Observations
On Spying
There’s a lot of press on the recent bust of 11 Russians reportedly spying on the U.S. All in all, it’s reported that none of them managed to work their way into a position where national secrets might be divulged.
Or maybe not. According to reports, their “mission” consisted mainly of collecting open source information. Domestic response and general feeling towards U.S. political parties, information on the upcoming election, the feel of the population towards the current administration, all things an English speaker could find out doing a bit of reading on Google.
But an article on RFE/RL caught my eye. The social network gathered was quite extensive. Perhaps the mission of this group was not as much of a failure as the FBI made it out to be, (insofar as gathering top secret information) but one that was more focused on providing a communications channel between the Russian government and the American tech industry. It’s all speculation, but I would think such an approach might have the advantage of bypassing normal public channels and thus avoid some of scrutany (not to mention political backlash) of firms like Cisco setting up shop next to the Kremlin.
I admit, its a lot of theorying and speculation on my part, and I’m sure only the FBI (and the spies themselves) know the truth. But given that so much espionage no longer is of the “top secret” variety, I’m inclined to wonder if this operation was focused in an entirely different direction than the one the investigators assumed it would be.
Edit: I haven’t read all of this yet, but security veteran Gary Warner has a really good series of articles going breaking down the whole operation. I should give these a closer look.
Health Care
I’ve been staying out of the Health Care debate a bit, but I thought I’d draw attention to something that caught my eye today.
As we all know, the bill passed, and “Obamacare” is now law. I am not disappointed by this. While there are some provisions that make me wary (namely the fee individuals must pay if they opt not to get insurance) I think on the whole it’s good, even if things such as tort reform and removal of interstate competition restrictions didn’t make it in.
Part of the reason I think many of those important elements were left out was due to the decision of the Republican Party not to offer any backing or input on the bill at all. They offered their own separate version (which was introduced in a Motion To Recommit just minutes prior to the first house vote in December.) but the law that was passed did not have much Republican input, only opposition.
This was unfortunate. The bill that passed should not have been entirely unappetizing to the other side; many noted the similarities between the Democrat bill and Mitt Romney’s (a Republican) plan for Mass. Being a moderate in most issues myself, I would have preferred to see both sides work on this together.
Alas, it did not happen, and in an excellent piece, David Frum, a well known Republican speaker, commented on what he was a failed Republican strategy on something that should have been an opportunity to work together.
Alas, he was fired today.
It’s somewhat ironic, given what his piece said, and I’m increasingly disappointed that there is little rational thought from the right side of the political spectrum anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I feel the left is no more innocent than anyone else, but the increasing frequency that rational and moderate voices are being drowned out by cheerleaders, shock jocks, and angry grand-standers is disappointing and worrying.
On privacy.
I’ll start off with a quote:
“”As a social good, I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth.”
-Judge Richard Posner, 7th Court of Appeals.
I saw the aforementioned quote on a cnet site and almost immediately went to find the full quote, as we see all too often how things are taken out of context. (I’d highly recommend watching his full comments; his words were not twisted and he went on to defend them, but he clearly had a specific context in mind.)
The quote was repeated around in many places, and in many ways it parallels Eric Schmidt’s “you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” statement when questioned on privacy.
In both cases, these people infer scenarios where illegal acts are being committed by people who enjoy privacy. Certainly we could have stopped what bad things they were doing had we been listening to their phones or reading their e-mail.
To those who lose friends or family due to violent acts, this reasoning seems obvious. Surely the sanctity of life matters more than someone reading your e-mail. The policies of the United States following 9/11 followed the reasoning that the threat of retaliation was no longer a sufficient weapon against those who did not fear. No amount of punishment would ever bring dead people back to life, and so removing all threats to life became the modus operandi.
Years go by and the incessant calls to “connect the dots” faded away. Companies like AT&T had their eavesdropping operations exposed, and people reacted with shock and anger at comments like the one above. Why is it privacy suddenly matters again? Hadn’t we settled this issue?
As most people reading probably answered to themselves earlier, privacy is not about hiding one’s ill deeds (though it can be used for such) but also serves as one’s protection. Every one of us was conceived in what could be considered a private act, (I wish I could find who originally pointed that out to me, but I forget the blog author) and many of us carry knowledge in our heads that, in the wrong hands, could be used against us. Privacy is enshrined even in the highest levels of government when every two years, citizens pull a curtain around themselves, protecting their secret ballot against the danger of peer pressure and intimidation.
