kimi wei blog

In a tale that mirrors the crushing privacy violations and vitriolic penal environment of Delores Umbridge in Harry Potter’s world, high school administrators in the Lower Merion School District of Pennsylvania used school issued computers, and software supposedly installed to protect students, to invade the privacy of the students homes and family lives.

Installed webcams were activated to spy on students and their families. This blew up in their face when a school administrator disciplined one student for “engaging in improper behavior in his home,” (that’s the language used in the family’s lawsuit) – and had the audacity to back her claim up by showing the photograph the webcam took of the Robbins boy as evidence.

The spying software’s been disabled, the school district’s being sued by the family, the makings of a class action suit have been initiated on behalf of the 1800 students given spy-equipped computers. And just maybe, now people will realize that violations of individuals’ privacy have gone way too far in a very unhealthy direction and it’s time for the public to draw the lines of what will and will not be tolerated.

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF)

See also
boingboing article
TechNewsWorld article

People ask me why I won’t let my kids buy an XBox. I explain our family policy: “Our family doesn’t support Microsoft. In any way.” Many hearing this think my view is seriously radical (not to mentioned extremely flawed). After all, XBox graphics are great and the games are cheap. “But, buying a kids’ gaming system? That’s not supporting a company!”

“To you it isn’t, which is completely fine. But to me, it is,” I reply. “Microsoft manufactures XBox, so my boys can’t have one.”

Sometimes this remark sparks off a dialogue about why I dislike Microsoft so much. There’s a bit on this subject at the end of my last blog post, but what really convinces people I may have legitimate grounds as a basis for my opinion is when I ask if they’ve heard that Microsoft sued the Brazilian government for abandoning the use of Windows on government computers in favor of using the free Linux-based operating system – and according to Microsoft (phrased this way when I first heard it) interfering with the company’s ‘g-d given right’ to earn a profit.

Lawrence Lessig, currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and formerly at Stanford Law School (where he founded Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society), wrote in this 2004 article

Apparently Microsoft has taken the first steps to filing a criminal defamation action against a Brazilian government official who was quoted criticizing Microsoft in a magazine article. Sergio Amadeu, head of the agency responsible for spreading free software within the Brazilian government, is reported to have accused “the company of a ‘drug-dealer practice’ for offering the operational system Windows to some governments and cities for digital inclusion programs. ‘This is a trojan horse, a form of securing critical mass to continue constraining the country’.”

Online petitions support Mr. Amadeu and Brazil’s “right to choose”

Pedro Cadina in a Linux Journal article comments

The Brazil Free Software Project launched the “Brazil has the right to choose” campaign, backed by a digital petition which, by June 27, had received more than 8,000 signatures from around the globe. His supporters include Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Constitutional Law at Stanford University; and Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation (FSF); Hipatia, the Italian NGO; and others.

The petition asserts (Portuguese language version here) states

In the middle of the week of the largest free software event in Latin America and one of the most important in the world, the president of Microsoft Brazil, Emilio Umeoka, has begun the attempt at intimidation declaring that the decision of the Brazilian government to support free software on computers in the public sector is being “influenced by ideology”. The salesman with the monopolistic megacorporation, Mr. Umeoka, goes further, afirming that the sovereign decision of our government, legitimately elected, can lead the country in “the wrong direction”. The right one, in the opinion of the salesman, would perhaps be to maintain the “market reserve” for MS in the government, fatten the wallets of the richest man in the world and continue sending, annually, billions of dollars out of the country in the form of royalty payments, in a country where 22 million people go hungry and 46 million live below the poverty line.

It’s so bold for a company to attempt by court action to hold an entire government hostage to its profit motive. Don’t you think?

I’m glad the Brazilian people seem not to be giving in on this one – see CNET’s 2009 article Brazil’s Love of Linux.

An ‘incredibly dangerous concept’

In several articles written in his typically clear style, internet user advocate Lauren Weinstein explains why he opposes the idea of ‘Internet Driver’s Licenses’, which he refers to as an, “incredibly dangerous concept. . . . I’m disappointed, though not terribly surprised,” Lauren comments, “especially in light of Microsoft’s explicit continuing support of Chinese censorship against human rights — to hear a top Microsoft executive pushing a concept that is basic to making the Internet Police State a reality.” He frames his opposition in an earlier article(January 2010).

