How the NSA is lying to you

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The EFF has a handy rundown of the positively Orwellian bullshit coming out of our “intelligence” community. Here’s an example:

Another tried and true technique in the NSA obfuscation playbook is to deny it does one invasive thing or another “under this program.” When it’s later revealed the NSA actually does do the spying it said it didn’t, officials can claim it was just part of another program not referred to in the initial answer.

This was the Bush administration’s strategy for the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”: The term “TSP” ended up being a meaningless label, created by administration officials after the much larger warrantless surveillance program was exposed by the New York Times in 2005. They used it to give the misleading impression that the NSA’s spying program was narrow and aimed only at intercepting the communications of terrorists. In fact, the larger program affected all Americans.

Dept. of Surprising Facts

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Via Kottke, we find this article that details the ages of the key participants in the American Revolution as of July 4, 1776.

  • Marquis de Lafayette was 18; so was James Monroe
  • Gilbert Stuart was 20, as was Aaron Burr
  • Alexander Hamilton, 21
  • James Madison, 25
  • Thomas Jefferson, 33
  • John Adams, 40
  • Paul Revere, 41
  • George Washington, 44
  • Samuel Adams, 53

You sort of expect that they were all older men at the time, but that’s really not the case at all.

Yeah, about that NSA thing?

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Turns out they CAN actually read our email. They just promise not to without a really good reason.

Oh, and they get to decide what a good enough reasons is, and they’d don’t have to tell us.

Books of 2013, #34: Gone Tomorrow, by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #13)

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Lucky #13, for sure. Child was off his game in the prior one, but back to a much better form here. This time around the enemy is a bit more au courant, but not clangingly so; Reacher has been in a post-9/11 world for a few books now, and given his lifestyle it was inevitable he’d have to battle terrorists and well-meaning but dimwitted fascist pseudocops.

Anyway, it’s a return of compulsively readable form for Child, which is refreshing after the train wreck of Nothing to Lose.

Alarmingly, I will note that there are only five more books in the series at this point, counting the one that won’t be out in hardback until the fall. I’m not sure what my junk food of choice will be when I run out of these. Nominations? (I think I’m safe through the end of calendar 2014 at least, so no hurry.)

So, with all the illegal bullshit the NSA is doing, you may have forgotten something else

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Civil forfeiture remains an enormous problem. Basically, law enforcement can confiscate anything they like, and it’s on you to try to get it back. Due process doesn’t apply.

In general, you needn’t be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on a par with “probable cause” is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused of one. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence.

Go read it. It’s long; it’s from The New Yorker. But you need to read it. A critical fact here is that law enforcement organizations have grown fat and happy on the ill-gotten gains that civil forfeiture brings, and are loathe to back away from it as a result because it directly benefits them, and never mind the people they’re stealing from.

“But that won’t happen to me!” you may think, but you’d be wrong. It just takes a few corrupt officers to create a Tenaha situation. For a while, maybe it won’t happen to nice, upper-middle-class white people who can afford lawyers and a court fight — but it won’t stay that way. And it’s utter BULLSHIT that this happens to anyone, regardless of race, class, or wealth.

Is it a powerful tool? No one contests that. But it’s a tool the government should NOT have, because it’s so prone to abuse. There’s no real recourse for the victims, and insufficient oversight of the criminals in charge. As with most problems with law enforcement or prosecutorial misconduct, their fundamental immunity from any personal consequences to their actions exacerbates the problem.

To recap:

  • The government has the capability to eavesdrop on every call and email, and the laws that govern this ability are state secrets that cannot be challenged in court.
  • The government has asserted its right to declare someone and “illegal combatant” — basically, enemy of the state — and asserts that, in so doing, it is free to imprison, punish, or torture that person without due process, and without opportunity for judicial relief.
  • The government can and does confiscate private property without compensation on trumped-up charges with only the slimmest of chances of getting anything back.

If we do not insist that this shit STOP with a furious quickness, it’s game over for this so-called land of the free. It’s not about what Obama might do with these powers; it’s about what a bad guy might do. Or a misguided good guy. We should never give the government a power that we would not want our worst political enemies to have, but we’ve been asleep too long, and the state has gradually acquired several such powers under cover of the (utterly bullshit) war on drugs, or because of 9/11.

It’s time to stop it.

Still not freaked out about spying, Snowden, and the governmental hysteria around it?

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Yeah, go read this.

tl;dr: the secure email provider Snowden used has shut down, citing cryptic governmental action. In his closure notice, the firm’s founder notes this:

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

He’s not wrong. Market reaction to the Snowden revelations is likely to cost US cloud and hosting firms a pretty penny. Sure, a Swedish firm might give up data to the Swedish government, but right now it’s the US government’s actions that disturb everyone who’s paying attention. Sweden, for example, hasn’t sent anyone to be tortured in Syria lately.

Books of 2013, #33: vN, by Madeline Ashby

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This one is one of those “big idea” science fiction books. What if, Ashby wonders, we had self-aware synthetic humans in today’s world? Take it further; wonder about love and marriage and kids. Take it one more step, and build your story around the “child” of a mixed couple: human father, “vN” (for Von Neumann) mother. In the world of the book, the child is really only the offspring of the mother; the synthetics are technological, not biological, and so an actual hybrid is impossible. Toss in a sprinklings of Asimov and set the ball rolling, and you’ve got most of Ashby’s novel.

It’s mostly fun, but begins to collapse under the weight of its own ideas well before the end. I find this is an issue in lots of SF: the writer’s “what if” engine goes into overdrive, and more and more ideas get grafted on, and before long the narrative is stuck in a bog of individually interesting notions that, taken together, create a mess.

Still, vN is a debut. Flawed as it is, it still suggests more interesting work to come form her pen. I doubt I’ll bother with the sequel, but I really would like to read what she comes up with next, once she’s done with this world.

Books of 2013, #32: Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II

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You may or may not recall that my first 2013 book was Ben Winters’ The Last Policeman, which I read in one sitting on January first. It’s the tale of a fairly green police detective chasing an apparent suicide that doesn’t look quite right — and set in a world with an expiration date. An asteroid is bearing down on the Earth; the expectation is that virtually no one will live past the following October. This sets in motion a number of events and changes in society, and it’s teasing out these effects where Winters does his best work, at least in the first volume. It’s not that the story is substandard; it’s just that he does such a good job with the worldbuilding that you get a little distracted.

The balance is better with book 2, Countdown City. The clock’s kept moving; by now, we’re inside 3 months. The asteroid is now set to impact the far side of the world, so we’ve added refugee issues to the challenges being faced by the people in Winters’ world. The plot this time is less obvious, and plugs into the impending doom a bit more directly even if it starts with a conventional missing-persons case (which, in this world, are never “conventional” — people run away or commit suicide with alarming regularity). As before, though, I sort of feel like Winters whiffs the ending. Not so much that it ruins the book, and no so much that I don’t want to read the final book (due next summer), but enough to be annoying.

Also annoying: Winters and his editor made some seriously rookie mistakes here when it comes to firearms. In 2013, that’s just silly; gun people are one of the original nerd tribes, and will happily set you straight about any number of concepts. For example, it should’ve been easy for them to find out that SIG Sauer doesn’t even make a revolver — and that, to be honest, nobody the age of Winters’ cop would be using a wheel gun anyway.

Winters compounds the problem by invoking a sniper rifle with a military designation (M140) that’s either made up or so obscure as to be a poor choice. Since there IS a Marine sniper rifle called the M40, plus a couple others based on the M14, it’s easy to see where the error came from, but that doesn’t completely excuse it. if you’re going to be specific, get it right. Being less specific to finesse your lack of knowledge on a given subject is no sin, as long as you don’t destabilize your plot; in both cases, Winters would’ve been safe avoiding the specific reference.

Books of 2013, #31: Bourbon, Straight by Charles Cowdery

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Cowdery is a well-regarded bourbon blogger and writer; as I’m a fan of the spirit, I sought out his book, which I think he self-published. It’s a bunch of solid articles, but it lacks the editing polish and overall coherence we associate with big-publisher books. That’s a nit, though; Cowdery’s book is a compulsively readable survey of the history of bourbon — which is a pretty fascinating tale. Aging, for example, comes late to the party; 18th century American corn whiskey was, typically, unaged and therefore clear. (Why bourbon is typically aged much less than Scottish whiskys is also an interesting tale, by the way.)

Cowdery also gives us a great survey of who, actually, is making bourbon today. It’s fewer people than you’d think — there’s no end of contract distilling and label opaqueness. The bourbon boom that happened after this book went to press have just made those problems worse. (Seriously, look at a bottle and see if you can really and truly tell where the whiskey was made. Odds are, you can’t, but for a very small number of brands.)

Anyway, it’s a good and quick read, but it might be worth waiting to see if Cowdery plans to update it in light of the modern developments in the whiskey market. Even if he doesn’t, though, it’s worth your time.

You are not safe.

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“Sure, NSA’s looking at everything, but I’m not a terrorist, so I’ve got nothing to worry about, right?“

Maybe Obama won’t do it. Maybe the next guy won’t, or the one after him. Maybe this story isn’t about you. Maybe it happens 10 or 20 years from now, when a big war is happening, or after another big attack. Maybe it’s about your daughter or your son. We just don’t know yet. But what we do know is that right now, in this moment we have a choice. Are we okay with this, or not? Do we want this power to exist, or not?

Oh, just go read it: Schneier on trust and effectivness

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Bruce Schneier on the state of public trust.

And, while you’re at it, take in this Ars Technica article where they ask him how HE would run the NSA. It’s illuminating:

“There’s a fundamental problem in that the issues are not with the NSA but with oversight,” he told Ars. “[There’s no way to] counterbalance the way [the NSA] looks at the world. So when the NSA says we want to get information on every American’s phone call, no one is saying: ‘you can’t do that.’ Without that, you have an agency that’s gone rogue because there is no accountability, because there is nothing checking their power.”

The way Schneier sees it, in an attempt to keep the operational details of the targets secret, the NSA (and presumably other intelligence agencies, too) has also claimed that it also needs to keep secret the legal justification for what it’s doing. “That’s bullshit,” Schneier says.

The famed computer scientist wants to apply traditionally open and public scrutiny to how the NSA operates.

“How much does this stuff cost and does it do any good?” he said. “And if they can’t tell us that, they don’t get approved. Let’s say the NSA costs $100 million annually and that an FBI agent is $100,000 a year. Is this worth 1,000 FBI agents? Or half and half? Nowhere will you find that analysis.”

For the record: the size of the NSA’s budget is officially classified as secret, but estimates put it at at least $8 to $10 billion annually—but his point stands. It’s nearly impossible to judge the effectiveness of federal spending of an unknown sum, whose tactics, legal justifications, and most importantly, outcomes, are completely hidden from the public.

The TSA is an aggressive, metastatic administrative CANCER

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They’re expanding to Amtrak — and this time, their doofuses will be armed.

“Our mandate is to provide security and counterterrorism operations for all high-risk transportation targets, not just airports and aviation,” said John S. Pistole, the administrator of the agency. “The VIPR teams are a big part of that.”

Some in Congress, however, say the T.S.A. has not demonstrated that the teams are effective. Auditors at the Department of Homeland Security are asking questions about whether the teams are properly trained and deployed based on actual security threats.

Civil liberties groups say that the VIPR teams have little to do with the agency’s original mission to provide security screenings at airports and that in some cases their actions amount to warrantless searches in violation of constitutional protections.

“The problem with T.S.A. stopping and searching people in public places outside the airport is that there are no real legal standards, or probable cause,” said Khaliah Barnes, administrative law counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “It’s something that is easily abused because the reason that they are conducting the stops is shrouded in secrecy.”

T.S.A. officials respond that the random searches are “special needs” or “administrative searches” that are exempt from probable cause because they further the government’s need to prevent terrorist attacks.

Emphasis added. So, the TSA can search when and where they deem necessary, and the Boarder Patrol can search you without probable cause as long as you’re within 100 miles of the border. Oh, and in case you missed it, it turns out the NSA dragnet data is used by the DEA, too.

T.S.A. officials would not say if the VIPR teams had ever foiled a terrorist plot or thwarted any major threat to public safety, saying the information is classified. But they argue that the random searches and presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent that bolsters the public confidence.

Really? No, what I see is a bunch of tinpot jackasses jumping at every opportunity to parade around playing soldier.

So long, Fourth Amendment!

Oh, Suck, we miss you

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The best site on the then-young Internet of the late 1990s was, undeniably, Suck.com. Full of snark and verve and piss and vinegar, the single column of text on that proto-blog pulled no punches. So enamored was I of their wit that, frequently, I’d copy bits into a text file to save for posterity.

Here is one such bit, now almost old enough to drive, from a file that came up in an unrelated search on my laptop today:

When children have no access to narrative except through the unfettered imaginations of account executives and copywriters, they become even more attuned than their elders to the machinations of the culture around them. We’ve set the stage for a generation that will never ever feel betrayed by sell-out because the sale is all they know. The good news? A 2010 Rage Against the Machine comeback tour is unlikely.

Suck, 11 August 1997, which is (astonishingly) still online

Sadly, well, it turns out they were wrong:

The Rage Against the Machine Reunion Tour was a concert tour by Rage Against the Machine from 2007 to 2011. It was the first tour for the band since they broke up in 2000.

Sigh.

This is pretty funny

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Grantland: The Further Adventures of Johnny Football.

It’s a bizarre phantasmagoric alt-future by way of @DadBoner:

Week 1: Home vs. Rice

The Thursday night before the game, Johnny Football shows up at the school pep rally with his good pal Six-Pack. Six-Pack’s well known around campus because he’s 300 pounds, nobody’s ever heard him talk, and he wears only ponchos. The students go nuts when they see Manziel, and start chanting his name until he takes the stage. Six-Pack comes with him, and when the crowd finally quiets down, Johnny Football grabs a trumpet from one of the band members and tells Six-Pack to play. “You’re all going to listen to him!” he screams at the crowd. “This is art!” The students go quiet, but Six-Pack has never played the trumpet before, and he just kind of blows into it randomly while Johnny Football does a swervy hip dance and shouts a song whose only words are “Where are my chiquitas at?” When it’s over, he disappears into the crowd and shows up for an 8 a.m. lecture the next day wearing a fake mustache and smelling like soil. Weird thing is, it’s not even his class.

It gets more gloriously weird. Via my attorney, naturally.

Who Is Johnny Football?

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This ESPN Magazine profile takes a look at the weird fishbowl this guy lives in — and the pressures that come with it.

He’s not the second coming, but he IS an obviously talented player, and he’s gotten enormously famous very, very quickly. The article notes something pretty amazing: early last season, it was still possible for him to use a fake ID.

Returning to Reza Aslan and Jesus

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Here’s how you know who Fox is, and what’s wrong with the “normal” media:

The Daily Show also interviewed Aslan about his book, and the discussion was deep, wide-ranging, and substantive. The Daily Show. On Comedy Central, which is not, as you probably know, a news station.

Stay with it; Aslan gets the “extended web interview” treatment to allow for a deeper conversation about the history of Christianity, about the historical Jesus, about his place in his time, etc. It’s fascinating.

The Times on the TSA

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This is solid:

It is time to stop pretending that annoying protocols like these are all that stand between us and devastation. The most effective security innovation post-9/11 was also the simplest: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, which has made it virtually impossible to hijack an aircraft.

Southern Sheriffs: Stay Classy

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Apparently, cops around Baton Rouge are still arresting folks for sodomy despite Lawrence v. Texas. The DA refuses to prosecute, but the arrests continue; we’ll let them explain why:

“This is a law that is currently on the Louisiana books, and the sheriff is charged with enforcing the laws passed by our Louisiana Legislature,” Casey Rayborn Hicks, a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said. “Whether the law is valid is something for the courts to determine, but the sheriff will enforce the laws that are enacted.”

Wow. How much dumber could Fox get?

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Proud halfwit Fox anchor Lauren Green just can’t figure out why a Mooslim would write a book about Jesus, and never mind that the Muslim in question is a scholar in comparative religion.

She gets hilariously schooled. It’s awesome:

GREEN: This is an interesting book. Now I want to clarify, you’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?

ASLAN: Well to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees — including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades — who also just happens to be a Muslim. So it’s not that I’m just some Muslim writing about Jesus, I am an expert with a Ph.D in the history of religions…

GREEN: But it still begs the question why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?

ASLAN: Because it’s my job as an academic. I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament. That’s what I do for a living, actually.

More coverage at Dangerous Minds. The crazy idea that this EVIL BROWN MUSLIM would have the gall to write about Jesus is, apparently, one of this week’s talking points over there, btw.

Wow. Just… wow. Check out the GOP project “Groundswell”

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Faced with an increasingly nonwhite electorate and the fact that words like “GOP”, “Tea Party”, and “Conservative” tend to connote racism for many people, these goofballs are going to try to solve the problem, in part, by rebranding the Tea Party as “Frederick Douglas Republicans” (sic).

I am not making this up. Click through for TPM’s discussion, and follow over to MoJo for the referenced article. It’s an excellent example of how top Republicans are spending way more time on marketing than on substantive work.

Dept. of Shocking Statistics

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From this very interesting article:

Microsoft’s share of connected devices sales (in effect, PCs plus iOS and Android) has collapsed from over 90% in 2009 to under a quarter today.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, in the space of four years, the overwhelming majority of devices on the Internet went from being Windows machines to being either iOS or Android.

And yet, Ballmer STILL has a job.

Dept. of Not-No-But-FUCK-NO

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CNET:

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users’ stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

Books of 2013, #29: The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

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I’m mildly embarrassed to admit this, but I’d actually never read this before — or, actually, any Chandler (or Hammett, for that matter). I’m really sorry I waited this long. The Big Sleep is an early giant of this genre — and while Dashiell Hammett came earlier, it’s arguably the ur-text of the whole realm.

Reading it, you get a weird little cognitive dissonance here and there as you run across events or dialog that seems like cliches — but then you realize it wasn’t a cliche in 1933. It’s like watching Stagecoach and noting the “tired” Western tropes — they weren’t tried when John Ford used them. Phillip Marlowe is the hard-boiled private eye, refined from Hammett’s Sam Spade: he’s full of whisky and wisecracks, isn’t afraid of violence, and follows an uncompromising personal moral code. Spade and Marlowe’s children are legion — most notably Robert Parker‘s Spenser, but there are countless others ranging widely through genre (for example, Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, and Richard Kadrey’s Stark within the world of urban fantasy).

It’s not a long book, but it’s a rich one. You’ll find yourself reading some portions aloud to yourself, even slipping into a snappy patter as you do it, just for the sheer pleasure of saying the words:

“Tell me about yourself, Mr Marlowe. I suppose I have a right to ask?”

“Sure, but there’s very little to tell. I’m thirty-three years old, went to college once and can still speak English if there’s any demand for it. There isn’t much in my trade. […] I’m unmarried because I don’t like policemen’s wives.”

or

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-lounge with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. […] The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem. […]

She had a drink. She took a swallow from it and gave me a cool level stare over the rim of the glass.

“So you’re a private detective,” she said. “I didn’t know they really existed, except in books. Or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotels.”

There was nothing in that for me, so I let it drift with the current.

A bit later:

I grinned at her with my head on one side. She flushed. Her hot black eyes looked mad. “I don’t see what there is to be cagey about,” she snapped. “And I don’t like your manners.”

“I’m not crazy about yours,” I said. “I didn’t ask to see you. You sent for me. I don’t mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don’t mind you showing me your legs. They’re swell legs, and it’s a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.”

You can hear those rhythms far and wide now, but in 1933, they were new.

Go. Read. Seriously, even if “detective fiction” isn’t really your thing. Chandler was way, way more than a genre writer. His works are well worth your time.

Books of 2013, #28: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

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Dude. Gaiman. Done.

Seriously, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a brilliant and delightful meditation on childhood, a vein Gaiman seems fascinated with lately (cf. Coraline), but that’s fine by me. Ocean is a modern fable or fairy tale, with supernatural menaces and allies obviously perceived only by our young protagonist, but it’s in no way tired or old hat; it’s a great story, and worth your time.