I hope to generate a meta-level discussion about wisdom and strategies when using technology. What I mean is we should discuss what technology means to us, how we need to adapt and re-orient our old frames-of-mind to the new digital world. Some things are radically different in technology, some things are the same. How to tell the difference?
For example, on February 14, 2008 United States federal judge Jeffrey White ordered a website be shut down completely. It is called Wikileaks, and it’s purpose is to offer an online safe haven for whistle blowers. It allows/encourages users to post documents that prove wrongdoings by companies and governments. Swiss Bank Julius Baer discovered internal documents had been uploaded to wikileaks. The documents included many damning things about the bank, but also had private customer information. Baer sued for the site to be shut down, and Judge White agreed, ordering the entire website be taken offline.
The first problem was that the judge should have ordered the specific offending documents removed. Instead he ordered the entire website be taken offline. The site’s ISP complied, and the effort was worthless because the site files were up again the next day via a foreign host. Similar efforts to squash the notorious Pirate Bay site have resulted in the same evasive tactic. The judge clearly demonstrated how technologically clueless he was with this order. This would be similar to Melaleuca being shut down completely if a couple of their products had ingredient problems. This overreach would never happen in the real world, but it happens in the digital world because of technological cluelessness.
The second problem is the free speech issues at stake in this case. Time magazine described wikileaks as potentially “…could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.” Many lawyers and civil rights groups have been protesting this decision. Judge White recently reversed his own order, acknowledging he had not considered the first amendment issues. The Swiss bank has also dropped the lawsuit, obviously feeling the sting of being exposed as backwards-thinking. What do you think? Should a judge be able to order an organization to completely shut down operations because of one or two potential problems that have no bearing on the rest of that organization?
Another example is when a person tried crossing the border into Canada a few months ago. A government agent apparently searched the person’s laptop and saw child pornography. They arrested the guy, but when they returned to the laptop to do forensic evidence collection, the operating system had gone into a sleep or shutdown. It required a password to open, and the password was encrypted with PGP, meaning it would take an army of crackers a few hundred years to crack the password, meaning it is virtually impossible to crack with today’s technology. It is the same technology Joseph Edward Duncan III used to encrypt his laptop, which authorities desperately want to crack and see what other evils Duncan recorded.
So they go back to the “suspect” and ask for his password. Apparently most of these idiots will actually just give their password and the case goes forward. This guy refused to give his password, and invoked his fifth amendment right to not self-incriminate himself. The courts and lawyers are now going round and round over this legal question, if he should be forced to give up the password.
On one hand, I can understand his use of the fifth amendment. When they get to his laptop files, they will probably be able to convict him of ten times the crimes than they can now. According to our bill of rights, he should not be forced to give up the password which will self-incriminate himself. However, given that at least one border agent already witnessed at least some of the child pornography images, couldn’t they just testify what they saw and couldn’t a jury convict the guy based on the agent observations? I understand that prosecutors have to send child pornography images into the FBI and prove they are of real children because a defense is that the pictures are artistic, not real. However, if I were on a jury, and they presented a couple border agents who swear they saw these pictures, and they explain the PGP password issue and how the suspect invoked the 5th amendment, I would figure he was hiding more and I would vote to convict. What do you think?
Another example related to this is the issue of TSA authorities searching laptop files as part of air traveler inspections. They are practicing this rampantly, but at least one judge said they should not. He reasoned that digital files are an extension of our minds, so digital files should have the same protection as our thought and be protected from self-incrimination. I think that is a completely ridiculous idea. Digital files are the same thing as written documents, whether hand-written or typed. However the law currently treats physical documents is the same exact way the law should treat virtual documents. This judge seems to think digital documents are somehow magical.
On the other hand, there are serious issues related to TSA searches of laptops. If I work for the TSA and I see Carl Icahn or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates come through, I’m going to stop them and search their laptops just for stock tips to make myself rich. If I see Steve Jobs coming through, I want to search his laptop for evidence of hot new Apple products. If I see Paris Hilton or Britney Spears come through, I want to search their laptops for partying photos I can sell to tabloids.
