Category: Activism & Politics

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Activism & Politics Featured Posts

Make America Kittens Again

Adorable Tomasina, available for adoption at the SFSPCA.

America, lend me your ear.

This has got to stop. We’ve fallen prey to the greatest con in the history of mankind. We sold our liberty not to Putin, but to something far more sinister: a reality TV personality. He has turned our fragile democracy into a particularly bad episode of the Jerry Springer show. But times a billion. And a billion times worse.

There’s only one solution. Everyone needs to install Make American Kittens Again, a browser extension that replaces images of these shysters with kittens. We also need to build one that rewrites every Trump headline as: “Wow, Look How Fucking Cute This Kitten Is!”

Better yet, Dear Media: Just do this for us. Every time Trump says anything, just write a story about a really cute kitten or cat. Include lots of pictures.

In case you were wondering, this is why we put all those cats on the internet in the first place.

Let’s end this reality show by deploying the cats and showing this administration who’s really in charge: we, citizens of the internet.

Internet: 1, Trump, et. al.: 0

Let’s do this.

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Activism & Politics Featured Posts

In Explaining Why He Sacked Comey, Trump Borrows From Mein Kampf

Be forewarned: I’m going to compare Trump to Hitler, again. Before accusing me of violating Godwin’s Law, please understand that his “law” refers to the odds of a Hitler reference approaching 100% in comment threads. Godwin doesn’t mention anything about the opening lines—let alone the entire premise—of a blog post.

So why Hitler? Why again? And why now? Pundits have already jumped on the liar-liar-pants-on-fire bandwagon, but they’re missing something crucial to understanding the latest balderdash to come from Trump, a literal font of nonsense and duplicity.

This time, he lied so bigly, so obviously and with such brazen impunity that his words qualify as a “big lie,” as defined by the  Führer himself in Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf:

“All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”

“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

[Emphasis mine.]

On a number of occasions, I’ve heard the claim that a lie becomes true if repeated often enough. Some even quantify this: It must be repeated at least seven times, they say. Often the qualified and/or the quantified version of this sentiment get attributed—incorrectly—to Hitler.

Hitler never said anything about the importance of repeating the lie, to the best of my knowledge, though repetition surely also had to be part of his strategy (in an epoch before instant mass communication). His description of the evil genius of a “big lie” merely states that the lie’s likelihood of being believed grows proportionally with the level of said lie’s intrinsic preposterousness.

Hitler adds that “the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it.” For evidence of this, one need not look further than Trump’s other attempts at big lies. He had a hand in the infamous birther lie, a big lie whose “traces behind it” literally birthed a movement unto itself. Others that come to mind? The size of the inauguration crowds. The alleged Obama wiretapping stunt. Now this.

Trump’s lie that Comey’s firing had something to do with Clinton’s emails is yet another “big lie.”

If Hitler was correct in his analysis of the efficacy of a “big lie” (and I’m afraid he is), then this lie—Trump’s biggest and most “grossly impudent” to date—is even more dangerous than all the others. Because “in the primitive simplicity of [our] minds” we are inclined to believe it.

Whether we believe it or not, we’ll be stuck with the “traces left behind it.”

Where will we find those “traces” this time around? In the selection process for the new head of the FBI. In the process—and eventual outcome—of the pending investigation into Trump’s alleged Russia connections. In his many, many conflicts of interest, not the least of which is firing the person investigating him. In more investigations of the Clintons, even.

After all, if Comey did get fired for bungling the Clinton email server investigation, we will of course want to know how exactly it was bungled so that the Clintons will finally be “brought to justice,” right?

That, of course, is a trap. If we fall into it, then we help manufacture the many “traces left behind” that will haunt us indefinitely.

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Why We Shouldn’t Compare Vault 7 to Snowden’s Leaks

For seven years I worked as a government contractor developing software for CIA. Although I was not briefed into as many compartments as a systems administrator like Snowden, I held a TS/SCI clearance and had the same ability to access classified information as any “govie,” just with a different color badge.

Also unlike Snowden, I didn’t knowingly compromise any classified material. That being said, what Snowden did is ultimately good for civil liberties in this country. Moreover, the courage and bravery of his actions make him a true patriot, an American hero and the mother of all whistleblowers.

