Shining City Upon a Hill

9/11 has harmed our values. We need to return to them.

I have been struggling with 9/11 for a great many years.

While I lost a cousin, we were not close. I stand in support of my family who were devastated, and who I love, and with my country who was attacked, and who I love. I’m glad we went after OBL and the Taliban in response. But for me to claim that I was a victim of this attack seems a form of self-aggrandizing that is disrespectful to those people who really did suffer. I do not need to light a johrzeit candle for someone who died on that day, but to support those who do.

But I have suffered a loss.

The terrorists who do not deserve naming killed 2,977 people on that day. Another 6,000 were injured. That’s a lot of people to lose in one day to a hateful act. and it required a response. But those criminals cannot be held responsible for harming our ideals. Only we can do that. And so we have done.

A great many of my friends see the attack as victims in such a personal way that it has allowed them to justify acts in our name by our government, without any sense of proportion.

They say, “Never Forget!”

That phrase is holy to me. It means that we should remember the loss of
6 million Jews who died at the hands of a society who accepted hatred and bigotry as an excuse for genocide, and that we should understand the causes of the deaths of those people, and never ever allow it to happen again. To me, it is blasphemous to use the expression in any other context.

In this context, it has been used as an excuse to harm our ideals, the best modern expression of which were said some 30 years ago:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.
Ronald Reagan, January 11, 1989

Since 2001, the wars in which we engaged have taken the lives of anywhere from 200,000 and 1 million people, and Afghanistan is not much better off than when we went in. But that is nothing to me compared to the mentality that we have taken on, in which we act out of fear, spite, and vengeance, and that we have lost our compassion for those beyond our borders. That so many are scared of the people who come here with nothing but the shirts on their backs shows just how far we have fallen from grace.

On September 13, 2001, I wrote that I saw my lot in life not to be a victim, but to support the victims, to keep calm and carry on. I wanted to do what I could to preserve the shining city on the hill. I still believe all of that, only now, sadly, the goal is restoration.

Most of us are not victims and we have to stop acting like victims. And we have to stop using a victimization mentality as an excuse for vengeful, uncharitable, and bullying behavior.

My hope is that as we approach the 20th anniversary of the attacks, we can begin as a society to reclaim our American ideals, so that we can once again be that Shining City On the Hill.

Internet Balkanization is here already, Mr. Schmidt.

In the technical community we like to say that the Internet is a network of networks, and that each network is independently operated and controlled. That may be true in some technical sense, but it far from the pragmatic truth.

Today’s New York Times contains an editorial that supports former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s view that the Internet will balkanize into two – one centered around US/Western values and one around values of China, and indeed it goes farther, to state that there will be three large Internets, where Europe has its own center.

The fact is that this is the world in which we already live. It is well known that China already has its own Internet, in which all applications can be spied by the government. With the advent of the GDPR, those of us in Europe have been cut off from a number of non-European web sites because they refuse to comply with Europe’s privacy regulations. For example, I cannot read the Los Angeles Times from Switzerland. I get this lovely message:

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

And then there are other mini-Internets, such as that of Iran, in which they have attempted to establish their own borders, not only to preserve their culture, but also their security, at least in their view, thanks to such attacks as Stuxnet.

If China can make its own rules, and Europe can establish its own rules, and the U.S. has its own rules, and Iran has its own rules, can we really say that there is a single Internet today? And how many more Internets will there be tomorrow?

The trend is troubling.

We Internet geeks also like to highlight The Network Effect, in which the value of the network to each individual increases based on the number of network participants, an effect first observed with telephone networks. There is a risk that it can operate in reverse: each time the network bifurcates, its value to each participant decreases because of the loss of the participants who are now on separate networks.

Ironically, the capabilities found in China’s network may be very appealing to other countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, just as shared values around the needs of law enforcement had previously meant that a single set of lawful intercept capabilities exists in most telecommunications equipment. This latter example reflected shared societal values of the time.

If you believe that the Internet is a good thing on the whole, then a single Internet is therefore preferable to many bifurcated Internets. But that value is, at least for the moment, losing to the divergent views that we see reflected in the isolationist policies of the United States, the unilateral policies of Europe, BREXIT, and of course China. Unless and until the economic effects of the Reverse Network Effect are felt, there is no economic incentive for governments to change their direction.

But be careful. A new consensus may be forming that some might not like: a number of countries seemingly led by Australia are seeking ways to gain access to personal devices such as iPhones for purposes of law enforcement, with or without strong technical protections. Do you want to be on that Internet, and perhaps as importantly, will you have a choice? Perhaps there will eventually be one Internet, and we may not like it.

One thing is certain: At least for a while, won’t be reading the LA Times.

