Tag: You’re Doing it Right

When the Legal System Turns On Itself

As we know the state has been having a hard time finding enough of the chemicals used in lethal injection to execute all of the prisoners currently on death row. Part of the reason for this is because European drug manufacturers are doing everything within their power to withhold these drugs from being used in state executions. This has lead the state to look for domestic suppliers of the drugs. While such suppliers do exist they are being subjected to the same legal system that put convicts on death row. A domestic seller of the drugs used in lethal injection faced a lawsuit if it supplied said drugs to the Missouri prison system. Instead of dealing with the lawsuit the seller not to sell the drugs:

In a lawsuit filed in federal court this month against the Apothecary Shoppe, Taylor’s lawyers said US drug regulations barred the pharmacy from supplying the drug for use in the execution, and asked the judge to block the sale.

Among other arguments, they said the pharmacy’s custom-made pentobarbital would cause him “severe, unnecessary, lingering, and ultimately inhumane pain” during the execution.

They argued the unregulated nature of compounding pharmacies in the US yielded “no evidence [the pharmacy] will or even has the capacity to test the pentobarbital… to ensure it will not cause unnecessary pain and suffering.”

In recent days, the Apothecary Shoppe notified Taylor’s lawyers it would not sell pentobarbital to Missouri for the execution – and had not already.

In return, Taylor’s lawyers filed a motion late on Monday to drop their suit.

It’s rather ironic that the same legal system that sentences people to death has been successfully used to make the execution of a convicted man more difficult (although it’s likely that Missouri either has a stockpile of the drugs on hand or will find an alternative way to kill the convict). Sometimes a bloated bureaucracy can be used to muddle itself up. I only hope this trend continues because if there’s one thing I would like to see made more difficult for the state it’s executing people.

Applied Crypto Hardening

I spend a lot of time urging people to utilize available cryptographic tools to secure their data. While I also admit that using cryptographic tools is less convenient that not and involves a learning curve, I believe that everybody has a duty to take their online self-defense into their own hands. To this end a group of people have gotten together and written a white paper that helps individuals utilized cryptographic features in popular software packages:

This whitepaper arose out of the need for system administrators to have an updated, solid, well researched and thought-through guide for configuring SSL, PGP, SSH and other cryptographic tools in the post-Snowden age. Triggered by the NSA leaks in the summer of 2013, many system administrators and IT security specialists saw the need to strengthen their encryption settings. This guide is specifically written for these system administrators.

Initiated by Aaron Kaplan (CERT.at) and Adi Kriegisch (VRVis), a group of specialists, cryptographers and sysadmins from CERTs, academia and the private sector joined forces to write such a concise, short guide.

This project aims at creating a simple, copy & paste-able HOWTO for secure crypto settings of the most common services (webservers, mail, ssh, etc.). It is completely open sourced, every step in the creation of this guide is public, discussed on a public mailing list and any changes to the text are documented in a publicly readable version control system.

The document itself can be downloaded here [PDF]. I haven’t read through the entire guide but it is obviously still being written as there are quite a few omissions. But what is there is good information albeit information devoid of theory, which is OK, you have to start somewhere and enabling these features without fully understanding them is still better than not enabling them at all.

Spies are Treated Better

Edward Snowden is not only a hero but he’s a pretty witty hero as well. After being accused of working as a Russian spy Edward Snowden made and excellent point:

Snowden, in a rare interview that he conducted by encrypted means from Moscow, denied the allegations outright, stressing that he “clearly and unambiguously acted alone, with no assistance from anyone, much less a government.” He added, “It won’t stick…. Because it’s clearly false, and the American people are smarter than politicians think they are.”

If he was a Russian spy, Snowden asked, “Why Hong Kong?” And why, then, was he “stuck in the airport forever” when he reached Moscow? (He spent forty days in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport.) “Spies get treated better than that.”

It’s true, if Snowden were a Russian spy he would have been met at the airport by several state agents and escorted to whatever headquarters he worked for. Instead he sat around in an airport while he awaited news of whether or not he would be granted asylum in Russia.

He also makes a valid point about the intelligence of the average American. The great state propaganda machine assumes we’re all idiots that will happily lap up anything it publishes. While there are quite a few people who do trust the propagandists they are, I believe, in the minority.

The Death of Politics

One of my friends posted an excellent article on Facebook last week by Karl Hess. The article is titled The Death of Politics and, as you can guess by the title, discusses the various ills of the political process:

This is not a time of radical, revolutionary politics. Not yet. Unrest, riot, dissent and chaos notwithstanding, today’s politics is reactionary. Both left and right are reactionary and authoritarian. That is to say: Both are political. They seek only to revise current methods of acquiring and wielding political power. Radical and revolutionary movements seek not to revise but to revoke. The target of revocation should be obvious. The target is politics itself.

