January 11th, 2008
We’re perched up here this evening amid the City on the Hill overlooking Santa Cruz, surrounded by thousands of students living away from home slowing waking up to the realization that they aren’t really kids anymore.
Now it’s been a while since I was a student, but I had one of those moments myself recently and it made me think about what it really means to be an adult.
There I was yesterday afternoon, walking through a major toy store chain on a mission to buy a half-dozen penguins, when I happened to wander by the LEGO section. Never mind the penguins, they’re not important right now.
Standing there yesterday facing a wall of colored plastic blocks I was struck by the memory of visits to the toy store as a little kid which always featured the LEGO section. I was pretty much LEGO-obsessed back in those younger days.
But the biggest and most impressive LEGO sets were also the most expensive, and so it was a special treat to even get one of the mid-sized sets to play with. I stood there yesterday remembering how satisfying it was to finish building even one of the smaller sets, watching the apparently random collection of colored blocks come together as primitive structures under your hands, and those smaller structures growing until suddenly you had a spaceship and a handful of mysterious extra pieces.
It always seemed like no matter how small or large the set, there were always a bunch of extra pieces. It’s one of the LEGO facts of life.
I stood there in the toy store, these visions running through my head yesterday, thinking about how cool it would be to assemble the model of Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter that Mom would have had the sense to not buy for me back when I was younger. A very happy birthday to you tomorrow, Mom, by the way. Bet this is the first time that you’ve been wished a happy birthday over the radio.
Well then it hit me: I didn’t need anyone’s permission to buy a LEGO set. As a grown-up I could make the decision to blow sixty bucks on a box of plastic parts all on my own.
That’s the thing about growing up. You get to make more decisions. Most of them are more along the lines of, “I guess that I can wait to pay this bill,” or, “What’s one more drink going to hurt?”
But you also get to say things like, “I feel like having pizza. For breakfast. Because I can.”
Yesterday was one of those growing up moments for me. Not quite as good as the moment when I realized that everyone else, all those adults who used to seem so experienced, were just making it up as they went along, too, but pretty damn good nonetheless.
I got home last night, cracked a beer, and poured a box of 1212 plastic LEGO blocks out on my kitchen table, just because.
I thought about stopping as the night wore on, snapping little blocks together until the tips of my fingers were sore (they still are), and squinting at the increasingly incomprehensible directions, but kept going just because.
I snapped and stacked, swore as tiny but essential pieces of which there were only two in the pile of a thousand other blocks remained hidden from sight, and kept going while the dishes sat in the sink, because I could.
And as the clock hit 1am I stepped back to admire Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, 13 inches of LEGO painstakingly rendered out of an apparently random collection of colored blocks. It’s a thing of beauty to a certain kind of eye, sitting there on my kitchen table right now, right next to a handful of mysterious extra pieces.
There are no extra pieces here. Each one is as important as the one that comes before for this, the Timothy Jordan Show News for January 11th, ‘08.
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While vicariously cruising around the Internet over the shoulders of my Staff this morning, I happened to notice that the current Terrorism Threat Level remains at Yellow.
I also happened to notice that Privacy Threat Level is skyrocketing toward the Red with this morning’s announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff that the REAL ID Act is moving forward.
The new Federal program would create a single identification database and a set of standards for state-issued identification cards. It would also, according to critics, this program’s staff among them, fail to solve any existing problems and create several new ones.
When it takes effect in May of this year, any State found to be in non-compliance with the new regulations will see its citizens banned from access to any Federally-regulated facility. That list would include government office buildings, nuclear power plants, and… oh yeah… airports.
That’s right, as of May 11th if the State of California were determined to be in non-compliance with the REAL ID Act, air travel in the U.S. would come to a standstill as tens of thousands of people go through extra background checks at security.
States can apply for an extension to the Act’s provisions, giving them until no later than 2014 to fulfill the Federal requirements. After December 1st, ‘14 anyone under the age of fifty will be required to have one of the new IDs in order to travel by air, or to conduct business with the Federal government.
The system requires the creation of a new Federal database to store identification information, as well as data links between the Social Security Administration, Department of Transportation, the Department of State, and the National Association of Public Health Statistics, among others.
Sound like the government will have instant access to a lot of information about its citizens? Yeah, they would. The threats to privacy from the Act are severe. It is in effect a National ID card.
Since all cards would be machine readable by design, and since machine scanning would be required for access to controlled spaces, it would allow instant tracking of U.S. citizens in many aspects of their lives by the Federal government.
To make matters worse, only $40 million has been appropriated for a program that’s expected to cost tens of billions. The bulk of the financial burden for meeting the Act’s requirements would fall directly upon the States. California’s implementation would cost a half billion on its own.
And while it’s been billed as a way to thwart identify fraud, the network that would carry this information isn’t fully tested, doesn’t have encryption, and can’t handle the data load. Several other Federal networks would also be used, two of which are still under construction, while a fourth doesn’t even exist outside of wistful planning.
The centralized database would be accessible by Federal agencies, police departments, security officials, and every single DMV office. Have you been to the DMV recently? The REAL ID Act has been sold to the public on the claim that a single set of standards will provide more reliable and comprehensive security over private information, but it creates a scenario where a single case of unauthorized access at a single DMV location could result in identity theft on an unimagined scale.
It goes on, and on. It’s an awful idea, pushed through Congress on a rider attached to GWoT emergency spending without meaningful debate, that’s going to cost us money, make us less secure, and threaten our privacy.
I’m not alone in pointing out these flaws. Members of Congress, security experts, and several State governments have all voiced their opposition. That opposition has done nothing to slow down the Department of Homeland Security. The REAL ID Act is moving forward.
