Writer Corry Doctorow may be just suffering from deep winter blues, but if not, and he's correct, his brief musings on the near future of the net are ominous:
“Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that 2014 is the year we lose the Web. The W3C push for DRM in all browsers is going to ensure that all interfaces built in HTML5 (which will be pretty much everything) will be opaque to users, and it will be illegal to report on security flaws in them (because reporting a security flaw in DRM exposes you to risk of prosecution for making a circumvention device), so they will be riddled with holes that creeps, RATters, spooks, authoritarians and crooks will be able to use to take over your computer and f*ck you in every possible way.”
Years ago I gave a lecture at Yale. My subject was Google. I ran through the basic points in The Google Legacy and Google Version 2.0. The audience reacted as if I had dissected a dead frog. I received a smattering of polite applause and headed out for a talk in New York City. So much for Yale and the idea that Google was more than a Web search company.
But Yale perceived the Web page differently. Here’s the quote:
‘Yale’s policy on free expression and free speech entitles no one to appropriate a Yale resource and use it as their [sic] own ,’ the statement read. It further stated its main priority at this time was supporting its own resources, ‘not others created independently and without the university’s cooperation or permission,’ and that ‘all the information on the website remains available to students on the Yale site.’
I assume the Washington Post is semi-accurate, just like an Amazon recommendation.
What did the future bonesmen learn? A nuance of academic freedom in Yale Land has been broadcast in an analogue transmission.
Will these two free thinkers demonstrate digital initiative in the future? Is Yale turning out well-trained online researchers for the next-generation information highway?
Tom: These days, when I check out the latest news on Washington’s global war-making, I regularly find at least one story that fits a new category in my mind that I call: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), that requires Verizon to produce on an “ongoing daily basis… all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
Here is the proof — in the form of a just released reputable survey — of the point I have been making. Large numbers of Americans see their government as the problem. It reminds me of conversations I had with Russians and others in the Soviet Union before its fall. Click through to see the charts that accompany this report.
Soon to be at the Harper's website, at http://harpers.org/, is the attached article by Andrew Cockburn. “Tunnel Vision: Will the Air Force Kill Its Most Effective Weapon?” is sure to generate howls of protest from officialdom in the Air Force and its mouthpieces.
The article makes numerous important, indeed key, points. They involve not just the unique capabilities of the supposedly too old, too slow, too primitive and too cheap A-10, but also about the real limitations of wonder weapon technologies that have a strong appeal to those who don't bother to look beyond the glitz and the many that have a material and dogmatic vested interest in them.
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Please pay close attention to the incident that Cockburn, a friend and colleague, uses to open the article–and to the denouement of the incident related at the end. Also, central to the article is the destruction of the notions that the F-35 will ever be able to perform the close air support mission of the A-10 or that the Air Force's leadership cares about that in the slightest.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) today released a declassified report on Sep 2012 attack on Consulate Benghazi. Invite your attention to SSCI press release, first below, and report's assessment of CJCS's performance as a leader, second below. Actual declassified and redacted report attached in PDF format.
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NB: Key findings and recommendations, and complete downloadable PDF, below the line.
