He isn't running on a "one man, one robot" policy yet but he is running.
Rufus For Mayor

Rufus For Mayor

I HATE the use of the word "neocon" in the title of this article as it attempts to contort these issues through the prism of American politics with a connection that is tenuous at best. However, the essay represents a significant truth - totalitarian states have supporters. I've encountered young Chinese nationalists, too.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of M.I.T.’s Media Laboratory and one of the early ideologists of the Internet, once predicted that the global reach of the Web would transform the way we think about ourselves as countries. The state, he predicted, will evaporate “like a mothball, which goes from solid to gas directly,” and “there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox.” In China, things have gone differently.

I think things have gone differently in America. The Internet has brought massive domestic political polarization by enabling echo chambers and eliminating former barriers that kept the ideas of kooks to niche circles. The Internet is more free but the people have yet to learn what attitude is required to handle it. And in the broader world, the end of the Cold War puts America in a position where "critical thinking" is automatically equated with disdain for what America represents. We're "the man" and our present misadventures in due process, checks, and balances are no help. This is sending gobs of young people into the welcoming arms of various totalitarian ideologies. Behold the Orwellian rationalizations of 21st century fascism:

“Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed,” he said. “We are always eager to get other information from different channels.” Then he added, “But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.”

Our minds are free because we live in a system of thought control! Its the thought control that enables us to think freely!

“Do you live on democracy?” he asked me. “You eat bread, you drink coffee. All of these are not brought by democracy. Indian guys have democracy, and some African countries have democracy, but they can’t feed their own people.

“Chinese people have begun to think, One part is the good life, another part is democracy,” Liu went on. “If democracy can really give you the good life, that’s good. But, without democracy, if we can still have the good life why should we choose democracy?”

Because if its not democracy, then you didn't choose it, of course, but more importantly, because this attitude is immoral. I really think this statement translates to "We're willing to support leaders who commit atrocities in our name because we think they are going to cut us in on the spoils." Thats deeply evil.

Letter from China: Angry Youth: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

When the British sought to expand their hold on Hong Kong in 1898, with a 99-year lease covering the whole of Kowloon Peninsula and all the nearby islands, most of Kowloon City was subsumed under the new jurisdiction. Under the terms of the lease, however, it was agreed that the small, walled magistrates' fort to the north of the town would remain Chinese territory until the new colonial administration had been properly established and all the details of land ownership, held within the fort, had been transferred.

The situation was never resolved, and for the next 90 years of British rule the City remained an anomaly: within British domain, yet outside British control. The Chinese officials left for good in 1899, but whenever the colonial authorities tried to impose their will, the remaining residents threatened to turn the attempt into a diplomatic incident...

And so, the Walled City became that rarest of things, a working model of an anarchist society. Inevitably, it bred all the vices. Crime flourished and the Triads made the place their stronghold, operating brothels and opium 'divans' and gambling dens. Undoubtedly, these few (and it always was a small proportion) kept the majority of residents in a state of fear and subjection, which is why for many years outsiders trying to penetrate were given the coldest of shoulders.

GSAPP: Kowloon Walled City

As no repairs have been carried out for 34 years, all of the buildings are slowly falling apart. Nature is reclaiming the area, as metal corrodes, windows break, and plants work their roots into the walls and pavements.

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns

Seems that the city of St. Louis, like many cities, allows the police to confiscate the cars of people suspected (but not necessarily convicted) of certain crimes. They have a contract with a city towing firm, and said firm was allowing police officers and their families to "rent" confiscated cars free of charge, sometimes for months on end. Officers and their families could also sometimes purchase the confiscated cars at a fraction of the cars' value.

At the same time that this kind of thing is going on this city gets rated one of the most dangerous in the US.

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run - St. Louis Cops Turn Forfeiture Policy Into Free Car Rental Service

The Google-Viacom showdown over the handover of YouTube user data appears to be over. The two sides agreed to changes in a previous ruling that would have required Google to hand over user id's, IP addresses and a list of all viewed YouTube videos to Viacom in connection with their ongoing copyright infringement litigation.

After an online uprising against the order, Viacom tried to assert that they never requested personally identifiable information (they did), and later promised not to use the information to sue individuals. The value of that promise was questioned by us and many others.

Google/Viacom Agree To Preserve User Anonymity In Data Shakedown - washingtonpost.com

A coded letter sent last year to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois has the lab, and outside coders stumped. The letter was sent anonymously last March in a hand-addressed envelope via regular mail to the physics lab's public affairs office.

After sitting on the letter for more than a year, the lab posted it on a physics blog in May, hoping to get help cracking it.

Mystery Crypto Letter Has Coders Stumped | Threat Level from Wired.com

``Atlanta is a second-tier city,'' said Jessica Harlan, 36, who relocated two years ago. ``New York is cooler and more exciting in every respect.''

``If my kids have a Southern accent, I will kill myself,'' said Brooklyn native Jodi Fleisig, an Atlanta resident since 1998. Fleisig said she tends to socialize with ex-New Yorkers, and finds inviting Southerners to lunch can be troublesome.

``Being Southern means you wait for someone to finish a sentence,'' she said.

New Yorkers on Atlanta

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush's five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government's authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration.

The Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama (D-Illinois) voted for the final bill... New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted against the bill.

Dosedo? Now that he is the nominee he needs to play to the right, whereas her actions have little long term consequence. Clearly this is a signal that mainstream Americans don't care if anti-terror forces obey the law, but I could have told you that.

Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) stressed that Congress was violating the separation of powers by interfering with the courts.

"This may be a historical embarrassment," Specter said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor. "Everyone knows we don't know what the program did, but here we are giving immunity to the telephone companies."

The Padilla case, and Gitmo, are the historical embarrassments. This telco stuff is but a footnote... perhaps an example that demonstrates Congress was unwilling to act. I'm not sure I completely understand the constitutional issues here but I'll bet the EFF/ACLU have a filing in order that should enlighten us, and I doubt the court system is going to pass on it if its credible. The EFF may have their day in court yet, but I suspect little will come of that anyway.

In general, accountability for the excesses of the GWOT can only be political. Bush has clearly demonstrated that the legal system does not literally constrain his actions. Surveillance laws can be ignored, American citizens can be seized on U.S. soil and held for many years without trial, tortured to the point where they don't really know who they are any more, and there is no accountability whatsoever.

The court system is an effective check upon the legislature, but only Congress can check the executive, and they'll only do it if large numbers of people demand it... A gapping loophole in the protections afforded by our social order. There is, ultimately, no escape from the tyranny of the majority.

For the record, I'm not terribly concerned about the rest of the compromise absent immunity. As previously noted here its cleaner than previous versions. Thats really what the EFF won at trail... a means to keep dishonest men from rewriting FISA.

Senate Approves Telecom Amnesty, Expands Domestic Spying Powers | Threat Level from Wired.com

I've had a report from someone with clue (and tcpdump) that a properly functioning DNS resolver that correctly uses randomised source ports
magically becomes vulnerable once the traffic's passed through a
Checkpoint firewall.

This is a very interesting observation that isn't constrained to Checkpoint... any NAT device that your DNS requests go through might steal any entropy your machine employed in selecting your source UDP port. There is no simple solution. The hacks on top of hacks on top of hacks here might just be near the collapsing point.

Full Disclosure: DNS and Checkpoint