Somehow I don’t feel any more secure.
<a href=”DHS, REAL ID Final Rule
• Reaction of Sen. Leahy to the Act, Jan 11th ‘08
• EPIC REAL ID Comments PDF (642.8KB)
• Petition to Congress in opposition
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In other news of our privacy being violated, the FBI has run into some problems with their wiretapping programs.
It turns out that the major telecomms have no problem cooperating with warrantless wiretapping if they’re being paid, but won’t rely on the government’s good faith if the bills aren’t being paid.
In an unclassified version of an internal report issued to the public yesterday, Department of Justice (DoJ) Inspector General Glenn Fine revealed that in over half of the 990 wiretapping cases reviewed the local field offices that requested the wiretaps were late in paying the phone company. Those wiretaps were disabled as a result, possibly resulting in the loss of evidence.
So much for the telecoms doing their patriotic duty. Patriotism only goes so far as an invoice, apparently.
The audit found that the FBI system for handling the funds for undercover activity, which includes wiretapping, is horribly outdated, and vulnerable to fraud or simple neglect to pay the bills.
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And while we’re harping on privacy rights this week, it should be noted that there was a victory amid the abuses. Back in November Judge Jerome J. Niedermeier of the Virginia District Court ruled that computer passwords are information protected under the 5th Amendment, and do not have to be disclosed to law enforcement officials.
At issue is a Grand Jury investigation into a case of suspected child pornography. A little over a year ago one Sebastian Boucher was arrested on suspicion of trafficking in kiddie porn as he crossed the Canadian border. At the time he was carrying a laptop, on which government agents discovered sexual images that appeared to show underage teens and children.
Boucher and his laptop were taken into custody, but when agents shut the computer, they activated an automatic password protection system on the main hard drive. Known as PGP, the software prevents access by encrypting files and requiring a password.
A password which Boucher has refused to supply to government investigators. They attempted to issue a subpoena, but Boucher’s lawyers fought back, saying that providing the password could amount to self-incrimination.
Judge Niedermeier agreed, saying that, ” Compelling Boucher to produce the password compels him to display the contents of his mind to incriminate himself.”
The implications of this case are a little hard to comprehend. Judge Niedermeier’s decision says that a password is not a physical thing, but a product of a person’s mind. The documents hidden by that password may not be protected under the law, but if this ruling stands the password itself most definitely is.
All the more reason for listeners who may be concerned about their privacy to take the simple measures necessary to encrypt their files. A link to the PGP corporation’s website, one of many encryption software companies, will be provided in the posting of this evening’s News segment.
Credit is due to Declan McCullagh for first publicizing this case.
• In Re: Boucher, Virginia District Court PDF (101.1KB)
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In an update to a story that we first ran nearly two years ago, the controversial conclusion of a study published in The Lancet, that up to 600,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion, may have been wildly inaccurate.
Both the Iraqi and U.S. governments, as well as independent organizations monitoring the war, were suspicious of the Johns Hopkins study, based upon a survey of just under 1900 Iraqi households in the summer of ‘06. They concluded that 2.5% of the population in the survey area had died as a result of the occupation.
But those numbers were almost an order of magnitude above previous estimates of civilian deaths. Iraq Body Count, a private group often cited on this program, said at the time that there was considerable reason to doubt the Johns Hopkins survey, most notably because it conflicted with a similar, but larger, study being conducted at the same time.
The Johns Hopkins figures would indicate that nearly a thousand civilians were being killed each day, a level of violence only reached, by all accounts, only in the worst days of late ‘06 when Baghdad was being rocked by sectarian violence.
Clearly, a thousand deaths per day would be noticeable. The figures published in The Lancet are almost certainly wrong, but that doesn’t mean that this most recent estimate of 151,000 deaths by the Iraqi Ministry of Health is any more accurate. The Iraqi government has been notorious for underreporting violence, and Iraqi Sunnis are unlikely to be honest and open with any of the Shiite-dominated Ministries.
The more recent survey, sponsored by the World Health Organization, covered just under 10,000 households. Their estimate is that there was a 1.6% chance of violent death during the same period of time covered by the earlier survey.
• Original Johns Hopkins survey, published in The Lancet PDF (242.1KB)
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I feel like lasagna. Yeah, lasagna, because I can.
But before that happens I’ve got an obligation to dispose of, it’s our weekly dose of excellence.
One of the factors to be considered as you get older is memory loss. It’s common to have a little memory loss as we age, but all too often it’s worse. Alzheimer’s disease becomes more likely as we age, affecting 5% of the population over 65.
It can be treated, but it’s poorly understood and there’s no cure.
Or rather there was no cure. The early results from a study out of the USC Department of Neurology and the Institute for Neurological Research are quite impressive.
The team, lead by Drs. Tobinick and Gross, is experimenting with an anti-inflammatory medication previously used to treat arthritis. They found that the inflammation commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease can be treated with the same medicine.
Their initial results are nothing short of extraordinary. Administering dose of etanercept showed results within minutes.
Let me say that again. They saw therapeutic benefits within minutes of beginning treatments. Two hours after being treated patients showed across the board improvements in memory and cognitive abilities. While the team can’t rule out a placebo effect, since both the patients and the examiners knew that a drug had been administered, the results are hard to ignore.
Three years into the study, they believe that there’s rapidly reversible inflammation-related component to Alzheimer’s disease, and a potential therapeutic treatment.
That’s damn excellent, and so Drs. Edward Tobinick and Hyman Gross win this week’s Timothy Jordan Show Award of Excellence.
• Rapid cognitive improvement in Alzheimer’s disease following perispinal etanercept administration PDF (499.1KB)
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And that’s the News for January 11th.