It just came to my attention that Miri died in August.
She was one of the most fascinating, powerful, caring and beautiful people I have ever had the honor to work with.

by Sam Brown

“The ideal goverment will make busdrivers nicer and make schools everywhere in America so that me and Sophie who is my Sister and the other children on the bus don’t have to sit on the bus so long.
the ideal Government will make light everywhere in all houses of America also in the night. And even my globe can stay on when I sleep and the light for my fish Joey because he is afreid in the dark. And it will make that when the grownups fishes leave each other that the Mommies stay with the little children fishes and the children fishes can lock the doors to their rooms in the night if they want and no one can come in and the Government punishes when someone comes in and hurts the little fishes.
I just hope Sophie will be ok.”

(A friend of me asked me to write “A couple of sentences” about my ideal government. This is for you, Hanna.)

I have been thinking about posting this for a long time now, and, after realizing that many copies have disappeared on the internet, decided to host this text here. There are many reasons against this step, many good reasons actually. However, I feel the importance of the message outweighs the reasons not to post this.

Below is the suicide note from Bill Zeller, a young programmer who was considered to be “very successful” by many of his colleagues before he took his life. It is a very sad letter, but I believe one can also draw strength from it.

RIP, Bill Zeller.

Read the rest of this entry »

• US knowingly ignored well known cancer risks and objections by experts: “Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as ‘safe’, glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation […] increase the risk of cancer.”
  (– propublica.org)
• “GlaxoSmithKline pays $3 billion to resolve U.S. criminal and civil investigations into whether the U.K. company marketed drugs for unapproved uses and other matters.” In other words: they payed $3 billion to stop investigations. If you screw up enough people and make enough money, you can actually pay a court not to investigate.
  (– bloomberg.com/news)
• “We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies.”
  (– NYdailynews.com)
• “Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total […] Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.”
  (– rollcall.com)
• Anonymous hacked different Israeli websites, among them the military and the secret service: “We do not tolerate this kind of repeated offensive behaviour against unarmed civilians. If you continue blocking humanitarian vessels to Gaza or repeat the dreadful actions of 31 May 2010 against any Gaza freedom flotillas then you will leave us no choice but to strike back. Again and again, until you stop.”
  (– English link, German link)
• The four biggest German electricity companies seem to have consistently reported wrong information to relevant German agencies.
  (– German link)
• German government wants to make export of weapons even easier. After all, war is such a wonderful way to make money.
  (– German link)

Last week, something very special happened, and it is worth remembering: the organization “Chaos Computer Club” managed to get the sourcecode of the software “German Trojan Horse” (Bundestrojaner), which is used by the German state to invade the privacy of its citizens and find things out about people (e.g. if they are involved in illegal activities).

The idea of this trojan horse is that you hack the computer of a citizen, install this trojan horse on it, and then you have full surveillence of that person’s life. You can even use the camera of a laptop to take pictures of the room, or record audio if the computer has a microphone.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has declared many of the functions of this software illegal (because they break the constitution) in 2008, and the government reacted to that and changed the software.

Or did they? A few days ago the software leaked to the CCC, they analyzed the program, and published a 23page statement. I will not translate this here, but to sum it up:

• The program still has most of the functions that were declared to be anti-constitutional; you could also say, the government ignored the order of the highest German court on purpose (yes, “the government”. I’m aware that only few people knew of this, but they are in the government, and the government has to take responsibility for the actions of his members, especially when are the main guys).
• The software is badly written, leading to the fact that it can be hyjacked by other people with bad intentions and abused – it has plenty of security issues.
• The way the program works is that it abolishes certain defenses, leaving the computer open to other attacks.
• The program enables the state to STORE ALIEN DATA on the computer. I cannot stress this enough, and I am sure you are aware of what this means (it takes 2 minutes to store data on a computer which will ruin this person’s life forever).
• The data is transferred over servers hosted in the US, giving other countries potentiall access to sensitive data of German citizens.

The main point: people who are experts in the field warned about this, precisely about all these points, when we were debating whether we needed something like a state trojan horse or not. Everything they said has come true now.

Next time they say something, stop acting like they are hallucinating weirdos who lost their mind, and listen to them. They might look funny, and some of them don’t shower as often as you would like it, but they are among the most important people of a modern society.
A big shoutout to the CCC.

Spread the word, let other people know what is happening. This is important.
If you want to know more, Fefe has a very comprehensive overview of links. For my English-speaking friends, here are two American sources (1, 2).

PS.: Thank you, government, for making sure that the Pirate Party will be elected into parliament September 2013. You are doing a great job. <3

Update: Thomas Stadler on his Internet-Law blog with a devastating statement.

Source: Sam Brown

The foundation “Bureau of Investigative Journalism” in London has evaluated over 2.000 sources (newspaper stories, leaked embassy documents, statements by lawyers, eye-witnesses and members of NGOs) regarding the usage of unmanned drones by the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2004 and 2011.

They come to the conclusion that within this period of time, at least 291 attacks took place, and at least 2.500 people were killed by these drones (and I don’t have to educate you about the concept of assassination in a modern, democratic state). To make things worse, at least 385 of the victims are proven to be civilians, at least 168 of them children. Furthermore. at least 1.100 people have been injured.

Most of these attacks actually took place under the presidency of Barack Obama – 236 out of 291. That is, on average, one each four days.
Welcome to the future.

CIA officials obviously criticised the study. Unspecifically (you are a bad, bad study!), and more importantly, before it was finished/published.

People elect other people and entrust them with the power to manage state affairs for them. Trust is the key.

Rasmussenreports conducts political polls on a regular basis. These are the results of the latest study:

[...] 46% of Likely U.S. Voters now view most members of Congress as corrupt. Just 29% think most members are not corrupt, and another 25% are not sure.

Similarly, [...] 85% of voters think most members of Congress are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people. [...] Only seven percent (7%) believe most of the legislators are more interested in helping others.

[...] Just six percent (6%) of voters now rate Congress’ performance as good or excellent. Sixty-one percent (61%) think the national legislators are doing a poor job.

52% of voters said most members of Congress get reelected not because they do a good job representing the folks at home but because election rules are rigged to their benefit. Only 17% felt incumbents get reelected because they do a good job representing their constituents, while 31% were undecided.

I’m not a person for revolutions. But do people actually realize what this means?

(N = 1.000, the margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence)