Category: Politics

  • When cryptographers say don’t, they really mean it

    Wow, what a week in the public debate on “exceptional” encryption! The OPM debacle, the MIT paper detailing why what the government wants can never be secure and the government’s odd admixture of fear-mongering mixed with hand-ringing all came together for me in the help text for iCloud Keychain (screenshot nearby). It simply says,”Your information…

  • I am not an attorney and I don’t play one on TV

    Patriot Act: BAD. Section 215 very bad. We’ve known this for a long time (thanks, Snowden). But now the appeals court for the Second Circuit has ruled that the bulk collection of phone metadata is illegal. Finally. I’m emotional about this because the executive branch has used a bad law to threaten dire consequences and force people and…

  • The NSA and political disillusionment

    Nothing, and I mean nothing, has upset me more than the Snowden revelations. In my social circle, I am usually the one arguing for a role for government, pushing back against my friends’ political cynicism and asserting that unless one participates there’s no hope of anything getting better. I was also a real fan of President…

  • The FCC kowtows to the cable industry (yet again)

    These days, I am fortunate to be working in a company that serves the broadcast, cable and entertainment markets. This unites my long interest in these industries with my love of deep-geek technology. (My company, Zixi, makes a video transport platform that allows these companies to develop new applications for high-quality streaming video.) Since I…

  • Got your letter, Mitt. But I am confused.

    Dear Mitt, Thank you for your letter of “Wednesday morning.” I wasn’t surprised to hear that you need the support of “…our nation’s most committed Republicans…Republicans like [me]”. But I was a little surprised to hear I was a Republican, though. You might want to check that voter registration list you have. I’m not sure…

  • Messsage to Southborough: re-elect Bill Boland

    Until this post, I have never publicly endorsed a candidate for anything. But I urge my fellow voters in Southborough to vote next Monday, May 14 (not Tuesday, as is often the case for elections) to re-elect Bill Boland as a selectman for Southborough. Why break my reluctance to publicly endorse a candidate? There are many…

  • Welcome to Southborough, MA: third-world city

    Another day, another power outage, courtesy of National Grid. Tonight, we lost power again. While we were out for only about an hour, the astonishingly unreliable National Grid distribution system has me thinking. First, National Grid should be heavily fined and their management replaced. Tonight, when I called “customer service” to report our outage (it…

  • National Grid improved nothing after Irene; continues to tell people nothing during crises

    Since at least Mark Twain, people have accepted that crappy weather and New England go together. Now, thanks to UK-based National Grid (can you picture “British” and “advanced engineering” together or “UK” and “superior service” on the same bill?), “third-world power distribution grid” and New England have come to be linked in people’s minds. In…

  • Do you use the Internet? Then you gotta read this.

    It’s Memorial Day and a little rainy here, so I pulled out the iPad to catch up on tech news. And I stumbled on to a piece of proposed legislation that scared the bejesus out of me. The so-called PROTECT IP act (S.968), now fortunately placed on hold in the US Senate by the same…

  • What a 1952 Japanese film will tell you about Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster

    I love Kursoawa films. And Netflix on the Roku box makes it easy to dive deeply in this master’s work. Among his less well-known films (and one of the few to be set in modern times) is Ikiru (“to live”) which I watched for the first time this weekend. IMDB has a good synopsis of…

  • thomas.gov needs a little more body-building so we can all use it

    We all have leisure activities, right? One of mine is to read the actual text of bills pending in Congress. Hey, I have an interest in the legislative process — and I submit you do, too. The good news is the Library of Congress makes the full text and history of every Congressional action available…

  • The Feds see “leaks,” I see the First Amendment at work

    Absolutely everyone in the media is talking about WikiLeaks.org’s publication of a stunning number of diplomatic cables from the far corners of the American diplomatic world. There’s so much going on here, I don’t know where to begin. First, any student of American history has to be beside himself or herself with joy to have so…