How US Companies Help Set Up Repressive Regimes

Here is a bit from a post by Cory Doctorow on the BoingBoing blog:

Two thirds of the way through the talk, they broaden the context to talk about the role of American companies in the war waged against privacy and free speech -- SmartFilter (now an Intel subsidiary, and a company that has a long history of censoring Boing Boing) is providing support for Iran's censorship efforts, for example. They talked about how Blue Coat and Cisco produce tools that aren't just used to censor, but to spy (all censorware also acts as surveillance technology) and how the spying directly leads to murder and rape and torture.

Then, they talked about the relationship between corporate networks and human rights abuses. Iran, China, and Syria, they say, lack the resources to run their own censorship and surveillance R&D projects, and on their own, they don't present enough of a market to prompt Cisco to spend millions to develop such a thing. But when a big company like Boeing decides to pay Cisco millions and millions of dollars to develop censorware to help it spy on its employees, the world's repressive governments get their R&D subsidized, and Cisco gets a product it can sell to them.

They concluded by talking about how Western governments' insistence on "lawful interception" back-doors in network equipment means that all the off-the-shelf network gear is readymade for spying, so, again, the Syrian secret police and the Iranian telcoms spies don't need to order custom technology that lets them spy on their people, because an American law, CALEA, made it mandatory that this technology be included in all the gear sold in the USA.

Here is the video of the talk which Doctorow attended given by Tor technologists:



It is depressing that US politicians pass laws that set up the basis for the spyware and then US corporations do the multi-million dollar R&D to develop the spyware that is then deployed by repressive regimes worldwide (plus the US government and big US corporations). We live in a "big brother" world. Orwell thought he was writing a cautionary tale with his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, but he was documenting the hellish future we now all live in.

EFF's List of Shame

Here is a list of US government "secrecy" actions that are mindless and counter-productive published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.

The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:

• Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The number of people with security clearances exceeded 4.2. million, more people than the city of Los Angeles.


• Government tells Air Force families, including their kids, it’s illegal to read WikiLeaks. The month before, the Air Force barred its service members fighting abroad from reading the New York Times—the country’s Paper of Record.


• Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were barred from reading the WikiLeaks Guantanamo files, despite their contents being plastered on the front page of the New York Times.


• President Obama refuses to say the words “drone” or “C.I.A” despite the C.I.A. drone program being on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers every day.


• CIA refuses to release even a single passage from its center studying global warming, claiming it would damage national security. As Secrecy News' Steven Aftergood said, “That’s a familiar song, and it became tiresome long ago.”


• The CIA demands former FBI agent Ali Soufan censor his book criticizing the CIA’s post 9/11 interrogation tactics of terrorism suspects. Much of the material, according to the New York Times, “has previously been disclosed in open Congressional hearings, the report of the national commission on 9/11 and even the 2007 memoir of George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director.”


• Department of Homeland Security has become so bloated with secrecy that even the “office's budget, including how many employees and contractors it has, is classified,” according to the Center for Investigative reporting. Yet their intelligence reports “produce almost nothing you can’t find on Google,” said a former undersecretary.


• Headline from the Wall Street Journal in September: “Anonymous US officials push open government.”


• NSA declassified a 200 year old report which they said demonstrated its “commitment to meeting the requirements” of President Obama’s transparency agenda. Unfortunately, the document “had not met the government's own standards for classification in the first place,” according to J. William Leonard, former classification czar.


• Government finally declassifies the Pentagon Papers 40 years after they appeared on the front page of the New York Times and were published by the House’s Armed Services Committee.


• Secrecy expert Steve Aftergood concludes after two years “An Obama Administration initiative to curb overclassification of national security information… has produced no known results to date.”


• President Obama accepts a transparency award…behind closed doors.


• Government attorneys insist in court they can censor a book which was already published and freely available online.


• Department of Justice refuses to release its interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act, a public law.


• U.S. refuses to release its legal justification for killing an American citizen abroad without a trial, despite announcing the killing in a press conference.


• U.S. won’t declassify legal opinion on 2001’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.


• National Archive announced it was working on declassifying “a backlog of nearly 400 million pages of material that should have been declassified a long time ago.”


• The CIA refused to declassify Open Source Works, “which is the CIA’s in-house open source analysis component, is devoted to intelligence analysis of unclassified, open source information” according to Steve Aftergood.


• Twenty-three year State Department veteran gets his security clearance revoked for linking to a WikiLeaks document on his blog.


• The ACLU sued asking the State Department to declassify 23 cables out of the more than 250,000 released by WikiLeaks. After more than a year, the government withheld 12 in their entirety. You can see the other 11, heavily redacted, next to the unredacted copies on the ACLU website.

The ACLU said it sued the State Department in part to show the "absurdity of the US secrecy regime."

Go to the original EFF posting to access the embedded links.

The Bush administration was blatant in its disregard for law and its disrespect for sensible security. The Obama regime is more devious. It gives the pretense of "concern" but its actions belie the truth. There is little difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. They both believe in the "mushroom theory" of government: keep the people in the dark and feed them shit.

Take a Tour Through Airport Security Theatre

Here is a bit from an article in Vanity Fair in which the reporter takes a walk through Reagan National Airport with security critic Bruce Schneier who points out the security weaknesses and the incredible expense to achieve this "security":

Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security.

To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as “security theater”: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.

...

Two months after 9/11, the Bush administration created the Transportation Security Agency, ordering it to hire and train enough security officers to staff the nation’s 450 airports within a year. Six months after that, the government vastly expanded the federal sky-marshal program, sending thousands of armed lawmen to ride planes undercover. Meanwhile, the T.S.A. steadily ratcheted up the existing baggage-screening program, banning cigarette lighters from carry-on bags, then all liquids (even, briefly, breast milk from some nursing mothers). Signs were put up in airports warning passengers about specifically prohibited items: snow globes, printer cartridges. A color-coded alert system was devised; the nation was placed on “orange alert” for five consecutive years. Washington assembled a list of potential terror targets that soon swelled to 80,000 places, including local libraries and miniature-golf courses. Accompanying the target list was a watch list of potential suspects that had grown to 1.1 million names by 2008, the most recent date for which figures are available. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security, which absorbed the T.S.A. in 2003, began deploying full-body scanners, which peer through clothing to produce nearly nude images of air passengers.

Bruce Schneier’s exasperation is informed by his job-related need to spend a lot of time in Airportland. He has 10 million frequent-flier miles and takes about 170 flights a year; his average speed, he has calculated, is 32 miles and hour. “The only useful airport security measures since 9/11,” he says, “were locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can’t break in, positive baggage matching”—ensuring that people can’t put luggage on planes, and then not board them —“and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.”

...

Terrorists will try to hit the United States again, Schneier says. One has to assume this. Terrorists can so easily switch from target to target and weapon to weapon that focusing on preventing any one type of attack is foolish. Even if the T.S.A. were somehow to make airports impregnable, this would simply divert terrorists to other, less heavily defended targets—shopping malls, movie theaters, churches, stadiums, museums. The terrorist’s goal isn’t to attack an airplane specifically; it’s to sow terror generally. “You spend billions of dollars on the airports and force the terrorists to spend an extra $30 on gas to drive to a hotel or casino and attack it,” Schneier says. “Congratulations!”

What the government should be doing is focusing on the terrorists when they are planning their plots. “That’s how the British caught the liquid bombers,” Schneier says. “They never got anywhere near the plane. That’s what you want—not catching them at the last minute as they try to board the flight.”

