News You Need to Know – Page 52

This Was Always The Plan

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was sold as legislation that would guarantee every American enjoyed health insurance. Anybody who looked at the methodology would be lead to question the sales pitch though. What the ACA did was require anybody who didn’t have health insurance to pay a fine. As the New York Times has noticed many people are opting to pay the fine rather than health insurance premiums because the former is cheaper:

Mr. Murphy, an engineer in Sulphur Springs, Tex., estimates that under the Affordable Care Act, he will face a penalty of $1,800 for going uninsured in 2016. But in his view, paying that penalty is worth it if he can avoid buying an insurance policy that costs $2,900 or more. All he has to do is stay healthy.

“I don’t see the logic behind that, and I’m just not going to do it,” said Mr. Murphy, 45, who became uninsured in April after leaving a job with health benefits to pursue contract work. “The fine is still going to be cheaper.”

Two years after the Affordable Care Act began requiring most Americans to have health insurance, 10.5 million who are eligible to buy coverage through the law’s new insurance exchanges were still uninsured this fall, according to the Obama administration.

It seems many people are mistaking this for an unintended failure when in fact it was the plan. The ACA, like all legislation, was passed to transfer wealth from the people to the State. The health insurance industry is one of the State’s larger partners. By requiring people to do business with insurance companies the ACA funnels money into the health insurance industry where a portion of it is funneled back to the State (in the form of taxes, lobbying efforts, regulatory compliance fees, etc.).

But some people are too poor to afford health insurance or too stubborn to buy it even when it’s mandated. In order to squeeze money out of those two categories of people the ACA also created a middle tier. You don’t have to buy health insurance but you also won’t be kidnapped and locked in a cage if you’re willing to pay the State a small fee directly. The trick is the fee is lower than buying health insurance but high enough to look favorable compared to being kidnapped and locked in a cage.

Manufacturers have long understood the importance of a middle tier. Apple, for example, prefers you buy the top of the line iPhone but makes lower tiers available because it realizes not everybody can afford or is willing to pay for the top of the line. The difference between the market’s middle tier products and the State’s is the former’s lower tier doesn’t involved armed officers kicking down your door at oh dark thirty, murdering your family dog, and kidnapping you.

So the ACA creates a three tier system. The upper tier is buying health insurance, the middle tier is paying the fine, and the lower tier is being a slave laborer for Federal Prison Industries (also known as UNICOR) for a number of years. It’s a piece of legislation designed specifically for the purpose of extracting more wealth from the public. What may appear to be a failure, the fine being lower than buying health insurance, is in fact part of the design meant to maximum the law’s effectiveness.

Only The State Can Sue You For Being Clever

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is brining a lawsuit against Volkswagen:

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in the fallout since the EPA published a notice of violation in September accusing Volkswagen of installing software on many of its diesel vehicles that would stop the car’s emissions control system from working properly during normal driving, but engage the emissions control system while the car was being tested in a lab, effectively helping Volkswagen cheat air quality regulators in the US.

A press release from the EPA said that approximately 499,000 diesel cars with 2.0 liter engines were found to have defeat devices, and some 85,000 cars with 3.0 liter engines were similarly implicated. The complaint filed by the Department of Justice suggests that the software to defeat the emissions control system in 2.0 and 3.0 liter cars was slightly different, however.

According to the complaint, during federal emissions testing, 2.0 liter engines from Volkswagen “run software logic and/or calibrations that produce compliant emission results” which the car’s onboard system calls the “dyno calibration,” referring to the dynamometer that’s used during emissions testing.

What makes this lawsuit noteworthy is that it demonstrates yet another double standard between private companies and the State. Although the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to bypass means of preventing the copying of data there is no such law for defeating physical systems. If, for example, you take apart your television, wristwatch, or automobile the manufacturer can void the warranty but it cannot sue you. Likewise, if you buy one of those terrible Masterlock padlocks and pick it open Masterlock cannot sue you for bypassing its system. And while Microsoft may be able to sue you for bypassing the copy protection used on the Xbox it cannot sue you for taking the physical system apart. In other words manufacturers cannot sue you for being clever with hardware.

Yet the EPA is free to sue Volkswagen for bypassing its very poorly designed system. Volkswagen didn’t bypass a means of prohibiting the copying of data as is covered by the DMCA. It wrote a piece of software to detect conditions associated with the EPA’s standardized testing system and present the system with what it expected. A more accurate way of explaining this lawsuit would be to note that Volkswagen is being sued because the EPA is too inept to design a test that’s difficult to detect. Volkwagen was clever and the State can sue you for being clever.

People Have Strange Fears

When police continue to kick in doors at oh dark thirty, shoot the family dogs, and desperately scour homes for hours hoping to find something illegal to justify terrorizing the occupants at an incorrect address many people seem perfectly content with the situation. In fact they continue to be apologists for the police and remind us that police are necessary (their words, not mine) for our safety.

But when a group of dip shits occupy an empty government building the previously mentioned people flip their shit. Supposedly these militia members, who haven’t even hurt anybody as far as I know, are to be feared:

Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, were convicted of arson in 2012 but a court ruled their original sentences were too short.

They said they lit the fires to reduce the growth of invasive species and protect their land from wildfires.

The case has riled right-wing activists who resent government interference.

Those occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge centre in Burns say they plan to stay for years and may use violence if police try to evict them.

Apparently a court system that can extent your sentence on a whim is also not worth fearing since nobody seems to bring that fact up.

I’m not a fan of the various militia movements. Militia groups, more often than not, are statist in nature. They usually want to change the government into their particular belief of how it used to be. But I have a hard time fearing them. Very few of these groups have ever actually initiated violence. Meanwhile the State’s law enforcers initiate violence on a daily basis throughout the country. Of the two groups the latter scares me a hell of a lot more than the former.

Furthermore, I don’t understand why anybody really cares about this occupation. The building they occupied was empty and, more importantly, unowned since the State cannot legitimately own property. All they’ve done is taken ownership of an unowned building.

Yet I keep hearing people tell me I should be afraid of this militia group. I really don’t understand the fear most people have.

Post Office Censoring Speech

The United States Post Office had decided to get into the censorship of speech business. Cannabis is legal in several states now. Not surprisingly this legalization has created a desire by cannabis related business to advertise their goods and service. Nothing illegal is being advertised so everything should be cool, right? Wrong. The Post Office is claiming that since cannabis is still illegal on a federal level it’s illegal to mail any advertisements for cannabis, even if those advertisements don’t cross state lines:

The confusion started in Portland, Ore., where local newspapers have been running ads for dispensaries and manufacturers in the state’s now-booming weed industry after voters legalized recreational pot for adults last year, following medical pot in 1998.

In November, Portland’s postal district issued a memo to newspaper publishers, telling them they are breaking the law by running ads for pot and using the U.S. mail to deliver their papers.

The reason? The U.S. Postal Service is a federal entity. Even though Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Alaska have legalized recreational marijuana and 23 other states have legalized medical pot, any newspaper running ads in those states violates a federal law preventing advertising for illicit goods.

Since the Post Office still enjoys a monopoly on delivering first class mail it would also be illegal for some of these advertisements to be shipped through another company. With that said, this would make a hell of a good act of civil disobedience. There is one bright side though, the Post Office is apparently unable to enforce this censorship:

But there’s a twist. The Postal Service apparently has no authority to stop the mailers if their publications contain pot ads. The new policy directs postmasters to send a report to the local U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service.

The matter would, in theory, then be turned over to a law enforcement agency for prosecution, although it’s unclear whether this kind of crime would be prosecuted. Federal authorities have generally not cracked down on pot sales in states where they’re legal.

This does show one of the major downsides of any monopolization in the mailing market. A mailing agent with a monopoly can end up becoming a censor. Either by refusing to deliver certain goods or material containing particular forms of speech a mailing agent, without any competitors, can create a prohibition without even having to go through the usual legislation process.

Demanding The Benefits Of The Monopolized Legal System But Not Accepting The Detriment

Black Lives Matter is planning another protest at the Mall of America. After losing court battles over last year’s demonstration due to incompetency the Mall of America is obtaining a restraining order against the organization this year:

The protesters want to demonstrate at the country’s biggest mall to draw attention to the Nov. 15 police killing of a black Minneapolis man, Jamar Clark, and to ramp up the pressure on investigators to release video of the shooting. Authorities say they won’t release it while state and federal investigations are ongoing.

The mall wants to avoid the type of disruption caused by a Christmas-time demonstration last year, when thousands of protesters angry over the absence of charges involving police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City forced the temporary closure of mall stores. Dozens of people were arrested.

This case is particularly amusing to me because the Mall of America is relying on the very monopolized legal system is willfully ignores. In this case the it’s trying to get the monopolized legal system to issue a restraining order because it doesn’t want protesters on its property (although I might argue that the special privileges it receives from the State invalidate any claims it might have to being private property). But the Mall of America willfully ignores the law prohibiting land lords from banning the carrying of firearms:

Both Cornish and Strawser said Minnesota law prohibits a landlord, such as the Mall of America, from restricting the “lawful carry or possession of firearms by tenants or their guests.” Strawser added, “carrying at the Mall of America does not violate the law, only the mall’s wishes.”

