aubreyturner.org

Sorry for the lack of posting lately.  I’ve been sidelined by some kind of nasty bug.  It started as a sore throat last Friday night and developed to the point where I could barely speak yesterday and today.  It seems to be getting a little better, and none too soon as I’m about to go completely nuts from being home all this time (not to mention being either too tired or too zoned out to think or write).

I hope it gets better tomorrow, since I have a vacation day and it sucks to be sick on your own time. 

So it appears that the Democrats have taken their ball and run off to New Mexico in a huff.  Quite frankly, I hope this little stunt backfires on them, but that remains to be seen.  I find it quite fascinating to watch them, though.  Their complaints hold little water with me and my sympathy quotient towards them is in the negative range.  It seems to me that they have little to complain about, since they did the same thing with redistricting when they were in power. 

But it got me to thinking about the law and programming.  In some ways, the law (and in Texas, the state constitution) is the set of programming instructions (code) that is used to run the government and society.  The problem in this case is that the code allows for the system to be compromised by the operators.  What we need is a set of code that specifies how the districts are to be mapped that the users can’t game.  Specifically, we should gore everyone’s oxen and come up with a system that creates districts strictly on the basis of population and does so in a way that can’t be gerrymandered. 

What I’m getting at is that we should encode a specific algorithm for districts into the law (or most likely in the constitution, given the odd way that Texas is run).  This algorithm would provide the set of steps needed to map the state into a set of districts that each had an equal number of people, regardless of current or past political affiliations or racial breakdown. 

Of course all the special interest groups would come out wailing that we’re disenfranchising minority voters or some similar nonsense.  Frankly, I don’t care because this modern day segregation crap is starting to get on my nerves.  We’re all Texans and it’s about damn time that we started remembering that.  Racial politics is the politics of segregation and discrimination and it’s high time to consign that crap to the trash pile where it belongs.

The FBI has quietly requested that the FCC rule that Voice over IP (VoIP) services fall under CALEA (the federal statute that requires communications providers to provide the ability for the FBI to tap all calls).  This would require broadband and VoIP providers to reengineer their networks to allow this kind of surveillance.

Representatives of the FBI’s Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Va., have met at least twice in the past three weeks with senior officials of the Federal Communications Commission to lobby for proposed new Internet eavesdropping rules. The FBI-drafted plan seeks to force broadband providers to provide more efficient, standardized surveillance facilities and could substantially change the way that cable modem and DSL (digital subscriber line) companies operate.

The new rules are necessary, because terrorists could otherwise frustrate legitimate wiretaps by placing phone calls over the Internet, warns a summary of a July 10 meeting with the FCC that the FBI prepared. “Broadband networks may ultimately replace narrowband networks,” the summary says. “This trend offers increasing opportunities for terrorists, spies and criminals to evade lawful electronic surveillance.”

In the last year, Internet telephony (also called voice over Internet Protocol, or VOIP) has grown increasingly popular among consumers and businesses with high-speed connections. Flat-rate plans cost between $20 and $40 a month for unlimited local and long-distance calls. One of the smaller VOIP providers, Vonage, recently said it has about 34,000 customers and expects to have 1 million by late 2004.

According to the proposal that the FCC is considering, any company offering cable modem or DSL service to residences or businesses would be required to comply with a thicket of federal regulations that would establish a central hub for police surveillance of their customers. The proposal has alarmed civil libertarians who fear that it might jeopardize privacy and warn that the existence of such hubs could facilitate broad surveillance of other Internet communications such as e-mail, Web browsing and instant messaging.

The FBI also contends that if the providers can’t provide access to individual users’ data streams that they must be given access to the whole pipe.

The FBI appears to have first presented its proposal to the FCC last year. But in the July 10 and July 22 meetings, the bureau extended it to say that if broadband providers cannot isolate specific VOIP calls to and from individual users, they must give police access to the “full pipe”—which, by including the complete simultaneous communications of hundreds or thousands of customers, could raise substantial privacy concerns.

A summary of the meeting prepared by the FBI said the FCC could “require carriers to make the full pipe available and leave law enforcement to perform the required minimization. This approach is already used when ISPs provide non-CALEA technical assistance for lawfully ordered electronic surveillance.”

I tend to have an instinctive reaction against giving such broad capability to any law enforcement agency, and I also have an instinctive distrust of the FBI given the serious problems that they have yet to address.  My anarchist tendencies tell me that this would open up a market for an anonymous peer-to-peer VoIP program that included strong encryption.  Let the FBI tap all they want, but (so far) there’s nothing that says what we’re sending back and forth has to be readable.

Tom Clancy’s new book, The Teeth of the Tiger, will be released on August 11.  Even after Red Rabbit I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  I’ve got my copy on order at Amazon. 

I’ve already read the first chapter in PDF format (which Amazon gives you when you order the book), and I’m ready for more.

