Category: Uncategorized

Spyware Charges

Sometimes the new e-world has to face facts like it lives within existing society and existing law:

The creator of software designed to surreptitiously observe individuals’ online activities has been indicted for allegedly violating U.S. federal computer privacy laws, local and federal authorities said Friday. If convicted, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara could face a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison and fines of up to $8.75 million. His current whereabouts are unknown. Four individuals who purchased the Loverspy software to illegally spy on others were also indicted.

I am surprised by the 175 years. I was thinking 185 would be more appropriate.

Lost Email

Arther recollects the emails he sent and received on 9/11 but did not retain. It reminded me that I have lost or, recently, abandoned sets of email three times. The first was an error of cleaning up a hard drive, the second was turning off an intranet and the hird a deliberate closing of an account. Like this blog, each had thousands of notes and conversations from many, many people. As information it was great stuff, giving the ability to trace an argument over months, to track how a project developed but it was also a bit of a millstone focusing importance on the past as well as the flow and the source. It was authoritative but in relation frankly to mostly low grade content and gave too much weight to what was rather than was would be.

I don’t know why that resonates with the fact that I’ve come across an interesting couple of themes recently in that book I’ve been reading on the Anti-Federalists of 1787. Some of them thought two things were necessary for them to get their message across – anonymity and a free press. By anonymity they meant the ability to write under a pen name so that the readership would not be able to pre-judge through status. By a free press they meant one without commercial pressure from the Federalists, one where printers would print and distribute all pamphlets equally. In this way virtuous public opinion could be best generated:

Public opinion was even more crucial than it had been in any other republic. “In a confederated government of such extent as the United States” it was vital that “the freest communication of sentiment and information should be maintained.” Centinal envisaged the public sphere of the print as an important means of cementing a nation together. Print afforded a means of achieving social cohesion without a stron coercive authority.

Ratification proved the danger of allowing the press to become a tool of a party or faction: the suppression of Anti-Federalist writing facilitated ratification in a number of states. Centinal complained that “the liberties of that coutnytr are brought to an awful crisis,” for it was precisely the Federalists’ ability to dominate the press that allowed supporters of the Constitution to isolate and “overwhelm the enlightened opposition”…

I don’t know what the connection is between the emails of 2001, this blog and the press of 1787. This site has over 2000 posts and many more thousand comments. But I do not really treat it like an archive as I rarely recollect that I have written something before. It is also practically anonymous as I have met only a very few of you comment makers in real life. It is also one of millions making them as a group, like personal email repositories, practically inaccessible for any real purpose – so free and so available that they are unfunctional as tools for the advancement of ideas into the community for shared consideration and development. This is even the case of the so called A-listers – that notion spoken of in 2003 but not really much any more: people who thought they were important because of hit counts seemed to think that that would bring authority and a means to make change.

I will have to think about whether there is anything to this.

Thanks A Lot

It is a funny thing in the Canadian character that we love to be mentioned, to be thanked as a nation. It is good to do something good, for sure – but sometimes I think we would get all gooey over being over-praised for a smallish thing than be proud in an achievement despite no much notice being paid. None of this is to take away in the the slightest from any of the good things done or recognition being made in the wake of Katrina…but making a list of all the people who say nice things and making a lead article out of it in a national paper is a tiny bit strange – but more in a sweet way than needy.

Sort of a variant of when Canada is noticed and a close tangent to worrying about not being too American.

Mr. Brown

This is in The Globe this morning:

The developments in New Orleans came against an increasingly stormy backdrop in Washington, where Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was relieved of his command of the onsite relief efforts amid increasing criticism over the sluggishness of the agency’s response and questions over his background. Asked if he was being made a scapegoat, Mr. Brown told The Associated Press: “By the press, yes. By the president, No.”

I didn’t think he was getting the boot because of the hurricane but his track record:

  • The [Boston] Herald reported last week that Brown was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows, and that he was tapped to join FEMA by an old college chum and Bush campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh.
  • “His bio, the White House press release, and a number of sources list him as assistant city manager in Edmund, Okla.,” Miranda says. ” When we called the folks in Edmund, they told us that, no, his position in fact had been assistant to the city manager, which is a purely administrative job, a very different job. He was an administrative assistant. It’s sort of an entry-level, intern-type job for somebody who’s interested in learning about government. When he began that job in 1977, he was still a college student. He didn’t graduate with his B.A. until 1978.”
  • Time also reported that Brown’s profile on the legal Web site Findlaw.com, which is usually based on information provided by lawyers or their offices, said he was an “outstanding political science professor” at Central State University, now the University of Central Oklahoma. The school took issue with that assertion. “(Brown) wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here,” school spokesman Charles Johnson told Time.

I have saved a .jpg of the bio from the FEMA website of Brown’s bio as Under Secretary which has at least two goofs in it. Are there more? You tell me. Here is the website. See if it changes.

I think he’s just getting the boot for being Mr. Fibber MacFibbfibb.

Colin Sad

I think it is good to get all cathartic once in a while, shed baggage and, well, point fingers. Colin Powell (former nicest person in what a made-for-TV-movie will one day call George Dubya, The First Years) has started to stretch his wings:

  • The Houston Chronicle says: “Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview to be broadcast today that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was ‘painful’ for him personally and would be a permanent ‘blot’ on his record.”
  • WebIndia 123 reports: “Powell told Walters government generally failed to prepare properly for Hurricane Katrina. I think there have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels — local, state and federal, he said. There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done.”

Seeing as there is a reasonably valid connection to the state of affairs post-hurricane and thoughts on Homeland Security preparedness and response capability generally, these are…err…less than supportive statements post-9/11-wise. I wonder, now that GWB is polling in the low 40% range and dropping, whether the teflon is starting to finally wear off, whether actual acts and specific policies will be weighed for their own merit rather according to which side of the line drawn in the playground dirt you stand on as you scream “liar!” What will this quack do when he has to add a third dimension to his reality?

Tangent: bookends for two eras have struck me lately – one, Berlin Wall Fall to 9/11 and, second, 9/11 to Katrina. Essays in by noon please.