Tag: Superdickery

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership

Between government and corporate surveillance I would, nominally, agree that government surveillance is more dangerous. This is because corporations aren’t in the practice of sending armed goons to your home to kick in your door, shoot your dog, and kidnap you based on what their surveillance has uncovered. But the distinction is only nominal because the data collected from corporate surveillance often finds its way into the government’s hands:

Throughout the United States—outside private houses, apartment complexes, shopping centers, and businesses with large employee parking lots—a private corporation, Vigilant Solutions, is taking photos of cars and trucks with its vast network of unobtrusive cameras. It retains location data on each of those pictures, and sells it.

It’s happening right now in nearly every major American city.

The company has taken roughly 2.2 billion license-plate photos to date. Each month, it captures and permanently stores about 80 million additional geotagged images. They may well have photographed your license plate. As a result, your whereabouts at given moments in the past are permanently stored. Vigilant Solutions profits by selling access to this data (and tries to safeguard it against hackers). Your diminished privacy is their product. And the police are their customers.

The company counts 3,000 law-enforcement agencies among its clients. Thirty thousand police officers have access to its database. Do your local cops participate?

One of the biggest risks of corporate surveillance is the collected data, either through sale or warrant, ends up in the hands of the State. While I have no real concerns about Facebook using my social graph to justify sending armed goons to kidnap me I do have concerns about judge granting a warrant to a law enforcement agency to obtain that data as a justification for kidnapping me.

Judges Don’t Have To Understand Something To Rule On It

In most professions the opinions of those who lack an understanding of a pertinent topic are rightfully ignored. Why would anybody waste time asking somebody who knows nothing about software development about the best method to implement a software feature? But the legal field is not most professions. In the legal field you can lack an understanding of a pertinent topic and still be taken seriously as proven time and again when a judge attempts to rule on a case involving technology:

In short, Judge Byran, despite hearing the views of those who took part in the investigation, and having read the briefs submitted by the defense and prosecution several times, could not fully grasp what the NIT was doing.

“If a smart federal judge still has trouble understanding after hours of expert testimony what is actually going on,” then the average judge signing warrant applications has little hope of truly understanding what the FBI is proposing, Nate Wessler, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in a phone interview. (The ACLU has agreed to a protective order for the Michaud case, allowing it access to the sealed filings.)

“It appears in this case, and that’s consistent with other cases we’ve seen elsewhere in the country involving use of malware, the government explanations and warrant applications are quite sparse, and do not fully explain to judges how these technologies works,” Wessler added.

As the hearing continued, Judge Byran said “I suppose there is somebody sitting in a cubicle somewhere with a keyboard doing this stuff. I don’t know that. It may be they seed the clouds, and the clouds rain information. I don’t know.”

Emphasis mine. The judge openly admits that he doesn’t know how the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) malware works and further emphasizes this fact but saying something entirely nonsensical. In almost any other profession the judge’s rambling would have been dismissed but in the legal profession his ruling, even though he has no idea what he’s ruling on, is respected.

This is yet another item in a long list of problems with the United States legal system. The fate of accused parties is being put into the hands of individuals who are entirely unqualified to make the decisions they’re tasked with making. As soon as Judge Byran said he didn’t know what was going on he should have been replaced by somebody qualified. In any other profession he would have been. But a judge’s power is more important than their knowledge in the courtroom. How anybody can look at such a system and claim it dispenses justice is beyond me.

No Hero Goes Unpunished In The United States

The United States has a very proud history of punishing its heroes. William Binney had armed goons storms his home and kidnap him because he revealed rather concerning National Security Agency’s (NSA) programs. When Chelsey Manning revealed war crimes being committed by the United States military she ended up in a military prison. Edward Snowden is still in exile for revealing the NSA’s illegal surveillance operations. Now the United States government is going after the man who revealed the corruption in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court:

A former Justice Department lawyer is facing legal ethics charges for exposing the President George W. Bush-era surveillance tactics—a leak that earned The New York Times a Pulitzer and opened the debate about warrantless surveillance that continues today.

The lawyer, Thomas Tamm, now a Maryland state public defender, is accused of breaching Washington ethics rules for going to The New York Times instead of his superiors about his concerns about what was described as “the program.”

