Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

Senator Joseph Biden has once again proven how inept he is when it comes to modern technology. His newest bright idea involves monitoring all peer-to-peer traffic on the internet to aid in the capture of child molesters and pornographers. He’s under some assumption that from the file name alone one can gauge the exact content of the file. Seriously. He does:

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it’s “pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation” simply by looking at file names.

What would be obvious to even the slowest minded of criminals would be to change the file name to something innocuous. There’s also the fact that a growing portion of peer-to-peer traffic these days is encrypted, which would further foil his brilliant detection methodologies.

Let’s ignore the fact that a filename alone can be absolutely misleading. There’s still the misguided belief by lawmakers that you can tie IP addresses to a specific individual. Ask the RIAA how well that one has been going for them. The problem is the people making these laws refer to experts who have next to no credentials in the field. It’s as if saying “he made the blinking 12:00 on the VCR go away, he must be an expert in media technologies!” Sadly our lawmakers spend too many times at luncheons on the dime of lobbyists rather than actually attempting to grasp a basic understanding of the technologies they seek to regulate.

I think going after these people who trade in kiddie porn is a great idea. I think working to develop some way to trace back these files, and monitor their trade so that the people responsible for them can be apprehended is an absolutely noble idea. I just wish people would have a clue before they charge headlong in to the fray thinking that they have the miracle device that will save the world. Right now a system such as this that is bound to cause a fair portion of false positives will go a long way towards destroying the reputations of innocent people. Once the label child molester is put upon someone, even if they are later found to be innocent, it never goes away. Our system might not be perfect, but we don’t need to further degrade it by embracing technologies that are such an obvious failure.

written by Alex \\ tags: politics, stupid legal tricks

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.

written by Alex \\ tags: politics, Politics & Law, stupid legal tricks

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.

written by Alex \\ tags: politics, Politics & Law, stupid legal tricks

Well the idiots in the state government are at it again, attempting to regulate every tiny detail of life in the name of public safety.  This newest effort comes from New York State Sen. Carl Kruger.  In a wonderfuly idiotic effort to protect people from their own stupidity he is introducing legislation that would ban the use of electronic devices while crossing the street.  That’s right, if you cross the street while cranking up the volume on your iPod you could be subject to 100$ fine.  His motivation for this?  Well his publically stated motivation is that three people in his district have been killed while stepping in to traffic while using some electronic device.  Think about it, these people walked in to traffic - I don’t care what they were doing at the time, if you don’t have enough common sense to look both ways before walking out in to the middle of the street then you’re just proving natural selection is hard at work.

His real motivations, one would assume, are like that of most politicians these days: an attempt to justify their seat in office.  They can’t find ways to help battle unemployment, homelessness, rampant drug abuse, or violent crimes, so they rally around some stupidly short sighted and moronic piece of legislation while touting how they are going to help save lives.  The fact that our legislative body is going to waste its time over such legislation, taking away from any chance they might focus on an issue that really matters, is a crime against the citizenry of this state.  Perhaps the greater crime is we keep electing these officials in to office.  We don’t smack them on the wrists and tell them no like a grabby child in a candy store.  Instead we spoil them by letting them get away with such assinine measures.

As for the people who are walking in to traffic - again, if you don’t have the common sense that tells you walking in to a street without looking first isn’t a good idea then there are far deeper problems here than the fact you were gazing longingly at your phone waiting for that next text message.   While the loss of life is always tragic, I am constantly amazed how much could be prevented by common sense.  If someone is not self-aware enough topractice common safety measures then all the legislation in the world isn’t going to save them.

Hopefully this piece of legislation will never see the light of day - though in todays fear mongering climate I have no doubt it’ll find its way in to law.

written by Alex \\ tags: politics, Politics & Law, stupid people

It took awhile, but the cold weather finally rolled in a few days ago.  We even got some brief periods of snow; including snow on the ground so that it almost looked like it really could be winter.  A lot of that snow is gone, but the cold weather certainly hasn’t left us.  I do love winter, but I’m not sure how I feel about this.  I’m a big fan of having four seasons, so I’m never happy when one intrudes, or completely overshadows another.  This winter is late in coming, and because it follows a period of unnatural heat I’m honestly concerned that spring is going to be a little lackluster.  There’s going to be a lot of damage to plants that started budding early because they were under the mistaken impression that we skipped winter and went straight to spring.  Surprise!  Winter creeped up on them and smashed them in the head with its icy sledge hammer of doom.I could go on to talk about global warming and every other environmental or political hot button.  I won’t.  I’m tired of people turning everything in to some great political debate to show how right they are and how the other side is dumb, or pandering to corporate greed, or whatever else they want to say about the other side.  I’m not saying some things aren’t political issues, I’m only saying that pointing fingers and waving your version of scientific evidence in the face of those you disagree with doesn’t solve anything.  We’ve over politicized every aspect of our lives.  We’re constantly seeking someone to blame rather than fixing the problem.  Yes, it would help on a grade scale if the powers that be would stop butting heads and focus on fixing the problems at hand, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.  So instead of touting our clever bumper stickers on the back of our cars, wouldn’t it be better if we just fixed our little corner of the world?  The road to change begins at home.  All that wasted effort telling the other guy just how dumb they are could have been going in to something productive, like making our tiny corner of the world a little brighter.  Be happy.  Enjoy life.  That’ll show them all.That’s what’s going through my mind as I sit and stare out at this cold gray day. 

written by Alex \\ tags: ithaca, politics, weather