This is simply not the case for the anonymous leaker(s) behind Vault 7.

The reason for this lies not in the specific methods of cyberwarfare that were leaked today, but rather in who was the target and by whom were they targeted. In other words, CIA using cyber attacks against foreign nations is very different from NSA violating American citizens’ 4th Amendment rights with wholesale data collection from wireless carriers.

Spying on Americans is simply not in CIA’s charter. We have plenty of ways to fuck with Americans: NSA, FBI, DOJ, IRS, state and local police, metermaids and a million other authorities. But unless you’re communicating with ISIS, CIA could care less about what’s happening in your living room.

What CIA does care about is gathering intelligence around the world to keep Americans safe at home and abroad. Of course there are boundaries. Sometimes those boundaries get crossed. Cyber attacks, however, do not violate the Geneva Conventions or any other rules of engagement. It’s 2017, ffs. If our country wasn’t exploiting hostile nations’ computer networks and systems, I would be disappointed in us. If Alan Turing didn’t “hack” the Enigma code during WWII, this post would probably be written in German.

There are two big arguments against this, two reasons why people are saying this release of information is good for America and her freedoms.

The first argument is that CIA did us a disservice by not sharing these exploits with the private sector, thereby leaving the doors open for bad guys.

That is true, but only in part. Hackers would need to independently find these same vulnerabilities and find ways to exploit them. It’s not like they’re gonna call CIA’s helpdesk for virus installation instructions. Furthermore, we in the open source community have a long history of whitehat hacking, the process of finding and reporting vulnerabilities back to vendors to make the digital world more safe and secure.

The second (and related) argument is that viruses and other malware could fall into the wrong hands. This is also true, just like it’s true for assault weapons, hard drugs and prostitution. They’re all illegal af, yet the bad guys still have ways to get them. This doesn’t mean we should stop cyber espionage, any more than it means we should stop making military assault rifles. Like with all our spying activities—and with spying activities in general—we should just do a better job covering them up, in much the same way we protect the real identities of (human) assets in the field.

In sharp contrast with what Snowden did, this release will have a net negative impact on our intelligence-gathering capabilities, weakening our ability to engage with potentially dangerous foreign powers.

 

Perhaps the worst part of this disclosure is that it further undermines CIA and erodes confidence in the intelligence community, already under fire from the so-called Trump Administration. It also comes, conveniently, just after Trump claimed he was inappropriately wiretapped.

Technically, this leak has no bearing upon wiretapping, but it’s safe to assume that Trump will take this as an opportunity to further belittle CIA and the intelligence claims about Russian interference in the election.

We will probably never know, but I strongly suspect a Russian source provided some if not all of these leaked materials. Let’s not forget: even though Snowden lives in exile in Russia, he’s as American as apple pie.

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Activism & Politics Elections 2016 Featured Posts

The Best (Only?) Way to Defeat Trump

Disclosure: I’m no politician and I’m no political scientist. (What little I know about politics I learned by running the tech stack for the Larry Lessig campaign.)

That being said, it seems like there’s an obvious tactic that could be deployed to stop Trump from turning the Oval Office into a reality TV set and Idiocracy into a documentary. It’s so obvious that I can’t believe it hasn’t been done already.

We simply need a moderate-leaning conservative with good name recognition (e.g. John McCain, Mit Romney, a younger version of Bob Dole — or someone of that ilk) to ditch the ruinous GOP and run on an Independent ticket. This gives die-hard conservatives — at least the sensible ones who can’t see themselves voting for Trump and won’t switch parties to vote for Clinton or Sanders — a viable option that isn’t a Democrat or a Fascist.

This will produce one of two outcomes. In the less likely scenario, we get record moderate-conservative and independent voter turnout (as a reaction to Trump) and the conservative Independent former-(R) candidate wins. In the more likely scenario, this 3rd party candidate splits the conservative vote, securing a win for Clinton or Sanders.

Either outcome is a win — if for nothing else, then at least for common decency.

Either outcome will end the mockery Trump has made of American politics.

Either outcome also spells the end of the Republican party as we know it. Donald Trump, for all his faults, has given the world a great gift. He is the final nail in the coffin for the GOP as we know it today. Finally, the Republican Party — ironically, the party of Lincoln — will reap the seeds of homophobia, racism, xenophobia, religious hatred, bellicosity and belligerence they have sown for the past several decades.

