All right, properly should have posted this on the 8th of December, but…
…it’s still in the spirit of the Christmas season!
(Thanks to WordPress’s most awesome ‘improvements’ to their embedding process, it looks that the best I can do for now is to link to the comic instead…..my apologies!)
What is it these days…
Yes – that is the question…exactly who is in power over there: the undisciplined son or someone else?
Whatever else he was, Vaclav Havel was a brave man.
He was brave enough to stand up for what is right – knowing full well the consequences…
Would more of us could say that!
There is a lot of videos ‘out there’ of Vaclav Havel, speaking, from the Velvet Revolution on. However, it is nice for people to also be remembered in their youth. This is why, for his memorial, I have picked a little clip from an acting role he did while he was just 29 years old. (It is in Czech, but there really isn’t anything of consequence said: just enjoy the ‘young’ Havel!)
A few days ago, I have brought you the reports on these hearings from Free Dominion.
Here is Ezra Levant, interviewing Marc Lemire himself about that same hearing:
What a bigger-than-life figure!
Love him or hate him, he certainly had an impact.
I’d say ‘Rest in Peace’ – but that would offend him: he is not ‘resting’, he is dead…and somehow, I suspect he would prefer the direct word over the euphemism.
His thought-provoking, piercing wit will be missed.
He will be remembered…
…for his unflinching honesty:
…and for his investigative work: even Pen and Teller love him!
Sounds so innocuous: Stop Online Piracy Act.
After all, ‘Pirates’ are all ‘bad’, so anything to get them off ‘our internet’ must be ‘good’, right?
We, surely, the Orwellian language is only a part of the trick here.
The SOPA hearings are being held today and it is difficult to believe that anyone who does not directly benefit financially from this legislation would be willing to support it. The effect of this legislation would be to chill free speech in ways to give Richard Warman and his Section 13 co-oppressors wet dreams in perpetuity!
Right now, even with the ‘moderate’, much less draconian legislation in place, the copyright infringement laws are being used to silence critics of big business – or even just independent voices (lest they become critical in the future).
In this example, a DMCA claim was used to censor a daily tech news episode which criticized a big-music corporation: under the law, a mere DMCA claim was enough to force a takedown of the episode for a minimum of 10 days. If you are running a daily news show, 10 days is an eternity… At least, under the DMCA rules, the news show could appeal to a judge…
And, of course, we all know that the US government has been known to censor a blog for over a year, denying them due process of law to get their property restored and name cleared.
Just to add injury to injury: not only are you guilty until proved innocent under SOPA, getting to court to prove your innocence will be much harder. And even if you were victorious and the courts found you innocent of all charges, you would not have a recourse to sue for damages suffered as the result of the false SOPA accusation!
Is this type of legislation even needed?
The Swiss government certainly does not think so: they have gone the opposite route. After studying the data for a long time, these legislators have concluded that downloading music/videos for personal use is not just perfectly legal, they claim it actually channels money away from copyright holders and helps the music/movie industry in the long run.
And what about the people who have been the most vociferous about the need for crippling the internet in the name of copyright protection? Surely, they themselves do not indulge in the very behaviour they wish to stamp out with knee-jerk legislation like ‘three accusations and you are permanently banned from the internet’, right?
“French President Nicholas Sarkozy is a man who has championed some of the most aggressive anti-piracy legislation in Europe. But today it’s revealed that the occupants of his very own office and home are responsible for a nice selection of pirate downloads using BitTorrent. Three strikes? Those with access to the Presidential Palace’s IP addresses have already doubled that quota. “
But, surely, those entertainment legacy industry movers and shakers who have lobbied the legislators for SOPA – the ones who claim that downloading movies and music for free would bankrupt them – surely they are not doing this themselves, are they?
“With increasing lobbying efforts from the entertainment industry against BitTorrent sites and users, we wondered whether these companies hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others. After some initial skimming we’ve discovered BitTorrent pirates at nearly every major entertainment industry company in the US, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Fox Entertainment and NBC Universal. Busted.”
And those ‘evil Pirates’ – they must be up to even more vile things…
Let’s hope the unanimous screams of protest from the citizens of the internet get heard!
Free Dominion has a discussion with several reports about the Tuesday hearing in Federal Court in Richard Warman’s ongoing case against Mark Lemire, which has run into a snag: the question whether Section 13 of the Human Rights Code (the thought-crime section) is Constitutional or not.