There are few things I dislike more than hypocrites. If you support the State’s monopolized legal system then you should abide by it entirely. On the other hand, if you don’t support the State’s monopolized legal system then you should avoid utilizing as much as possible. You shouldn’t expect to have your cake and eat it too.

To Save The Fish We Must Kill The Fish

In the neighborhood of Bristol some people decided that they wanted to stop fishing in one of the local lakes to prevent wildlife from being harmed by lines and hooks. Tot his end they banned fishing in the lake. But that apparently want’s enough. Now they are moving forward with a plan to save the local wildlife by killing it:

Last year, the local Neighbourhood Partnership voted to ban fishing at St George’s Park lake to stop wildlife being harmed by fishing line and hooks.

It has now approved an option proposed by Bristol City Council to destroy the fish rather than relocate them.

It’s a solution only the combination of well meaning idiots and government could support. Of course some of the loonies have said they don’t want to kill all of the fish; only enough to protect the fish from fishers.

Few things are more stupid than well meaning people with the power to force their will on others.

Fuck Your Censorship

After flat out stating that you don’t have a right to free speech it may seem odd to see a post arguing for free speech. This is because yesterday’s post touched on organizations censoring speech within their own property. Today’s post touches on legal censorship. Slate, not surprisingly, has an article that claims the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is such a tremendous threat that the First Amendment must finally be eliminated:

But there is something we can do to protect people like Amin from being infected by the ISIS virus by propagandists, many of whom are anonymous and most of whom live in foreign countries. Consider a law that makes it a crime to access websites that glorify, express support for, or provide encouragement for ISIS or support recruitment by ISIS; to distribute links to those websites or videos, images, or text taken from those websites; or to encourage people to access such websites by supplying them with links or instructions. Such a law would be directed at people like Amin: naïve people, rather than sophisticated terrorists, who are initially driven by curiosity to research ISIS on the Web.

The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden. As word spread, people like Amin would be discouraged from searching for ISIS-related websites and perhaps be spared radicalization and draconian punishment for more serious terrorism-related crimes.

Fuck you, Eric Posner, and the horse you rode in on. This is another example of Petty Tyrant Syndrome. Eric has seen something he doesn’t like, ISIS, and has decided the most expedient way to deal with it is to punish everybody. Since ISIS is using the Internet to spread its message Eric believes every user of the Internet must have a gun put to their heads so their brains can be immediately blown out if they post something that isn’t to his liking. And make no mistake, even though he tries to conceal the ultimate outcome of his proposed law by using euphemisms like “graduated penalties” this law, like all laws, would ultimately result in death by law enforcer. That’s because laws don’t recognize proportional responses.

If you break a minor law, are issued a citation, and fail to pay the State doesn’t throw up its hands in frustration and say, “Fuck it. It’s not worth the trouble to make you pay.” It issues an order to men with guns to hunt you down and kidnap you if you comply or murder you if you don’t.

Yesterday I mentioned that your right to free speech ceases to exist the second you enter somebody else’s property. But Eric isn’t proposing to censor people only on his own property. He’s proposing to censor people on everybody’s property. Under the lens of libertarianism he’s proposing to violate the shit out of everybody’s property rights. Therein lies the difference between censorship based on property rights and censorship based on legal decree. And that is why Eric Posner is a fucking cunt.

Why Magnetic Strips On Credit And Debit Cards Need To Die

I’ve been harping on backwards compatibility as it relates to computer security for a while but that’s not the only place backwards compatibility bites us in the ass. Let’s consider credit and debit cards.

Chip and pin cards have been the standard in Europe for ages now. The United States is finally thinking about getting onboard. But in true American tradition the move to improve credit and debit card security is being done in the dumbest way possible. First of all the United States is adopting chip and signature, not chip and pin. Second, and this is even worse, the old legacy system of magnetic strips is still being supported. Because of this constantly improving card skimmers are still a viable means of stealing credit and debit card information:

Virtually all European banks issue chip-and-PIN cards (also called Europay, Mastercard and Visa or EMV), which make it far more expensive for thieves to duplicate and profit from counterfeit cards. Even still, ATM skimming remains a problem for European banks mainly because several parts of the world — most notably the United States and countries in Asia and South America — have not yet adopted this standard.