Even here in the U.S., one of the most common Internet-related questions that I receive is also one of the most deeply disturbing: Why can’t the U.S. require an Internet “driver’s license” so that there would be no way (ostensibly) to do anything anonymously on the Net?

After I patiently explain why that would be a horrendous idea, based on basic principles of free speech as applied to the reality of the Internet — most people who approached me with the “driver’s license” concept seem satisfied with my take on the topic, but the fact that the question keeps coming up so frequently shows the depth of misplaced fears driven, ironically, by disinformation and the lack of accurate information.

On Dave Farber’s Interesting People list, Lauren sets out dangers inherent in we as individual users handing over our controls to what are able to access using the internet to a monitoring organization backed by companies with so much to gain from limiting free access to information as well as users’ ability to benefit from collaboration features. Large corporate backers proposing the implementation of ‘internet driver’s license’ push for this measure to be implemented knowing that its implementation will limit the public knowledge pool by hobbling the power of the free information exchange which the internet era has brought to seekers of knowledge, facts and truth in homes and schools all over the world.

As regards user protection, Microsoft’s track record shows it can’t be trusted

Microsoft is one of the biggest proponents of ‘Internet Driver’s Licenses’. They’re also the people behind a number of other heavy-handed tactics of technology user abuse which limit user options and create vulnerabilities to viruses, worms and trojan horses in every computer Windows runs on.

Bob Latshaw tells how Microsoft invented the strategy of blocking competitor’s software applications from working on computers using Windows – first done to make Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software useless so every PC user would need to switch to Microsoft’s Excel application. A strategy that worked so well it pushed an excellent product right off the map and has severely limited user options for several decades now.

And Geoffrey James explains,

“Most people don’t know it, but it’s entirely possible to build computer systems that can’t be infected by viruses. In fact, the original computers were specifically programmed so that no application (like a browser or word processor) could make permanent changes in any other application or in the operating system. . . .

Microsoft (which had plenty of trained operating system programmers who knew the score) could have implemented Windows using the same security features that had been in place in the timesharing world for decades.”

But they decided to,

“put their firm’s ability to make money ahead of your right to have a computer that works reliably and keeps your data safe.”

These and other facts about Microsoft are enough to make me very suspicious of any movement it gets behind in the name of “User Protection”. The concept of ‘internet driver’s license”s is clearly something that’s being cooked up to make our internet access much more limited and commercialized, and our lives a great deal less free.

Geeks From Down The Street gives us this great list

• Top 10 Stupid Laws
• In China you have to be smart to go to college
• In Ontario its illegal to climb trees.
• In Nova Scotia it’s illegal to water your lawn when its raining.
• In Australia a life sentence is 25 years
• In Alaska it’s illegal to break a law.
• In New York you can get fined for flirting
• In Scotland if someone knocks your door you have to let them use your toilet.
• In Alabama its illegal to drive blindfolded.
• In Ohio it’s illegal to get a fish drunk.
• In New York the penalty for jumping off a building is death.

Today I came out of the supermarket and headed towards my car. A couple in their 50s were pushing a cart just ahead of me. I noticed them particularly because they were conversing in fairly loud voices. I was parked right next to the cart return kiosk and as I offloaded my bags the woman headed towards the kiosk and me to return a cart.

It was odd that the woman kept talking to her companion as she walked away from their car – where he was offloading bags too – but she never raised the level of her voice. Then I noticed that the guy, now with his head half into their black SUV, was talking too. Also not loud enough for myself or the woman, who was now almost next to me, to hear. Especially since she continued to talk steadily in a conversational voice all the time that she walked.

I realized suddenly that each of these people was carrying on a conversation, but neither of them was conversing with the other. Although I was observing four people engaged in conversation in the parking lot of Shoprite, only two of those participants were physically present. They both wore earbuds.