The TSA claims they are looking for child pornography or terrorist-related evidence, but they also admit they often search these laptops out of owner view. This presents serious ethical issues for government workers, and I bet it will not be long before a scandal erupts where TSA employees inappropriately make money off of what they find in these laptops.
What I’m getting at are how our society approaches technology, and how we think up new paradigms or try to apply old wisdoms to new technology. Sometimes old wisdoms are analogous, sometimes they are completely wrong. These stories crop up in the news from time to time, so I hope we can discuss these issues as they come up, and gain a greater understanding of living in our digital age.
What do you think?
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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Here’s another example of being stupid with technology: copy protection, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
Metallica sued three universities after finding their copyrighted work being traded on Napster. They were seen as suing their own fans, and lost a lot of fans as a result.
The RIAA failed to adapt to the digital world by providing a consumer-friendly business model for people to buy digital tracks, and so users discovered digital piracy. The RIAA has tried for how many years now to put the genie back in the bottle by suing fans and trying all sorts of copy-protection schemes. The copy protections always fail miserably, getting cracked immediately and only serving to lock down the honest users.
There was the case of Sony music releasing CDs which contained copy protection that was so malicious it installed a rootkit on your computer (meaning it hid itself from users), and that rootkit opened security holes for hackers. This meant you bought your overpriced Celine Dion CD, and after putting it into your computer your computer was more prone to viruses, spyware, trojans, and keystroke loggers. Thanks Sony!
Only lately is the RIAA seen as realizing their mistake, finally allowing un-copy-protected MP3s to be sold through Amazon.com for a reasonable price. The MPAA is going through the same mistakes also.
What do you think?
I’m not sure where you came up with TSA searches of passengers laptops,(I’ve never heard of this personally) but I travel extensively with my laptop and I’ve never been asked to have it searched, nor have I heard of co-workers that travel at least bi-weekly that have had their laptops searched. Perhaps this was an isolated incident? Also, I don’t see how a passengers laptop could be searched “out of the owners view” to begin with. With the time it takes to boot up and search through somebody’s files, there’s just no way the passenger wouldn’t see this.
When travelling, I don’t let my laptop out of my sight, even though I have a type of “low-jack” installed on it incase it’s ever stolen. And I honestly don’t think they have the right to go through your laptop without just cause. Granted I would never have any pornograhic images on my machine, yet I still wouldn’t give them consent to search it either.
TSA agents……I can’t stand em! Their smug, rude and think their above the law.
Just laugh at them next time knowing that they only make about $28,000 a year here in Idaho Falls. Maybe they are rude and ticked off about not getting paid more.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been hasseled by the TSA at airports across the country. (perhaps that should be a new thread!) They’ve taken toiletries away from me because they were 3.2 ounces instead of 3oz or less, or because it wasn’t in a zip lock bag. I’ve had finger nail clippers, cardboard nail files and a half a dozen other ridiculous items confiscated. Don’t even think of carrying a bottle of water on board. It’s gotten completely out of hand and paranoid at the airports these days.
I remember back after the shoe-bomb incident occurred, they cracked down hard on people removing their shoes while going through the checkpoint. However, in the beginning it wasn’t mandatory and it even said on the TSA website, “you may be asked, but it’s not mandatory”. I would keep a printout of that from their website and not remove my shoes and man would that piss them off! They’ve since changed their tune and their website and now made it mandatory to remove your shoes each and every time.
It’s just such a hassle to fly anymore and their really not protecting anybody any better now than they did back before 9/11. All they’ve done is slowed down the boarding process and made air travel a pain in the keister and raised our rates to pay for it all.
I laugh at airport security and TSA and how stupid it is. They take anything that might be used as a sharp knife at the security checkpoint. Then in the larger airport you walk into the boarding areas with all kinds of restaurants where you eat with utensils including knives. Not to mention the things you can buy and improvise into weapons at the gift stores.
I agree that we as a society are not tech savvy, and don’t think of changing some of our responses/patterns of behavior, or actions based upon the marvels of the current age.
About the laptop and child porn that they can’t break into…I am disgusted but I agree that he has the right to invoke the 5th, and withhold the password.
