A few weeks ago, I finally joined MyBarackObama just so I could join the 'Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right' group. I muchly favour Obama over McCain and Hillary. I figured I'd also donate a bit of money to him iff he got it right.

Apparently, somehow the registering failed and I didn't join the group. Fail. But at least my fail wasn't epic. Obama's was.

If you live in the US, you should be aware that Obama said that he 'unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies' and that he would 'not be among those voting to end the filibuster'. And he didn't vote to end the filibuster--he was absent from the vote, even though he 'supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same'--but he did vote FOR the FISA Amendment Act, a bill giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. Gee, that phrase seems familiar.

Voting for the FAA would have done next to nothing to directly harm popular opinion of Obama. It would signify that he's not a rightwing nutjob, but most people had figured that out. Fewer than 40% of Americans (or even 40% of conservatives!) supported telecom immunity. The 30-something% who support it probably aren't too keen on Obama anyway, so he wouldn't be losing their support. Presumably he's hoping for a big payout from the telecom industry. Or maybe he thinks he needs the support of Democratic politicians, who are apparently more rightwing than the average Republican voter (probably they get their money from the telecoms, wherewas the voters don't). But those guys will support him anyway because 1) he's their candidate and 2) they want to hitch a ride on his coattails into office.

Telecom immunity isn't the most important thing in the world, to me. I care more about the government telling companies to violate our rights than companies saying 'Okay. Sounds like fun!' But it's still a big deal. Even bigger, though, is saying repeatedly and specifically that you will strongly oppose telecom immunity and then voting in favour of it.

It's sensible that Obama is moving to the centre. The standard winning move is to appeal to your base in the primaries and move to centre for the general election, and I'm completely fine with him doing that. Sure, his supporters are liberal, but the change Obama has been promising is that he's the un-Rove, and that's what we care about the most--being centrist is good.

The left-to-centre shift, however, cannot rightly be done by making specific promises to appeal to the base and then switching to the opposite position. Work out a compromise (which the FISA Amendment Act was absolutely not) and throw a bone to the right/centre where you wisely avoided making specific promises. Don't reverse on earlier promises, especially those that are both specific and important to your base.

I still favour Obama over McCain (it's the economy, stupid), but we don't win by getting someone from the Democratic Party elected. We win by forcing that person to do what was promised. Most of his supports seem to have already let him slide on one major, major issue (campaign finance). We'd have to be pretty pathetic to let him continue to lie to us over and over again. Supporters of Obama should be the first and most vocal critics when he breaks his promises, because those promises were made to us to get our support, not to McCain and his supporters.

I guess one of my fails was epic. I failed to notice that 'change' is a synonym for 'flip-flop'. Obama, it's a shame you're not getting any public financing, 'cause you won't be getting any of my money either, and you won't get my vote either if you don't get your act together.

The French Resistance did a decent job in France, though they needed a lot of help.

A few years ago, I wasn't so hopeful for us. Military has improved, I said. At this point, the argument that we need guns in case the government gets oppressive is bogus. They have tanks and missiles and intensive training.

Then we went to Iraq, and it became apparent that the US military, for all it's sophistication, still couldn't crush a few thousand guys with guns and limited training or experience.

Maybe Iraq will teach them how, but our leaders seem adamantly opposed to learning anything from their mistakes. Really, I think the only thing possible in the near future that would be sufficient would be increased big brotherhood: if you can track individuals well enough, you can crush an insurgency. Guns rights are only of penultimate importance in being able to overthrow the government. Privacy is number one. If they take your guns so you can't shoot them, you can instead build bombs with which to blow thy enemy into tiny bits, in thy mercy. If they're watching us, though, you can't do either.

ACLU trumps NRA.

I am governed by tens of thousands of pages of laws at three¹ (four?² five?³) levels of government. These laws have been interpreted and reinterpreted many times by tens of thousands of court cases. I am legally obligated to follow every one of these laws.

Actually, I don't need to follow these law and their most recent court interpretations. I need to follow whatever future interpretation is made by a prosecutor and accepted as correct by the presiding judge when my case is being argued. (And they say no post ex facto laws.)

I've broken several today. I'll probably break more by day's end.

¹ Federal, State, and County.

² Federal, State, County, and Town. I'm not in the town limits, but they have some territorial jurisdiction, preventing--for example--us from building a new shed.

³ Federal, State, County, Town, and International. Maybe I'm only under international law because I'm under the Federal law that inherits international law.

1. Review the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
   
2. Write letters to politicians.
   
3. Send more money to the ACLU.
   
4. Blow up part of the country with colourful explosives.
   

In one of my courses at ECU--a large course consisting largely of pre-med seniors, I do believe--the professor asked us how old you had to be a US Senator. People told him thirty-five.

On January 1, 2005, some people I know were discussing term limits. Numerous people--my dad, a retired math professor, and I believe some others--thought it was merely a limit on consecutive terms.

The general consensus among Republicans is that all Americans are endowed with certain rights, but that they're not inalienable and that only Americans have them.

If you're an American and I've described you with any of these anecdotes, please buy yourself a clue.

DISCLAIMER: I don't feel like proof-reading this. It's probably muddled and repetitive and [random disparaging adjective], but I just don't care that much. Sorry.

