Slashdot Mirror
The Strangest Online Political Challenges of 2007
destinyland writes "Blorgable has a list the year's ten strangest online political moments arguing that 2007 was the year digital identities started encroaching into the culture. While the U.S. Senate was busy fighting cartoon-related digital terrorism with 'The Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007,' Ann Coulter's web page ended up 'mistakenly' announcing her retirement after someone hacked it! But the unpredictable changes were sometimes deadly serious. Even the mainstream media noticed 'the ghosts of MySpace' — those U.S. soldiers whose web pages ultimately outlived them."
I'm hoping all the data about Area 51 getting stolen shows up on the 08 list! It's not my resolution to get it done but I bet it's some hackers' :-D I mean come on, every geek wants to know. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The only thing about focusing on 2007 is that it all carries over to 2008.
I personally found the Facebook group that sprung up supporting Stephen Colbert's presidential candidacy to be, mayhaps not strange, but certainly "rad," and a bit outrageous. It gained 1 million group members in under 10 days (and peaked at 1.5 million around the time that Colbert called it quits).
I've often considered starting an online political movement known as 'The Apathy Party.' I would advocate a party for the apathetic, by the apathetic, and by that I mean me. Everyone able to vote who didn't would automatically be considered of a member of the Apathetic Party, therefore I'd get their vote. If that's legal, I'd win the election for sure. If its not, well, I suppose maybe it would convince a few people to get out there, read up on the candidates, and vote.
OK, the subject might not appear to have anything to do with the story, but it does. One of the items on the list was the Boston ATHF "bomb" threat. (Really. I'm not sure what that has to do with the web, but it's one of the ten.)
Anyway, apparently in response to the bombing, Senator Ted Kennedy (known for, among other things, killing someone while driving drunk) has drafted legislation which would make placing items that are mistaken for bombs a felony, with a 10-25 year sentence.
So, fuck you Boston, for trying to make it illegal to place something that someone else manages to mistake as a bomb, no matter how obvious it is that it wasn't. (That's right. Even without intent. If someone mistakes it for a bomb, and you get 10 years minimum in a federal prison.)
I know a state can't leave the Union, but can the rest of the states kick them out? Or at the very least Boston? I know I'd feel safer if the Gay State wasn't part of the Union...
It is actually worth to consider that in western society the internet and it's services has changed the way we live - you are now a second grade citizen if you don't have broadband internet access. The people that have internet access can get access to a lot more information - not only wikipedia but also lunch menus phonebooks and instant communication services that were in it's infancy just five years ago. For example Skype did on a good day maybe kiss the one million mark of online users but now it's rarely below the five million mark and is about to kiss the ten million mark.
The internet services and identity troubles that have arisen is something that is growing concerns. Of course - identity theft isn't something new but it's easier on a global scale today. However it isn't only about protecting your identity from being exposed - it is also about allowing it to get correctly verified. The ability to verify the identity of a person by cross-checking the data with other systems is an important factor when doing transactions. Of course - sometimes you want to do anonymous transactions - but that isn't a big problem.
And one item that has been up during the last year is all the bank frauds. Especially the Nordea case which got wide-spread publicity. This was caused by a substandard technique for user verification. And we are going to see more and more cases of intrusions into our bank accounts, which is worrying - but the important thing is that the banks must take responsibility for providing the best possible protective measures without making it overly complex for the users. The threats when doing bank transactions isn't only in the classical hacking but there are also the man in the middle attack and the man in the browser attack. The later is actually circumventing any encryption scheme which means that it doesn't matter how good your encryption is. A verification of the transaction has to be done by different means - and one way that is reasonably safe is by using a token (that isn't connected to the computer) with a challenge/response where the challenge data is user friendly (for example the account that money shall be sent to). This will still allow a criminal to read your data but make it a lot harder to actually modify your bank account unless the criminal has access both to the token algorithm and the secret key of the token. The one-time password tokens that are only generating a random number aren't sufficient since they does only verify the fact that you have the token - but that doesn't verify if the data you send along with the transaction isn't being compromised.
Of course - this means that you will still have to be on the forefront when it comes to protect your identity verification data, and that you actually shall demand of your bank and other online services that they provide you with good protective measures. However it also means that the public services also has to take measures to protect the citizens by having a reasonable setup where risk assessment has been done.
The more worrying part is that in many cases "security" actually resolves to "citizen monitoring" in a way that brings into mind the actions of Stasi and other similar agencies. This is actually counter-productive and is not doing any good at all for the citizens. It's like fishing for cod with a net sized for sharks - you may occasionally get a catch - but probably not the catch you expected or wanted. Just the publicity around the monitoring has caused the big criminals to think twice before doing anything that might be recorded and tracked. It doesn't mean that there aren't anyone communicating through the net for criminal reasons - just that the methods got a lot more covert. Type an online entry here as a blog comment, make a posting in slashdot - and sometimes encode a message into it through
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The Paulistinians online activity.
Ron Paul, noted legislator, Presidential candidate, anti-semite, and racist, claims that his supporters are mainly made up of people who own cell phones and not landline phones explaining why he doesn't do well in polls, and who express their activity online instead of in-person at the caucus.
Online flash in the pan.
The good thing about Ron Paul and his neo-Nazi supporters is that his inevitable independant campaign will draw votes away from the Republican candidate, handing the Democrat candidate an easy victory, unless the highly polarizing Clinton is the nominee, then all bets are off.
So, this years online fund raising goes to the Paulistinians, but thats all he's got.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Offering a serious philosophical justification for the legitimacy of the joke-candidacy of Stephen Colbert, with a straight face, almost goes beyond irony.
I can only hope your post was meant as meta-satire - in which case it was genius!