Jim Harper left his hotel early Thursday at 5:30 a.m. to give himself more than two hours to clear security at San Francisco International Airport. It wasn't that he was worried the security line would be long, but because he accepted a dare from civil liberties rabble-rouser John Gilmore to test whether he could actually fly without showing identification.

Gilmore issued the challenge at Wednesday's meeting of the Department of Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee in San Francisco.

This is interesting. A member of the DHS privacy advisory committe takes Gilmore's challenge on and sails through SFO. Some of the comments attached are interesting, as well as Edward Hasbrouck's blog post. Apparently if you want to fly without showing ID you just tell them you lost your wallet and they have a process for that. Its when you start yammering about the Constitution that they fuck with you.

Wired News: The Great No-ID Airport Challenge

These comments from Decius in reference to the recent VA database theft are worth singling out:

Real Computer Security is hard, because you have to prevent bad stuff without being noticed as the good guys go about their jobs. When you get noticed, you've done something wrong, either because there has been a breach or because someone can't do their job because your security system stopped them. There is a certain art to finding the balance and it depends greatly on the specific requirements of the people you are working for and your wisdom in being judicious about what you control. Things like SOX and HIPPA micromanage the problem with one size fits all policies that inevitably fail in the real world.

Congress should operate on the level of incentivization and not on the level of specific requirements. For example, one of the reasons credit card fraud is so easy is that credit card companies don't bare the costs associated with fraud (the merchants do) and so they don't have any economic incentive to deploy technologies that are harder to subvert. In fact, credit card companies are making money on fraud by selling useless identity theft protection and credit report monitoring services. This is a problem lawyers can fix. They should focus on who is liable and leave computer security to the computer security professionals.

Indeed.

RE: Data Theft Affected Most in Military

Nashville producer and artist Jeremy Dickens remains on the vanguard of electronica in a city known for twang.

MemeStreams user logickal has a new EP out. You can get it from iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, and BeatPort. Jeremy also keeps a blog with numerous podcasts featuring his tracks.

We were all fans of Logickal's last release. I look forward to listening to this one.

dPulse Recordings : Logickal

Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.66%, up 0.05 percentage point from the previous week, and matching a four-year high touched two weeks ago.

Booga booga! Happy 6/6/6.

This morning, I hacked into the hotline that connects George Bush and God. God said the rapture is scheduled to start at roughly noon. Bush politely thanked her for letting him know several months in advance so he didn't have to worry about his polling numbers while getting things prepared.

Cthulu should appear on the east coast around 10am. Around 11am it should be revealed that Santa Clause is in fact Satan, and that most of the living population already sold their souls to the devil before even having pubes. It looks to be an exciting day!

The rapture is expected to include roughly six people, all within the very small number of remote tribes that have had limited contact with the rest of the world. After that point, the housing bubble is expected to pop, the hurricane season is going to start producing major storms, and a whole host of other nasty things. Due to budget constraints, and the delays in the normalization of the Middle East, the apocalypse and the following thousand years of peace has been delayed until further notice.

Remember, you heard it here first!

USATODAY | Mortgage rate indicator reinforces end of world fears

The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one. For the second election in a row, the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks. Given the scope of the GOP machinations, we simply cannot be certain that the right man now occupies the Oval Office -- which means, in effect, that we have been deprived of our faith in democracy itself.

American history is littered with vote fraud -- but rather than learning from our shameful past and cleaning up the system, we have allowed the problem to grow even worse. If the last two elections have taught us anything, it is this: The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system. If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded, they will abandon the ballot box. Nothing less is at stake here than the entire idea of a government by the people.

Voting, as Thomas Paine said, ''is the right upon which all other rights depend.'' Unless we ensure that right, everything else we hold dear is in jeopardy.

This article is truly disturbing. I clearly remember the allegations of voter manipulation and fraud in Ohio, but I had no idea of the scale or how strong the case was. The fact that Rolling Stone has been the only outlet to publish an examination of this issue in this much detail is even more disturbing. We require the media, as the 4th estate, to provide a check against government impropriety. The freedoms the press, and the rest of the public, enjoys does not come without responsibility. If there is in fact voter fraud persisting on the scale this article alleges, the major media outlets have not honored the responsibility they have to the American public.

On one level, I concur with Decius's opinion that this type of analysis would best be presented in a non-partisan academic journal, rather than a music magazine. That being said, I wonder why this has not occurred already. In no uncertain terms, this article is a challenge to the rest of the mediasphere to further investigate the issue. Much to Kennedy's credit, he provided a reference for every factoid he used, totaling a whooping two-hundred-and-eight footnotes. There is no challenge here figuring out where he got his information from, in order to challenge or validate the allegations present.

This challenge should be answered. Our constitutional values demand it. At this point, the goal should not be to overturn the presidency, but to insure that all votes are counted in future elections. This is critical in order for our democracy to work.

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

It's ironic that spooks so often remind us that we've got nothing to fear from their activities if we've got nothing nasty to hide, while they themselves are rarely comfortable without multiple layers of secrecy, anonymity and plausible deniability. While there was little or nothing at the conference worth keeping secret, the sense of paranoia was constant. The uniformed guard posted to the entrance was there to intimidate, not to protect. The restrictions on civilians attending the law enforcement agency sessions were, I gather, a cheap marketing gesture to justify their $6,500-per-head entrance fee with suggestions of secret information that the average network-savvy geek wouldn't have known.

