September 15, 2014

Who You Callin' An Organizing Principle?!?!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-You-Callin-An-Organiz-by-William-Boardman-Bomber_Bombing_Congress_Congress-140914-777.html



Washington's ISIS War Drums: Do Stupid Stuff, Do It Now!

Who You Callin' An Organizing Principle?!?!
By William Boardman
General News 9/14/2014 at 15:10:49

As Hillary Clinton was widely quoted as saying recently, "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."

Maybe others have pointed out that this is a pretty stupid statement, but that's far from the conventional wisdom. Think about the levels of stupidity here. Only "Great nations"? What, small nations don't need to get their acts together? And who says the United States is a "great" nation and in what sense is it great and isn't spouting a version of the American exceptionalism cliche just another way of doing stupid stuff? As organizing principles go, "Don't do stupid stuff" is a great place to start. Then all you need to do is figure out what's stupid and don't do it: like not voting for war in Iraq in 2002.

What does the aspiring President Clinton offer for her own organizing principle? In her book Hard Choices, she writes: "Making policy is a balancing act. Hopefully we get it more right than wrong." That means even less than "Don't do stupid stuff." That pretty much means: "we're bound to do stupid stuff but we hope we won't do too much stupid stuff."

Of course that makes good political sense coming from the woman who, as Senator Clinton, voted to go to war in Iraq. As if that wasn't totally knowable, in advance, as doing stupid stuff, really stupid stuff. That vote was a clever trap for intimidated Democrats, afraid to stand up to stupid stuff. Senator Clinton was not alone in that rush to war. She, along with Senators Kerry, McCain, Biden, Hagel, McConnell, Reid, and 70 other Senators, voted to support the administration lying us into that war on transparently dishonest evidence. It's kind of cute, in a darkly disastrous way, that these same wrong-headed people are again among those braying most loudly for more war now. It makes a sort of amoral sense, since today's mess is a continuation of the war they voted for because they presumably didn't think it was stupid stuff that would last more than a decade.

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Like lemmings, our politicians are drawn to war and those fuckers take us with them.

September 14, 2014

Analysis Of Volunteer's Metadata Stream Reveals His Life In Detail, Allows Passwords To Be Guessed

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140910/06590828478/analysis-volunteers-metadata-stream-reveals-his-life-detail-allows-passwords-to-be-guessed.shtml

Analysis Of Volunteer's Metadata Stream Reveals His Life In Detail, Allows Passwords To Be Guessed
from the not-"just"-metadata dept
Privacy
by Glyn Moody
Fri, Sep 12th 2014 7:39pm

Three years ago, Techdirt wrote about how German politician Malte Spitz obtained six months' worth of basic geolocation data for his mobile phone. He then gave this to the German newspaper Die Zeit, which produced a great visualization of his travels during this time. That showed clearly how much was revealed from such basic data. Since then, of course, metadata has assumed an even greater importance, as it has emerged that the NSA routinely gathers huge quantities of it about innocent citizens. More chillingly, we also know that people are killed purely because of their metadata. But what exactly does metadata show about us? We now have a better idea thanks to the generosity of Ton Siedsma from Holland. He has allowed researchers to access not just the geolocation data of his mobile phone, but all of its metadata:

From one week of logs, we were able to attach a timestamp to 15,000 records. Each time Ton's phone made a connection with a communications tower and each time he sent an e-mail or visited a website, we could see when this occurred and where he was at that moment, down to a few metres. We were able to infer a social network based on his phone and e-mail traffic. Using his browser data, we were able to see the sites he visited and the searches he made. And we could see the subject, sender and recipient of every one of his e-mails.

That's very similar to the sort of thing governments around the world are now routinely demanding. Here's what the researchers were able to find out about various aspects of his life as a result. The basics:

Ton is a recent graduate in his early twenties. He receives e-mails about student housing and part-time jobs, which can be concluded from the subject lines and the senders. He works long hours, in part because of his lengthy train commute. He often doesn’t get home until eight o'clock in the evening. Once home, he continues to work until late.

His work:

Based on the data, it is quite clear that Ton works as a lawyer for the digital rights organisation Bits of Freedom. He deals mainly with international trade agreements, and maintains contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a few Members of Parliament about this issue. He follows the decision-making of the European Union closely. He is also interested in the methods of investigation employed by police and intelligence agencies. This also explains his interest in news reports about hacking and rounded-up child pornography rings.

His social networks:

From a social network analysis based on Ton's e-mail traffic, it is possible for us to discern different groups to which he belongs. These clusters are formed by his three e-mail accounts. It may be the case that the groups would look a bit different if we were also to use the metadata from his phone. However, we agreed to not perform any additional investigation, such as actively attempting to discover the identity of the user of a particular number, so as to protect the privacy of those in Ton’s network.