Why Obama is dead wrong on Computer Privacy

A recent article on Wired "Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned" lead me to think that if the "Leader of the Free World" has this one so wrong, then maybe a few other people do too. This one is just too important to let slip by.

The case, which President Obama would like to see revisited centers around the infamous case of Major League Baseball players and steroid use, and how information was obtained on some of these people. The reality is, the technical issue of this case is one that reaches into every one of our lives, in ways which we have little control over. From the decision:

"the warrant was limited to the records of the ten players as to whom the government had probable cause. When the warrant was executed, however, the government seized and promptly reviewed the drug testing records for hundreds of players in Major League Baseball (and a great many other people)."

Think about this. What servers does your email go through? Do you use yahoo? Gmail? All of these peoples drug tests (which is confidential information, many were told at the time that it was completely anonymous!) were viewed by the police, simply by accident of where they were stored. This would be like the police getting a search warrant to look at the emails of a known criminal, but instead, browsing through everyone elses email who uses gmail.

Are you sure that set of turntables that you bought off craigslist wasn't stolen? Without this ruling, if anyone at your ISP were to commit a crime, and have their email on the same server as you, then the police could legitimately consider your email "in plain sight" and feel free to make sure that you haven't been talking to anyone that they know about.

If this ruling is overturned, it will be a dark day for anyone who uses email, and doesn't run their own mail server. Without this ruling, the police may as well be CC'd on every email that you send and receive. Every steamy love note, every purchase, all of it. All because, it happened to be stored on a computer that also stored the information of some under investigation.

(Edit: This comment from The Volokh Article demonstrates a real example of why this is important. Apparently this sort of "Grab and Search" has already been abused in Civil matters by the Church of Scientology)

The Most Unpopular Position: Real Justice

Think for a moment: What images come to your mind when you hear the word "Justice"? Do see judges slamming their gavels down? Men going to jail to "pay for their crimes"? Do you think of free men being exonerated and set free? Each of these is justice, in its own way. There is another side to justice, a far less popular side. It is justice, sometimes, when the guilty walk free.

The Obama Administration has said that they will attempt to bring many of the people at Guantanamo Bay detention center to trials. This should be heralded as a victory for justice. A victory for the rule of law and the belief that it is patently unjust to dole out punishment without due process, they might be lowly criminals, but WE HAVE STANDARDS!

Also just, some will be set free. Freeing a man who you can't find grounds to give his day in court is always just and right.

The last group should give us pause. This is the group of people who cannot be brought to trial, but are determined "dangerous" and cannot be let free. This is a travesty of justice, which shows low moral character of our leadership, and a lack of faith in the very system which they are charged with leading.

What stops illegal searches? What stops police from entering your home and snooping? What protects you from torture when you are a suspect?

We have a concept in our legal system "Fruit from the Poisoned Tree". It is a check and balance against police power. Any evidence obtained through coercion, through torture, through illegal discovery, is not admissible in court. So if a police officer is tempted to beat you, tempted to threaten you or your family, he does so with full knowledge that HE is ruining the case against you, and HE is going to be the reason that you walk free.

This is a powerful check and balance, and one that is not just good: It is FUNDAMENTAL to justice. Without this concept, there may as well be no courts, and no laws.

In the end, it doesn't matter what our enemies do. It matters little if they live or die. They cannot hope to actually hurt us, except to make us compromise our ideals. When we torture them, they win. When we hold them without trial, they win. When we make exceptions to our laws because of them, they win. They win because of what WE do.

If we don't have enough faith in our own system to send them to trial, if we don't have enough faith in the system to reject torture, and reject ANY standard less than "beyond a reasonable doubt", then, they win.

Our country has itself in a precarious position, but one where the path is obvious. If we look at the tradition of our laws, if we look at WHY our legal system is setup the way that it is, then there is little doubt that justice, in this case, leaves us unsatisfied, and feeling a bit cheated and empty. That is because justice doesn't do one night stands. We are in a committed relationship with Lady Justice, and we cheated on her; and now she asks us to do right by her.

It is sad but, we did this to ourselves. THEY didn't make us water board them. They didn't make us hold people without trials. We did that all on our own. We deserve to send a message to ourselves: These actions will NOT be tolerated, even if it means releasing a little bit of scum back into the world. It is our fault. Its time for us to eat our crow, and vow that next time, we will do it without debasing ourselves.

Squeeky Wheel gets grease; Eats Crow

I would like to send out a huge thanks to Steve Jaques at the MA Turnpike Authority. I also want to suggest that anyone who has had the problems that I did, hit up their contact page. Steve is a great guy, and explains things in a very rational manner. It makes a lot more sense now.

