News You Need to Know – Page 85

Call It Cynicism But I’m Calling Bullshit

Several sites are reporting about a tool aimed at performing denial of service attacks against Healthcare.gov:

Researchers have uncovered software available on the Internet designed to overload the struggling Healthcare.gov website with more traffic than it can handle.

“ObamaCare is an affront to the Constitutional rights of the people,” a screenshot from the tool, which was acquired by researchers at Arbor Networks, declares. “We HAVE the right to CIVIL disobedience!”

My gut tells me that this is bullshit. In fact, being the cynical person I am, I wouldn’t be surprised if this tool was written by somebody involved in the development of Healthcare.gov. They’re on the hot seat at the moment and probably trying to find anything to blame besides themselves. Developing and releasing a tool aimed at performing a denial of service attack against Healthcare.gov would give the developers of the website something to blame.

I do have some reason to believe this tool wasn’t developed by opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I have connections to numerous communities including groups that oppose the ACA. If this tool was really written as an act of civil disobedience against the ACA I would thinking the developers would want as many people to download it as possible. That would mean spreading the word to groups that oppose the ACA. I can’t find any mention of this tool in any of those groups.

So, for the time being, I’m calling bullshit on this.

Colossal Disasters

I don’t know people appreciate the sheer size of the failure that is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) online marketplace. The website cost somewhere between $170 million and $292 million and the only thing the government has to show for it is proof that simply throwing money at a development team doesn’t result in a quality product. On the website’s first day there were only six people able to sign up for an ACA insurance plan:

Just six people were able to successfully enroll in health insurance through Healthcare.gov, the government’s online marketplace, during the first 24 hours it was live. Just 242 people were able to enroll on the second day.

That’s according to new documents released by the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the website’s bumpy launch. Slow loading times, bugs, and errors prevented an unknown number of Americans from shopping for health insurance. The website had 4.7 million visits in the first 24 hours, the administration says.

Only six people out of 4.7 million visitors were able to sign up. That’s an approximate success rate of 0.0001 percent. From a purely technical standpoint this kind of failure is hard to quantify as far as scale. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a website should get you sometime like Google or Amazon, both of which provide almost 24/7 up time while servicing more customer in a day than Healthcare.gov is likely to see in its lifetime.

Were Healthcare.gov a private sector website this failure would have likely resulted in a flurry of firings and lawsuits. But since it’s a government website the only thing we’re going to see is even more money dumped into it.

Reversing the Continuum of Force

The continuum of force generally dictates that one should start with the least amount of force necessary and move up the scale from there. I guess nobody told this police officer:

According to police documents, now-former Officer Jody Putnam was inside a Dollar General Store when employees noticed the squirrel. Putnam apparently shot his firearm at the squirrel inside the store. When that didn’t work, he used another weapon; pepper spray.

I would think pepper spray would have come before a firearm. Then again, if I was trying to run a squirrel out of a building I probably wouldn’t use either. Open the door and chase the little bastard with a broom. Eventually it will make a quick exit.

IsoHunt Shutdown

I have some sad news to report. One of the better torrent sites, IsoHunt, has shuttered its doors:

isoHunt, a search engine for BitTorrent files founded more than a decade ago, has agreed today to shut down all its operations worldwide. The company, founded by Canadian Gary Fung, has also accepted a judgment that it must pay the movie studios that sued it $110 million.

It’s not clear how much of that the studios will actually be able to collect. According to a chunk of court transcript cited by Techdirt, the movie studios’ lawyers estimated that Fung and his company had only “two million dollars to $4 million, $5 million at the most” that they could possibly pay.

Fung gave up his long legal fight just weeks from having to defend his site in federal court; a jury trial was scheduled to start on November 5 in a Los Angeles federal court. Earlier court rulings had already determined that Fung was liable for “inducing” copyright infringement, so the court trial would have largely been about damage control. The MPAA had stated studio lawyers would have sought as much as $600 million had the case gone to trial.

Most of you know my feelings towards intellectual property. On top of finding it morally reprehensible, I have also witnessed the writing on the wall and it shows that intellectual property is dying. It’s impossible to maintain a monopoly on ideas when ideas can be spread around the world instantly thanks to the wonderful global network known as the Internet. Hell, this victory over IsoHunt is meaningless because there are hundreds of alternative torrent sites you can download movies and music from.

