Could Apple win the eBook trial because it uses Macs?

Least Surprising Tidbit From Apple-DOJ E-Book Trial
[Via Daring Fireball]

Brian X. Chen, reporting for the NYT from the e-book price-fixing trial:

Both parties showed their evidence on a projector screen. Apple’s legal team used a MacBook to shuffle between evidence documents, stacking them side by side in split screens and zooming in on specific paragraphs.

In contrast, the Justice Department’s lawyers could show only one piece of evidence at a time. One video that Mr. Buterman played as evidence failed to produce the audio commentary needed to make his point.

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An interesting comment. The Mac when your presentation absolutely has to work.

Apple security and its users – they can’t get our iMessages

 by Daniel Dudek-Corrigan

Apple issues rare public comment on its ‘commitment to customer privacy’
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple published a rare public comment discussing “Apple?s Commitment to Customer Privacy” in the wake of reports on the United States’ “Prism” surveillance program.

[More]

So Apple gets permission to reveal how many government requests it gets and what it does. Not too suprising

But the interesting thing in their response is this:

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.

I wrote about al of this before all the news broke. The government WILL find a way to read your digital communications in real time unless we stop them. Apple encrypts their data from user to user so well that the Feds complained and were trying to get Apple to give them a key.

Doesn’t this sound very different today than it did a few months ago?

 ”iMessages between two Apple devices are considered encrypted communication and cannot be intercepted, regardless of the cell phone service provider.”

If you have been using iMessages or Facetime, the Feds can only see you have sent them, not what is inside.

So I guess they can get meta-data of a sort but none of the actual information. As I said, encryption should be used by every teleco. Why in the world are our emails sent in the open (with the passwords) without high level encryption?

I htink this is why they are so upset about this going mainstream. 

I wonder when we will see the first ads from Apple stating that iMessages are safe from government intrusion?

“Drones” – the high concept movie that might be too close for comfort.

by Don McCullough

My Drone Book/Movie (If I wrote one)
[Via Global Guerrillas]

If I did write a near future, CGI thriller about drones, here’s my back of the envelope sketch of the plot. It’s definitely a movie plot, and not real.  That means it is meant to be over the top.

If you aren’t interested in an autonomous weapons disaster story, please disregard.

________________

Start.  An Israeli drone hunter/killer op, run out of a converted trailer in the desert.  Drone IDs a target in urban area.  At risk of losing target, the drone “tags” target (microdots).  Target disappears inside building, and begins to into large, sprawling tenement, doesn’t emerge.  Call in “mother hen” delivery system full of “chick” ground drones for search and destroy mission inside the complex.  They are flown in, inserted, and enter the complex.  Target is IDed several floors/walls away but appears to be on the run and deploying counter-measures to spoof ground drones.  

Target is intermittent and numerous ghosts appear intermittently.  All are moving.  The ground drones swarm, moving in a pattern that would encircle the target within the complex.   Probability calculation for primary target is over threshold (80%), so the order is given to swarm to go lethal.  Moments later the target drops a series of effective counter measures and blows through a wall into a corridor that allows a fast transient out of area.  Comms with the swarm is lost.  Since the swarm already has the green light on the target (not uncommon, but frustrating in the terminal phase of a misison), it continues on mission.  Drones, confused by the new counter-measures and out of comms with the team, begin to see targets everywhere.  They clear an entire tenement of 1000 + people, exit the complex and depart.  

News emerges on social media feeds.  Wireless and Internet nodes are brought down in area to slow media upload.  To hide the mission failure, a drone is called in to blow up the evidence.  Explosion trumps other info.  The incident is lost in the noise within a couple of days.

Few people know about this logic flaw.  No lesson learned.

[More]

The rest of the idea is a pretty sweet  action movie, demonstrating both a world in the panopticon, where security ‘requires’ autonomous drones in urban settings, and one with rampant mobile communication, hacking etc.

The scary thing is that drones do not only have to be in the air. Ground drones will probably be the most ubiquitous in a city. Easier to hide.

I wonder if Faraday cages will be illegal? In an authoritarian future, they would seem to be perceived as only of use to terrorists. So booster bags could become more important for protection.

Nice demonstration of how our fear of terror creates a terrifying world. I’d pay to see this movie.

