Safety first

While setting up my little netbook this morning, I carefully arranged the power cord to avoid tipping over a nearby coffee cup, whereupon my coworker assured me that the cup was empty. My observation is that the rule regarding coffee cups should be the same as for guns: always assume they are loaded.

Malware

I just received a message from a Facebook friend that purportedly connects to a YouTube video. However, the video doesn't play: it just pops up the message that I need to download Adobe Flash Player 10.37 in order to view it.

A quick Google search turned up this page, confirming that there is no Flash Player 10.37. It's a scheme to install spyware and adware on my machine.

While my internet practices probably aren't as safe as they should be, one of my rules is to never download a piece of software from the website that tell me I need it. In this case, I was looking for Adobe on the assumption that their Flash Player downloads don't contain spyware, while an unknown person's link just might.

Be warned.

Why the President's advisors don't tweet

Google News offered me this little article, which is a nice explanation of why working in the White House is different from sitting in chem lab.

Firstly and most obviously, in a sensitive environment such as the White House, controlling the flow of information to the outside world is extremely important. Secondly, Twitter is not immune to malware, viruses, and scams. Then there is the Presidential Records Act, which requires all White House communications to be saved. Abiding by these rules would prove difficult on an external service such as Twitter.

O'Brien also explains why switching to free Firefox would actually be rather expensive.

Leaking sensitive information

From ComputerWorld, :

Classified data on president's helicopter leaked via P2P, found on Iranian computer

Classified information about the communications, navigation and management electronics on Marine One, the helicopter now used by President Barack Obama, were reportedly discovered in a publicly available shared folder on a computer in Tehran, Iran, after apparently being accidentally leaked over a peer-to-peer file-sharing network last summer.

The classified file appears to have been leaked from a computer belonging to a Bethesda, Md., military contractor and was discovered Thursday by Tiversa Inc., a Cranberry Township, Pa.-based P2P monitoring services provider.

[Thanks to Peter's RAIN (Records and Archives in the News) drops.]

Maps don't bomb people - people bomb people!

Joel Anderson, a California assemblyman, recently learned that terrorists use services like Google Earth to plan their attacks. Now he wants to pass a law requiring the blurring of all images of possible terrorist attack, including government buildings, hospitals, schools, and churches.*

[A] security expert, Bruce Schneier recently wondered what other things legislators might consider banning to prevent terrorism:

"Bank robbers have long used cars and motorcycles as getaway vehicles, and horses before then. I haven’t seen it talked about yet, but the Mumbai terrorists used boats as well. They also wore boots. They ate lunch at restaurants, drank bottled water and breathed the air. Society survives all of this because the good uses of infrastructure far outweigh the bad uses, even though the good uses are — by and large — small and pedestrian and the bad uses are rare and spectacular."

Of course, this would be a state, not a federal, law. Wait'll those international terrorists learn they have to leave California every time they want to plot an attack. Oooh, they'll be tearing their beards out by the roots!

_____________
* Yeah, churches. Not shopping centers or sports arenas or high-rise office buildings, but definitely the churches.

State secrets

I don't like this:

Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on 'Extraordinary Rendition' Lawsuit

A representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

I'm willing to consider that this might be a necessary and reasonable position -- pending further actions which the new administration takes in cleaning up our act in the GWOT. But it doesn't obviously fit in with the other actions Obama has taken toward ordering a more open, law-abiding government. Which way is the story going to go? A) Openness is the general guiding principle, but there are a few rare exceptions that have to be made; or B) Openness will be played for its political value when there's not much at stake, but any time there's a rub Obama will readily claim all the privilege and power that other presidents have claimed.

It's too soon to either condemn or excuse the new President on this one action, but conservatives disgraced themselves by refusing to be skeptical of Their Guy in the White House; liberals don't need to go repeating their failures. We want the rule of law again, and we want it now.


(via D.A. Ridgley at Positive Liberty)

Gonzo knows archives - not!

Historians hope Obama will undo records order, in which Alberto Gonzales insults, and displays his ignorance of, the entire archives profession*:

"Let's say a former president dies," said former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was White House counsel when the order was issued. "Who is in a position then to make the decision with respect to privilege?

