Blackmoor Vituperative

As concerns about Internet privacy (or the lack thereof) continue to increase — and as users worry about the ability of governments, criminals and businesses to spy on their Internet usage — more attention is being given to tools that are designed to help users surf the Web anonymously.

The leading method for anonymous Web surfing is currently the Tor Network (which I discussed recently in my Tech Directions column).

Tor works through a technique called onion routing, which uses numerous routers through which communications will pass. As data passes through points on the Tor Network, each point knows only where the data is going and where it came from. As the network grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to trace a connection’s origin.

eWEEK Labs has been impressed with the functionality of Tor-based tools such as Vidalia, but these tools require full system installs and lack portability.

Hoawever, a recently released tool makes it very simple to get up and running quickly with a secure and anonymous Web connection. The free Torpark is a Firefox-based browser that automatically connects to the Tor Network and lets users surf anonymously with a minimum of fuss.

Even more impressive, Torpark, which runs straight from an executable and requires no installation routine, can be run directly from a USB drive. This means users can carry a privacy-enabled browser with them wherever they go. (No data is stored on the drive; only the app itself.)

(from eWeek, Torpark Makes Anonymous Web Surfing Easy)

I wonder how long it will be before this is made illegal and/or made the target of a domestic spying law?

The British Library has called for a “serious updating” of current copyright law to “unambiguously” include digital content and take technological advances into account.

In a manifesto released on Monday at the Labor Party Conference in Manchester, the United Kingdom’s national library warned that the country’s traditional copyright law needs to be extended to fully recognize digital content.

[…]

“DRM is a technical device, but it’s being used in an all-embracing sense. It can’t be circumvented for disabled access or preservation, and the technology doesn’t expire (as traditional copyright does). In effect, it’s overriding exceptions to copyright law,” Brindley said.

[…]

“One of the key problems is that the limitations and exceptions to copyright law are being ignored by business, which is imposing restrictive licenses on digital content,” Suw Charman, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told ZDNet UK.

Charman said DRM restrictions could be particularly damaging for academic research.

“If a library carried a printed journal, academics and students could photocopy it. Digital journals have restrictions on access, which is a dangerous road to go down,” Charman said. “If we allow companies to create their own licenses, we undermine copyright law. If we say contract law is more important than copyright law, it allows publishers to write whatever license they like, which is what is happening now.”

[…]

The British Library also called for the question of “orphan works” — content whose rights holder is hard to find — to be addressed.

(CNET News.com, British Library calls for digital copyright action)

Way to go, British Library!

The local government in the German city has transferred 100 staff members in the Lord Mayor’s department to a Debian configuration, and it intends to migrate 80 percent of the city’s PCs by mid-2009.

It has not been an easy transition for the government, which first announced its intention to move to Linux in 2003 and which had scheduled the first launch to occur in 2005.

But the project, dubbed LiMux, hit numerous delays after a dispute over software patents, extended contractual negotiations and a 12-month extension to the project’s pilot phase.

“The tests are over. We have fixed the bugs and solved some of the problems,” Florian Schiessl, deputy chief of the city’s Linux project, told CNET News.com sister site ZDNet UK on Monday. “Everything we wanted done for the first release is working at the moment.”

Schiessl said it would be impossible to migrate all city workers to open source, but that 80 percent would move across by between late-2008 and mid-2009.

(from CNET News.com, Munich fires up Linux at last)

It sounds like Munich is taking a measured, common-sense approach to migrating away from expensive, proprietary software to open source and open standards. The up-front cost of migrating is significant, of course, as it would be for any large-scale migration. Migrating their entire infrastucture to XP or Vista would cost as much or more. In the short term, they will benefit from the additional security Linux offers over Windows, as well as being free from Windows’ onerous licensing restrictions, but the real savings from migrating to Linux and open source software is long-term, and I am glad that Munich’s administrators are farsighted enough to realize this.

Aviation security officials eased the ban on carry-on liquids for airline passengers on Monday, after weeks of testing to determine how much of a liquid explosive would be needed to cause catastrophic damage to an airplane.

“…we now know enough to say that a total ban is no longer needed from a security point of view,” Kip Hawley, the assistant secretary for the Transportation Security Administration, said at a news conference at Reagan National Airport.

