blackboxvoting.org is a web site devoted to raising awareness about the security problems and unverifiability issues inherent in paperless electronic voting machines. The operator of the site, Bev Harris, has been contacted by the Secret Service. "They want the logs of my web site with all the forum messages, and the IP addresses. That's right. All of them. A giant fishing expedition for every communication of everyone interested in the voting issue."
If the Secret Service is engaged in a legitimate investigation of a crime, then I am sure that they can come up with a narrower request that targets information that could reasonably be related to the evidence they seek.
If they instead insist on wielding the power of the Patriot Act to execute this overbroad search, then it is hard not to think that their "investigation" is purely a pretextual means of gathering information about all those interested in guaranteeing free, fair, and democratic elections. Very scary.
From the New York Times:
If the election were held today, 46 percent of registered voters would vote for Mr. Kerry and 44 percent for Mr. Bush, the poll found. With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush would get 43 percent, Mr. Kerry 41 percent and Mr. Nader 5 percent, suggesting that nearly all of Mr. Nader's support comes from voters who would otherwise back the Democrat.Arianna Huffington, at Boalt yesterday, told us what she says to her Green Party and Independent friends, "You don't discuss remodelling, when your house is on fire."
The folks who tried to petition Ralph not to run have updated their flash movie to try to swing Ralph's supporters back to sanity, since Ralph himself wouldn't listen. Check out the flash. It's very well done.
The only other hope that I can see is Huffington's idea to stop focusing narrowly and solely on "the swing vote" and to instead go after the fifty million eligible voters that don't typically vote. After the 2000 debacle, it should be easier to convince them that their vote can matter. Four more years of Bush would leave this country and this world unrecognizable to someone from November 1, 2000. Something has to be done.
Posts here have been light as finals approach and because I've been doing a good bit of blogging elsewhere. First, I covered the second full day of The Patent Reform conference at Berkeley for bIPlog.
Then I was on the Newsletter Staff and a blogger for the Computers Freedom and Privacy Conference. This was probably the best conference I've ever attended, although I am something of a conference newbie. I blogged the Network Snooping Tutorial on Tuesday, the Concurrent session on RFID and Privacy on Wednesday, Thursday's Concurrent session on Data Retention and Privacy and a Defense of the Patriot Act by DOJ Attorney Rachel Brand on Friday. I also took video of the three EFF Pioneer Award winners giving their speeches.
Today, Arianna Huffington spoke at Boalt after a rally opposing the fee-hikes that face California students. During the question period I told her about how these increases will do particular harm to law students seeking to work in the public interest, where salaries are so much lower than in the big firms. She seemed very intrigued to hear about this and even asked me to do a guest blog piece on the topic at her blog. So, if that happens, I'll let people know about it here as well. I've talked about this issue on this blog before.
Mike Anderson, a soon-to-be graduate of Boalt Hall, has started his new blog, Mere Dicta, with a bang. He discusses the Supreme Court's review of the Hamdi and Padilla "enemy combatant" cases and makes the argument that, at least for Padilla, his perpetual detention without charges flies in the face of the Constitution's treason clause. The main idea is that the treason clause is rendered meaningless if it isn't applied in an allegedly clear case of treason like Padilla's. Check it out for all the citations and detailed argumentation, and be sure to bookmark his site, as I expect more great insights from this wickedly smart guy.
Just posted this comment to Kerry's blog.
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I just read an article about the Oregon court ruling that the state had to recognize the 3000+ same-sex marriages already performed there. In the article, Kerry was again described as opposing gay marriage and favoring civil unions. I wanted to say to Kerry, his staff, and his supporters: This is just wrong.
Sure, I'm going to vote for John in the fall, but it is problems with his views like this that are preventing me from contributing $$ to the campaign. The line to draw is not between civil unions and marriages. Because settling for civil unions is settling for indefensible discrimination. Kerry should instead draw the line between religious marriage and civil marriage. Churches and their members can believe what they want and perform only the marriages they approve. No one wants to change that. But THE STATE cannot discriminate in its performance of civil marriages.
I know Kerry's camp is worried about him appearing to waffle on any issue, as the Bushies have already trotted out that attack method. But the American people can understand something like the following announcement: "I've listened to my supporters. I've thought deeply about the issue. I've searched my heart. What I come away with is a deep conviction that anything less than civil marriage for same-sex couples is discriminatory and unfair. So, yes. I've changed my position on this issue, but that is something that distinguishes me from President Bush. He can't even think of a mistake that he's made and so he cannot learn from his mistakes. We need a President capable of careful reflection on hard issues. I will be that President."
Make us proud Kerry. Do the right thing and release a decision like that.
J.D. Lasica, whose blog, New Media Musings, is one of my must-read blogs, has written a great piece entitled The Killing Fields: Copyright Law and its Challengers. It describes a documentary film, Willful Infringement, that I have got to see. Read J.D.'s article and you'll know you need to see it too. I'd prefer to hear about a local showing of the film, but if not, I may have to find some way to cough up the $50 they want for the DVD. (I won't go into the willful extortion aspect of this too much, but it does trouble me that people so keen on sharing culture only want to share with people who have fifty bucks! I thought the Record Industry had a monopoly on price-gouging...)
Brad Templeton writes on his blog, Brad Ideas, that software and hardware are the same thing and so it bothers him that some would allow patents on hardware but disallow them for software. What follows is the comment I posted on his blog.
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I like your idea for filtering out some of the bad patents.
You're also right that some people simply say, "we should not allow patenting of software." I would like to put forward a couple arguments for that conclusion, rather than simply state it. Then I also have a question for you.