Tamm was a member of the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and, among other things, was charged with requesting electronic surveillance warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals Board of Professional Responsibility said Tamm became aware in 2004 that certain applications to the FISA Court for national security surveillance authority “were given special treatment.“

Isn’t it ironic how the State keeps urging whistleblowers to come forth if their information is related to a private organization but prosecute any whistleblower who comes forth with information about government corruption? If a whistleblower can lead the government to some wealth to steal it is grateful but when its dirty laundry is aired it becomes angry and violent.

Assumption Of Guilt

We truly live in wondrous times. At one time people held inconvenient beliefs about people being innocent until proven guilty by a jury of 12 impartial individuals. Today is a simpler time where most cases never go to trail. Instead the State merely coerces accused individuals into admitting guilt:

The presumption of innocence helps to combat prejudice and prejudging in the U.S. criminal justice system. But because plea bargains have supplanted trials in our criminal justice system, that presumption does not apply to most cases in the United States.

[…]

Unfortunately, the system that is described by our school teachers and that Americans see on television and in the movies is now defunct. Jury trials are now rare events in the United States. In fact, about 95 percent of the cases moving through the system will not go to trial. The overwhelming majority of cases will be resolved by plea bargains.

In a plea bargain, the prosecutor typically offers the defendant a reduced prison sentence if he agrees to waive his right to a jury trial and admit guilt in a brief hearing before a judge. Prosecutors use their power to pressure people who have been accused of a crime, and are presumed innocent, to waive their right to a trial and admit guilt.

We know this is true because prosecutors admit that this is what they are doing. The Supreme Court has approved these prosecutorial tactics in the landmark 1978 case, Bordenkircher v. Hayes. By a close 5-4 vote, the court said there was no constitutional problem with pressuring the accused to waive his trial and admit guilt. According to the court, there is no illegal coercion “so long as the accused is free to accept or reject the prosecution’s offer.”

The article touches on the folly of this system but I want to make another important point.

A person accused of a crime isn’t involved in a fair game. From the very beginning of a case, where the accused is arrested, the deck is stacked against them. Cops can lie to them but they can’t lie to the cops. So the accused is at an immediate information disadvantage because the cops and lie about evidence, witness testimony, and other things that can make a charge look hopeless to fight. Prosecutors have the right to threaten an accused with decades of prison time whereas the accused has no right to threaten the prosecutor with, say, a retaliatory lawsuit if it’s later found out that they’re innocent. In addition to that it’s also not uncommon for an accused party to front their legal defense fees even if they are found innocent.

The deal presented to the accused party isn’t fair by any sane definition. No matter what avenue they choose they’re at a major disadvantage. Admitting guilt and taking the lesser sentence seems like a good choice when the alternative is a longer sentence and tremendous legal defense fees. Especially when, as far as the accused knows, the evidence against them is thoroughly damning.

A legal system that favors one side over the other cannot be considered an engine for justice. It is merely a formality that allows the advantaged side to declare its actions just when it crushes the disadvantaged side.

The State, Like Any Other Thief, Is An Opportunist

The State is no different than any other thief. It’s an opportunist that preys on the most vulnerable. An incredible example of this is Denmark’s parliament:

The Danish parliament has backed a controversial proposal to confiscate asylum seekers’ valuables to pay for their upkeep.

[…]

Under the new law, refugees entering the country will only be allowed to keep possessions up to a value of about 10,000 kroner (1,340 euros; £1,000) – a figure raised from 3,000 kroner following objections.

Seldom is the State this brazen in its theft. Usually it wraps its actions in euphemisms such as taxes, citations, and civil forfeiture. The State also avoids openly targeting the vulnerable but in this case it is making an exception.

What makes this blatant theft worse is that many people seem to support it. Supporters of this crime claim that it’s a legitimate way for the refugees to offset their burden on society. This, like any other claim justified by nonsensical collectivism, is bullshit.

Let’s address the very premise that there is a burden on society. Why would people living in Denmark have to foot the bill for refugees entering the country? Because the State has a gun to their heads demanding they do so. Taxes aren’t increased because refugees are entering the country. Taxes are increased because the State has yet another means to justify increasing its rate of theft. The refugees aren’t the problem, they’re merely the excuse used by the problem.

