Kerry to Bush: If you really believe Clarke is lying...

Nathan Newman reports on Kerry's rejoinder to Bush administration claims that Richard Clarke is lying:

"My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if (Clarke) is not believable and they have reason to show it, then prosecute him for perjury because he is under oath," Kerry told CBS's MarketWatch

Heh. Newman notes that as long as they don't prosecute Clarke, they are tacitly admitting that he's credible.

Isn't it great to have a candidate who, you know, actually fights back? Let's imagine the alternate universe where Lieberman was nominated:

"My challenge to Richard Clarke would be, if you really believe in these divisive claims, which are tearing the nation apart in a time of crisis, why didn't you raise them before we went to war? It simply isn't credible," Lieberman told CBS's MarketWatch.

He added: "So really, Clarke should just shut his trap and vote for Bush in the upcoming election, like I'm planning on doing. I mean, voting for me would just intensify the partisan bickering in Washington, which is something I really want to rise above."

Next up: US Patent #6,273,287, "Breathing While Using the Internet"

Politech reports the following from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

When Regis University put some of its courses online in the 1990s, officials there figured that it was a no-brainer to administer tests online as well. And so they did.

Last fall, however, they received a threatening letter from Test Central Inc., which holds a patent on various types of online testing. The company claims that Regis and other colleges may be infringing on that patent and, if so, must pay thousands of dollars to continue offering tests online.

Ellen K. Waterman, director of distance learning at the Denver institution, says she was stunned to see that somebody claimed to own the rights to online testing itself. The patent claims made by Test Central are so broad, she says, that they seem to cover any type of testing in cyberspace.

"It's very, very general," she says. "If you can patent anything that people do on the Web, we are not protected at all."

Alas, the U.S. Patent Office's attitude towards online patents has long been exactly that: For any activity X, it awards patents to "Method and Apparatus for X on the Internet". It's a bonanza for land-grabbing "intellectual property" speculators, and a disaster for actual innovation. See: Priceline, One-Click, Eolas... the list goes on and on.

Wake up call, David E. Sanger

Today's Times news analysis, When Goals Meet Reality: Bush's Reversal on 9/11 Testimony, contains a perfect example of what's wrong with our White House press corps, and more generally with our entire political media. The article opens with the claim:

When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office three years ago, they made no secret of their intention to restore presidential powers and prerogatives that they believed had withered under the onslaught of Washington's cycle of televised, all-consuming investigations.

According to Sanger, Bush and Cheney are making a clear claim about Presidential history: that "Presidential powers and prerogatives" have "withered" under pressure from the media and Congressional investigations. The logical followup would be to ask at least one or two historians whether Presidential powers have really withered; and if so, why?* This would not take many words, but it would give readers the crucial historical context needed to understand the White House's behavior.

Instead, Sanger elects to write mostly about the political spin that's being put on Bush and Cheney's reluctance to be forthcoming. There's some good stuff in there, recounting evidence of that reluctance; but all we get about this historical claim is the White House spin, plus one unnamed diplomat confirming that this is indeed the White House's attitude.

By now, it's a cliché that the press covers politics like a horse race, obsessing over tactics and spin instead of substance. This is just one small example.

*Incidentally, I suspect that we'd learn the following from these hypothetical interviews with historians:

• No, the Presidential powers have not withered.
• But, they have been subject to greater public scrutiny, especially since Watergate.
• Most historians and political scientists believe this is a good thing.
• The Bush/Cheney administration is almost unprecedented in its extreme unwillingness to be the object of public scrutiny or Congressional oversight.

Gotta love that "moral clarity"

Q: Where is Bush/Cheney '04 campaign clothing manufactured?

A: In Burma, "one of the most repressive, brutal dictatorships in the world". I love the spectacle of right-wingers castigating liberals for being insufficiently hawkish towards repressive, brutal dictatorships, while wearing fleece pullovers embroidered with the names of their candidates and imported from a repressive, brutal dictatorship.

March Crypto-Gram highlights

It's Crypto-Gram day again...

• Financial institutions responding to identity theft with their usual concern for the customer. Don't use debit cards, and don't use online cash transfers. Use credit instead --- you're better protected from liability.
• Port knocking (Linux Journal article) is a cool new hack for increasing network security.
• Forget the password to some important password-protected thingie lately? Alternatively, need to snoop on friends and lovers who use Windows? Help is available.

Lastly, and for the umpteenth time, Schneier explains why "better" (more centralized, more standardized) identity cards wouldn't make us any safer from terrorism, this time in the context of a recent proposal called V-ID, from journalist/entrepeneur Stephen Brill. The whole article is worth reading, but here are some choice passages:

Trusted people within Choicepoint and V-ID are, of course, a potential problem. Several of the 9/11 terrorists had real Virginia driver's licenses in fake names, issued by dishonest state employees. This system will not be immune to that sort of problem, although I'm sure the creators will take pains to minimize the risk.

I worry about the back-end system. Somewhere there will be a computer that generates the questions, matches identity information with government databases, and generally administers the system. The fingerprint database will be stored somewhere, possibly on every reader. These databases would be vulnerable to attack, from insiders and outsiders.

...

The system is designed to be decentralized, so that someone cannot be tracked through the use of the card. It is an open question as to whether law enforcement could force the company to change that design and use the system to track people. The infrastructure is all there to do that: software on the reader and a communications system between the readers and some central point. Brill has said that it would be impossible, but from his description of the system, that's clearly not true.

...

Brill's plan is that people who have the card get a more lenient security treatment than people without. Call it what you will, but it means that people with the card are more trusted than people without.

The reality is that the existence of the card creates a third, and very dangerous, category: bad guys with the card. Timothy McVeigh would have been able to get one of these cards. The DC sniper and the Unabomber would have been able to get this card. Any terrorist mole who hasn't done anything yet and is being saved for something big would be able to get this card. Some of the 9/11 terrorists would have been able to get this card. These are people who are deemed trustworthy by the system even though they are not.

And even worse, the system lets terrorists test the system beforehand. Imagine you're in a terrorist cell. Twelve of you apply for the card, but only four of you get it. Those four not only have a card that lets them go through the easy line at security checkpoints; they also know that they're not on any terrorist watch lists. Which four do you think will be going on the mission? By "pre-approving" trust, you're building a system that is easier to exploit.

By any serious security analysis, identity cards are not an effective antiterrorism measure. On the other hand, they would be damn handy if you wanted to track the movements and behavior of ordinary Americans for political purposes. Of course, our government would never do that.

UPDATE: More on FBI surveillance of protesters (several large Quicktime files).