To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. And directed against a threat that, by any objective standard, is quite modest. Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.) During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs. Still more were killed by driving their cars into deer. The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

The article is well worth reading. Go read the whole thing.

More TSA Security Theatre

Here is yet another story of a person humiliated by TSA in their "pretend" security. They subject innocents to harassment and degradation wasting valuable resources while spending next to nothing on real threats.

From the Lori Dorn blog:

At what point does the need for security eclipse human dignity and compassion?

Yesterday I went through the imaging scanner at JFK Terminal 4 for my Virgin America flight to San Francisco. Evidently they found something, because after the scan, I was asked to step aside to have my breast area examined. I explained to the agent that I was a breast cancer patient and had a bilateral mastectomy in April and had tissue expanders put in to make way for reconstruction at a later date.

I told her that I was not comfortable with having my breasts touched and that I had a card in my wallet that explains the type of expanders, serial numbers and my doctor’s information (pictured) and asked to retrieve it. This request was denied. Instead, she called over a female supervisor who told me the exam had to take place. I was again told that I could not retrieve the card and needed to submit to a physical exam in order to be cleared. She then said, “And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly” loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor.

To my further dismay, my belongings, including my computer, were completely out of sight. I had no choice but to allow an agent to touch my breasts in front of other passengers.

I just didn’t understand why these agents were so insensitive to the situation. I would have been happy to show her which bag was mine and have her retrieve the card, but she did not allow even that. I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer. The way I was treated by these TSA agents added a shitload of insult to injury and caused me a great deal of humiliation.

I understand the need for safety when flying, but there is also a need for those responsible to be compassionate and sensitive to each situation. These agents were neither.

Compare Lori Dorn's story with the following...

http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=112091

A security breach at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport forced the evacuation of Concourse A, which serves six airlines. Paul Mason, Chief of Police at Lambert, said police were called to the concourse around 6:20 p.m. after airport screeners found a prohibited item in a bag. When airport police and TSA security officers arrived a few minutes later, the individual and the bag were gone. Mason said the item appeared to be a double-barreled derringer handgun. After security officers were unable to detain the person, the concourse was evacuated and passengers on five planes waiting to take off were unloaded and screened again. The entire process took about 1.5 hours.

Yeah... you humiliate a woman over her breast implants -- which are clearly identifiable in a scan -- but you let a guy with a double-barrelled derringer handgun just "melt away". Now that is class A, #1, top-of-the-line security!

Update 2011oct04: Here is a bit from a post on the NY Times blog of Tara Parker-Pope:

Since posting her story this weekend, several Web sites, including her husband’s blog, Laughing Squid, as well as the blog Boing Boing, have picked up her story. She said she has been contacted by T.S.A. officials and plans to speak with them soon.

The T.S.A. e-mailed a statement about the incident, saying that proper screening procedures were followed.

We strive to treat every passenger with dignity and respect. In this case, that may not have happened. During the screening process, if advanced imaging technology detects an anomaly that cannot be cleared, secondary screening is required to ensure the passenger does not have threat items, such as explosives concealed under clothing.

... [yada, yada, yada and more officialese ignoring responsibility and bad behaviour by TSA staff]

Ms. Dorn said the screening at the San Francisco airport before her return flight was uneventful, but she walked through a traditional metal detector rather than an imaging machine.

“The embarrassment came from trying to explain my situation to someone who didn’t want to hear it,” she said. “I was not refusing a pat-down if that’s what was necessary, and ultimately I submitted to one. I was objecting to how I was being treated.”

Ms. Dorn joins a long list of passengers with and without medical issues who have complained of mistreatment by T.S.A. screening workers.

Last year, MSNBC.com told the story of a woman who was forced to show her prosthetic breast during an airport screening. Another woman said she was embarrassed when, during the pat-down, a worker manipulated her breast prosthesis from side to side.

Joe Sharkey, a reporter for The New York Times, has also written about what many travelers perceive as attitude problems among screening workers.

The CIA Declares that Knowledge about "Global Warming" is Classified Intelligence

The American taxpayer foots the bill for the CIA, but when the CIA goes out and digs up information about "global warming", this is stamped "classified" and the taxpayers aren't allowed to see the results.

Just what about "global warming" is so dangerous that leaking anything about it to "America's enemies" would undermine the American republic? I don't see it.

Here are some bits from an article in Wired magazine:

CIA Says Global-Warming Intelligence Is ‘Classified’

Two years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency announced it was creating a center to analyze the geopolitical ramifications of “phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts and heightened competition for natural resources.”

But whatever work the Center on Climate Change and National Security has done remains secret.

In response to National Security Archive scholar Jeffrey Richelson’s Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA said all of its work is “classified.”

“We completed a thorough search for records responsive to your request and located material that we determined is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety,” (.pdf) Susan Viscuso, the agency’s information and privacy coordinator, wrote Richelson.

...

The CIA’s position, he said, means all “the center’s work is classified and there is not even a single study, or a single passage in a single study, that could be released without damage to national security. That’s a familiar song, and it became tiresome long ago.”

...

When the center was announced, the CIA said it would become “a powerful asset recognized throughout our government, and beyond, for its knowledge and insight.”

President Barack Obama also promised a transparent administration, which he might not be living up to. For instance, in 2009, the Obama administration played the national security card to hide details of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that is still being negotiated across the globe.

What’s more, consider the 33-page report the White House issued Friday, “The Obama Administration’s Commitment to Open Government.” (pdf)

So much for promises about "transparency". So much for the sweet light of reason in government. I guess the spies think that information about CO2 levels is a national secret that can be manipulated by "America's enemies" despite the fact that it is public knowledge.

How the UK Learned from its US Master

The world is well aware of the crimes of George Bush with his secret prisons and torture regime. But with the fall of Gaddafi, the UK is now getting its chance to shuck and jive in the public limelight and offer up excuses and the necessary exculpations for its behaviour. From an article in the UK's Guardian newspaper:

Sami al-Saadi is considering whether to sue the British government after he and his family were 'rendered' in an operation between MI6 and Gaddafi's intelligence services

A Libyan Islamist has told how he and his family were imprisoned after being "rendered" in an operation MI6 hatched in co-operation with Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence services. The rendition occurred shortly before Tony Blair paid his first visit to the dictator.

Sami al-Saadi, his wife and four children, the youngest a girl aged six, were flown from Hong Kong to Tripoli, where they were taken straight to prison. Saadi was interrogated under torture while his family were held in a nearby cell.

"They handcuffed me and my wife on the plane, my kids and wife were crying all the way," he told the Guardian. "It was a very bad situation. My wife and children were held for two months, and psychologically punished. The Libyans told me that the British were very happy."

Saadi says he is now considering whether to sue the British government, making him the second Libyan rendition victim to threaten legal proceedings in less than a week.

The evidence that the family were victims of a British-led rendition operation is contained in a secret CIA document found in the abandoned office of Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi's former intelligence chief, in Tripoli last week.

In London, meanwhile, an official inquiry into Britain's role in torture and rendition since 9/11 says the government has provided information about the UK's role in the affair, and Whitehall sources defended intelligence agencies' actions by saying they were following "ministerially authorised government policy".

It is the first time evidence has emerged that the British intelligence agencies ran their own rendition operation, as opposed to co-operating with those that were mounted by the CIA.

Go read the whole article.

Democracy only works if government is transparent. When governments have secret armies, especially secret torture chambers, carrying out crimes on "behalf of the people" for which the people do not agree and are horrified to discover, then you don't have a legitimate government. Apparently this simple truth hasn't yet registered on the US or UK governments. You can't run secret "wars" and commit "secret crimes" on behalf of a democratic people if you don't tell them what you are up to and get their permission.

America Running Scared and Paying Through the Nose

Here is a bit from an article by Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine that holds up America's waste of money on "security":

The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

Last year, McClatchy characterized this threat in similar terms: "undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism."

...

Despite these increasing economic insecurities -- actually, precisely because of them -- the sprawling domestic Security State continues unabated. The industry journal National Defense Magazine today trumpets: "Homeland Security Market ‘Vibrant’ Despite Budget Concerns."

...

Meanwhile, much of the anti-Terrorism weaponry in the U.S. ends up being deployed for purposes of purely domestic policing. As the LA Times notes: those aforementioned BearCats are "are now deployed by police across the country; the arrests of methamphetamine dealers and bank robbers these days often look much like a tactical assault on insurgents in Baghdad." Drones are used both in the Drug War and to patrol the border. Surveillance measures originally justified as necessary to fight foreign Terrorists are routinely turned far more often inward, and the NSA -- created with a taboo against domestic spying -- now does that regularly.

Exaggerating, manipulating and exploiting the Terrorist threat for profit and power has been the biggest scam of the decade; only Wall Street's ability to make the Government prop it up and profit from the crisis it created at the expense of everyone else can compete for that title. Nothing has altered the mindset of the American citizenry more than a decade's worth of fear-mongering So compelling is fear-based propaganda, so beholden are our government institutions to these private Security State factions, and so unaccountable is the power bestowed by these programs, that even a full decade after the only Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, its growth continues more or less unabated.

What is truly tragic is that the billions spent of "security" is happening while teachers, police, and firemen are being laid off, libraries closed, parks and recreation facilities closed, and people hunker down in a new Dark Ages secure in the knowledge that billions are being spent to "protect" them from the big bad bogeyman Al Qaeda while their bargain with the Devil has turned America's future into ashes.

Visions of the Future

Here is one perspective on where the political right in the US is heading. This is from a post on the Washington's Blog:

"Shrinking government" in American political discourse has, for decades now, meant the following. We enlarge the government's budget through taxation and penalties on working people and through borrowing and printing money. We not only tax the wealthy and corporations less, but we massively subsidize them with public funds. We move away from taxes and fees meant to limit the damage greed can do to the world, and we defund regulation of and law enforcement against the oligarchy. We transfer an ever greater share of the budget to the military. We expand the domestic and international surveillance-police states while merging the two. This, again, we call "shrinking government."

"Shrinking government" means a larger and more oppressive but less representative and less useful government. The military gets the money and gets privatized (employs non-competitive corporations working exclusively for the government). Education and public services get slashed and get privatized. Vote counting gets privatized. The privatized money gets to flow into election campaigns. The districts are re-gerrymandered with the latest modern technology. The media conglomerates get a monopoly and the monopoly limits electoral possibilities. "Shrinking government" means shrinking popular influence on government while government grows. But it grows in its ability to wage wars, occupy territories, and subsidize coal, oil, nuclear, and gas. It shrinks in its ability to give people anything in return for their taxes and fees. If this process continues it must result in ever greater repression or in revolt.

... a good portion of this movement wants to shrink everything except the military-police state, which is the most difficult thing to shrink. And the Republican politicians who co-opt this movement want to enlarge the military and police.

That's an awfully dyspeptic dystopia, but from my perspective it seems pretty accurate in triangulating where the US is headed.

How TSA Has Brought Security Theatre to a Boil

The US airlines did the one thing that should have been done before 9/11 only after 9/11. They installed hardened doors between the cockpit and the rest of the plane. Everything else in American aviation "security" is pure eyewash and a waste of money and a huge burden on people an a humiliation to many. It is simply security theatre.

Here is an example from Vance Gilbert's blog. This is a letter he wrote after a humilating and expensive "incident" with TSA:

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Vance Gilbert.

I live in Arlington, MA.

I am a homeowner, having been here 10+ years, I have a partner, and we have two 52lb Standard Poodles.

I am a 6 foot tall, bespectacled, slightly greying, 52 year old, 230 lb African-American male with a close hair cut.

On August 14, 2011, I boarded United Airlines Flight UA #3483 from Boston to Dulles on time and was seated in an isle seat #9C on an Embraer 170. I was dressed in shorts, baseball hat, t-shirt, hiking boots, and unbuttoned Jimmy Buffett Hawaiian shirt (covered with airplanes). As the door was being closed, we were told it was a full flight, meaning 70 - 80 people. I had my backpack under the seat in front of me, and my fanny pack/wallet behind my heels.

After the doors were closed the flight attendant came down the isle checking security buckling, bag clearance etc., and asked if she could put my fanny pack above me in the overhead bin. I replied to her that I'd be fine just stuffing it next to my back-pack under seat in front of me as it contained my wallet etc and that I'd rather have it near. She seemed fine with that resolution. All that was done without consternation or belligerence, and I thought nothing of it.

Now, I am a musician by trade and an amateur aviation historian, studying mostly European transport aircraft between WW1 and WW2, and some after. I was on my way to two different music festivals. When I travel I delve into reading about this era of aviation. I had taken out and was reading a book of Polish Aircraft circa 1946 and I was also looking at views of an Italian aircraft from 1921.

I think you see where this is going...

The plane went all the way out to the take-off point, in the queue for take-off. All the while I noticed a lot of phone pinging back and forth between the flight attendants. The young woman flight attendant was also crouched next to and conversing seriously to a dead-heading pilot about 4 seats up on the other side. The plane then proceeded to turn around and head all the way back to the gate. Once at the gate, the jet bridge was positioned. The Captain announced, "We have a minor issue, and we will continue our departure once it's resolved." He left the aircraft.

After about 5 - 10 minutes, 2 Mass State Policemen, 1 or 2 TSA Agents, and the bursar for the flight come down the isle and motion me to get off of the plane. I do not remember if they called me by name. We stepped out into the breezeway where one of the State policemen asked how I was doing that day.

I replied, "Sir, I think you're going to tell me I could be doing much better..."

Policeman: "Did you have a problem with your bag earlier?"

Me: "No sir, not at all. The flight attendant wanted it secured elsewhere other than behind my feet, and I opted to put it under the seat in front of me. It's my wallet, even though there's only 30 bucks in it…And all that was done without belligerence, or words for that matter…it was all good.

A few beats...

Policeman: "Sir, were you looking at a book of airplanes?"

Me: "Yes sir I was. I am a musician for money, but for fun I study old aircraft and build models of them, and the book I was reading was of Polish Aircraft from 1946."

Policeman: "Would you please go get that book so that i can see it?"

I go back onto the plane - all eyes are on me like I was a common criminal. Total humiliation part 2.

After a couple of minutes he says, "Why, this is all Snoopy Red Baron stuff..."

Me: "Yes sir, actually the triplane you see is Italian, from 1921 a little after World War 1..."

Policeman: "No problem here then, you can go on back on to the plane, sorry to inconvenience you...and have a nice flight".

We were now at least, after re-queuing, over an hour late. No one looked me in the eye, flight attendants, passengers. I missed my next connection, and had to cancel that portion of the flight (fair $ value equaling ??) and rent a car ($270) plus fuel ($30) to my work (lost 1/2 wages = $100), and I was afraid to read for the next two flights.

I silently wept the whole flight to DC. I've never been so frightened or humiliated. I'm shaking even writing this.

