See Bruce Schneier's newsletter:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0509.html
where he discusses reacting to "movie-plot threats" and failures regarding Katrina.

How about the right to free and fair elections? Manipulating the public through a simple technology like terrorist threat levels was very effective. I have no doubt that the technology being discussed here could be used for political gain as well. For example, what's to stop anyone from forging the id from a competitor's printer and posting offensive material? We've already seen an undercover operative outed, why would a political candidate be immune from this kind of attack?

Hayne, that’s some interesting analyses!

Some years ago, I wrote a proposal for a middle-of-the-road Norwegian political party. My idea was to put the military in charge of a broader spectrum of national threats, including non-military.

Examples: oil spills, natural disasters, animal/human epidemics, etc. My point was that the military had the operational expertise and the ability to mobilise effectively. In case of an oil spill, for instance, the Norwegian Pollution Control Authority would have the expertise.

In some regards Norway is a special case, since military duty is mandatory for all men, except conscientious objectors and those with a medical excuse. Besides, we’re regularly required to partake in re-training sessions. Relative to the size of our population, Norway can mobilise surprisingly large armed forces.

More importantly, in terms of natural disasters and other threats, the highly organised nature of our society enables us to deal with various scenarios more effectively than we otherwise would. (I’m not comparing countries, mind you.)

Many different types of threats are dealt with in different ways.

Bruce Schneier surely has an important point in regards to NOT limiting preparedness and spending to whatever "movie-plot" threat happens to be popular this month.

Another problem, however, is this: Western society is simply not structured to offer effective security against a no-holds-barred enemy without a territorial base. And I’m not sure such restructuring is desireable. So all measures necessitate a complex balance – cost/effectiveness, liberties/security, etc etc.

The most effective measures that have been taken so fare are probably the ones that we don’t read about. But we also have to find ways to erode support for the terrorist position. Without going into detail (which would be inappropriate here), I’m not convinced that the decisions being made are achieving that. Quite the contrary.


With best regards,
ArcticStones

Maybe, but unless you know for sure that the threats were bogus, you're just howling at the moon. Apparently, some of those threats were real.
- http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-07-voa57.cfm
(10 threats stopped mentioned, and verified by media and other sources.)

Conscience? A respect for law? The consequences of getting caught?

The point is not that the threats were bogus. They weren't. The point is that the same types of threats exist today, but we don't see urgent notices about threat levels anymore. In fact, the month after the elections, they ceased. Clearly, the people responsible for changing the threat level indicators no longer felt the need to tell us after the elections. Since the same threats continue to exist, the only conclusion I can see is that the threat level changes were politically motivated. Somebody must have been using them to manipulate the public.

So what is your point? It was an election, not a spelling bee – the candidates use whatever means they have at their disposal to win (and those means are considerable, including possible selective emphasis of intelligence data). Do you expect any less? I never did.

Technology used for political gains? Voting machines? But surely you don’t suggest...

By the way, I don’t know what technology or intelligence the Spaniards used, but everyone involved there is either dead or in prison. And their ex head of state lost because he tried to blame the ETA (Basque separatists), even though that was highly inconsistent with preliminary intelligence findings.

;)

Candidates, even political parties, should not be able to use the government to control the outcome of an election. In fact, I'm pretty sure doing so is a crime.

For sure. And we all know what you're suggesting, and that you don't like or trust the Bush admin, etc. That's pretty much all you've wanted to say since you joined the discussion. Duly noted! Time to move on (or move out).

Refocusing . . .

The issue raised on the thread wasn't about using technology to influence public opinion, nor how technology can serve to distort information for politician's gain. Good heavens, every political advertisement does that, so you'd have to say that TV, radio, email, web sites, etc. are suspect. People need to read various sources to inform themselves on this matter. I understood the issue to pertain to technology and privacy issues, so how about we get back to that. Thanks.

Yes Phil, I don't like or trust Bush, but I can't imagine a polititician, party, or government agency that I'd like having the ability to track down people who put up their own political posters.