Connie Fournier reports that the cast was large: from CCLA and BCLA to Doug Christie on stage, from BigCityLib to free-speech bloggers in the audience. Here is a little quote from her report:
“During this time, the judge listened intently and didn’t interrupt. His face was inscrutable. The funniest moment of the hearing came when the lawyer for B’nai Brith said that Section 13 is “a ringing endorsement of free speech”. Everyone in the audience snorted and snickered uncontrollably. (Probably only one person in the audience was a censor and the rest were free speech supporters or media).”
An excerpt from Narrow Back’s report:
“At 11:00 we returned to hear from the African Legal Clinic. They talked about “irradicating discrimination” for “deeper social concerns” “improvement of the condition of less fortunate people” blah blah, etc. They also talked about S13 as a “conciliatory process”. I just wrote down: “Ha!” “
And here is a part from Mark Fournier’s post:
“A couple of intervenors in favour of state censorship put in their two cents and then Richard Warman got up and complained that just because the CHRC did a terrible job of administering Section 13 his rights shouldn’t be violated. The irony was breathtaking.”
Read the whole reports – along with what people are saying about it – at Free Dominion!
When you live in a land ruled by Sharia!
Zilla of the Resistance has the story.
(Check it out and have a listen to the music: I rather like the tune I suspect is the ‘swing classic’ ‘Clementine’ done in Indonesian punk – a definite improvement over the original!)
Via: BCF
Quite apart from this story, it is important for us, Westerners, to understand that in lands ruled by Sharia, ‘charity’ does not work the same way it does in our part of the World.
This does not mean that Muslims are not charitable people: not at all!
And it does not mean that in countries with Muslim populations, people do not perform charitable acts for the sake of helping their fellow human beings, regardless of race or creed. They do – and we have many stories of Muslim women helping Westerners (men, women and children) who were in Japanese prison camps during WWII!
Rather, as Sharia rules every single aspect of life of those unfortunate to live under its oppression, so it has very specific and rigid rules for ‘charity’.
Let me illustrate this with an example: following the Tsunami a few years ago, people in Bengal (I refuse to use the new colonial name for the country) were upset that many Western charities got volunteers on the ground and started providing aid. The Bengali fear was that these aid groups were there trying to steal their children…
Many in the West were perplexed by this: why would the people there refuse aid, willingly provided without any strings attached?
Because right now, Bengal is under Sharia. And Sharia strictly differentiates between ‘Muslim charities’ and ‘non-Muslim charities’.
It is forbidden, under Sharia, for Muslim charities to help non-Muslims – and for non-Muslim charities to help Muslims (though, to be honest, non-Muslim charities do face a lot of regulatory interference under Sharia and are thus prevented from being as effective in providing aid as Muslim charities are). Therefore, when non-Muslim charities attempted to aid Muslims in Bengal, the response among the population was confusion and fear – and, ultimately, rejection of much help. The problem was finally resolved by the non-Muslim charities simply giving the money and aid materiel to Muslim charities, who then operated on the ground…
Another ‘perplexing’ example came even more recently, during the terrible flooding in Pakistan. Even as money poured into the county through Red Cross, there were appalling stories of whole non-Muslim families starving – even in regions where food aid was plentiful. Again, people in ‘The West’ could not make heads-or-tails of this and many wrote these stories off as propaganda.
Not so.
The primary channel for the aid funds was The International Red Cross.
In Sharia countries, the Red Cross partners with its affiliated Islamic charity, the Red Crescent, and channels all aid through it.
In Pakistan, which is for all practical purposes governed by Sharia, the Red Crescent operates as an Islamic charity under Sharia does. That means that Mosques are used as the centres from which the aid (from food on down) is distributed.
To most of us, this does not seem particularly odd: Mosques serve as community centres, so they are centrally located and accessible. Plus, they have the room to store the supplies to be distributed, so this would be a logical place to distribute aid from, right?
Plus, under Sharia, the Red Crescent is only permitted to distribute aid through a Mosque. So, it is not just the ‘logical’ course of action, it is the only permitted course of action. And the Red Crescent did make various statements to the effect that everyone who came to them for aid, received aid!
So, what was the problem that caused the non-Muslims to starve?
Under Sharia, a non-Muslim may not enter a Mosque!
Not being permitted to enter the place from which the aid from Western countries was being distributed, non-Muslims could either starve or convert to Islam…
I suspect there is a lot more about ‘charity under Sharia’ we just don’t know…
Over the last month or two, I have been highly critical of CarrierIQ and the sneaky way they gather smart-phone user information without informing the user they are doing so, much less providing an opt-out choice.
CarrierIQ has taken a lot of heat from a lot of places over this. Now, they are defending themselves: in the name of fairness, I think it is important to bring this defense to your attention.
