Politics – Page 24 – Spinor Info

Lest we remember

Canada, Computer Security, Politics No Responses »

Feb 122013

I was reading about full-disk encryption tools when I came across this five-year old research paper. For me, it was an eye-popper.

Like many, I also assumed that once you power down a computer, the contents of its RAM are scrambled essentially instantaneously. But this is not the case (and it really should not come as a surprise given the way DRAM works). Quite the contrary, a near-perfect image remains in memory for seconds; and if the memory is cooled to extreme low temperatures, the image may be preserved for minutes or hours.

Degrade of a bitmap image after 5, 30, 60 seconds and 5 minutes in a 128 MB Infineon memory module manufactured in 1999.

Decay of a bitmap image 5, 30, 60 seconds and 5 minutes after power loss in a 128 MB Infineon memory module manufactured in 1999. From https://citp.princeton.edu/research/memory/.

So even as we worry about public servants losing USB keys or entire laptops containing unencrypted information on hundreds of thousands of people, it appears that sometimes even encryption is not enough. If a lost laptop is in a suspended state, an attacker could access the contents of its RAM using only a rudimentary toolkit (that may include “canned air” dusters turned upside-down for cooling).

I wonder what the future will bring. Tamper-proof hardware in every laptop? In-memory encryption? Or perhaps we will decide that we just don’t care, since we already share most details about our personal lives through social networks anyway?

On that note, Canada’s government just decided to scrap a planned cybersurveillance bill that many found unacceptably intrusive. Good riddance, I say.

Anonymous war declaration

Internet, Politics No Responses »

Jan 262013

Anonymous attacked the Web site of the United States Sentencing Commission, an independent agency of the United States government responsible for articulating federal sentencing guidelines.

The USSC.GOV Web site is down (or rather, there is no DNS service for ussc.gov or www.ussc.gov; I guess that is one way of taking down a corrupted Web site) but I found the defaced content in Google’s cache, including the Anonymous letter in its entirety, as well as the accompanying YouTube video (with surprisingly good production values.)

The letter is a long rant, but I am not altogether unsympathetic to what they have to say. The death of Aaron Swartz was an absolute disgrace. It was also a completely unnecessary demonstration of a justice system gone berserk. And the concerns expressed by Anonymous over disproportional punishments, the presumption of innocence gambled away by plea deals in the face of excessive sentences and unaffordable justice, or criminalization of violations of terms of service are all concerns I share.

What I don’t share is the belief of Anonymous that the perceived criminality of government can be repaired by criminal acts of their own. Their “solution” does not lead to a better society; it leads to anarchy. Then again, weirdly and confusingly, Anonymous appear to understand this when they write, “We understand that due to the actions we take we exclude ourselves from the system within which solutions are found. There are others who serve that purpose, people far more respectable than us, people whose voices emerge from the light, and not the shadows.”

I am more than a bit puzzled by the second half of their message. In this half, they describe a “warhead”, perhaps some cybertool that they are distributing to their followers this way. The instructions are simple: download all components, assemble them, and wait for the moment that hopefully never comes when you get a decryption key.

Ok-kay… well, the components no longer appear to be available (if they ever were) on the listed mirror sites, but that’s not the puzzling part. The puzzling bit is the command line offered that the would be Anonymous supporter presumably had to execute after downloading all the files named Scalia.Warhead1, Kennedy.Warhead1, Thomas.Warhead1, Ginsburg.Warhead1, Breyer.Warhead1, Roberts.Warhead1, Alito.Warhead1, Sotomayor.Warhead1, Kagan.Warhead1:

cat Scalia* Kennedy* Thomas* Ginsburg* Breyer* Roberts* Alito* Sotomayor* Kagan* >
    Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.aes256 && rm -rf /

In plain English: assemble all the parts into a file named Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.aes256. If successful, wipe out your entire hard drive.

Say what? Yes, wipe out your entire hard drive. That’s what rm -rf / does on a UNIX system.