They claim to have sent letters to me about my credit card information. I never saw these letters, had I seen them, I may have never started complaining, and might have avoided the whole process. So its either the US postal service, or one of my roomates was an idiot and put them in a spot where they got lost. Oh well.

The real surprise here, is I talked to two level headed people today. While I was on the phone with Steve, I told him that I had been on hold waiting to talk to someone at the RMV about getting my car registered again; because their website was broken. He said he would pass that on.

About 5 minutes after I got off the phone with him, I had called the RMV again and was again on hold. Then I got a call from a nice woman at the RMV whose name I did not catch. She was extremely pleasant. Took the report of the broken website, and then... took my credit card information and offered to fax me a copy of my registration!

While I may not agree with some of the things they do, or the way that they go about it, some of them are good people, and I guess that its worth remembering that. I still want to see all of their departments spun off into non-profit orgs, and to see them move completely to non-extortion based revenue streams, but... thats a fight for another day and to be taken to people far above their pay grade.

Civil Disobidience: A Duty to do it right

Last week, I found myself issuing forth the following tweet:

#Freedom fighters resist #occupation in.... #Pittsburgh ?!?( http://bit.ly/4LIlQ )

It turned my stomach to see the oppression of protesters by police. The very idea that a person would be restricted to specific "zones" just to speak their mind is an offense against the very concepts fundamental to our republic. It is a violation of the right of people to peacefully assemble. There is just no excuse for this behavior by any state that wants to count itself in the United States Federal Union, it is shameful.

I am not interested in convincing the police, or mayors, or governors of this fact. While it would be great, I don't believe any one of them will listen. I want now to address my brethren, the protesters. When I saw the police come in to force people away, when I saw the tactics they used, I was disgusted and uplifted. Disgusted by what they planned to do, uplifted by knowing that the first to move to violence is the weakest opponent in public opinion.

When I saw protesters roll dumpsters towards the police line, I laughed, but then was made sad by the knowledge that this was going to undermine the whole cause.

Allow me to bring up an important concept, something that I have tried to take to heart, as hard as it can be. Henry Davit Thoreau said it best:

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. -- Henry Davit Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

The use of violence to suppress speech is a most enormous wrong. It is not a mans duty to right it, merely to not help it. Fighting back with violence does not help the cause, a fact born out in public opinion over and over. In truth, those who oppose the police with violence do nothing but bolster the enemies cause.

I am no pacifist. If I thought that freedom could come from mowing down that line of police and bringing massacre to every single one of them, I would wholeheartedly suggest it. There is no duty to toil under the whip of oppression either. The simple fact is, the media and those in power have deep business interest in each others continued existence. We MUST NOT hand them PR victories, because Hearts and Minds are the only battle fields that matter.

So, rather than throwing stones, rolling dumpsters, and the like, I would like to suggest a few older tactics that could work to win much bigger PR victories.

First, read, and reread the following statement on Civil Disobedience, written by one of the few real winners of a struggle, Mahatma Gandhi:

1. A civil resister (or satyagrahi) will express no anger.


2. One will sometimes suffer the anger of the opponent.


3. In doing so, one will put up with assaults from the opponent, never retaliate; but one will not submit, out of fear of punishment or the like, to any order given in anger.


4. When any person in authority seeks to arrest a civil resister, he will voluntarily submit to the arrest, and he will not resist the attachment or removal of his own property, if any, when it is sought to be confiscated by authorities.


5. If a civil resister has any property in his possession as a trustee, he will refuse to surrender it, even though defending it he might lose his life. He will, however, never retaliate.


6. Retaliation includes swearing and cursing.


7. Therefore a civil resister will never insult his opponent, and therefore also not take part in many of the newly coined cries which are contrary to the spirit of ahimsa.


8. A civil resister may not salute the Union Flag, but he will not insult it or officials, English or Indian.


9. In the course of the struggle if anyone insults an official or commits an assault upon him, a civil resister will protect such official or officials from the insult or attack even at the risk of his life.

Think backwards from the youtube video. Think backwards from the news reel. Do you want to be seen amongst the rowdy crowd, attacking the police line? Or do you want them to show a video of peaceful people, walking slowly with palms open and visible, politely asking for liberty?

I think the biggest victory ever would be to show hundreds of protesters, polite, and unarmed, walking dutifully into the police line and being beat down, one after another, offering no resistance. Tear gas wont kill you. The military practice with masks off all the time. It sucks, but if you can get up and continue walking, if you can make it to the baton that smashes your nose... you win.

Give them NO footage of rocks being thrown. No footage of ANY violence but "The violence inherent in the system". You are not there to beat them, you are there to lose. To be beaten. To show the face of the beast.