Refugees are entirely without fault in this mess. They have every right to cross the imaginary line claimed by the biggest gang in Denmark as its territory. That gang has no legitimate claim to the land so nobody is in the wrong for crossing into it. None of the refugees are stealing wealth from the people already living in Denmark. All of the theft is being performed by the Danish government.

They’re All In It Together

The primary duty of law enforcers is to expropriate wealth from the general populace. Few law enforcement agencies are as glib about this as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). From Medical records to identities the DEA has a long history of theft. But cash is king. The DEA was recently caught recruiting an agent of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to steal cash for them:

A Department of Justice watchdog officially condemned the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration this month, following a report that the agency had recruited a Transportation Security Administration security screener to search bags for cash that the DEA could confiscate.

[…]

In a summary of its investigation, the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General concluded that the agreement “violated DEA policy” on a number of levels. While the OIG determined that the TSA informant never provided any actionable information to the DEA, it concluded that the plans to pay the agent out of the cash he or she helped seize “could have violated individuals’ protection against unreasonable searches and seizures if it led to a subsequent DEA enforcement action.”

In effect, the OIG was questioning the propriety of an arrangement in which a TSA agent would use his or her power to tip off the DEA to the presence of cash in travelers’ luggage, and then receive compensation based on how profitable that information was to the agency.

Mind you, partnerships between the DEA and other government agencies isn’t unusual. However, such a blatant partnership aimed expressly at stealing cash from air travelers is pretty brazen even for the DEA.

The important question is what will happen now? If history is any indicator nothing will happen, which is why corrupt shit like this never ends. So long as nobody in the DEA is punished for trying to pull shit like this the agency is going to continue doing what is has been doing all along. And since the DEA is a money maker for the State it’s unlikely any other government agency is going to actually issue punishments where they are due.

Symbolism

The believed birthplace of the Bill of Rights now more closely matches the actual Bill of Rights:

A Pennsylvania building believed to be the birthplace of the Bill of Rights was partially demolished earlier this month because developers didn’t know the origin of the site, The Sentinel reported.

The building, originally known as the James Bell Tavern, hosted a meeting in 1788 of anti-Federalists opposed to the ratification of the new nation’s Constitution. The group began calling for changes to the document, and their plea was eventually heard when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791.

Overall the Constitution was, what I consider, a bad idea. It cemented the power of the federal government by giving it the power to issue and collect taxes and a monopoly on deciding whether any actions performed by the federal government were constitutional. Once the federal government of the United States had those two powers it effectively became unstoppable.

With that said, the Antifederalists made a valiant effort at damage control by getting the Bill of Rights included in the Constitution. Unfortunately the realities of statism became apparent very quickly as the federal government, almost immediately, began curtailing the supposed rights listed in the Constitution.

Federalists: 1, Antifederalists: 0.

Be Careful Posting About Bernie Sander’s Campaign

Although I suspect most of my readers aren’t feeling the Bern I could be wrong. Just in case some of you are Bernie supporters I’m going to do you a huge favor and warn you about posting material from his campaign online. It seems the campaign does not appreciate such things. Wikipedia received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice from the Bernie Sanders campaign because it displayed publicly available campaign material:

A lawyer representing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has demanded that several of the campaign’s logos be removed from Wikipedia, saying that reproducing the logos violate copyright law. The Wikimedia Foundation has complied with the DMCA takedown notice and removed the notices.

If you’ve been posting information from Sanders’ campaign you should consider removing it immediately less you receive your own DMCA takedown notices.

It is funny, from my vantage point of an anarchist, that a political campaign would decide to enforce its copyright like this. Most people are away that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. This is especially true for political campaigns. Even if people were using campaign material for mockery it will both amuse opponents and stir up supporters. There’s really no way a campaign can lose by letting people use its materials since such use is almost certainly not going to convince anybody to change their viewpoint.

Oh well, some people want a master. I guess it’s good for them to get a feel for the new yoke before they have to wear it.

