According to the Department of Homeland Security, warned that hackers are attacking software that controls medical devices, elevators, video cameras, security systems and a wide array of other sensitive operations. Except that is not included in the details of the report.
In the details of the report, a software vulnerability was found. There was no indication of any planned or attempted attacks by hackers into those systems. It was revealed that hackers could access through the discovered vulnerabilities, but not that this weakness had been exploited.
The internet has been a major problem for government officials. News reporting and political commentary are no longer confined to the major media outlets anymore. Not only does it disseminate news stories that said officials would rather keep buried, and not only does it enables large scale organization to oppose controversial decisions, through the actions of people like Julian Assange the users of the internet can now rip the mask off of the government and enable people to see just how ugly it really is.
In "Atlas Shrugged," the character Francisco Danconia compared the San Sebastian Mines to ripping the cover off of hell and letting people see it, saying that he had outdone Nero. Wikileaks has done the same thing outside the realm of fiction.
It is no surprise that congress was recently debating SOPA and PIPA. Small wonder as well that net neutrality is so heavily discussed. Government officials are afraid, and want more power to deal with what they fear. To get more power, they need to make a significant portion of the population afraid as well.
Threats need to be exaggerated. Just as when the neocons warned about the Iraqi threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and just as they warn about Iran's nuclear capabilities, in both cases exaggerations, the threat of the hackers has to be magnified to a degree sufficient to terrify people.
If remote control medical devices are hacked and disabled by hackers, that would be terrible. If an elevator was to suddenly plummet due to the actions of a hacker, that would also be terrible. There is no indication that this is happening, and those who issued the press release know this. The vulnerability was all they needed to hype it into a threat though. They needed more fear, and that is why they reported this the way they did. Only with enough fear can they try to take on the internet.
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Friday, May 25, 2012
Lese Majesty
A farmer decides, in the wake of the Mad Cow outbreak to conduct tests above and beyond those required by the government in order to advertise that his beef is safer than the national standard. The USDA doesn’t allow him to do so, he cannot conduct his own tests with his own money.
Many consumers are worried, maybe rightly and maybe wrongly, about Genetically Modified Organisms in their food. Seeing that there is a demand, some food producers decided to label their food as "GMO free." The FDA would not allow it, not because the advertisement was false, but because the FDA has decided that GMO foods are safe and this label would cause some to think otherwise.
When the banks were bailed out, it is rumored that some of the banks didn’t need a bailout. They were told that they had to accept a bailout anyway lest the public come to the conclusion that said banks were safer. The government had determined that the bailout would make the unsafe banks as safe as the banks that did not need a bailout. A bank not receiving a bailout would be an indication it was more safe in spite of the government saying all the banks were now safe. Of course this is more of a rumor than a substantiated story.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, private efforts to assist people in New Orleans attempted to operate along side the government efforts. The private rescuers were turned aside prolonging the suffering of some in New Orleans.
When the TSA first launched the BXR and MMW body scanners, it was pointed out repeatedly that these scanners cannot scan inside a body cavity. A news story from Saudi Arabia was presented pointing out that a terrorist there had hidden a bomb in his rectum. Eventually the TSA announced that their searches would be intensified because of the possibility of surgically implanted device. Those who most vociferously criticize the TSA realized this was their response to realizing the presented threat was valid but not being able to acknowledge an idea coming from outside their own organization.
What these all have in common is an effort by the government to forbid doubt of the competence and effectiveness of the government and its actions. It is Lese Majesty in its modern form, where it is wrong to insult the image of the king. This isn’t Sedition, which also should not be considered wrong, but merely the crime of causing people to doubt the goodness of the government. It has died out in most monarchies. In the United States it has returned and is regulated out of existence rather than banned because that would be too obvious.
Many consumers are worried, maybe rightly and maybe wrongly, about Genetically Modified Organisms in their food. Seeing that there is a demand, some food producers decided to label their food as "GMO free." The FDA would not allow it, not because the advertisement was false, but because the FDA has decided that GMO foods are safe and this label would cause some to think otherwise.
When the banks were bailed out, it is rumored that some of the banks didn’t need a bailout. They were told that they had to accept a bailout anyway lest the public come to the conclusion that said banks were safer. The government had determined that the bailout would make the unsafe banks as safe as the banks that did not need a bailout. A bank not receiving a bailout would be an indication it was more safe in spite of the government saying all the banks were now safe. Of course this is more of a rumor than a substantiated story.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, private efforts to assist people in New Orleans attempted to operate along side the government efforts. The private rescuers were turned aside prolonging the suffering of some in New Orleans.
When the TSA first launched the BXR and MMW body scanners, it was pointed out repeatedly that these scanners cannot scan inside a body cavity. A news story from Saudi Arabia was presented pointing out that a terrorist there had hidden a bomb in his rectum. Eventually the TSA announced that their searches would be intensified because of the possibility of surgically implanted device. Those who most vociferously criticize the TSA realized this was their response to realizing the presented threat was valid but not being able to acknowledge an idea coming from outside their own organization.
