A SCOTUS case on the Docket this year relates to business method patents, which has caused a slew of amicus briefs from anti-software patent organizations. This article links to one of them.

I'll admit to not having given this question a thorough analysis but my inclination has always been that the anti-software patent crowd was too radical. There are obviously some serious problems with the patent system as it relates to the computer industry. Patents take too long to get and they last too long. Its too easy to get a patent on something that you aren't actually selling or even things you can't actually build, and so there is a big problem with patent trolls scooping up patents for futuristic concepts that haven't really been created yet and they certainly didn't create, later suing when someone else actually reduces them to practice. These are all policy issues that deserve attention.

On the other hand, patents play an important roll in the software startup space, where they serve as a proof point that a new company has a real technological innovation and investors have a real asset that they've purchased with their money. It is not fair to say that software patents only hinder innovation - they both hinder and help it - and furthermore I think a lot of that hinderance could be addressed if there was sufficient effort to do so.

A lot of time and advocacy that could go toward building a better patent system for software has been instead spent on eliminating software patents. To me, concluding that "software" as an embodiment of ideas is beyond patenting is to argue that patents should not exist at all in any domain, and I think that is the real goal of many of those who oppose software patents.

All engineering is the reduction of principals to practice. What difference does it make if that reduction occurs in a microprocessor or in a test tube? If we cannot see where the line is between science and engineering in the practice of computing it is because we haven't sought to find it. We deliberately mislabel most academic software engineering programs as "computer science" when they are doing nothing of the sort. If software is, indeed, truly special, it makes more sense to craft our policy in such a way that the concept of a patent works consistently across all domains of engineering, rather than to create an inconsistent policy environment by exempting software in order to uphold ancient distinctions that our advancing knowledge has blurred.

In any event, I would guess that the court will deliberately avoid engaging the question and narrowly limit their conclusion to business methods, which is the matter at hand. There will be a lot of hand wringing on Slashdot, and that will be the end of it.

Groklaw - SFLC files Bilski brief: Software should not be patentable and don't forget the 1st Amendment

In a recent blog post, which you cannot read because it was censored by a DMCA takedown notice from Texas Instruments, I used the term "Angry Mob Cryptanalysis" to refer to a situation in which a distributed key cracking effort is targeted at a public key that is widely known and widely resented. This term has an origin in the annals of computer security research and my use of it might be misunderstood so I felt that I should elaborate.

Matt Blaze originally coined the term "Angry Mob Cryptanalysis" in a paper he wrote back in 1996 about government key escrow. The term and its origin are burned into my brain because I recall being excited at the prospect - a democratic check upon communications security!

In Blaze's paper a person would broadly distribute shards of his private key. If that person was later accused of a crime the police might issue a public call for shards. If a large number of people were sympathetic to the call they might reveal their shards, allowing the police to proceed with monitoring that person. Its sort of like replacing judicial warrants with a grand jury system, enforced with hard mathematical constraints that cannot be subverted. If the police want to intrude upon someone's privacy they'd have to convince a large enough group of people in the community in order to do so. A very interesting and brilliant idea with numerous variations.

But if you think about it, every key faces a threat to its security from the general public in a world where distributed key cracking efforts can be organized, regardless of whether the creator of that key intentionally escrowed it with the public in the first place. I think the term "Angry Mob Cryptanalysis" is fitting in any situation where there is a public effort to crack a key. Its a risk that designers of crypto systems need to consider - how widely distributed is your public key, what is the key strength, and how much public resentment might exist about it? If the key is weak enough and the resentment high enough, you might fall victim to a public cracking effort.

A perfect example of a place where this might be useful is the context of a computer worm like Conficker. Conficker.B currently controls about 5 million hosts on the Internet, and the security experts who monitor it are concerned that those infected nodes represent a collective threat to Internet security. For example, they could be used to launch denial of service attacks if the Conficker bot master was able to update them. Fortunately, the bot master is blocked through a daily effort by members of the Conficker Working Group to contro... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

On the definition of 'Angry Mob Cryptanalysis'

''Whether the issue is improving the involvement of young women and girls in education, to climate change and all political, economic, and social issues in between, I think empowering women is central to what the world has to do in the 21st century,'' he said.

You're damn right.

-janelane

Global Initiative Takes on Gender Inequality - NYTimes.com

Random Thoughts of the Day:

1. I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.

2. More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

3. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

4. I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

5. Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

6. That’s enough, Nickelback.

7. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

8. The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

9. Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

10. There is a great need for sarcasm font.

11. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the hell was going on when I first saw it.

12. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

13. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

14. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

15. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

16. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

17. A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

18. Was learning cursive really necessary?

19. Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” t... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

Random thoughts (not written by me, but I can relate to many of them)

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Appalling does not even begin to describe systematic and unconscionable destruction of one of the greatest minds in the history of Computer Science all because of his sexuality. Professional exile, revoked security clearances, threatened imprisonment, and forced chemical castration all of which culminated in suicide.

Utterly Disgraceful.

Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” - PM | Number10.gov.uk

The new Obama flavor laptop border search policy makes an interesting statement about reasonable suspicion and terrorist watch lists:

The presence of an individual on a government-operated and government-vetted terrorist watch list will be sufficient to create reasonable suspicion of activities in violation of the laws enforced by CBP.

Objectively, I'm inclined to agree, and I'm glad they drew this line in the sand, as its an important negotiating point with regard to when searches should and should not be authorized. If you think about the way that reasonable suspicion is used by police officers in deciding whether or not to stop someone, clearly "suspect matched the description of a wanted felon" is sufficient to establish that, even if it later turns out of be a case of mistaken identity. A terrorist watch list is a similar kind of thing. If the United States had a real process for flagging people who are genuinely suspected terrorists, I'm sure that being flagged by that system would meet the criteria for reasonable suspicion.

I think that employing terrorist watch lists and passenger screening systems in making determinations about reasonable suspicion in the context of border searches is a good thing. It eliminates the rhetorical argument that if we constrained border searches of laptops to contexts where reasonable suspicion exists, we might miss a terrorist. People who are likely to be terrorists are going to be flagged by these systems, and so reasonable suspicion is going to exist in those cases. Therefore, requiring it would not hamper our anti-terrorism efforts.

However, it is possible to imagine a "terrorist watch list" that is so mismanaged that it is not objectively reasonable to suspect that people on the list might be involved with terrorism. Unfortunately, it sounds like that is exactly the kind of list that we have right now. A list with 1.2 million names on it including people who are dead, vague entries that seem to only include common place names, and people who are obviously not involved in terrorism. If the ACLU's characterization of this list is anywhere near accurate, the list is a complete joke. It simply is not objectively reasonable to suspect that someone on this list is dangerous.

Two implications follow from that:
1. If the list is ever used in a real prosecution to establish reasonable suspicion of someone who does not turn out to be a terrorist but is prosecuted for some unrelated crime, that person might be able to challenge the reasonableness of that suspicion because the list is too unreliable.

2. It would behoove those who wish to make use of these lists in this fashion to make sure that they are reliable, so the courts will take them seriously when they are relied on in a context where they run up against Constitutional rights.

Reasonable Suspicion and Terrorist Watch Lists

I've read the case and I don't think I'm over-reacting at all. There seems to be a serious disagreement of fact between the justices as to how substantial this person's likelihood of success is. Its impossible to evaluate without more information. But thats not wants important. What's important is the underlying question of whether a person who is actually innocent must be executed because the procedure says that is what is supposed to happen.

Scalia certainly seems to welcome that debate:

If this Court thinks it possible that capital convictions obtained in full compliance with law can never be final, but are always subject to being set aside by federal courts for the reason of “actual innocence,” it should set this case on our own docket so that we can (if necessary) resolve that question.

As I previously stated, there should be no debate about that. The answer is yes.

Stevens writes:

Imagine a petitioner in Davis’s situation who possesses new evidence conclusively and definitively proving, beyond any scintilla of doubt, that he is an innocent man. The dissent’s reasoning would allow such a petitioner to be put to death nonetheless. The Court correctly refuses to endorse such reasoning.

Good.

Hearing on innocence claim ordered | SCOTUSblog

Is this a crazy view?

Mr Sullivan,

I'm not sure what Conor Clarke's email address is so I'm emailing you. Mr. Clarke suggests that Scalia and Thomas are not crazy in holding the view that federal courts are powerless to help a convicted but demonstrably innocent death row inmate.

I think this is one of those moments when there is a clear division between right and wrong. The basic principle that the United States of America does not execute people who are demonstrably innocent should not be subject to debate. We must not become so committed to upholding our procedural rules that we contemplate killing innocent people simply because that is what the rules say that we are supposed to do. In such a case, it is the rules that must bend, and it is the responsibility of everyone involved to ensure that they are bent. The alternative is simply evil and history should have taught us all that lesson by now.

Reasonable people can disagree in such a case about exactly how the rules ought to be bent, but this passage in the dissent seems to reach toward the conclusion that they cannot and must not be bent, and that position is simply wrong and incompatible with life in a mature and free society that recognizes the fallibility of human institutions.

Thank you,
Tom Cross
Atlanta, GA

RE: Why Justice Scalia Wants to Execute the Innocent

Two researchers for Hewlett-Packard have created a browser-based darknet, an idea that could make it easier for businesses to keep eavesdroppers from uncovering confidential information.

Darknets are encrypted peer-to-peer networks normally used to communicate files between closed groups of people. Most darknets require a certain level of technological literacy to set up and maintain, including taking care of the necessary servers. However, HP researchers Billy Hoffman and Matt Wood plan next week to demonstrate a browser-based darknet called "Veiled," which they claim requires little proficiency to set up and run.

oohh this sounds familiar -- first entry on digg 8-)

HP researchers develop browser-based darknet | Security - CNET News

The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, has died at the age of 111.

BBC obituary

BBC NEWS | UK | WWI veteran Patch dies aged 111