I have no doubt that if I were to bring these examples up to either of these men, they would agree that the need for privacy in these circumstances is necessary. But it is unmanageable to decide for every possible scenario what should be privacy and what should not. Instead we craft laws, which state in broad terms when privacy should be respected, and when it should not.
As Posner points out, people divulge all sorts of information daily with little care or concern as to what happens to it. The commonality of which technology has affected us has leveled our fears somewhat, we do not feel as exposed divulging our addresses if everyone else on our street has as well. And the data collected by computers and other systems is often vacuumed up into vast databases, and acted upon by algorithms and trending software, it’s focus trained outwards on thousands and millions rather than that of the individual. Think of the likelyhood that someone would focus on one individual in a sea of names, and one can feel complacent.
Improbable is not impossible however, and the same databases that deliver harmless ads in the hands of one can deliver malware or make charges to credit in the hands of another. Individuals can have their careers and lives ruined when privacy is breached. Is it right in these cases to assume that these individuals were doing something they shouldn’t have been?
To assume that privacy means hiding ill deeds forgets that we depend on our privacy every day for threats of predation, intimidation, and quick judgment. And just as we assume “innocence until proven guilty” to protect the unlawful incarceration of individuals, so must we assume one’s right to privacy lest we reveal information that can be used to compromise. It should be treated as no less important than justice itself. While there are many cases where an individual can be cleared after a wrongful sentence, “What has been seen cannot be unseen” so the saying goes.
On chess moves.
I normally keep politics out of my blogging, but it might be time to drop that rule.
I was reading the news out of Israel today for the building of 1,600 new homes. This comes a day after VP Biden starts touring the region spouting the U.S. and Israel’s “unshakable” ties.
I can’t help but feel like we just got played. Not more than a day later after Biden said “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel in terms of Israel’s security”, a whole swath of homes are approved on Palestinian land, no doubt for “security” reasons.
The move is admirable in it’s cleverness. If we object, then suddenly the “no space between” comment rings hollow. If we don’t, then we’re even more hated by the Middle East. It’s masterful in it’s deviousness.
Deviousness isn’t usually a trait between allies though. Sooner or later, the U.S. is going to get fed up of maintaining perpetual combat in the mid east because of our “unshakable” ties to a country even more obnoxious and heavy-handed than we are.
UPDATED: Biden has decided to sacrifice the pawn, and has rebuked Israel.
Idiots make poor suggestions, news at 11.
There are few days that go by that I don’t read something along these lines: A person, group, or entity, offers a motion that, for reasons of ignorance or greed, is stupid.
This usually results in numerous news articles proclaiming how our liberties/freedoms/lifestyle/cable TV selection are in immediate danger of coming under the jackboot of Fascism.
Buried in the fine print of the article though, you’ll see that often, these things don’t make it past the suggestion phase. An introduced bill, a letter of support, a submitted brief. Formal methods no doubt, but all carry the weight of some guy standing on a street corner proclaiming that the end is nigh.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if we’d be better served to ignore these things and get on with our lives. Stupid people say stupid things, with surprising regularity. Many media personalities have achieved larger-than-life statuses simply by proposing outrageous ideas that are attractive to all but a token few. Is focusing more attention on these things in our best interest if it stands that they’ll get ignored in the end anyways? Why lend any more credibility than is deserved?
It could very well be that it’s the reactions to these proposals that ensures their demise in the first place. I often wonder if this is the case in the areas of public policy; where a lot of bills and recommendations are posted, often without going anywhere. If there were people who might have considered some of these items in the slightest, many would rethink this in the face of so much uproar.
But while these items rarely make it past even one round of scrutiny, the comments and feedback that pour forth often seem to indicate that people think that these policies have been adopted or are on the verge of being so, convincing them of the downward spiral of their country/state/ISP. This fuels the cynicism even more, and mostly because of a poor understanding of systems that are often designed to weed out these bad polices in the first place.