Things are promising to get a bit hectic for at least the next month.  I have two months of crap to stuff into a one month bag (unless our project managers can pull a rabbit out of their hats and convince the customer that their proposed delivery date is delusional). 

At the same time, I have been prequalified for a mortgage loan so I’ll be house hunting.  So when I’m not at work I’ll probably be checking out houses and neighborhoods.  I’m going to be looking in Roanoke, Keller, and possibly Flower Mound.  Keller is most promising, given the current housing market it looks like it’s possible to get more house for the money there. 

I’d been piddling around with the idea of buying a house for months, but what finally motivated me to get moving was the fact that mortgage rates are starting to go up again.  I’m looking forward to having my own place.  At the same time, I’m dreading the move.  I originally moved into this place because I was going to graduate school at UNT part time and it was convenient (and the rent was cheap).  I’ve been here for a little over eight years now and I’ve accumulated more stuff than will reasonably fit.  Packing up all this crap is going to be a major pain.

This is to serve as a final reminder that The Bitch Girls will be particpating in the Blogathon tomorrow.  They’re raising funds for Locks of Love, which is a charity that provides hairpieces for children who have lost their hair permanently due to a medical condition. 

If you can spare a few bucks, sign up to sponsor them.  It’s for a good cause.  Not to mention that we’ve been promised something cool involving a digital camera if the sponsorship hits $1000 (only $156 to go).

I’m about to torture an analogy to death, but bear with me…

The shooting in New York yesterday got me to thinking about the way our society treats guns and the crazy idea that we can somehow create a “bubble” of safety which is free from all harmful elements.

For some time now I’ve thought about violent crime in a way similar to disease.  The agents of the disease can be thought of as malevolent microorganisms that are damaging the host organism by harming the individual cells that make up the whole.  We can choose a couple of alternative ways of dealing with this problem: 1) sterilization (the boy in the bubble method), and 2) immunization (distributing the means of counterattack and prevention throughout the body).  I am of the opinion that the second option, as related to a distributed defense (i.e. a pack not a herd, to borrow a phrase) is ultimately better. 

The first option, sterilization, means attempting to prevent the disease causing elements from even getting into the body.  In real life this is manifested in airport screening, metal detectors at courthouse entrances, gun-free school zones, the federal statute against having a gun in a postal facility, etc.  From my vantage point these methods have not only failed miserably, but they make the problem worse, since they create zones of increased vulnerability.  In fact, we seem to see more cases of mass shootings in gun-free zones.  I tend to think that this occurs because the killers, while mad or insane, do engage in some calculation about the relative chances for success of their plans.  Especially when they’re trying to make a big splash.  Which would make more noise in the press?  A story about a mass murder or a story about an armed citizen stopping an attacker (no need to answer that one, since we know how the media will report each one already).  There will always be holes in the “bubble” that will be exploited by those with evil intent.  Let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that a perfect barrier is not possible (if you think it is possible, solve the problem of drugs getting into prisons first and get back to me).

Immunization is not necessarily a perfect defense.  It requires distribution of the means to respond to the threat throughout the body of the people.  It does not always work.  There may even be times when innocent people are killed.  This is comparable to real immunization, where a vaccine sometimes kills people.  Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where there are no perfect solutions.  But this does have the advantage of not having to rely on the convenient fiction that it’s possible to screen out all threats and live happily within a bubble.  While microorganisms can’t think or weigh the consequences of their actions, criminals sometimes do.  Not only does having a distributed defense allow for swift preventative action against criminals, it can act as a deterrent, lowering the chances of success and dissuading some from committing certain types of crimes.  And for those criminals who don’t get the message, it removes them from the pool of criminals, so they won’t be around to commit future crimes.

Would an armed citizen have been able to stop yesterday’s shooting?  I don’t know.  Apparently there was also a cop there, but he was not able to react until it was too late.  But according to the accounts I read there were other people, private citizens who were disarmed by the state, who saw the shooter before he started shooting.  If one of them had been armed, perhaps the concilman would still be with us (and arguing for more gun control, as he was wont to do).

I made the decision some time ago to take responsibility for my own protection.  I don’t intend to rely on others to protect me.  But more than that, I know that I can’t rely on others to protect me.  Police have no duty to protect any individual citizen.  Those who advocate calling 911 and sitting back to “let the police handle it” are missing an important point.  Once you call 911, what are you going to do until the police get there?  Talk to them?  Throw the phone and run?  Face it: you’re on your own.

I take this responsibility seriously.  I go to the range at least once a week.  It takes time and money (I probably spend $30 to $40 per week on range fees and ammo).  But I consider it an investment well spent. 

Understandably, not everyone is ready to make this kind of decision.  I won’t be so crude as to imply that these people aren’t citizens, as some over-the-top pro-gun advocates have done.  However, I would caution these people to get out of the way of the rest of us.  The doctrine of prior restraint against law-abiding citizens is getting people killed.