That is, that’s what rm -rf / does on a UNIX system if a) you are logged in as root, and b) you are dumb enough to execute it.

So what exactly are Anonymous trying to pull here? Do they think American investigators are so dumb that they would follow these instructions without question, but their own followers are smarter? Is it a kind of an intelligence test to prevent stupid people from joining Anonymous? Or has the Anonymous letter itself been hacked?

Announcement by the Government of Canada

Canada, Hungary, Politics 1 Response »

Jan 202013

This giant billboard was spotted in the city of Miskolc, Hungary:

In English, the billboard reads:

ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

To reduce abuse, the refugee system of Canada has changed.

Refugees whose claims are found to be without grounds
are sent home much more quickly.

Further details: valtozas.kanada.hu

What’s wrong with this billboard, you ask? Perhaps nothing. It is, after all, important information. And it is located in a Hungarian city that, according to the Government of Canada, is the source of most unfounded refugee claims.

But it also happens to be a city with a high Roma population.

Still, it is not an easy black-and-white issue. It is true that Canada receives a disproportionately high number of false refugee claims from Hungary, an EU democracy, and many of the claimants are Roma. But it is also true that the situation of many Roma in Hungary is more like what one expects to see in sub-Saharan Africa, not in an EU country. And while many Hungarians readily blame the Roma for their own economic plight, it is hard to argue that the palpable fear they feel when a right-wing paramilitary unit marches through a Roma village is of their own doing.

Curiously, the Hungarian ultra-right is not happy about Canada’s toughening stance on Roma refugees. They’d much prefer to see all Roma leave Hungary and settle in Canada.

Constructing reality

Physics, Politics No Responses »

Jan 202013

John Marburger had an unenviable role as Director of the United States Office of Science and Technology Policy. Even before he began his tenure, he already faced demotion: President George W. Bush decided not to confer upon him the title “Assistant to the President on Science and Technology”, a title born both by his predecessors and also his successor. Marburger was also widely criticized by his colleagues for his efforts to defend the Bush Administration’s scientific policies. He was not infrequently labeled a “prostitute” or worse.

I met Marburger once in 2006, though to be honest, I don’t recall if I actually conversed with him one-on-one. He gave the keynote address at an international workshop organized by JPL, titled From Quantum to Cosmos: Fundamental Physics Research in Space, which I attended.

If Marburger felt any bitterness towards his colleagues or towards his own situation as a somewhat demoted science advisor, he showed no signs of it during that keynote address. Just as there are no signs of bitterness or resentment in his book, Constructing Reality, which I just finished reading. Nor is there any hint of his own mortality, even though he must have known that his days were numbered by a deadly illness. No, this is a book written by a true scientist: it is about the immortal science that must have been his true passion all along.

It is an ambitious book. In Constructing Reality, Marburger attempts the impossible: explain the Standard Model of particle physics to the interested and motivated lay reader. Thankfully, he does not completely shy away from the math; he realizes that without at least a small amount of mathematics, modern particle physics is just not comprehensible. I admire his (and his publisher’s) courage to face this fact.

Is it a good book? I honestly don’t know. I certainly enjoyed it very much. Marburger demonstrated a thorough, and better yet, intuitive understanding of some of the most difficult aspects of the Standard Model and quantum field theory. But I am the wrong audience: I know the science that he wrote about. (That is not to say that his insight was not helpful in deepening my understanding.) Would this book be useful to the lay reader? Or the aspiring young physicist? I really cannot tell. Learning the principles of quantum field theory is not easy, and in my experience, we each take our own path towards a deeper understanding. Some books help more than others but ultimately, what helps the most is practice: there is no substitute for working out equations on your own. Still, if the positive reviews on Amazon are any indication, Marburger succeeded with writing a book “for [his] friends who are not physicists”.

Marburger died much too soon, at the age of 70, after he lost his battle with cancer. His book was published posthumously (which perhaps explains why the back flap of the book’s dust jacket contains his short bio and room for a photograph above, but no actual photo. Or perhaps I am just imagining things.) But his words survive and inspire others. Well done, Dr. Marburger. And thanks.

