A year to forget

Ashcroft on the attack

Secret arrests, poor access to attorneys, increased surveillance on American citizens, a proposal for neighbors to spy on neighbors -- in 2002, the government gave civil libertarians a lot to worry about. But in the courts and in the national discourse, activists did win many battles. Operation TIPS, John Ashcroft's much-maligned plan for civilian workers -- including truck drivers and letter carriers -- to alert authorities to any "suspicious" behavior, was explicitly prohibited by the Homeland Security bill signed into law in November. The Defense Department's Total Information Awareness system, a massive surveillance program to monitor all Americans in an attempt to spot behavior that smacks of a terrorist action, is now being widely debated in the media, and Congress could hold hearings next year. If TIA does come into operation, it won't be without a host of rules circumscribing its legal uses.

Still, people who care about the erosion of civil liberties have good reason to be worried now. This Justice Department is unrelenting in its efforts to extend acceptable law enforcement behavior, and the terrorized public seems, for the most part, on its side. If there's another attack on what's come to be called "the homeland," or if there's a war in Iraq, will Americans really worry that their government is reaching beyond the Bill of Rights? Let's hope so.

The agony of pop-ups

The backlash grew in 2002 against one of the most intrusive forms of Web advertising -- pop-up ads.

America Online banned all third-party pop-up ads in its 8.0 release, while Earthlink provided subscribers with free software to block them.

Both new iterations of Mozilla and Netscape Navigator offered users ways to turn-off pop-ups, but Microsoft's Internet Explorer didn't get on the bandwagon.

The pop-up backlash comes when Web advertising is still struggling to find new ways to deliver company messages in a down economy.

Yet, towards the end of the year, there was a shred of good news in the online ad market; the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that the business had improved from the second to the third quarter of this year by 1 percent. That's the first time in six consecutive quarters that the online advertising biz has shown a substantive improvement over the previous quarter -- even if it was only 1 percent.

The assault on the environment

For all the Bush administration's attacks on the environment this year, there was no new drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or in the coastal waters near California and Florida. The Bush administration pledged $235 million to buy out existing oil leases in Florida, but continued to push for drilling in the Alaska refuge and near California. A politically divided Congress meant that the energy bill that would have authorized the Alaska drilling died in the Senate, but will likely come back for a vote before the now Republican-controlled Congress next year.

While the Bush administration finally acknowledged that human-caused global warming does in fact really exist, it stalled on taking any action to do anything about it, preaching the importance of more scientific research. But Bush appointees did not drag their feet in loosening clean-air controls on polluting factories, lifting the Clinton administration's ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and approving more drilling for oil in Padre Island National Seashore.

A modest increase in federal fuel-economy standards means that automakers will have to get a few more miles per gallon out of SUVs in the coming years. But environmentalists scoffed at the puny increase, deriding it as yet another concession to industry.

With Republicans now heading up both federal and key congressional committees in Washington, look for U.S. environmental policy to get even more industry-friendly next year.

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