The House of Representatives, showing their willingness to do something in the complete absence of understanding or common sense, has widened the list of computer crimes that will land you behind bars for the rest of your life. (In case you didn’t notice, hacking became terrorism last fall.)

CSEA’s original language said in cases where miscreants knowingly attempt “to cause death or serious bodily injury” through electronic means, the punishment would be life imprisonment. That wasn’t strong enough for the committee, which succumbed to pressure from the Bush administration […] promising life terms for computer intrusions that “recklessly” put others’ lives at risk.

On the face of it, that looks pretty reasonable. The problem is that the enforcement of this law will be done by people who, frankly, rarely know what the hell they’re talking about. Turn on your laptop at the wrong time with your wireless Internet card activated, and that can be recorded as an “intrusion” when it automatically attempts to handshake with the government or military antenna a block away. Here in DC, there aren’t many places where that won’t be happening.

Tech people working the Internet use “hacker” tools all the time on their own sites; it’s a pretty good idea to use the bad guys’ tools to see if the bad guys can break in. But when your site is at 123.93.13.1 and the FAA is at 123.94.13.1, it’s not that hard to accidentally ping flood the wrong location. Do you think that an explanation of “typographical error” will cover the problem?

Better yet, which is more likely: 1) the FAA will say, “damn, it was really incompetent of us to put a critical system on the Internet with no protection,” or 2) the FBI will jail a bunch of people and trumpet yet another advance in the war on terrorism?

It’s impossible to accidentally hijack a plane or release anthrax. It’s very possible to do entirely legal things on the Internet in such a way that you accidentally target someone else — or make someone else think they’ve been targeted, even when zero damage is done.

Odds of people in power understanding this before several poor schmucks have been sent to jail: zero.

Addendum: 2/28/02, 8:20 PM:

Here’s a perfect example of the kind of activity I’m talking about. My industry views this as “white hat” hacking which is far preferable to exploiting a security issue and then keeping your mouth shut. It could also earn Adrian Lamo a long stretch in jail from people who don’t know the difference between criminal activity and responsible reporting of security issues.

This story is so bizarre, I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

US planes rain dollars on Afghanistan

>CHAMAN, Pakistan: US aircraft over southern Afghanistan have scattered $100 bills tucked into envelopes bearing a picture of President George W. Bush, witnesses said on Thursday.

Picture of George W. Bush? $100 bills?

Ok, assuming for the moment that the story is true. $200 is about three months’ income; seems to me that 200 one-dollar bills would be a lot more useful. (Can’t imagine there are too many places where you can break a large bill.) If someone can advise me on what strategic purpose this serves, it’s escaping me.

And why a picture of W? We’re not talking about a media-saturated country; unless the armed forces have been on a publicity campaign that we haven’t been told about—always possible—the average Afghani wouldn’t know George W. Bush from Joerg Haider.

On the other hand, if the story is false, why is the Times of India running it? And if the story is off the Reuters news wire, why is the Times the only paper to pick it up?

The Republican Party of Texas wants to you shoot off your gun, not your mouth.

In my vote for “boneheaded legal move of 2002”, the RPT is suing a website for appropriation of trademark. So, naturally, now thousands more people are hearing about the site, Enron Owns the GOP, than ever would have if the RPT had just ignored it.

Here’s a sample from the RPT site, and the spoof site’s version:

These images are 2/3rds original size, and look more similar here than they do in the originals. You’ll have noted the big honking “E” in the word Republican and superimposed over what I’m guessing is the state of Texas — not that I’d have seen that if I didn’t have the RPT version for comparison.

Oddly enough, EnronOwnstheGOP considers this to be a top story, while the RPT web site doesn’t mention it. Maybe that’s because of the apparent moratorium against mentioning Enron at all anywhere on their site, which strikes me as pretty weird.

But what really annoyed the hell out of me was the proof positive that the RPT thinks the average American has the mental acumen of a toaster. From the letter written by one Jonathan Snare of Loeffler, Jonas, & Tuggey:

>Your website is clearly intended to imitate and mimic the RPT trademark symbol and website, and to create confusion and mislead the public. As a result, the public is likely to be deceived into believing that your website… is sponsored by or affiliated with the RPT.

Perhaps if the public has been lobotomized. Problem for their theory #1: satire is Constitutionally protected. Problem for their theory #2: in order to get to the spoof site, you have to accidentally type E-N-R-O-N-O-W-N-S-T-H-E-G-O-P instead of T-E-X-A-S-G-O-P-.-O-R-G.

Of course, a third party could maliciously point to the wrong site. Of course, that third party would be entirely outside the control of the spoofers. And if you’re feeling third-partyish today, you can buy the texasgop.com domain from BuyDomains for the low price of somewhere between $650 and $10,000. Or you can wait until the registration expires on June 11th and try to pick it up cheaper.

The Republican Party of Texas: We Can Subvert the Constitution and Make Mountains from Molehills, All Before Breakfast! My thanks to those fine folks for bringing this to my attention.

From Wired News Ephemera:

>Price of Arrogance

You can be penalized for being late with a bill payment. You can be penalized for early withdrawal. You can be penalized for unnecessary roughness. And if you’re a customer of New Zealand’s largest phone company, you can be penalized for being “an arrogant bastard.” That’s what Auckland businessman James Storrie found when he opened his bill from Telecom Corp. this month. It was right there: A $337.50 “penalty for being an arrogant bastard.” Telecom Corp. is investigating.

After the World Trade Center attack, a political cartoon portrayed Superman with his head in his hands, while a young boy asks him, “Where were you?” I thought this was a rather poignant message at the time: faced with a disaster of comic book proportions, we didn’t have comic book heroes to protect us.

Our president apparently felt the same way, because he’s still using comic book metaphors. After his gaffe on September 11th, promising to find the “folks” that did the attack, we’ve been treated to a steady stream of black-and-white views: our enemies are evildoers, and the entire world falls into two categories, with us or against us.

I happen to agree that terrorists are evildoers, but President Bush’s definition has been much more fungible. First it was the terrorists; then it was Al-Qaeda (although we the people had to rely on Britain to provide us with proof); then it was the Taliban. Since the Taliban has been defeated, though, many ex-Talibs are now the allies of the new, US-supported government, and apparently these doers of evil have been completely rehabilitated so long as they weren’t mentioned on the front page of the New York Times.

Now that the country we were at war against has been vanquished, and the terrorist group has been decimated, one might think we could switch to a state somewhere north of vigilance and somewhere south of war. One who might think that hasn’t been paying attention to Bush’s popularity figures, which peaked at an all-time high around 93% and have been hovering in the 80s since.

If you were paying close attention to these numbers, you’d have noted that they started going up before Bush really did anything; it took a week before he reached his first widely hailed turning point, during a speech he gave at the National Cathedral, before which he set the Cheney standard for flying to undisclosed locations. A White House political aide can be excused for coming to the obvious conclusion: war, good; recession, bad. Look no further than the last Bush administration for proof of that.

Bush II is obviously going to avoid making the same mistakes his father made, and it appears he’s decided that daddy’s biggest mistake was letting the war end. So now we’re at war against a shadowy terrorist organization, replete with comic book monsters, which luckily for the administration has no clear finish line.

Destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan? Not done yet, bin Laden is still out there.

bin Laden might be dead from kidney disease? Not done yet, he has many lieutenants.

Lieutenants are boxed up on the Pakistan border with no means of escape? Oh, keep worrying; Al-Qaeda has people everywhere.

But someone near the top is paying attention to public opinion, and realized that in order to have a war, you have to have clear enemies. Eventually, the fervor for war will lessen unless there’s a clear focus, and victories in the offing. Clearly, Al-Qaeda won’t fit the bill.

Ta da! For your wartime pleasure, we present: the newly unveiled Axis of Evil! (Somewhere, Lex Luthor must be kicking himself for being upstaged so badly in the criminal naming department.) Let’s look at its founding members:

1. Iraq. Ok, surely there’s some evil here. Biological and chemical weapons development, run by the star of the last War on Evil. Not evil enough to catch the attention of the president before September, but maybe he was just napping.
2. Iran. Hmm. A favorite evil star of the 1970s, but weren’t they one of the democratic up-and-comers of the 1990s? Sure, it’s hard to have a democracy when it’s coexisting with a theocratic state, but there was a brief period of time when the Iranians were looking like the good guys; notably, during our war against Axis of Evil Member #1.
3. North Korea. And from the history files of the 1950s returns that old evil from M*A*S*H 4077. A country devastated by hunger with a military budget that would barely cover Colin Powell’s annual brass polish supply. (We outspend them 55 to 1.) They’ve got a few missiles, though, which on a good day and with a strong tailwind can reach Japan. Perhaps they have to be part of the Axis of Evil in order to justify the Nonfunctional Missile Defense.

Let’s put it this way: South Korea is concerned that we’re being too belligerent towards the North Koreans.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the nations which aren’t even on the Meridian of Perfidy:

1. Saudi Arabia. Source of many of Al-Qaeda’s expatriate members and a vast chunk of their money (funneled out of US pockets thanks to our dependence on oil). Always willing to speak up to the rest of the Arab world about our “misguided” policies in the Middle East, and brilliantly effective distributor of anti-American propaganda whenever CNN isn’t looking.
2. China. North Korea is maybe trying to get nuclear weapons—which would be harder for them if we’d stop blocking international arms treaties. China’s got ’em, and they’ve got missiles that can reach the West Coast. Oh, and they’re still Communist. But they’re also a big market for corporations that give a lot of money to the Republican party, so China good… Cuba still bad.
3. Montana and Idaho. Okay, so they’re not countries. But let’s not forget that before September, the most successful terrorists in America were white guys named Ted and Timothy.

Now, you can’t very well declare war on Montana, it’s inconveniently part of the United States. War on Montana is silly. No, for the terrorists in Montana we need to use the FBI and law enforcement. Iran, though, Iran’s outside the United States.

I’d agree that war was the most efficient method of destroying 80% of Al-Qaeda, but now we’re up against the remainder — decentralized, at least still partially funded, located God knows where. Perhaps in friendly nations without the ability to root them out. War isn’t the way you pursue such an enemy, just as war isn’t the way you pursue the enemy in Montana. Inside the U.S., there’s the FBI. Outside the U.S., there’s the rest of the alphabet soup: CIA, NSA, and all of the other agencies whose budgets we don’t get to know about.

So you’re the Bush administration. You can:

1. ferret out enemies of the United States the way we’ve been doing it for 50 years, with the CIA and Interpol and friendly nations around the world; or you can
2. declare an ongoing state of war, with no clear end, against Axis of Evil countries (and whomever else comes to mind), during which time you may
   1. massively increase the defense budget and the bankrolls of those military-industrial companies who give you money;
   2. ram through right-wing policies which normally cause domestic resistance; and
   3. wrap yourself in a patriotic flag, call your domestic and foreign opponents anti-American, and keep up the military displays as long as they keep your approval rating inflated.

When do you suppose that war would end?

It’s 7 AM and I haven’t slept yet, which is probably why I think this is really funny. Click on the image to see it full-sized.