How much money was lost between the airline, the other travelers? - I couldn't begin to calculate.

How damaged am I from this experience? I'm not feeling particularly American. I'm angry, dumbfounded, frightened.

Would this have happened to the 30-ish Caucasian woman sitting across the aisle from me (who left her seat, water bottle, and book, never to be seen for the rest of the "completely full" flight)? Is it now against the law to be dark and read a book about historic aircraft?

What's my take-away from this experience as a taxpayer, United Airlines patron, Black Man, teacher, mentor, American? I was broken hearted and speechless as I overheard my friend's wife try to explain to her kids what happened and what he and I were talking about over dinner. They never did get why.

What do I tell your children?

Enough.

What do I do now - please advise?

Please contact me at the email above

Thanks in advance,

Vance Gilbert
Arlington, MA

There was nothing in this "incident" that common sense would identify as a "threat". This was pure over-reaction and stupidity and it was fueled by racism. Not violent, aggresive, mean racism, just an "uneasiness" with "the other" that plays into the hands of security theatre. What a tragedy.

Update 2011aug27: Here is a post on the On Liberty blog at the Boston Globe newspaper.

The ACLU is always concerned about ways in which ordinary Americans get inconvenienced by "security" measures that actually make us no safer, and less free. TSA's unpopular and invasive scanners and "pat-down" searches, which began frustrating travelers at Logan and nationwide last year, are a perfect example.

Recent reports of what happened to Arlington-based musician Vance Gilbert, who was questioned after reading a book about vintage airplanes on a flight out of Boston, seems to bear out that concern. Mr. Gilbert made it past TSA scanners and screeners, but then found himself being questioned after boarding his flight. We are reposting here Mr. Gilbert's open letter to the ACLU about what he experienced. He titled it "Racial Profiling First Hand".

That this kind of petty harrassment is "invisible" reminds me of how "decent" Germans after WWII claimed they had seen nothing of the internment and massacre of Jews (and gypsies, and homosexuals, and socialists, and handicapped, etc.). Funny... millions were dispossessed and killed and nobody noticed. Americans are undergoing their own mini-"holocaust" and nobody is noticing. Amazing. (It is there to be seen, buy you have to be attentive and remember and connect the dots. Most people couldn't be bothered. Like pastor Martin Niemöller noted in WWII:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Update 2011sep03: Here is more material on reaction to the Vance Gilbert case. This comes from a James Fallows blog at The Atlantic and it includes his own recent run-in with obnoxious TSA heavy-handedness. Here is a bit:

In three previous installments -- first, second, and third -- readers have discussed the implications of a recent case in which a Boston-area musician, Vance Gilbert, caused an airline crew to panic and abort the departure of a plane. Gilbert is black. How much difference did that make?

This is newly on my mind because, when starting on the first leg of a long overseas trip today, I had the most unpleasant encounter in years with TSA officialdom, at Dulles Airport. (I am now at LAX, waiting for the connecting flight.TSA Officer Z*** of Dulles, I will remember you!) This encounter was a reminder that regardless of race, getting crosswise of security-officialdom can lead to a lot of trouble. It was also a reminder that asking "Why?" or "What is the reason for that?" to a uniformed official of the wrong temperament can be the first step down a path that is difficult to retrace.

Go read the James Fallows post to get all of the material including the readers' comments he has brought into the post and the links he provides to relevant materia.

As a Canadian, I found this reader comment to have the greatest resonance:

From a reader in Canada:

>>After travelling through different airports in different countries, I must say that security screens in the US are the worst, but an incident in Canada demonstrated to me how their authority can be abused. On this occasion, during a plane change in Calgary, I saw that the security services everywhere hold an inordinate amount of power that is can be abused for any of the very personal reasons a screener may hold.

It was very early morning, before the coffee shops opened. Because there were a few hours between plane change I decided to leave the secure area and get some fresh air. As I was leaving the airport a nearby coffee shop was in the process of opening, so I rushed over, and waited by the counter, to get that much needed morning coffee.

As I waited for the server to serve me, a woman wearing a security uniform, came up to the counter, stood behind me, calling out to the server, "Elsie, can I have a black coffee". The server "Elsie" gave her the coffee and I started to give my order. Then, six more security people came up behind me and each called out their order. Elsie served all of them leaving me standing there. I was annoyed but let it go thinking that they were in a rush to get to their duty stations.

After Elsie served them, I gave her my order. Elsie picked up the cup and pot to pour my coffee, when a lone straggler wearing a security uniform appeared and called out her order to Elsie.

Elsie put down my cup and started to serve this lone person when I blurted out, "Do you mind giving me my coffee please". By this time I started to have visions of spending the entire time waiting in a line and never getting my coffee. Elsie served me before she served this security person.

I got my coffee, went outside and then returned to go through security.

When I went through security, every single person in that coffee line up was working the area. I was searched, scanned, patted down, had my carry-on torn apart, by 3 different security personnel, all in sequence. I swear I saw the last one smirk at someone behind me.

Could I prove I was singled out? No. Could I prove they were abusing their power? No. Do I believe that security personnel were abusing their power? Certainly Yes. Do I believe Gilbert? Absolutely Yes!

And BTW. I'm a white 66 year old, grey haired grandmother.

Update 2011sep12: Here is yet another example of "guilt by looking ethnic". Here is a bit from a post by another victim of security theatre, Shoshana Hebshi, in her blog Stories from the Heartland:

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread our legs and arms. Mine asked me if I was wearing any explosives. “No,” I said, holding my tongue to not let out a snarky response. I wasn’t sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was “What’s going on?”

No one would answer me. They put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

When the Patriot Act was passed after 9/11 and Arabs and Arab-looking people were being harassed all over the country, my Saudi Arabian dad became nervous. A bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart, he knew the government was watching him and at any time could come and take him away. It was happening all over. Men were being taken on suspicion of terrorist activities and held and questioned–sometimes abused–for long periods of time. Our country had a civil rights issue on its hands. And, in the name of patriotism we lost a lot of our liberty, especially those who look like me.

I never had any run-ins with the law. Since 9/11, though I felt a heightened sense of how my appearance would affect my travel plans, I never had any concrete reason to think I would be targeted.

...

Eventually a female uniformed officer came in. She looked like a fat Jada Pinkett Smith, and in a kind but firm voice explained what was going to happen. I was to stand, face the wall in a position so the camera above the toilet couldn’t see, and take off my clothes. I complied. She commented on my tattoo, saying, “Oh you have one of those things–good and evil, right?”

“Yin and yang. Balance,” I said, grabbing my clothes to redress.

“You understand why we have to do this, right? It’s for our own protection,” she told me.

Because I am so violent. And pulling me off an airplane, handcuffing me and patting me down against a squad car didn’t offer enough protection. They also needed to make sure all my orifices were free and clear.

She apologized for having to do the strip search, and I asked her to tell me what was going on. She said she didn’t know but someone would come and talk to me. She put my handcuffs back on and left. The other officer stood guard outside. I told him I needed to call my husband. He said I could use the phone later.

...

In the aftermath of my events on Sept. 11, 2011, I feel violated, humiliated and sure that I was taken from the plane simply because of my appearance. Though I never left my seat, spoke to anyone on the flight or tinkered with any “suspicious” device, I was forced into a situation where I was stripped of my freedom and liberty that so many of my fellow Americans purport are the foundations of this country and should be protected at any cost.

I believe in national security, but I also believe in peace and justice. I believe in tolerance, acceptance and trying–as hard as it sometimes may be–not to judge a person by the color of their skin or the way they dress.