My views do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

* Artwork: By ProjectManhattan, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39714913

Secret sauce and sentencing? Say it isn’t so!

Could you spend a long time in prison due to a software bug and not have the right to examine the software? Possibly.

One of the things that we in technology understand is that we make mistakes, a truth we don’t like to admit to customers. What happens, however, when a mistake can lead to tragic consequences?

Yesterday’s New York Times reports about a case that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon hear, involving a man who received a six year jail sentence, in part due to a computer program. The software known as Compas was supposedly developed by Northpointe Inc. (although a search seems to redirect to a Equivant) to provide a risk assessment of a person’s reentry into society. Such a data-driven analysis is vaguely reminiscent of the movie, Minority Report. In this case, the defendant Eric L. Loomis was not allowed to examine the software that assessed that he was a significant risk to the community, even though at least one analysis showed that the software may be programmed with some form of racial bias. The company argues that the algorithm used to make the sentencing recommendation is proprietary, and so should not be subject to review, and that if they release their algorithm to scrutiny they will essentially be giving away their business model, and they may have a point. Patents on such technology may be flimsy, and they eventually do come to a halt. To protect themselves, they make use of another legal tool, the trade secret, which has no fixed term of protection.

One can’t say that a mistake is being made in the case of Mr. Loomis, nor can one authoritatively state that the program is formally correct. The Wisconsin Supreme Court argued creatively that much like college admissions, so long as the software is one input combined with others, the software can be used. Is it, therefore, any different from a potentially flawed witness giving evidence? The question here is whether those who wrote the software can be cross-examined, to what extent they may be questioned, and whether the software itself can be examined. Mr. Loomis argues that to deny his legal team access to the source is a violation of his 14^th Amendment right to due process.

We know from recent experience that blind trust in technology, and more precisely, those who create and maintain it, can lead to bad outcomes. Take for instance the over 20,000 people whose convictions were overturned because a chemist falsified hair analysis results, or other examples where the FBI Crime Lab just flat got it wrong. Even Brad D. Schimel, the Wisconsin attorney general, conceded before the appeals court that, “The use of risk assessments by sentencing courts is a novel issue, which needs time for further percolation.” But what about Mr. Loomis and those who may suffer tainted results if there is a software problem?

While the Supreme Court could rule soon on the matter, they will only have very limited avenues, such as permitting or prohibiting its use. Congress may need to get involved in order to provide other alternatives. One possibility would be to provide the company some new intellectual property protection, such as an extended patent with additional means of enforcement (e.g., higher penalties against infringement or lower thresholds for discovery) in exchange for releasing the source. Even if they do, one question would be whether or not defendants could then game the system so as to score better on sentencing. How great a risk that is we can’t know without knowing what the inputs to the algorithm are.

It is probably not sufficient for the defendant and his legal teams to have access to the source, precisely because more research is needed in this field to validate the models that software like Compas uses. That can’t happen unless researchers have that access.

Finding REAL News as Opposed to Fake News

Here are three simple tests to determine whether a site is a trustworthy news outlet. Are there multiple sections? Does it have multiple news bureaus? Does the site post corrections?

The great New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Unfortunately, our democracy is being undermined by a combination of an epidemic of fake news and people being willing to believe the drivel.

What, then, are trustworthy news outlets? To start with, they have to have paid reporters. Determining the truth requires investigation with feet on the ground. It requires document searches, interviews, and research. That costs money.

Still, a well funded propaganda outfit could pay (or claim to pay) for “reporters”. How to tell the difference? Be suspicious of any site is primarily focused on national politics or any single issue.

Here are a three tests to guide someone as to whether a news outlet is likely legitimate for daily consumption. The tests themselves aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good.

1. Does the outlet have many news bureaus?

A real newspaper will have at least one regional bureau for the region they are covering, and will often have an additional bureau for a state capital or for Washington. Fake news sources may not have any bureaus. A simple test is to type the name of the site and then “news bureaus” into a search engine and examine the results. Note that a regional paper will tend to have only a few bureaus outside their region. That’s okay, so long as they stick to news where they have those bureaus and more importantly reporters.

2. Does the outlet have multiple unrelated sections?

Real news sources will have sections such as weather, sports, obituaries, arts, finance, and region, as opposed to just politics. They may not have all of these sections: for instance, the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have a weather section, but their finance section is unparalleled.

3. Does the outlet ever publish corrections?

Even if the answer to the first two questions is “yes”, no one is perfect. But a good news outlet will recognize their imperfections and always seek to report the truth, no matter how embarrassing it may be. A good measure of an outlet’s trustworthiness is how regularly they correct themselves.

Let’s Test

Given these parameters let’s see whether a web site is a good source for news.

Source	Multiple Bureaus?	Unrelated Sections?	Corrections?
The New York Times	Multiple, throughout New York, US, and the world	NY region, sports, weather, obits, arts	Regularly at the bottom of an article online, or in a section in paper.
Fox News	Multiple affiliates	Sports, weather, numerous regions	Not too often.
Breitbart	Four bureaus	no	Very rarely
Wikipedia	No	Yes (vast)	Entries are continually edited
The Daily Caller	No	No	Never
NPR	Many regional affiliates along with international bureaus	Numerous	Regularly online and on radio
The Wall Street Journal	Strong presence in financial capitals	Finance, Travel, even some Sport	Regularly at the bottom of articles
Politico	Primarily national, with a few state and international bureaus	No	Very Rarely

Trust, of course, is not a binary. That’s why it’s important to get information from multiple sources, maybe not every day, but regularly. Also, just because something is not marked as a trustworthy news outlet doesn’t mean their lying. It does however, mean, that they’re something other than a trustworthy news outlet. A blog, perhaps, or an analysis site. Wikipedia is an interesting case because nobody gets paid, but the information tends to be reasonably trustworthy (or at least transparent).

All of this doesn’t get people off the hook from using their common sense. RT would easily pass the above tests, and yet they are a well known and well funded propaganda arm of Vladimir Putin. Probably not a good news source. Most blogs aren’t so well funded.

The president made a morally bankrupt decision in banning refugees

Someone asked me on Facebook what my problem was with the “Temporary Ban” that President Trump imposed. I thought I would go into some detail.

What Has Happened?

First, how does the President have this authority in the first place? Federal law states that he may suspend travel of entire classes of people that he may state and for a period of time such as he may determine. Here’s what 8 USC § 1182(f) states:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

The courts will determine if this is sufficient power, and President Trump’s order does quote other laws. The key point is that Congress envisioned the need for the president to act quickly.

The meat of the order that has caused all the chaos is as follows:

I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).

For clarity, C-2 and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas are used by diplomats and their families (you can find all the visa categories here). In other words, excluding those visas, in the general case, all other non-citizens who hold passports from the seven countries in question are barred from entering the United States, whether they are visitors or resident aliens.

There are a few exceptions:

(g) Notwithstanding a suspension pursuant to subsection (c) of this section or pursuant to a Presidential proclamation described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.

This means that the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security can update the rules. There is no Secretary of State at the moment. This leaves the Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. This apparently happened over the weekend, according to some reports.

The text of the order then has several references to people fleeing religious persecution, such as the following:

Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.

The majority religion of each of the countries listed in the ban is Islam. What this rule states is that if you are a woman persecuted for wearing not wearing a head scarf and happen to be Christian or Jewish or Buddhist, you get priority. If you are Muslim you are out of luck.

I have, then, three objections to the presidential order.

1. Callous Disregard for Human Life

The way it was implemented stranded many people thousands of miles away from their homes and loved ones, and in some cases leaving some who were visiting a foreign country in a position where they would be forcibly returned to a “home” country that would put their lives at risk. How might this happen? Imagine a man who was born in one of the countries “of concern” (say, Iran) but departed as a political refugee to England. Then he moved to the United States, because he married an American woman. His home, his wife, and perhaps children are in the United States. If he went back to England, or worse, to some other country, last week to visit a sick friend or relative, he would not have permission to return to the United States, and he wouldn’t have permission to remain in the UK. That means that he would be at risk of being sent back to Iran. The original order did not take people like this man into account. Even to this moment, if he does not yet have a green card (that takes a year or two), he would not be able to get back home. Even at relatively low probabilities of this happening with any one individual, The Law of Large Numbers means that a case like this has almost assuredly happened. Perhaps many.

2. Made Up Threat

President Trump wasn’t responding to a real threat. The Wall Street Journal (no liberal bastion) analyzed this in depth and found that of “180 people charged with jihadist terrorism-related crimes or who died before being charged, 11 were identified as being from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia”. Moreover, in the past 24 hours, it’s become clear that the president acted without proper input from his Secretary of Homeland Security. And so, this was, as my friend and columnist Bruce Schneier coined the term years ago, Security Theater.

A decision that has no upside tradeoff that harms others is, by definition, morally bankrupt. I conclude that Trump is therefore morally bankrupt.

3. Religious Bigotry

I wrote at the top that I had three objections. The third objection is that the ban, as written, has the tinge of bigotry, because one religion in particular is disfavored – Islam.

Conclusions

There may be times when we need to suspend travel to the United States in a hurry. Imagine what would happen if there were a rampant and dangerous pandemic. The president needs to have the authority to protect the country in those sorts of circumstances. We need to be able to trust that the president will use his authority in a moral and responsible way. He didn’t do that here. Far from it. In this case he acted in callous disregard for human life. The president abused his authority.