2005 July Archive at JJB Blog

Monthly Archive for July, 2005

U.S. companies facilitating Internet censorship in China

Published

on 7/29/2005

. 1 Comment

Rebecca MacKinnon has been extensively covering internet censorship in China. Recently there has been some buzz about Cisco and many other U.S. companies selling certain network equipment to the Chinese government, which facilitates internet censorship (aka The Great Firewall). I’ve been following the saga for a while now, geekily captivated by the human-rights-techie-media drama, as MacKinnon gets a phone call from Terry Alberstein, Director of Corporate Affairs, Cisco Systems - Asia Pacific, and plagiarized by Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post.

A lot of the discussion is centered around which entity is responsible for regulating such activity: the companies themselves, the government, or the public? It’s an interesting issue that I think in many ways is a perfect microcosm of the failings of the current American corporate system. Instead of acting as abstractions, extensions, or even obscene exaggerations of popular ideals, corporations completely fall out of the control of their owners and directors. I can assure you that not a single shareholder or employee of Cisco believes in their hearts that “the censorship of the Internet in China is acceptable.” But if anyone in senior management started to say it was not acceptable, they would be out of a job. Instead, they convince themselves that since China is treated like any other customer, Cisco is merely exploiting a business opportunity as any company would. And to a great extent, this is the truth. Read the conversation with Terry Alberstein, linked above, to see the kind of reasoning and language to which I am referring.

MacKinnon recently got an email from Harry Wu, a Chinese human rights activist. Wu is obviously very well studied on these issues and brought up some fascinating points (emphasis and footnote are mine):

While Mr. Alberstein asserts that Cisco has not violated American law through its business dealings with the Chinese police, this is not up to Mr. Alberstein to decide. The U.S. Congress has the authority to decide if any violations have been committed. Cisco�s technology and equipment has without question made the job of Chinese police easier and more effective. Cisco has assisted Chinese security forces with their monitoring capabilities, and Mr. Alberstein lacks the authority to say that this does not constitute crime control.

Mr. Alberstein maintains that Cisco �sells networking equipment to law enforcement agencies around the world� and infers that its business activities in China are therefore identical to those in other countries. However, our issue is with China specifically, and there is a specific U.S. law that prohibits the export of crime control equipment to China. We should not believe the argument that Cisco�s sales of high-tech equipment to China are as innocuous as such sales to some other countries, and we must remember that there is a country-specific law in the Tiananmen Sanctions contained in Section 902(a)(4) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for FY 1990-1991 (Public Law 101-246).*

We should now ask Cisco to make public the information about exactly how much business it has done with the PSB. Every Cisco shareholder has a right to know about this information. They should publicize their profits, the quantity and date of sales and business dealings, and contacts in China, as well as the specific types of software and technology that has been sold. After Cisco has truthfully revealed this information, Congress and the American people can decide whether or not Cisco has committed a violation of the law.

I like how Mr. Wu, instead of considering whether or not a huge, uncontrollable corporation should behave “ethically,” references a specific U.S. law that forbids Cisco and other companies from participating in such activities. He speaks of the issue with a refreshing believe-in-the-system spirit, laying responsibility primarily on the U.S. government and the public to demand that Cisco be transparent with respect to its dealings with China.

*(4) CRIME CONTROL AND DETECTION INSTRUMENTS AND EQUIPMENT- The issuance of any license under section 6(k) of the Export Administration Act of 1979 for the export to the People's Republic of China of any crime control or detection instruments or equipment shall be suspended, unless the President makes a report under subsection (b) (1) or (2) of this section.
search THOMAS, 101st Congress, Bill Number: H.R.1487.ENR

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U.S. Military making up quotes

Published

John

on 7/26/2005

in general

. 1 Comment

Two different attacks in Baghdad, 11 days apart. Two press releases from the U.S. Military. Two almost identical quotes from “one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified.” From the CNN article covering this phenomenon:

Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said use of the quote was an “administrative error.” He said the military was looking into the matter.

Following are the two quotes as provided by the U.S. military in news releases:

[The July 24] news release said: “The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists, said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified.”

