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Stupid Censorship, Stupid Security
The
2003 Jefferson Muzzle
"winners" are out. This year's crop starts with John Ashcroft and the U.S. Congress, and works its way down through the school board that voted to put Harry Potter on the restricted shelf. Innovation in censorship deserves recognition, read and enjoy. And in other stupid news,
the winners of the
Stupid Security Competition
have been announced. I like that I'm being protected from tea. It makes me feel safe.
the problem with censoring data is that - if you aim to remove access to offending data - there is no end to it. there will always be people who get offended at anything.
for example the harry potter book burning event was just plain stupid. it is just a kids story (good though) and if your belief system is so fragile that you have to protect it by removing access to all data that you find not suitable, you have a problem.
in my experience if people prevent other people asking questions, than that means that that you are not too sure about your answers to those questions.
int.
Ned: And Harry Potter... and all his wizard friends... went STRAIGHT to hell for practicing witchcraft!
Todd: Yay!
One of my favorite saying is "Information is not bad, it is the is the holding of information that is bad". The idea that you are protecting a child from harm it unfounded. The only reason Censorship is around is cuz of Right Wing, conservatives are afraid of change. God forbid a child read a book about a kid who can make things float. Censorship is really about control, someone had decided that an idea should not be shared with other people and thus they take it upon them selves to control that idea. An idea could be anything, a book, a word, a movie, etc,. I am a firm believer that Censorship in any form is bad and hinders creativity. The DMCA is one of the biggest acts of Censorship I've ever seen. "NOPE! This here DMCA cays you can't publish that report about anti-copy protection!" common guys, step out of the box for a sec and look at with relevance Censorship has. and i'll tell you, it has none
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
from the Ashcroft article:
"Allowing $8,000 in tax dollars to be spent on drapes to conceal two semi-nude statues that often appeared behind the attorney general during press conferences in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. Ironically, the two statues represent "The Spirit of Justice" and "The Majesty of Law."
Ironic indeed, in fact most telling.
Ashcroft in his post 9/11 reign of the DOJ has done more to hide the doings of the DOJ and execution of it's commandments from the public than any other Attorney General in our nations history.
Being that he is the mind behind "secret search warrants", "secret evidence" and "secret imprisonment", it is quite fitting that he display this by making the representitive figures of his office "secret" as well.
Is there some kind of a Moore's law for Censorship? Something like "For every disgusting act of censorship, in 12 to 18 months there will be one twice as disgusting?"
some other thoughts:
People who are easily offended deserve to be... a lot!
The real war against liberty for all.
...a certain online service implemented filters in its user registration process. People with last names like Petit or Snodgrass, and people who lived in cities with names like Scunthorpe or Middlesex, were prohibited from signing up for the service! The filters are implemented elsewhere too, one of AOL's remote employees couldn't enter his last name, Kuntz, into his online profile. Way to lose revenue.
Rev. Lovejoy: I've got to go and burn some Harry Potter books before children discover the joy of reading.
Do the rest of us a favor who do not see an FBI agent around every corner, stop calling every administrative attempt to restrict a display of objectional art to children censorship.
Definition of censor. The FBI is hardly needed to meet the definition. Also, if that "administrative attempt" is at a public school where children are - by law - required to spend about 1/4 to 1/2 their waking time (during the school year) then they deserve every constitutional protection. Yes, yes, private schools exist. In practice, only so many people can afford that option. Those required to pay for and utilize the public school system have every right to oppose any "administrative attempt".
Whether this organization agrees with it or not parents and citizens have a right to restict objectional art from being displayed using publicly funded means, every bit as much as the artists have in producing then getting publishers to distribute and/or display their garbage.
No, that's exactly what censorship is .. you DON'T have the right to restrict things you object to. And you DO have the right to produce and put out "garbage".
If people have a "right" to not be offended, then how can you also claim a right of free speech?
My school's filter has blocked the Muzzle Awards under the category of "Pornographic and Recreational Nudity"! -Joe
did anyone else notice that there were a disproportionate number of awards going to institutions of learning? namely, school districts including middle schools and high schools?
i don't know about anyone else, but this is a scary proposition for me. schools trying to prohibit the dissemination of information about different cultures and schools of thought speaks volumes about the types of people that are educating our young people. if i let my kids in the future go through a given school system, i want availble to them a variety of vantage points, not just the "right one" as prescribed by the administration.
Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!
Me? If I can't drive there, I don't go.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I like that I'm being protected from tea. It makes me feel safe.
Read the article. They stopped an airplane passenger because he was carrying a box of gunpowder tea. After some investigating and discussing, they decided he could, in fact, carry the tea, but they had to impound the box with the evil word "gunpowder". So, they transferred the tea to a plastic bag, after which the passenger proceded to the plane.
So, no, they're not protecting you. They let the gunpowder tea onboard, those incompetent fools! What next? Bazooka Joe gum?
I'm telling you, what we need is more restrictions. I'm glad these gentlemen got the recognition they so richly deserve.
A rant about it
The RAVE act basically means, if there are any drugs on your property, no matter whether they belong to someone else or whether you knew about it, are your responsibility, and your property may be forfeit and you can be subject to a ludicrous fine.
The full text of the law.
A.C. for obvious reasons.
In 2001 I was interning as a system/network administrator for a publishing house (hint: textbooks). It was (alas) a mostly NT shop for the typists, editors, etc. "grunt workers." The graphics and design teams were mostly using Macs. We had an NT box with 5 30 gig drives serving as a file server.
One of the C-level pointy hairs must have logged into the file server one day and realized that most of the space was used up. He sent a memo to our department (Technical Operations) saying how he found a large number of TIF, EPS, and PSD files on the drives taking up "inordinate amounts" of space and that they need to be deleted immediately. I kid you not. Dunno whether he thought they were horrific pirate music files or what, but they were taking up space so by god they needed to go.
My manager printed out a copy of the memo, handed it to me, smiling, and said "write a batch file to do what he wants." I did. Ten minutes later, the fileserver had about 80 gigs more storage space.
All of us on the floor laughed our asses off most of the day.
The night shift spent most of their time restoring backups (fortunately most of the artsy folks had their own backups as well) cursing us for carring out the order.
The C-level never contacted TechOps again.
Just one example: San Fransisco's subway system BART is criticized for closing their public restrooms. In Washington DC the subway systems was designed 20 years or so ago without public restrooms in the first place. It is in fact hard to find a spot in the DC subway system where you are not under the watchfull eye of a video camera, all being monitored by at least one attendant visible to the public (I think the feeds go to a central location as well). Since they don't put subway stops in deserted parts of the city, this is hardly a major inconvenience. You simply visit a public restroom before you enter the station.
I can't think of any security measures anywhere that don't have at least one of the following problems:
The awards seem to include examples of all three. When I have talked to people who complain about various security measures I try to come up with scenarios that would justify the specific measure that they are complaining about. I can almost always get them to say "Oh, I never thought of that."
In a perfect world we would do this experiment: Every city would have TWO airports. One with the current mix of inconvenient, invasive, and imperfect security checks, the other with only the most cursory check in place (like US Airports in the 50's). Pilots, passengers and employees would use/work at the airport of their own choosing. There would probably be significant cost savings associated with having little or no security measures in place, so that airport could use lower costs as an incentive too.
I'd love to see the long-term results.
I am Canadian, and live in Toronto. I used to sail over to the US to visit their friendly towns, but I stopped a few years ago because of their weird customs rules. If they decide your I68 form is not in order, your boat will be impounded. Due to their zero-tolerance drug laws, if an immigration officer decides that there is even one speck of marijuana on your boat, your boat will be impounded. I am NOT a pot user, btw.
This is a disturbing trend I heard more and more often during the Drug War (which continues to rage unabated), but especially since 9/11- people from countries like Canada and Great Britain are cancelling trips to the U.S. because they are scared to come here. With all the loud and apologetic rhetoric about how "rights are only for citizens" (which any lawyer can tell you is bullshit), can you blame them? If I weren't a U.S. citizen I'd be nervous to come here too given the scary shit I've been seeing enter the conventional wisdom. I've never seen a level of nationalism and xenophobia like I'm seeing now.
This country likes to shoot its collective mouth off about its "freedoms", and it slathers the words "freedom" and "liberty" through its propaganda. Just look at the obnoxious names we give to things like Operation Iraqi Freedom. Even a few years ago it would have gotten a sensible name like Operation Desert Storm or Operation Desert Fox. Our naming of military operations has become perfused with propaganda- Operation Restore Hope, and now Operation Iraqi Freedom which just sounds creepily dishonest. We have made no secret of the fact that these are freedoms for us, not for you in the rest of the world. And while we like the idea of democracy taking root in foreign lands, it better not get in the way of cheap gas here or something has to be done about it. We have no problems with our government undermining or overthrowing democratically elected governments, or propping up repressive regimes. That stuff happens in countries we know or care nothing about and 90% of us couldn't place them on a map to save our lives anyway.
Except that the freedom that Americans lecture the world about is really like the royalty in Britain- sort of there for show, functioning as a crowd-pleaser, but with no solid or meaningful foundation underneath it. The Queen has meaningless rights that have mere ceremonial value, and as an American citizen, so do you! The reaction to one day of hijackings has revealed that much. When it comes time to put up or shut up, and actually honor these inalienable rights that we brag about, we're really clever at coming up with various excuses for denying them. Ironically, we often do this by dreaming up new contervailing powers for the state, phrased as if they're rights enjoyed by individuals- like the "right not to be killed in a terrorist attack" or the "right to protect our flag from desecration". The British may be a little pretentious with their own cultural fiction, but at least they're not as hypocritical.
This "freedom fries" talk can't be helping, either. Here it's just funny, but I just can't believe that nobody overseas is hearing the words "freedom fries" and questioning the wisdom of their investments here.
Americans are stupidly digging their own grave. If it means they might never have to start an uncomfortable conversation with their children about pot, the idiots will watch contentedly as thousands of people's lives are ruined in prison and Canadians (i.e. foreigners) have their boats confiscated with no due process. Then when the country has succeeded in scaring all foreign investment away and sinks into a depression, we'll just pin the blame on France (or whatever other representative of the civilized world has gotten in our way most recently). We're so wonderful, that if the world thinks we've lost our minds, it must be someone else's fault.