Political Rantings
More News Cataloging – NSA Call Lists
Thursday, May 11th, 2006I’m sure this is going to become a big deal:
NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans – most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
Most people won’t read past the headline. Some will skim the article and walk away thinking, “Bush is wiretapping even more phone calls now.” Folks who read the whole article, particularly the part I’ve quoted above, will walk away confused. They’re “reaching into our homes and businesses” even though we’re “not suspected of a crime,” [dum da dum dum…….DUM!!!!!] but they’re not “listening to or recording our conversations?”
Those who click through and read a few more articles on the subject will learn a bit more (and read “concerned” quotes from just about all 100 of the U.S. Senators). The NSA is looking for patterns in the data. The articles didn’t specify, but I suspect it’s something on the order of large numbers of calls being made to a single phone number, building, or area in a middle eastern country. Or maybe even large numbers of calls made between two citizens who both have made frequent calls to known terrorist trouble spots. That kind of thing.
These are just guesses, of course – I have no way of knowing. But assuming for a second that I’m at least directionally correct, my comment to Jeff Porten’s TIDBits article about the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference still applies: this is likely the case of technical capability vs. practical application of that technology.
If they’re looking for patterns, they need lots and lots of data. In this case, they also need phone numbers (source and destination), which is customer-identifying information. But if they take those millions of records and aggregate them to form patterns, they’re not using anyone’s phone number. It’s the aggregation of this data that’s interesting, not the data itself. (Of course, if they find a pattern and determine that it’s probable cause, one would hope they’d seek a warrant before wiretapping a phone).
The fact that with such data, they could accuse Mr. Smith is having an affair with Mr. Johnson’s wife, based on the correlations of late night phone calls to Mrs. Johnson at home and Mr. Smith at work makes for great copy, but isn’t really what’s happened here.
Don’t get me wrong: we absolutely must discuss the potential this creates for abuses of personal privacy. Specifically, we need to find technical solutions that allow the government to take advantage of modern data mining techniques to catch terrorists without exposing its citizens to potential privacy abuses. These issues should, and are, being debated as we speak.
But that’s not the story. The story is instantly tied to the tried & true NSA Wiretapping Story, even as they explain that they’re not the same thing at all. It doesn’t matter – they both contain the words “NSA,” “phone,” “collection” and “secret.” So that’s good enough. Also, the press gets a double-bonus here, because they can also catalog this story with the recent General Who Ran the NSA Wiretapping Program Gets Picked to Run the CIA story, which is also tangentially related at best.
A lot of newspaper and ad time is about to be sold, but we are going to need to dig deep to extract the facts described above. Such is the cost of the “free press.”
UPDATE: Yahoo/USAToday have a handy Q&A-style fact sheet on the issue that is stripped of all spin & hysteria. It even makes a point to distance itself from the NSA Wiretapping story.
Categories: Political Rantings | 10 Comments »
18,000 pages about an 18-page letter
Thursday, May 11th, 2006Finding the Letter
When I heard that the Iranian president had written George W. Bush an 18-page letter, I went right to the web to read it. Surely a community that could post the President’s National Guard records (and then post explanations about why they were fake) would be able to get such a thing online, no?
What I found was quite shocking. Here’s the story from The New York Times, ABC News, FOX News, The Washington Post, CNN and Ha’aretz.
All of the above articles talk extensively about what was in the letter. They all quote it repeatedly, which means they must have a copy. And yet none of them linked to a copy of it for me to read myself. Ha’aretz, the Israeli newspaper, provided excerpts, but that was it.
I continued digging, and eventually found it at Le Monde and from the BBC. I’m thinking this says a lot about how the media works around the world. The American media feels we have such a short attention span that we couldn’t be bothered with reading 18 entire pages of text. Besides, what they think of the 18 pages (and what the various experts they interviewed think) is much more important than what the 18 pages actually say, right? Why should I make up my own mind when they have a full time job making it up for me? The Israeli media is willing to provide a glimpse, but still wants you to rely on their reporting. In Europe, this probably isn’t as big a deal, so sure – here’s the letter. We’ll tell you what we think, but go ahead and read it yourself.
There was a day when websites were proud of their ability to link to source material. Now, many are clearly choosing not to. Luckily for us, Google knows no borders or boundaries. And if it’s out there, we’ll find it.
The Letter Itself
As to the letter itself, I had a mixed reaction to it. On the one hand, I was dumbstruck with how much I agreed with what the Iranian president had to say. He seemed to be making the same points the Democrats make on a regular basis, but in a more matter-of-fact, “this is how the facts look to me” kind of way. This, by the way, is basically the subject of the FOX News report (yes, that’s right – I just agreed with the President of Iran and FOX News in the same paragraph. For those who are dizzy, I’ll wait………..OK, better now? Moving on.)
On the other hand, the similarity between the letter and the standard Democratic talking points led me to believe that this effect was calculated to elicit maximum effect from Bush’s political enemies here in the United States, and perhaps abroad (we tend to forget that they have things in Iran like web access and CNN, so they hear us criticizing our leaders just as well as we do). Mahmood Ahmadi-Najad has been quoted in the past as saying he needs to “wipe Israel off the map.” In the letter, he says it this way:
Are we to understand that allowing the original inhabitants of these lands – inside and outside Palestine – whether they are Christian, Muslim or Jew, to determine their fate, runs contrary to principles of democracy, human rights and the teachings of prophets? If not, why is there so much opposition to a referendum?
Quite the restrained version of the previous quote, huh?
Even a lunatic can appear reasonable if he believes it suits his purposes. I think that might be what we have here. And while my knee-jerk reaction may be to respond with equally constructive dialog, I think the White House is looking a few steps down the road to whether or not dialog with this man is worth the effort, and concluding that it is not.
Categories: Political Rantings | 3 Comments »
EU to Microsoft: Don’t Build Any New Products Ever Again
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006The EU is considering action against Microsoft’s forthcoming version of Windows, Vista. They’re concerned that it will violate the ruling handed down by the second highest court in the EU in 2004.
Here’s the quote that caught my eye:
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told Microsoft in a letter in March that its plans for Vista could “deny PC manufacturers and consumers a real choice among competing software products and stifle innovation”, the Commission said.
That’s quite a stretch, isn’t it? Putting out a new product will deny consumers choice and stifle innovation? And, I suppose we’re to assume that the converse is also true: preventing Microsoft from releasing (i.e., innovating) a new product (i.e., another consumer choice) would (somehow) provide consumers with more choice and encourage innovation?
At particular issue, it seems, is the planned XPS format, which will compete with Adobe’s PDF format. Adobe has a near-monopoly in this space today, much like Microsoft’s monopoly on the PC desktop. As far as I can tell, XPS will have an advantage over PDF, because the ability create XPS files would come included with Windows (you can download Adobe’s PDF Reader for free, but you have to pay for software to create PDFs). PDF would still have the advantage of being cross-platform (Microsoft will allow royalty free licenses for XPS, but will only produce XPS software for Windows), as well as the huge advantage that Microsoft has today – ubiquity. PDF is a valuable format principally because everyone can read it. XPS will make a dent for sure, but will have quite a hill to climb to unseat PDF as the market leader. But regardless of whether XPS replaces PDF as the industry standard, I’m still lost as to how putting a competing product in the marketplace limits choice and stifles innovation.
If anyone’s stifling innovation here, it would seem to be the EU. And it would seem that we could point specifically to which innovation their stifling (Windows Vista).
The irony of the whole thing is that the EU is stymied by its own litigiousness. Microsoft has appealed their previous case to the highest court in the EU (the Court of First Instance). If they sue for changes to Vista based on that previous ruling, and the CFI overturns all or part of it, it could invalidate their Vista claim right out of the gate. On the other hand, if they wait to see what the CFI will do, Vista may be released in the interim, reducing their ability to influence changes.
I think this is starting to smell like a vendetta against the front-runner – in this case, Microsoft. I can understand the need to keep the playing field level, offer consumers the most options, and encourage other firms to compete. But if doing so means that the organization with the most resources and, arguably, the most experience is not allowed to compete at all, then aren’t we throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Categories: Political Rantings, Tech Talk | 5 Comments »
Senator Leahy on Privacy in the Post 9/11 World
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006Hat Tip to Jeff Porten for this. Some thoughts:
1) It’s good to see the Senator get around to discussing this. I said many of the same things on March 25, 2002. Of course, not nearly as many people were listening to me.
2) I’m constantly amazed at our elected officials’ ability to say nothing in the maximum number of words
3) Regarding the NSA Wiretappings, a few points:
First, point taken about the warrants. I sincerely believe the White House’s argument about the need for speed in these situations, but given FISA’s stipulation for obtaining warrants retroactively, I don’t know why they didn’t get warrants. It is interesting, though, that the Bush administration has requested more FISA warrants than any other administration before it, so it’s not like they don’t believe in the process. No one has ever theorized as to why they followed the law so many times before but were so nefarious here. They must have believed this to be a special case. I’m glad we’re investigating the reason why, and I hope when it’s found, we can resist the need to spin it in a big game of “gotcha.”
Second, it really, really bugs me when people talk about the wiretapping as if Bush himself was personally wiretapping the phone calls or random Americans. Leahy, to his credit, at least implies (but doesn’t say) that the wiretaps were done on those whose phone numbers were discovered in the “recent calls” list of cell phones obtained from known terrorists in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
Third, I’ll note that Leahy blatantly plays the “politics of fear” in much the same way the Republicans are accused of doing. To wit: Can they bug your home? Can they open your mail? Hey, who’s that behind that door?!?
Fourth, a serious question about wiretapping purely domestic calls: Let’s say our troops find two domestic numbers on cell phones in Iraq. Should they be able to listen in on a conversation between the two? I’m not so sure the answer is an automatic “no.”
Finally, history just doesn’t bear out Leahy’s assertion about “the chilling effects of surveillance on the right to protest and to express dissent in our nation.” His own examples seem to disprove his point: did Martin Luther King, Jr. feel stifled to express his concerns? Were the Vietnam War protests curtailed in some way? In fact, logic suggests that if the goal of surveillance was really to squash protest and dissent, it wouldn’t be secret at all. After all, people won’t be afraid to speak unless they know they’re being listened to.
4) Regarding his rather predictable call for congressional hearings on the matter, a familiar cliche comes to mind: I have a hammer, therefore this problem must be a nail.
Categories: Political Rantings | 2 Comments »
The Bizarro, Inverted Universe of Politics and Gas Prices
Monday, May 1st, 2006This from the New York Times (registration required):
There are competing proposals on the table for how to provide relief to the American taxpayer, given the $3/gal price of gas. One party (we’ll call them Party A) wants to suspend the 18.4 cents/gal federal gas taxes for the big oil companies (who pay the tax). The other party (Party B) opposes the plan because “they fear the oil companies would not pass savings on to the public, or that the laws of supply and demand would push the price up again.” A spokesman for Party B said, “Our folks thought it might amount to nothing for consumers.”
So would it amuse you to learn that Party A (“cut taxes for the big corporations”) is the Democrats and Party B (“giving big corporations a break won’t trickle down to the consumer”) is the Republicans? Wha?!?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to stare out my window and watch out for Evil Superman…
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Wasting Energy Discussing Oil
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006I’m no expert here, but I smell political posturing here on both sides of the aisle.
Given: Gas prices are sky high
Given: People are pissed off that gas prices are sky high
Given: Gas comes from oil
Given: Oil companies are recording record profits lately
Conclusion: Oil companies should give back some of those profits and lower gas prices.
Here’s my problem: Correlation is not causation. Are the oil companies’ large profits the result of high gas prices? If you think about it for a second, it gets really murky.
