Wampum

On Thursday the White Mice posted "Secretary Napolitano announced new directives to enhance and clarify oversight for searches of computers and other electronic media at U.S. ports of entry. This critical step is designed to bolster the Department's efforts to combat transnational crime and terrorism while protecting privacy and civil liberties."

The Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for Border Searches of Electronic Device runs to 51 pages, [link], and after reading the first few pages I fail to see how laptop searches (as well as any other form of data storage device, e.g., ipod, memory stick, ...) is going to discover, let alone interdict, "merchandise" (what on earth?) or industrial espionage or ... I'll read the whole thing eventually, but not yet. Perhaps on the page after the last one I read there's a proof that "merchants" (what on earth??) or industrial spies or ... have already been discovered and interdicted when using the internet to move data from point A to point B. Or the proposition that an American FireWall is both "a good thing" and "coming to an ISP near you" -- that is, that the pervasive wiretap the Obama administration is continuing from the Bush / Cheney regime period, is now permanent, and targeting more, much more, than previously advertised.

We (the IETF) decided that when the UK Home Secretary decided that anyone entering the UK with encrypted data had to surrender the associated encryption keys, that we'd our last meeting in the UK.

We (the IETF, and it took a lot longer) decided that when the US Heimat Sicherheit (Homeland Security) made it impractical for engineers from China to attend meetings that we'd our last meeting in the US. There's only one left, Anaheim next Spring. After that "North America" means Canada.

Michael Chertoff justifying massive searches was consistent with his and his master's ideology of public powerlessness. So where's the "change" and why isn't DHS's exec in NOLA making important "change" policy announcements on the "change" administration's first anniversary of the Katrina landfall and the drowning of thousands to the visible indifference of government?

And of course the ideology of the Executive Uber-Branch thrives unchanged, from the regime of Dick Cheney, to the "fooled you" elected government of Barak Obama.

So how long is my laptop going to be seized each time I travel to Quebec or Switzerland or to ICANN meetings?

Posted by EBW at 07:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Gazeta Wyborcza ran this on 2009-08-27:

The US plans for building elements of the missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic are virtually certain to be abandoned, say Gazeta's sources in Washington.

The signals that the generals in the Pentagon are sending are absolutely clear: as far as missile defence is concerned, the current US administration is searching for other solutions than the previously bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, a Washington-based lobby group.

Mr Ellison took part last week in an industry conference on missile defence where the Pentagon talked about its plans to defence industry executives. Gazeta reported that Boeing had proposed there - instead of a base in Poland - mobile interceptor missile (anti-missile) launchers.

Within hours U.S. State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley clarified that the government's review of the missile defense strategy is ongoing and has not reached completion yet.

So Ronald Reagan's "space defense" program (George Lukas wrote for Ronald Reagan) lives on, forward based in Russia's face by the Bush / Cheney twins, under the great candidate of change. Isn't it cute how the missile launchers are mobile? Just like the "rail garrisoned" Peacekeeprs roaming the rails, two missiles at a time, undetected by graffiti taggers or train spotting W87 collectors.

If anyone needs morning policy amusement, the unsigned editorial at the Washington Moonie Moonbat Times is a moderately silly read, click on the link.

Posted by EBW at 05:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently I'm the ... Nth+M, for some value of N == number of open NomCom appointed seats on ICANN's Board, the GNSO Council, the ccNSO Council, and the ALAC, and M is some number greater than one, ranked respondent to the NomCom's call for volunteers to those positions.

The "thank and dismiss" letter also contained a neat idea! Ways I can volunteer and contribute to ICANN. And get the same form letter next year!

Posted by EBW at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I took MB to the Cornell clinic this morning. Broken ankle or not, only the X-rays will tell. For the first time in four years this woman with MS, this candidate for the Maine Legis, this one-of-the-best Dem campaign operatives in the art of Field, has health care -- but only because she'd enrolled at Cornell.

I couldn't help but think. When push comes to shove, he's a Blue Dog.

Not a Corporate Shill, not a complex, winnable if the coalition is just right (and too the right) corporate Dem, but a Blue Dog.

Posted by EBW at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

FCC Chairman Genachowski told The Hill that the FCC will support “net neutrality” and go after anyone who violates its tenets. When asked by The Hill's reporter what he could do in his position to keep the Internet fair, free and open to all Americans, Chairman Genachowski said One thing I would say so that there is no confusion out there is that this FCC will support net neutrality and will enforce any violation of net neutrality principles.

