Emergent Chaos“I shall conclude this paper with a specimen of such writing,” he boasted, “which I may safely defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race to decypher to the end of time….”
I think what I really like about this story is how a mathematician bothered to send his new ciphertext to the author of Virginia's statue on religious liberty (as our third President preferred to be remembered). Having just finished Steven Johnson's very enjoyable "The Invention of Air," I'm struck by how broadly engaged with science and the useful arts the founders were. I think that sending an encrypted letter to President Obama would get you ... well, I don't really want to think about it, having just read the Declaration.
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Via CNN:
Steve Bierfeldt says the Transportation Security Administration pulled him aside for extra questioning in March. He was carrying a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution and an iPhone capable of making audio recordings. And he used them.On a recording a TSA agent can be heard berating Bierfeldt. One sample: "You want to play smartass, and I'm not going to play your f**king game."
Bierfeldt is director of development for the Campaign for Liberty, an outgrowth of the Ron Paul presidential campaign.
[...]
Unbeknownst to the TSA agents, Bierfieldt had activated the record application on his phone and slipped it into his pocket. It captured the entire conversation.An excerpt:
Officer: Why do you have this money? That's the question, that's the major question.
Bierfeldt: Yes, sir, and I'm asking whether I'm legally required to answer that question.
Officer: Answer that question first, why do you have this money.
Bierfeldt: Am I legally required to answer that question?
Officer: So you refuse to answer that question?
Bierfeldt: No, sir, I am not refusing.
Officer: Well, you're not answering.
Bierfeldt: I'm simply asking my rights under the law.
[...]The officers can be heard saying they will involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and appear to threaten arrest, saying they are going to transport Bierfeldt to the local police station, in handcuffs if necessary.
[...]Near the end of the recording an additional officer enters the situation and realizes the origins of the money.
Officer: So these are campaign contributions for Ron Paul?
Bierfeldt: Yes, sir.
Officer: You're free to go.
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Millions of people in Iran are in the streets, protesting a stolen election. Nate Silver, who did a great job on US election statistics has this:
However, given the absolutely bizarre figures that have been given for several provinces, given qualitative knowledge - for example, that Mahdi Karroubi earned almost negligible vote totals in his native Lorestan and neighboring Khuzestan, which he won in 2005 with 55.5% and 36.7% respectively - there is room for a much closer look.Nate is a big fan of data, and posted the official election results.
What's most interesting to me is the role of power and chaos in the midst of this. The first use of power, Ahmadinejad’s theft of the election, was a classical use of power by the leviathan to exert control. The responses of the world's hyper-power is deeply constrained by history. In 1953, the CIA overthrew the elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, a fact well known to Iranians. If the US acts improperly or throws power around, it will de-legitimitize whatever result comes. The sheer extent of power that the US has makes it hard to use without looking like a bully.
In the meantime, in the chaotic world of everyone a publisher, opposition is forming, organizing, and changing the face of Iran. It's hard to know how it will all turn out.
Twitter is being used to cover the election and protests and the rate of posts is staggering. It's worth a few minutes just to see the pace of use of the #iranelection tag. (Compare the pace to whatever happens to be in second place by looking at how many seconds of posts are between the first and last on the page.) Iranians on Twitter during the june clashes. A moving Flickr slideshow is here. There's also a tremendous amount TehranLive.org. In the more traditional media, Andrew Sullivan is doing as good a job as the New York Times capturing the English language end of it. Both add some context and history, as does Wikipedia's Iran presidential elections 2009 article. Neither capture the sheer energy and pace of on the ground reporting.
Photo: TehranLive.org
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As I've said before, all non-trivial privacy warnings are mocked and then come true.
Sixty years ago today, George Orwell published 1984. He unfortunately failed to include a note that the book was intended as a warning, not a manual.
Today, in England, there are an unknown number of surveillance cameras, including many around Orwell's house, despite the fact that they don't reduce crime. People can be detained for 28 days without charge, there are "anti-social behavior orders," which allow a civil court to impose behavioral restrictions on children as young as 10 based on low somewhat relaxed standards of evidence.
Being modern, the UK has outsourced most of its torture to other less reputable nations like Syria and the United States.
Photo: MI5
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Photo: "Under surveillance," Toban Black, in the 1984 Flickr pool.
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The story mentions how the increasing bureaucratization* of fund-raising leads to groups whose involvement is "I write them a cheque each year."
It also mentions that the folks doing the investigation end up volunteering their time and getting involved:
"Even if we don't feel like we're giving away a lot of money, I think it's just building in commitment that'll expand to other things that we do," she says. "So beyond our involvement in this giving circle, I think we're all probably going to be more engaged with our communities overall." ("Donors Turn To Giving Circles As Economy Drops")de Tocqueville would be shocked, shocked to discover that actually speaking to other people would increase civil involvement. But as we bureaucratize, background check and formalize every bit of volunteering, more and more people choose to stay away.
*The spell checker knows that word. How sad!)
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Now, bizarrely, if you visit that page, Yahoo wants you to show your (Yahoo-issued) ID to see (Matt's self-issued) ID.
It's probably a bad idea to present a novelty version of a DHS document to law enforcement.
It's a worse idea to live in a country where someone sees enough harassment of photographers to design such a thing so well.
The very worst idea, however, is to discover pressure to send the whole thing down the memory hole.
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I have deeply mixed feelings about how to handle those who tortured. On the one hand, they were only following orders. On the other hand, they were following orders which clearly required contortions to see as legal. Soldiers also have a duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders.
Please keep comments as civil as is reasonable for the topic.
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So while Statebook is a pretty entertaining demo, "Database State" is a disturbing look at how real the underlying data collection is in the U.K.
Via Boingboing.
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I was going to title this "Painful Mistakes: Torture, Boyd and Lessons for Infosec," but then decided that I wanted to talk about torture in a slightly different way.
The Washington Post reports that "Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots" and [UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office] Finally Admits To Receiving Intelligence From Torture. From the Post story:
When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.The torture committed in our names undermines our claim to moral superiority. It doesn't demolish it completely. Intentional mass murder of civilians is worse, but in war, you don't want to have such arguments. You want to clearly have a right side and a wrong side, and torture usually sets you on the wrong side. Boyd laid out conflict as happening in a moral-mental-physical atmosphere, with moral being the most important. If you don't have a moral claim to rightness, then your side's mental willingness to fight for the cause is subject to alienation through propaganda. (This is why Al Qaeda shows so many videos of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc.) More on this in Chuck Spinney's When Strategic "Genius" is Mortal Blunder."The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations.
So why do people commit acts of torture? It's because they believe that it works, and under the ticking time bomb theory, it's the lesser evil. That what counts is "why the President thinks he needs to do that."
There are two arguments against torture, the moral and the practical. Both are outlined in the articles cited at the top. I'd now like to turn back to the idea of best practices.
Best practices are ideas which make intuitive sense: don't write down your passwords. Make backups. Educate your users. Shoot the guy in the kneecap and he'll tell you what you need to know.
The trouble is that none of these are subjected to testing. No one bothers to design experiments to see if users who write down their passwords get broken into more than those who don't. No one tests to see if user education works. (I did, once, and stopped advocating user education. Unfortunately, the tests were done under NDA.)
The other trouble is that once people get the idea that some idea is a best practice, they stop thinking about it critically. It might be because of the authority instinct that Milgram showed, or because they've invested effort and prestige in their solution, or because they believe the idea should work.
The next time someone suggests something because it's a best practice, ask yourself: is this going to work? Will it be worth the cost?
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Robert Scoble, discussing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg:That's Jon Pincus discussing "Zuckerberg: Facebook to ratchet up exploitation, only bans “outliers”."He also said that his system looks for “outlying” behavior. He said if you behave like an average user you should never trigger the algorithms that will get you kicked off.Let’s be specific here: if you behave like the system’s Harvard undergraduate founders and primarily-male engineering staff have programmed the software to think like “an average user” behaves you should never trigger the algorithms that will get you kicked off. Except in reality, most people don’t behave that way. Robert is surprisingly sympathetic to arbitrary undocumented limits on speech:Of course, that irks me a bit because my usage of social media sites is totally outlier behavior. But, I can see his point. One thing that’s nice about Facebook is that I see very little spam or other nasty behavior.
I think this is a real concern. Facebook exists as a means of connecting with others. As I discuss in " Identities are Created Through Relationships," we create and evolve our identities through such interaction. If Facebook imposes conformity through secret rules whose violation results in suspension, then it acts as a censor on our social interaction and our willingness to explore and excel.
It's unsurprising that Scoble sees little spam or other nasty behavior, but free communities have some level of that, or they have a constant level of looking over one's shoulder for the camera or the plainclothesman. Scoble shouldn't be ok with that, and neither should we.
