A new world of vendor lock-in: encryption authentication of batteries

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

NEC's 'smart' batteries: invitation to monopolistic DMCA nightmare

NEC has announced that its batteries will have cryptographic authentication schemes to prevent 'low-quality counterfeits.' Jason Schultz comments on the way that the DMCA turns such a sytem into a license to screw your customers by shutting out competitors who make cheaper batteries:

The software will be introduced in Japanese digital cameras by year's end and is expected to be used in 50 million units by 2007. The software is ideal for use in mobile phones and batteries, but NEC Electronics is also considering extending this technology to 'smart' keys, printers and ink cartridges, as well as bundling the technology into hardware options.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, software-based authentication is the wave of the future. And now, with the DMCA, a near-monopoly! Future, here we come.

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Lock-in is binding customers to your products. Microsoft built its monopoly on binding customers to their proprietary (now DMCA protected) file formats.

In the old days hardware lock-in required patented oddball connectors. Now it's much easier and cheaper. To be fair I think this would have happened without the DMCA; the DMCA just makes it illegal to break the encryption.

update: Thinking about this a bit more, the best guide to what we'll see is HP ink jet printers. HP printer heada are keyed (by patent) to their printers. HP can (and does) give away the printers; they make their money on the consumables.

Cheap encrypted interfaces for physical devices extends this strategy. Ultimately many consumer electronic devices may be very cheap or free -- but we'll pay for them through the batteries. The battery manufacturer has complete control over product life-cycle -- if they stop making the batteries the device becomes garbage.

Any sort of consumable that's bound by encryption keys to a dependent device may have the same effect. If cars end up being run by fuel cells ...

I don't think we can imagine where this will end up. The only thing that will slow this down are (I hope!) high fees for use of this (certainly) patented innovation.

Ashcroft delcares translator's expose to be a "state secret" ...

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Bush Administration Silences FBI Whistleblower

Boston Globe: Translator in eye of storm on retroactive classification. Sifting through old classified materials in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds said, she made an alarming discovery: Intercepts relevant to the terrorist plot, including references to skyscrapers, had been overlooked because they were badly translated into English.

Edmonds, 34, who is fluent in Turkish and Farsi, said she quickly reported the mistake to an FBI superior. Five months later, after flagging what she said were several other security lapses in her division, she was fired. Now, after more than two years of investigations and congressional inquiries, Edmonds is at the center of an extraordinary storm over US classification rules that sheds new light on the secrecy imperative supported by members of the Bush administration.

In a rare maneuver, Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered that information about the Edmonds case be retroactively classified, even basic facts that have been posted on websites and discussed openly in meetings with members of Congress for two years. The Department of Justice also invoked the seldom-used ''state secrets" privilege to silence Edmonds in court. She has been blocked from testifying in a lawsuit brought by victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and was allowed to speak to the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks only behind closed doors.

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The now top secret, for your eye's only, must be removed, letters are here.

This administration is getting whackier all the time. Maybe Moore isn't as much of a crackpot as I'd assumed.

The July surprise: bin Laden on demand?

The New Republic Online: July Surprise?

... This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar ... But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections."...

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington."... according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

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Emphases mine. Sweet. The New Republic may have a serious scoop. If true it's an incredible sign of how ruthless and desperate the Bushies are. Can they be driven only by the lust for power, or do they fear what might come out if they lose?

To assign capture of America's deadliest enemies to their electoral calendar ... I wouldn't have given this much credence two years ago, but the Bush regime has a knack of making ridiculous conspiracies seem all too plausible.

Department of Homeland Security: Don't use IE, try another browser

US CERT: UN-Cast News Wire

There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites. Such a decision may, however, reduce the functionality of sites that require IE-specific features such as DHTML, VBScript, and ActiveX. Note that using a different web browser will not remove IE from a Windows system, and other programs may invoke IE, the WebBrowser ActiveX control, or the HTML rendering engine (MSHTML).

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Firefox (Win/Mac), Mozilla (Win/Mac), Opera (Win/Mac), Camino (Mac only), Safari (Mac only) are good alternatives. I use FireFox on PCs, and Safari on my Mac. FF and Safari have a lot in common. Apple is tying Safari improvements to the operating system, so when I stop upgrading my aging iBook I expect I'll switch to using FireFox on both platforms.

Blogger tips: too cute, but useful

Blogger Knowledge

Millionaires and Billionaires against Bush

ob4.org

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This web site is the creation of Mitch Kapor of spreadsheet fame and some of his silicon valley colleagues. I don't know all the contributors, but I suspect they're worthy sorts and quite wealthy. They're also the sort of people who tended, historically, to be relatively apolitical or libertarian.