Is Your Device A Snitch

I’m convinced that one of the biggest threat to privacy is the reliance on advertisements many industries suffer from. This reliance has lead to a proliferation of surveillance technology. And now that the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) is the new hot commodity we’re seeing surveillance technology being embedded to more everyday things. With so many devices being capable of spying on you the next big thing in advertising has become cross-device surveillance. Bruce Schneier has an excellent article that shows just how far these advertisers are trying to go:

SilverPush is an Indian startup that’s trying to figure out all the different computing devices you own. It embeds inaudible sounds into the webpages you read and the television commercials you watch. Software secretly embedded in your computers, tablets, and smartphones pick up the signals, and then use cookies to transmit that information back to SilverPush. The result is that the company can track you across your different devices. It can correlate the television commercials you watch with the web searches you make. It can link the things you do on your tablet with the things you do on your work computer.

Your computerized things are talking about you behind your back, and for the most part you can’t stop them­ — or even learn what they’re saying.

Now white noise generators that broadcast on the frequencies used by this surveillance technology are suddenly good ideas for stocking stuffers. Without them your new smart fridge can display advertisements to you based on what your smart television told it you were watching.

Not only does this open the floodgates of privacy violations further but it also greatly increases the ability of malicious attackers. Ad networks have become major targets for malware distributors. This has created headaches for computer and smart phone users but now it could create headaches for your television, fridge, coffee maker, and even your damn doorbell. Making matters even worse is how unreliable IoT manufacturers are at both implementing and maintaining security. What happens when your smart fridge is considered out of date by the manufacturer and its software security problems are no longer fixed?

The reliance on advertising to fund so much technology is creating both a private and security nightmare. And it’s only getting worse.

Intellectual Property Means Not Owning Your Stuff

Intellectual property laws are always justified as being necessary for human innovation. Setting aside the fact humans have been innovating for longer than intellectual property laws have existed, the belief many people hold is that nobody would invest the resources necessary to innovate if they weren’t promised a monopoly on manufacturing afterwards. More and more though we’re seeing what the real purpose behind intellectual property laws are. It’s not to encourage innovation, it’s to curtail ownership.

Copyright is the biggest offender. Due to software copyright laws it’s getting more and more difficult to say you own anything because manufacturers are claiming anything with a computer in it is licensed, not sold. What’s that mean? It means when your product breaks down you are legally prohibited from fixing it:

How many people does it take to fix a tractor? A year ago, I would have said it took just one person. One person with a broken tractor, a free afternoon, and a box of tools.

I would have been wrong.

When the repair involves a tractor’s computer, it actually takes an army of copyright lawyers, dozens of representatives from U.S. government agencies, an official hearing, hundreds of pages of legal briefs, and nearly a year of waiting. Waiting for the Copyright Office to make a decision about whether people like me can repair, modify, or hack their own stuff.

[…]

Thanks to the “smart” revolution, our appliances, watches, fridges, and televisions have gotten a computer-aided intelligence boost. But where there are computers, there is also copyrighted software, and where there is copyrighted software, there are often software locks. Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, you can’t pick that lock without permission. Even if you have no intention of pirating the software. Even if you just want to modify the programming or repair something you own.

Enter the tractor. I’m not a lawyer. I’m a repairman by trade and a software engineer by education. I fix things—especially things with computers in them. And I run an online community of experts that teaches other people how to fix broken equipment. When a farmer friend of mine wanted to know if there was a way to tweak the copyrighted software of his broken tractor, I knew it was going to be rough. The only way to get around the DMCA’s restriction on software tinkering is to ask the Copyright Office for an exemption at the Section 1201 Rulemaking, an arduous proceeding that takes place just once every three years.

Ownership implies you have sole control over something. It can’t exist under intellectual property laws. So long as you stand the chance of being severely punished for repairing, modifying, or selling something you cannot claim to own it. Intellectual property claims are promises granted by the State that it will dish out those severe punishments.

This problem is also going to become exponentially worse as the number or products with embedded software increases exponentially. Soon we won’t be able to claim ownership over our refrigerators, coffee makers, or door bells. Everything in our homes will be rented property of the manufacturer. And if we violate the terms of the rental agreement the State will send its armed goons at oh dark thirty, kick down our doors announced, and shoot our pets.