Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

Technology

by Suzanne

Reform School

President George W. Bush and the ACLU are suggesting reforms for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Patriot Act. Not surprisingly, their ideas differ greatly.

In his weekly radio address, the President said his administration is proposing legislation that would modernize the 29 year old law to cover technologies that have been developed since FISA's passage. He cited four key reforms: updating legal language to accommodate new technology, protecting privacy interests of people within the United States, allowing the government to work more efficiently with private-sector entities like communications providers, whose help is essential. And lastly, the bill calls for streamlining administrative processes so the intelligence community can gather information quickly and effectively while protecting civil liberties. Reform number three is alarming while number four is questionable, at best. The Bush administration is twelve days overdue in answering a subpoena issued by Congress asking for documents related to the warrantless surveillance. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (VT) granted an extension on July 17. The Committee is expected to issue a new compliance date soon. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed a legal challenge to the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program by a vote of 2-1.
For the full decision see. The ACLU is weighing its options, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is a possibility.

Meanwhile, the ACLU's Patriot Act reform < http://action.aclu.org/reformthepatriotact/ > focuses on the National Security Letters (NSL) provision. This section of the Patriot Act allows the F.B.I. to demand (without judicial review) telephone and e-mail records, financial records, and credit information from a recipient of an NSL. There is a gag order associated with NSL prohibiting the recipient from disclosing the fact that they received a letter to the subject of the search and from disclosing the records provided. The ACLU challenged the gag order provisions in Doe v. Ashcroft and Doe v. Gonzales. In both cases the judges ruled that the gag orders were unconstitutional on First and Fourth Amendment grounds. The Patriot Act Reauthorization Act of 2005 changed some of the provisions. An NSL recipient can now disclose that they have been a recipient while seeking legal advice or complying with the request. Recipients may also challenge compliance with the NSL and the gag order provisions. Additionally, the government was given the ability to seek judicial enforcement of NSLs in non-compliance situations. Congressmen Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced a bill on Thursday that proposes a fix for the gag rule. It also calls for a limit to the use of NSL's to investigations directly connected to terrorism thus limiting fishing expeditions that became public in the Office of the Inspector General's Report.

In case you're keeping score, NSL requests prior to the passage of the Patriot Act (2000)? About 8,500. NSL requests between 2003-2005 (after the passage of the Patriot Act)? 143,074. See Inspector General's Report.

Posted on July 30, 2007

Gonzalez is passed the torch of dishonesty

Alberto Gonzalez is a liar. Or so says FBI Director, Robert S. Mueller. In sworn testimony before Congress, Mueller contradicted Gonzalez's sworn avowal last week that his bizarre hospital visit to former Attorney General John Ashcroft was not about approving the probably illegal NSA warrantless wiretap program called TSP (Terrorist Surveillance Program) secretly authorized by President Bush four years ago. The Justice Department had concluded that the program was not legal and Ashcroft's acting deputy, James Comey, had supported that view. Gonzalez had apparently visited Ashcroft to get him to reverse his Deputy. Ashcroft was under sedation, but to his credit, refused to do so. Comey had threatened to resign as a protest for the continuation of the illegal surveillance program.

In addition to that lie, Gonzalez has repeatedly muddied the waters on the politics behind the firing of several US Attorneys last year.

Gonzo journalism can be compelling and thrilling. Gonzo politics is embarrassing to this country.

Attorney General Alberto "Judge" Gonzalez, has lied under oath and if he continues to resist resigning the post that he currently holds, will be doing this country a grave disservice. "Judge" Gonzalez may hold the technical qualifications for this job but he lacks the moral credentials. Like much of Bush's senior staff, Gonzalez is morally adrift, clinging to the shady notion that the President's desires trump Congress, the courts and most importantly, the American people. Several prominent newspapers and op-ed columnists have lambasted Gonzalez for his lack of integrity.

He is a disgrace to the United States.

Posted on July 27, 2007

Sony's harmonic EULA

This is hilarious. Here's the Sony/BMG end-user license sung by Toronto recording artist Brian Joseph Davis, thanks to Boing-Boing.

Posted on July 26, 2007

Airlines out passengers--not that there's anything wrong with that

It gets worse. The European Commission just voted to give access on passengers' sexual orientations to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Why doesn't this upset anyone?

Posted on July 25, 2007

1 Comment

What's slimier than a politican?

In the reptilian pecking order of less-than-ethical professions, none is so slimy as a politician. I always knew this, of course, but I get constant reaffirmation of that daily. Consider, for instance, a new bipartisan bill that passed Congress yesterday banning payment for spouses for campaign work. My first thought at reading this, was "My God, they do this?" Yes they do. A study by the watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, shows that over one hundred Chairmen and ranking minority members of House Committees inappropriately used their positions to benefit their families, including direct payment for campaign work.