They're trying to dress up giving users the ability to up/down vote on their rules as "democracy," and giving users a voice but as Michael Zimmer documents, it's a vote. They haven't (say) Wikified their Terms of Service and given users real input. They certainly aren't offering minorities any protection against the wishes of the majority.
What if the entire userbase votes to make everything from a member of the Screen Actors Guild fully public?
It is fascinating to watch the autocracy of Facebook forced to take tentative steps towards democracy. Here's hoping that their community also pushes for liberty.
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A former head of MI5 has accused the government of exploiting the fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties. Dame Stella Rimington, 73, stood down as the director general of the security service in 1996..."Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect - there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."What's new? It's gone far enough that even former spy chiefs are speaking out.
Let's stop the madness, and embrace liberty and the risk that the chaos won't be all for the good.
Thanks to Nicko for the pointer.
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From (the new) Whitehouse.gov:
Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/
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Following on my post on Parliaments, Dukes and Queens, I'd like to talk about other checks on the power of government, besides throwing tea into the harbor.
In Britian, "a jury has failed to clear police in the death of Jean Charles de Menezes." The jury is the first group who, frankly, has not whitewashed the death. Investigations by Scotland Yard, The Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Crown Prosecution Service all failed to find any form of punishable fault by the armed police or their leadership.
In New York, a police officer who wrongfully arrested a bike rider and lied about what happened has been indicted, "Officer Is Indicted in Toppling of Cyclist." Charges have not yet been revealed, but I'm hoping for perjury and assault. The interesting thing about this case, which I've followed a little, is what changed everything was video of the incident.
Meanwhile, one of the illegal wiretap (2005 variant) whistleblowers, Thomas Tamm, has come forward. In "The Fed Who Blew the Whistle," Michael Isikoff writes:
At one point, Tamm says, he approached Lisa Farabee, a senior counsel in OIPR who reviewed his work, and asked her directly, "Do you know what the program is?" According to Tamm, she replied: "Don't even go there," and then added, "I assume what they are doing is illegal." Tamm says his immediate thought was, "I'm a law-enforcement officer and I'm participating in something that is illegal?" A few weeks later Tamm bumped into Mark Bradley, the deputy OIPR counsel, who told him the office had run into trouble with Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the chief judge on the FISA court. Bradley seemed nervous, Tamm says. Kollar-Kotelly had raised objections to the special program wiretaps, and "the A.G.-only cases are being shut down," Bradley told Tamm. He then added, "This may be [a time] the attorney general gets indicted," according to Tamm. (Told of Tamm's account, Justice spokesman Boyd said that Farabee and Bradley "have no comment for your story.")By now its obvious that individuals, empowered by technology are increasingly able to act as a counter-balance to some of the power of the state. This is relatively new and still nascent. The ability of random passers-by to video events is only a few decades old. The ability to get stories out there and draw attention to them has increased tremendously with the rise of Usenet, blogs, Facebook, etc. Of course, people have always stood up to the state, but I think the addition of video and networking make it easier and a more interesting balance than it has been.
This, of course, requires citizens to be active, engaged, and united. All the outrage over illegal wiretapping was effectively countered with propaganda alleging that illegal was the only way to wiretap, or that the law was outdated. It also requires the citizenry to be jealous guardians of their precious liberties.
I've been going back and forth on this post, in part because Muntazer al-Zaidi was beaten by jailers, and is facing a 7-15 year jail sentence for 'offending the head of a foreign state.'
In unrelated news, the Obama transition team has done an internal review, which, shockingly, "Finds No ‘Inappropriate’ Contacts With Blagojevich"
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Four interesting stories recently, all having to do with the ancient relationship between a sovereign and a parliament, or the relationship of hereditary rulership to democracy. I secretly admire the emergent forms of government which have proven stable despite their chaotic origins. I'm fascinated by these imperfectly republican nations like Canada and the United Kingdom, where the assent of the Queen to legislation is still required. And for our Canadian and UK readers who think that isn't really relevant...well, take note of what happened in Luxembourg.
The Grand Duke of Luxembourg had the termity to not rubber-stamp a bill (on euthenasia). Radio Netherlands is reporting that a mere parliamentary committee has written him out of the process entirely. It's not clear to me who the Prime Minister of Luxembourg is now prime minister to, but that's the problem of the Luxembourgers.
Meanwhile, on December 4th, the Canadian "Governor General agrees to suspend Parliament until January." Formally, prorouging them. I sort of like the idea that someone in a position of authority has declared all of Canada's parliament to be rouges, but the G.G. is usually understood to be a ceremonial role. It turns out that that's not entirely the case, although her action was unprecedented. (The Wikipedia article on Governor General is unsurprisingly good - enjoy the section on controverseys — the one on the "2008 Canadian parliamentary dispute," is not yet well organized.) Still, the G.G. took decisive action to prevent the government from falling.
I'm a little disappointed that Stéphan Dion didn't call for a meeting of Parliament regardless of the prorougement, and vote Harper out. That would have been quite the republican act and given Americans some fine, and highly confusing chaos to observe. (I'm using republican in the sense of republicans versus monarchists, of course.)
At just about the same time, on Sark, the Chief Pleas have been pleased to replace membership by land ownership with democracy, which promptly elected them back into office.
Finally, in Britian, the Crown has arrested a member of Parliament to nary a whisper. As the Economist mentions, such acts once led to civil war in England. ("England had a civil war?")
Despite my dislike of monarchies, I don't want to forget that historically, legislatures wrested power from those monarchs. There's a value and risk to such a balance, which is that (as Madison wrote):
In a government where numerous and extensive prerogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary monarch, the executive department is very justly regarded as the source of danger, and watched with all the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency, to start up in the same quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.I'll have a little more to say about the indulgence of that jealousy shortly.
In the map, Sark is marked by the pin. Canada is not shown.
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The global blacklisting system for financiers of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is at risk of collapse, undermined by legal challenges and waning political support in many countries, according to counterterrorism officials in Europe and the United States.See "Terrorism Financing Blacklists At Risk" in the Washington Post.In September, the European Court of Justice threw the future of the United Nations' sanctions program against al-Qaeda and the Taliban into doubt when it declared the blacklist violated the "fundamental rights" of those targeted. The Luxembourg-based court said the list lacked accountability and made it almost impossible for people to challenge their inclusion.
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And the reason it doesn't work is that just because you're allowed to own something doesn't mean you're allowed to export it. The use, ownership, production, etc. of crypto was never restricted, only its export. In an Intenet-enabled world, export control brings lots of hair with it, which is why it was important to fight export restrictions. I could go on, but I've already ruined an otherwise amusing strip.
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I am tremendously inspired by stories like "Daughter of slave votes for Obama." There's real progress for our country, within the course of a lifetime.
I've watched as a number of my friends have gone all out for Obama, some traveling on their own dime to knock on doors in states less blue than their own. I'm glad to see that level of enthusiasm: a politics of petty attacks is very likely to lose tomorrow, where a McCain who had been "the McCain of 2000" might well have won.
I worry about Obama's views on national service, including his goal of 50 hours of community service from every middle and high school student, and his goal of federalizing non-profits. I think that the value of non-profits comes from their volunteer nature, and from their diverse goals. Federal dollars will be alluring for their sheer scale. They will also be distracting for many non-profits, forced, like many churches to strangely bifurcate their activity to allow for federal dollars to flow in. As de Tocqueville understood, much of the value of volunteerism — including volunteering for a political candidate — is that it brings us together as a civic society.
As I watch the outpouring of enthusiasm and of hope, I am hopeful that Obama is smart enough to understand that the real strength of our nation is not in Washington, and it's not in directives from Washington. It's from hundreds of millions of people pursuing their hopes and dreams. America is a diverse set of people with different hopes and different dreams, and the value of our democracy is that is has embraced and promoted the freedom of each of us to pursue our own dreams, chaotic though that may be.
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Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation's border lines.See Wired, "ACLU Assails 100-Mile Border Zone as 'Constitution-Free'." In closely related news, a Washington Municipal Court in Tacoma (pictured) has ruled that "showing ID to cops not required."The government has long been able to search people entering and exiting the country without need to say why, which is known as the border search exception of the Fourth Amendment.
After 9/11, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security the right to use some of its powers deeper within the country, and now DHS has set up at least 33 internal checkpoints where they stop people, question them and ask them to prove citizenship, according to the ACLU.
I found this map to be pretty shocking on two levels: first, and most importantly, I hadn't realized that it was 100 miles from any border. (And if it really is any border, do the international airports count?) Which brings me to my second point: it was pretty surprising to see not only that two thirds of Americans live within 100 miles of a border, but that there are only a few major cities (Denver, Atlanta) which are not in that zone.
I also feel personally invaded to know that every time I use a ferry in Seattle, they scan my license plate and record that travel.
The map is a link to the ACLU's page on the issue.
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In this respect, there are major discrepancies between the (nonbinding) description at the start of the regulatory notice issued today, and the actual regulations that follow it (the last 20 pages of the notice).We applaud the government's long-lasting impact on Americans. The Bush presidency, from the price of gasoline to the permission to fly system announced today, to license plate scanners on the Seattle ferries, has left a mark on the Republic like few presidencies in history.The essence of the Secure Flight final rule would be to (1) impose a new, two-stage, requirement for all would-be air travelers to obtain government permisison to fly, first in the form of a discretionary government decision to issue an acceptable form of identification credential and second in the form of a discretionary decision to send the airline a “cleared” message authorizing a specific person to board a specific flight, and (2) require all would-be air travelers to provide identifying information to the airline and the government prior to each flight.
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The Washington Post reports upon the further cheapening of the word "terrorism" in, "Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists."
The fifty-three people with "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime" who were put on a list of terrorists include anti-death-penanty protestors.
It's really hard to keep from laughing about this. Are we going to see next, Terrorism With Intent to Kill, so as to differentiate it from Terrorism With Intent to Stop Killing? Whatever your feelings about the death penalty, this ain't terrorism, guys.
The Post reports a number of things Police Superintendent Thomas Hutchins said that he'll be ashamed of once the meds kick in.
After "stunned" state senators called him to task about the spying, Hutchins said:
I doubt anyone who has used that term has ever met a spy ... What John Walker did is spying.
Please don't make me paste in dictionary definitions, Mr Hutchins. Quoting the dictionary is the last refuge of two-bit pedants and I'm at least a sixty-four-bit pedant. The Maryland committee you embarrassed yourself in front of has in fact seen a spy. If you need help, I recommend a mirror.
Hutchins also said that some of the names might have been shared with the NSA as well. Might have. That's "might" meaning "definitely," I presume. If you're going to spy on peaceful protestors, but them on terrorist lists, and share that with the intelligence agencies, have the courage to say so.
Here's a final quote from the Post:
Two senators noted that they had been arrested years ago for civil disobedience. Sen. Jennie Forehand (D-Montgomery) asked Sheridan, "Do you have any legislators on your list?" The answer was no.
That's how we know they knew it was wrong.
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According to The New York Times in, "Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China," the Chinese provider TOM has software in place that reads Skype text messages, and blocks ones that use naughty words and terms, like "Falun Gong," "Independent Taiwan," and so on.
A group of security people and human rights workers not only found out that TOM-Skype is not secure, but found the list of banned words because, as usual, someone didn't set up their servers very well. A report can be found here.
Skype president Josh Silverman replied to the issue today in this article. He says that yes, it's happening:
It is common knowledge that censorship does exist in China and that the Chinese government has been monitoring communications in and out of the country for many years. This, in fact, is true for all forms of communication such as emails, fixed and mobile phone calls, and instant messaging between people within China and between China and other countries. TOM, like every other communications service provider operating in China, has an obligation to be compliant if they are to be able to operate in China at all.
He's right: one of the quandaries of business in China is that you have to put your belief in freedom in a trust when you go there. This is why many of us do not like doing business there.
However, he also said:
We also learned yesterday about the existence of a security breach that made it possible for people to gain access to those stored messages on TOM's servers. We were very concerned to learn about both issues and after we urgently addressed this situation with TOM, they fixed the security breach. In addition, we are currently addressing the wider issue of the uploading and storage of certain messages with TOM.
In other words -- it's bad for the Chinese to spy, and bad for people to catch them at it. Oh, naughty Chinese, and shame on you too, Infowar for dragging this into the daylight.
This comes on top of April's flap in which the German and Austrian governments essentially said that they have no trouble listening in to Skype. Skype hasn't commented on that. This is a different issue, as it appears that the surveillance is being done via malware.
Despite the fact that we still don't know what goes on inside of Skype, it appears that the software is basically secure -- or at least the voice parts are. Or was at one time. The noted cryptographer Tom Berson did an analysis of Skype and showed that it was reasonably secure. There were also reverse-engineering analyses done on Skype by Philippe Biondi and Fabrice Desclaux, presented at Black Hat in 2006 that showed it was secure, if eccentric in its design.
However, despite the security of the voice parts, the text parts are obviously not secure. And we have this uncomfortable set of circumstances:
The problem here is one of labeling, and the market effects. I'm sophisticated enough to know that when Josh Silverman says:
... Allowing the world to communicate for free empowers and links people and communities everywhere.
that he is stating that free (as in beer) is important, even if he's unable to do a lot about free (as in speech) in repressive countries and in the face of law enforcement technologies.
But Skype has always touted itself as a secure technology. The reason that it became popular for free (as in beer) conversations was that we thought and were assured that it was also free (as in speech). Skype themselves paid for a security analysis.
Skype thus became not only the proverbial eight-hundred pound gorilla, but (it seems) the proverbial dog in the manger. Skype's presence has actively hindered other secure-voice technologies. Phil Zimmermann's Zfone, for example, has had to answer the question, "why do we need you when there's Skype?" It seems that he'll be answering that question less. Josh Silverman needs to do something to show us the basic integrity of the system. Presently it appears that he has empowered us to have communities everywhere but China, or Germany, or any place with a sophisticated and powerful government. At the very least, he should protect eBay's investment, because if people conclude that Skype is not secure, eBay may wish they'd invested that $1.6 billion in mortgage-backed instruments instead.
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If you are the sort of person who looks at odd legal rulings and opinions, you may remember that a few years ago the US DOJ issued an opinion that stored emails are not protected under the Stored Communications Act. The DOJ reasoning is that when you leave read email on your server, it's not a temporary copy that is needed for the communications (like a mail spool), and not a backup.
This reasoning is bizarre to people who use protocols like IMAP precisely as a backup. It's also bizarre to people who wonder why the DOJ would argue that stored communications are not Stored Communications. Those people tend to think that perhaps this would mean that if those stored emails are not Stored, then it wouldn't be illegal for the DOJ to just kindly request that copies of them be pulled from an ISP's storage (as opposed to their Storage) and be handed over, just in case you've been doing whatever.
The EFF has posted an interesting opinion, one that points out that if stored email is not Stored, then the people who reset Sarah Palin's password and read her email probably did not commit a crime under the DOJ's own interpretations of the law.
There doesn't seem to be much wrong with this reasoning. In any event, it's going to make it hard to prosecute the miscreants, because they will have to explain to a judge why they changed their mind, or why there is one law for veep candidates and one or everyone else. Way to go, guys.
Whatever one's opinion of Ms Palin, it's hard to defend violating her privacy. Let's hope this leads the DOJ to conclude that when you take communications and store them that they would be protected under the Stored Communications Act. As usual, the word is "oops."
(Many people will note that there are undoubtably plenty of other laws to charge them under, starting with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But any good prosecutor can find something to charge someone with. The point is about upholding and enforcing existing laws.)
Photo "Hockey Mom Makeover" by julie.anna.
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Dear Mr Harper,
In general people do not care for the government to be tracking their religious affiliation. In particular however, there are few groups who care less for this sort of tracking than Jews. Seriously, you're not going to get votes by sending Rosh Hashanah cards to your Jewish constituents. It freaks us out, really.
I was a little alarmed at the idea that the government might have some list of Canadian Jews, whether or not they're using that for benevolent or malevolent or cynical reasons," Mr. Terkel said. "It doesn't seem my religion should be the business of any federal government.
With No Love,
Arthur
P.S. It would be ever so slightly more convincing if you didn't also schedule the upcoming election on a Jewish holiday. Hope that helps.
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Mary Dudziak posted the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer before the credentials committee of the 1964 Democratic convention. It's worth reading in full:
Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.
We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.
After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.
After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know - did Pap tell you what I said?"
And I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "Well I mean that." He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."
And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself."
I had to leave that same night.
On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.
And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people - to use the restaurant - two of the people wanted to use the washroom.
The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."...
I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?"
And they would say other horrible names.
She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"
"So, well, say it."
She said, "I don't know you well enough."
They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."
They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.
The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.
I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.
After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet - to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.
One white man - my dress had worked up high - he walked over and pulled my dress - I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
Thank you.
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Wonderful graffiti art by Mau Mau at the Cans Festival II. Photo taken by Alan Bee.
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I find it interesting that security people and foodies are strongly correlated. Or at least are strongly correlated among the ones I know. Very Good Taste has a list of things called The Omnivore's Hundred, a list of things worth trying, modulo this and that. You mark things you have tried, and mark things you would never try or try again.
I found it via Cygnoir, who also gave a pointer to an easy-to-fill-out web page that will give HTML.
My results of that page are below.
-----------------------------------------
To make the filling out of this form and generating the HTML for it a bit easier, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
reddywhp has played around with some PHP. Go to http://reddywhip.org/lj/foods/ and fill it out there. After filling it out, you will be given the code to copy and paste into your blog.
Livejournal users, remember to use your LJ-Cuts!