Man Card

Legal, Politics, Society No Responses »

Jan 162013

I dislike stereotypes, regardless of the target. I especially dislike stereotyping people or ideas with which I disagree. Stereotypes do not promote understanding; they promote hatred and miscomprehension, the inability see the real nature of the other side, obscuring it with a meaningless caricature.

The idea that “gun nuts buy guns to compensate for their unmanliness” is one such stupid stereotype.

Or so I thought until today. Until I learned that the famed Bushmaster rifle, the one that was used to mow down children in Newtown, was in fact advertised with the concept of a “Man Card”, which can be revoked if you like, say, a kitten better than a gun, but can be reclaimed if you buy a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle.

No, I didn’t make this up and I don’t think CNN did either.

The Constitution of the United States of America contains a Second Amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms, in the context of forming a well-regulated militia. Some argue that this is part of America’s spectacularly successful system of political checks and balances, a “last resort” if you wish. Some argue that it is an obsolete leftover from revolutionary times, or worse yet, a relic of slavery when state militias were used to round up escaped slaves and states about to join a freshly minted Union were concerned that the right to maintain such militias will be taken away. Whatever the reason, I am pretty damn sure that none of the Founding Fathers, be they slaveholders or abolitionists, peaceful hunters or revolutionaries, ever conceived the idea that one day the Second Amendment will be used to issue “Man Cards”.

Groan.

Cuban exit visas

Politics No Responses »

Jan 162013

One of the most hateful aspects of communism, and perhaps the one that really cemented the impression that you lived in something akin to a labor camp or military barracks, was the institution of exit visas: the idea that travel abroad was a privilege that required government permission, which was not routinely granted.

Cuba, of course, had similar restrictions. The emphasis, astonishingly, is on the past tense: had. Because apparently as of now, Cuban citizens with a valid passport are entitled to leave the island without having to apply for an exit visa first. I am, actually, quite astonished. Could this be a sign of accelerating reforms in Cuba that will eventually end the island’s isolation? Or is that too much to hope for?

Still… congratulations to Cubans. May your new-found freedom be relatively unhindered by the entry visa requirements of many popular target countries.

What, no Death Star?

Film, Politics No Responses »

Jan 122013

I have to admit I am a little disappointed. The White House officially rejected a petition to begin construction of a Death Star space station. And it’s the bean counters’ fault, as usual: they think spending $850,000,000,000,000,000 on the capability to blow up inhabited planets contributes too much to the deficit!

Shame.

End of an era

Canada, Cats, Politics No Responses »

Jan 052013

Alas, the cat sanctuary on Parliament Hill is no more.

Now all we have there is politicians. This depresses me greatly.

21st century Stalinism

History, Politics, Society No Responses »

Jan 012013

I was reading about Kim Jong Un’s unusual New Year’s message when I came across this video, a documentary by Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, titled North Korea: A day in the life:

Even though it’s a few years old (it was made in 2004) and despite the fact that it was obviously made under the watchful eyes of North Korea’s censors, it still speaks volumes about the world’s last Stalinist state.

Corporations are not people

Politics, Society No Responses »

Dec 262012

Today I ran across the Web site of a movement to amend the US constitution to explicitly declare that corporations are not persons. I like the idea. In fact, it inspired me to exercise my non-existent skills as a cartoonist.

Equality

Politics, Society No Responses »

Dec 232012

A Facebook friend shared this image, a cartoon about conservative vs. liberal views on equality:

540185_10151296602148467_1486491679_n

Looking at the image, I realize that deep in my soul, I am in fact a conservative. That’s because I see another variation of the same picture (and it’s not the crudeness of my art to which I am referring):

equality

Then again, if I am a conservative, so was Kurt Vonnegut. Why else would he have written a story like Harrison Bergeron, in which a totalitarian state uses a form of mind control to create equality between intellectually gifted and less talented people?

