Torture report in Salon

Salon has a report of torture, including cold, prolonged isolation, and sleep deprivation -- by the United States. The victim was allegedly innocent of anything. (You may have to jump through some hoops at the Salon site.)

Much as I despise the current leaders of the US, I find this account difficult to believe. I'd rather believe that Mohammed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah made it all up to discredit the United States. But whether this account is true or not, the government has gone so far with its policy of secrecy that it's at least as difficult to discredit it as to believe it.

Anti-immigration, anti-globalization, and Real ID

Jim Harper notes that Homeland Security is offering grant money to states for implementation of Real ID. The $31.3 million being offered is just a drop in a mostly empty bucket, but its goal may be to stimulate grant-seekers into lobbying their states to implement Real ID.

I'm surprised that the Republican presidential candidates. who have been striving to outdo each other in hatred of immigrants, haven't been denouncing state governments for failing to implement Real ID. If I unfocus my head, I can almost see it: while many people want those evil foreigners kept under surveillance, they might get restless if they're reminded that it requires keeping everyone under surveillance and increasing their state taxes. Keeping the bundle of contradictions which passes for modern conservatism in mind, it makes a kind of sense.

The anti-globalization movement and the anti-immigrant movement don't overlap much, but they're products of the same kind of thinking. This thinking runs all the way back to cave tribes getting out the clubs when they see an unfamiliar tribe wander into their vicinity. At the time, that kind of response made good sense. Today, the ability to erase artificial barriers among people and the resulting hostility is what's needed. There are murderous people around, to be sure; but the anti-immigrant, anti-globalization, and protectionist mindsets are aimed at economic competition, not terrorists. They imagine that if only people could retreat back into their separate tribes, all would be better off. That's a profound mistake.

Inaccurate website promotes harassment of innocent

It sounds like a scene from I Am Legend.

"Christopher," they wheeze through the front door, "Christopherrrrrr - we know you're in there ... "

But it's the result of an error-riddled website under the authority of the State of Nevada, purporting to show the addresses of sex offenders. An innocent 71-year-old man, whose name isn't Christopher, has been repeatedly harassed because the site falsely shows his address as belonging to a sex offender.

Metro Sgt. Steve Rossi, who works in Metro's Sex Offender Apprehension program, disagrees. The Web site is a public service tool, he said. The law puts the burden on sex offenders to report their addresses, and because convicted felons aren't always eager to update police on their whereabouts, the Web site comes with a disclaimer that the information should not be used to harass or terrorize anyone, he said.

Sure. Rossi is saying, in effect: I'm giving people information about where sex offenders supposedly live. I'm taking their word for it and not bothering to check if it's right. But I told the people who read the site not to use it to harass or terrorize anyone, so my hands are clean of any guilt. As clean as Pontius Pilate's.

See also commentary by Radley Balko.

LiveJournal absurdities

LiveJournal has been hit by flak lately for egregious net-nannying. It's explained in some detail here.

LiveJournal allows users to specify "interests," such as "music," "cats," and "science fiction." Users can search for other users with particular interests. At some point, without telling the public, LiveJournal added a clumsy set of restrictions on interest searches, based on a substring of the interest being requested. Thus, you can't search for "spice girls," because it has the substring "spic." You can't search for "pedagogy"; it has the substring "dago." Why it blocks searches for "raccoons," "concerti per fagotto," and "do-wop music" is left as an exercise for the reader. (Update: As of the evening of December 13, LiveJournal has removed "spic" from the list of blocked substrings, while apparently leaving everything else the same. This only demonstrates that LiveJournal is aware of the problem and is responding by caving in to the pressure group of the moment, such as Spice Girls fans.)

According to some reports, this "feature" has been around for a while but somehow has only recently been widely noticed. The timing of its discovery is bad for LJ, as it follows hard upon the addition of the unpopular "flagging" feature which allows users to report "offensive" posts and keeps kids under 14 from reading anything that contains "adult concepts"), and the acquisition of LiveJournal by the Russian company SUP, which has people worried about risks to their confidential information.

Sites based on clones of the open-source LiveJournal software are having a field day. GreatestJournal got so many new users that it begged people to go to InsaneJournal instead. InsaneJournal, in turn, has just upgraded to a more powerful server.

