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Bob Barr Weighs In On Trusted Computing Group
bearwayne writes "Former representative Bob Barr (R-GA), a conservative and non-technophile, who has now has teamed up with the ACLU to fight growth of the Federal government's infringements on Civil Liberties ala the Patriot Act, weighs in on the Trusted Computing Group/Alliance in this article at Creative Loafing. Among other things, he expresses concerns about censorship, loss of control over one's PC, and other corporate/government abuses."
Every time self-described civil libertarians pick something to complain about, they end up with egg on their faces.
The latest embarrassment is the revelation that the Department of Justice has not invoked the Patriot Act's Section 215 - a section of the act that the ACLU crowd claims has turned the FBI into a library-raiding Gestapo.
What, in reality, is Section 215? It's a relatively innocuous provision of the Patriot Act that allows law enforcement to obtain, after getting approval from a judge, documents from third parties - your credit card company, for example - if they're pertinent to a terrorism investigation.
Caught up in the Section 215 hysteria they helped create, librarians have gone batty. One even burned her records lest the feds get their hands on the raw data revealing how many 15-year-olds borrowed "The Catcher In the Rye." Senator Russ Feingold even declared that Section 215 has made Americans "afraid to read books, terrified into silence."
Well, it turns out that this has all been an exercise in self-indulgent, pompous liberal feel-goodism and false bravado. Not only has the government never used 215, but the section doesn't even mention libraries - or any of the other secular holy sites allegedly imperiled by it.
At minimum, critics should stop talking about the Patriot Act's "trampling of rights" in the present tense. And lest they claim that they are being "vigilant" in the face of potential threats, someone should remind them that vigilance is fine, but lying and fear-mongering is crying wolf.
The Section 215 bashing is just the latest in an ongoing campaign to make up a problem out of the Patriot Act that does not exist. I'm sure you've heard that the Patriot Act also permits, in the words of Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine, "spying on the Web browsers of people who are not even criminal suspects." Errr, wrong. The Patriot Act actually toughens the standards by which the government can snoop on electronic communications.
Before the Patriot Act, there was no settled law on whether the government - or for that matter, some random stalker or Amazon.com - could acquire that kind of information. The Patriot Act made it a crime for the government or anybody else to pry into your e-mail without getting a court order.
There's been a lot of gnashing of teeth over the allegedly "widespread" civil rights abuses since Sept. 11. Well, it's a good thing the Patriot Act requires the DOJ's inspector general to investigate civil rights complaints. The last report, issued over the summer, found that there were 34 "credible" allegations of abuse out of 1,037 claims made over a six-month period (note: that's allegations, not convictions). And most of these "credible" but unproven allegations involved such horrors as verbal harassment of prisoners by prison guards. That's not nice and it shouldn't happen, but it's hardly 1930s Germany.
The complaints of lost civil rights go on. We hear about prisoners "kept in secret" when they're really not. Rather, the government won't release their names to the media - or to the terrorists who are keen to find out such information. However, the prisoners themselves - through their lawyers or families - are free to release their names.
The ACLU says that the feds can secretly enter your home while you're out and rifle through your files, underwear drawer, whatever. Well, that's true, if the cops get a warrant first and notify you later. If that scares you, I'm sorry. But it's hardly something new.
And of course, there's the partisanship. John Ashcroft (for whom my wife works) is the most unpopular man in the universe - if you go by what the Ashcroft-phobes say. There's nothing you can say that goes far enough for the hysterical base of the increasingly hysterical Democratic party. Senator John F. Kerry declared at a recent debate that he could see in the audience "people from every background, every creed, every color, every belief, every religion. This is, indeed, John Ashcroft's worst nightma
Barr is a worthless pile of shit. Search for "Bob Barr Ft Hood wicca" on google. This is someone with no respect for the constitution and has no place anywhere near people in power.
The only reason one should be concerned about this is if your TCPA computer is automatically configured to trust the government, or Microsoft, or whatever. If the default is to trust no one, and the user/administrator has complete control over who or what is trusted, then there is nothing to worry about. Trusted Computing becomes just another useful tool. That's it.
Only brain-damaged leftists are leaving the country. Good riddance.
We all know that *BSD is dying, it almost goes without saying. Yes, ever hapless *BSD continues to be mired in an irrecoverable and m ortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD commu nity. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for Fr eeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD ve rsus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 pe rcent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Use net posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell anothe r troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospe cts are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying