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Tag:

Technology

BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Government Case Against Apple is “Pure Applesauce”

by lgadmin March 2, 2016
written by lgadmin

“The Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.” These were not the words of a radical social justice warrior from “Black Lives Matter,” or even a liberal Democrat in Congress. They were the deliberate and percipient observations from one of the most substantive and constitutionally faithful of Supreme Court Justices  — the late Antonin Scalia.

The tragedy of Scalia’s untimely passing is amplified by the need for voices such as his in the current fight between iPhone manufacturer Apple and the federal government, over forced access to an encrypted phone belonging to one of the dead San Bernardino terrorists. The government claims its demand that Apple break into the phone by overriding the built-in privacy protections is “reasonable” and necessary in order to protect national security. Apple maintains what Uncle Sam demands is not reasonable; and would establish a precedent that would result in harm to the company, its millions of customers, other U.S. manufacturers of “smart phones,” and ultimately the U.S. government. One can almost hear Scalia’s voice calling the government’s case against Apple, “pure applesauce.”

Before digging deeper into the government’s current dust-up with Apple, it is important to note that this fight is nothing new; it is simply the latest chapter in a decades-long push by Uncle Sam to gain access to Americans’ digital technology and place this booming sector of our economy under its thumb.

In 1994, for example, Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA); which for the first time forced telecommunication carriers and manufacturers to deliberately modify their communications platforms and hardware for the sole purpose of facilitating the government’s ability to surreptitiously monitor communications made over those networks. The government (in particular the FBI), not satisfied by merely having a “back door” built into digital communication platforms for its convenience, also pushed Congress for legislation that would force private companies to provide encryption “keys” so that, if necessary, it always has a way to access the data on those networks. In those pre-911 days, Congress resisted such unnecessary and improper power grabs.

What makes the current debate with Apple different and more alarming, is that the government is for the first time demanding that a company actually invent a way to defeat the very encryption safeguards it builds into the devices it sells. Attorney General Lynch has taken to citing an obscure law, the All Writs Act of 1789, to justify this unprecedented exercise of power to compel companies to do the government’s work for it.

The debate over Apple’s reluctance to cooperate with government demands has to some degree been intentionally obfuscated in a swirl of techno-jargon about “encryption keys,” “brute force access,” and “backdoors.” Although these may be accurate details about the technical aspects of the debate, they have little relevance to the more important policy and constitutional impact of what is at stake. The question is not whether Apple can break its encryption; it could. Rather, the singularly important question is whether it should. And, the eventual answer to this inquiry will be a watershed moment for personal privacy in the digital age.

Since the government views providing access to data – even more than the data itself — as a duty no private citizen or company should have the power to resist, the feds characterize the current debate as a “minor” technicality. This is why it portrays Apple’s opposition to what it describes as a one-time-only solution to breaking the encryption on a single iPhone, as unpatriotic and shortsighted. Apple, and many Americans for that matter, view the government’s demands as something far broader and more important than a single, technical-assistance request in a single criminal investigation.

The true value of Apple’s encryption is that, as a manufacturer, it does not compromise its integrity for any reason. That’s the shield. As soon as they do it once, the shield is pierced and is made worthless, and there is nothing to stop others, including governments, from demanding access based on lessening degrees of “extraordinary circumstances.” One need only look to the USA PATRIOT Act, which frequently is employed but only rarely for terrorism investigations, to see this maxim in action.

Subsequent demands to access encrypted data will come not just from the U.S. government, either. Russia, China, and any foreign country willing to act as a proxy will not hesitate to use this precedent to search the phones of American business executives they suspect of “spying,” or some other fabricated offense – for the sole purpose of using the data it gathers to its economic, military or internal security benefit. Furthermore, the technology used to defeat security will not remain a secret for long; it will be only a short time before private, non-state actors coopt the anti-security measures for hacking private data.

This is precisely why the Apple debate is not just about one dead terrorist’s phone; the precedent set here will impact anyone who shares information digitally.

The good news is that, initially, a lower court has looked with suspicion at not just how the government is rationalizing its authority, but to what it inevitably would lead. “In a world in which so many devices, not just smartphones, will be connected to the Internet of Things,” writes U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, “the government’s theory that a licensing agreement allows it to compel the manufacturers of such products to help it surveil the products’ users will result in a virtually limitless expansion of the government’s legal authority to surreptitiously intrude on personal privacy.”

