I protest.

Not dead yet!

I haven't abandoned this weblog, nor have I shuffled off this mortal coil or anything else drastic. Between work and a truly horrific cold (made worse by not allowing it to stop me from working), I've just not had the energy to write. Hopefully I'll soon have my batteries recharged and will be back at it. Certainly there's enough to protest, these days, with the usual illegal and immoral antics of Tom Delay, the regular lies coming from the White House, the complete dribbling idiocy that continues to spew from most of the self-proclaimed Right and the plethora of other idiocies and injustices that are being perpetrated upon the population of the United States and the rest of the world.

Electronic voting in a nutshell.

As I think I have mentioned before, as a software engineer I regularly read the Risks Digest, a mailing list now nearly twenty years old that deals with risks to the public from computers and related systems. Naturally, the topic of electronic voting has received attention in that forum, and in fact Peter G. Neumann, the moderator, has spoken in public about the risks inherent in electronic voting.

The latest issue has a couple of especially incisive and succinct articles regarding this issue. First, Dave Brunberg asks, among other things,

Why not just admit that e-voting cannot be made secure without adding in somuch complexity that it becomes prohibitively expensive or self-defeating?

He points out a number of potential problems in the whole idea of electronic voting and suggests a potential fix for them. Peter Neumann responds:

Responding to the above message by Dave Brunberg:

ONE.  COUNT THE PAPER, and let the electronics appease the media only for an
      UNOFFICIAL PRELIMINARY count.  The official count would be paper.
      (Vendor arguments that paper is unreliable are largely bogus.  Vendor
      arguments that their systems CANNOT have erroneous results are of
      course COMPLETELY BOGUS, ignoring insider fraud, programming screwups,
      and configuration errors.  Instead, they tend to argue that no
      "hackers" can break in, which is not the primary concern for polling
      place voting -- although it would be a serious concern for Internet
      voting.)

TWO.  IF THERE IS A DISCREPANCY, the machine should be IMMEDIATELY DISABLED
      for the duration of the election.  No fooling around with machines
      that indicate on the screen that your vote has been recorded for a
      candidate you did not vote for, where you are told that it is an error
      on the screen but is correct in memory -- as happened in Florida in
      2002.)

THREE.  Why have electronic voting machines at all?  GOOD QUESTION.  The
      most compelling arguments are providing a nice voter interface and
      avoiding overvotes -- although we have reported cases of blank
      positions being counted as votes by miscalibrated optical scanners (or
      tampered ballots?), and there are also reports of chad knocked out of
      punchcards because of too-deeply-prescored chad slots, suggesting that
      some of the card-system overvotes are not the voters' faults.  But see
      the next message from William Ehrich, which has been said before but
      is worth saying again.  PGN

One should bear in mind when reading the above points that Peter G. Neumann is pretty much the expert when it comes to the risks of computers in society. If he says it, it should be taken very seriously indeed.

Finally, the comment from William Ehrich, who points out something that all software engineers should already know (and if they don't they shouldn't call themselves software engineers) and something that anyone interested in electronic voting systems should learn:

All the technical people seem to agree that a voting machine has to produce a piece of paper for audit trail, and some feel that that piece of paper should be the primary record of the vote.

It seems an obvious extension of this idea to have the voter simply mark the piece of paper with a felt marker.

That is in fact how we have been voting here. [Minnesota. PGN] It works well.

There is a counting machine at the voting place to count the ballots. If I don't trust that machine I can (in principle) recount them with a different machine or count them by hand.

There is a RISK in using a computer where it is not needed and can do more harm than good.

Emphasis mine.

As is so often the case, electronic voting is another situation in which "computers" are promoted as a panacea when in fact the problem, difficult recounts, "hanging chad" and confusing ballots as encountered in Florida in the 2000 election, cannot be solved by software, even when coupled with dedicated hardware. Over and over, I see people suggesting the use of optical-character-recognition methods (which are both electronically readable and readable by humans) or even older technologies, technologies that have been around long enough to have become very reliable, and I keep seeing those suggestions ignored or dismissed by people who seem to think that making the entire process electronic will be some kind of magic cure to all the problems. Unfortunately, making the entire process electronic will solve nothing and will instead add many new problems.

I will refuse to use the current crop of electronic voting devices. If necessary, I will vote absentee and I will certainly make my categoric refusal known to my Senators and Representative. After all, what is the point of voting if I have no assurance that my vote will be counted the way I intend? If I can't be sure my vote against Bush next November will in fact be a vote against Bush, because it could trivially be perverted by the hidden software inside the electronic voting mechanism, perhaps my time could be better spent camping outside my Senator's offices. Or maybe outside the White House, along with a few million others like me.

What he said.

While Atrios echoes what Jesse said, I in turn am echoing what Atrios said about the current tempest in the Democratic Party teapot:

...and another thing. Stop ceding the goddamn debate. Who here thinks Howard Dean can beat Bush? Why Ted, you ignorant slut, Fred Flintstone could take Bush with Barney Rubble as his campaign manager. Wesley Clark should stop saying that he needs to be the nominee because someone needs to be able to match Bush at foreign policy. What Clark should say is that Joey Tribiani could match Bush at foreign policy, though he, Clark, has the most experience. Stop acknowledging that Bush is strong on anything. He's a big loser. He's a miserable failure. He's lost 3 million jobs. He got us into a screwed up war. Our soldiers are being killed by terrorists. The Middle East is a mess. Afghanistan is a mess. OBL is alive. Hussein is alive.

All the Democrats do when they attack each other is to make Bush look better. The point of this whole effort, though, is to paint Bush as being the miserable failure he is. He has failed with the economy, he has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, he has failed with the fight against terrorism and he's failing with the environment, with energy policy and with Medicare.

If a Democrat stops pounding those points to pound another Democrat, they're making a big, big mistake. Dean/Clark/Gore/whoever isn't the enemy. The enemy is the Bush White House and we must defeat him next November.

So shut the fuck up and get busy, damn it!

A chickenhawk squawks.

Back in September I noted in "Ted Kennedy: Bush lied" the Republican reaction to Ted Kennedy's assertion that the "imminent threat" from Iraq was made up out of whole cloth in Crawford, Texas. An anonymous "Republican official" made the usual accusation that Democrats are "soft on defense." Of course, as we have seen over most of the last year, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was quite definitely not an "imminent threat," there were (and are) no "weapons of mass destruction" and that at least one of the pieces of "evidence" used by the Bush Administration to "prove" their assertions was forged. I think that now it's reasonably safe to say that Bush did indeed lie, as did Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice and the rest.

So the other day some chickenhawk ran across my article (which has a reasonably good set of comments except for his, by the way) and decided to "rebut" me. How did he go about his "rebuttal?" By quoting a speech by Hillary Clinton given on the Senate Floor on October 10, 2002. Of course, he neither quoted the entire speech nor provided a link to it. I've given you the link so that you can go read it yourself, and I'll quote a few relevant bits from it. It begins,

Today we are asked whether to give the President of the United States authority to use force in Iraq should diplomatic efforts fail to dismantle Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons and his nuclear program.

She discusses the recent history of Iraq, including Hussein's atrocities, the invasion of Kuwait, the first Gulf War and the U.N. weapons inspection process. She gets to the part of which the chickenhawks and freepers seem to be so fond (and the only part that this "David" person quoted in his comment):

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

Yep, she said it. But wait, what else did she say? Well, a paragraph later, she says,

Now this much is undisputed. The open questions are: what should we do about it? How, when, and with whom?

Some people favor attacking Saddam Hussein now, with any allies we can muster, in the belief that one more round of weapons inspections would not produce the required disarmament, and that deposing Saddam would be a positive good for the Iraqi people and would create the possibility of a secular democratic state in the Middle East, one which could perhaps move the entire region toward democratic reform.

