Yahoo! and Homeland Security

I am mainly just curious about this. When I click a Yahoo! link leading to a picture of a big fish (an Oarfish), and then click "show image" within the frame which Yahoo! provides to jump directly to the pic, why do I get to the Department of Homeland Security? And because a picture (or several) is worth a thousand words...

We start with this on March 11, 2010 at about 11PM.

Note my picture settings: Large and Wallpaper.

And you might as well just click on that third page.

Now click on the same image as the circled one.

Click view image at the top.

Voila!

Look at the articles. Now close your eyes and dream of freedom.

The circled one was my favourite, but the summary of the Greek Visa Waiver has the best chill factor. Just in case you don't see it, here's what it says.

Washington, D.C. - Secretary Napolitano announced the designation of Greece as a member of the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)—strengthening passenger information sharing and ensuring strict security standards while streamlining travel for Greek citizens visiting the United States.

Posted March 9, 2010 in News

Yeeeesss, "passenger information sharing....while streamlining travel"

"What's that you say, 'We are being told that less privacy leads to greater freedom.' Come on J. Lighten up and go party, dude."

Yes, Yahoo! is a major search engine trying to stay second place to Google. So this is almost certainly an innocent error. Still, it's worth noting that Yahoo! is one of several major U.S. information portals on the WWW, used by millions of people. If I were in the business of developing info-mining software algorithms, you can bet that Yahoo! would be of great interest to me.

And keeping in mind that Thomas Jefferson was a wealthy man who died penniless because he allowed people to take advantage of his generosity, I'll leave you with some of his thoughts.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

- Thomas Jefferson