Rants – Page 16 – a sibilant intake of breath

The second rule of the internet

Back in 2010, I described what I called the ‘first rule of the internet‘:

Against a sophisticated attacker, nothing connected to the internet is secure.

To this, I feel like I should add a second item:

Everything is internet now.

While there were once large numbers of electronic systems entirely disconnected from the internet, nowadays virtually everything is either connected to the internet constantly or occasionally connected to a device that is online. Your cell phone is probably always accessible to a sophisticated attacker using the internet, and the same is probably true for landlines using VoIP. Many of your computers are probably constantly connected to wireless networks (themselves targets for attack) and exposed to the wider internet through your broadband connection at all times.

Web integration with computers has reached the point that Google’s Chrome browser now treats ‘search’ and ‘GMail’ as apps within the Chrome environment.

The implication of combining the first and second rules is pretty plain. If you manage to attract the attention of a sophisticated attacker, they can probably get into the contents of your cell phone and your GMail account, as well as the hard drive of your PC and laptop, the ubiquitous webcams now built into computers, and so on. There is also a good chance they can take over your email, websites, Twitter accounts, and the like and use them for their own purposes.

Repeated ad infinitum

XKCD is right, this is worth a look today:

List of common misconceptions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note:

Nero didn’t fiddle while Rome burned.
The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was spherical, and how large it was.
Napoleon was not short. He was slightly taller than the average Frenchman.
The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free slaves in the northern states.
The Great Wall of China cannot be seen from space using the naked eye.
People did not evolve from chimpanzees.

Etc, etc, etc.

Advice to supervillains – killing your own scientists

One classic mistake made by cartoon supervillains concerns the complicated piece of machinery that is inevitably at the heart of their secret plan. It might be a time travel device of some sort, or a machine that strips the opposing superhero of their power, or a key part of a world domination scheme.

As a way of illustrating just how evil and ruthless they really are, supervillains will often kill the whole team of scientists who built the thing, perhaps by having them all drink poisoned champagne. This does make a certain measure of sense. Killing the scientists keeps them from going off and telling people about what they did, which could cause problems for you.

That being said, I strongly object to the timing that is frequently used for these killings. The supervillain will kill off the science team right before testing the device for the first time. As anyone who has worked on anything remotely technical and complex can tell you, this is the worst possible time to kill off all the people involved. Chances are, the machine will not work properly on the first try and that the only people who can figure out what went wrong are the people who designed and built the machine.

By all means, kill the science team once you are confident that you have a machine that will do what you want. Build it, test it, build an improved model, build a backup copy or two, and then hand out the glasses of killer champagne.

Much delayed and snowed upon

The combination of grossly insufficient sleep and mild snowfall has produced a morning of havoc. My normally-hour-and-a-half commute became two and a half hours, with people crammed cheek-by-jowl in a streetcar with totally fogged windows, lurching among confused drivers. Then, I forgot my (quite durable and expensive) umbrella somewhere on the subway or in a subway station.

With luck, it will turn up at the TTC lost and found within a few days.

Space tourism is pointless and damaging

Henry Shue has written convincingly about the moral importance of the rich giving up luxuries for the sake of fighting climate change, before the poor are asked to give up necessities. As he explains it, even in an emergency you sell the jewelry before you sell the blankets.

The ultimate example of luxury emissions is probably private spaceflight, as described in Nature recently. All that fuel gets burned so that a few really rich people can get to a high altitude and gawk for a while before returning to Earth.

Surely, our climate policies should curb such behaviours.

Unproductive investments that harm the world

Since the 2008 credit crunch, the governments of the world have been obsessed with economic conditions: trying to find ways to increase growth, improve the stability of the financial system, and cut unemployment. All other societal projects have taken a back seat. Given reasonable concerns about the economic future of the world, it seems like common sense to say that governments and societies should be investing their wealth and effort into things that will yield a beneficial return in the future. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the course Canada is following. We are making big investments in things that are bad for our own economic health, and even worse for the world at large.

Take the F-35 stealth fighter jets. They have no conceivable use. Canada is not going to war with any country that is capable of shooting down lesser jets, at least at any time in the foreseeable future. In the longer term, the jets still look useless, as it is increasingly clear that the age of manned combat aircraft is ending. Canada is spending tens of billions of dollars on weapons we do not need now, and which will probably be obsolete long before they go out of service. We should just skip this generation of killing machines, and perhaps invest later if some credible threat to Canadian security actually emerges.