Background, part I: Shortly before the sixth Harry Potter book was released, one booksellers in Canada accidentally sold copies to fourteen people. The courts issued an injunction prohibiting them from reading said copies until the intended release date.

Background, part II: Richard Stallman called on us to boycott Harry Potter because of this.

His argument is, at its core, that you have a right to read any book you own. This seems reasonable, but he doesn't really address--to my knowledge--the reasoning behind the injunction. It's reasonable, though still wrong.

Suppose I promise you that I'll eat a hamburger. Then I remember that I don't eat meat. Too bad: I made a promise and I have to keep it. You have a right to have promises made to you kept, and the courts come in and force-feed me the hamburger to protect that right. (I used to have a right to not eat a hamburger, but then I uncoercedly promised I would.)

Suppose, however, that I promise you that I'll at a hamburger, and promise my brother that I won't. I've now created a situation where either you or my brother will have your rights violated. The courts can come in and enforce one of your rights, but not the other. The solution is to force me to offer one of you something sufficient that you'll say 'Okay, this is just as valuable to me as your eating/not eating a hamburger.' I only have to keep my promise to you so long as you want me to.

Suppose, however, that you want a million dollars and my brother wants a billion dollars. I don't have a million dollars, and I certainly don't have a billion dollars. I can't pay either of you off.

So the courts come in, say 'Ah! Someone's rights will be violated, whatever we do, so the only two differences are:
* Whether Luca wants to eat the hamburger. (I don't.)
* The value of my fulfilling my promise you each put on it.

It seems reasonable (though arguable) that I gave up my right to choose whether I eat the hamburger, so the only thing to consider is the harm of the two options: breaking a million-dollar to you or breaking a billion-dollar promise to my brother.

The courts should choose make me break the million-dollar promise. No hamburger eating for me. Sorry.

However, you could pop up and say 'No, it's worth a hundred quintillion dollars to me!' and who are we to refute you? (Call your bluff by offering you a million dollars? Nope. You're too smart for that. And maybe you're not bluffing.) Or you say it's priceless. And my brother says the same. At that point, the courts have to decide what a reasonable value is, and that sucks, but it's how things actually work.

The hamburger is a silly example. The original issue was a Harry Potter book. (The bookseller promised the publisher they wouldn't let anyone read it and by selling it they promised the buyers they could read it.) RMS offers the example of accidental publishing of health effects of a product. I offer what I think is a stronger counter-example: What if the doctor's office accidentally publishing my medical records?

Slashdotters often argue against copyright by saying 'Don't publish what you don't want public' (which is a bad argument for reasons I won't detail here), but if I share information with my doctor on the basis that he won't share it, and then he does, it's not my fault. I had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now you have my medical records. This is terrible. You'll exploit them for your own nefarious purposes, I just know it.

This, like the Harry Potter case, is different from the hamburger promise case. In the hamburger case, we had to decide which promise would br broken. In this case, one promise (the doctor's promise of secrecy made to me) is already broken. The question is whether to break the doctor's promise to you ('here, you can have (==can read) these medical records!') by taking them back.

Instead of these to choices:
* Break a promise to you/publisher + bad consequences X
* Break a promise to brother/consumer + bad consequences Y

We now have to choices:
* Bad consequences X (promise to me already broken)
* Break a promise + bad consequences Y (promise to me already broken)

Before we chose which promise to break based on Utilitarianism ('minimise bad consequences) because the Deontologist (the 'keep promises' moral theorist) had no way of choosing one over the other. But now the Deontologist has a way of deciding. He doesn't give a damn about consequences.¹

So the Harry Potter injunction is wrong because Deontology is the correct moral theory. If (Act) Utilitarianism is correct, the injunction is probably right.

That's why the injunction is reasonable. Utilitarianism is a reasonable position to take. It just happens to be the wrong on. And, no, I can't prove that.


¹ People always assume Utilitarianism is the cold, calculating moral theory of logical people--it's the one Vulcan's hold--but the Deontologist is as ruthless and cold as any Utilitarian, and it's the only moral theory I know of that actually tries to derive its principles from logic. (It makes basic assumptions, of course, but these 'emotional' rules are derived logically from the basic premise, whereas Utilitarian doesn't need to bother with any logic.)

For years I've wondered why we don't have encrypting phones.

Five or ten years ago, phones may not have had great processors, and some would argue there wasn't much need. The first issue is quickly dying and the other is thoroughly obsolete.

Demand exists. Maybe it's not huge, but it exists.

Interoperability should be simple. Your phone initiates conversation with a quick 'Know such-and-such encryption?' and if the other phone says 'yes', you trade keys and encrypt (or, I suppose, send your pubkey and subsequently encrypted AES key¹). Maybe this means older phones get a couple tones at the beginning of a call. Probably not, but I don't know how they operate.

Phone companies probably like lock-in, so a lone company creating an encryption protocol and releasing a phone probably isn't sufficient. Get some big players on board. Get them all together, create a free, open standard for encryption and agree to all to start supporting it at least on the fast enough models.

Until you do this, I see no need to buy a mobile phone. (If they did this, I'd have a need: to support the concept. Actually, why not release a landline phone for this as well?)

¹ Can you get deniability with AES? I've always thought making it illegal to record people talking to me on the phone is really stupid, but if it's something we want, this could be a way to handle it. Maybe doesn't work so well with voice data.