Come on, they pay their wives for this? Why don't constituents boot them out when they find out about it? Jaded as I thought I was, this surprised me.

When will the USA dump our professional politician class and replace them with people that have lives outside politics and who do not see an elected position the same way that little boys see magic beans or cows in fairy tales?

Posted on July 24, 2007

trojan missile.jpg

ads ad infinitum

The first time that I've noticed a profession grousing about mandatory advertising is of all things, professional sports photographers. They're balking at new NFL rules requiring the photogs to wear vests that sport logos for Canon and Reebok. They claim that it's against their code of ethics, but I think that they're just embarrassed because it looks stupid.

This trend of companies making a few advertising bucks by advertising in highly inappropriate places is disturbing and needs a couple of pushbacks to establish where the line is going to be. How about police cruisers adorned with corporate endorsements? Or schools with advertisements in gyms pushing caffeinated, sugared soft drinks? Both of these have happened. Maybe military equipment with ads painted on them?

Posted on July 23, 2007

Advertising

The new soldier will keep on ticking

This is intriguing. The Defense Department is holding a $1 million prize competition to find a solution to reduce battery weight and size in a typical soldier's load out. The average soldier carries 20-40 lbs of batteries, more than their ammunition. The winning prototype (doesn't have to be a final product), must be wearable and weigh no more than 8.8 Kgs and be capable of a sustained power output of 20 watts/day for 4 days.

This has very interesting ramifications for the personal computer and associated gadgetry industries. Most of us that are "wired", such as myself, carry far too many chargers and batteries when we go somewhere. I, for instance, currently use a Blackberry (w/extra battery), MacBook Pro (w/extra battery), handheld Garmin GPS, video iPod, handheld digitial tape recorder, wi-fi network finder, bluetooth headset and easily half a dozen interchangable power cords. It would be nice to consolidate them into a single powerpack. A single charging station that weighed less than 1.5 lbs would be nice, too.

The really interesting inventions would be long-life batteries that would power a digital gadget for weeks and some day, wireless power.

Posted on July 19, 2007

Technology

Illegal Potters abound on Web

The new Harry Potter book is leaking all over the Internet. I think that I shall decline to put in a link as to where, although I found a copy and I'm sure most people could if they looked hard enough. There are several sites publishing synopses, as well as a series of photographs of the book's pages, held out by someone's hand.

What's most interesting about this is that if any book in history should have been protected, it's this one. The publisher has used almost draconian measures with the bookstores and distributors, trying to stop even a single copy from appearing in advance of Saturday's "witching hour", when the real book will pop up simultaneously around the world in stores everywhere.

Nothing is safe anymore, IP-wise. Granted a human being had to get hold of the physical copy somewhere, but after that, it's easy to use the Web to distribute the illicit copy, regardless of it being text, video or sound. It will keep on happening and I suspect, will get much worse.

The only real solution is a new model for content sales and pricing, more liberal personal usage laws and a new and innovative approach to content encryption.

Posted on July 18, 2007

Intellectual Property

spy vs spy.jpg

Auctioning off security

A Swiss start-up company, WabiSabiLabi, is providing a high-end luxury product for today's information consumptive society--security. Their wares are software vulnerabilities. They provide an auction service connecting up those who discover these flaws (typically researchers) and those who may wish to buy them (usually the affected companies).

Sure this sounds outrageous, but it's actually quite common for researchers to sell the results of their findings to companies, helping them close their products' holes. This approach is designed to create an efficient marketplace, valuing the data close to what the market will actually bear.

The take home point here is that in the future, everything that can be learned will be for sale. Every piece of data has its price and perhaps the biggest use of the Internet over the long haul is to be the efficient market machine, valuing every point of electronic information, no matter how esoteric.

Posted on July 17, 2007

Security

Video thrilled the political star

It's started. Not just the 2008 Presidential race, but the inevitable Internet involvement. And by "involvement", I don't just mean a couple of blogs, I'm talking about full-scale mass media. Take for example, the summer rave song, "Obama Girl". It features a very attractive young lady named Amber Lee Ettinger gyrating and "singing" (actually sung by Leah Kauffman) about her crush on Barack Obama while wearing tight shorty-shorts. This bit has become so popular, it's been feature on CNN and mentioned in the Economist. The website is so full of itself from the song's popularity that they sell "Obama Girl" merchandise and even have 'deleted scenes' from the YouTube video, if you can believe that.

There's a followup that was just posted today called Obama v. Giuliani,
in which Ms. Kaufman and equally attractive backup singers get into a singing match with some Rudy supporters. The video features delightful lines like: "stop your fussin, at least Obama didn't marry his cousin" and "I still want Rudy Giuli-on-me".

I highly recommend watching it.

Of course it started last election with the Jib-Jab people who had some hilarious bush-kerry stuff.