This view has appeal to some, because it would assure disarmament; because it would right old wrongs after our abandonment of the Shiites and Kurds in 1991, and our support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980's when he was using chemical weapons and terrorizing his people; and because it would give the Iraqi people a chance to build a future in freedom.

However, this course is fraught with danger. We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak.

If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan?

So Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option.

She goes on to express the opinion that working through the U.N. and only resorting to force if the Security Council approves it is also a bad idea. She presents the Kosovo conflict as an example of the problems with that approach and says,

In the case of Iraq, recent comments indicate that one or two Security Council members might never approve force against Saddam Hussein until he has actually used chemical, biological, or God forbid, nuclear weapons.

She then asks a really, really good question:

So, Mr. President, the question is how do we do our best to both defuse the real threat that Saddam Hussein poses to his people, to the region, including Israel, to the United States, to the world, and at the same time, work to maximize our international support and strengthen the United Nations?

Emphasis, of course, mine. She then offers the following approach:

While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposed conclusions, I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq. … if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998.

If we get the resolution that President Bush seeks, and if Saddam complies, disarmament can proceed and the threat can be eliminated. Regime change will, of course, take longer but we must still work for it, nurturing all reasonable forces of opposition.

If we get the resolution and Saddam does not comply, then we can attack him with far more support and legitimacy than we would have otherwise.

If we try and fail to get a resolution that simply, but forcefully, calls for Saddam's compliance with unlimited inspections, those who oppose even that will be in an indefensible position. And, we will still have more support and legitimacy than if we insist now on a resolution that includes authorizing military action and other requirements giving some nations superficially legitimate reasons to oppose any Security Council action.

(This is, in fact, what happened. Bush tried for the resolution he wanted and he didn't get it.) Unfortunately, Clinton makes a very big mistake, both in her speech and in her vote:

President Bush's speech in Cincinnati and the changes in policy that have come forth since the Administration began broaching this issue some weeks ago have made my vote easier. Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.

Emphasis again mine. She has more to say and you should go read the whole thing, but this is enough for me to make a couple points. One, rather than suggesting that Clinton lied, the speech suggests to me that she really believed that Hussein had those "weapons of mass destruction." Of course, given the push by the Administration to "prove" that Hussein was an imminent threat, it's possible that she was misled by the available evidence. But so what? Let us assume that "David" and the chickenhawks are correct and she did lie, saying that Hussein had WMD while knowing full well that he did not. There's no evidence whatsoever for this assumption (while there's certainly plenty of evidence that Bush has categorically and continuously lied throughout his administration), but leave that aside for now. What was her intent? It appears that she intended that we work through the United Nations, that if we go to war with Iraq we do so legitimately, with the backing of the international community. Lastly, what would she get out of lying? Bush would get the war he wanted, he would get to kill the guy that his Dad didn't get. What would Clinton get? Influence? Power? She's a Senator, for crying out loud! And a Senator, what's more, from one of the two or three most powerful states in the U.S.!

As I read Clinton's speech, I was struck by what seemed to me to be her naïveté, that she actually seemed to believe not only that Hussein had WMD but that Bush was worthy of her trust. I daresay that she now feels differently.

Ultimately it is down to this: When Ted Kennedy asserts that Bush lied, all "David" can do is whine that "so did Hillary." While I'm no particular fan of Hillary Clinton, it appears to me that Clinton is guilty perhaps of that naïveté I mentioned, perhaps of idealism (which would be pretty amazing to me considering how long she has been in politics) or at worst of simply being a politician that knows which way the wind is blowing. On the other hand, Bush is guilty of more than I can easily put in words. He lies at the very least, habitually and continuously. Perhaps those lies are fed to him or perhaps they are his own, but quite honestly I don't care. On his best day he's a terrible President and on his worst he's a war criminal.

And this "David" character is an idiot who needs to learn how to think critically about what he reads.

Oh, and as for "civil discourse," I'll start using it when the assholes on the Right start doing so as well, and not one fucking second before. When they vilify my very person and call me a traitor because I have the temerity to disagree with them, they deserve neither respect nor civility.

Criminal.

TBOGG writes about a column in the LA Weekly, "Open City: Coffee, Tea or Handcuffs?" Once more, a journalist has been denied entry into the United States by some bureaucrat of the brand-new bureau of "Customs and Border Protection." The woman, an Australian who works for, as she put it, "a cross between Good Housekeeping and People magazine," was denied entry solely because she was a journalist and didn't happen to have an "I-Visa." She was coming into the country on her way to New York to interview Olivia Newton-John. The "I-Visa" is a new requirement, just for journalists. Any other Australian can enter the United States without a visa for ninety days, due to a visa-waiver program. In fact, Sue Smethurst had done so no fewer than eight times previously as was not aware of the new visa requirement.

Obviously, the term "freedom of the press" is just so many meaningless words in the United States, these days. Worse, the "I-Visa" rule is enforced at the discretion of the agent. If the particular agent she ran into hadn't simply been an ignorant asshole, a petty bureaucrat with delusions of godhood, she would have had no problem.

It gets even better, though. Not only was she denied entry into the United States, she was "politely" interrogated:

The CBP agent who read Smethurst's traveler's questionnaire took her to a secondary inspection area 30 feet away and told her to wait, then left for half an hour. He returned with additional uniformed staff who, professionally and pleasantly enough, asked more questions.

What sort of stories did she write? What kind of magazine was New Idea?

Where was it published? What was its circulation? Does it print politically sensitive articles? When would her interview appear? Who would be reading it?

…

The polite interrogation continued. Who was her father? His occupation? Her mother's maiden name and occupation? What were their dates of birth, where did they live?

Innocuous questions, I suppose, but when she asked one of the officers whether there was some problem, she received this response:

"I will tell you when there's a problem," he abruptly snapped, according to Smethurst. Then he pointed to a nearby sign:

Your Silence Is Appreciated

In other words, "shut the fuck up, you terrorist!"

She was forced to swear that her answers had been truthful, she was photographed and fingerprinted.

— every time she comes to America, her swiped passport will bring up this documentation of her rejection. As Smethurst's inked fingers were rolled onto the government form, she noticed its heading:

"Criminal."

She was handcuffed and paraded publically through LAX to the main detention center. She was allowed to make a telephone call, but her bags were thoroughly searched and part of it temporarily confiscated. Hungry, she was denied food; she was denied tea

because it could be used as a weapon &mdash someone, it was explained, had recently thrown hot coffee into an agent's face. When she requested a cup of cold tea, she was similarly refused, although no one could explain to her how a cup of cold water could become weaponized.

I can't possibly imagine how someone could be pushed to the point of throwing hot coffee into the face of one of these scum! And of course we have to keep that cold water away from those awful terrorists, too; they could drown somebody!

After Smethurst was given a "detention meal" (an orange, a fruit-box drink and a petrified roll),

one of the staff returned with a bag of takeout and began eating a hamburger and fries in front of her.

In frustration, she threw her rock-hard roll into the trash bin in front of her. This, the "Customs and Border Protection" bureau claims, was a "tantrum." Smethurst insists she was repeatedly body searched when she was moved from one location to another, and that

she broke down in tears several times, swearing to her captors that she was not a criminal, had done nothing wrong and should be allowed in the country.

Finally, the office of the Australian Consul General won her release. They also got her a cup of tea. Before, that is, she was

escorted by three armed guards onto the 11 p.m. Qantas flight home.

Three armed guards. For one female journalist. Nice.

Of course, the "Customs and Border Protection" bureau claims that she became abusive and that they tried to "calm her down." Apparently, too, handcuffing is "standard procedure,"

because sometimes good people can do potentially violent things. It's not our intent to parade passengers on a perp walk &mdash Sue Smethurst is not a criminal.

Uh, right. Or rather, wrong. According to that form that bears her fingerprints, Sue Smethurst is a "criminal." She's not alone, either. This is happening continuously, and not only to foreign nationals but to American citizens:

Last September, the CBP at LAX detained the Australian-born wife of a U.S. Navy sailor for five days, while also briefly denying her infant daughter food and medical attention.

Australian-born but an American citizen! Oh, and not a journalist. If by now you aren't angry, you're an idiot.

My wife is a Chinese national, a citizen of the People's Republic of China. She has permanent resident status as my wife; it's conditional at the moment but the condition is due to be removed by the middle of next year. The last time she and I travelled to China to visit her mother, when we returned she and I stood in separate lines, I in the one for citizens and she in the one for foreigners. Never again. The next time, we will be in the same line, so that if this kind of thing happens to her, I will at least be there.

The INS under the Department of Justice (ha!) was bad. The "CBP" under the "Homeland Security Department" is apparently at least an order of magnitude worse. And this kind of thing makes us all safer how, exactly?

Winning hearts and minds.

Well, it appears that we are arresting children in Iraq, now. It appears that some schoolchildren engaged in a small, peaceful demonstration, some in support of Hussein and some in opposition to him. And what was the American response? You know, the response of those from the country that claims to support democracy and freedom of speech?

According to Ahmed, an English teacher, who followed the soldiers on their raid:

There were no leaders, this wasn't an arranged demonstration. It comes honestly, some of the students say, we love Saddam Hussein. Some of the students say no, we hate Saddam Hussein. I told them, it's OK, let them love him and let them hate him, we can all express our opinions. There are no weapons, there is no bombing.

The American soldiers came with tanks and stopped the demonstration and the kids sat in front of the tanks. They took pictures of the students and they had some spy maybe, I'm not sure, maybe students in the school. I begged the soldiers to leave these students because they are naive, they just believe this is a civilian demonstration, but the soldiers were very rude to the students and treated them like soldiers. They are kids, they are teenagers, so I begged the officer, but he didn't care.

I told them, just calm down, but they said no, they are not kids. In Abu Ghraib we have 16 year olds shooting at us. I said yes, but these are in school. They have books, not weapons. And they took pictures of us, what is your name, stand here. I am not a criminal, I am a teacher. They took pictures of most of the teachers.

I told them you have to educate people about freedom, not punish them, but they brought tanks and helicopters. Yesterday they surrounded the school and came in with weapons everywhere, soldiers everywhere and used tear gas on the students. They fired guns to scare them, above their heads. One student got a broken arm because of the beating. They had some sticks, electric sticks and they hit the students. Some of them were vomiting, some of them were crying and they were very afraid.

Others corroborated Ahmed's story:

One of the arrested boys decided he trusted Ahmed enough to talk to the people that Ahmed told him were safe, as long as he wasn't recorded and we promised not to identify him in any way. He wouldn't give his name or age.

"The soldiers pointed at me and I was grabbed by about 8 of them and dragged out by my clothes and my collar. They threw me on the ground and searched me and cocked their guns on me. We were held in chicken cages, about two metres by a metre and a half with criss cross wire. They were swearing at us a lot. They didn't beat us but they accused us of having relations with Saddam Hussein, asking who organized the demonstration, telling us anyone who is against our American interests will be arrested.

"They offered us some food but more curses. They didn't inform our parents at all. The headmaster came with three of the fathers. Most of us were held between 7 and 10 hours but one student is not Iraqi and he was held for much longer and they questioned him for two hours and made him stand outside from 10pm till 2am in the freezing cold. The youngest was 14."

These were urban schoolchildren. That there are "16 year olds shooting at us" in Abu Ghaib is irrelevant. These kids weren't those kids.

But now? Now, they will be.

We are making our own enemies. When we are attacked, we will have none to blame but ourselves.