In a topically, if not causally related item, the FCC recently invited comment on defining "broadband". Historically, narrowband was circuit switched (ISDN etc) and broadband was packet switched. Narrowband was therefore tied to the digital signaling hierarchy and was in some way a multiple of 64 KBPS. An acquaintance comments:

Technically, broadband is "faster than narrowband", and beyond thatit's "fast enough for what you're trying to sell"; tell me what you'retrying to sell and I'll tell you how fast a connection you need.

• If you're trying to sell email, VOIP, and lightly-graphical web browsing, 64kbps is enough, and 128 is better.
  
• If you're trying to sell wireless data excluding laptop tethering, that's also fast enough for anything except maybe uploading hi-res camera video.
  
• If you're trying to sell talking-heads video conferencing, 128's enough but 384's better.
  
• If you're trying to sell internet radio, somewhere around 300 is probably enough.
  
• If you're trying to sell online gaming, you'll need to find a WoW addict; I gather latency's a
  bit more of an issue than bandwidth for most people.
  
• If you're trying to sell home web servers - oh wait, they're not! - 100-300k's usually enough, unless you get slashdotted, in which case you need 50-100Mbps for a couple of hours.
  
• If you're trying to sell Youtube-quality video, 1 Mbps is enough, 3 Mbps is better.
  
• If you're trying to sell television replacement, 10M's about enough for one HD channel, 20's better, but the real question is what kind of multicast upstream infrastructure you're using to manage the number of channels you're selling, and whether you're price-competitive with cable, satellite, or radio broadcast, and how well you get along with your city and state regulators who'd like a piece of the action.
  
• If what you're trying to sell is "the relevance of the FCC to the Democratic political machines", the answer is measured in TV-hours, newspaper-inches, and letters to Congresscritters, which isn't my
  problem.

So (a) what is _rural_ broadband, and is it the same thing as _urban_ broadband, and (b) is there a "broadband" that is less driven by blueboxing the telco on the LD rates, passive consumption of pre-packaged consumer video / audio bits and "teh web as is"?

I think so, unfortunately, the application window closed minutes before my 3rd application was submitted, so I'll have to wait for the next application window for a "sustainability" application for rural Maine to the NTIA for BTOP funding.

Posted by EBW at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush's Helicopter Ben just got a second bite of the apple. Roubini, our unbelieved Cassandra (La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu) is seeing un chameau bactrien.

Isn't "change" both wonderful and ... reality based!!!

Posted by EBW at 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Frankie has a new gig. He's shopping the meme that it is "ethnic cleansing of Jews", good old MittleEuropaJudenFreiFollies, to oppose illegal settlements, and as a bonus, he's shopping "disputed territory" as the better term of art for "occupied territories".

His last major outing was morphing "global warming" to "climate change".

Got to admire a man who can market shit as sunshine.

Update: Ha'aretz bought the shite.

Posted by EBW at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via the firm.

By Dr. Hans Köchler, international observer at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands.

Back in August 1998 the United Nations Security Council had “welcomed” the resolution of the legal-political dispute between Libya and the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom over the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie through the trial of two Libyan suspects before an extraterritorial Scottish Court in the Netherlands. While the dispute between the governments has been settled years ago and Libya now entertains businesslike relations with both the US and UK, the only individual convicted in the Lockerbie case, the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, still awaits a final verdict in his case, the announcement of which he may not live to see because, while in Scottish custody, he has fallen ill with cancer that was detected only at a time when, so the prison authorities say, it was already too late to administer more than palliative care.

The hopeless, indeed Kafkaesque, situation which the lone Libyan prisoner finds himself in is further aggravated by the fact that his second appeal has suffered from enormous delays – which are scandalous under any circumstances and, seen in the context of deliberate withholding of evidence, are tantamount to an obstruction of justice. His predicament became even more serious when certain quarters confronted him with the alternative of either giving up his appeal in order to be sent back to Libya on the basis of a recently ratified “prisoner exchange agreement” between the UK and Libya – or die in a Scottish jail.

