I am Such an Asshole

I am at a "Rubiks" cubing competition with my son, and this time, for the first time, Sharon^* is with us.

She made the comment that she felt like she was in a room of people like Charlie.

I replied, "You mean virgins?"

When I informed Charlie of my bon mot, we was unamused.

(on edit) This was the River Hill Fall 2015 cubing competition, and the world record for solving a 3x3 cube was broken ……… twice, with the final record breaking the 5 second barrier.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

This is So Depressing

Rep Steve Russel (R-OK) just delivered a stirring speech in support of tolerance and of aiding the refugees, which invoked American exceptionalism, and our shame from our treatment of refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Later, he cast a vote in favor of the so called "Safe Act", which would exclude Syrian refugees.

I am tempted to hit myself in the head with a hammer, because it will feel so good when I stop.

There is No Evidence that Mass Surveillance Makes Us Safe

This is not an exaggeration/

Pro Publica examined almost a decade of mass surveillance, and could not any meaningful benefit derived from drinking from the data fire hose:

Current and former government officials have been pointing to the terror attacks in Paris as justification for mass surveillance programs. CIA Director John Brennan accused privacy advocates of “hand-wringing” that has made “our ability collectively internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.” Former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden said, “In the wake of Paris, a big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the scariest thing in the room.”

Ultimately, it’s impossible to know just how successful sweeping surveillance has been, since much of the work is secret. But what has been disclosed so far suggests the programs have been of limited value. Here’s a roundup of what we know.

An internal review of the Bush administration’s warrantless program – called Stellarwind – found it resulted in few useful leads from 2001–2004, and none after that. New York Times reporter Charlie Savage obtained the findings through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and published them in his new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post–9/11 Presidency:

[The FBI general counsel] defined as useful those [leads] that made a substantive contribution to identifying a terrorist, or identifying a potential confidential informant. Just 1.2 percent of them fit that category. In 2006, she conducted a comprehensive study of all the leads generated from the content basket of Stellarwind between March 2004 and January 2006 and discovered that zero of those had been useful.

In an endnote, Savage then added:

The program was generating numerous tips to the FBI about suspicious phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and it was the job of the FBI field offices to pursue those leads and scrutinize the people behind them. (The tips were so frequent and such a waste of time that the field offices reported back, in frustration, “You’re sending us garbage.”)

This isn't security, it's security theater, and the victories it achieves are in battles between for budget money from Congress. 

More IP Idiocy

The Swiss charity the Anne Frank Fonds will be atempting to add her father as co-author to the book in an attempt to expand the copyright term, which has the effect of preventing public posting of the work which otherwise would have happened on 1 January:

When Otto Frank first published his daughter’s red-checked diary and notebooks, he wrote a prologue assuring readers that the book mostly contained her words, written while hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex of a factory in Amsterdam.

But now the Swiss foundation that holds the copyright to “The Diary of Anne Frank” is alerting publishers that her father is not only the editor but also legally the co-author of the celebrated book.

The move has a practical effect: It extends the copyright from Jan. 1, when it is set to expire in most of Europe, to the end of 2050. Copyrights in Europe generally end 70 years after an author’s death. Anne Frank died 70 years ago at Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp, and Otto Frank died in 1980. Extending the copyright would block others from being able to publish the book without paying royalties or receiving permission.

This sort of sh%$ is getting out of hand.

IP protections have become more and excessive, and they have nothing to do with the intended purpose of IP protections, which is to encourage innovation and creativity.

The New York Times Calls Out Intelligence Officials for Exploiting the Paris Attacks to Further their Anti-Privacy Agenda

Seeing as how the Times is the very much the voice of the conventional wisdom, so when they have excoriated intelligence officials' opportunistic statements following the Paris attacks, it implies that there has been a shift in customary thinking:

It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that to a new and disgraceful low.

Speaking less than three days after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed 129 and injured hundreds more, Mr. Brennan complained about “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”

What he calls “hand-wringing” was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans’ phone records. In June, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection of domestic phone data by the government (but not the collection of other data, like emails and the content of Americans’ international phone calls) and requires the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make its most significant rulings available to the public.
These reforms are only a modest improvement on the Patriot Act, but the intelligence community saw them as a grave impediment to antiterror efforts. In his comments Monday, Mr. Brennan called the attacks in Paris a “wake-up call,” and claimed that recent “policy and legal” actions “make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.”