I think that you have to view the role of the Internet in this election as analogous, maybe even parallel to that of big media. Even though there is a plethora of dreck on the Internet, there is good stuff and it does rise to the top rather quickly. And the survival formula for material on the Internet is the same as that on broadcast television--being entertaining. I think that we're in for an interesting, if slightly bumpy ride in 2008 and what's left of 2007.

I wonder if web sites should be forced to give equal time to the other candidates....

Posted on July 16, 2007

Taxpayer dollars pays off phone companies

by Suzanne

According to Democracy Now, headlines from July 11, 2007, privacy experts are alarmed over a new FBI program that would pay private companies to retain millions of phone and Internet records that the FBI is legally barred from keeping itself. Companies would be responsible for at least two years of network calling records. This would allow the FBI to avoid laws banning the collection of data not directly related to a criminal investigation or intelligence matter. Democracy Now reports that Verizon, MCI, and AT&T are the proposed companies.

Posted on July 13, 2007

Feeding the Feds--Look up salaries

Here's an interesting thing to try...Go here and you can look up the salary of any federal employee. Try it, you can look up your friends and neighbors who work for the government and find out that they don't make as much as you thought that they did.

It's interesting to note who isn't listed, though. Why, Congress and the White House. Of course, every time that there's some new kind of privacy issue, the lawmakers are strangely exempt. For instance, the notorious US don't-call-registry also exempted political fund raising.

A friend of mine sent me this link but I won't mention his name because otherwise you could look him up (hint: his first name is Rich.)

I don't know if disclosing federal salaries is actually a privacy violation but I probably wouldn't like it if it were me. As more and more information becomes available on the web, couldn't we make some kind of attempt to make it universal, so everyone's salary become visible? I'm sure that this would be provocative, but it might be interesting to make IRS returns a matter of public record.

Posted on July 12, 2007

Harried Harry Hurtles Hurdles and Hurries to Harrods

As the literate Western world anxiously awaits the delivery of the new Harry Potter book on the 21st, some educational researchers are claiming that the books are not the panacea for improving children's' reading as many have claimed.

Studies are showing that even though many, many children will read a Harry Potter book, their subsequent interest in reading will taper off until it's about where it would have been anyway sans Potter. The Times article offers several plausible reasons why this might be true. The books are getting longer (going from 309 to the upcoming Deathly Hallows784 pages). Nonwhite children have trouble relating to the lily-white world of Harry and the gang (yes, I know that there's a child of color that announces the Quidditch matches and Harry gets to kiss a young Asian girl, but the major characters come out of a Wonder Bread bag.) The Times goes on to point out that appreciating narrative fiction may not be a good goal anyway, since most jobs require a working ability to quickly read and synthesize nonfiction or factual information, such as from the Internet.

I like the Harry Potter books and even if they don't significantly alter the national reading statistics, they're of some value. For one thing, they have undoubtedly inspired hundreds, if not thousands of would-be J.K. Rowlings who want to write the next fantasy book. For another, they add a new, modern classic to the pantheon of the Western world's children's literature, inspiring hope in generations of young Harrys, neglected by their family and figuratively living under a stairs, waiting for their Hagred to come and give them their birthright. How many of us that had bad childhoods don't think that someday, somewhere, we'd found out that we were more important than we had been treated hithero up to now? The magic of Harry Potter is delivering the message to children that they are special.

Posted on July 11, 2007

3 Comments

Pop Culture

Bush screws Miers

President Bush is moving closer towards a legal confrontation with Congress this week over his directive to two former aides (including former Counsel Harriet Miers) to refuse to testify on the Hill regarding internal White House deliberations over the apparently politically-motivated firings of several US attorneys. His instructions to his aides put them in a difficult position because they risk being cited for contempt and their legal shielding by citing Executive Privilege is thin and lacks adequate case law. Harriet Mier's Supreme Court nomination last year was the only abortion that President Bush has ever publicly supported. She is also ugly.

I would like to see this showdown occur, because I believe that the Bush/Cheney White House invisibility cloak is a bad one for this country. We need a check and balance on each of the branches, The White House should be monitored by Congress, just as Congress's best-laid plans and politicos are often tied up by DC escort services.

Posted on July 10, 2007

Judging the wild internet

Another body blow to privacy on the Internet was delivered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who ruled on Friday in United States v. Forester that visited IP addresses and email header information such as the From and To fields are privacy-wise, the same as a dialed phone number and thereby subjected to a lesser standard of probable cause to enable the government to get a warrant.

The Court did mention in the ruling that a full url might require a higher standard because it reveals more information.

So, what's it mean? For starters, the value of shrouded IP relay systems just went up, as has the importance of both junky freemail accounts and pseudonymous remailers, such as they still are.