The only outcome of this fiasco is that people looking to download files via BitTorrent have to spend a few minutes to find another site. In other words, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) spend, in all likelihood, millions of dollars on lawyers to achieve nothing of importance. If nothing demonstrates the slow death of intellectual property that should.

Compounding Mistakes

It’s no secret that healthcare.gov, the primary website for the Affordable Care Act, has been less than satisfactory. People are having a difficult time signing up for their mandatory insurance policies, which will eventually put them at risk of being fined. What is the planned remedy for this problem? Hiring Verizon to unfuck the website:

An informed source in the telecommunications industry said Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division has been asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the performance of the HealthCare.gov site, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made official.

I’m sure this will go over swimmingly:

A rudimentary URL hack may have exposed texting data for tens of millions of Verizon customers, according to a new report from security researcher Prvsec. The vulnerability was reportedly fixed in September, a month after Prvsec privately disclosed it to the carrier, but before it was addressed it allowed attackers to see who Verizon users texted and when, provided they had a subscriber-level login to the carrier’s website.

Verizon is obviously the best choice to develop a secure website that people will be entering their personal information into.

Being Offline Won’t Stop the State from Tracking You

After Edward Snowden leaked the National Security Agency (NSA) documents that unveiled how vast its surveillance has become there were a lot of reactions. Some people decided they didn’t have anything to hide so the state’s spying wasn’t an issue, otherwise decided to pursue technologies that would allow them to keep private communications private, and others decided to go offline. Of the three reactions the last one was, by far, the most irrational. You don’t have to be online for the state to track you. As this article points out, there are other ways for the state to surveil you:

The people who have actually attempted to live without being tracked–most often due to a safety threat–will tell you that security cameras are just about everywhere, RFID tags seem to be in everything, and almost any movement results in becoming part of a database. “It’s basically impossible for you and I to decide, as of tomorrow, I’m going to remain off the radar and to survive for a month or 12 months,” says Gunter Ollmann, the CTO of security firm IOActive, who in his former work with law enforcement had several coworkers who dedicated themselves to remaining anonymous for the safety of their families. “The amount of prep work you have to do in order to stay off the radar involves years of investment leading up to that.”

People who believe themselves to be very clever will often brag about the fact that they use a burner phone (a pre-paid cellular phone you can buy in most convenience stores) that they bought with cash. In their mind this means that the phone isn’t tied to them in any way and that they are untrackable while using it. Most convenience stores have security cameras looking at every square inch of the store. Those cameras can have some fantastic optics that give crystal clear images (the days of grainy black and white video footage from security cameras is ending). Facial recognition software is frighteningly accurate (just post a picture of a friend’s face on Facebook sometime). The state can requisition surveillance video whenever it wants (assuming it doesn’t just collect all surveillance footage like it does with phone calls and e-mails). In addition to that, the NSA collects phone records. It doesn’t take much to look at the numbers you called and develop a social map that has a good chance of identifying you. Using a burner phone won’t keep you safe from Big Brother’s gaze.

Another major source of leaks when it comes to your personal information are your friends:

Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar. For one, they probably think they’re doing you a favor when they invite you to a party using Evite, add you to LinkedIn or Facebook, or keep your information in a contact book that they sync with their computer.

But from your perspective, as someone trying to remain as untraceable as possible, they are selling you out. “Basically what they’ve done is uploaded all of my contact information and connected it to them,” Sell says.

This is the biggest one in my opinion. My family has given out my phone number and personal e-mail address to people even though I’ve told them numerous times that I didn’t want them to do that. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean your friends and family are. Unless you’re willing to sever all ties with other people you’re trackable. You may not have a Facebook account but that won’t stop your friends from posting pictures of you and writing your name in the description.

Going offline won’t save you. It won’t even make tracking your more difficult. The only thing going offline does is prevent you from utilizing very powerful technology to your advantage.

Keith Alexander is Planning His Move to a Cushy Private Sector Job

The bastard who spearheaded the massive National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance apparatus has unveiled plans to retire:

Army General Keith Alexander’s eight-year tenure was rocked this year by revelations contained in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s widespread scooping up of telephone, e-mail and social media data.

Alexander has formalized plans to leave by next March or April, while his civilian deputy, John “Chris” Inglis, is due to retire by year’s end, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

I’m sure a lot of credit for this retirement goes to Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. If it wasn’t for all the bad publicity provided by those two Mr. Alexander would likely continue is reign of spying. But this news is bittersweet. Being a higher up in the military, Mr. Alexander has probably received numerous job offers from politically connected defense contractors. Those offers likely include an absurdly high salary with very few job responsibility. Lockheed Martin, for example, would almost certainly love to hire Mr. Alexander to wine and dine his former military buddies to convince them to go with Lockheed’s solutions instead of Raytheon’s.

In other words, Mr. Alexander spend years illegally spying on us and his reward will almost certainly be a high paying career as a salesman for a defense contractor. That doesn’t seem like a very just outcome but it is a typical outcome when corruption within the state is unveiled.

Karma is a Bitch

It seems that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) new multi-billion dollar data center is having some problems:

The NSA’s new data-storage center in Utah has suffered a series of mysterious meltdowns in the past year.

Officials told the Wall Street Journal that 10 fiery explosions, known as arc-fault failures, have ripped apart machinery, melted metal and destroyed circuits. The repeated meltdowns have delayed the opening of the one-million square foot facility by 12 months.

I love karma.

Risk Assessment

I’m beginning to think that the downfall of our society won’t be caused by economic hardship but by our society’s ever growing unwillingness to accept any risk. Consider this story:

That’s what parents are asking after hearing about a Long Island middle school’s decision to ban most balls during recess and also require supervision of tag, even cartwheels, due to safety concerns.

No longer allowed at the Weber Middle School in Port Washington, New York: footballs, baseballs, soccer balls, lacrosse balls and any other hardballs that could injure a child. Also off limits: rough games of tag and cartwheels unless an adult supervisor is on hand.

“We want to make sure our children have fun but are also protected,” Dr. Kathleen Maloney, superintendent of Port Washington Schools, said in a local television interview, noting how playground injuries can “unintentionally” become very serious.

Even at a very young age children are being taught that risk is unacceptable. While playground injuries are never favorable they are also notably rare when you consider how many students play on playgrounds versus how many students are injured on playgrounds. Combine that ratio with the fact that a vast majority of playground injuries are likely minor scrapes and cuts. How often has a kid been killed playing football. I’m sure somebody can point out one or two stories but such an occurrence is statistically rare.

But banning games involving balls and unsupervised tag reinforced a zero tolerance policy of risk. When you think about it, much of the ills our society faces may be attributed to an unwillingness to accept risk. Economic polices are an example of this. The Federal Reserve, and with it ills such as fractional reserve banking and continuous inflation, was put in place to supposedly mitigate the risk of booms and busts (it failed obviously). Whenever a single company manages to commit an act of fraud the state moves in with sweeping legislation that causes hardship for every other company. These laws are usually met with widespread support form the general public who believes our society must do something to ensure the risk of fraud is wiped from the face of the Earth. Outside of economics, the Affordable Car Act (ACA) is another example of our society being unwilling to accept risk. In the hopes of eliminating the risk of uninsured people there was a law supported by some very loud individuals for a law that mandates everybody buy insurance.

Risk can never be abolished. It is ever present in everything we do. Since it cannot be eliminated we must learn how to live with it. Risk assessment is an important skill, one that cannot be learned in a sterile world where we’re taught only to consider risk unacceptable. The harder we work to eliminate all risk the more risky our society it likely to become.

Cause and Effect of Anti-Bullying Laws

One of the current crusades of the social justice movement is to bully bullies. By passing anti-bullying policies, which tend to work by prohibiting free speech and expression, school administrators believe they can bully kids into not bullying kids. It’s a rather strange theory; one that doesn’t seem to be panning out:

It started as a simple look at bullying. University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong analyzed data collected from 7,000 students from all 50 states.

He thought the results would be predictable and would show that anti-bullying programs curb bullying. Instead — he found the opposite.

Jeong said it was, “A very disappointing and a very surprising thing. Our anti-bullying programs, either intervention or prevention does not work.”

The study concluded that students at schools with anti-bullying programs might actually be more likely to become a victim of bullying. It also found that students at schools with no bullying programs were less likely to become victims.

Once again we see the Law of Erisian Escalation coming into play. By imposing order in the form of anti-bullying policies school administrators have cause chaotic bullying to escalate. This stems from the fact that bullying is a societal matter, no a legal matter. Trying to solve societal matters through legal means is a recipe for failure. By definition the lawless don’t comply with the law. Passing laws to curtail the lawless is like dumping kerosene on a fire to put it out; you only make the lawless person more lawless and the problem persists (or gets worse).