New Phone Service Will Eavesdrop, Sell Ads

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The New York Times reports on today's launch of a new Internet phone service that will be supported by advertising related to what people are talking about in their calls.

Dreamed up by Pudding Media, a start-up based in San Jose, Calif., the service is similar to Skype (let's hope not too similar) but is free. The trade-off is that the company will use voice recognition software to monitor the calls, select ads based on what it hears and push the ads to the user's computer screen while he or she is talking.

Pudding Media CEO Ariel Maislos defends the company against criticisms from privacy advocates by pointing out that Google does basically the same thing with e-mail, and nobody seems to mind. He also thinks that only old people care about privacy. (And really, after taking a tour through MySpace, who can blame him for assuming American youths are a bunch of wanton exhibitionists?)

He sees his company as simply capitalizing on the universal impulse to phone-doodle. But in early tests, he noticed that the content had a tendency to determine conversation.

"The conversation was actually changing based on what was on the screen," he said. "Our ability to influence the conversation was remarkable."

U.S. Military Is "Baiting" Insurgents In Iraq

Well, here's a story that's sure to increase the on-the-ground popularity of all those American troops who won't be coming back from Iraq all that soon after all.

The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then kill Iraqis who pick them up.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew Didier, leader of an elite sniper scout platoon, said in a sworn statement.

The Post got hold of the classified documents describing the program from family members of three snipers accused of murder because they allegedly planted evidence on Iraqis they killed. Although the case in question does not directly involve baiting, the lawyers for the accused snipers are arguing that questionable practices like baiting have blurred the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone.

The Pentagon has refused to talk about the program, but Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said the baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well as every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," he said.

Law School Not The Get-Rich-Quick Scheme Some Hoped

Two of today's papers bear front-page stories in which lawyers whine about not making enough money.

USA Today reports that federal judges are grumbling - apparently within earshot of Congress - that their salaries lag far behind those of private attorneys and law school deans.

Since 2005, 22 of 875 federal judges serving lifetime appointments have resigned or retired - more than any other time in history. Most earned higher salaries after leaving the bench.

This is bad because federal judges looking forward to a lucrative future job are less likely to make the kind of unpopular decisions often involved in protecting constitutional rights. Chief Justice John Roberts has said the trend has put the independence of the federal judiciary at stake.

The problem isn't really the salaries themselves - they're a healthy $165,000 a year - but the growing gap between what judges and their peers earn elsewhere. From 1995 to 2005, salaries for first-year lawyers rose 79 percent and salaries for partners in the top 100 first climbed 121 percent. To plug the gap, the Senate is considering boosting federal judges' salaries to $247,000 a year.

Not Going To Be Top Of Your Class? Maybe Give Law School A Pass

The root cause of the federal judges' problem - those astronomical private practice salary figures quotes above - are causing a much wider-spread headaches for young lawyers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Such drool-worthy digits are masking the truth: the job market for your average law school graduate is actually waning.

There are just too many JDs being handed out these days for the demand, leaving many recent grads saddled with six figures of students debt and few prospects beyond part-time contract work that pays as little as $20 an hour and leaves them uninsured.

Many are angry that they were lured into law school with promises of big first-year salaries that were arrived at through questionable mathematics.

For example, Tulane University reported to U.S. News and World Reports' widely watched annual law-school ratings that its' law school graduates entered in the job market in 2005 had an median salary of $135,000. But that is based on a survey that only 24 percent of that years' graduates completed - no doubt the highest achieving chunk.

In general, lawyering has never been so lucrative for superstars who get into the nation's top law schools, or those who graduate at the tippy-top of their classes. But the bulk of lawyers' salary growth hasn't been keeping up with inflation in recent years, the paper reports. Meanwhile, tuition growth at law school has tripled the rate of inflation over the past 20 years.

It leaves people like Matthew Fox Curl, who graduated in 2004 from second-tier University of Houston in the bottom quarter of his class, in a tough spot. After months of job hunting he took his first job working for a personal injury lawyer and made $32,000 in his first year. He quickly found that Texas tort reform has been "brutal" to the states' plaintiffs' lawyers and last year left to open up his own criminalal defense private practice.

He's making less money than his last job and is thinking about moving back into his parents' house. "I didn't think three years out I'd be uninsured," he complained, "thinking it's a great day when a crackhead brings me $500."

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