The new crime bill is an even worse example of putting good money to counterproductive uses. There is no crime epidemic that requires a government response. There is no evidence that imprisoning more people will reduce crime below the already-low level where it is now. Indeed, the only things we can be sure about is that imprisoning people for longer will do more to wreck their chances of living a productive life, while harming their families and communities.

The oil sands may be the biggest example of Canada’s misplaced priorities. Look at the big picture. There are two possible futures for the world:

A world where we do nothing about climate change, and warming of well over 4˚C takes place
A world where we wake up and begin the process of aggressively phasing out fossil fuels

The first possibility is a suicide pact. We would probably be condemning the world to radically destabilizing climate change, with sea level rise of many metres, dramatic changes in precipitation patterns, and enormous human suffering as a consequence. In the second possibility, there is no place for an industry like the oil sands. Indeed, unconventional oil and gas production serves only to lengthen humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels. The smart investment is figuring out how to live on carbon-neutral sources of energy. Spending billions of dollars on an industry that will either be dismantled soon or will persist as a witness to a burning planet doesn’t make either economic or moral sense.

Even if Canada never wakes up and takes the obligation to address climate change seriously, it is quite possible that the rest of the world will do so. The people who say that oil sands extraction are inevitable are the same people who said that the Keystone XL pipeline was a sure thing. As people become aware of the dangers of climate change and the ethical imperatives that flow from them, they will be less and less inclined to invest in the suicidal fossil fuel industry, and less and less willing to buy its lethal products. The billions Canada is investing in fossil fuel infrastructure may end up rusting unused. Leaving the Kyoto Protocol is just one indication that Canada is out of step with the international community, and risks becoming an international pariah based on its selfish focus on fossil fuel profits.

There are so many things we could be spending money more usefully on. We could be investing in the skills and training of the Canadian workforce. That would be a sensible recognition of how global patterns of trade and production continue to change. We could be investing in sustainable infrastructure: buildings, transport links, power generation and storage facilities, and an agricultural system that can function without fossil fuels. We could be investing in assistance to those who are suffering from extreme poverty, both in Canada and around the world, as well as those who struggle with serious mental illnesses.

Canada can make smarter choices, not to mention choices that cause less needless harm. We just need to think a bit more about what sort of world we want for our children and examine whether our current priorities are aligned well with those goals.

Holmes: people versus puzzles

The sterling reputation of Sherlock Holmes as a detective is legitimately based upon a combination of a keen ability to reason from observation coupled with a high level of personal energy. Holmes is not above waiting for hours in the dark to catch his culprit, disguising himself for long spans of time in uncomfortable ways, or even living in a rough shelter on a rainy moor so that his client doesn’t know that he is close at hand and observing.

At the same time, it is worth pointing out that Holmes frequently subjects his clients to unnecessary danger, so as to satisfy his own curiosity about the precise nature of the peril they face. In “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, Holmes intentionally uses his client as bait, knowing full well that whatever danger he faces is capable of being fatal, since it already killed an escaped convict. In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”, Holmes repeatedly exposes his client to an unknown pursuer, who later turns out to be armed. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, Holmes leaves his client in the power of her violent stepfather, who he suspects of having killed her sister (though he does relocate the client on the night when he expects her assassination to occur). In “The Adventure of the Priory School”, Holmes leaves the son of the Duke of Holdernesse with his kidnappers for an unnecessary span of time, so that he can explain the manner in which he located him with maximum drama and in a way that earns him £6,000.

All this demonstrates the dangers of choosing a consulting detective who is obsessed with solving the puzzle, potentially at the expense of the welfare and safety of the client. Someone more inclined to precaution and less obsessed with solutions may be a better choice, for those who value their lives more highly than precise answers.

(As a separate criticism, Holmes sometimes allows murderers to go free because he personally approves of the murder they undertook most recently, for instance in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” and “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”. This may not be so commendable from a public safety standpoint.)

Mandatory minimums and the crime bill

Depressingly, it looks like this new crime legislation will become law in Canada – bringing with it the certainty of substantial new prison costs and little in the way of likely benefits.

One aspect that seems especially objectionable is mandatory minimum sentences. I think it makes a lot of sense for a judge who knows the law and the circumstances of a case to decide what punishment is fitting. Binding the hands of a judge by forbidding sentences of less than a set amount seems like a policy can that only produce injustice. Surely, there are cases where a literal interpretation of the law would apply to someone, but where it would be unjust to punish the guilty party severely. Letting judges keep their discretion is an appropriate reflection of the complexity of the world. I also question whether the supposed problem of excessively lenient sentencing – the basis for establishing minimums – actually exists.