...

I feel fortunate to have friends and family members who are sick over what happened to me. I share their disgust. But there was someone on that plane who felt threatened enough to alert the authorities. This country has operated for the last 10 years through fear. We’ve been a country at war and going bankrupt for much of this time. What is the next step?

You can read more about the ordeal from this AP report: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/sep/11/us-airline-passengers-detained/

When will Americans wake up and demand their country back from the fanatics who see a "terrorist" behind every tree. From the crazies who want to live in a police state because they are scared of their own shadow? The attack on 9/11 was by a tiny handful of fanatics. It was a police action. Not a 10 year war with nearly 7,000 Americans killed, two countries invaded, and half a dozen others subject to drone strikes. Somebody wanted the big show, costly war. Think about who had what to win from making a big deal about "getting Bin Laden dead or alive" but when it came to actually getting him in the Tora Bora mountains, just couldn't see committing many US troops and decided to use Afghani mercenaries instead. Surprise! Bin Laden outbid the Americans and got away. So much for "dead or alive". So much for a serious "war on terrorism". The whole thing is a big Hollywood production to cover up another agenda: getting access to oil, use of fear to win elections, settling accounts with a guy who tried to kill your Daddy, etc.

How Politics Can Usurp Security

Here are some bit from a post on AlterNet.org:

How the Political Right Bullied the Department of Homeland Security Into Ignoring the Threat of Right-Wing Extremism

After right-wingers freaked out about a report detailing the rise in right-wing extremism, Homeland Security effectively dismantled a unit tasked with tracking it.

In the wake of the terrorist attack in Norway by right-wing Christian extremist Anders Breivik, conservative media pundits rushed to vilify anyone who brought up the underlying far-right ideology that fueled Breivik’s violence.

The uproar that follows any suggestion that right-wing extremism is on the rise works to silence the conversation about the danger of right-wing militancy. According to disturbing revelations by a former Homeland Security Intelligence Analyst, the consequences of this dynamic extend to the highest branches of the US government.

For six years, Darryl Johnson headed a Department of Homeland Security team tracking domestic extremist groups. Now Johnson, who is no longer with DHS, says that conservative furor over the report's findings pressured Homeland Security to abandon reporting on and monitoring the rising threat of right-wing extremism for the past two years.

...

In an in-depth interview published in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, Johnson reveals the level of sway the political right had in thwarting intelligence work on right-wing extremism. He says DHS deliberately mischaracterized the report as unauthorized, even though it had passed through proper channels and instituted restrictive policies that brought the important work of his unit to a virtual standstill. As a result, Johnson left DHS in dismay and was followed by almost all the members of his team, leaving a single analyst where there had been six. In comparison, there are at least 25 analysts devoted to tracking Islamic terrorism.

When questioned about Johnson’s claims -- which have been confirmed by current and former department officials in the Washington Post – DHS officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have repeatedly disputed his account and insist that the level of activity by right-wing extremist groups has remained consistent over the past few years. ...

Johnson’s report was consistent with data from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which finds that hate groups topped 1,000 for the first time since SPLC began counting such groups in the 1980s. The most dramatic growth was seen in antigovernment "Patriot" groups — militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy — which came roaring back to life over the past year after more than a decade out of the limelight. SPLC's Intelligence Project identified 824 anti-government "Patriot" groups that were active in 2010, up from just 149 in 2008.

It is interesting that right wing violence has always been much more bloody and widespread than left wing violence (except in Communist countries, but "left" in the context of those perverted societies is a bit bizarre). That means that any government security agency should always be "tilting" toward threats from the right. But historically most resources have been deployed against the "threat" from the left. But that's because most governments are centre-right and not left or centre-left.

Governments are always surprised by right wing violence but are hardly ever surprised by violence from the left. Their security apparatus is geared to counter threats from the left. But like the above article indicates, they either turn a blind eye to threats from the right or downplay them.

As the article points out:

In May 2009, just one month after the report’s release, an anti-abortion zealot murdered Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. In June 2009, neo-Nazi James von Brunn murdered a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In March 2010, nine members of a Michigan militia were charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction in connection with an alleged plot to murder police officers.

...

In a sad sort of irony, Johnson told SPLC that the conservative media personalities who misinterpreted and attacked his report “would have been shocked to know that I personify conservatism. I'm an Eagle Scout. I'm a registered Republican. I'm Mormon. In fact, I was helping the Boy Scouts with a fundraiser when I heard the report being attacked on the news."

Outrage over the report's findings quickly spread to Congress, where several conservative lawmakers demanded the ouster of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

...

That the right’s outrage over the report managed to influence the Department of Homeland Security should raise alarm bells for anyone who is concerned about homegrown extremism. It's frightening that the US government bowed to political pressure. The atrocity that took place in Norway is a reminder of the brutality that ideological extremists are capable of dishing out.

Go read the whole article.

Interesting Questions

In an article in The Daily Beast by Bob Graham, former senator from Florida has raised a number of issues and opened up questions that need to be answered:

On September 12, 2001, Americans learned that 15 of the 19 commercial-airplane hijackers of the previous day were Saudis. The thought that went through many minds was, What are the Saudis thinking? Were these 15 individual suicidal decisions, or does 9/11 represent a break in our mutually beneficial relationship stretching back to World War II?

From that date until today those questions have largely gone unanswered. Unanswered because the government of the United States has engaged in a sustained and effective campaign to keep the American public from knowing the truth. And we may ask: Why?

...

Why would the Saudis have given substantial assistance to at least two of the hijackers, and possibly all 19? The answer I have come to is survival—survival of the state and survival of the House of Saud. The Saudi regime in the late 1990s faced the prospect of a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution, when young revolutionaries toppled the shah. Osama bin Laden was ascending. He had achieved hero status—in his country of birth, Saudi Arabia, and across much of the Muslim world—for his work with the mujahedin in expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan. He had successfully bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa. He had trained thousands of potential terrorists in his Afghan camps. And he was planning even greater attacks—this time within the United States itself.

But bin Laden recognized a deficiency: Most of those who would be spirited into the United States had never been there before and did not speak English. How could they survive and maintain anonymity while they completed the final planning, practiced and executed an enormously sophisticated attack? The Saudis, who were known to have a global network of agents to monitor their youth against the prospects of another Iran, could provide the support infrastructure to make this possible. The threat of civil unrest against the monarchy, led by al Qaeda, could be the leverage for access to this network.

An insight into how far the regime might go in defending and perpetuating the status quo occurred in May of this year at the Vienna meeting of the World Health Organization. Advancing its policy of avoiding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or biological, the United States offered a resolution that would have required all 193 members of the WHO to either declare they were smallpox-free or—as would be the case with the United States—to commit to the destruction of any smallpox pathogens held in laboratories or elsewhere within five years. Throughout history, smallpox has been a scourge of mankind, and the virus remains the only communicable human disease successfully erased from nature, a miracle of organization and determination. There is only one way it can reappear, and that is in a weaponized form from a nation or group bent on mass catastrophe and worldwide havoc. The results of any dissemination would automatically be classified as a crime against humanity. This resolution to destroy all samples was successfully filibustered by Iran. It is not surprising that a country which for more than a decade has sought to develop a nuclear capability would also be seeking a biological weapon. What was surprising was Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s staunchest opponents, declaring that it “strongly disagreed” with the United States' position.

Why would the kingdom abandon its most important ally to support a nation that for the past 30-plus years has been considered its archenemy? Could it be that Saudi Arabia is also developing biological weapons?

The most perplexing unanswered question remains: Why would the United States engage in a cover-up?

I would love to have some answers to the questions raised by Senator Graham. He was co-chair of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 or 'JIICATAS911" is the official name of the inquiry conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks beginning in February 2002, with the final report released in December 2002.

It is hard to have confidence in a "transparent" government when fundamental questions like these go unanswered for ten long years. The go unanswered whether there is a Republican administration or a Democratic administration. Very strange.

Why Reasonable People Think Government is Brain Dead

Talk about closing the barn door after the horses have fled...

From the ACLU web site:

ACLU Sues State Department to Declassify Diplomatic Cables Already Revealed by WikiLeaks

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today sued the State Department over its insistence on keeping classified a set of diplomatic cables describing the government’s efforts abroad to avoid attention or accountability over its actions connected to the "War on Terror," despite the fact that the documents have already been released by WikiLeaks. On April 12, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for 23 embassy cables that were widely disseminated by news organizations in November 2010. The government has refused to respond to the request, prompting today's lawsuit.

"Our current secrecy regime has become completely untethered from reality. The government's insistence that information published throughout the world remains 'classified' is not only ridiculous – it's a legal fiction that has permitted government officials to evade liability for illegal conduct," said Ben Wizner, litigation director of the ACLU National Security Project. "All too often, the government has employed secrecy not to protect the nation from harm, but to protect the powerful from embarrassment and accountability."

I can understand a government needing secrecy for state security, but why would any government insist on "secrecy" for any document published on the Internet? This is just bureaucratic madness. It delegitimizes the government to take such an idiotic stance.

Why Your Government Wants You Insecure and Afraid

Here is a bit from a good article by Robert X. Cringely on his blog I, Cringely:

Twenty years ago, when I was writing Accidental Empires, my book about the PC industry, I included near the beginning a little rant about how good engineers were incapable of lying, because their work relied on Terminal A being positive and not negative and if they lied about such things then nothing would ever work. That was before I learned much about data security, where apparently lying is part of the game. Well, based on recent events at RSA, Lockheed Martin, and other places, I think lying should not be part of the game.

Was there a break-in? Was data stolen? Was there an unencrypted database of SecureID seeds and serial numbers? All we can say at best is that we don’t really know. And in some quarters that is supposed to make us feel more secure because it means the bad guys are equally clueless. Except they aren’t, because they broke-in, they stole data, they knew what the data was good for while we — including SecureID customers it seems — are still mainly in the dark.

A lot of this is marketing — a combination of “we are invincible” and “be afraid, be very afraid.” But a lot of it is intended also to keep us locked-in to certain technologies. To this point most data security systems have been proprietary and secret. If an algorithm appears in public it escaped, was stolen, or reverse-engineered. Why should such architectural secrecy even be required if those 1024- or 2048-bit codes really would take a thousand years to crack? Isn’t the encryption, combined with a hard limit on login attempts, good enough?

Good question.

Alas, the answer is “no.” There are several reasons for this but the largest by far is that the U.S. government does not want us to have really secure networks. The government is more interested in snooping in on the rest of the world’s insecure networks. The U.S. consumer can take the occasional security hit, our spy chiefs rationalize, if it means our government can snoop global traffic.

This is National Security, remember, which means ethical and common sense rules are suspended without question.

RSA, Cisco, Microsoft and many other companies have allowed the U.S. government to breach their designs. Don’t blame the companies, though: if they didn’t play along in the U.S. they would go to jail. Build a really good 4096-bit AES key service and watch the Justice Department introduce themselves to you, too.

The feds are so comfortable in this ethically-challenged landscape in large part because they are also the largest single employer… on both sides. One in four U.S. hackers is an FBI informer, according to The Guardian. The FBI and Secret Service have used the threat of prison to create an army of informers among online criminals.

While security dudes tend to speak in terms of black or white hats, it seems to me that nearly all hats are in varying shades of gray.

Go read the rest of the article and learn something useful and discover you have a crystal ball into the future.

Here's Cringely's bottom line:

We’ve created a culture of self-perpetuating paranoia in military-industrial data security by building systems that are deliberately compromised then arguing that draconian measures are required to defend these holes we’ve made ourselves. This helps the unquestioned three-letter agencies maintain political power, doing little or nothing to increase national security, while at the same time compromising personal security for all of us.

There is no excuse for bad engineering.

I say "three cheers for Cringely for calling a spade a spade!"

The joke is that national governments have the deep pockets to keep their secrets secret. As Cringely points out, having "leaky" security is of benefit only to allow government to spy on individuals (at least the ones not technologically sophisticated enough to protect themselves). Be assured, organized crime and terrorist can afford the necessary level of security (even if Osama Bin Laden appears to have ignored the need of it in his Pakistani-protected hideout).

If You Want a Betterr Government

Then you need whistleblowers who can point out corruption and failings within government. But if you crack down hard on whistleblowers, you will get a corrupt government.

Here is a bit from Wired magazine on one NSA whistleblower:

Days before he was set to go on trial on charges that he illegally retained classified documents, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser misdemeanor count of exceeding authorized access to a computer.

Drake had been charged under the Espionage Act after he allegedly provided information about waste and mismanagement at the NSA to a Baltimore Sun reporter in 2006 and 2007.

The former NSA linguist, who was set to go to trial next Monday, rejected two pleas offered by the government on Wednesday before finally agreeing to a third proposal, according to the Washington Post. He turned down an offer to plead guilty to the charge that he retained classified documents without authorization.

Drake, who left the NSA in 2008 and has been reduced to working at an Apple Store outside Washington, D.C. while he awaited trial, was facing a possible sentence of 35 years if convicted of the charges he was facing. He has long maintained that he never provided the Sun with classified information and also disputed that any documents investigators found at his home contained classified material.

Here's the real alarm signal. I've added the emphases:

The government’s decision to prosecute Drake and the resulting media attention has already led to more public disclosures about the NSA’s illegal surveillance program than the government likely wanted.

...

Drake’s revelations to the Baltimore Sun exposed the government’s waste and mismanagement of the programs.

Last year the government had dropped a criminal investigation of another whistle blower who helped expose the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program to the New York Times in 2004.

Go read the original article to get all the gory details about corruption and crime within government and how they are using "the Law" to suppress anybody who tries to point this out.

Finally, A Gutsy Company Says "No" to the Endless Demands of "Security"

From BoingBoing and my favourite blogger/novelist Cory Doctorow:

Mozilla tells DHS: we won't help you censor the Internet

Cory Doctorow at 2:43 PM Thursday, May 5, 2011

The US Department of Homeland Security has asked the Mozilla Foundation to take down the "Mafiaa Fire" plugin, which automatically redirects browsers to the new URLs for sites that have had their .com and .net addresses seized in the latest round of the copyright wars. The Mozilla Foundation has firmly refused.

However, where ICE might have expected a swift take down from Mozilla, the legal and business affairs department of the tech company was not planning to honor the request so easily.
"Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order," Anderson explains.

According to Anderson complying with the request without any additional information would threaten open Internet principles. So, instead of taking the add-on offline they replied to ICE with a set of 11 well-crafted questions.

Homeland Security Wants Mozilla to Pull "Domain Seizure" Add-On

Mozilla's questions to the DHS

History shows that trends change when somebody finally stands up to the bully and says "enough".

Copyright fights are over property rights and have nothing to do with "security" so Homeland Security has no business trying to enforce some copyright claim by making sure that browsers don't let people go to a site where the material is available. The Justice Department and the Courts are the appropriate tools for pursuing a property right claim.

A New Trend in Apple Phones?

I'm a bit of a cynic, so I was delighted to read this post by Robert X. Cringely:

I was in Los Angeles last Friday for TV meetings and lost my iPhone 4. It was on my belt and suddenly it wasn’t. Then in one of those deja vu experiences I noticed that I was only steps from an Apple Store, so I went inside to trace my iPhone using the Where is my iPhone? app. But my iPhone was nowhere.

Understand it was fully-charged and I had been using it less than 10 minutes before. My phone was nowhere to be found.

Sadly the kids at the Apple Store knew far too well what had happened because they hear the story every day. My phone was most likely stolen straight from its clip on my belt by a professional iPhone 4 thief. The moment it was grabbed from my belt the thief handed it to an accomplice. Within a minute the phone was powered-off and untraceable. They didn’t want my data, just my iPhone.

An iPhone 4 can go for $300 in China. They replace the SIM card, spoof the MAC address or sell it for use on a network that doesn’t care. The street price in L. A. for my phone is $100. An industrious criminal can grab several phones per day.

My friend Bill, hearing my story, said it is even worse in New York where thieves will steal the iPhone 4 right out of your hand, running off into the inevitable crowd of pedestrians. That will teach us not to use our mobile smart phones when, well, mobile.

I have had a hand-held phone continuously since 1993 and while I have broken phones a variety of ways including dropping one in a toilet, this is the first phone I’ve had stolen in 18 years. It’s not that I felt naked without the phone, I felt violated.

So what do you do? Go back to the Apple Store and pay full price ($599) for a replacement iPhone 4 because AT&T didn’t offer insurance and you didn’t think to buy a policy from a third-party provider

Nope. I bought for a quarter that price an iPhone 3GS which nobody wants to steal.

It’s good enough for me.

Combine that with the current fury over the fact that iPhones maintain a file on the phone that lets your every movement be tracked, and you get some major unhappiness with Apple. This feeds my glee at the idea that Apple which has rocketed up with success after success is now due for some major hiccups and product problems.

From CNN:

"By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements."

And according to this article at MSNBC, Senator Al Franken has 9 questions for Apple about this secret tracking:

Here's what Sen. Franken wants to know:

1. Why does Apple collect and compile this location data? Why did Apple choose to initiate tracking this data in its iOS 4 operating system?


2. Does Apple collect and compile this location data for laptops?


3. How is this data generated? (GPS, cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi triangulation, etc.)


4. How frequently is a user's location recorded? What triggers the creation of a record of someone's location?


5. How precise is this location data? Can it track the users location to 50m, 100m, etc.?


6. Why is this data not encrypted? What steps will Apple take to encrypt the data?


7. Why were Apple consumers never affirmatively informed of the collection and retention of their location data in this manner? Why did Apple not seek affirmative consent before doing so?


8. Does Apple believe that this conduct is permissible under the terms of its privacy policy?


9. To whom, if anyone, including Apple, has this data been disclosed? When and why were these disclosures made?

I'm thinking these "problems" will take some of the shine off the Apple, and a lot of people will make decisions like Cringely and buy other products that meet their needs.

Homeland Security Saves America from Six Year Old Terrorist

Alert, quick thinking, dedicated Homeland Security agents spotted a six year old terrorist in the act of infiltrating America and stopped her in her tracks by carrying out extensive examinations including a full scan and an exhaustive body pat down. Thank God for the hard working people at TSA!



Now that they have stopped the six year old threat in its track, I'm hoping TSA carries out these full body scans and exhaustive pat downs of all suspect 1 and 2 year olds. Everybody knows that it is the young ones who are the most blood thirsty and make the most determined terrorists hell bent on killing as many innocent Americans as they can. Only the proud TSA agents doing their duty provide that thin line of protection between America and the horrors of 9/11.

Sure, this six year old is a native American with a cute accent, but that is exactly what al Qaeda is recruiting these days: cute six year olds and 80 year old grandmothers. TSA knows this, so they are extra vigilant when these ruthless types try to board planes in America. Only the quick thinking, rigorous, and probing agents of TSA can save America from this newest terroist threat!

Never accuse TSA of "security theatre". No! TSA knows that hard cases prove the mettle of their agents. Somebody has to confront the six year old terrorists and TSA has stepped up to the plate and shown they are true professionals, dedicated to the job, and smart enough to know a terrorist from some six year old wanna be terrorist.

Who says there is waste, incompetence, and stupidity in the TSA. This videotape proves that this agency has what it takes to confront terrorism in all its guises. Nobody is gonna fool with the TSA after this tape gets out!

Here's what the bleeding heart, commie-loving, liberals say about the patriotic TSA. The following is Maureen Dowd questioning and undermining the TSA's integrity and the ability to execute effective security screening. Shame on her for this scurrilous attack:

Consternation crackled again last week when a Kentucky couple posted video of their 6-year-old daughter being given the deep probe by a female T.S.A. agent in New Orleans.

“We felt that it was inappropriate,” the girl’s mother, Selena Drexel, told ABC News. “You know, we struggle to teach our child to protect themselves, to say ‘No, it’s not O.K. for folks to touch me in this way, in these areas.’ Yet, here we are saying, ‘Well, it’s O.K. for these people.’ ”

Alaska State Representative Sharon Cissna has become a heroine for many women with breast cancer since she spoke out about the “twisted policy” of having the “invasive, probing hands of a stranger” on her, after scanners twice showed the scars from her mastectomy and she was ordered to undergo “humiliating” body searches.

The second time the Anchorage Democrat was told to do the pat-down in mid-February, returning to Juneau after getting medical treatment in Seattle, she refused. She rented a car, drove three hours into British Columbia, took a plane from Vancouver to the small town of Prince Rupert and then got on a ferry for a two-day trip to Juneau.

Her fellow lawmakers in the Last Frontier, where people have to travel by air quite a bit, passed a bill she co-sponsored pushing the T.S.A. to rethink its methods because “no one should have to sacrifice their dignity in order to travel.”

Cissna, 69, who said the aggressive pat-down also stirred unpleasant memories of a teenage molestation, said she has gotten more than a thousand letters. The Alaska Legislature has asked the U.S. Senate to hold hearings.

“I don’t have a huge war against T.S.A.,” she said on Monday. “I have a huge war against government that isn’t looking carefully enough at the people that it serves.”

She asserted that the system does not seem smartly tailored to focus on dangerous people rather than “good, law-abiding people.” So kids, seniors and those with disabilities, joint replacements and other medical conditions — things they already feel embarrassed about — end up getting harassed.

“Not only breast cancer veterans like myself,” she said, “but people who’ve had colostomies, any kind of alteration to their bodies that makes them look not absolutely 100 percent normal. And it is assaultive.”

One of my relatives, a distinguished federal official, recently sent a letter of complaint to the T.S.A. about her experience submitting to a body search at Washington’s Reagan airport after the scanner reflected the shadow of the ostomy bag she wears on her abdomen.

Fearing that would happen, she had printed out the notification card on the T.S.A. Web site, as she wrote, “so as to discreetly inform the T.S.A. agent of my medical condition. The agent would not even look at the card. ... The screening agent then did a hand search of my groin, breasts, under the waistband of my slacks and around my ostomy bag. ... Does having an ileostomy now make you a terrorist suspect?”

She has been rethinking how long she wants to work for the government in a job that requires a lot of air travel and says she would consider joining a class-action lawsuit against the T.S.A.