Or perhaps I am neither a conservative nor a liberal (and the same goes for Kurt Vonnegut). Instead, I am trying to use rational thinking to decide what’s best in a given situation, without resorting to ideology or dogma.

Gun nut credibility

Politics, Society No Responses »

Dec 192012

Generally, I am sympathetic towards the American concept of gun rights. The basic idea, as I understand it, is sound: a constitution that explicitly forbids government from claiming a monopoly on organized violence, in contrast with European countries where government has that monopoly. It is part of a well thought out system of checks and balances that characterizes America’s quarter millennia old stable democracy.

What I don’t really understand is how this, the notion of a “well regulated militia” that citizens can freely form and, if needed, rely on to fight government oppression, is related to the concept of granting every imbecile the “God-given” right to have a military grade assault rifle. I honestly don’t think that America’s founding fathers had concealed carry permits and assault rifles in mind when they formulated the Second Amendment.

But where the “gun nuts” really lost credibility in my view is when they began advocating that teachers be allowed, or even required, to carry a gun. Have you guys gone completely bonkers? Do you really think that the solution to tragedies like the Newtown massacre is to turn schools into battlegrounds? Do you actually listen to yourselves when you utter such a blatant idiocy?

I told a pro-gun friend of mine that if gun advocates continue on this course, it will only accomplish one thing in the end: we may yet see the Second Amendment repealed within our lifetime. And if that happens, the “gun nuts” will only have themselves to blame.

The right to bear arms…

Politics, Society No Responses »

Dec 162012

Predictably and understandably, a lot of people are questioning America’s gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, CT massacre.

What I would like to know is this: exactly when did “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” turn into the right for every clown and idiot to own assault weapons or to walk around in crowded places with a concealed handgun? Is this really what the Founding Fathers wanted?

To me, the meaning of the Second Amendment is clear: it is about not granting government a monopoly on violence. It is about the citizenry’s right to arm themselves and if necessary, protect themselves from oppression. But this meaning seems to have been forgotten. Last time I checked, American citizens long ago lost the right (if they ever had it in the first place) to operate private well-regulated militias that own, never mind aircraft carriers or ballistic missiles, how about tanks and fighter aircraft, the kinds of weapons necessary for protection against an oppressive state, as the civil war in Syria amply demonstrates.

So the original meaning of the Second Amendment is long lost; should the US Federal Government turn into an oppressive dictatorship, concealed handguns or semi-automatic assault rifles are not going to do much good against tanks, drones, or smart missiles.

But then, why is it necessary to let every idiot purchase a high-power handgun that serves only one purpose: to kill people, lots of people, at a high rate of efficiency?

Just wondering.

Crowdsourcing politics

Politics, Society No Responses »

Nov 252012

The other day, I read about an interesting experiment: The Guardian solicited readers’ ideas to resolve the nuclear crisis at Fukushima. Predictably, the majority of the submitted ideas were dangerous nonsense.

Today, I ran across something on Facebook: an attempt to promote the Robin Hood tax, a tax on financial (e.g., Wall Street) transactions. The suggestion is that a tax of a mere 0.5% on Wall Street transactions would not only generate billions in revenue but also slow down algorithmic trading that can cause so much runaway damage. Wikipedia tells me that EU citizens overwhelmingly support such a tax.

The trouble is that Wikipedia also tells me the reasons why such a tax may not be a great idea after all, as well as past lessons from attempts to implement such taxes, e.g., in Sweden. These are the consequences that are left out of the populist rhetoric, and are usually only discussed by experts.

Should this mean that we should leave political and economic decision-making to experts? It has been tried before. It is called totalitarianism. So once again, I am reminded of Churchill’s words: “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.

Which is why the often quixotic fight of those who try to educate the public is both noble and essential.

Surveillance state

Computer Security, History, Politics No Responses »

Nov 152012

The sordid saga around the resignation of Gen. Petraeus continues. It became such a tangled story, Gawker.com actually published a flowchart to make it easier to decipher.

