No-fly list and security

Bruce Schneier has a couple of good blog entries about airport security.

Firstly, he discusses a proposal to pass government employees with security clearances through airport security quickly, and why it is a bad idea.

This issue is no different than searching airplane pilots, something that regularly elicits howls of laughter among amateur security watchers. What they don't realize is that the issue is not whether we should trust pilots, airplane maintenance technicians or people with clearances. The issue is whether we should trust people who are dressed as pilots, wear airplane-maintenance-tech IDs or claim to have clearances.

The second discusses the No Fly list. The American Sixty Minutes television program has got their hands on the list, and discovered -- no surprises here -- that it:

[...] includes names of people not likely to cause terror, including the president of Bolivia, people who are dead and names so common, they are shared by thousands of innocent fliers.

[...]

But the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists or suspects are kept off the list.

The 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for more than a year.

If you were hired as a consultant to implement a scheme that kept tens of thousands of people reminded of terrorism every day, keep them in a low-level state of anxiety, while still doing nothing to seriously inconvenience real terrorists, it would be hard to come up with a strategy better than the No Fly list.

You thought Russia and the US were friendly?

With both the US and Russia in imperial moods, it is all smiles in public while daggers are clutched behind their backs. And the latest trouble is over Russia's neighbour, Georgia.

Russia sees Georgia as within their sphere of influence. Historically, Georgia has been part of both the old Russian empire for centuries, and in recent times part of the USSR. Stalin himself was a Georgian. There are many Russians living in Georgia, and Georgians in Russia.

All that began to change a few years ago, with the electoral victory of a pro-US president. In just a few short years, Georgia has politically moved away from the Russians into the arms of the US. The Georgian army uses American uniforms and equipment and is trained by American advisors. Georgia has become actively hostile to Russia, accusing them of imperial designs on Georgia, and of deliberately trying to keep Georgia weak and divided. Russia, for its part, sees the Georgian President as a tool of the Americans, aimed at surrounding Russia with hostile countries that are nothing more than American client states.

Both countries have accused the other of blackmail and terrorism.

Not surprisingly, the Americans are very keen to see Georgia, with its valuable oil pipelines, remain in their sphere of influence rather than Russia's. They have invested heavily in the career of the Georgian President.

There is even the threat of war between the two. Although Georgia's military is no match for Russia's, Russia has greater political reasons for avoiding war. While a full-blown war is unlikely, a proxy war between separatists and the Georgian government is more likely.

More here.

Voting software security

Bruce Schneier has something to say about a Los Angeles election official who defended the choice of secret, proprietary voting software:

What she should be saying is something like: "I think it's odd that everyone who has any expertise in computer security doesn't want the software to be proprietary. Speaking as someone who knows nothing about computer security, I think that secrecy is an asset." That's a more realistic quote.

The use of secret, proprietary security products is something which makes security experts either laugh or cry; laugh, because it is such a foolish thing to do, and cry because it invariably ends up making the security weaker rather than stronger. Secret security products are invariably snake-oil, or worse.

It is like this: which would you rather trust, a public lock made to a standard, one that any locksmith can inspect at will? Or a secret lock, made by a single company that tells you it is secure, but won't let anybody independent inspect it?

In the first case, the security of the lock depends on the properties of the lock itself. It must be secure, even if people know how it works. But in the second case, the proprietary, secret lock works only if people don't know how it works. Once the bad guys discover its secrets, and they will, they can crack it with impunity, and nobody will know.

Of course the analogy with locks is not perfect -- ordinary locks are very simple to pick. They are more of a deterrant to casual thieves than a really secure system. But the principle holds: inherent security beats secret security every time. If you really want to protect something, you protect it with something that doesn't lose its power if you know how it works.

Report on the future president

Thanks to the miracle of TCP/IP over tachyon, we have a news report from November 5th 2008, when an unknown write-in candidate, 19 year old Diebold technician Billy Pustule, will surprise both the general public and political pundits by being elected President of the USA with an unprecedented victory.

Losing Republican candidate Bill Frist also expressed concern that the democratic process may have been "tainted".

"You ever play poker with a big group of guys," he said, "and your partner's the dealer, and he slips you a beautiful quartet of aces without anybody noticing, and you've done this all a bunch of times before so you're feeling pretty confident and play all in, and then some other guy flips over a straight flush? Well, that's about how I'm feeling right about now."

Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter

Oh my, this has got to go on my Must Watch list.

Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter.

There is a review (with screen shots and even a short movie clip of Jesus kicking some unrighteous atheist butt) here.

So where is the shock?

Monday's headline on Melbourne's free gossip rag, MX, was "Pope sex shock". They reported that a BBC documentary revealed that Pope Benedict XVI (formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger before he changed his name for legal reasons) was involved in the systematic cover-up of sexual abuse and rape by Catholic priests.

So where's the shock? The Catholic Church has been protecting sexual predators for decades -- the BBC reported on a leaked secret Vatican document from 1962, the Crimen Sollicitationis (they sure love their Latin), that sets out the procedures to follow. The document imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witness.

To learn that the Pope followed Church policy is no surprise. It would have been shocking to learn that Ratzinger had disagreed with the Church policy of protecting the abusers.

As cardinal, Ratzinger was head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and faith, and for 20 years he was responsible for enforcing the Crimen Sollicitationis. In 2001 he issued a secret Vatican edict to bishops instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of the safety and well-being of the children. (They sure love their secrets as well as their Latin -- anyone would think that the people charged with guarding humanity's morals were ashamed of the things they do.) Victims' silence was enforced by the threat of excommunication.

Naturally enough, when faced with the evidence that the Pope was involved in covering up sexual assault on children, the Archbishop of Birmingham Vincent Nichols accused the BBC of "a deeply prejudiced attack on a revered world religious leader" by revealing what the "revered world religious leader" has actually done in his position of power. According to Nichols, the real bad guys are not the priest abusers or their bishops who covered up their crimes or the cardinals who created Chuch policy, but the BBC for reporting on what the Pope's morals are really like.

Which tells us a lot about the sort of moral midgets who rise to power in the Catholic Church.

Hoist by his own petard

Republican ("family values") Party Congressman Mark Foley was one of the co-sponsors of "the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006", which was signed into law by President Bush this year. This law makes it a criminal offence to discuss sexual acts or solicit sex from people under the age of 18.

So it is sweet, sweet justice that Congressman Foley has been hoist by his own petard. It seems that Foley has been soliciting sex from 16 year old Washington interns for years, and the GOP leadership has known about his predatory abuse of power for almost a year and done nothing about it.

Many of these are the same people who treated Bill Clinton as a criminal and monster for his consensual relationship with adult Monica Lewinsky, and now have been caught out ignoring one of their own committing serious sexual abuse against minors. Unlike Clinton, Foley wasn't involved in consensual relationships, but was pressing his intentions where they weren't wanted.

Amusingly, if he had actually had sex with these teenagers, it would be legal in almost all American states, if not for the pesky law which he helped write. Seems that the age of consent in most US states is 16. What was he thinking to co-write a law that made his own actions a criminal offense -- and then keep doing them???

It also shows the foolishness of the law he wrote -- it is a criminal offence to talk about sex to 16 year olds, but not to have sex with them. Puh-lease!

Link via Jim Lippard.

Library calls for update to copyright laws

It isn't just "pirates", unwashed hippies and computer geeks who are upset at the current direction copyright law is being pushed. The national British Library, also wants copyright law to be updated.

The British Library warned that the law could easy be rendered obsolete by changes in technology, and that technologies like Digital Restrictions Management software was riding roughshod over the rights given by Copyright Law. In effect, DRM takes away rights that the law gives.

(Actually, it isn't quite that simple, since copyright law itself is based on the idea of taking away or limiting what a property owner can do with his or her own property, in order to give the creator of the work extra rights. But those rights that are left over, rights based on the fundamental right for a person to do anything they choose to do with their own property, are being rendered irrelevent and meaningless by DRM software.)

"One of the key problems is that the limitations and exceptions to copyright law are being ignored by business, which is imposing restrictive licenses on digital content," Suw Charman, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told ZDNet UK.

Charman said DRM restrictions could be particularly damaging for academic research.

The British Library also raised the issue of "orphaned works" -- copyrighted material that is locked up because nobody knows who owns the copyright. In many cases, that material exists on old film which is literally rotting away by the day. Movies from the early 20th century is going to be lost forever because nobody is legally permitted to copy it without the copyright holder's permission, but nobody knows who the copyright holder is.

Exit strategy

Bob the Angry Flower is smashing his hand with a hammer. Repeatedly. And now he's looking for an exit strategy.


Click here for the full cartoon.

In related news, The Onion discusses the American troops' exit strategy for Iraq:

In a striking rebuke of the assertions of the Pentagon and the White House that a swift exit is neither practical nor possible, soldiers of varying rank have outlined a straightforward plan of immediate disengagement, dubbed "Operation Screw This."

No photocopies will be accepted

I recently got sent an email by a friend for an on-line competition at Borders booksellers. Nothing terribly exciting -- you get sent a unique URL to visit, with a one-in-a-bazillion chance of winning something interesting, and when you lose, they give you a consolation prize: something like "buy three magazines, get 10% discount on the fourth" sort of thing.

The consolation price is supplied as a PDF file. It says:

Only valid on presentation of original voucher, no photocopied vouchers will be accepted.

For the benefit of the lawyers who wrote this thing and are probably scratching their head in puzzlement over why I am pointing this out, I will point out that it is an electronic PDF file. There is no "original voucher" when the user can print out a thousand identical copies. Prohibiting photocopies just makes no sense when the user can just print out another copy.

Three years in Gitmo for telling a joke

Badr Zamen Badr and his brother ran a satirical magazine in Pakistan that poked fun at corrupt Islamic clerics. Their mistake was to publish an unflattering poem about a local politican.

He threatened them, and then accused them of being involved with al Qaeda. For three years, the United States government has acted as the personal enforcer for a spiteful foreign politician with a grudge and no sense of humour.

Jim Lippard has more.

Best wedding cake ever

The amount of work that was put into this Discworld wedding cake is astounding.


More photos here.

Missing "a" found

The first person on the moon, Neil Armstrong, has defended himself for years against the charge that he screwed up his famous quote "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Armstrong has always claimed that he actually said "one small step for a man", and that the low transmission quality caused the "a" to be lost.

It seems that Armstrong was right.

More Wikipedia bashing

If it wasn't so frustrating, it would be amusing to see Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics and his frequent efforts to bag Wikipedia.

He's taken up prefacing every attack on Wikipedia with a explanation of just how much he likes it, no really, he likes it just fine. This time, he gloats that the US Patent Office has removed Wikipedia from their list of approved sources of information when they have to check a patent application. Apparently, the US Patent Office has, up until now, been using Wikipedia as an official source "for years", according to critic Greg Aharonian.

I smell a rat. Wikipedia wasn't even close to ready for prime time as recently as two years ago; it's arguable whether or not it is ready now (although I would argue that, used with care, it is). It certainly wasn't heavily in the public eye two years ago. I find it difficult to credit that an organisation as conservative as the US Patent Office would have been using Wikipedia in 2004.

But what the hey, maybe it was an official source. Stranger things have happened.

Dubner writes:

The argument in defense of Wikipedia that I find most troubling is that it is self-correcting and self-policing, which is to say that, Hey, in the end all the mistakes and vendettas get fixed by caring and level-headed people.

If being self-correcting and self-policing (rather like the free markets Dubner champions as an economist) is a bad thing, what's the alternative? An official government fact-checking agency? We could call it The Department of Homeland Truth, and make sure that only things that get approved by the bureaucrats in the government are printed.

Perhaps not.

Maybe Dubner thinks that the self-correcting model is a bad one, and that the correct model is something like that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is ... self-correcting and self-policing. Hmmm.

So what is his point? As an economist, he surely knows that all of science (including the Dismal Science, economics) is self-correcting and self-policing, and operates by concensus rather than fiat.

Science and knowledge advances according to what is said, not by who says it. Britanica has got a reputation to uphold, and it may be that we can trust that they value their reputation enough that we should treat the facts they publish as trustworthy; but ultimately we have to take their word for it. In other words, we believe Britannica because of who they are. Wikipedia instead exposes the whole messy business of deciding what's true and what isn't, and that is far more valuable, even more valuable than the facts themselves. If Wikipedia says something is a fact, we can (if we take the time and effort) see exactly why we should believe it.

Dubner has made an empirical claim here. He stated:

The problem, of course, is that if someone happens to read or cite a Wikipedia entry at a moment when all those things haven’t been fixed, which is obviously a vast, vast, vast majority of the time, then the mistakes get promulgated as fact.

Dubner claims that, on average, supposed "facts" in Wikipedia are wrong not just the majority of the time, not just the vast majority of the time, but the vast, vast, vast majority of the time.

I'm not sure what the difference between "vast majority" and "vast, vast, vast majority" would be. 51% is clearly "the majority", and it stretches the common meaning of the words "vast majority" to apply it to anything less than a four-fifths majority. Three vasts surely means something like 999,999 in a million, but let's give Dubner the benefit of the doubt and make it a nice low 90%. So Dubner believes that, overall, any supposed fact on Wikipedia will be wrong at least 90% of the time.

That's an empirical claim that can be tested. Choose (say) one thousand random Wikipedia entries, and count the number of supposed facts in those entries. If more than one in ten are correct, then Dubner is full of sh.. mistaken.

