Those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. There should be a ribbon for that.

I need to compile a database of sarcasm like this, along with the recent NYT essayist who wrote:

"I do not avoid books like "Accordion Man" or "Elwood's Blues" merely because I believe that life is too short. Even if life were not too short, it would still be too short to read anything by Dan Aykroyd.

For the record, I support the troops. And always remember, Everybody Loves Raymond.

Warriors and wusses

The United States government either currently has, or soon will have, new technology that makes mass surveillance possible. The next question for citizens and other policy makers is whether and when to use this capability.

You may remember, from late 2004:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything. And still I see a woman in row four, cutting an apple. With a four-inch knife.

Back to the Granick story:

It is also possible that the disclosure of any details about the search and scan strategies and the algorithms used to sift through them would immediately allow countermeasures by our enemies to evade or defeat them.

That would be a weak algorithm, anyway.

Any search algorithm, whether public or not, is unlikely to be able to distinguish between innocent and criminal communications.

That's it! A public algorithm. What we need here is a global-scale collaborative filter. We could resume the draft, but for NSA instead of the Army. You could work from home, or even in your car, for an hour each day, listening in on phone calls. But mind you, as the President said, that "There is a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring." This is just the detection phase. If you hear something suspicious, you just press a number key, 1 through 9, to indicate how urgently dangerous it seems. The call is then forwarded to a professional for further handling, including FISA procedures as necessary.

More information doesn't make us smarter. We need smarter information.

Easily said, but not so easily done. Ideas?

Wired News: Mass Spying Means Gross Errors

There's a big debate going on the US and Canada about who is going to pay for Internet wiretapping.

It won't be long now until the telcos start trying to pass on the cost of wiretapping to the major content providers. It'll be likened to existing security-related overhead expenses, like "loss prevention" at retail outlets. If Barnes and Noble has to pay for private security guards, why shouldn't Amazon have to do the same?

VeriSign's conflict of interest creates new threat

"We have the ability to access virtually any packet data network and by using mediation equipment deployed in our network, VeriSign can provide a secure, reliable, cost-efficient solution that enables carriers with GPRS or CDMA 1x technologies to comply with all lawful intercept requirements without impacting network performance."

When I see VeriSign talk about "lawful" intercept, for some reason I am reminded of a particular scene from The Simpsons episode BABF12, "Pygmoelian":

The Simpsons arrive at the Duff Days site. Homer switches off the beer music, to the kids' relief. As soon as they step out of the car, though, a live band plays exactly the same tune.

Near the entrance, a man is dressed as Surly, one of the Seven Duffs.

        [loudly] Drink Duff! [under breath] Responsibly.
        [loudly] Drink Duff! [under breath] Responsibly.

VeriSign NetDiscovery [Lawful] Intercept Service

There are a number of pitfalls for the person attempting to sanitize a Word document for release. This paper describes the issue, and gives a step-by-step description of how to do it with confidence that inappropriate material will not be released.

Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted From Word to PDF

There's nothing newsworthy in this rehash of an article, but did you know that VeriSign sells surveillance equipment and "all-in-one" surveillance services to the carriers? I hadn't known that.

See also:

VeriSign® NetDiscovery™ Services Selected by Vonage

VeriSign NetDiscovery Services Implemented by Cox Communications

Eavesdropping leaps into 21st century

CodeCon is the premier showcase of cutting edge software development. It is an excellent opportunity for programmers to demonstrate their work and keep abreast of what's going on in their community.

The 2006 conference will be held at StudioZ in San Francisco. The call for papers period is now closed, but early registration is now open until February 1st.

CodeCon 2006

In 2005, just 10 foreign-language films had ticket sales of more than $1 million in the United States.

"I feel as if there's almost no auteur draw anymore." The honest truth is that the filmmaker matters increasingly little today."

I recommend many of the films mentioned in this article. (Have you seen The Aristocrats?)

Is Foreign Film the New Endangered Species?

Everybody loves a particularly stinging review.

Could it be that the allure of film is explained by the fact that films evoke the dreaming mind of the viewer?

If this sounds potentially interesting, it is not.

The word for this sort of writing is twaddle.

'The Power of Movies'

Sure, we'll all live longer, but how will this affect the future of flirting?

These days, Americans flirt feebly, liquor-soaked and anxious. But for lo, these many years we at least have had cigarettes, instruments of seduction.

"Girl comes up and she says, 'Can I bum a smoke?' and it was obviously a pretext," says Jason. The girl talked to him awhile after that, one of those classic Washington dialogues about law school.

Hrm...

Not sexy: those people outside office buildings.

You might also wish to check this out:

Efforts to make us more like the rest of the world in that regard strike a blow at the very essence of Spanishness: should our schedules change, we'll be much more like France or Switzerland - and definitely more boring.

A totalitarian state is one that sticks its nose where it doesn't belong and attempts to intervene in every aspect of its citizens' private lives, and many governments today, whether left, right or center, have developed this practice of behaving like busybodies. The old notion that only dictatorships can be totalitarian seems terribly naïve nowadays. And that is the worst thing about this antismoking law and others of the same ilk: they unfortunately prove that totalitarianism is no longer incompatible with the democratic systems that once guaranteed our freedoms.

Got a Light? A Ritual Gone in a Puff of Smoke