little too much on Facebook.

Facebook is becoming a  major factor in marriage breakdowns and is increasingly being used as a source of evidence in divorce cases, according to lawyers.

The social networking site was cited as a reason for a third of divorces last year in which unreasonable behaviour was a factor, according to law firm Divorce-Online.

The firm said it had seen a 50 per cent jump in the number of behaviour-based divorce petitions that contained the word ‘Facebook’ in the past two years.

As quoted in the article, the managing director of Divorce-Online added that "'People contact ex-partners and the messages start as innocent, but lead to trouble." He also warned about Facebook postings: "People need to be  careful what they put on  Facebook as the courts are now seeing a lot more evidence being introduced from people’s walls and posts in disputes over finances  and children."

France's Government Employees: "Fonctionnaires" are Dysfunctional

In this weak economy, millions of private sector workers have been thrown out of work, or forced to accept pay and/or benefits cuts. In the meantime, public sector salaries are out of control, pushing the states and the federal government to the brink of bankruptcy. Why should taxpayer-supported government employees be immune from the "magic of the marketplace"?

When someone like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seeks to rein in the bloated public sector bureaucracy, the unions and the media typically start throwing around scare tactics about reduced police safety services among other things. No one wants first responders to be taken off the grid; it's the jobs of do-nothing paper pushers that should come under scrutiny. For one thing, have you ever wondered about those "unessential" employees on the state payroll that are allowed to stay home following a snowstorm?

Here's an example from France via the London Telegraph in which a whistleblower puts the "dis" in dysfunctional:

A French civil servant who lifted the lid on the wastefulness of the country's state sector in a book describing a "five-hours-a-week" culture where people competed to take the longest coffee breaks has been suspended.

Zoé Shepard, her pen name, confirmed France's worst fears about its "fonctionnaires" – its 5.2 million civil servants – in a book recounting how they compete to see who will hover longest at the coffee machine, draw up sick notes to stay weeks away from the office or while away the day on Facebook.

In Absolument Dé-bor-dé (Absolutely Snowed Under), subtitled How to Make 35 hours Last a Month, nepotism is rife and taxpayer's money wasted, with one local civil servant even signing off his visit to a prostitute as "travel expenses".

Obama Gives In to ACLU on Detainee Photos

We're all for government transparency, especially in fiscal matters (and we need more transparency for example to combat vote fraud), but what is the point of putting out information that undermines U.S. security and and stature?

In a letter from the Justice Department to a federal judge yesterday [April 23], the Obama administration announced that the Pentagon would turn over to the American Civil Liberties Union 44 photographs showing detainee abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush administration.

The photographs are part of a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU for all information relating to the treatment of detainees -- the same battle that led, last week, to President Obama's decision to release memos from the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel providing legal justifications for harsh interrogation methods that human rights groups call torture.

Courts had ruled against the Bush administration's attempts to keep the photographs from public view. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh tells ABC News that "the fact that the Obama administration opted not to seek further review is a sign that it is committed to more transparency."...

But some experts say the move could have a chilling effect on the CIA even beyond President Obama's decision last week to release the so-called "torture memos."

Calling the ACLU push to release the photographs "prurient" and "reprehensible," Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, tells ABC News that the Obama administration should have taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

"They should have fought it all the way; if they lost, they lost," said Lowenthal, who retired from the Agency in 2005. "There's nothing to be gained from it. There's no substantive reason why those photos have to be released."

Maybe the administration will consider setting up a page on FaceBook or MySpace to make it even easier for our adversaries and assorted political opportunists (like this individual) to find documents or images that will damage our nation. Also, do the ACLU minions feel that they are immune or somehow have a force field around them that would provide protection from any future acts of terrorism?

On the subject of transparency in this administration, an excellent blog post here.

White House Gathering Social Media Data

There seems to be a pattern emerging with this administration:

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information.

"The White House has not been adequately transparent, particularly on how it makes use of new social media techniques, such as this example," he said...

The National Legal and Policy Center, a government ethics watchdog, said archiving the sites would have a "chilling effect" on Web site users who might wish to leave comments critical of the administration.

[Source: Washington Times]

CIA Surfin' The Web For Open Source Intelligence

An "exclusive" from Wired.com's national security blog:

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.