I’m hesitant to say it would be a successful prosecution based upon what the agent saw, because that kind of prosecution scares me. “No, your honor, we have no evidence, can’t produce the evidence, but our guy saw it, honest he did!” But maybe it’s done all the time in various types of cases and I’m naive.
I don’t think TSA should have the right to look into your digital files, really…I mean, they may rifle through your papers but are they truly authorized to READ them while they’re checking for security risks?
You said: “The TSA claims they are looking for child pornography or terrorist-related evidence” on the laptops. This isn’t Homeland Security trying to make my flight safer, this is the Gestapo!
You can tell I do not fly (never have, hopefully never will) at my old age (I’m an idiot, I agree) but now I’ve only got more reasons NOT to…
I have never downloaded music or other content that I did not pay for. However, I know plenty who do this (and they download pirated everything else they can get) and I don’t think it’s okay in any way. I guess I’m lucky…If I didn’t have a spouse who was a techie I’d probably have a pretty hard time with some of the download sites, so I guess I can understand the frustration in a way.
My comment references the discussion on the city wide web cam network. It is my understanding that audio recordings are admissible when obtained as a function of legal video. So if I place a camera somewhere, say on my vehicle as a security measure, and park my vehicle in a lawful place, and my camera records audio along with the video, then I can lawfully record peoples conversations in public…So don’t just worry about whether you are going to make out in a park, but consider whether you plan to talk in public, and who might be listening, and whether that is a concern.
When taking my shoes off at an airport recently, I alarmed another passenger by pointing out how idiotic it was, when I had just driven an SUV into a parking garage and left it there – I could have parked a bomb – but now was having to take my shoes off to protect us all! How stupid is that? The other passenger suggested I not make any further references on the topic. The screeners didn’t even notice my comment or the other passengers discomfort.
And furthermore, doesn’t making people take their shoes off just signal that they don’t have those devices that sense particles per million of substances like cocaine or explosives?
And if we really had ‘homeland security” wouldn’t that have reduced the flow of drugs across our borders?
Woman says TSA forced piercings removal
LINK: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_us/nipple_rings;_ylt=Ap5DnC9aU_HkHPY8JfTaMAms0NUE
Net neutrality is another issue where an amazing amount of stupidity has occurred the past few years.
Net neutrality has been the historical fertile soil of the Internet. It means your unknown website gets treated the same as any other big-name website in terms of delivering traffic. A user requesting your website will get it delivered to their browser at the same rate of speed as when the user requests the CNN or Google website. Net neutrality means digital bits are treated the same, and nobody’s bits are treated better than anyone else.
Then along comes AT&T, and some other old school Internet backbone companies who want to change this. They want to charge more for delivering some website traffic, or be able to slow down the delivery of website who do not pay more to the backbone carriers.
At first this seems to be market-driven, hey what’s wrong with being able to pay to get to the front of the line? What’s wrong with being able to pay for premium service? If a website takes in a lot more traffic, shouldn’t they have to pay their fair share of that increased traffic?
The problem that these people fail to acknowledge is that high traffic companies already pay more for their traffic, they pay more in bigger bandwidth pipes to carry their data out. YouTube had difficulty getting sold for awhile because of the huge bandwidth costs they incurred each month for all those video deliveries. Consumers are already paying tiered rates based on the bandwidth they want coming into their homes. The companies who own the Internet pipes are already getting paid at both ends proportionally to the amount of traffic which can squeeze through.
So why the ruckus? Companies like AT&T and Comcast just want to make more money, they don’t feel like they are getting the lion’s share they ought to for the commodity service they provide.
At first, some supporters said it was fine for network providers to discriminate bits based on who pays more, because we have free market choices. If your broadband provider slows Google or eBay traffic because they are not getting kickbacks, you just change providers, right?
Wrong. We know the broadband provider market is still limited. You do not have a wide choice of good broadband providers. When you get past the appearance of choices in southeast Idaho, you discover that Qwest is the only major backbone provider here. So if Qwest decided to throttle website traffic based on kickbacks, all local resellers (MicroServ, CableOne, BridgeMaxx, etc.) would have their traffic throttled also.
