New cartoon: Trance Pacific Partnership.

In some parts of India, nearly all those accused of crimes (including murder) against Dalits go free because the witnesses are intimidated into not testifying.

The big secrets Manning and Snowden revealed were secret only from us, not from the enemies the US admits to.

Overreaction of the week: a college in the US is pressuring students to use iris scans to get entry to college buildings, supposedly for their safety.

If you have any contact with students there, please ask them to "opt out". We must oppose all new "security" measures unless there is a specific strong local justification. School shootings in the US are a very small cause of death, so small that they don't justify contorting peoples lives in any matter at all.

I have opted out of the RFID-equipped ID cards that are the main method of getting into the MIT building where my office is.

Big Brother is pushing companies to hand over SSL master keys.