That is not to say that you can't be assertive. I think protesters should practice the soetto stomp. Sadly I can no longer find a description of it online (where I learned about it). So I will describe it here.

The move takes practice. It is basically a human chain mail, a form of modified (peaceful) phalanx. Each person links arms to the person to his right and his left, and then grabs the belt of the person to his front. Like this a wide and deep chain can be formed. Once the block begins to move, not even killing the people in the front and sides with machine gun fire will stop it.

I was thinking that, with a little more practice, the front rows could partially disengage on contact with the police line, forming a wedge to break their line (which the broken off people would be wedged aside with the line and able to fall back to the back of the formation). This would be peaceful, it would be almost unstoppable. (hint: To get moving a cadence could be helpful)

That is all I have. I hope that some of you will take this to heart and the next G20 conference can be overshadowed by the stories of police abuse, and not, the story of rowdy protesters.

Mass Pike Fast Lane Violation Scam

Edit: This issue is resolved, and while I may not agree in totality with the reasons, I do appreciate the response and have written a blog post on a more positive experience: (squeeky wheel gets grease eats crow)

Original Post:
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority was kind enough to send me a couple of notices to inform me of what a disgusting scam they have been able to use our tax dollars to set up. I put it right up there in terms of honesty with those telemarketers who try to sell people auto warranties on ten year old cars. Don't take my word for it, here is some text taken directly from a violation notice. (edit: more on FAST LANE Fee Scams)

If you are a FAST LANE or E-ZPass customer, you are encouraged to fill out the Appeal Form that was included with the Toll Violation Notice. If your appeal is accepted the $50.00 violation fine will be waived and you will be required to pay only the missed toll amount and a $5.00 administrative fee.

This seems pretty straightforward, if you ignore several facts:

1. I had my transponder in the car and it was registered.
2. My credit card on the account had expired, the ONLY needed remedy was for them to notify me of the issue so that I could update the card information.
3. They sent a picture of my license plate, and used the Registry Of Motor Vehicles database to look up my registration information.

Of course, the appeal form asks for a FAST LANE account statement. The same statements that they have not sent me in a few years now. So I set it aside and said "I will have to deal with that later.". Later came when, a month later, the two $50 violations became two $90 violations. A competent company, that wasn't trying to fleece anyone would have made this a single $5 fee. The Mass Turnpike Authority wants $180.

So I appealed the violation. I was informed that I would need to FAX in my appeal, and then call back in two days, because they don't notify people of their appeal results. They ask you to write an appeal and fax them, and just like they can't be bothered to lookup your account information, they can't be bothered to tell you the result of your appeal.

When I called, I was informed that my fine was reduced from $180 to $60. No mention was made of the fact that this $60 should have been a $5 administrative fee. AT this point I paid, since my car needs to be re-registered, and they sent a notice to the RMV that I owe them money.

So what we have here is a state run agency, that has setup a system designed to cause overcharges, with an annoying process that only removes a portion of the charges... EVEN WHEN IT IS CLEARLY THEIR OWN SYSTEM THAT CAUSED THE CHARGES.

This is a scam pure and simple. It is blatant, and I cannot recommend that anyone in the state of MA get a FAST LANE pass or use their E-ZPass within the state. If you have an E-ZPass, put it in a metal box when you enter MA. Do NOT risk using the FAST LANE system, it just isn't worth it.

That is, unless you like the idea of having to write an appeal just to be overcharged $55 for their mistake. In that case, enjoy!

Of course, if you don't like what a scam the MA FAST LANE system is, then you COULD complain to these people.

When Decency Trumps Liberty, We All Lose

NPR's Andy Carvin sent out the following retweet today:

Two words for ya: basiji bloggers RT @evgenymorozov: on how authoritarian regimes use crowdsourcing to muzzle free speech http://is.gd/2q7Cm

This is really just the latest incarnation of what we have seen here in the US. A minority of people, who are willing to organize around their personal offense at someone else's statement are able to magnify their voices to drown out the majority of people who have better things to do. We saw it with FCC complaint campaigns like this one.

It may seem that a site like youtube seems pretty liberal with its "Community Guidelines" however, it still starts down the slippery slope of not allowing "pornography", or "bad stuff like animal abuse, drug abuse, under-age drinking and smoking, or bomb making." and also "YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust."

The problem here is that, everyone will be offended by something. Youtube (and many other sites) implement "Flag Systems" that are all the rage. You let the community flag problems and have things taken down. So is it any surprize that armies of "the offended" will now spring up to make their voices heard above the rest?

How do we define pornography when the internet has people from all countries on it? Here in the US, its generally illegal for a woman to be topless in public; In France, being topless at the beach is simply a part of life normal for women from birth through old age; then there is Saudi Arabia, where women are covered from head to ankle.