They are united, however, in the belief that GWB is a disaster for the nation and the world.

The site may or may not be interesting, but it's noteworthy as a marker for a societal transformation.

Building a Militia - in America

Boing Boing: Thousands volunteer to spy on fellow citizens

Time has good news for nosy, racist jerks: the Dept. of Homeland Security is enlisting 400,000 people to report on suspicious behavior in public areas.

After the [training] session in Little Rock, two newly initiated Highway Watch members sat down for the catered barbecue lunch. The truckers, who haul hazardous material across 48 states, explained how easy it is to spot 'Islamics' on the road: just look for their turbans. Quite a few of them are truck drivers, says William Westfall of Van Buren, Ark. 'I'll be honest. They know they're not welcome at truck stops. There's still a lot of animosity toward Islamics.' Eddie Dean of Fort Smith, Ark., also has little doubt about his ability to identify Muslims: 'You can tell where they're from. You can hear their accents. They're not real clean people.

That kind of prejudice is hard to undo, but it's a shame Beatty's slide show did not mention that in the U.S., it's almost always Sikhs who wear turbans, not Muslims. Last year a Sikh truck driver who was wearing a turban was shot twice while standing near his tractor trailer in Phoenix, Ariz. He survived the attack, which police are investigating as a hate crime.

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Blackshirts, Red Brigadiers, Klansmen ... they'd recognize this program. It's how you build a militia. In this case, one that votes Republican.

Rumsfeld's Foreign Legion

From the June 26th Economist:

The award of a $293m contract to a British soldier of fortune, Tim Spicer, has also brought thousands of western and Asian mercenaries under America's wing and beyond the reach of Iraqi law.

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If there are 3,000 mercenaries, this comes to $100,000 each -- about right for a year's service. Very odd that this has gotten no press. Sounds like Rumsfeld's alternative to the draft is a new American Foreign Legion.

Kaplan argues against the draft -- on pragmatic grounds

The False Promises of a Draft - Why conscription won't improve the military. By Fred Kaplan

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Kaplan doesn't really argue whether a draft is right or wrong -- he argues that it's impractical and counterproductive. He makes a strong case, though he chooses his arguments carefully. We've got the material for a very good debate now.

Kaplan's position is that we should pay more to recruit our warriors -- possibly a LOT more. I gather he's talking about sizeable tax increases.

Either a draft or a big tax increase. Sounds like the choices are well defined.

Tim O'Reilly on open source, economics, and the future of software

tim.oreilly.com -- Various Things I've Written: Tim's Archive

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A longish and complex talk, with a large helping of Net history. Tim needs to turn it over to one of his editors before it goes to print -- or, more likely, turn it into a book. For the moment, however, it's well worth the thinking work.

Google Gags the Left, but not the Right

Perrspectives: Articles: Google's Gag Order

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Here's what I wrote Google's media contact:

Read this page:

http://www.perrspectives.com/articles/art_gagorder01.htm

This is a big deal. If Google is censoring liberal/left web sites targeted by right wing loons, but leaving far nastier right wing sites untouched, then Google is going to face a firestorm.

Time for me to uninstall the Google toolbar and try Vivisimo's instead.

Gore Attacks from the left: Democracy itself is in grave danger

Salon.com | "Democracy itself is in grave danger"

Even though we are now attuned to orange alerts and the potential for terrorist attacks, our founders would almost certainly caution us that the biggest threat to the future of the America we love is still the endemic challenge that democracies have always faced whenever they have appeared in history -- a challenge rooted in the inherent difficulty of self-governance and the vulnerability to fear that is part of human nature. Again, specifically, the biggest threat to America is that we Americans will acquiesce in the slow and steady accumulation of too much power in the hands of one person.

Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent -- that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.

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There's been a trend in the Bush reign towards the idea that a war-time president is above the law, indeed, is the law. I wonder if Gore fears that Bush will stage something in October ...

Gore studies history. He knows democracy is not a certainty. Full democracy is only about 34 years old in the US. He's worried that we may lose our soul in the way we respond to terrorism.

I'd expect al Qaeda to launch an October attack with a chemical or radioactive weapon, with the intent to keep GWB in power. If they do, look for GWB to declare martial law ...

Bill Clinton, oh how we miss you ...

Salon.com News | The Salon Interview: Bill Clinton

.... If you're not going to have an employer mandate, then probably the only way to do it is some version of what Rep. Rahm Emanuel [D-Ill.] is now suggesting -- which is to allow all the uninsured people to buy into the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program. That's a private plan with a lot of different options and costs. And then subsidize the purchases for small businesses and those who can't afford it. That's the simplest way to do it, with low administrative costs.

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I felt like crying reading Clinton's interview. We need him so badly now.

The good news is that he's fit, sharp, and ready to fight hard.

With Clinton right and center, and Gore covering his left flank with raking fire, Kerry might just win.

One thing you can be sure of, no-one will talk about gun control. The NRA has won a decade's respite.

Bush 2004 achievements

washingtonpost.com: Bush Remains Afloat Despite Bad News

- Bush delivers a State of the Union address, with his opposition to performance-enhancing drugs in sports standing out against a bleak roster of new policies.

- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill writes a book claiming Bush was determined from the get-go to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

- The president's shaky performance on NBC's "Meet the Press" fuels anxiety among GOP allies about Iraq and the fledgling re-election campaign.

- Richard Clarke, the top counterterrorism official for Presidents Clinton and Bush, undercuts the president's tough-on-terrorism claims during congressional testimony.

- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice at first refuses to testify before Congress about the Sept. 11 attacks, then bows to pressure.

- Bush's economic adviser, N. Gregory Mankiw, says the transfer of U.S. jobs overseas is sometimes a good thing.

- Bush scuttles plans to name Anthony Raimondo as manufacturing czar after Democrats point out that the businessman's company laid off 75 workers in 2002 while announcing the construction a $3 million plant in China.

- The death toll in Iraq mounts through the spring as Republican governors, busy attending funerals of slain servicemen and shipping National Guard troops overseas, warn the White House that voters are getting antsy.

- Four U.S. contractors are killed and mutilated near Baghdad.

- Train bombers strike Madrid. Voters throw the Bush-backing Spanish government out of power. Spain later withdraws its troops from Iraq.

- Vice President Dick Cheney comes under fire for past business ties, secretive deliberations on energy policy and unsubstantiated suggestions that his office might be behind the leak of a CIA operative's name.

- U.S. weapons inspector David Kay concludes that Iraq did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons, undercutting Bush's main justification for war.

- Democrats unite behind Kerry after a short nomination fight, allowing him to raise record amounts of money and turn quickly against Bush.

- Democratic lawmakers call for an investigation into whether the Bush administration's Medicare chief pressured a subordinate to withhold estimates of the cost of last year's Medicare legislation.

- Clarke follows his testimony with a book claiming Bush was so preoccupied with Iraq both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks that he failed to effectively confront threats from al-Qaida.

- Gas prices top $2 per gallon.

- Revelations that U.S. soldiers abused prisoners in Iraq fuel anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world and raise questions at home about U.S. moral authority in Iraq.

- Militants linked to al-Qaida behead American Nicholas Berg.

- The leader of Iraqi's governing council is assassinated.

- A memo reveals plans for the Bush administration to slash domestic programs after the Nov. 2 presidential election.

- Al-Qaida militants in Saudi Arabia behead American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr.

- Militants in Iraq behead South Korean Kim Sun-il.

- Insurgents launched coordinated attacks that kills more than 100 people, including three U.S. soldiers.

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My list would include some of these things, others were only tangentially the result of GWB's incompetence.

The Bush Terror Report: feeding the ignorant masses

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Errors on Terror

Among other things, the center took over the job of preparing the government's annual report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism." The latest report, released in April, claimed to document a sharp fall in terrorism. "You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage declared. But this week the government admitted making major errors. In fact, in 2003 the number of significant terrorist attacks reached a 20-year peak.

How could they get it so wrong? The answer tells you a lot about the state of the "war on terror."

Credit for uncovering the report's errors goes to Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist, and David Laitin, a Stanford political scientist, who are studying patterns of terrorism. Mr. Krueger tells me that as soon as they looked at the latest report, they knew something was wrong.

All of the supposed decline in terrorism, they quickly saw, resulted from a fall in the number of "nonsignificant" events, which Mr. Krueger and Mr. Laitin say "are counted with a squishy definition." Even the original report showed significant attacks — a much less squishy category — rising to a 20-year high. And the list of significant attacks ended on Nov. 11, 2003, but there were several major terrorist incidents after that date. Sure enough, including these and other omitted attacks more than doubled the estimated 2003 death toll...

... Mr. Krueger, a forgiving soul, believes that the report was botched through simple incompetence. Maybe — though we can be sure that if the statistics had told the administration something it didn't want to hear, they would have been carefully checked. By the way, while the report's tables and charts have been fixed, the revised summary still gives little hint of how bad the data really are.

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One of the key memes Strauss taught the Neo-Cons was that the masses were ill-suited to the truth. Better to tell them what will best serve their true interests, interests that only their betters can know.

This meme runs deep in the Bush Administration. They communicate stories to reassure the masses, while preserving "truth" for those (all loyalists) best able to handle it.

Al Gore would say this isn't very democratic. He'd be right.