Unfortunately, Judge Orenstein’s correct analysis is being shouted down by government lawyers, political candidates, and most mainstream media outlets, more concerned with playing on fear of terrorism than with protecting individuals against Big Brother’s insatiable thirst for power and information.

Originally published here via townhall.com

March 2, 2016 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

FAA Stifling Private Drone Use and Innovation

by Liberty Guard Author March 18, 2015
written by Liberty Guard Author

Amateur drone hobbyists, beware! If you happen to make one red cent from any video filmed with your small drone – or if Uncle Sam thinks you are — you might soon receive an unwelcome notice in the mail or an ominous visitor at your door. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is cracking down on what it deems to be “commercial use” of drones or “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” (UAVs), as it prefers to call them. The agency is turning amateur hobbyists and small business owners into potential outlaws should they ignore the FAA’s demands to “cease and desist” from operating any drone in what its regulators deem to be a “commercial” manner.

Founded in 1958, the FAA’s primary – and extremely important – responsibility is to keep the airspace safe and navigable for aircraft. Indeed, in recent years the FAA has done a commendable job at this important task. However, in the finest of bureaucratic fashions, it always searches for new areas in which it can meddle, and for which – of course – it can justify larger budgets. Its latest target: small drones.

Small UAVs — those under 55-pounds — are becoming increasingly popular among hobbyists and small businesses. Rather than embracing this new technology and developing safety regulations that foster innovation while protecting public safety, the FAA apparently has instead decided simply to do whatever it can to stifle development and innovation of this emerging and exciting technology. The regulatory fog thus created has caught amateur drone enthusiasts and small businesses in an untenable situation.

Consider Jayson Hanes who, since 2013, has flown drones as a hobby; capturing stunning views from Tampa and surrounding areas, which he then posts to his popular YouTube channel (his most popular video has nearly 100,000 views). However, without any evidence that Hanes had received one thin dime for his drone videos, the FAA sent him a formal letter accusing him of operating a drone for “commercial purposes,” which would place him in the same regulatory class as commercial jumbo jets.

Hanes’ story is similar to that of Maine drone hobbyist, Steve Girard, who was contacted by the FAA nannies earlier this month and told to take down his website, which sold drone-shot aerial footage. “We just want to do a small business,” Girard told his local news. “We know how to fly it and respect people’s privacy. We do it safely.”

The FAA claims it is looking further into how, and why, both these citizens were contacted, but these are far from the only incidents in which the agency has used scare tactics, such as “cease and desist” letters and legal threats, to force hobbyists and small businesses to stop using drones. Notably, the FAA’s demands are being made without any evidence whatsoever that these “commercial” drones pose any danger to life or property.

As Vice.com technology reporter Jason Koebler noted last year, more than a dozen businesses have received threatening letters from the FAA about their drone use. This bureaucratic harassment is particularly troubling given that the FAA’s supposed ban on “commercial use” of drones is itself legally dubious, and has been virtually unenforceable since it was first concocted in 2007.

Troubling also is the impact of such tactics on the overall development and growth of the drone industry. One UAV industry report released in 2013 estimated that drone integration in the US economy could create more than 70,000 jobs in the first few years, with an economic impact in the tens of billions of dollars. Proposed uses for UAV’s include everything from inspecting farm crops and cattle ranches, to inspecting buildings, bridges and pipelines; all at far lesser cost in dollars and risk to humans.

To be fair, the benefits of UAV use are not completely lost on the FAA. Last month, after more than half a decade of inaction, the agency finally released its proposed rulemaking on the use of small UAVs for commercial use. While the proposed rules constitute an important step forward in providing at least some clarity and notice for current and future private drone users, the underlying desire to control by the FAA remains obvious in its regulatory outline, and presents serious challenges for future economic development and deployment of UAVs.

It is not a question of whether the FAA has a role to play in ensuring that drones are deployed with due regard for public safety; and the agency should in fact be moving more expeditiously in that regard so drone users are properly are on notice as to the legitimate safety regulations with which they must comply. But the FAA should keep its regulatory mitts away from questions of why citizens use drones, especially when constitutional rights such as those protected by the First Amendment are concerned.

The public comment period for the FAA’s proposed rulemaking on small UAVs closes April 24th, so those concerned with this issue must hurry to make their voice heard.

March 18, 2015 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Technology-Driven Narcissism Cheapens Life and Morality

by Liberty Guard Author December 31, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

Years ago, what one was having for dinner was news only for those sitting around the table. But in today’s hyper-connected society, every common, banal activity is deemed sufficiently important to be captured, cataloged, and broadcast to a global network of equally insipid “friends.” There are even specialized terms like “selfie” and “hashtag” to describe a process that, until now, was nothing more noteworthy than a group photo. The self-titled gurus of this social media realm call it “creating content,” despite the obvious fact that nothing is being created.

One need only spend a few minutes on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see that today’s youth are more self-absorbed and feeling more self-important than ever. Rather than find role models and inspirational leaders in the likes of Steve Jobs, who changed modern digital technology with the production of the first iPhone, or Marc Andreessen, who helped launch the first web browser and now is helping push an equally revolutionary technology,Bitcoin, many “millennials” are obsessed with vapid Hollywood tabloid starlets like Kim Kardashian, or the latest YouTube “celebrity” – as if becoming a celebrity actually takes true talent anymore.

This growing obsession with other people’s lives, and with believing that other people must be interested in every daily detail of our lives, has reached the point at which there now is a hashtag to describe this feeling — #FOMO, which stands for “fear of missing out.”

Rather than enjoy the tangible reality of our own, God-granted existence, we cling to social media in order to live vicariously through the ephemeral, digital experiences of others. In the process, we are losing our sense of decency, morality and humanity.

Some might posit that our culture of social media makes us more interconnected; but if so, it comes at the cost of sacrificing the connection with ourselves. And, to compensate for the increasing hollowness of our own existence, researchers discovered people, especially those suffering from loneliness or depression, desperately attempt to fill it by sharing even more about ourselves, thus feeding the cycle rather than breaking it. “There’s a lot of social pressure to show that everything’s great,” one observer told Market Watch. “It’s a never-ending quest to be interesting and intellectual and unique, and strive to prove something to the world. You [can no longer] just be yourself.”

There is a darker side to this obsession as well; one that is pushing our society even further into the cultural abyss. Not only have we become bored with our own lives, choosing instead to live second-hand through the lives of others, we also are now experimenting with experiencing second-hand deaths. This macabre obsession first surfaced several years ago in the “Bodies” and “Body Worlds” exhibits making the rounds of major American cities. These featured the flayed, “plasticized” bodies of cadavers in varying poses marketed to the public as “art.” The public was and remains so eager to satisfy some grotesque urge to look at these “cool” displays of dead people, that they will pay money to do so.

Now, Europeans are taking this necromania to the next level, with a museum exhibit created by Dutch scientists that employs manufactured smells and sounds to recreate the deaths of famous people like John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana, Muammar Gaddafi, and Whitney Houston. Patrons experience these “famous” deaths by being shoved into darkened, metal, morgue-like boxes and then — according to media accounts — exposed to scents such as a recreation of Jackie Kennedy’s favorite perfume or Houston’s bath oils, accompanied by sounds such as splashing water and Houston’s voice as she drowns during a drug-laden bath. Presumably the deaths of Diana and JFK are accompanied by the sounds of crashing automobiles and gunshots, in order for the patrons to properly experience their death rush and get their money’s worth.

The use of technology for such bizarre and pointless purposes is rapidly turning into the same type of synthetic-sensory experience as that of “Feelies” — contrived movie theater events described some eight decades ago by Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel, Brave New World. Huxley described how people were exposed to a manufactured, full-sensory environment in order to weaken their ability to experience truly genuine emotion; thereby facilitating the government’s drive to control the citizenry.

All this should serve as a warning sign that we indeed are losing touch with the true meaning of living; found in acts of creation, production, and achievement — and instead trying to supplement the growing emptiness with second-hand experiences and reality. The problem with the incessant drive for sensorial pleasures is that not only does it cheapen the value of the individualized life experience responsible for positive human achievements, but it turns individuals into budding sociopaths incapable of feeling any sort of emotion that is not provided through external means. We begin to pursue only those things that make us feel happy and safe, without any regard to morality, or understanding of how this blind pursuit of emotional satisfaction is making us pawns to others, including the government.

December 31, 2014 0 comment
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