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A Christian Science church near the White House filed suit against the city on Thursday, accusing it of trammeling religious freedom by declaring the church a historic landmark and refusing to allow church leaders to tear it down.Me, I just think there's something between irony and schadenfreude in there not only being a "brutalist" style of architecture, but that Washington DC wants to preserve it, over the objections of those subjected to it.The building, a stark structure with walls that soar toward the sky, is an eyesore or a work of genius, depending on who is discussing it. The 37-year-old church was designed by Araldo A. Cossutta, who had been an architect in I. M. Pei’s firm, and declared a landmark in December.
Supporters of preserving the church, the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, say it is a sterling example of a style of architecture called brutalism, which is identified by repetitive geometric design and raw concrete. ("Church Sues over Landmark Status"="
(Not to mention the questionable justification for the government creating and keeping a list of historic landmarks which their owners then must maintain.)
Photo: Washington DC 3rd Church of Christ Scientist, Amy.Arch
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The Paper of Record has a hilarious article, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" which asks important questions about what Those Darn Kids are doing -- spending their time using a mixture of hot media and cold media delivered to them over the internets.
I'll get right to the point before I start ridiculing the ridiculous, and answer the question. No. Of course not. It's not really reading. This is not text. It is not the product of hot lead type lovingly smearing a mix of kerosene and soot over wood pulp. It's a bunch of pixels, and those pixels are whispering directly into your brain. You are not reading, you're hearing my snarky voice directly massaging your neurons. That doesn't happen when you read. People don't see things or hear things when they read. Ask Anne Fadiman if you don't believe me. She knows.
Let's look at some of the statements in the article:
Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird� or “Pride and Prejudice� for fun.
It is unrealistic to expect any children to read Austen. Austen is arguably the second best writer in all of English, but she requires emotional experiences that children do not have. Pride and Prejudice is no more children's reading than 1984 is. Trust me on this, I know. I read 1984 when I was ten, and when I re-read it in college, I was gobsmacked to learn that there is sex in it.
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers.
They said pretty much the same about Dickens. Until relatively recently, no serious scholar of literature (read college professor) would admit to reading Dickens. Personally, I agree. These days he's considered a classic, and the non-serious scholars won't admit to reading him.
Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun.
And of course we can fix this by denigrating what they do read, as opposed to finding things for them worth reading.
“Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media,� Dana Gioia, the chairman of the N.E.A., wrote in the report’s introduction, “they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.�
I'll do my part. I resolve to start writing my blog posts, okay? Do you want them in printing or copperplate?
[Synopsis: Nadia's mother tries to instill a love of books in Nadia. Nadia does not respond until they get a computer, when Nadia gives up TV for fanfic.]Now [Nadia] regularly reads stories that run as long as 45 Web pages. Many of them have elliptical plots and are sprinkled with spelling and grammatical errors.
Which the masters of modern literature such as Pynchon and Joyce would never do. Austen never had elliptical plots, they were circular, and she was merely eccentric.
Nadia said she wanted to major in English at college and someday hopes to be published. She does not see a problem with reading few books. “No one’s ever said you should read more books to get into college,� she said.
And this is a problem?
Reading skills are also valued by employers. A 2006 survey by the Conference Board, which conducts research for business leaders, found that nearly 90 percent of employers rated “reading comprehension� as “very important� for workers with bachelor’s degrees.
I don't know about you, but I wonder what sort of people the 10+% of employers are who think that reading comprehension is not very important. What sort of Dilbert-refugees are they? I find that "nearly 90%" to be disturbing.
Some literacy experts say that reading itself should be redefined. Interpreting videos or pictures, they say, may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem.
Ah, the word "may." I've ranted about it before. It is true that interpreting pictures may be as important as analyzing a novel. It certainly is if you want to appreciate El Greco. But that's not the point. As much as I like sneering at moderns who think Dickens is literature, times change. It may, indeed. Joyce may have written grammatically. Austen may be suitable for children. Reading comprehension may be important for workers with bachelor's degrees. And Shakespeare's works may have been written by another man of the same name.
I am disdainful of hot media, but the Web is the rennaissance of cold media. It's an aberration in a slide to hotter and hotter media. Also realize that cold media is relatively recent. Most of human history had its literature in songs and pantomime.
Lastly, remember that kids have been no damned good for as long as we've been writing at all. The pinnacle of civilization was when we were in the caves, and it's been a long slow slide into perdition ever since. Every generation is worse than the previous one. It will continue to be that way. These kids are going to sigh with exasperation and not understand why their kids roll their eyes at Sailor Moon. And they just not going to understand the true art form of fanfic and slashfic. Tsk.
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The author of The Gulag Archipelago and other important works on the barbarity of the Soviet Union passed away today. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was 89.
My sympathies to his family and friends.
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Vox Libertas, a blogger at the Daily Kos has written an analysis of the new US FISA law in his article, "I think I understand the FISA bill. Do I?"
Vox Libertas has taken an approach that I can appreciate. On the one hand, many people are unhappy with the telecom immunity. I'm one of them. But people I respect are also saying that it's a good compromise, and compromise means you don't get everything you want.
Vox Libertas goes to the trouble of (shock, horror) reading the primary sources and explaining what's in the new FISA bill. He also shows his own sources.
No matter what you think, this is worth reading.
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The New York Times has in an editorial, "The Government and Your Laptop" a plea for Congress to pass a law to ensure that laptops (along with phones, etc.) are not seized at borders without reasonable suspicion.
The have the interesting statistic that in a survey by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, 7 of 100 respondents reported a laptop or other electronic device seized. Of course, this indicates a problem with metrics. It almost certainly does not mean a 7% seizure rate, as I've seen this inflated to. These seizures are such an outrageous thing that the people who have been subjected to them are properly and justifiably outraged. They're not going to toss the survey in the trash.
I'm not sure how much I like the idea that Congress should pass a law to ensure that the fourth amendment is met. Part of me grits my teeth, as I think it should happen on its own. But if the courts aren't going to agree, that probably has to happen.
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In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts
John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
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The Telegraph reports in "Hats banned from Yorkshire pubs over CCTV fears" that
Pubs in Yorkshire have been ordered to ban people from wearing flat caps or other hats so troublemakers can be more easily recognised.
And in other news this weekend, MPs have stamped their little feet insisting that Britain is not a surveillance society.
Photo "flat cap Harry" by theolip.
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We join our glorious Soviet brothers of the TSA in rejoicing at the final overthrow of the bourgeoisie conception of "liberty" and "freedom of expression" at the Homeland's airports.
The People's Anonymous Commissar announced:
This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.Commissar Hawley stated "with this advance, we overcome the latest tactic of the counter-revolutionary, and ensure that our internal passport system is fully functional."This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers.
...Passengers that fail to comply with security procedures may be prohibited from entering the secure area of airports to catch their flight.
("TSA Announces Enhancements to Airport ID Requirements to Increase Liberty")
He went on to explain that this enhances our first ammendment rights to free expression by ensuring that all free expression will be supportive of the new policy, and that under United States v. Biswell, 406 U.S. 311 (1972), a comrade's entry into a perversely pervasively regulated area permits content-based speech restrictions.
We are also renaming this blog "Imposed Order."
It is the policy of Imposed Order that all comments will be supportive of this policy and the new name for the blog.
News via Gary Leff. Image via Lenin Internet Archive.
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I'd like to talk about the Obama strategies and a long chaotic campaign in two ways. First in fund-raising and second, on the effects of a long campaign.
In fund-raising, everything I've read says that the Clintons were much better at getting the "big" donations allowed under McCain-Fiengold. (Which I've commented on here and here.) What I now want to say is that the "chaos" strategy of enabling lots and lots of small donations seems to have worked spectacularly. Letting your supporters self-select, emerge, and then working them over and over. In fact, Dissent commented that her name was added to their list when she made a media inquiry. Highly chaotic, no big one-night rubber chicken totals, and highly effective.
As an aside, I know that oftentimes in startups, we've ended up quixotically pursuing big deals, because big deals can be given attention. The strategy of using channels and having lots of little sales can be harder to advocate for.
Secondly, voter engagement is at a high everywhere in the country. Pundits often complain about low voter turnout, low engagement with the process, and people not caring. It seems that a little chaos, diverse candidates, and having a winner emerge from the contest are healthier for democracy than having the pundits select a winner.
We'd like to thank everyone who paid attention to our primary endorsements.
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El Reg writes that the India Times writes that RIM has "blackballed" (El Reg's words) the Indian Government's requests to get BB keys, saying what we suspected, that there are no keys to give.
The India times says:
BlackBerry vendor Research-In-Motion (RIM) said it cannot hand over the message encryption key to the government as its security structure does not allow any ‘third party’ or even the company to read the information transferred over its network.
