Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

Network connections, the ticking time bomb.

I stumbled upon an interesting article comparing the safety of the internet to both a wild west frontier, and a place ruled by the “laws of the jungle”.  The article details data that was collected about the number, frequency, and scale of attacks on major corporate and governmental networks.  The scary part isn’t that this attacks happen, but how successful they can be.  Each iteration of attack is more sophisticated than the next.  This is going beyond the mere script kiddie attacks that have been common for quite awhile.  The level of sophistication used shows and organization of the attacks, and some sort of infrastructure.

The news has recently talked about these so-called “cyber attacks” by China on various governments and companies around the globe.  While these are the more publicized attacks, the majority of them appear to be coming from highly technical criminal enterprises.  The motive is the same as it always has been with these types of organizations: money.

Companies don’t want to talk about it when these things happen.  Even if they are successful in fending off would-be black mailers or corporate data hijackers, they don’t want to report the attempts.  Fear of a decline in stock prices, giving off the appearance of being weak or vulnerable, or just the all to common veil of corporate secrecy are some of the reasons that these situations are never made public.

What’s even more frightening is that in this time of recession, companies are cutting their security budgets.  They are trying to make due with less.  Meanwhile those who would plunder them are increasing their resources and finding new ways to infiltrate protected networks.  When there are threats on someones physical well-being the typical response isn’t to slash the number of security personnel protecting them, it’s to increase it.  Yet when it comes to data, the life blood of corporate America, this is exactly what they are doing – cutting back security in an attempt to save a couple of bucks.  It’s another striking example of short-sightedness that can end up costing companies more in the long run.

Protecting our networks against these threats is a monumental task.  The internet is a global entity, policing it is near impossible as all governments work under their own set of laws, seldom working well with others.  Attempts at working together often lead to tangled, and slow moving bureaucracies.  Governments are not designed to be quick and responsive, however the internet is an ever changing rapidly evolving place.  It requires a quickness of response.

There’s not a clear cut solution to this.  Just as with any other type of crime there is no fool-proof system that can’t be cracked.  Education and ever evolving security practices can minimize the risk.  Just like you shouldn’t walk through a bad part of town with a wallet stuffed with cash, corporate networks shouldn’t leave their data out in the wind, unprotected where someone with a little technical aptitude can get at it.

United States of the Recording Industry.

To say I’ve been dissapointed with certain aspects of our new President would be quite the understatement.  No, I don’t think he’s about to bring the American way of life to its knees or send us all to some form of doom and darkness as a lot of Republican pundits seem to believe, but I do find some of his early choices eerily striking to other politicians who have made a career out of limiting freedoms.  It started with him appointing several RIAA key lawyers to top spots in the Department of Justice.  This is a group of lawyers who seem to think that the law doesn’t apply to their own clients.  Their crusade against the evil people of America who are setting out to bring an end to the noble and ethical recording industry (please not the substance dripping from your monitor is indeed sarcasm) has gone far beyond a misuse of justice.  Sure, I believe they have every right to make a profit and to defend their copyright.  Downloading copyrighted material without the right of the copyright holder is against the law and I have no beef with that. I do have a beef against the tactics used in targeting lower and middle income families who can’t mount a proper defense on their own behalf.  I have a problem with their unethical use of private investigation companies who have been found guilty of breaking laws throughout various states, yet arguing that whether the evidence was gained legally or not doesn’t matter.

Obama’s most recent Supreme court justice nominee seems to be falling right along with all his other legal picks.  Perhaps the thing I find the most appalling in these trials is the ludicrous damages awarded to the recording industry.  While, if found guilty, I do believe that damages should be awarded, I am alarmed by the amount of said damages.  Rulings that awards tens of thousand of dollars per song downloaded in damages, in my mind, fits the definition of a cruel and unusual punishment.  In fact the Obama administration supports the $150,000 dollar per song maximum under Copyright Law.  Charging the guilty the full retail price for each album they downloaded seems a much more reasonable course of action – or if the goal is to really punish perhaps double the albums retail value even if the entire album, only a couple of song, were downloaded from it.  There is no validity that anyone has been able to show that suggests one person downloading an album illegally causes the recording industry to lose tens of thousands of dollars.  In truth, if the people didn’t download them, a large percentage of them probably wouldn’t have purchased the album anyways.  The math, the arguments, the logic, it’s all wrong.  What does any of this have to do with Obama picking Sonia Sotomayor to become a Supreme Court Justice?  She has ruled in favor of excessive damages in Copyright infringement cases throughout her career.  With a challenge to these damages potentially appearing before the Supreme Court in the near future her appointment would only further Governments support of big business and its continuing trend of putting the people that elected them in second-class role.

I never expect politicians to speak much truth, especially during an election, but Obama seems bent on going out of his way to contradict his idea of being a man of change.  Things seem pretty status quo to me.

Happy 75th Anniversary!

Today marks 75 years since beer was once again made legal in this country.  After a few dark years of underground boozing and the rise to power of the mafia, the government wised up, at least momentarally, to repeal Prohibition and once again allow booze to flow freely!

So lift up a pint and celebrate 75 years of legalized beer!  Here’s to you beer, and 75 more years of deliciousness!

Didn’t see that one coming!

Yes, the title of this post is sarcasm.

Scooter Libby’s sentence is being commuted. A man who has been found guilty of all kinds of misuse of power is now being freed by the master of misused power. The only difference is Bush isn’t doing anything illegal, just really stupid. At this point I think his own political party might be the group that hates him the most as he is single handedly destroying the GOP’s chance of winning the next election. Between him and a vice president who can’t decide what branch of the government he wants to belong to this day there is no public support left for the GOP. If they have any chance of salvaging what is left of their party they need to be the ones to step up to the plate and pry the madman from his thrown.

With politics being all about the status quo these days we know that’s not going to happen. It’ll be business as usual, and I’ll just keep hoping that nothing else goes to hell in the next year and a half.

Eroding LiveJournal

There’s been an outcry on LiveJournal as of late due to certain liberties being stripped.  In an overzealous reaction to a barely literate organization LiveJournal has suspended numerous accounts and communities for having keywords such as rape or incest.  No research or investigation was done.  Numerous of these groups were support communites for survivors of rape and other horrific abuses.  Even more absurd a literary group discussing Nabokov’s “Lolita” was banned.  I understand the legal pressures that they may feel.  Shutting down groups that preach abusive behavior is one thing, but to go after any group merely by doing a keyword search is draconian, ignorant, and abusive.  It’s sad that in this climate of declining liberties that places that once stood for the open sharing of ideas now contribute to the supression of a liberty that is enshrined at the very foundation of this country.  That right to express our beliefs, and the ability to feel safe in open discourse is something that makes this nation very unique.  Freedom of speech and the press are not given liberties even in many First World nations.  Many groups are battling with our national leaders to preserve these rights, now we face attacks by the private sector whose very business model was built upon these rights.

It might not seem like such a big deal now, but if given just an inch, next time they’ll take a foot.  Left unchecked it could lead to the censorship and banning of any group that could possibly offend any other member.  Where do you draw the line?  I’m sure I’ll continue to post to my LiveJournal account about the more mundane things, but it has lost its appeal as a place where I can express anything other than every day events such as letting people know about a get together.  I really hope that a public outcry by the massive LiveJournal user base will help them rethink their policies.  At the very least investigate claims, examine their merit before jumping the gun and banning people because of a potentially offensive keyword.  SixApart (the parent company of LiveJournal) could take this as a chance to stand up and buck the trend of ever increasing regulation of internet speech.  They could raise the banner of open dialog between peers and stand up to those who would oppress one of our most basic, and yet most unique of rights.