Left In Lowell

Just came back from the Special Meeting of the Lowell School Committee which took place in the Mayor’s conference room at City Hall.

I have to congratulate the whole Committee for coming up with a specific plan that will not only do the interviews of the School Superintendent finalists in a timely manner but will also assure that the other aspects of the due diligence are not sacrificed.

About a dozen community members were present as well as the Superintendent’s staff. Dr. Karla Brooks Baher advice and counsel during the discussion was invaluable. A number of times Mayor Bud Caulfield acknowledged how grateful he was that she was there and was participating.

The bottom line: this Thursday and Friday, the finalist will be interviewed. This Thursday, the School Committee will decided on the pay range as well as a potential pre-diiscussion prior to the final vote, which will be on March 24th.

On site visits will take place to the communities of the outside candidates; the out of town finalists will be invited to visit Lowell; conference calls will take place between our School Committees and those of the finalists; and finalists will be asked to provide a “portfolio” representing various documents and papers written by the candidates.

This meeting took place in a cooperative and friendly atmosphere. It helped that cameras were not there and the Mayor’s conference room is cozier than the City Council chambers. I think the School Committee members came to this meeting wanting and willing to come up with a plan that will be fair, open and comprehensive. They succeeded.

Information is a precious and precarious commodity these days. Many “trusted” companies you do business with are selling their data on you to other companies. Junk mail and spam attack you at all angles, scams abound, and the universe is getting smaller and smaller.

Conservatives and liberals alike ought to be very, very frightened of our Big Brother culture. Because Big Brother is doing it…again:

Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the National Security Agency has assembled what some intelligence officials admit is a driftnet for domestic and foreign communications.

Here’s the way the whole thing works, according to Gorman: into the NSA’s massive database goes data collected by the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Treasury. This information includes data about email (recipient and sender address, subject, time sent), internet searches (sites visited and searches conducted), phone calls (incoming and outgoing numbers, length of call, location), financial information (wire transfers, credit-card use, information about bank accounts), and information from the DHS about airline passengers.
[…]
Gorman describes the NSA’s effort (elements of which have been reported before) as basically a resurrection of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program, which of course was de-funded by Congress once the details became public.

OK, so the NSA figured out that naming a program Total Information Awareness sounded really Orwellian. So they changed the name and kept doing it - even after Congress said “No!”. Can someone tell me just where the due process is? Hello? Do we even have a Bill of Rights anymore?

And how important do you think it is to keep telecom immunity out of the FISA bill now?