The July 13 news release said: “The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,’ said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. ‘They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.“

In this instance, the source of the misinformation was the U.S. Military. Dan Gillmor, however, lays additional blame on the PR-bullshit-replication culture (I just coined that!) that the news media perpetuates, not only by hinging on press releases as sources, but by themselves maintaining a similar PR-driven releationship with the public. Dan writes:

Look, PR people make up quotes all the time. It’s part of their job.

If you’re in the news business you see this stuff all the time. I mean, when a corproate CEO is quoted as saying, “I am gratified by the performance of our frabjab-widget business unit during the quarter, when the trajectory of widget sales continued to move in a favorable direction,” you can be fairly sure that this line was written, not uttered, and not by the guy being quoted.

Now, I grant that it’s even more stupid than usual for a PR person to use the same (probably fake) quote in separate releases. And you’d think that the military could find a real person to quote. But this kind of thing is only a surprise to people who think that quotes in press releases have actually been spoken out loud by actual people, except on the rarest of occasions.

Call me skeptical, but I have a sneaking suspicion that CNN’s corporate parent indulges in a little creative writing of its own from time to time, even when discussing CNN itself in a press release. For example, it strains my brain to imagine that John Lee, senior vice president, CNN Newsource Sales, really told a PR person: “A more useful Web site continues CNN Newsource�s leadership position in communicating with affiliates, ensuring that they have all the information they need as quickly and reliably as possible from CNN. This newly designed interface is an easy-to-navigate portal that connects affiliates to the world of news. It is an efficient, intuitive, one-screen, information portal that lets each desktop user get immediate, topical information that they need from CNN to produce their local newscasts.�

Just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? The only human-sounding aspect of that quote is the bad grammar.

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Public Citizen releases report on Chris Cox

Published

John

on 7/26/2005

in general

. 0 Comments

Christopher Cox has been nominated chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Public Citizen has released a 30 page report asserting that he is the wrong person for the job. Some excerpts from the press release:

Public Citizen analyzed both Cox�s voting record and the legislation he has sponsored during his years in the U.S. House of Representatives. The analysis shows that:

[snip]

Although Cox is often cited as having supported the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform act of 2002 – the most significant investor protection legislation of the post-Enron era – each of seven committee and floor votes Cox cast on amendments to the bill was against stronger investor protection. Cox also displayed little concern for the bill when it was in committee, missing 7 of 13 committee votes.

Despite having seven chances, Cox did not cast a single pro-investor vote on retirement investment protection bills that moved through the U.S. House of Representatives after employees of a number of companies, including Enron, saw retirement savings wiped out. He voted to ease conflict-of-interest standards for financial advisors; against giving employees a seat on the board of directors of their own retirement plans; and against allowing employees to freely sell company stock held in their retirement plans.

Cox has voted to block efforts by the SEC and the Financial Accounting Standards Board to require corporations to expense the value of stock options granted to employees.

Cox is the named sponsor of 178 pieces of legislation, but just four of them – 2.2 percent – have dealt with securities issues. An energetic co-sponsor of legislation, Rep. Cox has lent his name to 1,988 pieces of legislation. Yet only 19 of them – 1 percent – have dealt with securities.

Excluding legislation judged to be neutral, 69 percent of the securities-related legislation Cox has sponsored or co-sponsored has been against investor interests.

Cox’s signature legislative achievement – his sponsorship of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 – made it substantially more difficult for investors to sue to recover losses due to fraud. Moreover, evidence is now emerging indicating that the act, ostensibly aimed at so-called frivolous lawsuits, is having the effect that critics feared: barring meritorious lawsuits in which investors are legitimately entitled to recover damages. The original version of the bill that Cox introduced would have provided even more avenues for companies to dodge liability for fraud.

The other major securities-related bill Cox sponsored sought to interfere with the work of accounting standard-setters and to preserve a method of accounting widely criticized for its potential to be used to mislead investors and allow companies to paper over problems.

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Cease and Desist Letter Sent to Leo Stoller

Published

John

on 7/22/2005

in general

. 10 Comments

Leo Stoller
Rentamark.com
P O Box 35189
Chicago, IL 60707-0189

Re: Freedom of Expression

July 22, 2005

Dear Mr. Stoller,

Please be advised that we are stakeholders in the Freedom of Expression� Security Consortium (FESC), which, as our motto states, �regulates freedom in the marketplace of ideas.� We are writing in response to your infringing use of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, a federally registered trademark that is controlled by FESC member Kembrew McLeod, who owns the domain http://freedomofexpression.us. This mark, granted by the USPTO on January 6, 1998, is also used as the title of Dr. McLeod�s book, published in 2005 by Doubleday/Random House.