"One could say leave it to the (national) archivist. Why is the archivist a better person to make that kind of determination, necessarily?" he said. "You may have a family member who could be totally objective, as objective as an archivist. An archivist might be predisposed to releasing everything, irrespective of impact on (national) security, irrespective of other damage to other kinds of issues and matters."

Actually, archivists routinely deal with matters of privacy and confidentiality, and NARA especially deals routinely with records that touch on national security. Archivists do have a bias toward making information available, but they're not idiots. Some records must be kept confidential and that is part of an archivist's job; here at my library, I had to help scuttle plans for displaying certain gifted items because they contain private medical information. Would have been nice to display the documents, sure, but we can't and I knew it. I was trained to know it - that's how basic it is. Why is the archivist a better person to make that kind of determination? Because it's basic to the archives profession and archivists are professionals, that's why.


[PS. Maarja Krusten, at the archives listserv, also points out the absurdity in imagining that the President's heirs would have any sort of security clearance to be looking at top secret documents, anyway.]


___________________________
*Granted, I should lighten up; it's not like anyone's really taking Alberto Gonzales seriously these days.

Don't go messin' with no librarians

Ann Arbor library director shows thief she's no pushover

On Sunday, Parker pursued a thief after he grabbed a collection box of money donated for a local charity called the Family Book Club. In the process, she broke her leg and the thief got away - but not with any money.

What I'm paranoid about

[I was originally going to title this post, "Why I'm paranoid," but that may not be the same question.]

Via Millard Fillmore's Bathtub:
Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

... snip ...

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

Now put this side by side with this event from Inside Iraq:

Yesterday, a force from the Iraqi army came to my neighborhoods to evacuate the governmental flats where about 600 families live in. One of my neighbors tried to inquire about the evacuation order. He asked the army force "why does the army implement the evacuation orders? This is not the duty of the army". The question developed into an argument and the soldiers lost their mind because they didn't use to listen but they used to beat, fight and kill. They beat my neighbor violently to give a lesson to others to obey and execute only "Execute and then discusses"

I know, I know, I shouldn't be comparing the American army to the Iraqi. But I keep seeing (and I'll continue posting) too many similar events from American police who react with only moderately more restraint if they're asked to explain their actions and commands. "Execute and then discusses." When authorities don't believe they should be bothered with questions, violence isn't far behind.*

And now we're going to have Army brigades especially trained to operate in US cities the way they operated in Baghdad. If I'm supposed to sleep better at night, it isn't working.


* And, yes, there are extreme cases when this has to be done. Army authority is built on the needs of the battlefield, where committees might not live long enough to pass a resolution. But dealing with reporters or escorting a student out of a library just aren't that kind of emergency.

Hacked email

This is a great thing, not because I admire the hacker or think he's striking any sort of blow for democracy.* But having such a high profile person fall victim to their own bad security habits is a terrific attention-getter and I'm all for that. It's also a good illustration of why I prefer sites that let me make up my own challenge question, rather than forcing me to choose from "What is your mother's maiden name," "What street did you grow up on," etc.

Hacker impersonated Palin, stole e-mail password


* (By his own description, he's a prankster who bailed out when he realized how much trouble he was getting himself into and not a political operative)

National Security Letters

[Note: an earlier version of this post was accidentally zapped out of existence]

Via Library Juice, Mother Jones magazine on the Connecticut librarians' resistance to national security letters. My favorite part:

The Supreme Court subsequently ordered the Justice Department to unseal the court documents in the case. Among the evidence the government had tried to keep secret were quotes from previous Supreme Court cases; copies of New York Times articles; and the text of the Connecticut law that guarantees the confidentiality of library records. The Justice Department had also sealed arguments made by the ACLU attorneys, including this passage: "Now that John Doe's identity has been widely disseminated, the government's sole basis for the gag has wholly evaporated."

Omigod, i would have slept so much better not knowing that ....

What I'd like to hear more of

Obama to Palin: 'Don't Mock the Constitution'

"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting," Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. "Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years."

He finished with a dismissive comment about his opponents.

"These people."

Handling secret documents

Report Describes Careless Handling of U.S. Secrets
Gonzales Says He Does Not Recall

So does this man ever remember anything?