Everybody knows that a colostomy bag is nearly always just a cover for a bomb being sneaked aboard a plane, that a prosthesis is inevitably cover for a gun or knife, a catheter is a lethal weapon in the hands of a trained terrorist, and that nobody is more dangerous that a six year old girl or an 80 year old grandmother.

Look, if the TSA has to publicly rape my sister in order to keep America safe, I say let me hold her clothes while they take her down and gang bang her. Security first, security always! So what with this "Bill of Rights" nonsense. We are talking security. When a six year old threatens America's security, I say beat her black & blue, throw her in isolation for a year, break her down. There are no limits when it comes to keeping Americans safe! Every red-blooded American should stand ready to hand over his mother, his grandmother, or baby sister for whatever interrogation techniques that TSA may think is necessary. To question this is to undermine the security of the nation and to become an active agent of al Qaeda.

By the way: I will never travel to the US again, nor will I ever fly on a plane using these idiotic TSA "security" procedures. I have my dignity to preserve. I weep for the sheep-like Americans who put up with this degradation in the name of "national security". This isn't security. This is madness. This is like the Joe McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s that found communists everywhere, that destroyed peoples lives solely by inuendo and false accusation. Nutty! But for "patriotic" Americans it must be a relief to get back to "the good old days".

Bradley Manning, Victim of the National Surveillance State

Jack Balkin is a Yale professor of law who has written an interesting post entitled "Bradley Manning, Barack Obama and the National Surveillance State" on his blog Balkinization. There is much worth reading, but here is the key bit:

All of which brings me to Private Bradley Manning. The Obama Defense Department's treatment of Manning, a American citizen, has employed the sort of harsh techniques that candidate Obama and his supporters would have loudly decried if applied to Guantanamo Bay inmates or to another American citizen, Jose Padilla.

It's worth noting that if Private Manning were a prisoner of war, his treatment at the hands of the Obama Administration would violate the Geneva Conventions; indeed, if he were an non-uniformed enemy combatant, his treatment would probably violate Common Article III. Apparently, President Obama has gone Attorney General Alberto Gonzales one better. Not only must he believe that the protections of the Geneva Conventions are quaint, he must also think the same of the Bill of Rights, at least as applied to leakers--or at least, leakers whom the President and his associates did not authorize.

P.J. Crowley was fired for pointing out the obvious, that the treatment of Manning was counterproductive. He forgot to add, illegal and unconstitutional as well. By telling us the obvious, Crowley forced Obama to acknowledge the fact of the Defense Department's actions in public, and to report calmly to the press that that the DOD had informed him that everything is perfectly acceptable.

Of course, since the DOD is mistreating Manning, what exactly did he expect that they would tell him? This is a bit like President Bush asking John Yoo whether the United States is committing torture. Of course John Yoo is not going to tell you that you are committing torture; the very reason he is there is to tell you that everything is perfectly fine.

The American people did not vote for the "national security state". In fact, most don't realize that the nature of the country has changed over the last 10 years. They are too busy making ends meet during the Great Recession.

Most people have no idea what path is being trod by their country:

In July 2009, I explained that we were witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimation of the National Surveillance State, in which the President's power to detain, surveil, and punish at his discretion would be greatly expanded. In the treatment of Bradley Manning, we can see a glimmer of what this will mean in practice. Unless there is a public outcry, we have no guarantee that this exceptional incident will prove truly exceptional. After all, if a liberal Democratic President is willing to look the other way in this case, what can we expect of future presidents of either party?

Day Late, Dollar Short

While the Obama administration dithers in deciding how to "implement" its decision to support the populist uprising in Libya beyond mere words saying that Gaddafi "must step down", the situation has become worse. But it is more serious than that. Here is an intelligence summary from a newsletter (Kforce Government Solutions Inc.'s NightWatch newsletter) that tracks security threats to the US:

General comment: The general theme in the weekend protests is the youth movement appears to be fading. It claims credit for forcing two heads of state to resign, but that was actually intra-palace politics involving the armed forces. Libya's counter-revolution has encouraged all the tough-gut, hardline regimes to stand firm. Thus far, there are no revolutions.

In instability theory, the side with the most guns, including bullets, always wins. Libya is proving that point once again.

Some governments have made promises of modest political reforms, but even Egypt appears to be making only cosmetic changes by amending the constitution. All governments have regrouped and recovered. All promises are reversible. The movement appears to have peaked and does not look sustainable.

Some implications. First, the Arab youth lacks leadership, insight and planning. It poses no threat to anyone except itself. Western education and exposure made young Arabs feel uncomfortable without providing any practical sense about how to carry off a revolution or move for more acceptable changes. Modern technology seems to have tempted young Arabs with illusions of invincibility that provide no protection against real bullets.

The western democracies are out of energy and idealism for now. Having spent vast resources for modest results in the past decade in Iraq and especially Afghanistan, they are not inclined to get involved with the Arab youth. Western pressure is no threat to authoritarian regimes in Muslim countries, aside from insipid statements about unacceptable behavior and feckless sanctions. Qadhafi's vengeance on the rebels will be limited only by his own and his western-educated children's imaginations, provided they win.
The message thus far is a strong preference for regimes that are, regardless of their illegitimate antecedents and disreputable histories. Even governments that are the products of revolution have proven suspicious of and hesitant to deal with revolutionary movements.

The youth exposed vulnerabilities that wiser, more sophisticated enemies will exploit in the future. The Islamists, for example, will have obtained a better sense of the vulnerabilities of the authoritarian regimes and their strengths. When they make their move against the kingdoms, they will have benefited from the pending failure of the youth movement.

So much for "democracy sweeping the Arab world". Instead, the above cynical experts see only a win for the forces of darkness (both authoritarian governments and Al Qaeda wannabes). They will learn lessons from this and continue their death choke on the Muslim world.

What I find most disheartening is the idea that the idiotic and wasteful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq meant that governments were "exhausted" and not able to take advantage of the opportunity to spread democracy here. That makes no sense. Those wars cost well over a trillion dollars and 5,000 American lives. Assisting the popular revolts might have cost $100 million and maybe 2 or 3 lives. To say that you are "too exhausted" to do the latter because you did the former is to say that a man dying of thirst has crawled across a 200 mile desert but when he is within 10 feet of a glistening, fresh water pool, he just "doesn't have the energy" to crawl those 10 final feet. Nutty!

Political Loonies

This headline got my attention:

Florida Conservatives Standing Up For Liberty With New Law to Ban Farm Photo

This is from a blog posting by Matthew Iglesias on the Think Progress blog site:

SB 1246 by Sen. Jim Norman, R-Tampa, would make it a first-degree felony to photograph a farm without first obtaining written permission from the owner. A farm is defined as any land “cultivated for the purpose of agricultural production, the raising and breeding of domestic animals or the storage of a commodity.”

The specific freedom-enhancing element of this particular initiative is that apparently freedom-hating animal rights activists have been known to secretly document farm activities in order to advance socialism. The article quotes Wilton Simpson, “a farmer who lives in Norman’s district” who “said the bill is needed to protect the property rights of farmers and the ‘intellectual property’ involving farm operations.” I sort of suspect he just threw in the spurious intellectual property claim to make me angry.

Since 9/11 I've been bothered by signs popping up on building saying "no photography allowed". I think the signs should be taken down and the local constabulary issued sticks. When somebody shows up at the aforesaid building, the defender of the law should simply poke out their eyes. That is must more "secure" than letting people wander around viewing stuff and memorizing the layout. You can never be "too safe" you know.