The full RIM letter to its customers says:
Dear Valued BlackBerry Customer:
Research In Motion (RIM) is more excited than ever to be doing business in India and is extremely pleased by the enthusiasm of Indian customers toward the BlackBerry platform.
RIM recognizes that some customers are curious about the discussions that occurred between RIM and the Indian government regarding the use of encryption in BlackBerry products and understands that the confidential nature of these discussions has consequently enabled an opportunity for a variety of speculation and misinterpretation to arise.
RIM regrets any concern prompted by incorrect speculation or rumors and wishes to assure customers that RIM is committed to continue serving security-conscious businesses in the Indian market with highly secure and innovative products that satisfy the needs of both business and government.
RIM respects the needs of governments to balance regulatory requirements alongside the corporate security and individual privacy needs of its citizens and RIM will not disclose confidential discussions that take place with any government. However, many public facts about the BlackBerry security architecture have been well established over the years and remain unchanged. A recap of these facts, along with other general industry facts, can help customers easily debunk incorrect rumors and speculation and maintain confidence about the security of their information.
- RIM understands and respects the concerns of governments. RIM operates in over 135 countries today and provides a security architecture that has been widely scrutinized over the last nine years and has been accepted and embraced by security-conscious corporations and governments around the world.
- Governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs without compromising commercial security requirements.
- The use of strong encryption in wireless technology is not unique to the BlackBerry platform. Strong encryption is a mandatory requirement for all enterprise-class wireless email services.
- The use of strong encryption in information technology is not limited to the wireless industry. Strong encryption is used pervasively on the Internet to protect the confidentiality of personal and corporate information.
- Strong encryption is a fundamental requirement for a wide variety of technology products that enable businesses to operate and compete, both domestically and internationally.
- The BlackBerry security architecture was specifically designed to provide corporate customers with the ability to transmit information wirelessly while also providing them with the necessary confidence that no one, including RIM, could access their data.
- The BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is based on a symmetric key system whereby the customer creates their own key and only the customer ever possesses a copy of their encryption key. RIM does not possess a "master key", nor does any "back door" exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data.
- The BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is purposefully designed to exclude the capability for RIM or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances. RIM would simply be unable to accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator, ever possess a copy of the key.
- The BlackBerry security architecture was also purposefully designed to perform as a global system independent of geography. The location of data centers and the customer's choice of wireless network are irrelevant factors from a security perspective since end-to-end encryption is utilized and transmissions are no more decipherable or less secure based on the selection of a wireless network or the location of a data center. All data remains encrypted through all points of transfer between the customer's BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the customer's device (at no point in the transfer is data decrypted and re-encrypted).
- The same BlackBerry security architecture is maintained in all 135+ countries where the BlackBerry solution is commercially available and it continues to be validated through various formal and independent security certifications, including FIPS-140-2 (USA), @Stake security assessment, Common Criteria EAL 2+ (International) and CAPS (United Kingdom), as well as several other independent government approvals and customer assessments.
Once again, RIM is extremely pleased by the reaction of the Indian market to the BlackBerry platform and excited about the future in India. RIM also remains positive about the ongoing use of strong encryption in enterprise-class information technologies and believes that governmental security requirements in countries around the world, including India, will continue to be achieved in tandem with the domestic and international security needs of corporate customers.
My major grumble remaining is that while RIM has been very good at some assessments (FIPS 140 and CAPS are worth something, CC is not), Those of us in the real world haven't seen the BlackBerry architecture.
I still hear people say, "Oh, you can't trust that because the French government banned them," which is also FUD, but absent an open attitude about public review, is going to keep happening. My response to that FUD is to counter-FUD by pointing out that there's no better way to spy on someone than to FUD their existing security system.
It's worth something to know that Charlie Miller hasn't broken the BlackBerry, but it would be better to have more to go on. Thank you for the discussing rather than ignoring this, RIM. Please, may we have another?
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You may have seen this article from the India Times, "Govt may get keys to your BlackBerry mailbox soon." Many people have been commenting on it, and the hand-wringing should build up to a good storm in a few days.
The gist of the article is that the Indian Government has told RIM that if they can't read BlackBerry email, they might just ban all BlackBerries from India, and that RIM is caving.
Being the sort of person I am, I called someone who actually knows something. I can't tell you anything more, precisely because they actually know something.
What I was told is that this is complete FUD and false. The BlackBerry crypto is real crypto, just like SSL, PGP, S/MIME or anything else. The keys are generated on the handsets and on the BES server. There is end-to-end crypto, using real protocols like SPEKE. RIM doesn't have the keys to give. RIM cannot give the keys over because only the devices have them.
Of course, as is true in all hatchet jobs, the lead is with weasel-words:
In a major change of stance, Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) may allow the Indian government to intercept non-corporate emails sent over BlackBerrys.
See that? It's the word may.
Here's my own text, which I know may be true because I just may have made it up:
In a major cryptographic breakthrough, Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) may soon put quantum cryptography in all new handsets, preventing any interceptions, because it's well, you know, quantum, and quantum is cool.
Or this:
In a major scientific advancement, Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) may have accepted an order for 10 million BlackBerrys from space aliens living on Epsilon Erandi. A faster-than-light (FTL) email relay server may be installed at Barnard's Star as part of this groundbreaking, er, space-breaking agreement.
And even:
In a major economic development, Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) may have purchased the Large Hadron Collider from CERN. According to officials close to the development, Canadian High Commissioner David Malone may have approved the deal not merely despite, but actually because of the chance that the LHC could create a small black hole that would devour all of France. "Canada is just fed up with the pointy-lips in France making fun of their accents and may have decided to take proactive action. Details on this one will be provided in two or three weeks," sources close to the deal may have told Emergent Chaos. No comment was available from the United Nations at posting time.
May, while a merry month, may also be the tool of liars.
RIM, I know you're reading this, not only because we are one of the top 25 blogs, and not at all because we speak for the President of the United States, but because Adam used to live in Montréal and is no pointy-lips. Please, please give us a definitive statement. You have to call bullshit on this sort of thing before it becomes destructive.
I know and you know that there would be no better publicity for you than to call their bluff and say, "D'accord, pas des mûres pour vous." We would all cheer. BlackBerry sales will soar.
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As part of its regular "risk management" service, which provides screening, tracing, and identity and background checks on potential clients or trading partners, MicroBilt will now offer a "watch list" service that checks these individuals against 63 different lists from 35 sources, including OFAC, the FBI, and Interpol, Bradley says. ("Companies May Be Held Liable for Deals With Terrorists, ID Thieves", DarkReading)I say more than 63 because some unknown number are secret. The poor souls who find themselves on these lists have, in essence, no recourse. Convincing 35 or more agencies that their presumption of your guilt is incorrect might, in theory, be possible. In reality, the agency has no reason to do anything but drag its feet: there are no penalties to them for declaring you guilty. In contrast, a failure to put your name on the list risks them not having prevented you from your future thoughtcrime.
But there's hope. And it's not in MicroBilt's stock price (MicroBilt is a subsidiary of First Advantage). Rather, it's in the courage of a judge, who ruled that any American who has been routinely detained because they are on a watch list knows that they are on a list, and thus the government's 'State Secrets' privilege isn't applicable:
since the government admits it has stopped the six men and two women more than 35 times, federal Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier of the United States Northern Illinois District Court dismissed that argument. Instead he found that the government "failed to establish that, under all the circumstances of this case, disclosure of that information would create a reasonable danger of jeopardizing national security." (" Court: Government Must Reveal Watch-List Status to Constantly Detained Americans," Wired's excellent 27B-6 Mk IIa blog)
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In that essay, he uses the term "generativity" to refer to a system which has what I would call 'emergent chaos.' A generative system is one which is open enough that people do strange things on it, and new stuff emerges. There's no need to get permission. In The New School, we talk about the difference between the internet, where anyone can run anything, and the old phone network, where only Ma Bell had any way to innovate. And never did.
In commenting on these ideas, Adam Thierer says some things I want to respond to:
I see no reason why we can’t have the best of both worlds–a world full of plenty of tethered appliances, but also plenty of generativity and openness. In a follow-up essay, I pointed out how Apple’s products create a particular problem for Zittrain’s thesis because even though they are “sterile and tethered,” there is no doubt that the company’s approach has produced some wonderful results.So I'm all for choice in who gets what. At the same time, I think that Thierer makes the mistake of thinking that generativity happens in a vacuum. I don't think it does. I think that the more generative devices you have, the more chaos (both good and bad) emerges. If only a few hundred people have Chumbys, then no one is going to write the alarm clock my buddy Nathan wants....
And what’s wrong with this? Answer: Nothing! People are getting the choices and configurations they want. Older generations are simply not comfortable with the “general purpose” devices that tinker-happy gadgeteers like Zittrain and me prefer.
(From "another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!")
On the other hand, if there are a million Chumbys then someone might.
