Civil liberties – Page 3

Ben Franklin, the original open saucey badass

J. Matthew Buchanan discovered an interesting anecdote about Mr Franklin: that he had very little use for exclusive patents! Check out this passage from Franklin’s autobiography (grafted from Matthew’s post):

In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in 1742, invented an open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled “An Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is particularly explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use of them answered and obviated,” etc. This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.” (emphasis added)

As Matt sumarizes: I bet if Ben were around today, he’d be an open source programmer, inventing all sorts of new software and sharing them with everyone.

Privacy? What privacy?

I had an interesting exchange at the Net Squared conference last week involving privacy and tags. It came down to a question from someone new to tags: “So if you tag everything with this tag, doesn’t that mean that everyone can find what you’ve tagged?”

The answer is, of course, yes.

Which drew some rather wide eyes and a breath, “Oh”.

And that’s when I went off on my anti-privacy rant. About how privacy is like sand between your fingers and that the more you try to hold on to it, the less you really can maintain control over. And subsequently, over time, more and more spills out into the hands of others, often those who you least expect or want to have information about you.

Like the government or like your paranoid employer beholden to laws of the government. Like insurance companies or the folks who run the ATM card networks. Like people who determine how much you should pay for certain things.

Anyway, sniveling aside, a long time ago I decided that there is no privacy in anything digital (which is both a beautiful and a terrifying thing, depending on how much you know about technology). Knowing a bit myself, but not quite enough, I’ve decided to try and flood the network with as much information about myself as possible in the naive and desperate hope that by creating more positive and truthful information I can counter whatever lies may someday be advanced against what I’m really up to. I mean, when the government is spying on your cell phone calls, your boss is paying people to read your emails and who knows who’s snooping on your WiFi connection, what else can you do? Certainly not pretend that you have an iota of privacy anymore! Enh, whatev. At least the kids get it.

The Krypton of Privacy

Looks like we now know that the white underbelly of the beast lives just down the street — as well as what it looks like:

In San Francisco the “secret room” is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T’s WorldNet service, part of the latter’s vital “Common Backbone.” In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the “secret room” on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The “secret room” itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.

And hey, the next time they hold a conference on “Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception and Internet Surveillance”, let’s hold a BarCamp and riff on things like:

…lawful intercept of voice over the Internet (VoIP) and real-time Internet surveillance and the need for lawful interception and Internet surveillance
…what real-time Internet surveillance technology solutions are available, what tariffing mechanisms are available to pass costs off to the general public and how investments in Intelligence Support Systems (ISS) can generate a financial return without jeopardizing consumer privacy
…and how there are no lawful intercept or real-time Internet surveillance barriers that can’t be solved with adequate research and development investment and service provider commitments

That’s the spirit! Anything can be accomplished if you put your mind to it. Whether it’s right or wrong! Whohoo! Moral absolution!

Fuckers.

Calling all heros

→ ..rant follows.. ←

Been reading Batman, The Dark Knight Returns after I found the series at a closing sale deep in the Mission. I always have loved Frank Miller’s work and this is no exception.

Reading comics now, when I’m 25, is a different experience than when I was younger, more naive, and perhaps less literate. And certainly just as much if not more visual. In fact the stories really never resonated with me much; sure I’d read them but I was much more into the art.

So reading comics now — comics only 10 years old but already classic in their own right — while reading the news, I wonder if we’re stuck in some weird life-imitating-art vortex. Or some alternate reality. Yeah, that must be it.

In which case, I don’t see any reason why I can’t put a call out for all remaining heros to show themselves. In fact, I’d call for amnesty on all of them, if they’d just come out and give us a hand and maybe provide, even for a fleeting moment, some semblance of a heroic ideal.

You see it in the movies in fact. You see it with characters like V. But those tales of hyper-violence that exist in the Matrix genre of reality are farcical, pretending to give us some deep clue about the inner reality of our time but only obfuscate the confusion and true alienation of our time.

I’m sorry, I can’t just call in an exit. I’m sorry, I just can’t take the blue pill. I’m sorry, I don’t have the strength of 40 men with the ability to absorb hundreds of bullets fired point-blank. I’m ordinary; I’m human; I’m no hero: I’ll die and make mistakes. And so I’m terribly desirous of someone who is some kind of superperson to come in and clean up the mess we’ve made.

. . .

No but see, I did the dishes tonight (– at least part of them). We had our pasta, we did the dishes. Has the President ever done dishes?

