The TSA is Still At It.

courtA recent article in the Wall Street Journal brings to light continuing abuses by the Transport Security Agency of people’s freedoms.  In the article several cases are depicted in which the TSA expanded their role from protecting against terrorism on planes to general law enforcement.  Here’s the issue: the only reasons the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution allows anyone to screen at all in advance are that the screening is not viewed as a law enforcement activity, and that it is impossible to undo a successful attack.  The principle, then, should be that TSA should be required to invade our privacy to the minimum extent possible to protect against such attacks, so that we can continue to enjoy what little we have left of our rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.  The courts have held as such repeatedly, and it is the same logic used to uphold drunk driving checks.

Technology actually hurts and helps.  For instance, new scanners make it possible to see through clothing and detect all manner of substances.  On the other hand, because they can do so, there should be less need to open containers if those scanners have said that they are safe.  Similarly, technology can improve the way we identify individuals.  By doing so, quizzing people about their identity should become less necessary.  Just to be clear, I do not view anything having to do with RFID in such a vein.  We’ll discuss this more soon.

Happy (forthcoming) 4th of July

American Flag & The Washington MonumentSince America is celebrating her birthday a day early, let’s do the same.  Happy 233rd birthday, America!  You’re this many fingers old.  But a mere twenty-one months earlier, even George Washington didn’t think much about the idea of seceding from Britain.  In a letter to British Captain Robert Mackenzie he wrote on October 9, 1774 of independence:

“…that no such thing is desired by any thinking man in North America; on the contrary, that it is the ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty, that peace and tranquility, upon constitutional grounds, may be restored, and the horrors of civil discord prevented…”

It’s not that Washington was content with the way things were, but the differences had not yet risen to the point where he felt they were irreconcilable.   The Powell doctrine didn’t exist back then.  The founders entered into a war not knowing whether they could win it.  England’s soldiers were far from home, however, and France was looking for new ways to stick a finger in the King’s eye.  Perhaps fortune and geography favored the foolish, and yet here we are.  Why did they fight?  Perhaps they felt it was simply the right thing to do.

It is often said that America’s revolution was one of ideas and not merely one of force.  Those ideas had strong ideological grounding from the likes of John Locke, upon whom Jefferson based the preface of the Declaration of Independence.  It was he who wrote that man was entitled to life, liberty, and property.

The real revolution did not end in 1781, however.  It continues today as our country struggles through recession.  Back then, the idea that we could ruin the entire world through global warming or nuclear war would have been considered laughable, and yet today it is understood by all but the most foolish.  Back then black men counted  as property, as did women and children.  Today a black man is president, and America’s voice to the rest of the world is a woman.

Perhaps the next revolution lies in the orthodoxy of economics; the idea that production can sustain us.  If production sustains us at the cost of the environment, it does so at the cost of our children.  How we value the earth and future generations is something our current model does so poorly, that to this day coal production destroys land and pollutes the air.

Perhaps the next revolution will be how we as a world community live together.  Although Roosevelt and Truman worked to form the United Nations in 1945, the institution has done a poor job at preventing wanton attacks on civilians, despotism, and adventurism.

Perhaps the next revolution is yet within America, on how we govern ourselves.  As I look at the fiasco that faces the people of California I wonder what it will take to undo the tyranny of the minority of people who are unable to cope with the simple notion that you get what you pay for.  If government requires the consent of the governed, which is really what King George III lost, doesn’t it also require at least some amount of common ground?  Where is that common ground today?  This is not just a challenge for politicians.  Californians themselves must agree on what is important to fund and what is not.

So Happy Birthday America!  Now let’s get back to work.

Baby Shaker Shakes Apple iTunes Model

iPhoneI have an expression that I have ruthlessly stolen from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and it is,  “A double dumb-ass on you!”  Today I say that to Apple, for walking into a minefield with iTunes, and controlling what applications they allow on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  It seems that someone wrote an game called Baby Shaker, in which the idea is to cause the baby on the screen brain damage.  The game is sickening and tasteless, which I generally like, but in this case, it even turned me off.

So why is Apple in trouble?  They approved publication of the game and then after parental outrage they withdrew the approval.  Oops!  Somehow to Apple this debacle was not predictable.  Here is a lesson that many in the print media as well as the networking business already know.  If you attempt to control content at all, you take some responsibility for that content.  In no way can the iTunes store be viewed as an open market, in the same way, say as eBay.  And even eBay caves into pressure to remove some items from auction.

This is only the latest in a series of minor goofs they’ve made, the last one being the other side of this coin- they had a backlog of applications that people wanted approved for release on iTunes.  Instead of simply hiring more people they seem to have relaxed their standards.  Good news for developers, but bad news for consumers who are not careful, and bad news for Apple’s image.

The purpose of Apple’s review is nominally to ensure that an application does not interfere with the proper functioning of the consumer device.  When you have millions of these things out there, the last thing you want is to increase your support costs (such as people clogging Genius Bars) due to a poorly written application.  Of course, that’s not the only reason Apple has control.  They want a cut of the money for for-profit apps.  And indeed they would have profited from the distribution of this app, which sold for $0.99.  But if you want a piece of the action you have to work for it, and in this case Apple did not.  Even though the iPhone and iTunes largely sustained Apple’s top line growth, the company cut corners on the editorial review that they seemingly hold so dear.

Shame on Obama: “They were only following orders”

Attorney General Holder this week said that it would be unfair to prosecute members of the CIA who participated in war crimes, simply because someone in the Justice Department told them it was okay.  This is tremendously disappointing news.  President Obama and his team could have sent the message that no person is above the law, that your time will come if you break the law, and if you torture.  Instead, the message they sent was that it was okay to simply follow orders of an ideologically extreme administration.  And the administration sent the message to the rest of the world that America does not hold its own accountable.  Nothing could have undermined the president’s to mend fences with the world.

Someone once said that the worst evil is not committed by those who act, but by those who do not.  Shame on this administration for not acting.

Is getting into the gutter with Cheney a good idea?

I’ve been told never to argue with drunks, and never to kick people when they’re down.  What happens, however, when they throw the first punch, verbally or otherwise?

CNN has reported a poll that 72% of Americans disagree with Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion that the Obama administration is worsening America’s security.  Whether we are improving our security is an important question, and while clearly the last administration did a dismal job at diplomacy that led to America’s isolation, why go there now?

The answer  is that Vice President Dick Cheney chose to open his mouth.  There is an unwritten rule in executive politics that you do not speak ill of either your successor or your predecessor.  The reason is obvious: it looks like sour grapes.  Cheney has vested his ego in an approach that the American people have demonstrably disagree withJoseph Biden.  It is also possible that the man whose policies were a huge source of controversy misses the limelight.  And it is certainly true that Cheney believes that his policies were the correct ones, and that the dismantling of those policies are dangerous: he’s not lying.

This leaves open the question of whether Vice President Joe Biden should engage in the same kind of dirt throwing, negative politics.  It goes back to the Vince Lombardi rule: when you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.  Having exited with the lowest opinion poles in history, Cheney is not in a position to affect public opinion.  So why then engage him?