Category: Current Events

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FBI and Police Departments Endorse Apple's Full Device Encryption

Via Daring Fireball:

The Washington Post:

FBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Apple and Google on Thursday for developing forms of smartphone encryption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information stored on the devices — even when they have valid search warrants.

I can't think of a better endorsement of Apple and iOS.

"Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile," said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago's police department. 'The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I've got to get an Apple phone."

Well, that didn't take long. An even stronger endorsement. The pedophile card is pretty much the last resort for these law enforcement types who feel entitled to the content of our digital devices. Fear mongering with bogeymen and an appeal to base emotions.

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Torches and Pitchforks

You know things are getting bad when one of the 0.01 Percent sounds a warning call to his fellow plutocrats:

Here's what I say to you: You're living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we're somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that's not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there's no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That's the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.

Read the entire article here.

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Fuck the NRA

"So while the NRA may be a bloated, possibly corrupt, excessively powerful lobbying force, partly staffed by horrible racists, it's also the mouthpiece of a fandom more widespread than Bronies, Trekkies, and Furries combined and multiplied by a hundred. Gun ownership is almost inarguably the single most popular hobby in America, and the NRA is a consequence of that.

Even popular gun-control efforts that failed, like the 2013 bill, would have been nothing more than tiny, symbolic changes, such as making background checks more ubiquitous, or eliminating high-capacity magazines. Elliot Rodger passed his background check and didn't use high-capacity magazines. The presence of the NRA makes real reform so far-fetched, nothing has even been proposed, let alone voted on, that will get us anywhere close to Richard Martinez's "Not One More" promised land.

And meanwhile, there's shooting after shooting. When these things happened, the president used to fly out to the grieving town and give a speech. Now we don't even fly our flags at half mast. They've become an ongoing problem we can't take the time out of our day to be individually upset about, like Adam Sandler movies.
Matching shooters gun-for-gun isn't a solution anyone takes seriously, not even the NRA. The real answer is that we, the American people, see that there are school shootings, and we all agree that they're tragic, but then we've done the David Foster Wallace thought experiment in our heads: Gun control would mean an America with fewer school shootings, but we would lose some of our gun freedom.

And apparently we don't want to live in a place like that."

We'll Always Have School Shootings Because We Really Really Love Guns

Fuck the NRA.

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Quote of the Day

"Tranny is an abbreviation for transvestite and transsexual, so I'm free to use it since I fall with that category. Much as blacks can use the N-word. I know tranny from London, where they abbreviate everything—breakfast is brekkie, biscuit is biccie. Tranny is used affectionately on the club scene. Even transsexual advocates like Jayne County and Kate Bornstein have come out and said that these words aren't necessarily slurs…

"And I'm sick of people thinking they can ban words because they make them feel bad. Boo hoo for you! Any time we choose a different path in life, we're going to get shit for it—whether you choose to be openly gay, trans or even a straight guy with tattoos all over his face. If you don't have the balls to take shit, then choose an easy path. And for huge gay organizations like GLAAD to join in to censor Ru or anyone else confuses me. "Gender bender" is on GLAAD's list of banned words. That's what Frank-n-Furter, David Bowie and Sylvester were—that's not a slur except to the most precious, uptight goody two-shoes." ~ Lady Bunny

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If Only…

Just once, I'd like to open up my RSS reader and see this for realz. Imagine a day without anything stupid going on in the world; no war updates, no stupid religious bigotry, no rumors of Apple's NEXT. BIG. THING., no pr0n resembling gymnastic competitions…

What an awesome day that would be!

I guess there's always the option of just not opening the reader…

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If You're Not Outraged You're Not Paying Attention

I don't think I'm alone when I say I think we were all a lot happier in the pre-internet world. That's because most of us went through life, blissfully unaware of the majority of atrocities and the outright stupidity occurring in the world. I know that knowledge is power, and yes, while we have now have the collective wisdom of humanity at our fingertips,  at the same time we are also exposed to things that no one in their right mind needs to see. (Two Girls, One Cup will forever be burned into my consciousness as prime example of this.)

Just this morning, while going through my Twitter feed, I came across these items. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, because I would've been a lot happier never having learned of any of it:

She was jailed because apparently stoning her to death would be bad for international relations.

Maybe—like most toddlers think—if he stomps his feet and threatens to hold his breath until he turns blue he'll get what he wants.

At least he didn't use the N-word.

Stalin would be proud.

Don't worry, it's all okay because at least he's not gay!