(New York Times, U.S. Eases Rules on Gels and Liquids in Carry-Ons)

This is true, as far as it goes. They do know it now. Of course, they knew it when they created the ban, as well. The ridiculous ban has nothing to do with reality. It has to do witrh perception. There was a perception that planes were in danger from liquids. Ergo, the bureaucrats passed rules to mollify that perception. At no time did either the perception of danger or the rules passed against liquids have anything to do with real danger. It’s all theatre, and it works because the audience is gullible.

Calvin and the snowmen

Bunny suicides

At this point, I don’t get my boarding pass or license back from the other agent. Later I am told that the woman who gets the Boarding Passes and Driver’s Licenses, as you pass through the metal detector, hands the one she has off, and then takes the next one from the person coming through next.

But, she didn’t hand it to me. She likely gave it to someone else, probably the next person in line. I get out, after they inspect my bag for secret blow-up water (you know, our liquid diet hoax by the current administration to get them reelected). I realize I don’t have my ID and Boarding Pass. I go back to the TSA desk the the security area exit (I’m a few feet away), and an Agent Derreck says they have nothing of mine, without checking (across the room from where the actual thing happened). I get him to walk over in the security line to check for sure. He does and comes back empty handed. I ask, “How will I get on the plane?” He takes me to Jet Blue special services, where they cut me another Boarding Pass. But I have no DL, so the JetBlue woman asks me for other ID, and it turns out that 2 credit cards, my gym ID with picture, and costco ID with picture, are enough to get me another boarding pass. She double checks my California address verbally with me which I repeat back to her as I stand next to Agent Derreck.

While she was printing, Agent Derreck starts to talk about how TSA over in the security area has an “… ironclad process for bringing people through the metal detector.” Basically, they bring one person through, check ID and boarding pass again, and then once they give it back, motion the next person through the metal detector. This is how they regulate people coming through the metal detector. As he says this, a different TSA agent, a woman, walks up the JetBlue service desk and hands a New York State Driver’s License to the JetBlue woman, and says, “This person didn’t get their ID back.” Agent Derreck grabs the license from the JetBlue woman’s hand, and says to me, “This kind of looks like you.” To which I say, “That woman has tons of blond hair, and mine is brown, plus I live in CA.” He hands it back to the JetBlue woman. A couple of minutes later, another TSA agent, also a woman, walks up the the JetBlue service counter with a Driver’s License from Kansas, and hands it in, saying again that someone didn’t get their ID returned.

After getting my boarding pass reprinted, I say to Agent Derreck want to make a complaint about TSA. He calls Port Authority but only tells me he’s called “someone” and they’ll be there in a few minutes to take it.

Port Authority Officer M. Wapole (#1746) arrives, takes a report, gives me the report number, a phone number and the name of the officer and date and time. I ask for a copy of the report and he says I’m not allowed to have one. I am surprised. He says it’s private property. I ask how I make the complaint against TSA and he says he’s not TSA. So I go back to Agent Derreck of TSA.

Agent Derreck says he won’t take a complaint. He says I can make one at www.tsa.gov (so much for people without computers). I ask for his name and the agent’s name at the metal detector, and he covers his shirt. But I can see that it says “Agent Derreck” before his hand is fast enough to cover his name tag, in brass. He says, “I won’t give you my name or hers.” And walks off, with his hand over his right breast.

(from TSA: Incompetent and Not Afraid to Cover It Up)

This is just an excerpt. You should go read the whole thing. My favorite line:

“Who are these people kidding. Security Theater it is.”

They say the front line of the War on Terror is the airport security line. See if you’ve got what it takes to keep airline travel safe in this hysterical game of airport security. Better not let that tube of toothpaste get through your checkpoint — it could be a terrorist’s weapon against freedom (or maybe it just fights gingivitis)!

After several days of plotting scenes in my head, I started writing Spider Season today. That’s the working title. I’ve written about 650 words so far. If I can do 500 words per day, I can finish the novel in 8 months.

I am still not sure how to handle time, weights, and measures. If I make something up, that will push the reader out of the story. If I use “kilos” and “meters” and so on, that will seem too modern. If I use archaic measurements like “stone” or “yards”, that will implicitly place the story in our past. I am not sure what to do.

I have also placed myself in the awkward position of having to find out how large a ten-year-old girl’s feet are. How does one find such information without looking like some kind of pervert?

It’s funny how human beings work. I can shrug off the deaths of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, as simply the way the universe works. Meanwhile, the story of one girl’s death makes me cry like a baby.

It shouldn’t. People die by the thousands every day. It makes no sense that I am crying.