Quotulatiousness

September 23, 2009

Information is data, but data is not information

Filed under: Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Wired obtained several hundred pages of information through a Freedom of Information Act query relating to internal surveillance of Americans by the FBI — including information from hotels, car rental agencies, and at least one department store chain:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.

Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the “Total Information Awareness” system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Such a system, if successful, would correlate data from scores of different sources to automatically identify terrorists and other threats before they could strike. The FBI is seeking to quadruple the known staff of the program.

The last paragraph needs a bit of analysis . . . because just adding more data won’t “automatically” do any good for domestic security or individual privacy. There was no lack of data on the 9/11 terrorists: if anything, there was too much data. Data is useless until it is corelated with other data to form actual information, a pattern of data that shows something of interest. The various intelligence-gathering arms of the US government already gather lots and lots of data, but they haven’t always been able to turn that collection of raw data into useful information . . . at least, not in a timely fashion.

Opsahl cites a October 2008 National Research Council paper that concluded that data mining is a dangerous and ineffective way to identify potential terrorists, which will inevitably generate false positives that subject innocent citizens to invasive scrutiny by their government.

At the same time, Opsahl admits the NSAC is not at the moment the Orwellian system that TIA would have been.

Those false positives may be enough to disrupt the private lives of many Americans and non-citizen residents, because everyone still has things about them they don’t particularly want to be broadcast to the world. Many employers reconsider their employees who are deemed to be “of interest” to the government, leading to potential loss of employment, diminished opportunities for promotion, or other less obvious but still negative consequences. Having “nothing to hide” is no defence . . . in fact, it may make things tougher — if they don’t find anything obvious, they may decide to dig deeper, creating more disruption.

Of course, things could always be worse: the EU is busy working towards their own Precrime database. (Obscure reference explanation.)

Watch the collector value of M1 rifles drop now

Filed under: Asia, History, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

The South Korean government is planning to sell off its large holdings of M-1 rifles and carbines, according to this BBC News report:

South Korea has come up with a novel way to boost its defence budget — by selling a vast stockpile of old Korean-war rifles to collectors in the US.

The guns were originally sent to Korea as military aid, and some were also used during the war in Vietnam.

For more than five decades, they have been kept mothballed in warehouses.

Most of those on offer are M1 rifles — a weapon once described by US General George S Patton as “the greatest battle-implement ever devised”.

I recall when the Canadian Forces retired the FN C1 rifle . . . the government freaked at the thought of thousands of “assault rifles” being sold to civilians, so they changed the regulations to move the FN into a more restricted category (which most casual gun owners didn’t qualify for).

September 22, 2009

Truth in advertising?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

Jim Davidson watches the new GM television ad . . . and pukes:

They used to advertise “that great GM feeling.” Nowadays it seems more like “that sinking GM feeling.” Case in point, car-neophyte Ed Whiteacre’s current ad campaign.

“Car for car when compared to the competition, we win. Simple as that,” he says in this bright new ad promoting his complete ignorance about automobiles.

Sure, the white haired old man looks alert and sentient as he parades through a nearly empty show room with strange other people wandering around not selling any cars. But the words make no sense.

Car for car when compared to the competition, GM sucks. And they gave up competing on cars when they went for the enormous taxpayer bailout. It isn’t simple as winning in a head to head car making competition. Remember? GM played that game and they lost. They lost all of their money, so they demanded all of our money.

Later he lies again, “So we’re putting our money where our mouth is.” No, you bastard, you stinking lackey of big government, you filthy thief, you aren’t. GM tried putting their money where their mouth is, and they lost. They went under. So now they are putting our money where their mouth is. He isn’t a nice old man, he’s an evil old liar.

More on the ABM decision

Filed under: Europe, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:50

Following up from last week’s post on cancelling ABM systems for Poland and the Czech Republic, Jon sent the following comment:

I was wondering about this sort of thing when the announcements were first made, but thought that “No, Obama is indeed evil enough to do this just for kicks.” Is is possible, thought, that the Polish and Czech installations are being cancelled as they are being replaced with something else?

Have you read anything to that effect anywhere?

I assumed colossal ignorance and ineptitude, rather than deliberate provocation, but maybe I’m just too naive. I had read something about the SM-3 BMD at Taylor Empire Airways (yes, this time I’m sure it was Chris Taylor). He indicates that it does have a better track record than competing systems and it can be deployed much faster, but that there are also some caveats.

September 21, 2009

Sir Humphrey is about to be proven correct again

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:30

The American government is trying to exhort artists to support its goals . . . and doing more than just exhorting:

If you’ve ever wondered–and worried–about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and a group of “independent artists from around the country.” The short version: It leads to the use of taxpayer-funded culture as a means of propagandizing for specific, partisan political aims. Which corrupts not just art but artists.

[. . .]

Given that the NEA prides itself on being the single largest funding source for the arts in the country, such arm-twisting by agency officials, however masked in fulsome compliments to creators’ genius, is disturbing on its face. It clearly sets a political agenda for the very people who are likely to be applying for, well, NEA and other government grants. Does anyone think that the organizers were fishing around for projects that might complicate the public option for health care?

Embedded in the discussion is at least one other disturbing point: a nearly lunatic delusion that artists are the vanguard of the proletariat. As Mike Skolnick, the political director for music impresario Russell Simmons, told the participants, the assembled crew “tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what’s cool and what’s not cool.” While that command-and-control notion is widely shared by liberals and conservatives alike, it is patently false. Artists and politicians hate to hear this, but the audience does have a mind of its own.

Sir Humphrey Appleby put it best: “Plays attacking the government make the second most boring theatrical evenings ever invented. The most boring are plays praising the government.”

Hate the president: it’s a hallowed tradition

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:27

Steve Chapman looks at the long, long, long history of President Derangement Syndrome:

A new president, pursuing policies well within the political mainstream, evokes weirdly angry and intense denunciations from opponents—a reaction hard to explain in terms of anything he has actually done. Does that suggest, as Jimmy Carter insists, that their true motivation lies in racism?

No, it doesn’t, because I’m not talking about Barack Obama. I’m talking about George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — both of whom, from the day they took office, managed to convince a minority of Americans that they were not just wrong but illegitimate, dangerous, and thoroughly evil. Obama’s troubles are not exactly unprecedented.

[. . .]

So you don’t need to turn to race to explain the virulent animosity against Obama. What all the presidents who previously endured irresponsible slander had in common, after all, is that they were white.

Clinton’s experience suggests that merely being a Democrat is enough to evoke hysteria in some quarters. In matters of policy, he was about as congenial as any conservative could have hoped — cooperating with Republicans to balance the budget, advancing free trade, rejecting an international treaty banning land mines, signing welfare reform, and threatening to bomb North Korea over its nuclear program. Yet even today, many on the right regard him as an extreme liberal.

I don’t remember President Ford rousing the standard levels of derangement among his opponents, but that could be because it was before I started paying much attention to U.S. politics. Other than Ford, all the other occupants of that office seem to have generated deep animosity (Nixon? Hell yeah. Carter? Yep. Reagan? A subgenre of musical animosity. Bush I? Yep.)

September 18, 2009

I didn’t think this was legal

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:49

Linked from The Agitator, a little bit of legal trivia . . . even if the jury finds you not guilty, the judge can still sentence you to prison anyway:

Indeed, my friends, welcome to our world.

Not only have many defendants been sentenced for stuff the jury said they didn’t do (or at least wasn’t proven), but yesterday the Supreme Court refused to do anything about it. The cert denial came in the case of Mark Hurn of my hometown, Madison, Wis. Hurn ate 15 years extra years in prison for possessing crack cocaine, even though a jury acquitted him of the charge. It’s true. Though he was convicted of having powder cocaine in his house, (for which he was looking at two or three years in prison), he was sentenced to almost 18 years. Why? Because even though the jury acquitted him of the crack charge, the judge kind of figured he’d done it and therefore found, by a preponderance of the evidence that he’d done it, and sent him to prison as if the jury had actually said “Guilty” rather than “Not Guilty.”

US tariff on Chinese tires “a colossal blunder”

Filed under: China, Economics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

I don’t read The Economist regularly these days, having given up my 20-year subscription about five years back. Their steady drift away from free markets towards statist models made the publication less and less interesting (and much more live most other financial publications). This article, however, at least covers the situation in an even-handed way:

You can be fairly sure that when a government slips an announcement out at nine o’clock on a Friday night, it is not proud of what it is doing. That is one of the only things that makes sense about Barack Obama’s decision to break a commitment he, along with other G20 leaders, reaffirmed last April: to avoid protectionist measures at a time of great economic peril. In every other way the president’s decision to slap a 35% tariff on imported Chinese tyres looks like a colossal blunder, confirming his critics’ worst fears about the president’s inability to stand up to his party’s special interests and stick to the centre ground he promised to occupy in office.

This newspaper endorsed Mr Obama at last year’s election in part because he had surrounded himself with enough intelligent centrists. We also said that the eventual success of his presidency would be based on two things: resuscitating the world economy; and bringing the new emerging powers into the Western order. He has now hurt both objectives.

Several sources mentioned that yesterday’s announcement about cancelling the ABM systems that were to be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic was an attempt to cozy up to Russia. This move can only be interpreted as an attempt to look tough against the Chinese — which would just be dumb — or (even more disturbingly) solid proof that Barack Obama doesn’t have a clue on international trade.

September 17, 2009

US to abandon plans for ABM system in Europe

Filed under: Europe, Military, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:04

From an article in the Wall Street Journal:

The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Thursday that the plan was changed to better protect U.S. forces and allies in Europe from Iranian missile attacks.

The U.S. based its decision on a determination that Iran’s long-range missile program hasn’t progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Subtext to those plucky pro-US nations in eastern Europe: “So long, suckers.”

Update: The Guardian reports:

The US decision will cheer many in government in western Europe who believed the scheme was an unnecessary provocation to the Russians. But today the Czech Republic and Poland expressed disappointment at the White House’s decision to reverse track after six years of difficult negotiations. Senior sources in Warsaw and Prague said they would insist on the Americans honouring pledges they made to the Nato allies in return for agreeing last year to the plan for missile defence deployments.

Alexandr Vondra, a former Czech deputy prime minister and ambassador to Washington intimately involved in the negotiations with the Americans, said he was surprised. “This is a U-turn in US policy,” he said. “But first we expect the US to honour its commitments. If they don’t they may have problems generating support for Afghanistan and on other things.”

September 16, 2009

Hope, change, but we’ll still do warrantless wiretaps

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:54

So much for any realistic hope that the Obama administration was making a clean break from the anti-civil liberty policies of the former Bush administration:

The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.

In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider “modifications” to the act in order to protect civil liberties.

“The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,” Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.

It’s funny how certain laws — in the hands of the opposition, anyway — are evil, wrong, and fattening, but miraculously transmogrify into essential tools of state once you’re the one in power. It doesn’t seem to matter which party you’re talking about either.

September 15, 2009

The Tea Party protests, summarized by their opponents

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:49

Matt Welch sat on a panel the other night, where he learned some interesting things. Specifically, that some of the other panelists had diagnosed (to their own satisfaction) the racist roots of the Tea Party protests:

1) The Tea Parties are experienced by many black Americans as a “racial assault.” This was posited by a white “anti-racism writer,” though the black Tea Party organizer on the panel didn’t seem to agree.

2) The “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, historically, is inseparable from white racial resentment against blacks.

3) My pointing out that the racial-motivation interpretation of the protest was not manifested in the overwhelming majority of signage I saw and conversations I had was directly analogous to white Americans believing that race relations were just fine 50 years ago.

4) Glenn Beck has described Obama’s health care plan as intentional “reparations” for slavery.

QotD: Generational obsolescence

Filed under: Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:35

What I find amusing is how some believe that the death of civility is a new development. It started with Joe Wilson and was compounded by Serena Williams. Civility has been chained to a rock getting its liver picked out by buzzards since the golden children of the Greatest Generation were encouraged to let their freak flag fly, to use a horrid phrase.

[. . .]