Meanwhile, however, The Guardian raises some very troubling points:

In response to Ms. Kelley’s initial complaint about a vaguely offensive e-mail, the FBI devoted substantial resources and engaged in highly invasive surveillance for no reason other than to do a personal favor for a friend of an agent;
Without any evidence of an actual crime, and without a search warrant, they gained access to Ms. Broadwell’s e-mail account;
Again, without any evidence of any actual wrongdoing, they also got their hands on e-mails exchanged not only between Ms. Broadwell and Gen. Petraeus but also between her and Gen. Allen.

The Guardian comments about the “sweet justice” aspect of all of this: namely that America’s security surveillance system that is running amok is targeting the very people in charge of that system, such as the head of the CIA. However, I do not share their implied optimism; I don’t think the growth in surveillance will stop anytime soon. We are nowhere near close to anything like the McCarthy era’s pivotal “have you no sense of decency?” moment. For that, a lot more good people will have to be harmed a lot more gravely first.

Pocketbooks and bedrooms

Health, Politics No Responses »

Nov 082012

Rudy Giuliani made an interesting comment on CNN yesterday. He ridiculed his own party by pointing out that they are all for states’ rights… except when they are not, such as when they are pushing to amend the federal constitution to define marriage. He pointed out that a conservative party that stays out of both people’s pocketbooks and their bedrooms would be a winning combination. I couldn’t agree more.

So how come I am in favor of Obamacare? Well… I also like highways. Some libertarians may argue that by building a highway, government restricts your freedom to drive where you want and forces you onto a narrow strip of asphalt. Technically true, but I still prefer to live in a place with a well-developed national infrastructure. These days, I consider a universal health care system just as important a part of that national infrastructure as highways, schools, or electrical networks.

Welcome to Canada

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Nov 082012

Apparently, it’s real. Some Americans, bitterly disappointed with Obama’s re-election, are considering emigration. At first I didn’t want to believe this but I now personally heard about a medical professional from the southern United States who is contemplating moving to Canada.

Well, we are a big country, a welcoming and tolerant place. Still… are you sure you will fit in? I feel compelled to repost a picture I ran across on Facebook a day or two ago.

Presidential election

Politics, Television No Responses »

Nov 072012

Obama won. He is not going to have an easy four years with an obstructionist Congress. And the route Republicans will chose in the wake of Romney’s defeat remains an open question. I hope they don’t turn further right; that would either marginalize them or lead a far-right candidate to the White House, and neither of those outcomes are pleasant to think about.

But the real winner of the night I think was Nate Silver of the The New York Times, who predicted the outcome with uncanny accuracy, state-by-state. The one state that has not been called yet by the networks? Florida, with Obama slightly in the lead. Nate Silver’s prediction? A 50.3% chance of Obama taking the state.

And the real losers were Fox News, I believe. Rather than facing the facts, they decided to question the wisdom of their own “decision desk”, live on the air. What a sad (not to mention ridiculous) moment.

Muslims in America

Politics, Religion No Responses »

Nov 022012

I am reading some very interesting statistics. It is a survey of Muslims in the United States.

Wenzel strategies is a partisan public opinion firm associated with the US Republican Party. Nonetheless, while their ideology may be reflected in their choice of questions, I have no reason to believe that the statistical integrity of their survey is compromised. There may be some shenanigans not uncommon when partisan pollsters are involved (for instance, how did they select their respondents?) that may skew the results somewhat, but I don’t think they would alter the outcome dramatically. In other words, I don’t think this is islamophobe fodder.

The picture painted by the survey is complex. A small but not insignificant percentage of the respondents (almost all of whom are US citizens who are registered to vote) clearly have extremist views: for instance, 12% of the respondents think that those who criticize Islam or Mohammed should be put to death, with a further 9% unsure. On the other hand, defying stereotypes, only about 16% think that Israel has no right to exist, and only 7% think Sharia law should take precedence over the US constitution (with a further 20% unsure). And a surprising 30% think it’s okay for US citizens to evangelize Muslims, with a further 28% unsure.