Genes can not be patented – true or false?

 by TexasGOPVote.com

The week in review: June 10-14
[Via SCOTUSblog]

The Court has transitioned to its end-of-Term schedule, releasing opinions on two action-packed days this week. We have seven opinions and one certiorari grant. That means there are just nineteen opinions to go before we put this Term to bed – and several of them raise exceptionally high-profile and contentious issues, including affirmative action, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, state voter ID laws, and same-sex marriage. Here’s the rundown of what happened this week.

This week’s headline decision is Justice Thomas’s opinion for a unanimous Court in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. The Court held that naturally occurring DNA segments cannot be patented, but it reached the opposite conclusion with regard to complementary DNA – also known as cDNA, which is essentially a synthesized replica of the protein-encoding parts of natural DNA, but not of the entire DNA sequence. Myriad Genetics had isolated two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, mutations in which correlate to a dramatically increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer; it then developed medical tests to detect the mutationsand therefore predict cancer. The company sought patents on the naturally occurring DNA sequences themselves, as well as on synthetic cDNA that it had created from the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Those patents effectively gave Myriad the sole right to isolate (or license others to isolate) the BRCA genes – which means that Myriad effectively held a monopoly on the ability to test for mutations in the genes. The patents also gave Myriad the sole right to create BRCA cDNA.

In yesterday’s much anticipated decision, the Court held that naturally occurring genes are not patentable, but cDNA is. The Court recognized the importance of isolating the natural BRCA genes, but it reasoned that “[g]roundbreaking, innovative, or even brilliant discovery does not by itself” justify a patent; instead, the question is whether a “new and useful . . . composition of matter” has been invented. Because the BRCA genes are part of the natural DNA sequence, the Court determined that by isolating the BRCA genes, “Myriad did not create anything,” and the natural BRCA genes could not be patented. However, because cDNA is created in a laboratory and does not occur in nature, those sequences could be patented.

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The Court’s decision will take some time to digest in its details. For example, it suggests that a gene made of DNA is not patentable. But if the RNA from that gene is converted into complementary DNA (cDNA) in the lab, then THAT gene made of DNA can be patented.

I imagine we have not heard the last of this, especially since it appears the court itself tried to make this a narrow ruling and not a generally applicable one.

In the meantime, don’t weep tears for Myriad. The costs for their tests seem high (around $3000 but are actually not that outrageous considering that the nature of the BRCA mutations requires them to find a few bases altered in a stretch of over 10,000, just about everyone with a BRCA mutation seems to have it in a different spot so every woman needs to have deep coverage over the entire region to be sure). It is not simply a quick sequencing check. 

And, what was not mentioned, was that the $3000 test also includes most of the costs for checking other family members. Because once Myriad knows where the exact mutations are for one woman, they can reaily check all the other female family members for minimal costs.

So, those who talk about Angelina having the money to pay for the test should also remember that her mother suffered from the same sort of cancer and her aunt just died of breast cancer. For around $3000, Myriad would have checked all three of them.

But the real value Myriad has now comes from the huge database it now has for BRCA mutations. No one else has such a resource and I expect them to use this over the near term.

In the mean time, I expect we have not seen the last court case on patents and life.

Did Snowden ‘erase’ his online presence? Read Shockwave Rider.

by Abode of Chaos

Edward Snowden the Invisible
[Via BAGnewsNotes]

Edward Snowden on Hong Kong hotel bed

HotelChatter.com sleuths hotel and room used for Guardian interview

screenshot – Edward Snowden Guardian Interview

The Hawaii rental

Photos of the woman identified as the girlfriend surfacing now (1, 2)

What is fascinating and unprecedented, at least as long as I’ve been doing the Bag, is the anonymity of Edward Snowden.  Given the aggressive and no-holds-barred nature of personality politics, gossip and online dish, not to mention the era of social networking and personal branding, how is it possible that almost three full internet days have gone by without a single photo of Snowden showing up online (outside of the images captured by the Guardian in a Hong Kong hotel room related to his interview)?

What you see above is what appears so far — at least, Google Image and Google News-wise.

[More]

If there is so much information about everyone online, why have we not seen more about Edward Snowden? Heck, why hasn’t the NSA ‘leaked’ anything that could damage him?

Within minutes of the identification of the Boston Bombers we had a plethora of material. Here, not much at all.