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

………

These reforms are only a modest improvement on the Patriot Act, but the intelligence community saw them as a grave impediment to antiterror efforts. In his comments Monday, Mr. Brennan called the attacks in Paris a “wake-up call,” and claimed that recent “policy and legal” actions “make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.”

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

………
In truth, intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before — only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public. There is no dispute that they and law enforcement agencies should have the necessary powers to detect and stop attacks before they happen. But that does not mean unquestioning acceptance of ineffective and very likely unconstitutional tactics that reduce civil liberties without making the public safer.

That was a major case of whup ass that was unloaded on the leaders of the US state security apparatus.

Basic Common Sense

Over at Washington's Blog, they make a very good point, "If We Want To Stop Terrorism, We Should Stop SUPPORTING Terrorists."

Just read it. It covers all the bases, including the many misdeeds of the House of Saud.

Traitors

And no, I am not talking about treason against the United States, which is, as I have noted before, very specifically defined in the Constitution, the only crime so defined.

Rather, I am suggesting that the House vote to exclude Syrian refugees is treason against the whole of humanity, which necessary has a less specific definition:

Responding to increased fears of terrorism in the United States following the Paris attacks, the House of Representatives passed a Republican-backed bill Thursday that would temporarily freeze Syrian and Iraqi refugees' entry into the United States and revamp the vetting process. The bill passed 289 to 137, with near-unanimous support from Republicans and 47 Democrats backing the measure.

………

The bill "would immediately shut down resettlement of refugees from the Syria and Iraq region," Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Wednesday. "This rash reaction ignores the fact that all of the Paris attackers identified thus far are either French or Belgian, and that many terrorist threats are homegrown." A Syrian passport was discovered by the body of one of the Paris attackers, but French officials said soon afterward that it was a forgery.

The bill does not explicitly halt admission of Syrian refugees, a response that some Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), called for this week. But it does require additional vetting of refugees by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, without specifying the procedures. Implementing the bill "would cause a pause" in the admission of refugees, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

It would also increase the FBI's role in the screening process and require the secretary of homeland security, the FBI director, and the director of national intelligence to personally certify to Congress that each individual refugee is "not a threat" to the United States.

I'm sure that someone out there is going to talk about the reality of politics, but most of these districts are safe enough that the only way that a caught on camera eating babies.

When I make quick look at the list, a few names stick out;

• Patrick Murphy, who was a Republican bankster until he wanted to run for Congress, and is now the establishment's choice to run for Florida Senate.
• Steve Israel, former Blue Dog who has been single minded in attempting to restore that caucus.
• Marcy Kaptur, who defeated Dennis Kucinich in the primary after they were redistricted together.
• Dan Lipinski, who inherited the seat from his father, and is the most reactionary Democrat in Congress.

There are a couple of Reps on this list who are not complete tools, like Louise Slaughter, but it doesn't matter.

This vote is that bad.

After the break is a list of the Dems who voted for this.

• Pete Aguilar (CA-31)
• Brad Ashford (NE-02)
• Ami Bera (CA-07)
• Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
• Julia Brownley (CA-26)
• Cheri Bustos (IL-17)
• John Carney (DE-AL)
• Gerry Connolly (VA-11)
• Jim Cooper (TN-05)
• Jim Costa (CA-16)
• Joe Courtney (CT-02)
• Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
• John Delaney (MD-06)
• Lloyd Doggett (TX-35)
• Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02)
• John Garamendi (CA-03)
• Gwen Graham (FL-02)
• Gene Green (TX-29)
• Janice Hahn (CA-44)
• Jim Himes (CT-04)
• Steve Israel (NY-03)
• Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
• Bill Keating (MA-09)
• Ron Kind (WI-03)
• Annie Kuster (NH-02)
• Jim Langevin (RI-02)
• Dan Lipinski (IL-03)
• Dave Loebsack (IA-02)
• Stephen Lynch (MA-08)
• Sean Maloney (NY-18)
• Patrick Murphy (FL-18)
• Rick Nolan (MN-08)
• Donald Norcross (NJ-01)
• Scott Peters (CA-52)
• Collin Peterson (MN-07)
• Jared Polis (CO-02)
• Kathleen Rice (NY-04)
• Raul Ruiz (CA-36)
• Tim Ryan (OH-13)
• Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
• David Scott (GA-13)
• Terri Sewell (AL-07)
• Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)
• Louise Slaughter (NY-25)
• Marc Veasey (TX-33)
• Filemon Vela (TX-34)
• Tim Walz (MN-01)