Gonzales improperly carried notes about the warrantless wiretapping program in an unlocked briefcase and failed to keep them in a safe at his Northern Virginia home three years ago because he "could not remember the combination," the department's inspector general reported.
...
Ultimately, Gonzales stored them in a safe outside his Justice Department office that was accessible by people who lacked the requisite security clearances to see them ... In one instance, employees searching for material related to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2006 sifted through the sensitive material in the safe "document by document."
...
Gonzales characterized the amount of material he possessed as limited and said the lapses were unintentional. He said he had followed policies as he understood them during his time at the White House. "He always placed the notes in the most secure place over which he had immediate personal control"

The most insightful comment:

"Because so much information is classified, there's a tendency to treat classified records in a cavalier fashion," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Police State

Via Phayrngula:

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Massive, multiple coordinated raids with dozens of police in SWAT gear, on people who pose no physical threat at all. Maybe the Chinese will start criticizing our human rights record.

PS. Seriously. Even the Chinese don't do this when they think someone's looking.

Documents stolen from Israeli national library

Israel Fears a Thief Stole Bits of Its Musical Legacy

The library has determined that hundreds of items are missing, including photographs, manuscripts and letters by Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Pablo Casals, Felix Mendelssohn and Richard Strauss. Many items are also gone from the archive of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv and a historic music library in Haifa. The search of other music archives is just getting started.

...

[The suspect's] lawyer responded with a short statement by e-mail saying that Mr. Bizanski was a collector of Judaica who often visited libraries and archives and had committed no crime, and that the police did not understand how collectors operated.

You have to like that last line.

The Gitmo detainees again

John Yoo opines in the Wall Street Journal:

In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court's word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists.

Again repeating the fiction (that's the polite word for bald-faced lie) that the Bush Administration has simply been following precedent with its treatment of terrorist suspects. Nothing could be less true - Yoo was part of an effort to deliberately create a legal black hole where no precedents or legal constraints applied and rules could be made up on the fly as convenient. They had a choice of saying, "We're going to treat these people as POW's" or "We're going to treat these people as violent criminals," in which case none of this mess would exist.

It's always a "power-grab" when someone expects a Bushie to obey the law.

"Rights" for Gitmo detainees

As I sit here searching databases for info on rare medical textbooks, I'm listening to the Diane Rehm show and getting increasingly annoyed. Matthew Continetti, the associate editor for "The Weekly Standard," keeps comparing the Guantanamo detainees to prisoners of war, who can be held indefinitely until hostilities are over. Has he forgotten that the Bush Administration explicitly refused to consider these prisoners to be POW's, because they didn't intend to observe the Geneva Conventions? Not POW's, so we're allowed to abuse them; not criminals, so they have no rights in court; not in the US, so no American due process can touch them; not anything at all for which anyone has ever defined any rules that we would rather not follow.

This is the fundamental dishonesty in all these arguments about the SCOTUS overreaching - any sensible treatment would have worked withing the framework of existing law, instead of going through such contortions to move the issue into legal no-man's-land. It's a lie to pretend that it's the Court that is departing from previous practice. Rather, they're trying to restore it.

About those bottles ...

Goodbye, hard-plastic Nalgene

And then it gets worse:

“You probably run a greater risk of having a piano fall on your head.”

Is there no end to the hazards?

Everyone I knew at Yellowstone was a heavy user of Nalgene bottles and I have to say ... I always blamed the weed.

[I'm still going to use my bottle, though.]

[UPDATE: Once again, I left the damn bottle somewhere. I am not going to buy a new one - this is getting old.]

High-handed government actions

The Treasury Dpt. is shutting down web-based businesses that deal in travel to Cuba, even if they do no business in the United States.

Count me in on the hand-wringing over such warrantless actions and the evidence of panic when the g'ment sees enemies in every bush. Even more interesting is the role the US is playing in pushing the planet to one-world government. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it's issues like this that undermine localism and strengthen the appeal of international laws and legislative bodies. Communications activity crosses borders more easily than people and goods and, whether we increase or decrease regulation, the world is somehow going to have to get on the same page.

Trust

Abuse of the Freedom of Information Act. I really don't care about online gambling, but this is an excellent example of a) why no one believes a word the Bush Administration says anymore, and b) why you should never trust anyone who says, "Trust us."

In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, "Trust, but verify."