It is plainly clear to me that there is only one solution here, only one real choice. Show nothing, or show everything. Get rid of any shadow of censorship and declare everything ok, or shut down the site completely, because everything will offend someone.

It was thirteen years ago when John Perry Barlow transmitted "A Cyberspace Independence Declaration". I think it is high time that the citizens of this space take heed and demand the independance that we need. Why should we continue to subject ourselves to the tyrrany of the whiners and the nannies?

These well meaning, if misguided, ninnies who seek to force others into silence, are worst than all the crimnals and miscreants combined. We should not kow-tow to them one iota.

I will let John Close it out:

...more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have
declared war on Cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling, and
powerful we can be in our own defense.

Trust is a Weakness

When Introversion put out their game Uplink with the tagline "Trust is a Weakness", they hit a nail right between the eyes. Whether it is confidence men tricking you into Trusting their shady business deals, or a hacker abusing the fact that your central server trusts the edge server that he is now in control of... trust is a weakness.

This fact seems to be utterly lost on national governments, as they happily continually turn around and ask us to "trust them" in so many various ways. Trust them, even, to force an industry to compromise everyones security, as long as we let the Government hold the keys to the backdoor. Surely nobody will "slip in".

Except, that is exactly what happened in what this article calls "The Athens Affair". It is a great tale of a CEO suicide, and compromise of untold numbers of secrets, both state and private. To help those with short attention spans, from the article:

rogue software used the lawful wiretapping mechanisms of Vodafone's digital switches to tap about 100 phones and handed over a list of bugged numbers. Besides the prime minister and his wife, phones belonging to the ministers of national defense, foreign affairs, and justice, the mayor of Athens, and the Greek European Union commissioner were all compromised. Others belonged to members of civil rights organizations, peace activists, and antiglobalization groups; senior staff at the ministries of National Defense, Public Order, Merchant Marine, and Foreign Affairs; the New Democracy ruling party; the Hellenic Navy general staff; and a Greek-American employee at the United States Embassy in Athens.

This is the direct result of what has become a nearly universally accepted requirement that many nations place on the phone systems. A requirement that has hamstrung the entire industry, throughout many countries, and prevented further progress in personal security, progress which would have protected all of these organizations and secrets.

That requirement, is that the communications providers must provide a way for the Government to "tap" whatever line they choose. Of course they surround this with courts but, in the end, an open door is an open door. This makes no more sense than requiring people not to install door locks, because you might want to enter their houses.

It seems innocuous, but it has prevented several rather simple advances of technology which would benefit s all. Why do our handsets not offer, right now, real end to end encryption? The technology has existed for years, if the markets were allowed to have people seriously working on this and delivering products to the public, there is no reason it couldn't be standard on every phone.

Even something as dirt simple and infrastructureless as OTR, deployed standard, would greatly decrease the value of even mounting this sort of attack in the first place. It would give us the option of not trusting the phone company, the government, and their ability to keep others out of their systems. The option to not allow this severe weakness to continue.

To dishonest people, the world is awash with trust to abuse. Laptop hard drives with credit card data, medical data, industrial data. Phone lines that can be tapped to get juicy personal details, or gain advantage in business, or even help plan assasinations and terrorist acts. Each one of these that we can raise the bar on, each is a deterrent. Each makes dishonesty less profitable.

Instead, we defer to the wisdom of governments who tell us that its so vitally important that they have access, that we must trust them. Afterall, they would never do anyting wrong. Nor would the major multinational telecom corperations, nor any of their employees acting rogue, nor even the rogues who break into their networks and gain access. You trust all those people don't you?

The Atheneans do, and I am sure that right now, they are so glad that they did.

Deeper than Race

It as been hard to avoid the coverage of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr, because it has turned into the big race debate all over again. All over the news, people just seem to have let slip from their minds one universal truth: The police have a real tendency to be dick-headed egomaniacs, and routinely arrest people for little to no reason when they feel insulted.

Hot headed people, of any race, can tell you this one. Had Henry Gates been white, and upset about the police in his house, I am absolutely sure that he would have still been arrested.

The fact, which everyone seems to be ignoring, is that this does NOT excuse Sgt. James Crowley. The simple facts, here:

1. The initial call even mentioned seeing suitcases, the police had little reason to suspect anything strange going in.
2. Rude or not, neither side disputes that Henry Gates showed identification documents and resided at the home
3. Rude or not, being rude and/or loud is an unreasonable standard for "Disorderly Conduct" and every indication was that the MATURE AND PROFESSIONAL thing to do, was simply for Officer Crowley to leave the scene.
4. Officer Crowley chose not to be a mature professional. He, as a representative of the City of Cambridge, chose to be petty, and abuse his power to defend his ego.