Under these circumstances, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Justice (who certainly has seen the latest medical reports) should act without further delay on Mr. al Megrahi’s second request (the first was rejected) for “compassionate release” under the provisions of Scots law. This would allow the appeal to continue and avoid the circumstances of “emotional blackmail” the Lockerbie prisoner faces in regard to the prisoner exchange option. Apart from the convicted Libyan national’s right – under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms – to a proper judicial review, it is in the supreme public interest of Scotland and the United Kingdom that this second appeal proceed unhindered and that, eventually, a decision be reached beyond a reasonable doubt. This fundamental criterion of Scots law was not in any way met by the trial verdict and (first) appeal decision of the Scottish Court sitting in the Netherlands back in 2001 and 2002. The Opinions of the Court issued by the two panels of Scottish judges were inconsistent and based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence; on testimony of at least two key witnesses who had received huge amounts of money; on the opinions of forensic experts of, to say the least, dubious reputation and with problematic links to intelligence services; and on at least one piece of evidence that had been inserted at a later stage into the list of documents and apparently been tampered with. Furthermore, vital evidence such as that of a break-in at a luggage storage area at Heathrow airport in the night before the departure of the doomed flight had been withheld from the court during the first trial (a fact that still has not been properly explained), and further vital evidence is still being withheld in the phase of the second appeal due to the British Foreign Secretary’s having issued a so-called Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate. Concerns similar to those which I had raised in my reports to the United Nations Organization in 2001 and 2002 about improprieties, irregularities and judicial malpractices have also been raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) that, in June 2007, referred Mr. al Megrahi’s case back to the appeal court, suspecting – as I had done on the day of the original verdict on 31 January 2001 – that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. Regrettably, the SCCRC has decided to keep some of the reasons for its decision secret.

The public is also kept in the dark about what Scotland’s Justice Secretary discussed at his meeting with Mr. al Megrahi at Greenock prison, which was indeed an unprecedented step in Scottish legal history. One thing should be taken for certain, however: If Mr. MacAskill is a man of honour, he will not have made granting the prisoner’s request for “compassionate release” conditional upon the latter’s dropping the ongoing appeal. This would not only be morally outrageous, it would also be illegal in terms of Scots law and, as infringement upon a convicted person’s freedom to seek judicial review, in outright violation of the European Human Rights Convention the provisions of which are binding upon Scotland.

If Scotland prides itself in its unique judicial system, which it has practiced since long before devolution, the authorities should exercise all efforts to repair the damage that has been done to the country’s reputation by the flawed judicial proceedings in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. If Mr. MacAskill is indeed serious about dealing with the matter strictly within legal parameters, as he repeatedly said, the competent Scottish authorities should finally make those steps that are necessary to identify the actual “Lockerbie bombers” (in the plural!) wherever they may be and however powerful they still may be, apparently having succeeded for so long in using the Scottish judicial system to make Mr. al Megrahi a scapegoat in the strange and ugly world of international power politics.

Posted by EBW at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One man presented hismelf at a polling place to cast ballots for ... more than 30 related women. The war to liberate women, now in its seventh year, hasn't yet achieved one woman one vote.

Posted by EBW at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Passing for the moment on the fraud the Chicago machine party elites perpetrated on the Dems, both Iowa dems caucusing and dems working the Iowa caucuses, and subsequent, when marketing their "change" candidate as a regular guy who really thought we would pass single-payer when the Dems had majorities in the House, the Senate, and controlled the Executive Branch, a condition which apparently has not yet ripened, there are the possible unintended consequences of dumping all of the progressives, some of the Party, and according to the polling data, most of the population that live on wages, not inherited wealth or unearned income, for our incorrect beliefs.

Single payer would dislocate hundreds of thousands of workers in the insurance rackets, and end dividends to hundreds of thousands of racketeering stockholders, and hundreds of heads of organized crime families would be ... without.

And the wealth of hundreds of millions of protection policies, hundreds of dollars per week paid for "protection", would be no longer seized, as a condition of employment, a "fringe benefit" created as a work-around for war-time wage and price controls. Roughly half of the cost of health care is the maintenance cost for this WW2 social gimmick, the care and feeding of a class of "service providers", where the fundamental service is a "fringe benefit" that doesn't breech no longer extant wartime wage caps. From the first google hit for "origins of health insurance in the us"

Employee benefit plans proliferated in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Strong unions bargained for better benefit packages, including tax-free, employer-sponsored health insurance. Wartime (1939-1945) wage freezes imposed by the government actually accelerated the spread of group health care. Unable by law to attract workers by paying more, employers instead improved their benefit packages, adding health care.

Government programs to cover health care costs began to expand during the 1950s and 1960s. Disability benefits were included in social security coverage for the first time in 1954. When the government created Medicare and Medicaid programs in 1965, private sources still paid 75 percent of all of the health care costs. By 1995, individuals and companies only paid for about half of the health care with the government responsible for the other half.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, the cost of health care rose rapidly and the majority of employer-sponsored group insurance plans switched from “fee-for-service” plans to the cheaper “managed care plans.” As a result, most Americans with health insurance were enrolled in managed care plans by the mid-1990s.