Radicals and revolutionaries have had their sights trained on politics for some time. As governments fail around the world, as more millions become aware that government never has and never can humanely and effectively manage men’s affairs, government’s own inadequacy will emerge, at last, as the basis for a truly radical and revolutionary movement. In the meantime, the radical-revolutionary position is a lonely one. It is feared and hated, by both right and left — although both right and left must borrow from it to survive. The radical-revolutionary position is libertarianism, and its socioeconomic form is Laissez-faire capitalism.

Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit: that all man’s social actions should be voluntary: and that respect for every other man’s similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life, is the ethical basis of a humane and open society. In this view, the only — repeat, only — function of law or government is to provide the sort of self-defense against violence that an individual, if he were powerful enough, would provide for himself.

If it were not for the fact that libertarianism freely concedes the right of men voluntarily to form communities or governments on the same ethical basis, libertarianism could be called anarchy.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist I believe this article has a lot of valuable points regarding the political process that is worth reading. Namely the article touches on several points I’ve discussed regarding the political process including the fact that it is the system established by our rulers and that the system has a habit of devouring the lives of those who participate in it.

Politicos often criticize individuals who don’t participate in the political process. They will accuse those who refrain from political participation of being lazy and unwilling to do the work necessary to instill change in society. I believe that political participation is an act of laziness. It is what people do in lieu of the work necessary to instill change in society. Instilling change requires changing the opinions of the masses and the most effective way of doing that is to live by example. People generally seem to gravitate towards those who live lives consistent with the principles they espouse.

Political participation is an attempt to seize the power structure for your own gains. When people win political battles they merely win at gaining control over a system that allows them to instill their will on society at the point of a gun. It doesn’t mean people in that society will believe what you believe it only means they will comply with what you believe because a great deal of force is being used to make them. Living by example, on the other hand, tends to convince people that your beliefs are good enough that you live your life by them. Even if they don’t agree with your beliefs they will often respect them and more often than not they will adopt aspects of your beliefs into their own lives.

Libertarianism is a philosophy of peace. Specifically it is a philosophy that teaches the initiation of violence is wrong. Politics is an act of initiating violence and is therefore, in my opinion, incompatible with libertarian principles. Sadly we have all grown up being taught that the political process is the method of instilling change in our society and it is very difficult for most to escape that belief. But unless we do we will find yourselves forever under the boot of rulers.

The Future is Bright

My love-hate relationship with Google continues. On the one hand Google collects as much personal information about its customers as it can in order to sell it to advertisers. On the other hand Google develops some really interesting technology. Its latest endeavor are smart contact lenses:

SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s vision for wearable technology took another ambitious leap forward Thursday when the world’s largest Internet search company announced it is developing a smart contact lens.

The lens measures glucose in tears using a wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor. While at a very early stage, Google hopes the technology could help people manage diabetes better.

I have little interest in a lens that can measure glucose levels but I have a lot of interest in where this technology may lead. Someday this technology will likely lead to a contact lens version of Google Glass, that is to say a heads up display. Having a heads up display on contact lenses would offer a means of displaying information over your vision without requiring the use of goofy looking devices on your face. Furthermore it would allow you to conceal the fact that you have a heads up display over your vision, which may come in handy during boring business meetings.

I look forward to our technological future and all of the advantages it will bring and solving the disadvantages it will bring.

A Promising Steganography Tool

Encryption is a wonderful tool that grants us information control. But there is one thing that encryption generally fails to do, conceal the fact that you’re using encryption. This is where steganography comes in. Steganography is the art of concealing hidden messages in plain sight. There are numerous tools that allow you to do this, most of which conceal data inside of image files. The creator of BitTorrent is developing a new steganography tool can conceal data inside of any file type:

For the last year Cohen, who created the breakthrough file-sharing protocol BitTorrent a decade ago, has been working on a new piece of software he calls DissidentX. The program, which he released over the summer in a barebones prototype and is now working to develop with the help of a group of researchers at Stanford, goes beyond encryption to offer users what cryptographers call “steganography,” the ability to conceal a message inside another message. Instead of merely enciphering users’ communications in a scramble of nonsensical characters, DissidentX can camouflage their secrets in an inconspicuous website, a corporate document, or any other, pre-existing file from a Rick Astley video to a digital copy of Crime and Punishment.

“What you really want is to be as unsuspicious as possible,” says Cohen, who spoke with me about DissidentX at the Real World Crypto conference in New York Tuesday. “We don’t want an interloper to be able to tell that this communication is happening at all.”

As world governments become more tyrannical I believe it will become critical to have means of communicating securely in a way that doesn’t reveal the use of secure communications. Embedding an encrypted message inside of a picture of a cat, for example, is likely to go undetected on the Internet. Communications could be setup in such a way that uses embed a message in an image, upload it to a specific image sharing site, and decrypted by the recipient without anybody else knowing the image contains a message.

Resigning Like a Boss

If you’re planning on resigning you’re going to have a hard time toping this former politicians:

On Thursday, David Waddell used the Klingon language to write his letter of resignation from the Indian Trail Town Council in North Carolina.

More politicians need to show the level of seriousness their jobs entail. In fact I would go so far as to say all political documents should be written in either Klingon or Elvish.

Taking Out the Trash

I believe most people reading this post are aware of the rate of corruption that exists in Mexican police forces. In many place the drug cartels effectively own the police. When you think about it it makes sense. Drug cartels are generally composed of psychopaths who have no quarrel with hurting people as are police departments. A strategic alliance between the two seems inevitable. Unfortunately, if you’re not a member of the government or the drug cartels, you’re in a pretty bad position. You must make a choice between submitting to the police-cartel alliance or taking out the trash:

Small groups of local vigilantes took up arms and joined forces to storm Paracuaro, headquarters of the Knights Templar gang, where they arrested police officers and seized control of the town in a blaze of gunfire.

They drove into the town in black armoured vehicles shouting ‘Don’t be frightened, we are vigilantes’, before expelling drugs traffickers, whom they accuse of kidnapping people and bribing them to make money. Several gun battles were reported, leaving at least one dead.

Police officers, whom the vigilantes accuse of being in league with the cash-rich drug gangs, were rounded up by machine-gun toting locals, along with others suspected of associating with gang members, and a checkpoint was set up at the entrance to Paracuaro.

Many people will likely be quick to point out that the town merely swapped one set of rulers, the police-cartel alliance, for another set of rulers, the vigilantes. That may be true but it’s also likely that the vigilantes won’t be as ruthless as an alliance between two psychopathic organizations. I would also say that the vigilantes were likely members of the local community who became fed up with the alliance and simply wanted to rid their town of violent offenders and not claim rule over it.

As things continue to deteriorate in the here United States I won’t be surprised if we begin seeing actions like this. Many police departments, such as the ones in Los Angeles and New York, are known for their brutality and violation of civil rights. As economic matters continue to worsen these departments will likely try to take advantage of the situation by increasing the rate of arrests so property can be confiscated. A breaking point will eventually be released and the people will decide to so the cops out and establish a superior, and far less violent, system of neighborhood protection.

It’s not Wise to Disturb Elves

The Icelandic people are wiser than most other people. For example, in Iceland the threat of disturbing the local elven population is a good enough reason to halt a highway construction project:

Elf advocates in Iceland have joined forces with environmentalists to urge authorities to abandon a highway project that they claim will disturb elf habitat, including an elf church.

The project has been halted until the supreme court of Iceland rules on a case brought by a group known as Friends of Lava, who cite both the environmental impact and the detrimental effect on elf culture of the road project.

The group has regularly mobilised hundreds of people to block bulldozers building a direct route from the tip of the Álftanes peninsula, where the president has a property, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer.

Issues about Huldufolk (Icelandic for “hidden folk”) have affected planning decisions before, and the road and coastal administration has come up with a stock media response for elf inquiries, which states in part that “issues have been settled by delaying the construction project at a certain point while the elves living there have supposedly moved on”.

This is the first time elves have prevented or delayed construction projects in Iceland. I think the Icelandic people know that trespassing on the land of elves can only end in misery as the creatures are known for their mischief.

I have a deep interest in mythology and folklore. One of the reasons Iceland interests me is because the island still holds onto their myths and folklore. While blocking the construction of a highway because of elves may seem ridiculous to most people I find it quite charming. It demonstrates a deep connection with the past and the last, which is something I feel is lacking in most developed nations.

Test Firing of Liberator in Japan

I that 3D printable firearms will destroy gun control. Once individuals are able to easily manufacture firearms from their homes it will be impossible for any government to restrict ownership. But beliefs and demonstrations are two different things. Today I have a demonstration of 3D printable firearms apparently skirting gun control laws. Japan isn’t know for being a weapon friendly island. Throughout Japanese history rulers have disarmed segments of the population. Disarming people took the form of sword hunts, which eventually concluded in the disarmament of the samurai in 1876. Today acquiring a firearm in Japan is extremely difficult [PDF]. Even possessing parts of a handgun can get you into legal trouble. So seeing a Liberator pistol being fired in Japan is pretty exciting:

My understanding of Japanese weapons laws leads me to believe that the video is showing an illegal act but I’m not entirely sure as the demonstrator was willing to show his face. Either way I think this thoroughly demonstrates the viability of producing 3D printable firearms in localities with strict gun control laws. Gun control advocates will be quick to point out that 3D printable firearms aren’t yet viable, which is true today. Tomorrow will be a different story. 3D printer technology is advancing rapidly and we will see affordable printers capable of manufacturing reliable firearms in the near future. After we reach that technological achievement gun control laws will be unenforceable and thus gun control will be dead.