I’ve previously written about RFID tags and their privacy implications.  Today, Slashdot had this article that includes details of a scheme being introduced in England that would snap your picture when you remove a tagged item from the shelf and then use that to identify you at checkout (supposedly to match you to the item to prevent shoplifting).

Alan Robinson, manager at the Tesco store on Newmarket Street, Cambridge, seems excited about this store’s current trials of RFID tags in Gillette Mach3 razorblades. Speaking to Smart Labels Analyst magazine in April this year, he said: “We are cooperating with this trial in every way we can – we would like to be a test bed for many more trials of this kind.” He adds: “We haven’t had a single customer ask what the tag is doing in their packet of razors!” Notoriously subject to theft (small, expensive and easily resold), these blades were tagged by Gillette, which earlier this year ordered 500m radio-frequency ID tags from the aptly named Alien Technology Corp. At the Tesco Cambridge store, reports the magazine, a camera trained on the Gillette blade shelf, and triggered by the tags, captures a photo of each customer who removes a Mach3 pack. Another photo is taken at the checkout and security staff compare the two images to ensure they always have a pair.

A spokesman for Tesco confirmed that this set-up is in operation. He says: “Generally in retailing, razorblades are stolen more than other products, but that is not why we are doing the trial. We have plenty of security measures in place to stop things being stolen. [This trial] is not to do with security or theft, it is a supply chain trial.” According to the spokesman,”there are certainly not any privacy concerns” in relation to these tags. He adds that there is plenty of in-store signage indicating the supermarket’s use of CCTV cameras.

Still, customers might not infer from this information that these cameras are being used to take a digital photo of them each time they lift a Gillette razorblade from the store’s shelf – it only takes one to prompt the camera – and again when they present the pack at the checkout. Tesco says that the photos are “temporarily stored”, but does not specify for how long. However, Smart Labels Analyst magazine explains that this system enables the store to “blacklist certain shoppers and keep an eye on them”. In his interview with the magazine, Alan Robinson recounts an occasion when his Cambridge store was able to show the police a photograph of a shoplifter in the act of removing two packets of razors from the shelf: “The police were completely flabbergasted, having never seen anything like it in their lives.”

The two passages I’ve added emphasis to are quite telling.  No privacy concerns my ass.  These guys are the perfect examples of retailers who are eager to track your every move and link it all together to either market more crap to you or blacklist you from their stores.  And don’t think that the blacklisting will be confined to just shoplifters for long.  Complained about the service the other day and caused an employee to take too much time (but you don’t usually buy a lot of stuff in the store)?  You will be flagged as a costly complainer.  When you show up at the store next time they may try to drive you away, since you’re not worth enough for them to waste their time with you.  I know one person that Fry’s would probably love to keep out of their computer section (since he is known to them for questioning them about every sale item; which is quite aggravating to them, since their sales are often deceptive).

I just hope this never makes it here, but I’m not confident that the people in England will make enough fuss about it to make the trial unsuccessful.  They’ve gotten so used to meekly submitting to surveillance schemes that I fear for them as a people.

The rest of the article has more information about loyalty cards, which also makes for interesting reading.

Here’s one more from News.com(.com).  According to this article Amazon.com is in the process of creating a searchable text index of the contents of a number of nonfiction books.  This would allow the user to enter a search term and get back books that contain the term in their text, along with a short excerpt from the book to show the context in which it was found.  Amazon itself is not saying anything about it, but it appears to be scheduled for activation on their site in the fall.  I like the idea, since it would allow me to see if the book is truly relevant to the topic I was looking for.  Of course this wouldn’t necessarily be helpful for doing immediate research (i.e. I’m looking for something right now), since I’d have to wait for the book to be shipped to see all of it.

Here’s an interesting article about spam and the Direct Marketing Association’s attempt to water down any anti-spam legislation.  Particularly interesting is their self-serving definition of spam.

Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association, has an unusual view of what types of junk e-mail qualify as spam.

Wientzen said during an appearance on CBS News last week that spam is only “e-mail that misrepresents an offer or misrepresents the originator—or in some way attempts to confuse or defraud people.”

Let’s parse that sentence closely. The DMA claims that unwanted e-mail is spam if, and only if, it happens to be fraudulent or confusing. Because the DMA’s members are legitimate, established businesses, Weintzen tells us, their unsolicited e-mail entreaties to us shouldn’t be considered spam.

Somebody needs to tell this wanker that it’s spam if I say it’s spam.  And I have a simple rule to determine whether I say it’s spam:  If I didn’t ask for it and it’s likely to part me with my money if I take up the offer, then it’s spam.

You’d think these idiots at the DMA would have learned from the national do-not-call registry that if you piss off enough people that sooner or later your deep pocket lobbying efforts will become ineffective.  And it definitely doesn’t sound like they understand just how much people loathe spam.

If I had my way spammers would be hung from their toes and bled slowly.  I guess Weintzen is lucky I’m not in charge.    In the meantime, I guess I’ll just redirect all my spam to him.  He shouldn’t object, as long as it’s not misleading.  Right?