The way those two present people interacted made it pretty clear they were a couple with a long history. I know that long-term, frequent contact with another individual’s personal idiosyncrasies can eventually foster frustration, and also that boredom can set into relationships of many years standing. Too much time spent together with not enough distractions to keep attention occupied on external matters can eventually cause contention to sneak into relationships.

Clearly, these people had located the holy grail in terms of relationship saving. Their cellphones permit them to enjoy the benefit of two bodies sharing a physical chore like grocery shopping . . . without the couple needing to engage with each other’s personalities or thoughts while together. I can see where for some couples, this could definitely be a relationship saver.

Although some mainstream newspapers have given this matter a bit of coverage, it remains a little-known fact that the white supremacy movement is alive and well in northern New Jersey.

A Village Voice article describes the experience of an undercover reporter who got himself invited in 2007 to attend a “white power” event that was held in Elmwood Park, New Jersey.

. . .white supremacist groups around the country had called for “patriot” get-togethers over the three-day weekend. The one organized for the New York area included a Saturday barbecue and a Sunday visit to “the incomparable Metropolitan Museum of (White) Art.”

Visiting the preeminent art museum, these patriots believed, would be a terrific way to celebrate white culture.

But first, there was the barbecue, which a Voice reporter was now traveling to after contacting local white supremacists through one of the most active neo-Nazi websites on the Internet, Stormfront.org, which has more than 110,000 members. (About 10,000 are in the Northeast.)

Jamie Kelso, who organized the gathering, told the reporter he, “. . . hopes to convince others that white nationalism is a respectable political program,” adding that, “rising anti-immigrant sentiment has helped his cause.” A man called, Copperhead, introducing himself as Kelso’s right hand man, picked the reporter up at a Saddle Brook motel and drove him to the Elmwood Park meeting location. Jump to full article . . .

The supremacy group apparently has long-established roots in Elmwood Park. After receiving press attention in 1996, the group supposedly stopped meeting at an Elmwood Park hall. Peggy O’Crowley reported on 18 September 1996 in The Record newspaper (reprinted here), “The National Alliance, a right-wing organization that advocates the establishment of a, whites-only society . . . had canceled its meeting after an article Saturday in The Record described how several right-wing groups and controversial speakers had been meeting . . . ” at an Elmwood Park hall.

But another report indicates that the group didn’t actively stop meeting there until 2007.

White supremacist groups had been meeting at a local branch of the Junior Order of United American Mechanics since the 1990s. David Duke stopped there during his 1988 presidential campaign. On September 25, 2007, the locks were changed, reported the secretary treasurer of the JOUAM. At this time, he states, “As soon as we found out, we took action”, referring to the revelation that some members of the Junior Order chapter were white power activists. Numerous boxes were recovered that included tapes and books by the police, were soon forwarded to the FBI.

In March of this year, an Indymedia report tells us, “antifascist group scouts on the lookout for white supremacist gatherings in honor of “International White Pride World Wide day” spotted Erick Weigel, “known for trying to attack antifascists at an anti-immigrant rally in Morristown in 2007,” and followed him

to the Allwood Branch Public Library in Clifton. . . . The location was confirmed when League “chairman” Alex Carmichael was spotted through the meeting room window. Alex is an attorney in Northern New Jersey who has been known to refer to himself as “the next Adolf Hitler.

One People’s Project tells the story of how that reunion was visited by anti-fascist protestors

CLIFTON, NJ Mar. 21—A local library was duped into booking a meeting of the white supremacist League of American Patriots (LEAP), a meeting that was almost immediately routed when anti-racist activists (antifa) in effect forced the attendees to leave.

He offers this tip to white supremacists

Here’s a bit of advice for organizers of future neo-Nazi meetings: public libraries are just that, public. If people who don’t like you or what you stand for want to sit in on your meeting, you can’t stop them unless they break a law or something.

Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate, explains a phenomenon which merits thoughtful consideration.