And on that subject, here's another one for whom I'm sure it's just a matter of time until he's caught tap, tap, tapping his way into scandal in an airport mens' room.

There are dozens—if not hundreds—of more examples, but just posting these was exhausting enough. There are times I truly regret that the Mayans were wrong about the end of the world, because this planet really needs an enema.

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Some Thoughts on the NSA "Scandal"

I would like to believe in magical things. I think it's hard-wired into human DNA that we're predisposed to believe in things we can't see. I also think that's why humanity has the need to create gods, goddesses, nymphs, fairies, trolls (not of the internet variety), ogres, monsters, and aliens who travel light years to insert probes into our rectums. It's why 6000 year old myths from the Middle East continue to hold sway over a huge portion of the people who live on this spinning rock in the middle of fucking nowhere.  "Christianity is the one TRUE religion!" "Islam is the one TRUE religion!" Um, okay. Travel back in time to Dynastic Egypt and tell the average man on the street that in 4000 years Osiris, Anubis, and Isis will be historical footnotes. The same thing will happen with the Abrahamic god. That's why science has been fighting an uphill battle from the very moment some of us started saying, "Wait a minute! What you're telling me doesn't explain what I'm seeing. Let's see if it can be explained rationally."

I would like to believe that anally probing aliens intentionally committed suicide and crashed their ship in the New Mexico desert sixty-five years ago because they knew the clever apes who found it would reverse engineer the integrated circuits contained therein and years later make their society so completely dependent upon that tech—and their people so completely enslaved to it—that their eventual invasion will simply be a matter of switching it all off and walking in. Or that our governments have already been thoroughly and completely infiltrated by shape-shifting reptilians from Zeta Reticulii who are now monitoring and cataloging each and every one of us with a computer or cell phone under the guise of national security to—once again—facilitate an easy invasion and the takeover of our precious resources and bodily fluids. (It's amazing what you read on some of the walls in the dark alleys of the internet.) That would be so much more fun than accepting the mundane, real-world reasons we're being "monitored."

While there are probably some nefarious elements (We are human, after all, and history has repeatedly shown that we can be truly vile toward our fellow beings.) behind the NSA and alphabet soup of governmental agencies that have been spying on us, I think for the most part it is because since 9/11, the people who run this country (and let's be clear: it's not just the US who have been involved in this) have been terrified of being caught with their pants down and allowing another terrorist attack to happen. Over-reacting? Probably. But I can understand—if not necessarily agree with—their desire to err on the side of caution and be safe rather than sorry. Another major attack on the United States in particular would crash the entire world economy—on  shaky legs as it is—giving the Koch Brothers a very big sadz. (Sorry, I went down another dark alley there.)

I gave up all pretense of believing in internet privacy shortly after I first started blogging and put my thoughts online for all to see. A few months later I received a rotting box of meat in the mail  with a return address in the abandoned Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls. (Yes, that Love Canal.) Apparently some right wing loon took offense at something I'd written back in the day about his precious smirking chimp and decided to send me some kind of message. Um, yeah… (I'm still trying to figure out the symbolism.)

So the NSA revelation comes of no surprise. If the powers that be want to know how often I overdraft my checking account, the balances on my credit cards, my medical history, what I buy at Target, or my taste in porn or music, I say "Knock yourselves out." Index and cross-refence to your heart's content and sell it all to the marketers. I'm still not gonna buy the crap they try to sell me unless it's something I want to buy. Yeah, at some point something in all that data may prevent me from getting something I want, but I'm not going to live my life in a state of fear because of it. As a whole, nothing about me is that much different any other internet-connected American. I think if anything, it's going to show the watchers how much more alike we are than anything else.

And one thing to keep in mind even if all the paranoid right-wing ranting about data collection is so the US—or more likely, their favorite bugaboo, the shadowy One World Gub'mint—can weed out "undesirables" does actually turn out to be true and we wake up one morning to discover jack-booted thugs breaking down doors and making people "disappear" because they watched a video of a girl shooting ping pong balls out her cooter, bought a big purple double-headed dildo online, or called a sitting President, "Mr. Poopy Pants" on Twitter instead of actually apprehending people who mean to do this country harm…it won't last. It never does. Repressive regimes are always so blinded by their own egos they think they'll last forever and yet history has shown again and again—as we celebrate ourselves on this July 4th—that they never do. Every tyrannical government has its breaking point where the people refuse to bow any further and they rise up, sweeping those governments into the dustbin of history.