I also think it is counterproductive and unjust to tighten the laws on illegal drugs. Most of the harm done by drugs arises precisely because they are illegal. It would be far better to legalize, regulate, and provide treatment. That is especially true of exceptionally benign drugs like marijuana – which is probably less damaging to the people who use it than most prescription antidepressants. Besides, it is up to properly informed individuals to decide what they want to put into their bodies – not a moralizing state that has bought into the morally bankrupt and ineffective ‘War on Drugs’ mentality.

Finally, I strongly object to the lack of personal security for inmates in prison. Even criminals deserve to have their human rights protected by the state.

GRE and travel upcoming

The GRE is in four days, and I am pretty nervous. I don’t think it should be the most important consideration, when people are applying to graduate school. It is a very artificial test, largely based on some really narrow conceptions of how language should be used. I bet a lot of authors who have won major literature prizes would have trouble with their ‘reading comprehension’ and ‘verbal reasoning’ questions. Often, several answers are justifiable, and the rules according to which the test-writers choose which one is ‘right’ are somewhat arbitrary and parochial.

But I shouldn’t grumble too much. It will be over soon.

Getting in applications by the end of the month is a major undertaking. At the same time, I have a couple of exciting trips coming up. I am going to Ottawa next weekend for the launch party for my friend Andrea Simms-Karp’s excellent new folk album: Hibernation Nation. I have had the songs stuck in my head constantly since I first head them. Probably about 100 people have caught me humming them to myself on the subway to and from work, operating under the false assumption that everyone around me has hearing as mediocre as mine.

The weekend after, I am going to New York City for American Thanksgiving. I definitely need to have my applications in by then, as the trip will incorporate a 28th birthday celebration and is something that I want to be able to focus all my attention upon.

Crime and pollution

The way in which many political conservatives are obsessed with crime but unconcerned about environmental degradation strikes me as strange and internally inconsistent. It seems to me that pollution and crime are generally objectionable for the same reasons, and that the justification for the state making effort to reduce both is similar as well.

The two types of crime that are most relevant here are those that involve financial harm and those involving physical harm to a person. Burglary is an example of the first sort, while assault is an example of the second. When someone commits a burglary or assault, they are choosing to assert their will on an innocent victim, who suffers either in terms of lost goods or in terms of personal injury or death. The state recognizes this assertion as unfair and something to be avoided, and creates and enforces criminal sanctions as a mechanism for discouraging these behaviours. We see situations in which groups of criminals have complex organizations that produce large revenues through crime as exceptionally objectionable, and exceptionally worthy of intervention by the state.

When a company or an individual chooses to emit toxic substances into the air or the water – or when they choose to dangerously alter the climate – they are imposing the same sort of harm on the general public that the burglar or the assailant does. The acid rain resulting from the operation of a coal-fired power plant could cause economic harm, such as when it kills fish or trees. Pollution also causes personal injury and death.

So how can many conservatives call for ‘cracking down’ on crime, while simultaneously criticizing environmental regulations and promising to scale them back for the benefit of business? The most plausible explanation seems to be an unwillingness of inability to look beyond the most immediate consequences of an action. When a man in a mask stabs another man and takes his wallet, it is clear what has taken place. The full consequences are less clear when a mine or factory seems to be producing useful products, generating profits, and producing employment – while simultaneously hurting or killing people through the production of toxic by-products or contribution to dangerous climate change.

From a more psychological perspective, perhaps the difference in intention is given undue weight by those who do not see crime and environmental damage as morally comparable. Perhaps criminals bear more moral responsibility because they recognize that their behaviours inescapably involve undeserved harm imposed on others. Of course, the same is true of educated polluters. It is no longer credible to claim that dumping mercury into the water or carbon dioxide into the air doesn’t harm people, or that people who choose to carry out these economic processes do not choose to produce these outcomes.

Perhaps the difference in viewpoint is logically connected to the way in which the recognition of interdependence undermines libertarianism. If you are determined to believe that people have an absolute right to undertake certain activities – such as driving in cars, flying in planes, or raising large numbers of pigs in industrial factory farming circumstances – then you must either deny the reality that these activities harm other people or implicitly argue that the people doing the harming have a right that takes precedence over the right that by-standers have to avoid being harmed.

Obviously, I don’t think either of these arguments are very convincing, which brings me back to my initial point. It doesn’t make much sense to get all hot and bothered about crime and to manifest that concern with tough new laws and longer sentences while simultaneously ignoring the harm that pollution causes to people and pressing for less restrictive regulations on polluting activities. If we respect the right of people not be be harmed by criminals, we should also respect their right not to be harmed by polluters.