The full document can be read here.
In the first few lines. they thank Trevor Eckhart for “for sharing his findings with us”. That is quite a change from their initial response, when they threatened to sue him if he continued to expose their practices…until the Electronic Frontier Foundation stood up for him, that is. It’s nice to see that, deep down inside, they are really swell guys and gals who care…
Reading ‘between the lines’, here are a few excerpts from CarrierIQ’s statement:
“…Carrier IQ software automatically passes the hardware serial number and the subscriber serial number (e.g. IMEI/IMSI) to the Network Operator who can then match to their customer records…”
i.e. CarrierIQ matches the phone and user information in their database, making it possible to identify individual user’s phone habits as opposed to just collecting ‘anonymous operational data’ that could be used to analyze network performance without compromising user privacy.
* * *
“Q. “Why is my battery only lasting 3 hours and my phone keeps crashing?”
A. Because you have loaded a new application abcxyz and this is draining the battery quickly and making your phone unstable.”
i.e. CarrierIQ monitors what applications are on your phone.
* * *
“Q. “Why does my phone drop calls when I drive on Interstate 80?”
A. It looks like you were dropping calls between exit 34 and exit 35 and we are upgrading our towers to improve performance at that section of the highway.”
i.e. CarrierIQ records your location with respect to phone usage.
* * *
“The Carrier IQ software installed on the mobile device is called the IQ Agent.
. . .
The IQ Agent has been implemented on feature phones, smart phones, data modems and tablets.”
Nice to know… I guess I’ll pass on that tablet computer and put my IT guys to hacking the modem: if it is doing what the smart phones are doing, it’s time for a jail-break!
* * *
“In typical deployments, the IQ Agent uploads diagnostic data once per day, at a time when the device is not being used.
. . .
Network Operators who are Carrier IQ customers do not charge consumers for this upload nor does it show up as usage of consumer data plans.”
In other words, you are not given any clue that one corporation is beaming data from your phone or tablet and selling it to another corporation. Nice!
Well, at least they don’t make you pay for it…
* * *
” [Preload] version of the IQ Agent cannot typically be deleted by an end user but only gathers and forwards metrics from the device if it is enabled with a profile …”
My emphasis.
* * *
“Network Operators typically prefer the embedded version of the software as it provides the most comprehensive diagnostic set. This embedded information is used to understand which control signals are passed between the mobile device and the handset…”
Again, the emphasis is mine.
* * *
I think this ought to be sufficient for a Q.E.D. – but the document goes on:
“Network Operators and handset manufacturers determine whether and how they deploy Carrier IQ software and what metrics that software will gather and forward to the Network Operator.”
Translation: “All of your data is belongs to us, you puny little humans! Mu-ha-haaaaa!!!!!”
OK, let’s not go overboard here.
Let’s be fair!
Carrier IQ suggests that they themselves do not make the call about just how much data to collect about you – they will only collect and pass on the data which their customers, the Network Operators and handset manufacturers, will pay them to collect about you!
Mu-ha-haaaaa!!!!!
* * *
“An embedded version of the IQ Agent cannot be deleted by consumers through any method provided by Carrier IQ.”
Is there an echo in here? Mu-ha-haaaaa!!!!
* * *
“A new profile can be downloaded to a mobile device when it periodically checks-in with the network server. After receiving the new profile from the network server, the device will begin gathering the metrics and pre-processing according to these instructions.”
Translation: you complain – we’ll ferret out your secrets!
* * *
And that is just the first half of the document…
In the rest of the document, to the best of my reading, they assure us they are working on a ‘fix’ that would make it less possible for us to find and remove the IQ Agent, they admit to (at times) collecting SMS messages (but that was a mistake and they don’t do it any more), collecting phone call data, URL information, collecting keystroke data (but only under ‘specific conditions’ and when the ‘collector’ wants it – not for themselves, not at all….plus it’s not ‘on purpose’, just a by-product of other functions), and so on.
And then there is IQ Insight… This is the bit that collects all the location information: letting ‘operators’ to really drill down through your data!
Oh – and they say they only sell your information once…
But, don’t take my word for it: I am sure my reading of this document is highly flawed and imperfect, as what they say in their ‘conclusion’ does not, in my never-humble-opinion, match up fully with what they say in the body of the text. Obviously, it must be my understanding which is flawed.
It would be much better if you were to read the document for yourself and form your own opinion about CarrierIQ’s most illuminating explanations.
And, if these do not send you screaming for a throw-away phone, I have this lovely medieval bridge in Prague I’d love to sell you!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 