So what's the real problem? It isn't that some dems won't vote, its that here we are in the first summer of the Great Recession, the first summer after the Stimulus Package was voted in, and just before Congress went on recess it did not pass a historic bill, a bill that extends Medicare to all, a bill that captures, and expresses, all of our hopes that the common weal will prevail over adversity, that past sacrifices have not been in vain, that our society, our culture, is more functional than dysfunctional.

We don't have that, so what do we have? Why does anyone who works for a wage, or worked for one, or is still looking for work that pays a wage, minimum or more (or less to be honest), why does anyone who needs for there to be work, either to keep a paid job that still exists, after millions have been lost, or to get a job created by an expansion of work, believe that "we've turned the corner" or "the darkest days are behind us"?

What we've lost is the economic recovery, not simply the staggering waste lost to parasitism, to endemic corruption, but the social confidence, aka "consumer confidence", upon which the administration's plan of record for economic recovery is based.

What we got is PTSD -- post-tempest summer disorder -- the "malaise" the corporate hacks hung on the Carter administration after his "Crisis of Confidence" speech of July 15, 1979. Malaise which will measure with skepticism each claim by the administration that it has the fix for the economy, that hope is more rational than management of failure, that we are not, fundamentally, simply managing the impoverishment of most of the world, dinosaurs convinced of both the possibility of evolution and the certainty of extinction.

We'll muddle. Through is an open question. Without leaders. That's what we lost.

Posted by EBW at 05:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In today's mail. The contrib link is here. You know what to do. Co-pay.

HEALTH CARE WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

The masquerade is over! The "public option" is ... dead.

Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT? You have to choose. And you have to pay. If you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the private insurance companies and you will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

The Administration plan requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is delivering tens of millions of new "customers" to the insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.

You will next hear talk about "co-ops." The truth is that insurance company campaign contributions have co-opted the public interest.

I need your help to spread the word and rally the nation around true health care reform which covers everyone and maintains fiscal integrity without breaking our nation's bank! Your contribution will empower our efforts to continue to fight for the single-payer, not-for-profit health care bill, HR676 "Medicare for All," which I co-authored with Rep. John Conyers. The bill now has 85 sponsors in the House.

The hotly-debated HR3200, the so-called "health care reform" bill, is nothing less than corporate welfare in the guise of social welfare and reform. It is a convoluted mess. The real debate which we should be having is not occurring.

Removing the "public option" from a public bill paid for by public money is not in the public interest. What is left is a "private option" paid for with public money. Why should public money be spent on a private option which does not guarantee 100% coverage nor have any cost controls? A true public option would provide 30% savings immediately which would then cover the 1/3rd of the population who presently have no health care.

Unfortunately, under HR3200, the Government is choosing winners and losers in the private sector; proposing to spend public funds on subsidizing insurance companies who make money not providing health care. This process will insure only the expansion of profits. Gone is the debate over cost.

As a result of current negotiations, the Medicare Part D rip-off will continue for another decade, further fleecing senior citizens. Drug importation has been dropped, so no inexpensive drugs can be accessed from other nations.

Instead we are told the pharmaceutical companies will accept a 2% cut in the growth rate of their profits - they call this cost control!

If the matter were not so serious, it would be farcical: The executive branch pretends that the proposed health care reforms are something they are not. The legislation is being attacked for something it is not. Congressional leadership and the White House defend the legislation, pretending it actually is the very proposal that is being attacked. But it is not.

A commonsense government health care reform policy would insure that every single American has full access to health care by expanding Medicare to cover everyone under a Single Payer System. We are already paying for a universal standard of care, it is just we are not getting it.

I need your help to spread the word and rally the nation around true health care reform which covers everyone and maintains fiscal integrity without subsidizing insurance and pharmaceutical companies and breaking our nation's bank!

My voice in Congress will continue to challenge the special interests who do not want "single-payer" to succeed. I need you to join me in combating the special and corporate interests who spend millions to try to win this Congressional seat. With your help WE will win again. With your help I will continue to represent your concerns, be YOUR VOICE in the United States Congress, and be the voice for health care for all Americans!

Please contribute $25, $50, $100 in support of my campaign. Please contribute now.

With your help, we can accomplish ANYTHING in America. Persistence, dedication, truth and courage will lead the way and win out in the end.

Thank you.
Dennis

Posted by EBW at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I can't wait to find out which one is a "coop". Wierd to think that getting MB into Cornell Law, and getting health for both of us and the kids, two with uninsurable autism pre-existing conditions (and a pittance per month of social security benefits), with a two year lead-time cost and three years of tuition, less merit grants, will, over a three year period, cost less then "standard health" for a family of six, with two children with autism.

