Remote-Control Air­plane Soft­ware.

Does any­one other than me see a prob­lem with this?

Some 30 Euro­pean busi­nesses and research insti­tutes are work­ing to cre­ate soft­ware that would make it pos­si­ble from a dis­tance to regain con­trol of an air­craft from hijack­ers, accord­ing to the Ger­man news magazine.

The sys­tem “which could only be con­trolled from the ground would con­duct the air­craft pos­ing a prob­lem to the near­est air­port whether it liked it or not,” accord­ing to extracts from next Monday’s Der Spiegel released Saturday.

“A hijacker would have no chance of reach­ing his goal,” it said.

Unless his goal were, um, hijack­ing the air­craft.

It seems to me that by design­ing remote-control soft­ware for air­planes, you open the pos­si­bil­ity for some­one to hijack the plane with­out even being on board. Sure, there are going to be computer-security con­trols pro­tect­ing this thing, but we all know how well that sort of thing has worked in the past.

The sys­tem would be designed in such a way that even a com­puter hacker on board could not get round it.

But what about about com­puter hack­ers on the ground?

I’m not say­ing this is a bad idea; it might be a good idea. But this secu­rity coun­ter­mea­sure opens up an entirely new vul­ner­a­bil­ity, and I hope that some­one is study­ing that new vulnerability.

[Schneier on Secu­rity]

I’ll say it’s a bad idea. With this sys­tem in place, hijack­ers wouldn’t need to take any risks at all. In fact, they wouldn’t even need to leave their homes. Just what we need–“pajamas media” turn­ing into “paja­mas terrorists.”

Israeli Jus­tice Min­is­ter: IDF enti­tled to Kill Every­one in South Lebanon.

From the BBC today:

Israeli Jus­tice Min­is­ter Haim Ramon “said that in order to pre­vent casu­al­ties among Israeli sol­diers bat­tling Hezbol­lah mil­i­tants in south­ern Lebanon, vil­lages should be flat­tened by the Israeli air force before ground troops moved in.
He added that Israel had given the civil­ians of south­ern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and there­fore any­one still remain­ing there could be con­sid­ered a Hezbol­lah sup­porter. “All those now in south Lebanon are ter­ror­ists who are related in some way to Hezbol­lah,” Mr Ramon said.

****

Ramon made these com­ments on Israeli Army radio.  He was appar­ently not asked about the IDF’s prac­tice of blow­ing up the cars full of civil­ians flee­ing south Lebanon.

Ramon has made stark the stan­dards that the Israelis are using, and there is no excuse for any Amer­i­can politi­cian or cit­i­zen to con­tinue deny­ing that the Israelis are not inten­tion­ally tar­get­ing civil­ians en masse.

[BOVARD]

I’m reminded of an arti­cle from an Israeli news­pa­per that I com­mented on sev­eral years ago:

“Herut MK Michael Kleiner out­raged MKs when he pro­posed to Sharon that the IDF car­pet bomb Pales­tin­ian cities. He was respond­ing to Sharon’s request that the MKs in the com­mit­tee pro­pose ways to deal with the ter­ror prob­lem. When Sharon said Israel has no inten­tion of harm­ing the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion that is not involved in ter­ror, Kleiner inter­rupted. “Are the 100,000 peo­ple who attended Salah Shehadeh’s funeral innocent?”

Kleiner explained that a quick vic­tory was within reach if Israel took the right steps. “Just like the Amer­i­cans bombed the Ger­man city of Dres­den in World War II, and they bombed Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, we should do the same.” He pro­posed an IDF plane drop leaflets warn­ing peo­ple to leave their homes in time, and that the bridges to Jor­dan be kept open “because after the bomb­ing the peo­ple won’t have any­where to return.”

Sharon angrily shot down the idea. “I would never do such hor­ri­ble things. That would be an enor­mous mis­take. You do it when you’re prime min­is­ter,” he said to Kleiner. MK Ran Cohen, chair­man of the com­mit­tee, summed up, “Kleiner’s pro­posal is as dis­gust­ing as the sui­cide bombings.”