In the data set, I don’t see much by way of significant differences among demographic groups. One exception is the support for the death penalty for those who offend Islam: younger responders were much more inclined to agree (19%) than the older generation. Similarly, younger responders were much less likely to support Israel’s right to exist (31% disagree with that right).

Overall, if the survey results are valid, they are troubling. While the majority tends to have moderate views, an alarming minority (and in some cases, even a majority) expressed views that are fundamentally incompatible with liberal Western principles. For instance, as many as 58% do not believe that the First Amendment of the US constitution should protect criticism of Islam or Mohammed. And the fact that younger Muslims tend to have more extremist views may mean nothing (younger people are generally more receptive to radical ideas) but may also indicate an alarming trend.

One conspicuously missing demographic question is the one about immigration status: how many of the respondents were born in the US, immigrated as children, or arrived as adults? Perhaps accompanied even by a breakdown by country or region of origin. That is because I would not be surprised at all if the more extremist views were held by recent immigrants from countries with strong tribal traditions. I wonder why these immigration questions were omitted from the survey.

Immigration status and partisan views notwithstanding, I find it deeply disturbing that, at least according to this one survey, as many as one in five young American Muslims think I should be put to death if I were to make my critical views on Islam or Mohammed public.

Are conservatives really anti-science?

Canada, Politics, Science No Responses »

Oct 272012

I gave this post a provocative title intentionally. I am a one-time conservative voter. One reason why I feel disenchanted with conservatives (not just in Canada, mind you) these days is that they seem to have politicized science at every opportunity. Sure, others have done the same thing in the past (liberals are certainly no knights in shining armor) but the past is the past, right now I am worried about the present. Reproductive health, stem cell research, environmental science, climate change, you name it… if they don’t like the result, they attack it, and if the result withstands politically motivated attacks, they move on to attack the researcher. Or, as the case might be, they do their darnedest to undermine the integrity of the data.

This is precisely what happened when Canada’s conservative government eliminated the mandatory “long form” census that was sent to 20% of Canadian households. Sure, there were legitimate privacy concerns that could and should have been addressed (I even wrote a letter to the Chief Statistician myself many years ago when we received the long form census and found some questions a tad sensitive, and the safeguards against being able to personally identify responders inadequate.) But eliminate the long-form census completely, making it “optional”? That is a bone-headed stupid move. The most charitable interpretation is that the government simply didn’t know what they were doing because they don’t understand statistics. A more sinister possibility is that they knew exactly what they were doing, and they are undermining the integrity of Statistics Canada’s data sets on purpose. In light of what has been done and said in recent years, despite my general dislike of conspiracy theories, I am leaning towards accepting this interpretation.

And now the results are beginning to arrive, demonstrating the validity of all those concerns. According to the data collected, the percentage of people in Canada whose mother tongue is English remained the same despite the fact that in the meantime, Canada received 1.1 million new immigrants, 80% of whom had a mother tongue other than English of French. Or that the number of people in Canada whose mother tongue is a non-official language supposedly dropped by 420,000, again despite the above-mentioned immigration statistics.

Of course these results make no sense. What they reflect is a faulty data collection methodology. A methodology forced upon Statistics Canada by a political leadership that finds it appropriate to meddle with science.

The damage due to such meddling is profound and lasting. There is the immediate damage of distorted results. This can be fixed easily; for instance, if Canada were to return to the long form census, this one census could be discarded as an outlier and the long-term integrity of the data would remain assured. But by politicizing the science and polarizing researchers, they undermine the process itself, creating a partisan mindset. Defenders of scientific integrity will unavoidably find themselves participating in political debates and feel forced to adopt polarized positions. Climate scientists often sound more like preachers of a religion than impartial researchers. Could this be, at least in part, due to the polarized atmosphere in which their scientific results are scrutinized? Ultimately, it is the integrity of the scientific process that suffers, and that’s bad news for all of us, regardless of our political views.

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