Senator Elizabeth Warren has written an open letter to Michael Froma, the nominee to run the US Trade Representative’s office, calling on him to release the text and negotiating documents for the secretive, controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), whose sweeping and brutal copyright provisions make it clear that this is the next attempt to pass SOPA and ACTA — the US law and international treaty that flamed out in 2012.

“I appreciate the willingness of the USTR to make various documents available for review by members of Congress, but I do not believe that is a substitute for more robust public transparency,” Warren wrote to Froman, who is now an assistant to the president. “If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.”

Senator Warren Presses White House to Release Pacific Trade Text [Mark Drajem/BusinessWeek] (via Reddit)

“I appreciate the willingness of the USTR to make various documents available for review by members of Congress, but I do not believe that is a substitute for more robust public transparency,” Warren wrote to Froman, who is now an assistant to the president. “If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.”

Senator Warren Presses White House to Release Pacific Trade Text [Mark Drajem/BusinessWeek] (via Reddit)

“If the federal government had access to every email you’ve ever written and every phone call you’ve ever made, it’s almost certain that they could find something you’ve done which violates a provision in the 27,000 pages of federal statues or 10,000 administrative regulations. You probably do have something to hide, you just don’t know it yet.”—Moxie Marlinspike, who has worked as a software engineer, hacker, sailor, captain, and shipwright, writes eloquently about why privacy matters.

A coalition of Internet companies and civil liberties groups have signed on to an open letter to the Obama administration calling for increased transparency and sensible checks on the power of the American surveillance apparatus and its spy agencies. The signatories — including Happy Mutants, the company that owns Boing Boing — call on Congress to convene a committee like the Church Committee of the 1970s, to investigate the scope and legality of American surveillance. The entire letter — and its associated campaign — is at Stopwatching.us.

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;

2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;

3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

86 Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying

I don’t know anything about wine, but I like the looks of Vinport’s limited-edition Star Trek wine featuring label art by Juan Ortiz. The labels represent classic ST episodes: “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Mirror Mirror,” and “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Star Trek wine (via Laughing Squid)

Swedish artist Johanna Mårtensson created this installation depicting a cityscape made of bread in 2009, and photographed it as it decayed, creating a series of pictures representing the destiny of all human folly come the day that we make ourselves extinct and vanish from the face of the Earth:

I was inspired by an article about how well the earth would do without us. Within 500 years all buildings would be half fallen or fallen, perfect homes for animals and plants. The forrest would soon grow in cities. After hand buildings as well as pollutions would be taken care of by bacterias and micro-organisms. An ufo that came here in a couple of of hundred thousand years would not see many signs of that a gang of primates ones thought that they where the lords of the planet.

Decor Photoinstallation by Johanna Mårtensson (via Crazy Abalone)

I like Tim Maly’s short-short science fiction story, which takes the form of a Twitter bug-report:

“Yo @carzymoney,” he said, “I think @timebot’s got a bug in the link code. #learn2code”

It was a post by Allison. Nothing special, something like “Mmmm tasty lunch” with an image attached. The image was a broken link. No big deal. I tried to find the original tweet but there was some problem with the unique ID and you don’t make it easy to page through past tweets. I’d have given up if I hadn’t noticed the timestamp.

The timestamp was in the future. Two days in the future. Weird bug. But @timebot was always a side project and I was on some big deadlines.


Report a problem to the support team. (via Making Light)

3D latte foam art

Brian Ashcraft updates us on the astounding foam-art of Osaka barista Kazuki Yamamoto. Yamamoto has now mastered 3D foam, and is blowing my mind. Ashcraft has a series of posts documenting the journey of Yamamoto to undisputed novelty foam king of the Pacific Rim.

3D Coffee Art Reaches New, Dizzying Heights [Brian Ashcraft/Kotaku] (via Geekologie)

Steve Anderson at The Independent:

Pope Francis has said that atheists should be seen as good people as long as they do good, in a move to urge people of all religions - or no religion at all - to get along.

A team from the University of Sichuan won the Red Dot Design award for a concept design called “Lumigrid” — a bike-light that projects a grid on the ground ahead of the rider, making terrain irregularities easy to spot:

Lumigrids can project a grid onto the ground. On a flat road surface, the grid will consist of standard squares. On a rough road surface, the grids will deform accordingly. By observing the motion and deformation of the grids, the rider can intuitively understand the landforms ahead. In addition, the luminous grids can make it easier for nearby pedestrians and vehicles to notice the bicycle, reducing the likelihood of collision.

Lumigrids can be fixed onto the bicycle’s handlebars. Its power is supplied by either an internal battery or by the rotation of the bicycle’s wheels. It has only one button so that the rider can easily use it while riding. The first press will turn on the power, the second press will change the mode of projection, and holding the button down for two seconds will turn the power off. Lumigrids has three modes with different grid sizes that can be used to adapt to different situations: normal mode (140x180mm), high-speed mode (140x260mm), and team mode (300x200mm).”

Lumigrids (via OhGizmo)

A man in Virginia says he was accused by security guards at a local Walmart of kidnapping his daughters. The father is white. The mother is black. They have been married for about 10 years and have three daughters: a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins, all of whom are mixed-race. The incident happened last week on Thursday, May 16, and involved a police officer being sent to their home to question them on whether the children were, in fact, their children. The couple says they will never shop at Walmart again. (image: MyFoxDC)