It's also one of the more intelligent rulings that I've seen related to the Internet. Most Appeals Courts either boot the issue completely or make a sweeping, unenforceable ruling. This Court has started the slicing up of the wild animal that is the Internet with razor thin legal knives, portioning the tasty bits for generations of lawyers to gorge themselves on. Many similar rulings will follow, I'm afraid.

The big one, of course, will be the one that outlaws usage of encryption.

Posted on July 09, 2007

1 Comment

Scooters in Paradise

Scooter Libby's jail sentence was commuted yesterday by President Bush, who gleefully claimed that he made the decision by himself in the same tone that my young kids used to use about solo potty endeavors.

Paris Hilton was forced to serve two weeks in jail for driving with a suspended license (twice). Scooter was sentenced for lying to a Grand Jury, although ostensibly he was being investigated for outing Valerie Plame, a CIA agent.

To me, both sentences seem harsh. TMZ makes the comparison today, citing their own polling showing that 90% of the 120,000 people who responded, believed that Paris should serve the time and 60% felt the same way about Scooter.

I could care less about Paris Hilton. It sounds to me like she got sentenced because of an attitude that wealthy celebrities often have, that somehow normal rules don't apply to them. Maybe her short sojourn in the slammer will put a scare into the 'A' list, although somehow I doubt it. I suspect that that the real outcome will be a maturing change in Paris...no one can do that kind of jail time and emerge unscathed. She was probably terrified every minute she was there and I can empathize with the fear that she must have had using the unsheltered toilet in front of dozens of hard-core, highly amused prisoners.

Scooter Libby is part of an elite group of draft-dodging, yet war-mongering scofflaws. He and his boss, the aptly named "Dick" Cheney were part of that ol' white-boy sing along that we call the Iraqi War. I think that Scooter should go to jail for something, if nothing else, for being the VP's buttboy. Lying to a Grand Jury is a serious thing, but in Bill Clinton's case, it seemed to be used as a political tool to get at someone you don't like. Now that I think of it, the same argument applies to Scooter. Scooter's recent sentence commutation by President Bush, was, however, a travesty of justice. Harsh sentence or not, we do not all have friends like 'W' who can wave their wand and keep us out of jail. As rich and famous as she is, Paris could not avoid jail time. Since Scooter was effectively covering Bush and Cheney's ample white asses, it seems as if they should have not been able to issue him a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Paris and Scooter. Scooter and Paris. Forever locked in our memories as two badboys caught and over-sentenced in the year of crime. Who would have ever guessed that out of the two, the one who would do jail time would be the flighty socialite with a moving violation?

Posted on July 04, 2007

Pop Culture

Broken down Yahoo

Now that Jerry Yang is running Yahoo again, it'll get better right? I'm not so sure that Yahoo isn't broken beyond fixing. From my narrow perspective, they are the largest seller of intangible goods on the planet and as such are completely reliant on the goodwill of their clientele. Therefore they wouldn't want to alienate them, right?

Wrong.

They've announced a new program called Smart Ads, or personalized ads for sheep, er "customers;" like Yahoo has any. Smart Ads is a Yahoo-run database that is loaded up with the internals of a company's advertisements, key words, descriptive text, pictures. Yahoo then runs profiling software against the personal information of their users, like demographics, recent activity, historical searches and bought or derived information about the victim. They can then match the closest fitting ads to the person and even the state of mind that the chump is in at the moment.

At some level, this matching process is inevitable. It could even be argued that it's consumer friendly because it keeps away the noise or ill-fitting ads.

The problem that I have with this is twofold--first is that the consumer has absolutely no control over the process nor do they have the ability to directly examine and if necessary, challenge the stored profiles. My second problem is that it's Yahoo. I do not trust Yahoo and since they've released this program without a hint of additional privacy protection for their "customers", they clearly could care less.

Fundamentally Yahoo's business model is screwed up. They live or die on the "portal strategy" where people have to do everything on the Net on the Yahoo site. Although their actions made them avant-garde 10 years ago, today they are obstructionist. I don't believe that there will be a Yahoo 5 years from now. 10 years from now, people will laugh if you tell them that there used to be a company worth billions of dollars with that name.

Posted on July 03, 2007

Cheney suppresses justice

by Suzanne

The White House, the Vice President and the Justice Department have until July 18th to comply with the Senate Judiciary Committee's request for information about warrantless surveillance. This is the tenth time the Committee has requested information about the National Security Agency's (NSA) illegal wiretapping from the Bush Administration. The first nine times the Committee did not use it's subpoena power. The tenth time might be the charm and in honor of it the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) created Subpoena Watch. It features a subpoena check list with the suspects, their actions (or lack thereof), and status of subpoena issuances and document delivery. They spearheaded the case against the NSA (ACLU v. NSA). Meanwhile, they have asked public utility companies in 24 states to investigate the phone companies and protect the privacy of millions of Americans.

Posted on July 02, 2007