A light 30 minutes from Lessig which may relate to his new book.

He drops a simple solution here which is extremely light on details, and then directs viewers to go to the "fix congress first" website where its easy to join the movement and buy a tshirt but it appears to be hard to nail down exactly what change is being advocated so one can consider whether or not it will actually work in practice.

Previously these folks were advocating a constitutional amendment relating to the first amendment and campaign finance which I felt to be ill considered. Now things appear to be a bit mushy.

It would be neat if we lived in an ideal world where "special interests" could be prevented from spending truck loads of cash convincing people to think things without undermining their ability to advocate their views, but I don't see how these two things can be separated and I'm highly suspicious of the idea that there is an easy way to solve that problem that will work in practice.

Republic, Lost | Lawrence Lessig Lectures on blip.tv

On September 24th, people from across America and across the political spectrum will convene at Harvard University to discuss the advisability and feasibility of organizing towards a Constitutional Convention. The conference's lead organizers are both proponents and opponents of an Article V convention and we actively encourage the participation of those who support a convention and those who oppose holding a convention at all.

I don't see how empowering a bunch of people we don't have faith in to rewrite the only thing we do have faith in is going to do any good.

Conference on the Constitutional Convention : Harvard Law School, September 24-25, 2011

Richard Posner is an influential judge on the 7th circuit appeals court and law prof at the University of Chicago.

Back in 2005 Posner made the radical argument that universal warrantless surveillance of American citizen's telecommunications would not have any privacy implication whatsoever as long as computer screening was used to identify valuable communications before escalating up to an officer:

The collection, mainly through electronic means, of vast amounts of personal data is said to invade privacy. But machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy. Because of their volume, the data are first sifted by computers, which search for names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., that may have intelligence value. This initial sifting, far from invading privacy (a computer is not a sentient being), keeps most private data from being read by any intelligence officer.

So, in Posner's view, there is no privacy impact associated with having a computer scan your email for suspicious passages. This essay caused me to wonder if he would also think that there would be no privacy impact associated with a warrantless search of your house as long as robots were doing the searching. I call it the "robocop" argument. Posner went on:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it difficult to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents unless they are suspected of being involved in terrorist or other hostile activities. That is too restrictive. Innocent people, such as unwitting neighbors of terrorists, may, without knowing it, have valuable counterterrorist information.

In other words, Posner thinks its important that the government spy on innocent people.

Now, in 2011, he hears a case about a draconian law in Illinois that is being used to prosecute people who record the actions of the police, in public places. I'll quote Reason's explanation:

Illinois has one of the country's strictest eavesdropping statutes, requiring consent from all parties even for recording police on the street while they are performing their official duties. Doing so without permission is a Class 1 felony punishable by a prison sentence of up to 15 years, exposing people to the risk of arrest and prosecution for recording public events such as protest rallies or their own encounters with the police. Meanwhile, the police are free to record citizens during traffic stops or other interactions.

Posner, apparently, does not think that the government should be subject to the same sort of surveillance by the people which he thinks the people should be subject to by the government:

"If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping.…There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers," U.S. 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner said. "Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy."...

I find the juxtaposition of these two views to be striking. They seem to outline a point of view that whatever empowers the state is legitimate and whatever limits the state is suspect. Perhaps its an oversimplification of Posner's outlook on privacy to simply take these two datapoints, but the comment about "reporters and bloggers" doesn't sound like an objective privacy concern.

Richard Posner's Orwellian views on privacy

The creation of a "micro entity" encourages the individual inventor to get back into the patent game by reducing the fees required for filing an application.

This is a nice idea but I think its a political move intended as an answer to critics who point out that "first to file" systems in other countries have reduced participation by individual inventors in favor of large corporate entities. Nevertheless, its useful for potential startup founders to be aware of these rules.

The America Invents Act and the individual inventor

This must-see video condenses the International Space Station's night flight over Earth into 60 seconds, courtesy of science educator James Drake.

PhotoBlog - See the world from outer space ... in 60 seconds

Here is where to go to download the Convergence Firefox plugin.

Convergence | Beta

Tom Cross, Manager IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence and Strategy, talks through the challenges of using open wifi and his proposal for secure open wireless networking.

If you've got an hour to kill...

Secure Open Wireless Networking - YouTube

I am convinced that when President Obama mentions raising taxes on “the wealthiest Americans,” everyone thinks he is talking about them....

This sums up the POV of many young Republicans:

“Well, my taxes might not go up now, since I’m making the median income, but my wages are going to quintuple any day now, I just know it. And when they do, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay one more plug nickel in taxes. I also need to protect the loopholes for corporate jet owners, as I’ll surely soon be one.”

Attention Americans: You Won’t All Be Rich Tomorrow | The Big Picture

Rick Perry defended his record of executions as Governor of Texas, in the GOP presidential debate on Sept 7, 2011.

Listen to the audience cheer.

The problem with all of this is that Gov. Perry most likely executed an innocent man:

Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby. [Remaining portion of statement omitted due to profanity.]

I kind of hope Perry becomes the Republican nominee, so we can have a long, protracted national discussion about the fact the party that claims to advocate limited government is, in fact, full of enthusiastic death penalty supporters.

The GOP celebrates Texas executions

This talk will provide an in-depth examination of the current problems with authenticity in SSL, discuss some of the recent high-profile SSL infrastructure attacks in detail, and cover some potential strategies for the future. It will conclude with a software release that aims to definitively fix the disintegrating trust relationships at the core of this fundamental protocol.

I like the way this design uses blind proxies to protect user privacy. I wish DNS worked that way.

BlackHat USA 2011: SSL And The Future Of Authenticity - YouTube