Sadly, Sharon (who was far less ruth­less in office than his his­tory had led me to expect) is gone, and while Kleiner isn’t the Prime Min­is­ter, Olmert seems to be just as bad.

Man Arrested for Tak­ing Cell Phone Pic of Cops.

Philadel­phia res­i­dent Nef­taly Cruz says that when he heard a com­mo­tion out­side his house, he walked out of his back door with his cell phone to see what was hap­pen­ing. When he saw the street lined with police cars, he decided to take a pic­ture of the scene.

“I opened (the phone) and took a shot,” Cruz said.

Moments later, Cruz said he got the shock of his life when an offi­cer came to his back yard gate.

“He opened the gate and took me by my right hand,” Cruz said.

Cruz said the offi­cer threw him onto a police car, cuffed him and took him to jail.

…Cruz said police told him that he broke a new law that pro­hibits peo­ple from tak­ing pic­tures of police with cell phones.

“They threat­ened to charge me with con­spir­acy, imped­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion, obstruc­tion of a inves­ti­ga­tion. … They said, ‘You were imped­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion.’ (I asked,) “By doing what?’ (The offi­cer said,) ‘By tak­ing a pic­ture of the police offi­cers with a cam­era phone,’” Cruz said.–NBC 10

Police say they were in Cruz’s neigh­bor­hood that night arrest­ing a drug dealer. So what? How does tak­ing a pic­ture of police activ­ity make Nef­taly Cruz a crim­i­nal? When cit­i­zens are spied upon by the police, they are told, “If you’re not doing any­thing wrong, you have noth­ing to worry about.” Shouldn’t the same apply to our pub­lic ser­vants per­form­ing their duties on a pub­lic street?

[Police State USA]

I’m actu­ally sur­prised that such arrests aren’t more common–the last thing the samu­rai class wants is a bunch of peas­ants see­ing what they’re up to. I’ve heard it said that cops react to cam­eras the way vam­pires do to crosses–while amus­ing, it’s unfor­tu­nately not true.

Notice this part in particular:

Cruz, a Penn State Uni­ver­sity senior, said that after about an hour police told him he was lucky because there was no super­vi­sor on duty, so they released him.

“They said if the super­vi­sor was there I wouldn’t be a free man and that he is let­ting me go because he felt that I was a good per­son,” Cruz said.

Trans­la­tion: the super­vi­sor who was on duty told the arrest­ing offi­cer that Cruz hadn’t bro­ken any laws and had to be released.

kids say the darn­d­est things!. I like Kinsella’s baby quote. One thing I’ll never for­get is my husband’s nephew’s mem­o­rable words, when he was five. Now this was a time when he had 4 older sis­ters (two of them teenagers) from whom he learned phrases,… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

It’s pretty well known that big­ots learn their big­otry from those around them. Here is a (sad, dis­gust­ing) real-world example.

Peru­vian Gothic. Don Benigno Aazco carved his way 36 years deep into the green heart of the Andean for­est, founded 14 set­tle­ments, aban­doned his wife and many chil­dren, mar­ried his daugh­ter, slew his son-in-law, fought drug ped­dlers, tamed the wilder­ness, and reclaimed, as best he could, the Inca Empire. And now I was going to find him. [Out­side Online]

The author did find him. This is one of those true sto­ries that makes Hol­ly­wood adven­ture movies look bor­ing in com­par­i­son. It’s like look­ing two hun­dred years into America’s past, when the moun­tain men were start­ing to head west of the Appalachians.

Shawn Hogan, Hero. Last Novem­ber, Shawn Hogan received an unset­tling call: A lawyer rep­re­sent­ing Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures and the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica informed the 30-year-old soft­ware devel­oper that they were suing him for down­load­ing Meet the Fock­ers over Bit­Tor­rent. Hogan was baf­fled. Not only does he deny the accu­sa­tion, he says he already owned the film on DVD. The attor­ney said they would set­tle for $2,500. Hogan declined.