I’ve always thought it’s imperative to stay engaged with your times until your time, singular, is up. Otherwise your sense of the world calcifies, and your worst impressions become your default opinion. The glories of the imagined past become a means of self-admiration, because you were not only lucky enough to be there but smart enough to get it. Kids today, they don’t. Perhaps growing up in the 70s kept me from idealizing my own past; the culture was all gimcrack glitz and second-hand hippie shite before the jams were well and truly kicked out by the anti-sloth movements of the late seventies and early 80s. They were musical and political; the former was all over the road and the latter emotional and naive, but I think they were the first attempts to wrest control of the social narrative from the early boomers, and as such were derided with the smooth weary conceits you’d expect from the generation that remade the world and expected the rest of us to line up and lay laurel wreaths at their sandaled feet.

Then the rise of internet culture saved the late boomers and Gen Xers from cultural obsolescence, because it was no longer necessarily to participate in any of the usual events to be up to the moment. On the internet anyone can be about 26 years old.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2009-09-15

September 12, 2009

Is it non-partisan when both parties are at fault?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 20:55

Belatedly, from a post at Gates of Vienna on September 11, 2009:

After eight years that hole in ground in Lower Manhattan is still there. That’s more than twice as long as it took America to mobilize, rearm, go to war, and defeat Nazi Germany and Japan in World War Two.

In the eight years following John F. Kennedy’s call to put a man on the moon, the United States went from having no manned space program, though designing and testing the Mercury and Apollo spacecrafts, to a successful landing on the moon.

The original Word Trade Center took six years to complete, from the ground-breaking to the ribbon-cutting.

In the past eight years we have seen plenty of candlelight vigils with teddy bears and flowers and tearful remembrances by the relatives of the slain.

But there’s still a hole in the ground where the Twin Towers used to be.

The bureaucratic wheels grind slow . . . but not necessarily very fine.

September 11, 2009

QotD: Eight years on

Filed under: History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:51

On the Hewitt show tonight I started talking about 9/11, and my mouth overran my head, because somewhere down there is a core of anger that hasn’t diminished a joule. This doesn’t mean anything, by itself — anger is an emotion that believes its justification is self-evident by its very existence. Passion is not an argument; rage is not a plan. But as the years go by I find myself as furious now as I was furious then — and no less unmanned by the sight of the planes and the plumes. Once a year I watch the thing I cobbled together from the footage I Tivo’d, and the day is bright and real and true again.

Or not. It’s all so far in the past, isn’t it? The ten-year-old you had to sit down and console and reassure is off to college. The President is retired — seems like he left two years ago. The wars grind on, but as far as the front pages are concerned, they’re like TV shows that lost their popularity but pull enough viewers to avoid cancellation. (The video store doesn’t even carry the DVD of the first two seasons anymore.) We’re used to the hole in the ground where the towers used to be, and if they announced they won’t rebuild, but will pave it over and use it for parking, people would shrug. We haven’t forgotten that the towers fell, but no one remembers what they planned to replace them with. The towers they planned looked empty in in the pictures — shiny, contorted, as if twisting away to avoid a blow.

Right after the towers fell, people who’d never liked them as architecture wanted them back just as they were. Get back up in the sky! But it hasn’t happened. Even if they build the replacement towers, there’s still a space in the sky where no one will ever stand again. We could stand there once. That we couldn’t stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2009-09-11

September 9, 2009

An example of the polarizing nature of the health debate

Filed under: Cancon, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:26

This is a classic polarizing topic for debate . . . so much so that very little information is exchanged between the sides because they’ve already made their minds up and facts are not going to change anything. I’m not over-fond of Canada’s healthcare system: my dealings with it have been quite uneven, but generally not good experiences. That aside, there are positive things about the system along with the negative.

The American debate is well past the point of rationality. As an example, the other day I read an announcement that a well-known person was struggling with cancer and that the prognosis was not good (and I’m deliberately not linking to the discussion in question). The responses on that particular page split fairly evenly into three groups:

  • People who expressed their sympathy and hopes for her recovery.
  • People who pounced on her illness as a reason for implementing Obama’s healthcare proposals right now.
  • People who used her illness as a way to decry socialized medicine in all its forms.

Comments from group two failed to notice that the family lives in Canada. Comments from group three failed to notice that this was a human being in pain, facing an even more painful future. Neither group covered themselves with glory.

I can’t even say I was surprised. Disgusted, but not surprised.

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