Is Clusty selling search result placement?

I've been using Clusty for some time as an alternative to Google with more privacy (if only because it doesn't share cookies with Blogspot). But today I got a search result which has quickly lowered my opinion of Clusty. In a work-related search for a free software library to write GIF files, seven of the top ten results are for couponmountain.com, and they have no apparent relationship to the subject of my search. The titles it found on couponmountain.com are "Scholastic Store", "Buy.com", "Panda Software", "Buy.com" (again), "NothingButSoftware", and two more links for "Panda Software".

I can think of two ways this could be happening: (1) couponmountain.com has found a way to game Clusty's results, or (2) Clusty is giving couponmountain.com favored status in its search results for some reason, such as money. I'm inclined to the second explanation, but neither one says anything good about Clusty.

That stacking doesn't always work to the alleged beneficiary's benefit. In an earlier post, I noted that a Clusty search for "free vacation scam" led to www.southwestvacations.com, and wondered why. I didn't mention that that result was a redirect from a couponmountain.com link; it didn't seem important at the time. The word "free" occurs in both searches; that's probably significant. Similar searches on Google don't have couponmountain.com showing up anywhere near the top of the results.

Ask.com is in the news today with a new privacy feature, so I think I'll try them for a while.

PRO IP and civil forfeiture

Here I play amateur lawyer and try to make sense of the civil forfeiture provision which I previously mentioned in connection with the "PRO IP" bill.

The relevant section of the bill is under Section 202:

(g) Forfeiture and Destruction; Restitution-

`(1) CIVIL FORFEITURE PROCEEDINGS- (A) The following property is subject to forfeiture to the United States:
 
`(i) Any copies or phonorecords manufactured, reproduced, distributed, sold, or otherwise used, intended for use, or possessed with intent to use in violation of section 506(a) of title 17, and any plates, molds, matrices, masters, tapes, film negatives, or other articles by means of which such copies or phonorecords may be made and any devices for manufacturing, reproducing, or assembling such copies or phonorecords.
 
`(ii) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of a violation of section 506(a) of title 17.
 
`(iii) Any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation of section 506(a) of title 17 that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation.

Let's focus in on (iii), and find section 506(a) of title 17. (I'm hoping that's an up-to-date version.)

(1) In general. — Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed —
 
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
 
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
 
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.

These clauses are separated by an "or," so satisfying any one of them establishes a violation. With civil forfeiture, the burden of proof is lowered, and proportionality goes out the window. The weight of the penalty depends on the value of the accused's equipment, not the extent of the crime. (A) doesn't specify any minimum level of "financial gain," so it might provide a ready excuse to take people's computers away. (C) looks bad at first glance, but it's followed by a fairly restrictive definition of "work being prepared for commercial distribution." Quoting an advance review copy of a book doesn't count, for instance.

News accounts which I've seen give the impression that forfeiture could apply to anyone who makes a single illegal download. That isn't true, but the bill's provisions could still be very bad. I leave further analysis to those who are better at figuring out laws than I am.

Got an open wi-fi connection? Beware

The House of Representatives has approved a bill that would make anyone with an open Wi-Fi connection subject to criminal charges if child porn and some other "obscene" material is passed through their machine.

Many computers ship with open or lightly-protected Wi-Fi connection. If the bill becomes law, the people who own these computers and have never done anything to safeguard their connections could be subject to fines of up to $150,000 for a first offense and twice that for subsequent offenses.

This may be the worst piece of insanity to come from Congress since the Communications Decency Act. Ron Paul was one of only two representatives to vote against this orgy of power-lust.

Time of selfish giving

As we come to the end of the year, many of us are looking at ways to decrease our tax burden for 2007. One way is to give money to a qualified organization that does things which we like. If your marginal tax rate is 30%, then $500 which you can give to a deductible organization equals $350 you can spend in some other way plus $150 which the government gets.

Here are some organizations that promote liberty, have tax-deductible status, and might be worth an expenditure:

• Institute for Justice
• The Cato Institute
• Foundation for Economic Education
• Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
• Independent Institute
• International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL)