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| 12/24 |
| 2004/8/3-4 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:32670 Activity:very high |
8/3 Kerry FlipFlops on technology.
http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5291476.html -fifth columnist
\_ We've turned the corner!
\_ What's next week's talking point?
\_ You need to go look at some of the posts out there on the
web from people who have been victims of Declan's idiocy.
He fudges facts and loves to attack basically anyone. He
has all the idiocy of a mainstream journalist, but with the
mean streak of a motd flame warrior. Here's a start:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001617.shtml
\_ At least you've never had to work with the guy.
\_ please elaborate. you worked with him?
\- kerry flipflops on SCIENCE:
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=17231
Bush knows the answer: Jesus is the Light. --psb
\_ Partha, what are your politics?
\- Personally, heavily Kantian. Publically, a mix of
Kantian and Utilitarian which is too involved to be
summarized here. I believe Bush should be defeated
not so much because of future policy directions but
because he is a liar of low character who surrounds
himself with even sleazier people than he is. --psb
\_ You need to talk more about rights for me to place your
politics, Partha. You can be a Kantian anything. -- ilyas
\- i will if you send me a paypal payment of $5.
or you can send me a sufficiently interesting
multiple choice exam. --psb
\_ Meh. I don't care enough. You don't either. -- ilyas
\_ Meh. I don't care enough. You don't either.
Although you know, to an outside observer it DOES
look like you just threw a dead philosopher label.
A label which doesn't really discriminate anything.
-- ilyas
\_ You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when
suddenly you look down and see a tortoise. It's
crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip
the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays
on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun,
beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it
can't. Not without your help. But you're not
helping. Why is that?
\_ Thats interesting. I dont know. Im a republican?
\_ Sigh.
\_ Double-sigh to you. That was Tom Ammiano's
response when The Wave tested SF Mayoral
candidates.
\_ All very nice but all your wall/motd statements make you
look like any other soda leftist. Nothing special going
on there. Perhaps you think Kerry has surrounded himself
with people of good will and strong hearts? Whatever.
\_ Oh no. I've been reading his stuff for years now and psb
is interesting because his mind does change. He spent
quite awhile being hawkish online a year or so ago. I'd
guess tom is the motd liberal you are looking
for, though brain is the one I'd really like to hear
more from. There are too few advocates of pure evil on
the motd. -- ulysses
\- writing currente calamo ...
1. years ago during George I's First Gulf War, for
the same piece of commetary, i was simultaneously
accused of "writing for the baghdad daily" and
for writing for the jerusalem post. so i knew i
was doing something right.
\_ Years ago? What have you done for me lately?
2. since you are writing anonymously, there is nothing
in it for me to prove you wrong on my leftist
leanings. i'm certainly on the record as "flipflop-
ping" on George II's Gulf War II, but as John Maynard
Keynes said " "When the facts change, I change my
mind - what do you do, sir?".
\_ My anonymity has *nothing* to do with your
postings. This is a weak cop out. You're here
on the motd and most people post anonymously.
If that was such a problem for you, you should
have just ignored me entirely instead of writing
a numbered 5 point rant.
3. sure kerry is ambitious. sure he was a member of
skull and bones. nevertheless he's someone who
took trouble to get himself into the lines of
fire. bush probably has the most honorable service
record of his coerteie of chickenhawks ... which
says something. you wont hear me saying anything
uncivil of john mccain. i suppose at a certain level
you have to respect BUSHCO for even getting a
sup ct justice in their crony cabal. maybe some of
kerry's advisors are not morally pure, nevertheless
someone like sandy berger had the deceny to quit.
\_ You call Berger decent? Holy shit... The man
stuffed high security level documents down his
pants and destroyed them. With twisted standards
like that anything else you say about morals or
decency is utter crap.
\_ Actually, he's been cleared of all of that.
Try a news source other than Fox News.
\_ Not pp. Link that he's been cleared?
They find the docs or soemthing?
4. do you respect somebody who opposed the 9/11
commssion existing, then limited their subpoena-like
powers/his cooperation, would not testify under oath,
did not have the balls to show up "Dickless" ... and
now rather than stand on execitive privilage or sep
of power, is attempting to coopt the agenda.
\_ You're putting words in my mouth. Standard
leftist pap. I didn't say anything at all either
way about GWB or anyone in his administration.
I call red herring on this one. It has nothing
to do with what I said. Weak distration from
what I said which is that you're a leftist, not
some intellectual non-partisan who exists on
some higher plane of political discourse.
\_ Err ... I am sure you are intelligent enough
to understand psb's question was directed
at the general audience. I know, self
importance can lead to temporary idiocy.
As it now stands, the only thing in your
gabhole is your big smelly foot, and
you shoved it in there all by yourself.
5. as tacitus wrote in the annals, "My only regret is
that insults and perils have made my old age unhappy
... it is because I disklike criminality."
--psb
\_ Yes, very nice. You get 2 bonus points for an
ancient name drop reference/quote and another
bonus point for the quote almost sounding like
it has something to do with the topic but not.
You're a leftist. Nothing wrong with being a
standard Bush hating liberal. There's lots of
them and not all of them are idiots. Some have
actually know why they hate Bush. I just don't
think you're one of that set. Be a liberal,
live it up, hate Bush, whatever. Just don't run
around claiming you're better than everyone else
through false claims of being different somehow.
\_ If you have read psb's posts over a long
period of time, and don't think psb is
"different" in any way from "normal," i'm
curious to know what circles you normaly
run in.
\_ nice ... when you can't win the argument ...
just throw labels at your opponent.
\_ Dubya didn't ask his dad for advice on Iraq; he submits to a
Higher Father.
\_ I always wondered: do people who post this stuff think
they're clever/funny or what? Is it troll bait? I don't
see the point in this sort of post.
\_ "There is a higher father that I appeal to". --Dubya,
to Bob Woodward. Troll 1, You 0. -John
\_ Uh, yeah whatever. This doesn't answer my question.
\_ OK I'll bite. It's called "sniping", otherwise
known as the "paenut gallery." Some people
find it amusing, you obviously don't. Let it
lie. -John |
| 12/24 |
|
| news.com.com/2010-1028-5291476.html The Democratic National Convention is over, some $65 million has been spent on a week-long party in Boston, and what do we now know about John Kerry? So let's take a look at what Kerry was doing before he announced his bid for the White House--long before the usual phalanx of speech writers and marketing consultants began filtering his public statements into something that resembles the texture and flavor of Velveeta. A careful review of Kerry's history in the Senate shows that his record on technology is mixed. The Massachusetts Democrat frequently sought to levy intrusive new restrictions on technology businesses that could harm the US economy. He was no friend of privacy and sided with Hollywood over Silicon Valley in the copyright wars. wrote about in 2002, members of the Senate Commerce committee were trying to figure out what to do with a Hollings bill that would have required copy protection controls to be embedded in all consumer electronic devices. introduced legislation requiring call center representatives to divulge their physical location at the beginning of the call. On the campaign trail, he's complained about "Benedict Arnold" CEOs moving jobs overseas, though as a senator he's voted for free trade with China. Privacy In the mid-1990s, when the US eavesdropping establishment was trying to ban encryption products by arguing that drug smugglers, terrorists, child pornographers and other random miscreants could cloak their communications, Kerry leaped into the debate on the wrong side. Kerry, who served on a key intelligence committee, became something of a go-to guy for the FBI. At a hearing before that committee in 1996, Kerry lobbed softball questions at FBI Director Louis Freeh about the Internet and advances in encryption technology. "Has all of this really left you, in the law enforcement community, kind of grappling to catch up, and frankly behind the curve?" Kerry didn't go so far as to say that strong encryption should be outlawed, which Freeh had wanted. campaign says that "John Kerry stands by his vote for the Patriot Act. He even wants to strengthen some aspects of it relating to terrorism, such as improving intelligence information sharing." Broadband Deployment Act, which gave tax credits for businesses that provided high-speed Internet connections of at least 15 megabits per second to "underserved subscribers." The answer depends on your perspective, but might the same tax credit have been better used to encourage the development of nanotechnology, or remote medicine, or Internet security products? The danger in this sort of industrial policy is that a Washington politician, even one who appears to be as intelligent as Kerry, may end up making the wrong call. To be sure, technology policy won't be as important in the 2004 election as topics like the Iraq war, terrorism threats and the US economy. He chronicles the busy intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired. |
| www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001617.shtml Fighting the worms of mass destruction was about ways to deal with internet bads -- spam, viruses, worms, oh my! Declan read the article and concluded from it that "Lessig wants to preserve freedom by ending anonymity" and so of course, his list, and my inbox, raged with the outrage at such a thought. But what no one seems to have taken time to do is actually look at the article. For Declan's statement has no relation to anything the article actually says. Read on if you'd like the proof, but the bottom line yet again: Declan is a brilliant writer, and excellent pundit. The article was based on a long interview with the Economist's new man covering tech. Here are the four mentions: Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford University and an expert on cyberlaw, says that when it comes to cyberspace, policymakers have so far shown themselves to be consistently stupid and bribable. How else, he asks, to explain the curious hierarchy of their current priorities. Online copyrights come at the top because of the powerful lobbying of music companies, which are better described as firms faced with a rapidly eroding business model than as victims of crime. Near the bottom comes the online privacy of millions of consumers. Some argue that the cost of insuring against product liability might stifle software innovation. A small upstart company making a small operating system would not present much of a target to hackers, and would thus pay negligible premiums. A parallel approach to the problem of internet insecurity is, therefore, to focus on the internet's users, discouraging bad behaviour and ensuring that criminals can be traced. Legally, however, that could become as controversial as product liability. Mr Lessig suggests using a bounty system to catch hackers, which might involve enlisting those most able to catch themnamely, other hackers. To preserve freedom further, suggests Mr Lessig, anonymity could be replaced by pseudonymity. It is on the basis of the last quote that Declan infers that "Lessig wants to preserve freedom by ending anonymity." In a preceding paragraph, the article states, I'm kind of a fan of eliminating anonymity, says Alan Nugent, the chief technologist at Novell, a software company, if that is the price for security. When the author (anonymous) of the Economist article said "anonymity could be replaced by pseudonymity" he was saying it in relation to what Nugent said. And he rightly reports that I described in detail to him how we needed to increase the right and strength of pseudonymous systems so people could have more privacy. But to promote more pseudonymous rights is not to promote "ending anonymity." But in any case, in my reply to Aaron, again, my emphasis was on the need for building strategies to strengthen pseudonymous systems. There are two kinds of responses to this -- one to try to defend and build a system protecting absolute anonymity; the second is to build effective protections for pseudonymous life, which is shorthand for traceable transactions, but where the permission to trace is protected by something like a warrant requirement. I'm not saying the government should build these systems, but that they should be permitted and indeed encouraged. In my view, we will make no progress following path one, but that we would strongly advance privacy if we could advance path two. A strong ethic and architecture of pseudonymous identity, properly protected, would give us more privacy than we have today. Of course, it is possible (and probably likely) that such an architecture would not properly protect the link between a transaction and the privacy of a person. Government officials, for example, upon mere suspicion would be able to break the link, etc. I would promote a regime where the gov't required a very strong warrant-like reason before it could break the code that makes the link. that the baseline from which we're starting is a world where no real showing is necessary for this sort of surveillance. Notice again, this says nothing about "limiting anonymity." Yet again, as Declan comments in the introduction, "Why do I get the feeling that Larry Lessig doesn't like "absolute" anonymity much at all? " And he goes on to attack the position I did not advance -- that we should eliminate things like remailers, etc. Indeed, much of the work at the Stanford CIS is about defending just this sort of anonymity. So again, I don't know what basis Declan has for transforming my arguments in favor of more rights of pseudonymity into an argument against anonymity. Only the crudest sort of mind could fail to distinguish between the two ideas, and of course, Declan's mind is not crude. And for all who raged in my inbox, you might well think about directing your anger at the real cause -- not what I said, but at someone who simply made up what I said. html "Likewise, intelligent people may decide for themselves whether Declan's insistence in the righteousness of his cause is evidence of a journalist rightly defending a factual story, or a self-promoting quasi-journalist trying himself to make news as a vehicle to promote his own writings. html "As far as I can tell, the whole GPL story was thought up by the Wired reporter, and then refined by a bunch of anonymous characters on Slashdot, in an attempt to explain my bizarre (to them) decision to settle out of court. my motivations are simply not what those people assumed. The context of this is that he "thought up" a story that had the potential to get the defendants into *more* legal trouble, and so this was a public denial of that story. Once more, I must disclaim, as a programmer who has decrypted censorware, at personal legal risk, and could very well find myself the subject of some similar thought-up story by Declan McCullagh fanning lawsuit flames, I am not disinterested here. lessig, with all due respect, sir, it seems you are playing word games. first of all, "pseudonynmity" is a rather imprecise word. in fact, as it is not found in the OED, it is not a word at all. we (us mice) have only your definition to guide us as to its meaning. it does not appear in your response that you offer an explicit defintion, so we are left to try and understand what exactly you mean from the body of your response. There are two kinds of responses to this one to try to defend and build a system protecting absolute anonymity; the second is to build effective protections for pseudonymous life, which is shorthand for traceable transactions, but where the permission to trace is protected by something like a warrant requirement. Im not saying the government should build these systems, but that they should be permitted and indeed encouraged. absolute anonymity we understand literally to mean absolute anonymity. this means we can, for example, send and receive messages and, if we so choose, there is NO WAY that any particular person can be traced to any particular message. we can do whatever we want and it can't be traced to us. under absolute anonymity terrorists, pedophiles, scam artists, stalkers, spammers, illegal file sharers, as well as legitimate political protestors, and us mice can send and receive messages without any risk of being identified. that is, we can only send and receive messages which are technically and legally traceable to us. absolute anonymity, since we are speaking in absolutes, is all or nothing. either one constructs a a system protecting absolute anonymity or one provides means to enable traceability. either there is a way for pedophiles to send and receive messages with perfect privacy, or there is not. the two regimes cannot co-exist - as you appear to suggest is possible. either there are legal means by which traceability may be used, or no such legal authority exists. honestly, this is a statement worthy of donald rumsfeld. extending "pseudonynmity" only makes sense in the context of first enabling, and then extending, traceability. if it is an option, the system has to support it and if the system supports it then my anonymity is no longer absolute. perhaps only the "crudest sort of mind" would conclude from this that you are "against anonymity" but to us mic... |
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