First of all, we should distinguish between the different businesses oil companies are in:
There are the folks that drill for oil, find it, and then sell it on the open market. Since the cost of drilling for oil is relatively fixed, I would assume the profits in this business are driven almost entirely by the price of oil on the open market. Clearly, this is not set by the oil companies, but by commodity traders around the world. Just like people who play the stock market for a living, it seems clear to me that companies that sell oil will make higher profits when oil is trading at $70/barrel than when it’s trading at $50/barrel. And good for them, too. They’re taking the risk (what if oil dropped to $30/barrel?), and they deserve the reward. Asking them to sell their oil to anyone but the highest bidder would be as ridiculous as asking a farmer to sell his corn, sugar, or cotton for less than he can get for it.
Then there are the folks that sell gasoline for a living. Some of these folks are probably independent gas station owners and don’t work for oil companies at all, but let’s think about them for a second anyway. Oil is a key raw material in the production of gasoline, so if the price of a barrel of oil goes up, I’d suspect the price of a gallon of gas would go up. Higher prices at the pump don’t necessarily mean higher profits for the gas station. They could simply be passing their higher costs along to you.
Where it gets tricky is when you consider companies like ExxonMobil, who both drill for oil and sell gasoline. As discussed previously, there’s no reason to believe that the cost of getting the oil out of the ground has changed significantly (is there?). And since they don’t have to buy the oil on the open market, their cost of producing gasoline shouldn’t increase that much either. So why the high prices? My guess is it comes down to supply and demand. If they sold gasoline at $2/gallon instead of $3/gallon, people would buy a lot more of it, and they would eventually run out. Remember the gas lines in the 1970’s? Opposite problem (supply was restricted by OPEC, as opposed to demand skyrocketing due to the industrialization of China and India), but the same result: if you price too far away from the equilibrium, you can create a shortage. This makes inherent sense to me, but I don’t know enough about the mechanics of the oil industry to say for sure. Can anybody help out?
Oh, and while we’re at it – does anyone know what percentage of oil produced in the world gets converted to gasoline? Many folks (including the president) are describing the long-term solution to this problem with ideas like hydrogen-powered cars. How much of the problem will we have solved if we have hydrogen powered cars built in factories that are heated by oil, powered by electricity that is produced with oil, and made out of petroleum-based plastics? I think there’s more to breaking our “addiction to oil” than just getting rid of the SUV’s. Thoughts?
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More News Cataloging
Friday, April 7th, 2006OK, so let me see if I get this straight:
Former Ambassador, Joe Wilson, criticizes the Bush administration over the Iraq war. In response, the administartion declassifies portions of a secret National Intelligence Estimate, which provides (or so they say, anyway) historical context for why we went into Iraq. The President, via the Vice President, authorizes Lewis “Scooter” Libby to release this newly declassified information to Judith Miller of the New York Times. This being the same Scooter Libby who is accused of leaking the name of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, to the same Judith Miller of the (same) New York Times.
What a fantastic opportunity to news catalog: we can write about this story and attribute signifigance to it by mentioning it along side a story that’s already been established as important (the Valerie Plame leak), and it will wind up on the front page of most major newspapers.
Here’s how we do it: First, we describe the facts of the story. Then, we summarize the facts of the Valerie Plame story, pointing out that many of the same people are involved. Then, in paragraph SEVEN, we say this:
The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Plame’s identity.
After that, we can quote a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, who calls the president the “leaker in chief.” Leaving press secretary Scott McClellan to point out that there’s a huge difference between the President declassifying information and someone leaking classified information to the press (as was the case with Valerie Plame, and also, as McClellan points out, with the information about the NSA wiretapping program). McClellan says:
“Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that distinction are simply engaging in crass politics.”
Which is absolutely right. Of course, he says it in the last paragrpah of the story.
Final result: a large percentage of the people who read this will walk away convinced that George W. Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame’s name to the New York Times.
Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings | 1 Comment »
The Mysteries of Immigration
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006Via Instapundit, here’s a map of the world that resizes the countries based on relative levels of net immigration.
On most political issues, I’m happy to offer my opinion regardless of how many facts I have (one of the many benefits of not actually being responsible for any of this…), but in this case, all I have are questions.
First, if we’re so interested in protecting the illegal immigrants, why not simply make them legal? I mean, we control the immigration laws, right? If we’re going to protect them when they’re here, why not just hand them a photo ID card at the border? Then we could even get them to pay taxes and other fun stuff like that.
I’m being glib, but seriously: I can’t think of anything else in this country that we call “illegal,” and yet argue about whether or not their should be a punishment for it.
More questions: if there are jobs that people are willing to do for less than the minimum wage, and we’re willing to let people pay less than the minimum wage to do these jobs, then why don’t we establish legal exceptions to the minimum wage laws for certain jobs? If, as our leaders are currently telling us, immigrants do this work because Americans refuse to, then nothing changes. If, on the other hand, there are Americans who would work in the fields for $2/hr, would we rather they be unemployed, restricted by their unfortunate (!) status as citizens or legal immigrants?
Anyone have any answers here? Is it just about stirring the pot before the mid-term elections? Is this a problem no one wants to solve?
Categories: Political Rantings | 1 Comment »
The Department of Internet?
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006According to the International Telecommunication Union (via InternetWeek), in 2000, the United States ranked third in the world in number of high-speed internet subscribers per capita. In 2004, we were 16th. The 2005 numbers are about to come out, and it looks like we might fall out of the top 20.
Some of these countries have obvious advantages in this space (close proximity of people, making it easier to get broadband access to a higher percentage of the population), but we’re behind countries like Canada too. InternetWeek thinks that what’s missing is a government regulated broadband network.
Interesting. Here’s a space where market forces aren’t satisfying the public good (it’s not profitable to wire everyone for broadband, so no one does it) AND where the providers (cable & phone companies) are starting to make noises about distributing their costs to their users (the content providers).
Smells like a public utility, doesn’t it?
Government run broadband access to the internet would allow us to determine what percentage of the country was online by manipulating government spending, rather than counting on the private sector’s profit motive. On the other hand, there’s been a lot of talk lately about how the feds react to content that travels over their wires. If the feds get involved here, look for the same kind of decency/censorship debates that we’ve had in radio and television in recent years. Of course, the Internet raises a few new issues: First, content on the Internet doesn’t necessarily come from the United States, so even if access is a public utility (in this country), it would be exceedingly difficult for the government to completely regulate the providers.
Second, the Internet provides more interactive options for policing content. If you think people are in a tizzy now over the government asking search engine companies for data, imagine if they controlled the servers themselves? They may not be able to stop the production of “offensive” material, but they could more easily control the distribution of it. Now, I’m not suggesting that the U.S. government would outwardly censor Internet content (see also: China) – that wouldn’t pass muster with the public in this country. Distribution control in the U.S. more often takes the form of surcharges – charging a premium for access to adult sites (a la HBO or Cinemax on cable TV), for instance.
So the question is this: is more universal access worth giving the government a say over what gets seen and how much it costs? I say no, but then again, I live in a major metropolitan area where broadband access is readily available.
I wonder what Scalzi thinks out in Ohio…
Categories: Political Rantings, Tech Talk | 3 Comments »
New York City Subway Stories
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, so I commuted into the city at an odd hour. On the uptown E train (World Trade Center line) at around 11:15, was a man wearing blue jeans, a windbreaker, and a winter cap.
He was carrying with him a hacksaw, a screwdriver, and a flashlight. He didn’t have any kind of bag or case, he was just carrying them loose in his hands. I assume he was in a construction-related line of work, and was just bringing his tools to/from his job.
So, I ask again, exactly what are they checking for when they randomly inspect our bags on the subway? If an openly visible hacksaw is OK, what exactly is not OK?
Categories: New York, New York, Political Rantings | 3 Comments »