It poses a tremendous threat to human rights and dignity in countries without adequate legal safeguards, and still invites occasional abuses in countries with them. Its costs are paid by citizens who are deliberately kept in the dark about how much they're paying for it, how effective it is in fighting crime and how susceptible it is to abuse. And that's the way the entire cast of characters involved wants to keep it.

Wired News: Crashing the Wiretapper's Ball

A double-amputee Iraq-war vet is suing Michael Moore for $85 million, claiming the portly peacenik recycled an old interview and used it out of context to make him appear anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, who strongly supports America's invasion of Iraq, said he never agreed to be in the 2004 movie, which trashes President Bush.

"They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene," Damon said yesterday. "They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition."

"I just want everybody to know what kind of a guy Michael Moore is, and what kind of film this is," said Damon. He has appeared in two films attacking "Fahrenheit" -"Michael Moore Hates America" and "Fahrenhype 9/11."

His image appears seconds after Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) says, "You know, they say they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind."

"I'm the most fortunate disabled guy. I've even had a house built for me [by a nonprofit group, Home for Our Troops]."

Particularly outrageous to Damon is the fact that Moore never interviewed him or asked his permission to use the old clip.

"We attempted to resolve the situation amicably with Mr. Moore [for a year] but he refused," he said.

This guy probably has a good case. The usage of his likeness may have been waved, but he was no doubt casted in a "false light".

In relation to this, I strongly suggest seeing the documentary by Michael Wilson, Michael Moore Hates America. I was seriously impressed with it. Wilson paints a very accurate picture of Moore, using Moore's own narrated journey documentary style. Wilson also makes some great statements about documentaries as a journalistic art form. This documentary is very serious about itself, and at several points stops to examine its own intentions and methods.

The scene that features Damon was the most powerful part of Wilson's documentary. I was seriously angered that Moore took advantage of someone who has served with honor and paid a serious price in the process. It's both heartbreaking an inspiring. This guy lost his fucking arms, and he proudly proclaims that his service in the military has improved his life in every way!

Regardless of your interest in Moore, you should see this documentary if you love documentaries. It has not gotten the attention it deserves.

New York Post | Exploited GI sues Michael Moore

On or around May 8, the following personal ad appeared on the Internet classified ad site Craigslist. (It has since been removed.)

For mein fraulein

Mein Fraulein, I haven't heard from you in a while. Won't you
call me? 212 //// 796 //// 0735

If you actually called the number, up until a couple of days ago you would have heard this prerecorded message (MP3). It's a head scratcher to keep you National Security Agency analysts occupied in your spare time. Each block of numbers is repeated twice; but below I have transcribed them only once for clarity.

Another use of VoIP to disconnect a phone number from a physical location, this time apparently for an intelligence purpose (although this seems an anachronistic way to deliver a ciphertext). "Group 415" might be a reference to the area code in San Francisco, where Craig's List is most popular. There is also a song in the recording. Identifying the song might aid analysis... The voice is clearly sampled.

Another code for Elonka?

Voip cipher lines

Porting the hacker ethic to the nonvirtual world, magazines like Make and blogs like Boing Boing are making it cool for geeks to get their hands dirty again...

But the hands-on revival is leaving home chemists behind.... “There are very few commercial supply houses willing to sell chemicals to amateurs anymore because of this fear that we’re all criminals and terrorists,” Carlson says. “Ordinary folks no longer have access to the things they need to make real discoveries in chemistry.”

To Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” says unreasonable fears about chemicals and home experimentation reflect a distrust of scientific expertise taking hold in society at large.

This Wired article is very apropos in light of Decius's CACM article. Apparently between trying to prevent terrorism, meth production, and fireworks accidents, state and federal regulators have pretty much made amateur chemistry illegal in the United States, which is going to do wonders for our future.

There was a debate on MemeStreams about whether product liability and tort law restricted individual freedoms. This is also a perfect example of that.

Wired 14.06: Don't Try This at Home

PDF also available. You should check out the ToC for this issue, as it features a whole series of "Perspectives on the Long War."

The result is a change in relative advantage at the individual level played out, for example, in the increasing role of suicide attacks in warfare. In today’s social and political context, it is not enough to focus on military organizational and doctrinal changes like networking and swarming. In the long run, the "swarming" that really counts is the wide-scale mobilization of the global public.

Can I get an Amen?

Will the United States recognize the significance of connectivity and its implications for conflict? It is hard to say.

To win, we must all become super-empowered individuals. Get happy, get angry, whatever; just get going.

I liked that phrase, "the significance of connectivity", and wanted to see who else was using it, and how. It seems most common in a neurobiological context. But I ran across this article from a member of the faculty at Ankara University:

In an age in which the problems that the citizens face exceed local, and even national boundaries, the significance of connectivity on a global scale gains an unprecedented importance.

Remember that guy, "Tom", who used to write openly accessible op-ed articles?

Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any other time in history. Globalization can be an incredible force-multiplier for individuals. Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly, unmediated by a state.

So you have today not only a superpower, not only Supermarkets, but also what I call "super-empowered individuals." Some of these super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful -- but all of them are now able to act much more directly and much more powerfully on the world stage.

("You don't strike me as super-empowered!")

The New Levée en Masse | PARAMETERS, Summer 2006