Look, I’m utterly distressed. I’m at a loss for a clear sentiment here — I mean, any hope of raising kids normally, with a sense of right and wrong and order is out the door, thanks to the most popularest-ever Decider in Chief. You do realize what’s going on, right? You do realize what else has been happening lately? You do realize that nothing the President says is true, is believeable, is trustable, is something that you should repeat with authority? That our credibility as a nation is in the ashtray? That this country — our country — is being lead by a baboon?

Fuck, the man signs a bill into law and then jots down the ways in which he’s not bound to play by them in the Federal Registrar. I mean, why have a system of courts? Why have a Constitution? Why did they fucking play that stupid ass “How a Bill is Made” video over and over in grade school when they left out the most important part: that the Supreme Dicktator isn’t bound to mortal laws… only the ones of His choosing.

. . .

That’s why I’m calling out the superheros. That’s why we need their help. There is no law in this country — not even the one that was supposed to get the person that we voted for the most into the White House — that applies to this administration. While the sniveling proletariet stutter through the metal detector conveyer belts that They Who Rule’ll never be subjected to, shovel $8 fuel into oversized steel death machines, while we foot the bill and they sip the champagne of Crusade Spoils and the rancorous chorus of the maligned, the disenfranchised, the disenchanted, dispirited, overpromised, underdelivered — the normals — grows deafening, the cracks begin to appear.

But they’ll not tumble without an unyielding force of righteousness — and without the help of the supers. I mean, badazz supers, like Batman. Or like Jules in Pulp Fiction. This is what he’d say, on the page right before the very last page of the series:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Government gone wild III

What’s that line in Syriana?

“You’re not guilty until you’re investigated”?

Something like that.

And speaks volumes that, which seems terribly apropos, given that, without admitting any malfeasance, the government has decided to intervene in a civil case filed by the EFF against AT&T for their role in aiding the government spy on US Citizens.

You don’t see this often, folks, but yes, the government has decided to call up designated hitter “State Secrets Privilege“. Which basically reads “Ok ok, the jig’s up, you figured us out, game’s over. But now that you know, drop it. Don’t fuck with the government, or we’ll fuck with you.” (No really, I looked it up!).

Anyway, the case isn’t cold yet owing to a potentially independent-thinking judge — which is basically the Kryponite of this administration.

Anyway, food for thought from Gmail’s Quote of the Day:

Henry Ward Beecher – “The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.”

…knows chaos

I’d wager that chaos is indeed one of the major subjects areas lacking from education today. Perhaps now solution.

BellSouth to New Orleans: Let them eat cake

The mission of The Emergency Email Network(sm) states:

“Provide notification to citizens of local, regional, national and international emergencies utilizing the Internet and electronic mail (email) in a secure and expedient manner”

Â© 1999 The Emergency Email Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

…which is quaint, presupposing that during a disaster, you’ll actually have some form of internet connectivity. Ironic, given that this service (complete with robot teleaid) is linked to from the BellSouth website and that they’re suing the city of New Orleans to prohibit them from offering free 512KBPs wifi to its citizens. Something about the government not competing with private industry.

Okay, well, whatever. Clearly they have to pay the mortgage and clearly competing with the hurricane-ravaged government of New Orleans is a burden no monopoly company should have to deal with:

“Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition,” says the story. “Some states have laws prohibiting them.”

Yeah, alright, them’s the rules and all, ain’t they? I mean, Google has to abide by Chinese law in China…

Such as it’s the case that the government’s been neutered from providing adequate network services to its constituents, it strikes me that it might just be time, oh, I dunno, to get up and make our own network? And hey, the work’s alreeady begun with community mesh projects like CUWireless and SFLan. So get on a bus and head to the upcoming National Summit for Community Wireless Networks. And add your thoughts, resources or capabilities to the shiny new MuniFied wiki.

I have barely a clue about the technical ins and outs of wifi, but if I know one thing, it’s that we can’t wait around and rely on the public or private sectors to get it right, make it open, make it free and then guard against bullshit maneuvers like BellSouth’s taken against the very communities that need this kind of connectivity the most.

Free your iPod

Those French, man, I tell ya… first they take a “principled” stand against Bush’s war (amounting to an “anything but what the US does” strategy) and now they’re takin’ on Apple and DRM.

Is there any rhyme to their reasoning or are they just taking on the causes cÃ©lÃ¨bre et du jour? And are they even on the right side this time or just utterly confused? I know I am!