One of my favorite science fiction novels is Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. Published in 1975, it focussed on a protagonist who seems eerliy similar to Edward Snowden. Here is how Wikipedia describes  Nikc Haflinger:

The hero, Nick Haflinger, is a runaway from Tarnover, a government program intended to find, educate and indoctrinate highly gifted children to further the interests of the state in a future where quantitative analysis backed by the tacit threat of coercion has replaced overt military and economic power as the deciding factor in international competition.

Nick is able to use the skills he learned to make himself invisible to the system. So, as it collects instantaneous data on everyone else, he can move unseen.

So, now we have someone with the skills to call up information on anyone. He was very careful in how he released this information. Lots of planning went into it. He was careful with what he released, so far, where he was interviewed and what his plans were.

Is he now invisible?

Could he also make sure that any data about him was simply deleted? Is he undetectable to the very system he revealed?

Did he create backdoors that will allow him to prevent NSA from finding him no matter where he chose to hide? Is he even still in Hong Kong?

I do not know but read Shockwave Rider and you might get a better idea of the possibilities.

What happens when our TVs watch us and send the data to the NSA?

NSA Domestic Spying Program Makes Xbox One Even Scarier
[Via American Times]

The government has been spying on US citizens by tapping into the servers of American tech giants according to The Guardian—so much for making privacy a priority.

Revelations that the government has access to all of Verizon’s call ‘metadata’ have widened.

The Guardian is reporting that the government has had essentially unfettered access to the servers of most of the biggest American tech companies since the end of the Bush administration.

This access began in 2007 and includes tech giants like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.

[More]

New computer game consoles will have the ability to determine who is watching games and what they are doing. Biometric data will be collected.

If this is being sent to Microsoft severs, then it appears the NSA will also be collecting them.

Do we really want the government to be able to watch us at home when it wants to? This is a discussion we need to have.

Consequence of climate change – people cannot afford insurance

by Pam_Andrade

After Sandy, a dire choice: Lift home or face sky-high insurance, but many can’t afford either  
[Via | StarTribune.com]

George Kasimos has almost finished repairing flood damage to his waterfront home, but his Superstorm Sandy nightmare is far from over.

Like thousands of others in the hardest-hit coastal stretches of New Jersey and New York, his life is in limbo as he waits to see if tough new coastal rebuilding rules make it just too expensive for him to stay.

That’s because the federal government’s newly released advisory flood maps have put his Toms River home in the most vulnerable area — the “velocity zone.” If that sticks, he’d have to jack his house up 14 feet on stilts at a cost of $150,000 or face up to $30,000 a year in flood insurance premiums.

[More]

Why a loaded die is like climate change. Climate change is shifting the odds, resulting in huge financial effects. Do we decide that our whole society – which is responsible for climate change – helps pay for these effects or do we just leave those who happen to be on the losing end of the die toss to bear the brunt?

Higher sea waters mean that flood plains near the coast will change. This means that hones that used to stand outside the need for flood insurance are now inside. And the increased odds bring larger insurance premiums.

Which means that they now have two options: lift their homes on stilts above the flood level or pay for huge increases in flood insurance premiums.

If you chose to build in a flood plain, you go into it knowing the consequences. But when a flood plain moves into you, it can be devastating.

A simple home elevation can cost $60,000. Insurance premiums could be increased $30,000 a year. Government hel – help from all of us – is being constricted due to concerns abut the debt.

Many people are in denial:

They think Sandy was a fluke, a storm to end all storms, the kind they won’t ever see again. And they’re preparing to do battle with the government for the right to continue living just as they have for generations — in low-lying abodes that were never built to endure storms, let alone the fierce hurricanes of the 21st century.

But sea levels continue to rise. And it appears that current weather changes may drive more hurricanes up the eastern seaboard than into the Gulf. This will happen again.

And  while America has decided that it can help rebuild homes damaged by storms like this it has also decided to greatly reduce Federal subsidies for flood insurance, even for people who have the misfortune to now live where rising sea levels can reach them. 

We mandated higher premiums for those in a flood plain, shortened the revision times for determining where flood plains exist and removed lower rates that were grandfathered in. Now if the flood plain increases due to climate change, many people are just on their own. We decided that helping those hurt by increasing climate change was not as important as lowering the debt.