But this only happens if Trump loses. Which is why we need a moderate conservative to step up, “take one for the team” and run as an Independent.

And by “team” I mean the one consisting of every sensible person on this planet.

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Activism & Politics Elections 2016 Featured Posts

Trump, Portlandia and Fascism

When The Donald first entered the 2016 presidential race, I have to admit feeling some mild intrigue. I have respect for outsiders, for people who don’t always color in between the lines. Having run the technology stack for another non-traditional candidate — Lawrence Lessig — I can appreciate the frustration many of us feel about incessant partisan bickering, pay-to-play politics and an impotent congress. Lessig, who ran on the issue of campaign finance reform, even gave credit to Trump for elevating the money-in-politics message to the national level.

That being said, I had already formed a negative impression of Trump based on a number of stories I’d read in the media about his bankruptcies, scandals, questionable business decisions, failed marriages, etc. But everyone knows that the media have their own agendas, so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Same goes for his reality TV career: I spent five minutes with Gordon Ramsey a couple years ago and he proved to be kindhearted, gentle, humble and gracious in every way imaginable. Here too was I willing to give Trump a pass. Maybe he was just playing a character as so many “reality” TV stars are wont to do.

Perhaps because it seemed like a reasonable move for a reality TV star, Trump announced Senator Lindsay Graham’s (real) mobile phone number at a campaign event last year. While it seemed underhanded and petty, it also could have easily been mistaken for a practical joke — albeit a rather nasty one, but a joke nonetheless.

Like a Portlandia skit, Trump’s antics started out being amusing and engaging. I’ll admit it; I had a few good laughs.

Then I watched The Donald belittle Senator John McCain over his POW experience. These words were spoken not in the context of a reality show, not twisted out of context as part of some media spin job; no, he said them plainly in no uncertain terms. When asked to apologize, he refused and redoubled his attacks on the senator and war hero.

At this point, it became clear to me that Trump could not be taken seriously. No serious candidate would make fun of McCain’s distinguished service to his — and our — country. Ten years ago (or perhaps even ten months ago), a comment like that would have meant political seppuku. Trump had to be kidding. But this was no laughing matter.

At this point the Portlandia skit, while still amusing, begins to make you wonder if you should be chuckling or cringing.

Then the wheels started to come off the train. Trump said young black kids have “no spirit,” called Mexicans criminals and rapists, threatened to build a great wall between our countries (which actually is a little funny given his bizarre China fetish), called Carly Fiorina ugly and Ted Cruz a “pussy.” Note that these are just the things he’s said on record. I don’t want to know what he says when the world isn’t listening. Really, I don’t.

So at this point, we’ve established that either Trump is “just kidding” or he’s a racist, a xenophobe, a megalomaniac, a misogynist/sexist — and a grade-school bully. 

Some have said that he’s rewriting the rulebook for American politics. But breaking all the rules is not the same as rewriting them. Besides, panem et circenses has been a central theme in perhaps every political contest over the past 2000 years, so we’re not dealing with a new strategy, just a bigger one. I’ve heard something similar said about violence: if it’s not working out for you, you just need to use more of it. 

Back to Portlandia. At this point in the skit, you’re feeling downright squeamish. You’re looking around the room to see if anyone else can see that you’re watching it. You wish it would have ended when it was still funny and not so darn . . . creepy.

Then Trump told his little ditty to the world about killing Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. For me, this was the moment where his outlandish Portlandia skit of a campaign really went off the fucking rails. Forget Portlandia! Not even Idiocracy — as prescient as it was — predicted something as ghastly as this.

We’re long past the point of “just kidding” now and moving into the territory of white robes and hoods. On second thought, the KKK isn’t even the right analogy. They’re small potatoes. Trump is huge.

At long last I have come to understand why intellectuals typically avoid Third Reich analogies: because they were all waiting for this very moment and they didn’t want to spoil it on someone unworthy.

I’m not going to mince words: Trump is Hitler. He is amassing a following of neo-Nazis and thereby starting the most dangerous movement in our country since our own Civil War.

He must be stopped and stopped now, before he makes it to the general election.