This is a pretty open and shut case of police abuse of power. My recommendation is that Sgt. Crowley be fired, and brought up on charges of public corruption. He should be made an example of, because being an example was his job, and he failed miserably.

Edit: This does raise the question of what the Disorderly Conduct law in MA actually is. Here is a great write-up of why the Officer had no leg to stand on, and should have known better: http://volokh.com/posts/1248465451.shtml

Overall I just have to state it again. Gates was a grade A ass in this encounter. However, I object to the idea of that being an offense that warrants the use of state power to correct. I am happy to see that the law agrees with me. Now if we could only reign in power tripping police, who tarnish the dignity of the state with their petty actions.

In Defense of Texting while Driving

One of the Stories on Slashdot today is "US Agency Blocked Cellphone / Driving Safety Study". This sounds like some sort of big Government cover up to protect big wigs in some industry. The numbers however, just don't pan out. In fact, the numbers on the Anti-Texting side, are actually pretty flimsy.

They enjoy tossing out a statistic that there are 1000 fatalities a year in texting while driving incidents. This may sound like a lot, but, its a number without context. To make sense of it, lets ask another question: How many driving fatalities are there every year?

That answer was easy to find. It was on a page on Drunk Driving Statistics where we see the answer. Last year, there were 41,000 driving fatalities, 16,000 of which were "Alcohol Related".

In 2005, 11% of fatal crashes involved a person over 65, that is about 4 times as many as texting at around 4000 fatalities. (Each fatal crash must have at least 1 fatality, so this is actually giving the older drivers the benefit of the doubt).

It is pretty plain to see that this legislation is nothing short of an attempt by the Insurance Lobby to generate a new Windfall. More tickets means more surcharges. Are they going to scare you into paying more?

Well lucky for them, they don't have to. They just have to convince the legislature of it. The legislature that will see their own coffers increase directly from the fines from the tickets.

Sounds like these texting bills are really a big Win for everyone involved, don't they?

Examining Liquid Ban Stupidity

The TSA blog has a mildly interesting interview with a "Bomb Appraisal Officer". He supported the "3-1-1" liquid ban, and explained why it is important, in his mind anyway:

"This type of threat is not new, but our enemies are persistent and totally committed. They learn from their mistakes and then make adjustments all the time to try and stay ahead of security. Explosives come in ever changing shapes and materials to include a caulk like explosive that looks and feels just like toothpaste or Sunscreen. If we added personal hygiene products such as toothpaste to the “must be sampled” list, the lines would back up forever. It is just simpler, easier, and more logical to restrict those things in the sizes already established to minimize the risks to passenger aircraft." -- BAO Richard

In responding to this, I was wondering if there was a way to explain why this 3-1-1 policy is still stupid, yet without getting too complicated and hand wavy. So, if "out enemies" are totally committed and learn from their mistakes, then shouldn't we design our security model in such a way that a less than gifted high school freshman can't devise a simple plan to defeat it?

So allow me to pose my response to 3-1-1 as so:
Ali and his 5 friends want to blow up a plane. They have aquired a powerful explosive paste, but the current regulations state that each passenger may only bring 3 oz of "liquid" on a plane at once. Starting from Boston, and only moving 3 oz past checkpoints at a time, can Ali get his paste onto a single plane?

So Ali and his other 5 friends each take 3 oz of paste onto a plane for Chicago. They each leave their 3 oz with him, giving him a total of 15 oz. Of course, they scheduled flights to give them an overnight layover. So Ali waits in the terminal like a poor traveler, and the rest leave the airport, to come back for their flight, each with 3 more oz, giving Ali 37 oz of "explosive".

He gets on his connecting flight to LA, while his "friends" now get on their flights to Texas. The flight to LA explodes, and Ali wins the the day.

This is a plan that doesn't violate the 3-1-1 rule in any noticable way, and yet, still brings 12 times as much explosive on the plane as the 3-1-1 rule would allow, and used about as many people as 9/11 used for one plane. In this scenario, only one actual "bomber" is needed.

This plan was devised by a not very dedicated person, who has no interest in actually blowing up planes, over his lunch break.

Now raise your hand if you actually believe 3-1-1 is going to stop anyone with enough brains and sophistication to get ahold of explosive paste to begin with. Is anyone still convinced?

How about this one. Ali and his 5 friends each grab 12 oz of paste. His friends which are "caught" simply say "ok I am sorry" and let the TSA toss their "toothpaste" in the trash. They simply repeat this every few weeks until enough of them get through that they have enough explosive paste for their plans.

Total costs here for tickets might run into the couple of thousand dollars range.... maybe.

Case of the "deadly" nunchaku

Andy Carvin tweeted earlier "Trying to remember the last time I heard a congressional hearing discuss nunchucks. A resolution in honor of Bruce Lee?". This got me wondering why and doing a little web searching. I found a couple of interesting pages on what I am calling Maloney V Stupid.

What strikes me about this case, beyond the obvious and interesting technical questions of Constitutional rights vs State law, is that nobody is actually questioning WHY so many states have laws that, essentially, ban two sticks connected via rope or chain.

Having studied some small amount of Martial Arts, watched "Fight Science" and actually seen someone in a real street fight with nunchaku, I am left absolutely shocked that ANYONE considers them a dangerous offensive weapon.

It is true, the nunchaku can deliver powerful blows in the hands of a trained professional. However, this is just as true of a stick. In fact, a stick is, in many cases, more dangerous, as it is easier to learn, and doesn't show the lack of control after impact that the Nunchaku does. (the inherent flexibility of the nunchaku also absorbs much of its own impact force, unlike a solid stick)

In short, I have to disagree with the courts that found states have a "Rational Basis" for banning the nunchaku. Unless the standard for "rational basis" is "it looks really cool in movies, and we don't want people looking cool in fights".

Is there any defense of these laws? Aside from arrests for posession, was there ever an increase in "nunchaku related attacks"? Is there ANY evidence that lacking access to nunchaku has ever stopped a fight and NOT merely resulted in someone grabbing a more effective weapon (like a stick, or rock)? Did banning the nunchaku decrease violent crime?

I think its clear that this is yet another silly law, passed by the lazy and the stupid. Then defended and used against citizens by the criminally insane. Am I the only one who hangs his head in shame when he hears the utter nonsense that comes out of his government?

Once again, we should all just be ashamed to call ourselves American.

Thin Blue Line of corruption

If you happen to combine driving your car with paying attention, you may have noticed the proliferation of cars with "Blue Line" bumper stickers. They are small, they are simple, they don't say what they are at all. Except, everybody knows blue means police.

There are claims like that of Sgt.John Delaney of the Springfield Police Department, who was quoted as saying:

"This thin blue line basically represents the fraternal order of police officers throughout the country, the thin blue line represents the brotherhood of police being connected through the thin blue line."

Of course, you can find these quite easily for purchase online. In fact, many people have put them on their cars in the simple hope of avoiding a ticket. The police claim this will not get you out of a ticket, but the original site (www.thin-blue-line.com according to some articles) appears to be offline now, and apparently originally required a person to prove employment as a police officer to get the sticker.

So we have an attempt to create a marker which can allow an off duty police officer to identify himself (or his family) to other police. Are we actually excpeted to believe this was simply an attempt to "show support for the police", if only police were intended to buy it?

This, my friends, may not hold up in court, but is evidence prima facie of an attempt at corruption. There is really no reason for a police officer who is off duty, or his family, to be treated any differently than anyone else on the road. The citizens who have followed suit have it dead on: The original point WAS to avoid tickets. There is simply no other conclusion that makes any sense.

This sticker is no less than corruption. It is no different than the old practice that police in Boston used to have of leaving an M&Ms packet on their dashboard as a signal to the meter maids that they were police and shouldn't be ticketed. This is corruption, pure and simple.

So much for the police as role models or paragons of virtue.

At least the citizens have the right idea, put those stickers up so they can't tell who is who. The way it is supposed to be.

Scam Alert: NSC Defensive Driving Course

Apparently this scam has been running for a while now. In MA, this scam has even infiltrated the State government and is actually mandatory for anyone who has "5 or more surchargeable offenses in a 3 year period". While it is impressive that this apparent sham organization with very suspect generic name "National Safety Council" has actually received a state mandate, it is still a scam.

Let's delve into the details of this scam.

This scam is in the form of a class. The class costs $100 for 8 hours of "instruction". Anyone can take the class, but it is mandated for "problem drivers". This is the first place where we can see the scam nature of the class: "Problem Drivers" includes people who have:

• Not renewed their license on time (how often do you check yours?)
• Not renewed their Registration on time (ditto?)
• Failed to have registration in the car (an outdated requirement from before the police could look it up from their cruiser... which they have to do anyway to see if it was revoked)
• Had a single incident with multiple offenses (as each counts as one, even for a single incident)

The course content is laughable at best. Not once was SIPDE (Scan Identify Predict Decide Execute... a mnemonic taught by real driving safety courses) or anything like it mentioned. Instead we were treated to a mandated "8 hour" course, that was about 3 hours of course material packed between breaks, and various attempts that the instructor made to slow his teaching down and not finish too early.

The class features a mumbo-jumbo "personality profile" (a favorite of scammers everywhere), based on a short quiz. It then went on to describe, without any talk of studies being done or pointing to a bibliography, the features and pitfalls of their imaginary personality profiles.

After this, we watched a few ridiculous videos to show examples of "Effective, Short Term, and Ineffective" thinking. This asks the "student" to use the skill of watching small actions (like people changing lanes, or going through stops signs), and then asks them to jump to wild conclusions about what the driver must be thinking, and then to rate their assessment of their wild assumptions about what the other person is thinking.

The entire video bit was an exercise in ineffective thinking: namely jumping to wild conclusions about other peoples thought processes based on the minutia of how they drive their car. This is exactly the sort of thinking that people use when they get mad about being cut off, because they KNOW the other person saw them, all they have done is replace "asshole" with "ineffective thinker!".

All in all, this is an ineffective program, that wastes time, and doesn't teach anything useful. It is a scam, and I recommend avoiding this one. If you are looking to voluntarily take a driving course, take one that actually teaches driving. I highly recommend the Motorcycle Safety Foundation courses (which actually teach SIPDE and evasive maneuvering, and actual effective thinking).

If you have received a letter from the RMV, then I would say just grin and bear it.... and write your Representatives about canceling this horrible program.

Good Intentions and Paving the Road To Hell

In recent blog comments, I made some comments about how the public sector works, and why it makes bad decisions. I was reading an essay on the TSA Secure Flight by Bruce Schneier, one of the members of the actual working group. This was the most telling comment:

Unfortunately, Congress has mandated that Secure Flight be implemented, so it is unlikely that the program will be killed. And analyzing the effectiveness of the program in general, potential mission creep, and whether the general idea is a worthwhile one, is beyond the scope of the working group. In other words, my first conclusion is basically all that they're interested in hearing.(Bruce Shneier, CryptoGram #502 Article 1)

This, I think, is the core problem of government. We have a legislative body, which is tasked with making decisions on everything. They are not security experts. They are not experts in anything except law. So they write their laws, they pass their budgets, and then, assign implementation to someone else.

As a technical engineer, I can tell you something: There is a huge flaw in that design. That is, there is nothing to mandate a review of the program. There is no check to be sure that it can accomplish what it intends to. There is no check to be sure it doesn't have unintended consequences. There is just "this is the project, here are the funds, make it happen".

This sort of project needs periods of review and re-review. It needs to have its issues looked at, and there needs to be some way that the call can be made that "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea" or "Maybe this can't feasibly be implemented" or even "Oh, this doesn't do what we want".

I don't think the TSA or working group are incompetent, or evil. I don't think congress has bad intentions. I would say that they have a very broken process. A process that sends out mandates before making sure that their mandate will actually have its intended effect.

It is pretty clear, from both my own cursory reading, and from the opinions of experts in the field, that this "Secure Flight" program is a waste of money, a waste of time, and just a bad idea.

The problem is that it looks good to people who don't understand security. That means congress and the public. Since it looks good to them, it gets the mandate. Since it has the mandate, it gets implemented. Opinions of experts and naysayers be damned.

Even though everybody has the best of intentions, broken process leads us to pave the road to hell. Wasted resources are a double waste. They are wasted because they bring back nothing valuable, and prevent those resources from being used where they would help.

This is just one project, in one area. It doesn't take much digging to find others. This is just a common problem with any and all organizations that are organized in this way. Its true of the government, its true of Universities, its true of an nonprofit that use grant money.

The Bottom line: Politics and non-technical committee are bad ways to make technical decisions. Letting technical decisions come down from "on high" without review and proper vetting leads us down this path.

The China Advantage

I was thinking recently about the public policy here in the US and all the talk about the "Up and coming China". It may just be my limited exposure but it seems to me that their advantage is simple: They are less ideological than we are.

Yes, less ideological. Notice that you don't hear much from them about "little red books" or revolutionary communism? In fact, they have been experimenting with capitalism for years, and even implementing it now!

The advantage of China is simple. They do socialism well, and capitalism, well, kinda ok. They are still new at it, but hey, they are getting the best of both worlds now.

The US, well, we do Capitalism pretty well. However, whenever it comes to needing to do anything the least bit "socialist" we argue, we hem, we haw. We CAN'T do anything socialist. So when we have to, when capitalism is really failing, we try so hard not to be socialist that we screw it up... usually badly.

Take health care here in MA. Its become pretty obvious that Single Payer healtcare is the only real solution. Health care just effects every member of every household.

However, Mitt couldn't do that. We couldn't have... socialism! So instead we implemented this horrid debacle. Mandate everyone buy insurance, mandate the state come up with some way to get low income people insurance. Then he cut and run.

It is unclear how this benefits us. We could have done something socialist. We could have done it well and solved a real problem that just does not seem to have any other good solutions. Instead we did everything we could to avoid "being socialist", and made absolute hash of it.

Could it be that the real problem isn't socialism? Is it ideology?

The Dim light of Hope

I was making my rounds on the TSA blog today and someone posted a link to this: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.2027:

I have to say, everyone should contact their Representative and let them know that this is a bill that we need to become law, and the sooner the better. Currently the TSA is absolutely run amok with their cowardly security theater. They will just keep implementing whatever they want, and using it however they want. The foxes are entrusted with the safety of the hen house.

A few points from the bill:

(2) PROHIBITION ON USE FOR ROUTINE SCREENING- Whole-body imaging technology may not be used as the sole or primary method of screening a passenger under this section. Whole-body imaging technology may not be used to screen a passenger under this section unless another method of screening, such as metal detection, demonstrates cause for preventing such passenger from boarding an aircraft.

(5) PROHIBITION ON USE OF IMAGES- An image of a passenger generated by whole-body imaging technology may not be stored, transferred, shared, or copied in any form after the boarding determination with respect to such passenger is made.

However....

`Whoever, being an officer or employee of the United States, knowingly stores, transfers, shares, or copies an image in violation of section 44901(l)(5) of title 49, United States Code, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.'.

In a country that has mandatory minimum sentences for victimless crimes like drugs, this seems like a slap on the wrist. I would bet that nobody does a day of jail time for this unless their victim is a celebrity. This should be at LEAST a $10,000 fine and 1 year minimum. It should also be considered a felony.

MA Safe Driver Program: Failing to renew makes you an Unsafe Driver?

I recently received a note in the mail from the MA RMV. The note informed me that I had 5 "Surchargable events" on my license, and I MUST complete driver re-education if I want to keep my driver's license. I am apparently a danger on the road.

This being the case, as I am guilty, I may as well admit my horrible safety offences...are you ready?

1. Expired Registration (taken care of the next day)
2. Expired License (ditto)
3. Failure to have the registration IN THE VEHICLE (never mind that they can easily look it up, and look it up anyway, even if you have it...)
4. At fault accident (tapped another car at 2 MPH in stop and go traffic)
5. Ticket for "following to close" (from the same accident as #4)

So I would like to ask the MA RMV and particularly the safe driver program.... does the course cover paperwork? How do clerical errors make one a bad driver? Is a single minor "fender bender" (more of a denter than a bender) really deserve to be two events?

Is it any wonder people see state workers as incompetent? Is this really just one more attempt to squeeze us for some cash? Be ware people.... the state of MA is out for your money.... and thats apparently ALL they care about.

MBTA Transit Police: Protecting their Budget through Theater

A common site around The Hub of the Universe these days, at least if you ride the MBTA, has been Bostons newest comedy troupe: The MBTA Police. Their theater productions are a free service provided by the T, in an effort to make you feel better about the previous and coming new fare hikes.

Their performance this past week at the Charles/MGH station was particularly moving. They brought in a paddy wagon, a dog, an "itemiser" (explosive & narcotics detector), around 6 police officers, and a sign to inform people that they did not have to submit to the detector, but would be asked to leave if they did.

The vast majority of people just walk right through with no issue. It does increase congestion and make a big scene, as they always schedule their performances for the times that will inconvenience the largest number of people.

All this inconvenience is, of course, quite expensive. However, in the war on bogeymen, we must be vigilant. You see, this is a very important security measure for the MBTA. You see, if a person with large amounts of drugs or explosives was about to get on the train, and saw the fearsome "Itemiser" awaiting him, he would clearly not turn around and walk out of the station, providing him with at least maybe an hours inconvenience as he hails a cab, walks to the next subway station, takes the bus, or tries again tomorrow.

Clearly we must salute the MBTA police for a security policy so capable of protecting us from terrorists and drug dealers, at least ones who are both lazy and incompetent. It would easily thwart an attempted coordinated attack as one of its operatives at one station might have to abort his mission. Terrorists who don't have cell phones would be crippled!

We should also consider what terrible fate might befall us without this program. Without 6 officers and a dog standing around for 4 hours, they might not have anything to do at all for those 24 man hours. That might even lead to the MBTA police budget being cut, and who wants that?

The MBTA police theater troupe should be given commendations for their amazing work protecting their budget and doing their part to justify fare increases across the T. Bureaucrats everywhere should take a lesson here in how to scope creep your department like a freebasing megalomaniac.