In the July 4, 2005 New York Times article about your business, �He Says He Owns the Word �Stealth,�� you said, �If a trademark owner doesn�t go up to the plate each day and police his mark, he will be overrun by third-party infringers.� Also, as you state on Rentamark.com, �There is no free well-known intellectual property left in the 21st Century. No free rides!� As a group that monitors unauthorized uses of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, we couldn�t agree more.

In the course of policing FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, we at FESC (consisting of the websites freedomofexpression.us, freedomofexpression.org, freedom-of-expression.org, and freedom-of-expression.com) have learned of your infringement, which can be found at this URL: http://www.rentamark.com/e-marks/E-I/e-i.html.

We are troubled by (1) your unrestrained use of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and (2) the fact that you have offered to license this phrase to third parties without permission. After all, not just anybody can utilize FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, and it is clear that your use of this phrase constitutes unfair competition and a blurring and tarnishing of this federally registered mark.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION will be substantially and irreparably damaged should this infringement continue. We, therefore, demand that Rentamark.com immediately cease and desist using FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION within five days. We eagerly await your response.

Very truly yours,

Kembrew McLeod
http://freedomofexpression.us/
Freedom of Expression� Security Consortium
1037 E. Washington St.
Iowa City, IA 52240
kembrew@freedomofexpression.us

cc:
John Joseph Bachir http://freedomofexpression.org/
Fletcher Moore http://freedom-of-expression.com/
Julie Gilberg http://freedom-of-expression.org/

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EU Parliment Rejects Software Patents

Published

John

on 7/16/2005

in general

. 1 Comment

The European Parliment, the parilimentary body of the EU, has rejected the Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, a directive which included the creation of software pattents.

Wikinews has the story. Included in the Wikinews article is this photo (click the photo to see a larger version where you can read the banners on the boats):

Which inspired this dialogue between me and Zane:

Context for the metaphors: Open source software and/or small business software is carefully and lovingly developed, often by its users, and is mindful of the hapiness of its users, the health of the industry, and general information ethics issues. Big companies often create huge, poorly designed software projects that are difficult to maintain and upgrade, and often lock down information resources (with either patents or copyright) that they are not using, while disallowing smaller businesses who are eager to make new technologies available to society from doing so.

zane: Man, that picture sums it all up so nicely. You’ve got rich vs. poor, few vs. many, sinecure vs. meritocracy.
john: yeah
john: also the yacht has an engine and the canoe is paddled [Open-source and/or small business software is lovingly maintained by a small group of effecient, dedicated people; it can quickly adapt to the supply and demand dynamics of the free market. Closed-source and/or corporate software is big, ineffecient, and must design and execute its actions in broad strokes as it desperately holds on to a monopolistic existence based on artificial markets created by intentional and persistent restriction of information.]
john: even more awesome.
zane: you can work environmentalism in there too.
zane: This picture is the caption for all I believe!
john: oh man
john: ALSO
john: you can’t see the passengers of the yacht
john: they are hidden inside [Closed-source software and/or patented technologies hide the inner workings of a product from the end user, and by extension restrict access to information.]
zane: good one
john: ohhhhhh zane
john: you will like this one
john: check out their statement
john: patents = european innovation
john: to the casual observer they are stating that those things are equal
john: but really, since it is a = and not a ==, [In many computer languages, = changes the meaning of the thing on the left, == checks to see if the left and right have the same meaning] they are assigning new meaning to the concept of Patents!! [Patents were originally intended to provide short-term protection for actual implementations that were on the market, to provide incentive for new innovation. The concept has morphed to the point where it is now possible to patent an unimplemented algorithm.]
john: heh heh
zane: haha
zane: Also, the people in the canoe are more globally aware, they state the general case, while the yacht takes the narrow, local view.
zane: The yacht also presumes to first command the reader, and explains only as a side note, while the canoe merely persuades.
john: hahaha
john: excellent points
zane: The yacht, devoid of its human masters, also represents the dehumanization of society and our enslavement to material things. Is the yacht the true master?
john: the yacht is seemingly/effectively self-navigated
john: it is too complicated and cumbersome to be propelled or navigated by hand even if one tried [a corporation develops its own personality and needs independent of the desires of its employees]

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Wikinews

Published

John

on 7/5/2005

in general

. 1 Comment

I’ve long been a huge fan and daily user of Wikipedia. When Wikinews was announced several months ago, I was a bit skeptical. I’m a big fan of do-it-yourself journalism, to be sure, but in terms of practicality I couldn’t see how the wiki was a good medium for news. But to be honest I never explored it very much.