[…]

Hogan, who coded his way to mil­lions as the CEO of Dig­i­tal Point Solu­tions, is deter­mined to change this. Though he expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he thinks it’s a small price to pay to chal­lenge the MPAA’s tac­tics. “They’re com­pletely abus­ing the sys­tem,” Hogan says. “I would spend well into the mil­lions on this.” [Wired]

I’ll bet what­ever low-level func­tionary put Hogan on the vic­tim list is in a lot of trou­ble with his supe­ri­ors right now. The MPAA’s bogus law­suit tac­tic depends on their tar­gets being unable to afford to fight back.

Prob­a­bly if it looks like he’s going to win (and I sus­pect he will), the MPAA will sud­denly decide to drop the suit, so as to avoid a prece­dent that would keep them from ter­ror­iz­ing their cus­tomers in the future.

We’re the Only Ones. Not You. Us..

A knife-wielding gro­cery store employee attacked eight co-workers Fri­day, seri­ously injur­ing five before a wit­ness pulled a gun and stopped him, police said.

Let’s see…knife-wielding maniac, every­body being vic­tim­ized, no cops around, what will stop this guy…?

Not resist­ing? Nope.

Giv­ing him what he wants? Uh, I think he’s show­ing us what he wants.

A hoplo­phobe? Sorry.

An armed cit­i­zen? Bingo!

Les­son here for all to see? A moral per­son with a gun can not only defend them­selves, but also those around them.

“Sour grapes” reac­tion from “The Only Ones”?

Hig­gins said police were pulling into the park­ing lot as Cope was con­fronting the attacker.

“We com­mend him,” Hig­gins said. “But we don’t encour­age peo­ple to take that kind of risk. He could have been hurt.”

What kind of risk does Hig­gins rec­om­mend peo­ple take? Wait­ing around for them to respond doesn’t have risks?

And note the armed cit­i­zen resolved this with­out fir­ing a shot–that is, rather than a gun in pri­vate hands being used to kill, here’s a real world exam­ple of a cit­i­zen using a hand­gun to restore the peace and save lives–both of the vic­tim and the attacker.

[Thanks to Four­teen Alpha] [The War on Guns]

It’s for­tu­nate this hap­pened in Ten­nessee. Here in Los Ange­les, the psycho’s vic­tims would have been expected to die qui­etly and not rock the boat by defend­ing themselves.

Takeover Rob­bers Tar­get Restau­rants. In fact, Barone’s was just the lat­est Los Ange­les restau­rant to be robbed. While crime con­tin­ues to fall across the city, police are strug­gling to con­tain a sharp jump in armed rob­beries. Author­i­ties are par­tic­u­larly con­cerned about a series of takeover rob­beries tar­get­ing restau­rants. In the San Fer­nando Val­ley alone, upward of 200 have been hit in the last two years. Offi­cials in other parts of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia also report an increase in the crime.

Detec­tives say the holdups are the work of sev­eral groups of ban­dits tar­get­ing smaller, sit-down eater­ies, usu­ally as own­ers are count­ing cash at clos­ing time.

[…]

“What we are see­ing in some respects is dis­place­ment,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger. “It’s more oppor­tunis­tic hit­ting restau­rants. They see a mom-and-pop restau­rant, and that doesn’t come close to being as for­ti­fied as a bank. And they take that oppor­tu­nity, using the same type of aggres­sive behav­ior.” [Los Ange­les Times]

And how do our lords and mas­ters want to respond? Like this:

The prob­lem has become so severe that Los Ange­les Police Chief William J. Brat­ton and other city offi­cials are sup­port­ing state leg­is­la­tion that would give up to two years of extra prison time to rob­bers who use masks.

Yeah, that will show them. And con­sider this:

“These rob­bers are more likely to be vicious to their vic­tims because their iden­ti­ties are masked,” said Coun­cil­woman Wendy Greuel, who rep­re­sents the Ven­tura Boule­vard shop­ping cor­ri­dor where many restau­rants have been hit.

She may be onto some­thing there. Per­haps she should ask chief Brat­ton if any of his troops ever mask their identities.

Pre­dictably, noth­ing in the arti­cle even hints at the real solu­tion to this prob­lem. Under Cal­i­for­nia state law, employ­ees may be armed at their work­place with their employer’s per­mis­sion. Since these restau­rants are “mom-and-pop” oper­a­tions, they don’t have to worry about any dis­tant cor­po­rate over­seers order­ing them to remain helpless.