Comcast is an example of stupidly playing around with bit throttling. They were accused of slowing down bitTorrent traffic. They denied it up and down the board. Then some smart people ran some tests and proved without any doubt that Comcast was indeed throttling the bitTorrent traffic. Comcast switched to saying they were administering their network, uhhh-huhh.
Then Congress held hearings on the matter. Comcast got caught stuffing the hearings with their own employees and homeless people they paid to hog seats so people actually interested in the proceedings could not attend. Some of these homeless people were photographed sleeping in their seats.
This is an issue not just to preserve the neutrally fertile soil of the Internet, but it is also a racketeering problem since Comcast wants to sell high priced cable video and they could potentially slow down video sites like YouTube. What if your local ISP decides they don’t want you watching or reading some things online? It is as slippery a slope as there ever was.
There is also the issue of these ISP providers advertising “unlimited downloads” then cutting off your service at 200 GB per month. There is the issue of some companies fighting peer to peer technologies (called P2P), while others like Verizon study the issue and come out with P4P which is P2P but works better and does not impact the provider’s network as much as P2P. Guess which line of thinking will get which company ahead of the competition?
In Newark I had my 2 inch pocket knife confiscated and then went to the steak house and had a steak … with a STEAK KNIFE! Now, I could put it in my carry-on and get on the plane.
HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?????
If, say, 5 guys do this … HELLOOOOOOOOOO????
And if they have bad intentions??????
HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?????
I don’t know what services Comcast offers in IF area, but just a note of caution, here in Northern California many Comcast users who relied on Comcast for their home phone service were suprised to learn during our winter storms that when the power was knocked out so was their phone service.
What penalties did Comcast suffer as a result of paying people to crowd the hearings?
I agree, Snarkyboy, that is completely absurd. At my last trip to the airport I had a sealed container of liquid in a backpack, no-one checked it’s contents while I stood there barefoot with my SUV parked in their garage. Makes me want to become a security consultant, but then, security is clearly not really the objective.
I haven’t been to Newarks airport in years, but the majority of airports in this country have their restaraunts, stores & gift shops located outside of the security checkpoints. Meaning if you have a lay over or you want to grab a quick bite, you’ll have to walk past the security check point to eat or shop and then go back through security to get to your gate.
(btw….you should have expected any size knife to get confiscated) Now nail clippers….that one boggles my mind.
I know people who use bitTorrent quite a bit. Maybe ComCast’s efforts in this area is a morals enforcement, in a way?
And I’m also interested in what happened when they were busted for stuffing the hearings, too…anything other than a pink face for a few days?
Are you saying that Qwest owns the equipment, or are they the supplier and those other companies are the middle men, for how we access the internet?
CR67, SFO is a major airport, and when I was there last week the sit-down restaurant at our domestic terminal was INside the security gate, ie knives could go straight from table to plane.
If you notice I said “the majority”….but thanks for the tip.
Your welcome. Why is the steak knife issue being overlooked?
The thing about bitTorrent is that there are illegitimate uses and legitimate uses, and you would have to sniff packet by packet and do other verifications to see if it is legitimate or not.
I’ll have to look if Comcast was reprimanded for stuffing the seats. I think I heard the congreesmen were upset and planned to hold another hearing but I doubt Comcast got more than a grumbling out of it.
Qwest is the backbone provider in our area, everyone else is a reseller. Qwest is the one who delivers the Internet here, even to the universities. As far as I know they support the un-neutral bit policies which AT&T and Comcast are pushing for, but Qwest has not been aggressive about it, probably letting the others get bloodied in the fight and see how it turns out.
Just got back from SFO, where I took up the Steak Knife issue INside the Security Gate area with a pilot, as we stood in front of the restaurant where one can obtain such items. I was prompted to do so after finding key-chain finger nail clippers at the gift shop INside the Security Gate.
With a look of great disgust, he said “Tell me about it. I deal with it every day. Americans are totally unprotected. If we were serious, we’d have what they do in Europe. Go to any Airport there, and you will see Security carrying Machine Guns all over.”
With cockpit doors that have been secured much better and pilots being able to carry firearms now, a steak knife should be the least of your worries. If a group of passengers can’t overpower a man with a steak knife, (especially after 9/11), then we’ve got much deeper issues to deal with imo.
Sony BMG, throwing tantrums for years now about piracy of their products, busted by their own tech support using pirated software:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080331-sony-bmgs-hypocrisy-company-busted-for-using-warez.html
Sony BMG was raided, and up to 47% of Sony BMG’s software may be pirated. The tech support company is suing Sony BMG for both $475k and to make an example of them.
Oh, the irony! Certainly Sony BMG is a rich company, they could afford all the software they need, what drove them to piracy? Keep in mind this is the same company which was responsible for installing malicious rootkit software on music listener’s computers.
Sooooo, I guess piracy is okay for them but not the rest of us? Or if I get sued by them for piracy can I just point this out in court, say I’m just following their fine corporate example?
Didja hear about that girl at Rocky Mountain Middle School who sent a pic of herself topless to her boyfriend? You can guess how quickly that pic got spread around school. She reported it to the principal, first lying and claiming her boyfriend PhotoShopped her head onto a nude body, later admitting she lied and took the picture herself and emailed it herself.
The investigation is still ongoing, but “they” are hinting the boys who had the pic on their cellphones may get charged with possessing child pornography, meaning 13 year old boys who received a pic of their classmate, taken and given by that classmate, may have to register as sex offenders.
The boys are certainly culpable for having and spreading the pic, but what about the girl’s responsibility? If the boys are going to be charged with anything, the girl should get charged first for CREATING and DISTRIBUTING the child pornography before the boys get charged with anything.
Most disappointing is how District 93 Superintendent Chuck Shackett is responding to this incident, saying he may ban all cellphones from all the schools. The pic was taken after school hours, so the original incident has nothing to do with school business. The only concern District 93 has is that the phones on school property had the pic. If the district has problems with student drivers, why haven’t they banned students from driving to school?
Shackett should use this as a “teaching moment”. Banning the phones won’t stop the behavior, it will just leave students with less ability to learn about how to use and not use technology. Maybe ethics should be taught in schools again. Certainly ethics should be taught in technology classes at least. Teach kids about inappropriate uses of technology, with this incident a prime example. This “teaching moment” can also extend to parents. Host a class at back to school night where parents are shown how to check their kids’ cell phones, emails, myspace pages, and digital files for inappropriate content.
Rather than pushing this problem out of the district’s sight and mind, Shackett should demonstrate leadership by meeting the problem head on and fighting it.
I’m a little curious how this one hit the news, someone must have tipped them off. Parents, you may (or may not) be surprised to know this is happening in other schools with this age group, and older. (I speak from former employment). We had another SE Idaho school where the boy and girl taped themselves having sex, he invited some buddies over to watch it. The whole peer group found it funny, needless to say the parents didn’t. We dealt with it and it didn’t make local or national news like the Texas case today. Teens and parents really need to be aware of the repercussions from taking video or pictures of yourselves. How do you know a friend of a friend won’t pass it to his uncle who is a pedophile? He’d know right where to find you if your personal info was included with the picture! And if he doesn’t find you, he’s got a live photo of a local girl. Scary thought….. If I was to punish anyone, it’d be the insensitive boyfriend who thought he was cool forwarding it to his friends. But how many of us were bright at age 13? I did a lot of dumb stuff too.
cautionary tale: Never, ever take a picture of yourself or others naked. Or half-clothed.
No good can come of it.
That is another great point. There are probably dozens if not hundreds of similar nude pics of teenager girls being distributed in the same manner around our local high schools. This one we know about because the girl reported it. How many others are out there?
The schools and the parents should do a sweep of all the students’ cell phones and check for these images and videos. I betcha many more will be found.
This is what happens when you give young teenagers mobile devices that capture pics/video and can share with other mobile devices, then fail to talk to those kids about how and how not to use the technology. Silly parents, your kids are going to be porn stars!
its not necessarily the parents fault. kids throughout history have disobeyed their parents. it happens, get over it. nobody was harmed in this incident and i dont see any charges coming out of this. If they do than i say shame on the prosecuters. let the parents discipline their kids and lesson learned. if anything, shame on the boyfriend who forwarded it to his friends.