What these all have in common is an effort by the government to forbid doubt of the competence and effectiveness of the government and its actions. It is Lese Majesty in its modern form, where it is wrong to insult the image of the king. This isn’t Sedition, which also should not be considered wrong, but merely the crime of causing people to doubt the goodness of the government. It has died out in most monarchies. In the United States it has returned and is regulated out of existence rather than banned because that would be too obvious.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Stop SOPA
Those who wish to rule must rue that the government ever created the internet. It has, since it branched beyond military use, become a big thorn in the side of the political class. In terms of shopping, it has enabled people to bypass sales taxes and to find bargains from a great distance as well as purchase used items at deep discounts on sites such as eBay. In terms of news it has allowed non-mainstream providers and their audience to find each other, and allowed greater dissemination of stories that the mainstream media would prefer to bury. In terms of law enforcement, incidents of an individual being mistreated are no longer considered isolated incidents local to one area but are instead indicative of a pattern with each new "isolated incident" feeding into the general outrage of the people being mistreated by the police. In terms of political activism, it has created the Ron Paul campaign as well as other issue focused campaigns that in the past would have died for lack of coverage.
Various attempts at "net neutrality" have been a topic of conversation, in which the cover of safeguarding the net is used to control the net. While there is some merit to some aspects of the discussion in favor of net neutrality measures, the discussion as a whole lacks much merit. It is obvious by the way the internet was constructed that it was a government project initially, as the methods of allocating bandwith are somewhat crude compared to how one might design the internet if one was starting from scratch.
But "net neutrality" keeps getting a justified defeat, so false claims of fairness have proven to be far insufficient. So in the name of stopping piracy a bill has been introduced to congress that will effectively shut down large swaths of the internet for those who access in the United States. It is the Stop Internet Privacy Act. A better, although more biased and more vulgar link can be found here although it would be a bad idea to open that link at work.
This bill has the potential to, in the name of stopping piracy, shut down many sites that contribute the value to the internet today. Any site that has user-provided content is at severe risk lest one of the users provides copy-righted content. If the content falls under fair use, the burden of proof is on the accused. Currently, under DCMA, if someone sees copyrighted material they must submit a letter to the site requesting the material be taken down. Under the SOPA bill, a site must instead actively monitor all content lest something be copyrighted, and failure to do so is a crime. YouTube, which receives a vast number of videos every day, could not handle the burden and would have to shut down. That would stop the embarrassing videos of police abusing people from surfacing and spreading.
Other sites that share content, such as Rational Review News Digest and Freedom's Phoenix which excerpt portions of an article and link to the original article at the original site may be considered to be at risk if the original provider does not want their article shared with a particular audience. Righthaven was shut down for their abuse of copyright law, but this new bill strengthens the position of similar copyright trolls.
The internet has been a force for freedom in this increasingly oppressive world. Given how many content provider websites are headquartered in the US, and disputes are supposed to be settled in the US no matter where the content provider website is located, this amounts to world-wide censorship. Currently this bill is in committee, but given what it could potentially accomplish this is bill should be stopped.
Various attempts at "net neutrality" have been a topic of conversation, in which the cover of safeguarding the net is used to control the net. While there is some merit to some aspects of the discussion in favor of net neutrality measures, the discussion as a whole lacks much merit. It is obvious by the way the internet was constructed that it was a government project initially, as the methods of allocating bandwith are somewhat crude compared to how one might design the internet if one was starting from scratch.
But "net neutrality" keeps getting a justified defeat, so false claims of fairness have proven to be far insufficient. So in the name of stopping piracy a bill has been introduced to congress that will effectively shut down large swaths of the internet for those who access in the United States. It is the Stop Internet Privacy Act. A better, although more biased and more vulgar link can be found here although it would be a bad idea to open that link at work.
This bill has the potential to, in the name of stopping piracy, shut down many sites that contribute the value to the internet today. Any site that has user-provided content is at severe risk lest one of the users provides copy-righted content. If the content falls under fair use, the burden of proof is on the accused. Currently, under DCMA, if someone sees copyrighted material they must submit a letter to the site requesting the material be taken down. Under the SOPA bill, a site must instead actively monitor all content lest something be copyrighted, and failure to do so is a crime. YouTube, which receives a vast number of videos every day, could not handle the burden and would have to shut down. That would stop the embarrassing videos of police abusing people from surfacing and spreading.
Other sites that share content, such as Rational Review News Digest and Freedom's Phoenix which excerpt portions of an article and link to the original article at the original site may be considered to be at risk if the original provider does not want their article shared with a particular audience. Righthaven was shut down for their abuse of copyright law, but this new bill strengthens the position of similar copyright trolls.
The internet has been a force for freedom in this increasingly oppressive world. Given how many content provider websites are headquartered in the US, and disputes are supposed to be settled in the US no matter where the content provider website is located, this amounts to world-wide censorship. Currently this bill is in committee, but given what it could potentially accomplish this is bill should be stopped.
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