RODERICK T. LONG: Vic­tory Through Victim-Swapping.

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

By most reports, Israeli bomb­ings of Lebanon are strength­en­ing Hezbollah’s sup­port among Lebanese civil­ians, while Hezbol­lah bomb­ings of Israel are strength­en­ing the Israeli government’s sup­port among Israeli civilians.

So here we have (what are by lib­er­tar­ian stan­dards) two crim­i­nal gangs, both blast­ing away at inno­cent civil­ians, and the result is to increase these gangs’ pop­u­lar­ity among the civil­ians being vic­timised! A very suc­cess­ful out­come for both sides.

The trick, of course, is that each gang is blast­ing away at civil­ians in the other gang’s ter­ri­tory. If each gang were to attack its own civil­ians directly, those civil­ians would quickly turn against the gangs in their midst. But since in fact each side’s con­tin­u­a­tion of bomb­ings is what allows the other side to excuse, and get away with, its bomb­ings, the sit­u­a­tion isn’t really all that dif­fer­ent; each side is caus­ing its own civil­ians to be bombed. It’s just that by fol­low­ing the strat­a­gem of attack­ing each other’s civil­ians, the two gangs man­age to avoid (and indeed pro­mote the exact oppo­site of) the loss of domes­tic power that would fol­low if they were to bring about the same results more directly. Think of it as the geopo­lit­i­cal ver­sion of Strangers on a Train.

No, I’m not sug­gest­ing that Hezbol­lah and the Israeli gov­ern­ment are in cahoots. They don’t need to be. This is how the logic of sta­tism works, this is how its incen­tives play out, regard­less of what its agents specif­i­cally intend. The exter­nal­i­sa­tion of costs is what states do best. (True, Hezbol­lah isn’t a state, but it aspires to be one, and its actions are played out within a frame­work sus­tained by statism.)

What would hap­pen if the civil­ian pop­u­la­tions of Israel and Lebanon were to come to see this con­flict, not as Israel ver­sus Hezbol­lah, or even Israeli-government-plus-Israeli-civilians ver­sus Hezbollah-plus-Lebanese-civilians, but rather as Israeli-government-plus-Hezbollah ver­sus ordinary-people-living-on-the-eastern-Mediterranean? Both Hezbol­lah and the Israeli gov­ern­ment would quickly lose their pop­u­lar sup­port, and their abil­ity to wage war against each other would go with it.

But by encour­ag­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of civil­ians with the states that rule them, sta­tism makes it harder for civil­ians to find their way to such a per­spec­tive. (Of course racism and reli­gious intol­er­ance are part of the story too – yet another way in which such cul­tural val­ues help to prop up the state appa­ra­tus.) As long as the peo­ple of the east­ern Mediter­ranean con­tinue to view this con­flict through sta­tist spec­ta­cles, Hezbol­lah and/or the Israeli gov­ern­ment will con­tinue to be the vic­tors, while the civil­ian pop­u­lace in both Israel and Lebanon will remain the van­quished and victimised.

[Lib­erty & Power: Group Blog]

A very good point. I thought it was obvi­ous from the begin­ning that Hezbol­lah and the Israeli gov­ern­ment had each decided that they wanted to have a war, and that it was def­i­nitely not to the ben­e­fit of civil­ians in Israel or Lebanon. Even the main­stream media has acknowl­edged this to some extent–or at least, the Los Ange­les Times has.

Belkin Wi-Fi phone for Skype allows users to make free calls. Belkin today announced its new Wi-Fi Phone for Skype,which gives users the increased mobil­ity to place free, unlim­ited domes­tic and inter­na­tional calls over the Inter­net to other Skype users, and low-cost calls to ordi­nary phones world­wide… [MacMinute]

It’s an inter­est­ing idea, but Belkin’s FAQ indi­cates that it doesn’t work with access points that use browser-based authentication–which rules out a great many pub­lic access points, such as those found in the ubiq­ui­tous Star­bucks chain.