I can only think of two reasons for not wanting your identity known:

1. You're doing something illegal and don't want to get caught.

2. You're doing something that is political in nature, and that could cost you in some way. By political I don't necessarily mean that you're running for office or even supporting some one who is.

My point is, when you talk about privacy rights, you are talking about politics.

3. You're doing something which has been made illegal but is or should be your right.

I'm from Cuba. I don't need to be reminded how important anonymous political speech is.

As far as what rights the Patriot Act has abridged... Did you know it's illegal to discuss various parts of the law itself? So illegal that in a court challenge against it, the agrieved party could not actually file the text of the law it was fighting? A very important foundation of our system of law is that you can't be accused of violating a law that is unclear, and that trials are public. The PA has created secret laws and secret courts. That's contrary to our constitution.

This technology makes it risky for someone to expose those illegal laws.

The nature of the threat posed by serializing and dating printouts has been made a lot more obvious. Color Laser Printers might be just a test case. HP already tried (and stopped after consumer protest) to implement printer drivers phoning home and telling hp about ink consumption. That was presumably only for marketing (and getting reliable data about 3rd party refills), but still an intolerable intrusion.

Firmware-Watermarks and phone-home drivers (why not include document titles printed or even complete text dumps) could be the next step. The political dimension here is clearly about not tolerating the beginning of what looks more like a first step to control anonymous free speech.

Remember what happened to the DVD-zoning scheme and how zone-free firmwares for about any drive you care to name can be found easily. Finding "anon"-firmware for snitching printers will probably become the next Big Thing should that trend really persist. Illegal or not doesn't matter much here, because whoever needs that kind of anon-printing has strong reasons to do so.

Having a larger public debate about the balance between breached privacy versus crime-prevention and whether or not that is good enough to justify snitching printers has been pretty interesting so far.

I'm grateful for the re-focusing last posts and all those who try to keep the discussion on-track. The diversity of political opinions and cultural differences is what can make a rich debate if everybody is careful to avoid provocative blanket statements like most of the participants have so far.

Yes, those are qualities that "human beings" value. Unfortunately, I don't see them in the world leaders of today, quite the contrary, corruption, lies, deceit, falseness, ignorance, manipulation of power, etc. etc. permeates every strata of society starting from the top down. The small learn from the big; a child from his parents and teachers, an adult from his community and leaders, and countries look to learn from the world leaders. The situation today is so bad, that as a result I don't expect normal people to "understand" those good qualities anymore. Conscience, law and consequences are being bought easily today with manipulation of power and money $$$...

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I couldn't agree more.

This is new? ;)

At least in free societies, the media, congressional oversight groups, and disclosure laws can help to preserve a certain degree of accountability. So can one's political opponents. Lots of good people don't want to run for public office any more because any dirt from your past will be dragged up for all the world to see by your opponent and journalists looking for "a story." In a way, that's a kind of corrective, too. As long as one has political opponents, you can be sure they will not let a slip pass unnoticed.

But, OK, some of you are cynical about politicians, and with good reason, no doubt. The misuse of a technology by political leaders is a possibility, for sure, but that shouldn't put an end to the discussion, nor to the possibility that the positive uses can outweigh the dangers and can even be safeguarded somehow.

You're right, it is not new, precisely my point. It is a very sad fact that after more than 5000 years of history, people keep making the same mistakes again and again as if they haven't learned anything yet....

The terrible thing is that in the past, this state of affairs polluted the spirit of a town, region, maybe a continent, but today, there's enormous power in the hands of very few, and is so enormous, so big, that affect the lives of all humans and living things on this planet and beyond. Never before our planet as a whole was subject to this kind of manipulation.


Yes, but I have observed that this alone is never enough, usually their movement is too slow, sometimes bias to interest groups, and most of the time they act after all the damage is already done. So, yes, they help to create a "certain" degree of accountability.


Yes, I agree with you as everything has two sides and you're right, that shouldn't put an end to the discussion. Anyhow, I usually don't like to get involved in this kind of threads, sorry about that.

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In this case, I don't see how the positive can outweigh the negative. Catching a few counterfeiters isn't enough, but maybe I've missed something. Is there another positive?