A few arguments against software patents off the top of my head:
0. Since software is already afforded copyright protection, which lasts the life of the author plus seventy years, software production is already adequately incentivized. To additionally provide patent protection to software drastically skews the bargain with the public that all "exclusive rights" bargains seek to achieve and instead provides the software developer with an unnecessary windfall.
1. Software patents have a disparate negative impact on the development of Free software, which for other public policy reasons we would prefer to promote. Free software developers, unlike proprietary software developers, are typically fiscally unable or philosophically unwilling to license patented software techniques. The benefits that Free software provides to both businesses and individuals are worth more to the public than providing a monopoly right to a software patent holder.
2. Software, by its very nature, is susceptible to fewer techniques for achieving its ends than are many other industries. Consequently, where in other industries one can "design around" a patented technique in order to achieve the same end and to thereby compete in the market with the patent holder, "designing around" in the software world is often much more difficult or impossible. There is often simply one or only a few reasonable or efficient ways to accomplish a given software task and if patented, unreasonably enormous amounts of software would be infringing or require licensing.
3. Software cannot be distinguished from mathematical algorithms, and we have traditionally not allowed the patenting of mathematical algorithms because we recognize how stifling to innovation such a practice would be.
4. The software and computer industries advance at a pace totally unlike other industries where we offer patents. Consequently, providing a 20-year patent term for software has a totally different impact in its industry than such a term does in other industries. This is not an argument for the abolition of software patents, but instead suggests that if we are to have such patents, they should perhaps only last two to five years. (How much software do you have from 1984 that really needed to be protected by patents these last twenty years to serve as an adequate incentive for its authors to produce it? None.)
Question: This isn't the first time I've heard a knowledgeable person disclaim any distinction between hardware and software. But, just as you're dissatisfied with those who provide no arguments for not allowing software patents, I can't accept this lack of distinction without a persuasive argument. Do you have one? It seems to me that there are several principled distinctions between the two.
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(I should have also noted that another way to avoid the inconsistency that troubles him is to abolish patents altogether. This would probably be a better course than allowing software patents, so far as I can tell.) For rhetorical effect it would probably also have been a good idea to include Bill Gates' famous quotation:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."We're headed that way now.
What follows is an e-mail I just sent to the members of my law school module (the small group of about 32 that you take all your classes with first semester).
Hello all,
Now that we're past that paper, I wanted to encourage people to try to catch what may be the best thing I've ever seen on TV. This week PBS aired The New Americans, an Independent Lens documentary, over two nights, for about six hours total. You can learn more at:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/newamericans
although I don't presently know of any additional airtimes.
For me, I thought it was a good program to help people get the whole point of life. It seems to me that most of the world (or maybe just most of the first world) has an unfortunate view on this. They apparently think that what they should primarily do with their lives is acquire wealth and things. I think this is unfortunate not only because of the selfish worldview it represents, but also because if these people continue in this misguided pursuit, they are ultimately going to be unhappy and disappointed. That may be just what I took away. Don't get me wrong, I think Porsche Boxsters are as cool as the next person, I just don't also expect that my having one or not will determine whether I feel at peace on my deathbed.
More clearly, the documentary illustrated how rich each of us already is merely by the fact of having U.S. citizenship. The show has you think about a girl from Mexico who wants to finish high school, but whose parents cannot afford the necessary school uniforms to send her. A girl who, when her family is finally allowed to enter the U.S., learns that California won't allow someone 18 years old to attend public high school. A girl who, without reliable transportation to attend night school, ends up just picking pesticide-covered strawberries for you and I to buy at Safeway.
The myth of the American self-made man is strong. Our culture inculcates it in us from birth. But it seems fairly clear to me that it is just that, a myth. Take most of us at Boalt, for example. We have each worked our butts off to get here and have achieved countless impressive things thus far through lots of hard work. But when I think of my own case, I have to recognize that I didn't even want to attend high school, but I was in a culture, a country, a community, a family, and a peer group that made doing otherwise unthinkable. Sure, I worked hard in college and did well, but I also had parents who worked hard their whole lives to pay for me to do so, and to create in me the mindset that I obviously would attend college, do well, and graduate. (And they were only in a position to do that because of the hard work of their own parents, etc. If one starts honestly tracing one's support network, you'll stop being so impressed with oneself pretty quickly. Not to suggest that any of us has this fault.)
The documentary also tracks a family in Nigeria whose brother is murdered by the government because of his outspoken political views. Their own houses, businesses, etc. are bulldozed as added punishment. One of the brothers, who has a chemical engineering degree from a Nigerian university, struggles in the U.S. as a department-store security guard. The examples continue.
One upshot for me was that there are a lot of good people in this world, doing the best that they can, and having a mighty hard time achieving a decent quality of life. Not that I haven't had this realization before, but it reinforced it. If one has the slightest bit of compassion for other human beings, then one has to question the worth of devoting one's life primarily to self-enrichment. The truths exposed in the show are admittedly frustrating, because I don't know exactly what our society could or should do to solve the myriad of problems it presents. It's vastly complicated, but one can definitely see that trickle-down economists need not apply.
But since I can't (yet) do anything to solve every global problem in one fell swoop, I deal with the resulting frustration by doing the things that I believe will help and that are within my control. A large part of that involves trying to make choices with my life that are directed at helping others, not merely directed at enriching me. It also involves encouraging others to make similar decisions. Our module may need to hear this sort of thing less than any other, but I care about each of you. This is a time when each of us will make big decisions about the directions our lives will take. I believe that gaining a global perspective of where we already are can help those decisions come out better. Better for you, and better for the world.
(You may now crack jokes at my expense. But you likely know that I'm just crazy enough to be sincere here and to not be dissuaded by cynicism. I don't intend to offend, but the medium of e-mail and my own ineptitude limits my ability to convey my intentions perfectly.)
Sincerely,
Brian