Ownership rights pose a real danger to scientific progress for the public good

The idea of ownership is ubiquitous. Title deeds establish and protect ownership of our houses, while security of property is as important to the proprietors of Tesco and Sainsbury’s as it is to their customers. However, there is a profound problem when it comes to so-called intellectual property (IP) – which requires a strong lead from government, and for which independent advice has never been more urgently required. The David Nutt affair has illustrated very well the importance of objective analysis of complex social issues.

The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it: drugs are “evergreened” when patents are on the verge of running out – companies buy up the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them being turned into products. Moreover, the prices charged, especially for pharmaceuticals, are often grossly in excess of those required to cover costs and make reasonable profits.

IP rights are beginning to permeate every area of scientific endeavour. Even in universities, science and innovation, which have already been paid for out of the public purse, are privatised and resold to the public via patents acquired by commercial interests. The drive to commercialise science has overtaken not only applied research but also “blue-skies” research, such that even the pure quest for knowledge is subverted by the need for profit.

Jump to full Guardian article.

Learned this from a friend

d{>_<}b

Wow.

Recently I was thinking about how much stress pensions cause to the social and economic systems in the United States. After looking at this issue for a while I concluded that pensions are a major contributor to social inequality, and they create unreasonable (and maybe unpayable) financial burdens on future generations of employees and citizens. Here’s how:

Promise now, others pay later

When I began talking to people about pensions I learned that they may also be unsustainable: that is, pensions are promised to employees by a generation of company execs and union bosses who aren’t going to be around the day pension payouts start to come due. This is the same sell-the-future-short ruse that politicians employ when they’re able to get public commendation for voting a law into being although they make no provisions to fund the law’s enactment. New Jersey’s Amistad Legislation which became law in 2002 but is still waiting for funding to bring a racially balanced historic perspective to classrooms across the state is a good example of this. The Racism in Higher Education paper sheds some light on this sujbect.

This public manipulation ploy allows for a generation of administrators and politicians to gain the admiration and support of constituents and employees by supporting a benefit they get behind freely (pun intended) – specifically because they never have to think about how they are going to pay for it. They leave this to future counterparts who will get saddled both with the burden of payment and answering to a public indignant for being made to pay for programs they didn’t ask to be created and which aren’t going to be useful to them any time soon.

The inequality

There are people who can expect to live comfortably as pensioneers of major corporations and government job. Other citizens need to hope that their children will be able – and will want to – take care of them better than the government run social services system does (or doesn’t do).

Phil Greenspun shares interesting thoughts on the pension issue

Smart modern companies don’t offer pensions because they’ve have figured out what should have been a simple fact: the only enterprises that should be offering to send people a check every year for the rest of their lives are insurance companies (if they write annuities and end up paying twice as much as planned because of an innovation that extends human life they will save a corresponding amount by not having to pay out life insurance claims) and ones that have a printing press for money (i.e., the federal government).

Cities and states have a tougher time escaping pension commitments and traditional bankruptcy protection may not be available to them. If every household in San Diego owes $6,000 for unfunded pension liabilities, property owners and residents will have to cough it up in the form of higher taxes. If the pension fund does poorly in the stock market, the households will have to pay again.

We the people share a lot of responsibility for bankrupting our own towns and states. We vote for politicians who promise the moon but don’t immediately tax away all of our income and wealth. A politician who promises $2 in benefits and $1 in taxes will win an election over one who promises benefits equal to taxes. The federal government respects voters wishes by running a visible deficit, borrowing or printing money to cover shortfalls. The Federal government can’t truly be bankrupted by its obligations because it can simply print money to pay everyone back.

My current hero is Paulo Coelho. If you want access to a positive and empowering perspective on life that can be easily adopted by anyone breathing, take a look at his website and learn more about what Paulo does and says. Paulo’s a Brazilian guy possessed of a mountain stream of beautiful wisdom and comments, for example

The moment we set off in search of love, it sets off in search of us.

You ask if love wins over anything. The answer is yes if you don’t try to possess the subject of your love.

Yes, I have money and success and friends. But my greatest conquest was to get this by doing what I wanted.

paulocoelho.com
Follow Paulo on Twitter
Follow me on Twitter