Nothing — not even the creepiest Portlandia skit — can approximate the scourge that this one man will bring upon our country if we are foolish enough to elect him.

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Activism & Politics Elections 2016 Featured Posts Lessig for President Software Development

Lessig 2016: The Internet’s President

On the heels of Larry Lessig’s historic announcement of his Referendum Candidacy came another newsworthy item: Jimmy Wales announced that he is chairing LECEC, the Lessig Equal Citizens Exploratory Committee, which consists of me and scores of other volunteers and staffers working at a breakneck pace to make Lessig’s nascent campaign a reality.

At first blush, the Wales announcement might seem like a footnote on an afterthought, but I read something very different into it. Something that reminds me of Paul Revere. But no British are coming this time. Instead, Wales penned these nine simple words and so began the largest, most peaceful, and most desperately-needed democratic revolution in human history:

When you light up the Internet, anything is possible.

–Jimmy Wales, Chairman emeritus, Wikimedia Foundation

That’s right, Internet: He may have understated it a bit, but Jimmy Wales just asked us to mobilize and elect Lessig in 2016.

Let’s face it: No one has been kinder to the Internet than Larry Lessig. In the twenty-plus years I’ve followed his work, he’s rallied against outrageous software patents, fought copyright takedowns, drafted the contracts that legally protect and enable “open source” software (which powers most of the Internet), started the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford, fended off aggressive corporate and government entities in his quest for net neutrality and, naturally, he’s spoken at TED. Four times.

Larry is and has been the Internet’s dedicated steward for the better part of his career. His body of work enabled the Internet to become what it is today: a loosely-coupled network wherein heterogeneous data, applications, and systems play in an ecosystem with minimalist governance atop a tiny handful of protocols and specifications.

No one’s been a bigger advocate for the open internet than Larry Lessig.

–Cenk Uygur, The Young Turks

If Vint Cerf, Donald Davies and Bob Kahn are the “fathers of the internet” and if Aaron Swartz was “the internet’s own boy,” then Lessig is the Internet’s uncle.

What better way for the Internet to say thanks to Uncle Larry than to use its enormous catalytic power to hack him into the White House?

And who better to do the hacking than the hackers of our own generation? We were born into a world with basically no connectivity to information, services or people. Today, we have access to pretty much every other connected person and all of the world’s public digital information (so long as we can keep our phone batteries alive).

As software developers in the mid-90s, we didn’t just witness the explosive, hockey-stick growth of the commercial internet; we actually built huge swaths of that reality ourselves. My peers and their peers built out the data centers and server racks, the gateways and firewalls, the routers and switches, the firmware and software platforms, the web servers and middleware, the web services and mobile applications — that drew billions of people into a web of inter-connectivity, knit together so tightly that a single thread can be spun half way around the world and back again in just seconds.

As my peers and I built PayPal and Yahoo! and Oracle and Amazon and Google — and the millions of companies that weren’t as fortunate — we didn’t realize this tremendous side benefit:

We created the most powerful agent of social change in the history of humankind.

In 2012, when Lessig and Swartz “lit up” the internet to defeat the SOPA and PIPA bills, scores of sites — including Wales’ Wikipedia — “went dark” in protest of these hair-brained bits of legislation.

That was the battle. This is the war.

Today we are at war with a much darker evil, far more insidious than the foiled attempts to reign in and regulate the internet. Our government has become the handmaiden of the “funders” — billionaires, PACs, multinational corporations, labor unions and other special interests — and we are fighting to restore a representative democracy back to the citizens to whom it was promised.

We are fighting “the root of all evil,” the darkest evil with the deepest pockets. And we’re already in way over our heads.

But now, Jimmy, we’re gonna light up the Internet.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

If there exists one light great enough to drive the corrupting influence of money out of DC, it’s not burning torches and gleaming pitchforks. Rather, it’s the glow of a hundred million mobile phones, tablets and laptops, mobilized under a single, peaceful mandate. With every Facebook like, every share, every re-tweet, every blog post, every comment, every volunteer effort and every donation, the light spreads and burns ever more strongly, driving out the darkness.

Wales said:

When you light up the Internet, anything is possible.

I say:

Lessig for President in 2016.

Wales said anything. And it’s our job — as denizens of the Internet — not to prove him wrong.

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Activism & Politics Elections 2016 Featured Posts Lessig for President

Lessig 2016: Defining a Generation

In the Federalist Papers, published in 1778, James Madison called for a Congress “dependent on the people alone.” His generation sung a song of revolution whose refrain of Taxation Without Representation came to symbolize egregious overreaches by a corrupt monarch: currency, stamps, quartering soldiers, sugar, and of course: tea. Theirs was a government under siege.

Our Founding Fathers imagined, fought for and won a new legislature, a congress governed by the people, for the people.

Today the representative democracy our forefathers left us also lies under siege.

Not by an offshore monarchy, but by a pathological dependency upon money from special interests, corporations and the mega-mega-wealthy, who — through a system of legalized bribery (which Senator Elizabeth Warren calls “rigged”) — have created a dysfunctional, gridlocked government dependent not on the people alone, as Madison intended, but on the money alone.

So many issues about which we care so deeply — be they climate change, gun control, Wall Street, food safety, racial equality, a living wage, the tax code — end up in stalemates because of the towering influence wielded by massive campaign contributions from magnates and special interest groups. That systematic corruption, combined with the virtually limitless corporate spending enabled by Citizens United, has created a deeply unbalanced and divided country at odds with her own legislature. The 2% popularized by the Occupy Movement is not the problem; it’s the .0001%.

Money, functioning as quite literally the root of all evil, fundamentally stops any populist movement at odds with corporate interests in this country, ultimately benefiting the few hundred billionaires who run our plutocracy and kicking the other three-hundred million of us to the curb.

Ryan Borek, the Executive Director of Take A Stand PAC, estimates that congresspeople spend, on average, 31 hours a week fundraising, during which time “they must raise around $650 an hour to meet their goals for the next election.”

In the underrated and shockingly prescient movie Idiocracy, the Secretary of State says “brought to you by Carl’s Jr.” after nearly every sentence. Why? Because they pay him every time he says it. “It’s a good way to make money,” he claims, derisively, as if to ask, “Doesn’t everyone know that already?”

To address the corrupting influence of money in Washington, we don’t need another Carl’s Jr.-sponsored politician. We need nothing short of a trans-partisan — if not apolitical — revolution. We need the un-president, the Frodo Baggins president: a selfless reformer who takes power from the reigning authorities only to destroy it, for everyone’s benefit.

That is why I can say, with confidence, that:

Today’s Lawrence Lessig announcement is the defining moment of our generation.

I joined this movement’s tech team as a volunteer in January of this year, but I’ve been following Lessig’s work for the better part of twenty. In his latest book, Republic, Lost, he makes a compelling case for the Regent (or Trustee) President, now being called the “Referendum President.” The concept is simple: once significant campaign finance and voter equality reform has passed, the Referendum President promises to resign, leaving the vice president at the helm.

The historical mandate of the nation’s first “Referendum Candidate” has the power to end the endemic corrupting influence of money and return the government to its rightful purpose: to serve the people it governs.

Obviously, this won’t be easy. Many smart people have told me this idea is completely insane. I kindly invite naysayers to show me a better one.

In the meantime, I am humbly asking you to support this movement.

One of the great ironies of fighting against the corrupting influence of money is that it’s going to take money to win.

We’ve built a crowdsourcing platform upon which we intend to raise $1M by Labor Day, or else we will return all the contributions. We’re accepting small donations only (adhering to the federal per-person limits of $5,400). No corporate or PAC donations are allowed.

If you too feel that this idea’s time has come, please consider kickstarting the revolution by making a contribution. If that doesn’t feel possible, try to make it so. Every little bit counts. (Skip Starbucks and give Lessig five bucks?) This morning, after watching her dad work literally around the clock from Friday afternoon until this morning, my nine-year-old donated $5. That’s half her weekly income. While I am touched by her support, this remains our problem to solve. If not for us, then for her generation and the generations to come.

Yes, we need money. But whether you are able to give or not, please help us get the word out by sharing this message.

I hope you’ll join me and the rest of Team Lessig in making ours the generation that fixes our broken government, leaving behind what Madison imagined and implored: a congress dependent not on big money, but on the people and the people alone.