That’s not to mention many proposals where a single line or component may be taken out of context. By itself, a phrase can indicate a grave danger to our traditional way of doing things, until it’s viewed in the larger context of it’s surrounding mitigating language. Suddenly it has no teeth. Yet it’s often that singular phrase that’s reported on.
Advocacy and special interest groups I feel are sometimes guilty of this. To an extent, I can see why: It is their mission to be passionate about their chosen issue. Advocate and watchdog groups serve a role in paying close attention to a particular issue in a way the populace cannot. (I can hear the multitude of persons saying that “people should be educated on the issues”, but I challenge any one of them to stay abreast of all of the “important” issues in the world and still have some semblance of a life.) However, while it’s important to raise awareness, it does not do favors to scare people into thinking that something is worse than it is.
There isn’t a realistic fix for this problem. In the end, critical thinking and common sense is the only cure from panicking needlessly at every little thing. Whether or not this has a high chance of uptake in the face of so much sensationalism however, I’m not holding my breath.
Is this the Droid you are looking for?
I’ve been on a bit of a social media kick as of late, starting up a Twitter account and launching a new website. I place a lot of blame for that on my smartphone. Having slowly gotten hooked on the concept of mobile e-mail by my work Blackberry (gateway drug?) I planned on getting a Storm2 soon after it’s release. Reviews for the device were mediocre, but many were glowing in praise for Motorola’s Droid, the Google Android powered device also being offered on Verizon’s network.
“Why didn’t you jump on the iPhone?” you ask. Variety of reasons. For one, I’m not a big early adopter of personal electronics and social apps. Not sure why. My PCs are cutting edge, but I didn’t get an iPod till the 4th generation. The Droid represented my first foray into smartphones (aside from my work blackberry, and that was slow in coming.) In some cases it’s a lack of device maturity, in others, I fail to get taken in by the hype. It’s probably a personality issue; the more everyone jumps on something, the more unlikely I am to do so myself, an irrational thought that what’s suddenly good for everyone is, for that reason, not good enough for me or something. But I usually come around eventually, and that has it’s own rewards, in that I’m usually introduced to a more polished product.
So life has been different with a smartphone in my pocket. And with it has been the desire to use more and more of the “web 2.0″ everyone talked about so much, because now it suddenly makes sense. It’s far from a phone in your pocket, it’s a computer in your pocket, and with the cellular network, it’s having the world with you at all times.
I can share trivial things, quickly and with little interruption. “I saw this, and it’s cool.” Is it important? Probably not. But quick text and “status” updating apps such as Facebook and Twitter have made it easy to share the odds and ends we run into every day. The key to this though is not only the ability to share these things quickly and with little effort, but to read and absorb them with little effort as well. I think this last point is the more important of the two, and it finally clicked to me the other day that this is the reason Twitter is so popular. I can get very brief, simple updates from many people, and it all but takes a few seconds. This seemlessness is what makes is so much more convenient and appealing over a direct e-mail or phone call.
The result of this also is that we can rack up social points and time with people without having to establish a dedicated conversation over the phone or so, which isn’t always convenient. And it enables interaction with many people at once, instead of overly focusing on one.
That’s not to say that face-to-face time has suddenly fallen by the wayside. But for the times when you want to have trivial conversations with someone throughout the day, it’s a welcome development.
The information at one’s fingertips astounds me. I get traffic info on my phone. My fiancee e-mails me grocery lists. I have my full calendar with me in my pocket, which syncs to the cloud, and to my friend’s calendars as well if I wish them to. (Which is awesome when you’re planning for a group.) Ask a question, and I can wiki it on the spot.
On the techie side of things, the fact that 3G and cellular networks in general are becoming more and more like a general internet service is evident in it’s networking capabilities. I can tether a computer network to my phone, forward all of the traffic over an SSH tunnel to a proxy server at home, or any other number of things. (The ability to do this and establish a Remote Desktop connection on my phone still awes me.)
Of course, many of these things are not unique to the Droid. iPhone will do it, Windows 7 Mobile will do it, other Android devices will do it, as will Palm. Pick your poision. Eventually though, just as we saw with camera phones and color screens, we’ll all have one of these. I do find that rather cool.
There are of course, changes and consequences of any great technological change. Here’s a few I can think of just off the top of my head:
- The current regulatory climate is ill-prepared for these sorts of services. Cable networks, phone networks, cellular, and internet, are all regulated differently. But these services all ceased to be different a long time ago. All of these networks all run on Internet Protocol now, and all of them deliver some if not all of the services the other provides. The only differing mechanism is the physical medium easy service uses. Rules need to be drawn up for “Information Services” (since that’s what all of these are) and placed under that framework.
- Some commentators have been warning of security issues on the phone in the past. If they were early then, they arn’t now. This is a full-blown computer in your pocket, and has all of the same attack surface as your PC at home. As these are becoming more ubiquitous (and they are), this will become more and more of an issue. Smartphones, (which again, are really pocket computers) are not thought of as devices in the same class as a desktop or laptop. This will need to change quickly.
- Many privacy issues exist. I’m not necessarily talking about wiretapping. One of the key differences between your smartphone and your PC is that you control your PC. You have physical access to it, you can build your own, wipe it, load your own software, etc. It is your device, and so long as it understands Internet Protocol, you are free to control it as you wish. This is not true of your phone. With the exception of the few handful out there hacking apart Android, your phone company controls your handset. It’s features and functionality are ultimately delegated to you by your service provider. We’ve seen the dangers of network operators who abuse this control. It will need to be something that’s carefully looked at. Google’s Nexus One concept is promising in that it removes the provider from the handset, but it is by no means a total cure.
- We’ve seen these people: Persons talking on the phone in their car. Persons furiously typing away at their Blackberries in a meeting, elevator, or even while you’re talking to them. Extraordinary convenience creates extraordinary temptation to “check” on things every few minutes. I’m totally guilty of this. This is not a technological problem, but a human one. Self control. The recipient of a phone call or e-mail does not demand automatic response. People cannot expect an immediate response from you where you provide no expectation of one. This is an option I think people don’t exercise often enough.
That’s enough out of me for now. Do you have a smart phone? What do you use it for? What are you hoping to use it for? If you’re pressuring friends to get one (like I am. =) what are you hoping they’ll use it for? Post below!
Start
-knocks on the web frame- So whadda ya think? Isn’t much yet, but holds lots of promise. After sticking it out on blogger and hosting my own web server for a few years, I decided it was time to move to an actual host. Dyndns.org has been excellent in giving me the ability to host a web server from my own home, but getting around a port 80 block means doing some funky DNS redirects, something most corporate and government networks don’t take kindly to.
Also, I don’t have to remember to start VMware every time my system goes down for an update.
So here we are, all solid and stable and I don’t have to manage it. Which this time, is good. I settled on bluehost.com, who’s rate was pretty good. The control panel access and features are what sold me. I won’t be doing much development, but there’s support for more or less everything I’ll be needing (which isn’t much) and the premade scripts for installing wordpress and phpbb look great.
Speaking of WordPress, I’ve been insanely jealous of people’s blogs that seem well made and put together complete with easy to use widgets and twitter access and whatnot. Blogger is nice, but requires you to muck around with a lot of code to deviate from the template, and as you may have guessed by now, I’m no coder. Icons and buttons and check boxes for me, please. =)
So here it is, the new site. I’ll be hoping to post a bit more, some links and things, occasional funny stuff, interesting articles and the more occasional insight or dumb idea I just had. Given that I work primary in infosec now, there’s lots of instances I feel the need to comment on something, and all of the poor souls who read this page will now have to deal with it. =)
In the meantime, you web-enabled, social media twittering experts feel free to leave comments telling me what I did wrong or how to make this site look better. I now have the mandatory twitter account; I’ll eventually learn how to make the most of this thing. The rest of you, say something insightful!
Enjoy!
What I'm Doing...
- Loving this dreary weather. =) 1 week ago
- Still wondering why it is all of my pipes suddenly need to be ripped out...bbl, tearing up apartment. @Bent_Tree 3 weeks ago
- @EmilyHaHa Tripod or other stabilizer, tell them to smile and open their eyes "on three", dial back the flash. =) in reply to EmilyHaHa 2010-08-04
- Laura just booted up Dragon Quest VI....in the original Japanese...I had no idea she was so hardcore...=) 2010-07-16
- I was about to comment to Laura about how pretty the crickets and cicadas sounded outside, until I realized it was my external HDD copying. 2010-07-16
- More updates...
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