Well, I just read this interview with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. I also finally took a look at Wikinews, where within 2 minutes I had read 3 very interesting, well written, and relevent stories that I hadn’t read anywhere else. Now I am a Believer.

Some excerpts from the interview:

One of the reasons we started it is that we noticed that Wikipedia itself, even though it is an encyclopedia, does a very good job of filling in background information on news reports.

We thought this type of energy could be applied to news as well. There’s an interest in writing more current events type of articles, but they aren’t appropriate for an encyclopedia, so we needed a place to put those, to direct that energy.

There’s no magic bullet to eliminate bias, and be objective and neutral. But what’s interesting about the way the wiki process works, and the openness of it, is that if you write something and you want it to survive the process, you have to write it in such a way that is broadly satisfactory to people of many points of view. That is a natural impetus to push you away from loaded terminology–or having an ax to grind in a story.

…what we can do very well is basically be another form of response to–and commentary on, in a certain sense–the mainstream media, just as blogs have become important. A very well-written, good blog is like a very well-written editorial column in a newspaper. Some of the top bloggers could easily be writing a syndicated column for…respected sources.

At the same time, bloggers are very often drawn to comment on the media itself. Such as being critical of how a story is being reported or digging into some facts that have been overlooked by the media. Things like that. I think we’ll also fit into that type of role but in different ways. The bloggers are the editorial page and response to the editorial pages, and we’re the response to the front page. We’ll synthesize what’s being reported in a variety of sources.

When asked what Wikipedia and Wikinews have taught him about people:

It’s really uplifting, actually. It’s amazing how many people, who even have very strong beliefs of their own, are able to cooperate in a friendly manner to get it right.

I’ve been on the Internet for a long time and participated in mailing lists and Usenet groups. Basically, what tends to happen in that type of environment is a lot of arguing. At some point, I realized that if I did something more productive than arguing with the same people over and over, I could probably have written three of four books by now.

I thought, gosh, it’d be nice if software existed to support us to work together. I may disagree with this person, but we have a lot of knowledge, and we may be able to present this issue in a way that will be helpful to others. Digging through our old e-mails is going to be a painful experience at best.

It’s amazing that it does work, and if you provide the incentive in the software that encourages people to cooperate rather than compete, then people can do amazing things.

Here is one place where I slightly disagree with Wales. Like seemingly everyone else commenting on the future of “news”, media, etc., Wales seems to think that the heros of one-way media aren’t going away anytime soon. Immediately after he claims this, he (in my opinion) contradicts himself by correctly describing the current media environment where two-way media are picking up steam and will begin to overwhelm traditional news sources.

The old broadcast model, in which an elite set of scribes sends out their thoughts to world–I don’t think it will ever completely go away, but it’s getting challenged by a more interactive model, in which communities come together to do things that fall somewhere in the realm that we traditionally thought the media do.

How that will work is a difficult question. But I definitely think that we’re already seeing that the media needs to respond to the blogosphere. Because certain stories break online or certain stories are undermined by people online, digging into the facts in a way that the traditional media either won’t–because of institutional biases–or, more often, can’t because of the expense of having 50 people pore over all the facts of any individual stories. It’s impossible. But the blogs do it.

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Liquid Labs website

Published

John

on 7/4/2005

in general

. 0 Comments

Check out the new website for my friend Zane’s software company. His current main product is FraudSWEEP, “the premier fraud detection tool for financial institutions of any size as well as service bureaus and banking service providers.” Also featured are his open source scripts for The GIMP.

He even has a store with some pretty clever designs. I particularly like the Before They Were Famous line. Also check out the D-Style line, which features the home row of the Dvorak keyboard layout.

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