Getting into Cornell Law (or Minnesota Law or Hastings Law or ...) was the hard part. Anyone who can, which is a wicked small demographic, gets lower cost health care than the standard offer of nothing, or nothing that costs a lot.

Posted by EBW at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today the daily paper Etemad Melli was closed. Saturday it carried the story that hundreds of the 3,000 plus arrestees died in custody, after being "beaten and tortured". The butcher's bill according to the state is "30 persons" killed, and the opposition's report to the Majlis has 69 confirmed killed.

With most of the arrested being in Tehran, a kill-to-capture ratio of 1-to-30 is very, very high. Almost Israeli in its casual use of capital punishment in the occupied capital.

Posted by EBW at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Obots' grand creation, the agent of change and hope and so on, is dumping the uninsured working, and non-working poor. I've been both.

Time to start working for change.

Posted by EBW at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Buffalo New has State drops collection of taxes on Indian cigarettes: Writes off revenue from reservation sales. Buried midway in the copy, after the enraged reaction quotes is this gem:

During an interview on an unrelated topic, Robert Megna, the governor's budget director, revealed to The Buffalo News that the state is backing away from the projection of $65 million from the potential revenue source.

We learn from Russell Sciandra, who directs the "Center for a Tobacco Free New York" that:

It's embarrassing, and it's outrageous that the Empire State can't seem to figure out how to collect this tax when just about every other state does.

But what is the real situation? The State vs Seneca Nation contest is neither new, nor likely to be settled in the State's favor, at least not by April 1st, when the budget year begins. So the State removed $65 million in revenue it shouldn't have "anticipated" in the first place, any more than it should have anticipated the sale of Ellis Island, a 53 acre parcel worth approximately $2,300 per square foot. This was, as Matt Anderson clarified, the figure deleted from the budget "to prudently address potential risks to our receipts forecast."

Apparently Robert Megna, the governor's budget director, thought it prudent to clarify to Mr. Precious that imagined revenue might not materialize within a statutory budget period. However, Mr. Precious ran with the story -- outraged quotes, no balanced comment from any FIL practitioner, and a heap of hot, Injun-Hatin' comments.

Journamalism.

Posted by EBW at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When i did the design and stats for my high school civics class project, which was to survey the public on the introduction of a off-main-street shopping center, that is, design a poll that my classmates fielded and figure out what the answers might mean, we ran into an unanticipated artifact. Older homeowners along the coast had a view, not just of the ocean, but of the desirability of changing property taxes along the lines of Howard Jarvis' and Paul Gann ideas, which would be voted in eight years later.

The nut of the problem was a high school junior or senior knocks on the door, the older homeowner comes to the door, the kid asks the geezer what the geezer thinks of taxes and schools, and the geezer says there's no need to pay for schools and the conversation ends.

What if the Prop 13 "Yes" voters got their wishes by individual choice? What if they got "tax relief" without dorking tax policy for skyscrapers, malls, and non-coastal residential properties? What if ... they were freed of the burden of being treated by physicians younger than they were, the beneficiaries of the hated socialist transfer of wealth from the deserving old to the undeserving young?

We Californians all sunk together when Prop 13 was voted in.

I look at the local "one nation, one plan" lawn signs here in Ithaca and I think "no, two plans, two nations". I don't want to loose single payer because the corporations can whip up "death panel" rhetoric. I don't want Obama to persuade the visibly insane that they can, with sufficient lithium and love, recover their sanity. I want him to cheerfully offer "Yes. You can Opt Out", and we can have two plans, single-payer for one nation, and no public oversight, protection, or involvement at all for those who want whatever the corporations are willing to take from them.

Opting out of single-payer would be a long-term commitment, a decenial decision, at census time. Or a fiver year prospective decision at tax time. Or a for the next 12 months decision, again at tax time. Those poor crazed people could be freed of government tyrany.

The likelihood is that most of the demographic was fine with "separate but equal" and would prefer to put their retirement savings in the stock market, and would be happy to live "above the herd". So what is the downside of tossing them to the lions?

Posted by EBW at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More interesting tidbits from the May 12th report by the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Assured funding for certain information security and information assurance programs of the Department of Defense (sec. 214)

The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Network and Information Integration (ASD/NII) have attempted for a number of years to persuade the Office of Management and Budget to establish a budget line item for information assurance anticipatory development within the Department of Defense (DOD). While these efforts have not been successful, the committee believes that the arguments in favor of such a program are compelling.

The information technology (IT) industry is the most vibrant and rapidly evolving industry in the world. The Department attempts to acquire or make use of these commercial IT advances to achieve efficiencies and improved operational effectiveness. However, DOD cannot effectively adopt this technology if it cannot be used securely, yet the Department has no appropriate mechanism for keeping pace with the march of technology development.

There is, for example, an outstanding requirement for a very high speed Internet Protocol encryption capability, but NSA has almost no resources with which to respond. The executive branch recently had to launch a satellite that lacked encryption for a key wideband downlink. The Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite program was delayed because of a belated encryption subsystem development effort. These types of requirements can be anticipated and, with modest funding, security solutions can be developed to match acquisition schedules.

The committee recommends a provision that would impose a permanent 1 percent tax on the Department's information systems security program, other information assurance programs, and the non-National Intelligence Program-funded cyber security initiative to finance this new program.

The committee directs that the program be executed by NSA's Information Assurance Directorate unless otherwise specified by the ASD/NII. The ASD/NII shall review and approve expenditures under this program. The committee urges the administration to vitiate the need for this statute-based funding mechanism by submitting its own budget request for this activity.

Cyber attack mitigation technologies

The budget request included $109.5 million in PE 62702F for applied research on command, control, and communications technologies. The September 2007 Defense Science Board study entitled `Mission Impact of Foreign Influence on DOD Software' highlighted the need for `programs to advance the state-of-the-art in vulnerability detection and mitigation in software and hardware.' In support of this finding, the committee recommends an increase of $2.5 million for the development of systems to detect and defeat malicious software on military networks and information systems.

Reconfigurable securing computing

The budget request included $56.9 million in PE 63203F for development of advanced aerospace sensors. The Air Force and Department of Defense have set cybersecurity as a high technology priority. To support these efforts at the tactical level and reduce the costs for the development of security systems, the committee recommends an increase of $2.0 million to develop reconfigurable secure computing technologies for advanced sensor systems.

When the USG relaxed the Federal Information System Procurement Standards, eliminating the POSIX barriers to Microsoft's propriatary operating system product, it created the Microsoft monopoly. There won't be a non-monopoly until there's a market for competing product -- hardened *nix in the base USG FIPS mix. Until then, another $2.5 million plus or minus random budget and defense policy walk, for bandaids for recurring road rash from pervasive use of a (single, shared fate) wobbly trike.

I'm amused by the launch-sans-crypto outcome, and the additional amounts sought, 1% and $2.5 million and $2.0 million for anticipatory capability, monitoring development, and operational agility are oddly small, given the size of the overall cybersecurity budget previous post) of $17.0 billion.

Posted by EBW at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The program was established by National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD-54/HSPD-23), in January 2008, three months before Rod Beckstrom, who now joins us as ICANN's CEO, was appointed to run the newly created National Cyber Security Center, reporting directly to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, a post he bailed from twelve months later.

Implementation of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), which was established by President Bush in National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 in January 2008, continues at this time. President Obama in February 2009 ordered a complete review of U.S. Government cybersecurity programs, including the CNCI, by the National Security Council/Homeland Security Council (NSC/HSC). The NSC/HSC review is to be completed and recommendations reported to the President in mid-April 2009. The CNCI will incorporate any changes recommended by the NSC/HSC review and approved by the President at that time.

The Senate Armed Services Committee had the following unclassified statement. I've added emphasis not in the original:

[...]

National cyber security initiative

The committee applauds the administration for developing a serious, major initiative to begin to close the vulnerabilities in the government's information networks and the nation's critical infrastructure. The committee believes that the administration's actions provide a foundation on which the next president can build.

However, the committee has multiple, significant issues with the administration's specific proposals and with the overall approach to gaining congressional support for the initiative.

A chief concern is that virtually everything about the initiative is highly classified, and most of the information that is not classified is categorized as `For Official Use Only.' These restrictions preclude public education, awareness, and debate about the policy and legal issues, real or imagined, that the initiative poses in the areas of privacy and civil liberties. Without such debate and awareness in such important and sensitive areas, it is likely that the initiative will make slow or modest progress. The committee strongly urges the administration to reconsider the necessity and wisdom of the blanket, indiscriminate classification levels established for the initiative.

The administration itself is starting a serious effort as part of the initiative to develop an information warfare deterrence strategy and declaratory doctrine, much as the superpowers did during the Cold War for nuclear conflict. It is difficult to conceive how the United States could promulgate a meaningful deterrence doctrine if every aspect of our capabilities and operational concepts is classified. In the era of superpower nuclear competition, while neither side disclosed weapons designs, everyone understood the effects of nuclear weapons, how they would be delivered, and the circumstances under which they would be used. Indeed, deterrence was not possible without letting friends and adversaries alike know what capabilities we possessed and the price that adversaries would pay in a real conflict. Some analogous level of disclosure is necessary in the cyber domain.

The committee also shares the view of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that major elements of the cyber initiative request should be scaled back because policy and legal reviews are not complete, and because the technology is not mature. Indeed, the administration is asking for substantial funds under the cyber initiative for fielding capabilities based on ongoing programs that remain in the prototype, or concept development, phase of the acquisition process. These elements of the cyber initiative, in other words, could not gain approval within the executive branch if held to standards enforced on normal acquisition programs. The committee's view is that disciplined acquisition processes and practices must be applied to the government-wide cyber initiative as much as to the ongoing development programs upon which the initiative is based.

The committee also concludes that some major elements of the cyber initiative are not solely or even primarily intended to support the cyber security mission. Instead, it would be more accurate to say that some of the projects support foreign intelligence collection and analysis generally rather than the cyber security mission particularly. If these elements were properly defined, the President's cyber security initiative would be seen as substantially more modest than it now appears. That is not to say that the proposed projects are not worthwhile, but rather that what will be achieved for the more than $17.0 billion planned by the administration to secure the government's networks is less than what might be expected.

Finally, the committee concludes that, for all its ambitions, the cyber initiative sidesteps some of the most important issues that must be addressed to develop the means to defend the country. These tough issues include the establishment of clear command chains, definition of roles and missions for the various agencies and departments, and engagement of the private sector.

Additional information on the cyber initiative is contained in the classified annex to this report.

[...]

The non-utility of keeping the program highly classified is not that it fails to deter enemies or inspire friends, but that it fails to function. As for dumping a big part of $17.0 billion on prototypes and concept development, that would be fine if the program were ARPA and actual research and development standards were met. Otherwise it may be closer to white-collar welfare for the beltway security service sector, and as much a crock as the Y2K frenzy was. The hiding of a substantial portion of the "foreign intelligence collection and analysis" budget in the "Cybersecurity" package is unsurprising corruption, for which some Executive Service pay grades should end up doing time in Club Fed.

"Engagement of the private sector" ... Does that mean turning about a billion shared-fate DOS devices into something slightly less tempting to every actor needing a force multiplier? Does it mean turning most of the access networks into something slightly less tempting to the same force multiplier shoppers than many open loops of many open devices? Could it mean securing the domain name, or the address allocation, delegation trees, so that synthetic resolution, and synthetic routing, artifacts are slightly less available than at present? If only it were so.

Kudus to the Federation of American Scientists which FOIA'd the material.

Posted by EBW at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Fascist America: Are We There Yet? by Sara at Orcinius. Recommended reading.

Posted by EBW at 06:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The putchist claimed he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw something. True love perhaps, or someone who would never be untrue, or ... Meanwhile a pair of Project 971 Shuka-B (Akula) and a Project 971A / 971M Shuka-B (Akula II) attack boats are working the Middle and South Atlantic Bights at the margins of the respective Economic Exclusion Zones. That in it self is hardly newsworthy. The media coverage of the resumption of normal patrols is overblown, but it is a reminder that weapons, that is, capabilities, not just policy or politics, that is, intentions, are what must be seen clearly.

Posted by EBW at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"This is a great regret that we are not a signatory [to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague]."

Of course, it is a great regret that we are not prosecuting the war crimes of the past 8+ years, and that too is something the Obama-bots sought not. Post-partisan and all that.

Posted by EBW at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the past 10 days I've been in Stockholm, where we managed to get to the end of the IDNAbis WG agenda, which is rather a big deal for several reasons:

• domain names (text labels in the DNS) may now be written in scripts supported subsequent to the issuance of version 3.1 of Unicode,
  
• the email weenies (who caused this whole mess by insisting that they'd never, ever, fix addressing in SMTP) can finish fixing local and remote addressing for text labels which contain characters outside of the {a-z,A-Z,0-9,-} set,
  
• the Unicadettes (who caused their whole mess in ways too numerous to enumerate) can go off and dither about Emojis and Klingon and stop using the IETF to tell language communities that they (the language communities) don't know what they (the language communities) are talking about when they (the language communities) talk about how they (the language communities) write their (the language communites) languages in their (the language communities) scripts, and
  
• the ICANN Staff and {PRC, RF, ...} governments and {Verisign, Verisign, ...} for-profit internet exploits can cease to dither about what rules apply to text labels that go into the IANA root, and seriously collide over issues like anti-trust vs literacy.

On the way home there was no cloud cover over Greenland, so I saw ice and rock, to my heart's content.

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Posted by EBW at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Weiner, co-chair of the Middle Class Caucus, has led the effort for single-payer along with Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Elliot Engel (D-NY), Bobby Rush (D-IL), Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), and Peter Welch (D-VT).

A full debate and a floor vote.

Outstanding.

Posted by EBW at 01:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via Haaratz.

Police on Sunday recommended that the state prosecution to indict Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering, witness harassment and obstruction of justice.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz must approve the recommendation before Lieberman is formally charged. It could be weeks or months before a decision is made.

The combined maximum sentence for those crimes would be 31 years in prison, a police officer said.

A police statement said the investigation began in 2006 and covered events going back to 2000.

Lieberman released a statement in response to the police announcement, saying there were no grounds for the indictment and that he was the victim of persecution.

"For 13 years the police have conducted a campaign of persecution against me," the foreign minister said. "As much as my political strength and the strength of Yisrael Beiteinu rise, the campaign of persecution also intensifies."

He said police had no real reason for launching an investigation against him, and that if the suspicions had been proven true, the investigation would not have lasted for over a decade.

"Only an appeal to the High Court, which demanded a halt to the judicial torture of me and my family, obliged the police to conclude the investigation," he said.

A police source has said the investigation is "practically over," and the body of evidence is sufficient to support an indictment on the charges.

Last month, Mazuz met with police investigations division head Yoav Sigalovich, national fraud squad head Shlomo Ayalon and detectives involved in the investigation.

The indictment taking shape suggests Lieberman managed a well-oiled business machine through front men even after taking public office, and made millions of dollars.

Lieberman and his associates are suspected of establishing several companies, some of them shell companies, in order to launder millions of shekels and funnel them into his own pockets. Police have investigated whether Lieberman continued running these alleged operations even after becoming a public official.

In addition, police believe Lieberman and his associates tried to obstruct the police investigation in at least three separate instances, by changing the names of companies he allegedly established in Cyprus after he suspected the police had identified them.

In his statement Thursday, Lieberman added: "I hope that as opposed to the police, the other law enforcement bodies will act fairly, without political considerations and without preconceptions, and will not try to forcibly justify the longest political investigation in the state's history.

"In a country governed by civil laws, a person - even if he is a minister - is innocent until proven guilty."

The last time Lieberman and his associates changed the companies' names was in 2006, at the height of the investigation, when he allegedly realized that police were shifting their focus from Austria to Cyprus.

As reported in Haaretz, Lieberman incriminated himself when police questioned him on suspicions that he took bribes. However, this is believed to be the less significant of the charges the foreign minister may face; if a plea bargain is reached, it may be dropped from the indictment.

Haaretz has learned that Lieberman earned more than NIS 2.5 million as a salaried employee of his daughter's company from 2004-2006, when he was neither a Knesset member nor a cabinet minister. According to information obtained by Haaretz, between 2004 and 2007 the company headed by Michal Lieberman, M.L. 1, received NIS 11 million from anonymous sources overseas for "business consulting."

Another Haaretz probe revealed that in 2001 an Austrian company owned by Jewish gambling tycoon Martin Schlaff transferred $650,000 to a Cypriot company, Trasimeno Trading, which police believe was controlled by Lieberman. A previous probe revealed Lieberman held several private bank accounts and accounts belonging to companies while presiding as a minister in the cabinet of former prime minister Ariel Sharon.

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In Iran, the daily Kayhan characterized yesterday's hearings as "revealing the proofs of the treason of Khatami and Moussavi". Yup. Treason. The big T. The death sentence by any ready hand. Any bearded moron or group of bearded morons from the sticks is now free to hit the former president and the former prime minister, with anything from an assault rifle to stones.

Kayhan continues: "The leaders of the plotters are corrupt, the authors of impardonable crimes, notably the murder of innocents and cooperation with foreign enemies, but one cannot be content to judge and punish the second hands. If one doesn't act seriously against the (unindicted, viz Khatami and Moussavi) instigators of the troubles, they will continue their conspiracies."

Meanwhile, in the other West Asian religious loony bin, the years of public faggot baiting by the "religious" paid off big time, with a masked man taking an automatic weapon to a gay and lesbian center in Tel Aviv and killing a 26 year old man and a 16 year old girl and wounding another 13 persons before running off.

Posted by EBW at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)