I think anyone writing for a blog entitled "The Technology Liberation Front" would get this, but let me lay out it. If I'm thinking of creating a widget to connect an ipod to a stereo, then I have to pay for my R&D out of the sale price of each device. If I'm spend a million bucks on R&D, then if I sell a million units, I can add a buck to the price of each. If I sell 10, then I'm going to lose money.
Entrepreneurs know this. They learn to prefer larger markets. They gravitate to larger markets. And thus the larger markets develop an advantage, which is that people want to participate, there's a talent pool available, there's a greater opportunity to partner, more investors willing to invest, etc. It's a virtuous circle. You can buy a wider variety of parts to customize a Scion or a Mini than you can with a Ferrari. There just aren't enough Ferarris to support a broad ecosystem of innovation. (There may be a network of engineers who wouldn't bother touching a lower end car.)
And so each "tethered" device may reduce generativity by reducing the chaotic froth which exists in the generative world. I'm not saying that such devices have no innovation. I have (and enjoy) an iphone. I'd love to be able to SMS people URLs or contacts. And maybe when we get the SDK, and the iPhone becomes generative, I'll be able to.
Until then, generativity has existed in active conflict tension with the tethering. I think that generative and tethered systems can co-exist. But it's not the "best of both worlds."
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Each category is analyzed to determine patterns of ordinary behavior. Every single transaction by customers in these groups, and even patterns of transactions stretching back as far as a year, are then scrutinized for evidence of deviation from this norm using measures such as the number, size, or frequency of transactions, among others.When "not behaving normally" is considered grounds for investigation, there's an inevitable chilling effect. The willingness of people to do new, exciting things is reduced by the risk that they'll get on some financial blacklist, and be unable to buy a house or a car.
(Via Paul Kedrosky)
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After weathering days of criticism from Germany over a spectacular tax evasion case, Liechtenstein — sometimes seen as the inspiration for the satirical novel from the 1950s about a tiny Alpine principality that declared war on the United States — is digging in for what may be a prolonged battle to defend its lucrative tradition of banking secrecy against what it views as attacks from a giant neighbor.Of course, Germany, and the other large nations would like to pretend this is about fraud, not competition for business. They'd like the smaller nations to harmonize their tax codes, and prevent the messy chaos of having to compete on their laws. Countries such as Liechtenstein offer alternatives, and act as a brake on the unfettered invasions of privacy that otherwise intrude on all our lives.
This isn't about Liechtenstein above all others, it's about diversity. It's about diversity in approaches to taxation leading to diversity of choices. It would be stereotyping to assert that the orderly Germans or the bureaucratic French don't like Liechtenstein solely because it's different. Really, it's because few governments have any appreciation of, or love for liberty.
Governments and their employees focus on their goals and their (always enlightened) rules. This isn't about Liechtenstein putting itself above others, but allowing people to put their own self-interest ahead of that of the functionaries and bureaucrats.
Some chaos emerges, and we think it's a fine thing.
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DOYLESTOWN, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A man who wrote a vulgar message on the memo line of a check he used to pay a $5 parking ticket has apologized in writing, leading police to drop a disorderly conduct charge against him. David Binner sent the check after receiving a $5 parking ticket. He calls it "a temporary lapse of judgment." Clerks were offended by the message, and the disorderly conduct charge was filed because the comment was obscene, police Chief James Donnelly said. "He was contrite enough to offer an apology, and I think that satisfies the people who were insulted by it," he said.Associated Press, via CNN So what vulgarity was so "obscene" the police had to step in?
"The F-word isn't what it used to be," attorney [for the check-writer] Keith Williams said. It doesn't have a sexual connotation anymore and so can't be considered obscene, he said.I guess that about says it. Meanwhile, the local police Chief explains that clerks were "insulted" when they saw this naughty, naughty expression while they were being paid from the public purse. As an idealistic youth, I read Cohen v. California. So should the Chief:
The ability of government, consonant with the Constitution, to shut off discourse solely to protect others from hearing it is, in other words, dependent upon a showing that substantial privacy interests are being invaded in an essentially intolerable manner. Any broader view of this authority would effectively empower a majority to silence dissidents simply as a matter of personal predilections.Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971)
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A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as an aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.Even though it's true, companies are scared of making health claims for booze. "Draft legislation could outlaw any health claims in adverts for alcohol in Europe, [a spokeswoman for Brewing Research International] said."Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin told a conference in the US.
...
The researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, that the most benefit they saw was from 24 fluid ounces of Guinness - just over a pint - taken at mealtimes.
They believe that "antioxidant compounds" in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.
It's sad when the ability to make true statements is suppressed because 'authorities' worry that people are too dumb to listen to a bunch of statements and make up their own minds.
All quotes from the BBC, "Guinness good for you - official"
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Today marks the For 14 years, Americans were unable to legally have a drink. This led to a dramatic growth in the acceptance of organized crime and violence. Al Capone made his money in the demon rum, and was willing to fight for income and market share. It led millions of otherwise law abiding Americans to speakeasys. The imposition of controls made the problem worse.
Back then, Congress had the wisdom and backbone to recognize a broken policy when they saw it, and passed the 21st Amendment to repeal prohibition.
An awful lot of chaos emerged from that day. People can now buy a staggering variety of vodkas, all perfectly identical in taste. There are thousands of wineries, all around the country, some internationally famous, and others providing great value wines. There's a movement for the quality brewing of beer, ranging from stores providing everything you need to brew at home to Michelob trying to redefine their industrial process as craft brewing.
So raise a toast to the fact that you can buy booze from a wide variety of producers, and forget, for a moment, the worries of the day.* Enjoy the blessings of liberty which the Constitution aspires to, and hope that they'll be expanded one day to the entire United States, to our youth, and to a wider variety of intoxicants.
Image: Enoteca, by Conmani, via SXC.hu.
* Void where prohibited by law. Advice not intended for people under 21. Emergent Chaos encourages you to enjoy our products responsibly.
[Update: I can't subtract. Thanks, Puck!]
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In a May, 2006 post entitled Codename: Miranda, I joked about having my grocery purchases linked to another Chicagoan due to poor schema design.
There, I joked about buying:
... granola, yogurt, hummus -- the healthy stuff which probably alerts Admiral Poindexter's Bayesian classifier to my fifth-column status.
Maybe this wasn't jocular after all, as a Congressional Quarterly article (referred to by Ryan Singel) reports:
Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.
I hope Miranda is not in Gitmo as a result of my healthy eating habits.
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While this great tradition can be traced back to the Magna Carta, it was the rise of the modern state with all the new powers at its disposal that made the 17th century the pivotal period in the struggle against arbitrary and unaccountable government ------ as Britain led the way in the battle for freedom from hierarchical rule, for human rights and for the rule of law.It's a fascinating speech for the depth of understanding it goes through before proposing national ID cards and a DNA database. In today's United States, I can hardly imagine the President giving a speech this deep or nuanced.And tracing Coke's defence of common law, the work of John Locke and the Bill of Rights of 1689 right through to the first of the Reform Acts, Macaulay concluded that 'the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known'. ("Speech on Liberty," Gordon Brown)
Well worth the read on Guy Fawkes day.
Via the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
[Update: As Nicko suggested in comments, I read too much into this, and in the Queen's Speech, Brown made no clear mention of ID cards or DNA databases.]
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A lot of people are saying she got what she deserved, or that she's lucky to be alive. These people probably think that Jean Charles de Menezes should have worn different clothing before getting on the London Metro, and that Andrew Meyer should have never asked a question of John Kerry.
I think this is a tremendously dangerous trend for society, and not just the creative or strange types. Should we give police such broad license to use force that everyone needs to consider, first and foremost, if their actions, their legal actions, might freak out a policeman?
If we do so, there are substantial costs. They're not visible. A few moments of time every day, considering how the police feel about you. A little less bizarre or riqsue public art. A little less creativity and verve in life, as we all ask "what if a cop shoots me?"
What would have happened to the first people designing and testing cell phones, if homemade electronics with a battery had been cause for concern? How would we test keyless car entry systems, if a police officer had shot people walking up to cars without unlocking them? Even Dave Maynor would be in trouble. Just look at his art:
When I was a kid, Radio Shack sold breadboards (like the one the student was wearing.) Tinkering with electronics was a key part of what launched the Homebrew computer club. Tinkering with dangerous chemicals was an important part of the development of modern photography.
Do we want everyone who tinkers, invents, hacks or makes projects to have to worry that cops with submachine guns are going to show up and ask agitated questions? Are those filters good for society?
Here at Emergent Chaos, we're fans of, well, emergent chaos that happens when those filters go away.
Photos: Lisa Poole, AP, and Dave Maynor, Errata, respectively.
[Update: Chris Soghoian makes the useful point that lots of bombs have no visible wires at all, being hidden inside other things. And while protecting against dumb terrorists is useful, it's not worth giving up our ability to tinker, build or innovate.]
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Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore's choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he'd packed for the trip.In related lying news, last week it came out that Director of National Intelligence McConnell lied to the Senate about wiretaps.The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government's screening program at the border is actually a "surveillance dragnet," according to the group's spokesman Bill Scannell.
"There is so much sensitive information in the documents that it is clear that Homeland Security is not playing straight with the American people," Scannell said. (Wired News, "U.S. Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read.")
If this was a political blog, we'd analyze the trend. Since we're all about information security, and pirates I'll just say that in an environment where the security measures are unclear and scary, you can expect users to behave in strange ways.
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What the hell are the idiots at Facebook thinking?
If there's anything stupider than banning a woman from breastfeeding in public, it is banning a picture of a woman breastfeeding on the grounds that it is "obscene", which is what the morons at Facebook have done, as reported (for example) by the Toronto Star.
Attention Facebook idiots:
"Obscene" is a legal term. If your lawyers tell you that something like this is obscene, you need lawyers who didn't go the Springfield Upstairs School of Law. It sure as hell looks like it has redeeming social value to me.
Much is being made about the hypocrisy of Facebook allowing umpteen pro-anorexia groups, when anorexia is itself demonstrably damaging to women and when such web content (according to recently-published research) is as well. I think this is a foolish argument.
Facebook's position isn't wrong because it does more harm than good, or because it is inconsistent. It is bad because being able to advocate controversial things is an essential element of freedom.
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John Mackey took a different approach. He didn't blog, but engaged in conversation on a message board about his company.
I think it's a good thing to be able to hear from CEOs shedding their spin, from journalists freed of their need for access, and everyone else who wants to put forth their own words to stand or disappear on their own strength.
Fake Steve is a little less interesting since the unveiling. The posts about immortality were a nice touch, but, I thought, over-wrought.
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Tourists visiting the White House must now adhere to a dress code which bans jeans, sneakers, shorts, miniskirts, T-shirts, tank tops, and flip-flops.
Since this is an extremely important rule, signs were posted and emails sent White House staff (writes Al Kamen in the Washington Post).
A telling detail, per the WaPo:
The e-mail reminder was all in capital letters.
Sigh.
(Title yanked from some Luna lyrics, .sig fragment from the Usenet Oracle via Wikipedia)
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In "Help EFF Examine Once-Secret FBI Docs," the folks at EFF ask for your help doing what Congress won't. Engaging in oversight of our civil servants:
We've already started scouring newly-released documents relating to the misuse of National Security Letters to collect Americans' private information. But don't let us have all fun — you, too, can dive into the docs and help uncover the truth about the FBI's abuse of power. All 1138 pages are freely downloadable (with searchable text) from EFF’s website, and we'll be posting a new batch every month.A related request, from Ryan Single over at 27B-6, is to "Help Wired News Make Sense of FBI Computer Crime Stats."
Really, there hasn't been such a good opportunity to uncover illegal activity by Uncle Sam the Church Committee hearings. It's like shootin' fish in a barrel.
Go take a look.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, posted on the Yahoo! Finance board for Whole Foods under the pseudonym Rahodeb, which is an anagram of Mackey's wife's given name. (It's also an anagram of "A Bread Ho," but since the WSJ doesn't stoop to that sort of cheap joke, it falls upon me.)
Rahodeb apparently posted prolifically for eight years, quitting last August. While some people are clucking their tongues at this, it seems that if a CEO is going to natter about his own company, it's okay if we're all surprised that it was him when he's outed.
Mackey says in his defense that he did a lot of trolling. "The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn't. Sometimes I simply played 'devil's advocate' for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too." For example, when someone on the board made fun of Mackey's haircut, Rahodeb said, "I think he looks cute!"
His final defense at any tongue-clucking comes from the circumstances under which he stopped posting as Rahodeb. He made a bet with Hubris12000 about the performance of Whole Foods stock, and that bet required that he stop posting if he lost. I think we've all seen web boards with both Rahodeb and Hubris12000 and didn't know which side to cheer for.
Full disclosure: "Mordaxus" is an anagram of "Doxmursa" which is thankfully not my SO's name. "Pseudonym" is an anagram of "Does my pun?" which is ungrammatical, but an interesting question nonetheless.
Photo "This Bread is Such a Ho" courtesy of Jason and Heather.
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In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts
John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
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The iTunes Plus music store opened up today, which sells non-DRM, 256kbit AAC recordings. In case you have missed the financial details, the new tracks are $1.29 per, but albums are still $9.99. You can upgrade your old tracks to high-quality, non-DRM, but you have to do it en masse and it's only for the ones presently offered.
In a delightful bit of evil, you can also set up iTunes to display iTunes Plus first. This effectively gives EMI the endcap.
Ars Technica reports that these tracks, however, contain your account name and email address in them in their article, "Apple hides account info in DRM-free music, too." They say,
With great power comes great responsibility, and apparently with DRM-free music comes files embedded with identifying information. Such is the situation with Apple's new DRM-free music: songs sold without DRM still have a user's full name and account e-mail embedded in them, which means that dropping that new DRM-free song on your favorite P2P network could come back to bite you.
I have verified that this is correct. Apple has encoded both the account name and email address using a steganographic coding mechanism standardized in ISO 10646. Colloquially, a subset of this is often called "ASCII."
I have also verified, however, that you can patch out this information using a variety of tools. Despite my snarky subject line, I did not use sed, I used a text editor. I happened to use one that Doesn't Suck, but I'm sure it will work with vi or emacs, or even Notepad. I give no further instructions, though, as it's easy to botch this if you're not well versed in the technical arts.
As I've noted in the past, they aren't the only one to watermark the files. Emusic does this as well, but with a more obscure scheme. It is possible that there is some other scheme that takes more wit than typing command-F, which is all I did. It is also possible that there are side effects; all I did was play the modified file all the way through and check the info screen, which I show below.
One last bit of advice -- if you're going to put music files up a P2P network, you cannot be paranoid. They are out to get you. It would be folly to take any music you bought from any service and serve it up.
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In 27 B Stroke 6 Threat Level, Kevin Poulsen writes, "News from Bizzaro World: Ashcroft Opposed Taps."
Kevin, your reality tunnel is showing. There are many things that Ashcroft was (I apologize for using the past tense), starting with prig and prude. I'm not particularly a fan of his, but the Venn diagram of what he valued and what I value looks more like the Mastercard logo than the Hooters logo, and I don't think that this is an ipso facto surrealism.
Back in 1998 as a Senator, Ashcroft was a supporter of Goodlatte's SAFE (Security And Freedom through Encryption) Act, not to be confused with the 2003 "Security and Freedom Ensured" act, which was an attempted limitation of the PATRIOT Act. When that SAFE Act was destroyed in the House, he with Patrick Leahy and Conrad Burns introduced the E-PRIVACY (Encryption Promotes the Rights of Individuals in the Virtual Arena Using Computers) bill. Despite the fact that there was no "Y" in their acronym (perhaps it was a silent "Y'all"), it's a pity it never was passed. The EFF gave a good news/bad news assessment with the good news being:
EFF is pleased to say that the E-PRIVACY Act is the most thoughtful piece of encryption legislation to date. Introduced by Senators John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), and Conrad Burns (R-MT), the new bill sharply varies from proposals favored by the Clinton Administration and law enforcement/national security agencies by easing export controls on mass market encryption products, limiting government access to decryption keys, and prohibiting the government from requiring key recovery mechanisms.
The bad news was that it created a new crime of using encryption as part of a criminal act. I'm not in favor of that, but we got that part, and we never got the good news.
After E-PRIVACY never went anywhere, there was the 1999 PROTECT Act, and you can find Ashcroft saying it doesn't go far enough fast enough.
Despite many quirks, such as being bothered by bare breasts, he favored bearing arms and clothing communications. His successor as AG, Alberto "Schultzie" Gonzales, often seems to be to be the incarnation of the cynical adage, "be careful what you ask for." Take a look through the EFF archives from '98, and feel a bit wistful. Read Dahllia Lithwick in Slate, and feel moreso. Ashcroft was a complex person with whom many of us had disagreements, not an inhabitant of Bizarro World.
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The BBC reports "Motorists hit by card clone scam:"
Thousands of motorists who use a bank card to buy petrol are thought to have lost millions of pounds in an international criminal operation. It is believed cards are being skimmed at petrol stations, where the card details and pin numbers are retrieved and money withdrawn from the account.That's impressive if the thieves have gone to the stations one by one, less so if they cracked a central billing computer. Hard to tell, because the U.K. doesn't (yet) require breach notification.About 200 of the UK's 9,500 petrol stations are thought to have been hit.
As to the effects of credit card theft, which I said were low, Ross Anderson has an article at Light Blue Touchpaper, "Extreme Online Risks:"
An article in the Guardian, and a more detailed story in PC Pro, give the background to Operation Ore. In this operation, hundreds (and possibly thousands) of innocent men were raided by the police on suspicion of downloading child pornography, when in fact they had simply been victims of credit card fraud. The police appear to have completely misunderstood the forensic evidence; once the light began to dawn, it seems that they closed ranks and covered up.See Ross's story for links and more details.
What I'd like to know is, are all those cameras helping reduce crime over in the UK?
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These days when you read an article about copyright that involves students, it also involves the RIAA or the MPAA. This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the other hand, is about two high-school students taking on Turnitin. The students specifically asked that certain papers of theirs not be included in Turnitin's database and despite this, the papers were included. The students are claiming that this is a violation of their copyright. Should be an interesting case to watch, regardless of the outcome, it's great to see students standing up for themselves.
[via: Sivacracy]
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Riffing on what Arthur has said, I'll take a slightly different exception to Mike Rothman's rant on anonymity.
Kathy Sierra's been treated pretty shabbily. The problem isn't anonymity, it's a lack of accountability. These people are behaving unacceptably, and we don't know who they are. However, there are cases where people have acted in similarly inappropriate ways, and the salient point is actually the opposite of anonymity -- celebrity. If an anonymous person said that a Supreme Court justice should be poisoned, ha ha, that's just a joke, they might get their IP address tracked down and then get a good talking-to. It seems possible that the very people defending the celebrity I refuse to name might feel differently if it were an anonymous person and a different Justice.
I'm really not in the mood to compare and contrast all of this with cartoonists and mullahs, slurs on a civilization that lived where you live now, insults upon a national leader, videos about political candidates, and so on. They're all about when inappropriate speech is so inappropriate that it's not just talk it's action. I'll just say again that Kathy Sierra has been treated shabbily, and I will smile when just desserts is handed to the perps. I know that Rothman's outburst is just an eye-rolling stupid thing said in the heat of righteous anger.
However, I'm going to part company with Arthur, because I'm not writing anonymously. I'm writing under a pseudonym and there's a load of difference. One of the major differences is, in fact, accountability. You, Gentle Reader, have some impression of me by now, and if I say something stupid, that will get mixed into your opinion.
A pseudonym is merely a mask. Several people have figured out from an ill-timed writing of mine that I am actually Steve Jobs. No one seemed to bite my hints about the Presidency. The point, anyway, is that acting and speaking in a way that is connected and accountable is often a good thing, anonymity or pseudonymity is if anything just a means to then end, which is separation, not a lack of accountability. The Cigarette-Smoking Man was anonymous, but we all knew who he was, and his actions also had their consequences.
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In the "inconvenient coincidences" category, it seems that Al Sharpton's great-grandfather was a slave owned by relatives of the late segregationist US senator Strom Thurmond.
Thurmond's niece, Ellen Senter (via an AP report) provides an interesting perspective:
I doubt you can find many native South Carolinians today whose family, if you traced them back far enough, didn't own slaves," said Senter, 61, of Columbia, South Carolina.
Except, that is, for the ones who were slaves, Mrs. Senter.
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At Balkinization, Scott Horton discusses how "Two Hundred Years Ago Today, the Global Campaign for Human Rights Achieved Its First Victory:"
"As soon as ever I had arrived thus far in my investigation of the slave trade, I confess to you sir, so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition. A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished, let the policy be what it might, - let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition."Scott says much and says it well. Go read his post for the history, the nature of the arguments put forth, their relationships to today, and the biographic information about Wilberforce.- William Wilberforce, speech before the House of Commons, May 12, 1789, Hansard vol. 28, col. 68
Today the cause of universal human rights celebrates an important anniversary. On this day two hundred years ago, the Parliament at Westminster voted an act for the abolition of the slave trade. A few decades later, Parliament also voted the manumission of slaves throughout the British Empire. By that time, in the 1830's, the trafficking in slaves was viewed as a jus cogens crime by legal scholars around the world and the global movement to abolish slavery altogether was well launched.
I'm left then, with few things to add, and so I'll say them briefly.
Advances in human freedom are cause for celebration.
There were strong economic arguments for the institution of slavery, but sometimes you have to do the right thing, even if it costs.
Painting from American University Slave Trade case studies
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``People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or question the President. [Quote slightly edited for clarity.]The quote is from Bloomberg, "George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons' Every Move."
I'm reminded of Milgram's authority experiment, where he had men in white lab coats telling people that they needed to deliver electrical shocks.
(Via Slashdot, a ways back. Photo of Roxanne by L.N.L.)
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First, you take a business away from legitimate enterprises, claiming only the state can run it without it sinking into a wretched hive of scum and villany. Then, you ban competition. Then, you decide that you're better off selling the monopoly rights to the highest bidder.
It's what Illinois is doing with their state lottery.
I was going to talk about the history of corporations as monopolies, and the issues with government run business, but Larry Ribstein said almost everything I wanted to say in "Selling State Lotteries."
Maybe the state could do the same with health care?
Image credit: Emergent Chaos.
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Why? Because MySpace complained. He's got a mailing list archive and it has some stuff in it that pissed MySpace off -- security information about phishing attacks. That's well and good, but GoDaddy yanked the whole domain!
Now we find out that GoDaddy gave its owner an hour to respond, when the data had been there for nine days. Well, that makes everything much better. Their rationale? We have to ProTeCT tHe chILdrEN!!! And on top of it all, it turns out that it was actually about one minute, showing that GoDaddy went to the same math school that Verizon did.
I actually don't care much about the details, which you can read here.
I'm willing to agree on the very little I know that the offending posts oughta go, but I think they massively over-reacted, and are compounding the over-reaction with more over-reaction.
I can tell you that never have I ever been so happy to be a lazy slug who has never gotten my domains off of Network Solutions! Many people have hectored me to change for years, but it's a pain and I never really liked the GoDaddy Super Bowl ads, either. I always defended myself by saying that having your domains with NetSol is like having your long distance with AT&T. They're the devil you know.
I'm so happy to find out I made the right decision. Thanks, GoDaddy! And to all you who have made fun of me for years -- Hah! You alphas work so hard, I'll bet it will be easy to switch.
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Thanks to manfromlaramie for finding this.
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The NYT reports, "Rough Treatment for 2 Journalists in Pakistan" and indeed reporting is dangerous in countries where they do not respect the sort of basic rights we in the civilized world have championed for nigh 800 years.
However, a computer was seized, sources were roughed up and possibly jailed or killed:
Come on. You don't have crypto? You've never heard of PGP (to name the obvious famous one)? That's so easy to find I won't even paste in the link. I hope when you get a new laptop you'll consider protecting your sources.Since then it has become clear that intelligence agents copied data from our computers, notebooks and cellphones and have tracked down contacts and acquaintances in Quetta.
All the people I interviewed were subsequently visited by intelligence agents, and local journalists who helped me were later questioned by Pakistan’s intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence.
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"They are a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past," said Father Efstathios Kollas, the President of Greek Clergymen.See "Ancient Greek gods' new believers" at the BBC, who, for once, don't 'misuse' quotes.Hundreds of followers of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Artemis, Aphrodite and Hermes stood in a circle, a mile from the Acropolis, in what was the first official religious service allowed in the grounds of an Ancient Greek temple.
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On January 18th, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As part of the hearings, there was a discussion of habeas corpus. As part of that discussion, Gonzales said:
There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.
Yes that's right, our own Attorney General thinks that there is no guaranteed right in the U.S. to habeas corpus. He even got more explicit when he said:
the Constitution doesn't say, 'Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.' It doesn't say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended . . .
Think Progress has the full transcript and video from C-SPAN2. including where Senator Spectre appropriately takes Gonzales to task. The video in particular is a must see if only for the goofy expressions on Gonzales's face.
Via Balkinization, who as usual has an excellent analysis.
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In a report to Congress to be released today, the Treasury Department concluded that the program was technologically feasible and has value, but said it needs to determine whether the counterterrorism benefit outweighs banks' costs of compliance and to address privacy concerns.Lemme help you, Treasury: it doesn't, and you won't. Please stop wasting our money.
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Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.All Hail Eris!
On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.
(that's it from Bob's bedside at his fnord by the sea)
RAW Memorial February 07
date to be announced
There are too many reasons why RAW was important. One of the ones most relevant to this jazz combo is that in Illuminatus! he and Robert Shea concern themselves with the problem of loss of liberty in the face of terrorist threat. (And they even use those words.) One of the things they discuss as part of the plot is the unwitting alliance between the authorities and the terrorists. It is only because of the terrorists that repressive authority can make repression palatable. And the repression itself makes the terrorists more than mere whackos.
It's a roller-coaster ride of a book (meaning bumpy and thrilling), but every bit as important as We, Gravity's Rainbow, or Animal Farm.
Edit (11 Jan 2007, 17:57):
See also Quinn Norton's missive on 27B Stroke 6.
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