For reasons of backward compatibility with ATMs that aren’t yet in line with EMV, many EMV-compliant cards issued by European banks also include a plain old magnetic stripe. The weakness here, of course, is that thieves can still steal card data from Europeans using skimmers on European ATMs, but they need not fabricate chip-and-PIN cards to withdrawal cash from the stolen accounts: They simply send the card data to co-conspirators in the United States who use it to fabricate new cards and to pull cash out of ATMs here, where the EMV standard is not yet in force.

This is another example of where a hard cutoff where all backwards compatibility is dropped should be implemented. So long as magnetic strips are still supported it’s trivial to steal credit and debit card numbers and use them to steal cash from people’s accounts.

Security, in general, does not lend itself well to backwards compatibility. Once a system is broken is should be dumped entirely. The credit card companies here in the United States should have required all banks to issue chip cards and all retailers to use readers that only support chip and PIN, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and other such modern payment methods. Instead everybody decided that the average American is too stupid to adapt to a new system and rewarded this perceived stupidity by continuing to support a completely broken standard. Because of that we’re all being put at unnecessary risk.

The Plague Of Backwards Compatibility Continues

SHA1 is a cryptographic hashing algorithm the Internet has relied on for quite some time. As things tend to go in the technology field, the old workhorse is showing its age. Attacks against it are quickly becoming more feasible so it needs to be put out to pasture.

Because of this certificates issued after 2016 will use SHA256. Although all modern browsers support SHA256 older browsers do not. Unfortunately this has convinced Facebook and CloudFlare to create a jerry rigged process to allow people running out of date browsers to access their services:

Facebook said as many as seven percent of the world’s browsers are unable to support the SHA256 function that serves as the new minimum requirement starting at the beginning of 2016. That translates into tens of millions of end users, and a disproportionate number of them are from developing countries still struggling to get online or protect themselves against repressive governments. CloudFlare, meanwhile, estimated that more than 37 million people won’t be able to access encrypted sites that rely on certificates signed with the new algorithm.

Both companies went on to unveil a controversial fallback mechanism that uses SHA1-based certificates to deliver HTTPS-encrypted webpages to people who still rely on outdated browsers. The remaining, much larger percentage of end users with modern browsers would be served HTTPS pages secured with SHA256 or an even stronger function. The mechanisms, which both companies are making available as open-source software, will allow websites to provide weaker HTTPS protection to older browsers while giving newer ones the added benefits of SHA256. Facebook is deploying the plan on most or all of the sites it operates, while CloudFlare will enable it by default for all of its customers. CloudFlare said other sites, including those run by Chinese portal Alibaba, are also implementing it.

I’m of the opinion that there needs to be a cutoff date for software. That is to say there needs to be a date where people agree that supporting it is no longer happening. After that cutoff date anybody who refuses to upgrade will just have to suffer the consequences. The reason I believe this is because continuing to support legacy software puts both users and service providers at risk.

Just this year we were all bitten in the ass by legacy support. The FREAK and Logjam exploits were the result of continued support for the old export grade cryptographic algorithms once mandated under United States law. Both exploits allowed downgrading the encryption algorithms used by clients and servers to communicate securely with one another. By downgrading the algorithms being use the communications, although encrypted, could be feasible broken.

By supporting older browsers Facebook and CloudFlare are giving users another excuse to continue using vulnerable software instead of finally upgrading to something safe. In addition to not supporting effective cryptographic algorithms, out of date browsers also contain numerous unpatched security holes that are actively exploited. Using out of date browsers is unsafe and shouldn’t be encouraged in my opinion.

Stupid Hurts

I take a great deal of solace in knowing that a lot of people are too stupid to successfully pull off any kind of meaningful attack:

WHEATFIELD, NY – The U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed new information Wednesday, regarding the investigation of a Wheatfield man accused of making and possessing homemade bombs.

The new information, was geared to persuade a federal judge that Michael O’Neill, should be detained in federal facility and not allowed to seek bail or bond.

O’Neill is accused of making at least seven bombs at his home. Two weeks ago, one of the explosives inadvertently went off inside the garage. O’Neill was the only one injured and was taken to ECMC where his left leg was amputated. He’s been there ever since.

Prosecutors are claiming Nazi, Confederacy, and Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia were found in his home, which they’re probably using to insinuate he’s a dangerous man but to me show he’s probably just an idiot. On the upside, if he did have any malicious intent it doesn’t matter since the only person he managed to hurt with his homemade bombs was himself.

Of course his survival ensures he is disqualified from receiving a Darwin Award.