The Federal Government has used the mobile phone tracking 'Triggerfish' gadget for years now, and sometimes with great success. That's because its an effective, invasive piece of hardware: by posing as a cell tower Triggerfish is able to quickly glean valuable identifying data from phones. Like phone taps, this had previously been thought to have been used only with the telcos' approval, and after law enforcement officials had found "probable cause" to monitor someone. That supposed caveat was a minor comfort to privacy hounds, but as is so often the case with these things, might have been, shall we say, slightly optimistic.

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Obama is officially the first YouTube president—you know, if you doubted it for some reason with 1800 videos uploaded and over 110 million views. He will be the first president to post videos of his weekly fireside coffee talks on YouTube in addition to the traditional radio format, which goes back to FDR, who used the medium to directly address the nation as he steered it through the Depression and WWII. Indeed, some pundits are calling the Obama administration's use of the web the "internet-era" version of FDR's fireside chats.

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The US Army banned YouTube, social networking sites and blogging well over a year ago, citing security and bandwidth issues. Standard wartime practice, really, just updated for the internets. It has the unfortunate side effect, though, of cutting troops from technology that would keep them closer to their family. Enter TroopTube, a video sharing site where soldiers can upload clips for the families and "supporters" that are screened by Pentagon employees for "taste, copyright violations and national security issues."

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Pumping out a sustained 1.64 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second (1.64 petaflops) after a recent technological overhaul, the Cray XT Jaguar is now the world's latest fastest supercomputer (huge disclaimer coming) for non-classified research. And once you see what's under the hood, you'll know why.

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I'm kinda disappointed Google CEO Eric Schmidt really won't be the country's first ever chief tech officer after all. Despite rumours and (fairly reasonable) speculation he was not-so-subtly campaigning for the position (and Obama), yesterday he definitively said that he wouldn't take the position if offered:

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Who would have thought that here, in the dying stages of 2008, we'd be looking back fondly at the Howard government's failed $84 million porn filter? Remember how hard we laughed when it was cracked within minutes by 16-year-old Tom Wood? And how badly it failed because the very nature of the Internet means that censorship just doesn't work? You'd think that no government would be stupid enough to make the same mistake again, wouldn't you? Well, it just goes to show that the government's penchant for stupidity continues to grow unabated, now that K-Rudd and his geeky sidekick Conroy are planning on forcing mandatory ISP-level filtering of all illegal content, as well as an opt-out filter for "adult" content.

Yes, no matter how ridiculous it seems to any Internet user with even the tiniest morsel of common sense, the Government believes that the Howard porn filter didn't work because it wasn't mandatory for all Australians. And so now we as Australians are faced with possibly the single biggest affront to our online freedoms, while the Government decides it needs to follow up on a headline-grabbing election promise that is impossible to enforce.

While 99.9 percent of Gizmodians understand that mandatory internet filtering just can't work, for that 0.1 percent, here's why the filter is doomed to fail, and why you should lend your voice to the online activism movement taking the government to task over their foolhardy attempts to censor the net.

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Right now, the dudes responsible for bailout bills, freedom fries and like, laws I think, carry the standard corporate drone equipment: BlackBerrys. To be precise, House of Representatives members and their staffs have about 8200 BlackBerrys between them. But for a few of the fancier ones, that's not good enough. They want iPhones.

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Trying to add a silver lining to your undoubtedly dismal economic future, the FCC has struck down T-Mobile's complaints that the agency's scheme to offer free wireless to lower-income peoples will interfere with established 3G networks. In an engineering report, the agency claimed that there would be no "significant risk of harmful interference."

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Transportation Security Administration baggage screener Pythias Brown is the reason you hate flying with expensive gear in your bag, especially if you ever flew out of Newark airport. Over the last few years, he stole at least $US200,000 worth of electronics. Not just a camcorder here, a laptop there, or an Xbox 360 or two, either. No, this guy had balls. Among his biggest hauls—literally—was an HBO employee's $US47,900 camera. And the TSA was totally clueless about it. He was finally caught after CNN found a camera he had stolen from them up for sale on eBay.

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The hard-hitting investigative team at MyFox has just discovered the latest and greatest threat to national security and your children: Fisher-Price's Little Mummy Real Loving Baby Cuddle & Coo Doll, which is sold across the country, has apparently been hijacked by Al-Qaeda to reprogram your children into followers of Allah! If you squint your ears, one of the talking doll's catchphrases sounds like "Islam is the light." God-fearin' parents everywhere are horrified, or at least outside of this McDonald's and Pizza Hut. Why hasn't anyone been talking about the surge where we really need it, the heart of Fisher-Price??? [YouTube]

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