• World-wide Emergencies

  Summary: Agreements between nations must be via treaty and not by administrative decisions of the heads of state.

   

• War Making Powers Granted Within the United States Constitution

Summary: The Constitution gives the war-making power to Congress, and it does not authorize Congress to delegate that power to the President.

• Eavesdropping without a Court Order

  Summary: President Bush wants to eavesdrop on communications between terrorists without a court order authorizing the practice with specific people. The problem is that practice can easily be abused and extended to eavesdropping on any or all US citizens.
   

• Dangers of the World Heritage List

  Summary: The United Nations (UNESCO) has authorized the compilation of a list of natural and cultural sites that are considered to be of world importance as part of our heritage. There are dangers in countries doing this.
   

• The Ultiimate Widget

  Summary: Once it seemed like technology would slowly replace humans at whatever it was they did. Now a once-advocate of replacing humans with machines has changed his mind, and put humans back where they belong.
   

• Scare Tactics

  Summary: The psychological principle behind jail design, the effect of a dummy camera, at work on the battlefield? How the pan-opticon effect may turn war into a factory of diplomatically useful images.
   

• Count all the Legs, Divide by 4

  Summary: Secure web sites, encrypted email, even bank transfers all use ciphers that rely on an unproven mathematical assumption: that big numbers are, like, hard.