So many people living in what had been dry areas of the coast face some horrible options, including simply walking away from their homes because they cannot afford to pay for them anymore and no one will pay for the huge insurance premiums. Entire areas may soon be ghost towns because few can afford to live there.

The insurance companies know about climate change. That is why the rates are going up. Our attitude seems to be to just let those people who, through no fault of their own now live in a flood plain, to bear the full brunt of this change. One that will get larger as we move forward in this century.

I believe that since we are all responsible, we should all pay. But some Americans believe that only the unlucky should have to pay.

Members of Congress – both Republican and Democrat, in the House and in the Senate – are trying to fix this problem, introducing legislation that would ameliorate some of these huge insurance changes now affecting millions by making us all become part of the solution. And some of our conservative Americans want to keep things as they are, letting the unlucky deal with it.

Do we come together to help everyone or do we let the unlucky fend for themselves?

We need to make sure we have a very good conversation here because it will happen again and it will get worse. This can not be ignored or denied.

 

So what would you do if a drone coptor showed up outside your bedroom?

by Don McCullough

How Low Can Drones Go?
[Via Techdirt]

As we’ve pointed out in a few stories, drones aren’t necessarily something to worry about. Like any technology, they can be used for good and bad purposes, and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. But determining where exactly the line between acceptable and unacceptable lies is tricky, as the following story from the Capitol Hill Seattle blog shows:

This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield. I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day.

So how close does a drone have to be to someone’s home before it becomes intrusive? Clearly, at some height the air is part of the sky commons that belongs to everyone, as a famous 1946 US Supreme Court decision laid down:

The air is a public highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts at the idea.

The post continues:

After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away. My husband went to talk to the man on the sidewalk outside our home who was operating the drone with a remote control, to ask him to not fly his drone near our home. The man insisted that it is legal for him to fly an aerial drone over our yard and adjacent to our windows. He noted that the drone has a camera, which transmits images he viewed through a set of glasses. He purported to be doing “research”. We are extremely concerned, as he could very easily be a criminal who plans to break into our house or a peeping-tom.

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So, what happens when a citizen, standing on public sidewalks, operates a drone in the air over private property? How about if he was on his own property? What happens if he uploads video he took while operating the drone? What happens if you destroy his drone while it is operating over your property? Do you get to keep it if you capture it? Can you legally block the signal controlling his drone? Will there be a market for a directed device that can incapacitate someone’s drone?

Some interesting questions will be hitting the courts soon.

Senators may have overplayed their hand with Apple

by epSos.de

Tim Cook tells Congress why Apple won’t move $100 billion back home
[Via Ars Technica]

There’s a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company’s tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they’re holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International (AOI), which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world.

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While both Republicans and Democrats went after Tim Cook, the feedback on this article is fascinating. Usually when Apple is involved it is pretty evenly split between pro and con.

But in this case, almost everyone sees Apple as simply doing what Congress allows it. If Congress wants things to be different, then change the law.

Virtually no one was on the side of the senators.

If they expected this to be a launching point for going after Apple, I don’t think that is going to happen.

Our current government cannot properly be relied on with regard to copyright protection

by Orange County Archives
*I’m assuming that the Orange County Archives has the right to publish this as the movie came out in 1920 

A Framework For Copyright Reform
[Via Techdirt]

I watched a large part of the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property’s first hearing on copyright reform, and came away somewhat disappointed. While the panelists presented a variety of interesting viewpoints and worked hard to highlight areas of agreement, many of the Congressional Representatives were clearly confused about the law, the Constitution and the nature of the debate itself. I came away with a few key concerns, but also with some ideas for a framework that any debate on copyright should necessarily take. First up, the concerns:

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The Constitution never mentions protecting anything by using Copyright. Copyright is to be used to promote:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Too often our government sees copyright only as a right to make money, at the expense of the progress of science. At the moment, any corporate entity can have an exclusive right for 120 years.

I don’t mind money being involved and do not think everything should be free. But I do think the pendulum has gone too far and that protecting a flow of capital is more important than promoting progress.

I do not believe the original purpose of copyright is served by allowing non-creators of a work to control access for so much longer than anyone’s lifetime. Yet that is what our government is interested in – protecting the rights of corporations rather than promote progress.

The balance needs to shift back. As this article mentions, we are all content creators now. The entire arena is being disintermediated, decentralized and disrupted. Powerful monied interest threatened by this process are abusing Congress and copyright. Those that made their livelihood by marketing and distributing  the creative works of others should simply have less power to control copyright than they currently possess.

America has not seen copyrighted works enter the public domain since the 70s.  Just about anything since the early 20s is still covered by someone’s copyright. The ‘limited time’ was extended to 95  years to keep Disney happy. I expect that when Mickey Mouse comes up against this limit, Congress will just extend this ‘limited time.’

One detrimental example of the harm this does is the inability to determine what is really licensed or who holds copyright. One of my favorite documentaries – Hollywood by Brownlow – dealt with the early silent film era. Using archival material, It was a fabulous resource on a critical time in American history. None of us can legally watch it on our DVDs because it is not clear who holds copyright anymore for much of the archival material.

So many entities have come and gone over the last 100 years that it is simply impossible to know who has a legitimate copyright.

No matter how many people want to pay to watch this great documentary, copyright issues will keep it from appearing again. Only old videotapes from 20 years ago can be watched. But there are only used ones available for public sale. When they go, it will be lost to us. At least legal versions.

There are many works that people want to enjoy and will even pay for but cannot legally because no one knows who has the rights anymore. Searching out these questions has become too costly to make such publication worthwhile.

They will simply be lost to us. 

People create new versions of what is in the public domain and corporations simply claim they own it. We just saw a movie based on characters from a public domain works – Oz, the Great and Powerful – where huge amounts of money needed to be spent to fend of lawyers representing a work made decades after the original. They even haggled over the exact color of green that could be used.

Hard to see how anything but corporation coffers and lawyers pockets are being promoted here.

Perhaps in 2019 we will see some works from before 1923 lose their copyright. Or Disney and others will get it extended again. Corporations benefit but the rest of us do not. The progress of science and the useful arts are stymied when works are controlled well past the point where their authors and inventors are even alive.

Specialists required in any revolution. I’m the third type.

by Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara

The Three Types of Specialist Necessary for Any Revolution
[Via Daring Fireball]

Kottke, quoting Vonnegut.

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Could just three types of specialists really be responsible for any successful revolution? Even a scientific one?

First type – a true genius: “a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation.” By themselves they are just lunatics.

Second type – a thought leader: “a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad.” By themselves they are unsatisfied.

Third type – the integrator: “a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people.” By themselves they are ignored.

But together they change the world. At least that is the idea.

And I think there is a germ of an idea.

I fit in the third type and I am really good at it. But I’ve recognized that my skills often only have real impact when I connect with those of type 1 and 2.

By myself, I am often ignored. Any calls for change are put aside, the fear of change is too great.

But when my words are put into the mouth of the right person – often a thought leader – they get heard and acted on. And when I take the ideas of a genius and make them understandable for the group, miraculous things get done. The group wants change, they want a revolution.

Let’s figure out a way to connect these three together and see what happens. What important and useful changes could we produce?

Let’s revolutionize revolution! Who wants to help?

Going to Space Camp – How community changed the life of a young girl, first for ill and then for good.

Teenage chemistry enthusiast won’t be charged with felony, will go to space camp
[Via Boing Boing]

Kiera Wilmot — the Florida 16-year-old who created a small explosion just outside her school before classes started by mixing cleaning solution and tin foil (she was just curious, nobody was harmed) — will not be charged with a felony, after all. Florida State Attorneys dropped the charges against Wilmot yesterday. After her case garnered national attention, she ended up with a lawyer who has defended her mostly for free. There’s no word yet on whether she’ll be allowed to return to the school that expelled her and pressed charges in the first place.

[More]

Not a felon. Going to Space Camp. I just love stories like this.

This shows that new communities  created on the Internet can be smarter than zero-tolerance laws. 

First her community expelled her, threatened to send her to jail and possible mark her as a felon for her life. For something that hurt no one, that many people have done and that was at most a poor choice – something that teenagers really should be allowed to make. Because… zero-tolerance.

But, because the internet can create ad hoc communities of real social power, with tools to affect rapid change, it did not stop there. Strangers stepped up to raise their voices and to help her. She got a good lawyer to step up. The social pushback stopped the previous process and allowed cooler, smarter decisions to be made.

And what is really great is people did more than just raise their voices. There are tools to allow them to put their money where their mouth is.

So a fund was created to pay for her defense. Over $8000 was raised. After any remaining legal expenses are paid for, the money will be used in a trust for her education.

However the really great thing was started by Homer Hickam, the former NASA engineer whose story is told in October Sky – he built rockets as a teenager, really high powered ones. It would not be surprising to have seen him put in a similar position today as Kiera.

Homer set up a crowdfunding project to send Kiera and her sister to Space Camp! More than enough money has been rasied to send them. Homer just added this:

We have the girls scheduled now, their tuition paid, their flight suits purchased, and nearly everything arranged.  They’re excited and so are we!

What a great story. Instead of destroying this girl’s life, the community actually taught the lesson it needed to (get some oversight before any science work, just to double check?) and then provided her opportunities she did not even have before. 

And the rapidity at which this happened demonstrates that we are beginning to create the social norms to balance safety to a community vs freedom for the individual.

Instead of going to jail, Kiera is going to learn about space. Amazing.

iPhone encryption – so good the Feds cannot crack it

 by The U.S. Army

Police asking Apple to decrypt seized iPhones must wait their turn
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple is inundated with so many requests from law enforcement agencies to decrypt seized iPhones that officials must endure a waiting list before their case is handled.

[More]

And there is such a backlog that it can take 7 weeks for the Feds to get the iPhone cracked. 

Interesting that the iPhone is about to get clearance to be used by some Federal employees at the same time that its security is to great for other Federal employees to deal with.

The five grants that, because of conservative Representatives, could change US science forever

by MartialArtsNomad.com

Here are the five grants that has conservatives so upset they want to alter how research is done in the US.

• Award No. 1247824: “ Animals in National Geographic, 1888-2008″ ($227,437)
• Award No. 1230911: “Comparative Histories of Scientific Conservation: Nature, Science, and Society in Patagonian and Amazonian South America” ($195,761)
• Award No. 1230365: “The International Criminal Court and the Pursuit of Justice” ($260,001)
• Award No. 1226483: “Comparative Network Analysis: Mapping Global Social Interactions” ($435,000)
• Award No. 1157551: “Regulating Accountability and Transparency in China’s Dairy Industry” ($152,464)

You only have to read the conservatives online to see exactly why they dislike these grants – not because of the intellectual content of the work but because of their personal political views. So now we use political debate to examine grants

And political opinion, not facts, to determine funding.

These five grants represent  a minuscule number of funded grants and tiny amount of funding the NSF provides a year. They gave out 11,000 grants last year and have a budget of $7,000,000,000l The total of these grants are about $1,300,000 averaging over 2 years  in length – so $650,000 a year. This is 0.009% oif the total budget

So, let’s assume that the number  of grants everyone can agree are ‘bad’ are 100-times greater than this (a big if since many people feel these 5 grants are fine). That still means less than 1% of all the funding NSF makes is a mistake.

Even if we could find 500 grants that we all agreed were bogus, 99% of the grants would be acceptable to some Americans. 

Even assuming these 5 grants are totally worthless – not very likely – are we really going to overhaul the research engine so we can let politicians decide which gets funded and which does not?

Is the problem really bad enough to require the sticky hands of politicians to be responsible for research funding? Because that is what conservatives in Congress are proposing.

The government WILL find a way to read your digital communications in real time unless we stop them

Google, Facebook, and others could face fines over government wiretap refusals
[Via The Verge - All Posts]

A new bill being drafted by a secret government task force would impose fines on internet companies — such as Facebook, Google, gaming and VoIP companies — if they don’t comply with court orders to allow law enforcement to wiretap on user communications, The Washington Post reports. According to the The Post, the legislation is being written up to address the FBI’s recent complaints that many web companies don’t or can’t comply with court orders forcing them to “intercept online communications” in real-time. The FBI calls this the “going dark” problem.

[More]

Legislation is being created to allow the government to access our email, text messages, etc. Ostensibly to keep us safer.

The article does not mention that the message system Apple uses on iPhones – iMessage – is encrypted in ways that does not permit real-time access. even if Apple wanted to. So what are they going to do? Fine Apple into oblivion.

If this happens, I will work to encrypt everything I sen don the Internet. It may not do much but it is something. Of course, they will then move to wipe out encrption.

And, as the article states, adding in all these backdoors makes everything LESS safe, opening entire systems up to hackers. Making us ‘safer’ demonstrably makes our networks less safe.