Of course, not all Wikipedia entries are of equal quality. I dare say that there are obscure "facts" on pages that have never been checked since they were created that are wrong; no doubt there are entries with all the trustworthiness of gossip magazines. So what? Lazy and incompetent researchers will treat bad sources as if they are good sources, Wikipedia doesn't change anything there. Ten years ago, people used The Little Bumper Book Of Fun Facts For Tiny Tots as their major reference, and now they use the Internet the same way. Bad reseachers will treat anything they read as infallible, not just Wikipedia. If you are doing "real" (i.e. important) research, you should not be relying on any single source of information, whether it is Wikipedia or Britannica, because no single source is error-free. Good researchers will treat Wikipedia as it is meant to be used: look for citations, and follow the link to verify the facts. And unlike most other secondary sources, Wikipedia warns you when caution is needed.

The Smell

I think I've meet the closest thing in Australia to Foul Ole Ron.

There was a fellow at the train station this morning, heavily bearded but dressed in reasonably neat and clean-looking, if lower working class, clothes. His clothes might have been clean, but the rest of him wasn't. He stank so badly that the smell was deserving of a capital letter, like Foul Ole Ron's Smell.

I don't have the most sensitive nose on the planet -- there are probably rocks with a better sense of smell than me -- but the stench of this fellow was making me ill. The miasma he was giving off actually remained in the area for minutes after he walked to the other end of the platform.

I've been within smelling distance of people covered in honest sweat, and even dishonest sweat. I've been exposed to the smell of beggers, and people who don't wash during the height of Aussie summers, and folks whose diet includes much garlic or curry, and even one person who has a metabolic disorder such that, five minutes after stepping out of the shower, he smells like he's just run a marathon and been dipped in vinegar.

None of them came close to this bloke. For the first time ever, I think I understand what it must be like to be a bloodhound, and to be able to follow trails of scent through the air. If I wasn't trying to keep away from him, I could probably have tracked him blindfolded just by following the smell he left in his wake.

He didn't, however, say "Millenium Hand and Shrimp" or "Bugrit", so I guess he isn't the real Foul Ole Ron.

And for that, we can all be grateful.

I aten't dead

I haven't posted anything since last Wednesday, not because I've been dead, but because Real Life interfered, as it is wont to do. Between work commitments and family commitments and rescuing damsels in distress this is the first chance I've had to blog anything.

How To Switch To Windows

Over the last four or five years, there has been a virtual flood of journalists, familiar with Windows and little else, who have tried to migrate to Linux. Generally they fumble ham-fistedly with the system for a few hours or days, then self-importantly declare that Linux isn't ready for the desktop.

Long-time Linux user Matthias Endler decided to go the other way. As a Linux user, how easy is it to migrate to Windows?

I’ve heard of a new Operating System called Microsoft Windows the other day and wanted to give it a try because it is said to be easy to use and intuitive. Unfortunately the author offers no live-cd to test everything before I have to install. Instead of downloading it from the Internet as I always do I had to go to the computer store and buy it for a price of €150. There is also a so called "Professional Edition" but it would cost even more. [...]

[...] The Internet Explorer doesn’t have a popup filter and seems to attract ads and after fifteen minutes my taskbar looked like a battlefield full of spam. I had to close every window manually. My former Browser Firefox had tab-functionality included but IE seems to have own browsing rules and standards. But that was just the beginning: When I wanted to chat with my friends I found out that Windows Messenger doesn’t support ICQ, AIM, TOM and Jabber. I was forced to create a so called MSN-Account to continue but I refused.

(Sometimes the author's language is a little clumsy, but I believe English is not his native tongue, so a little understanding is in order.)

Beyond the satire, there are a couple of serious points: complaints that some system or another is not easy to use often merely means it is different from what the complainer is used to. Ease of use often also focuses on making simple things easy to do, at the expense of making complicated things impossible (or at least very difficult): a hammer is easy to use, but if you are used to having access to a complete tool box, having to use nothing but a hammer makes things harder to do, not easier.

Vancouver's drug policy

Salon reports on Vancouver's harm-minimization program for drug users. Three years ago, infectious disease was rampant amoung Vancouver's addicts, with diseases like hepatitis and AIDS at risk to spread to the wider population. The streets were littered with discarded needles and trash, and sometimes corpses: an average of three people died in the streets from overdoses every week.

But since Vancouver started the Insite legal injecting room program, things have turned around radically. The streets are cleaner, disease is under control, people are no longer dying, drug use in the streets is reduced and the number of addicts seeking help and entering rehabilitation programs has increased.

A banker by trade, Allen was helping run a community campaign to secure Insite's future. "Just seeing the renewed optimism of the neighborhood has been amazing," he told me. "It's been a dramatic change over the last three years. I remember a person dying almost every day out here. One of your neighbors was always in mourning."

[...]

Rising support for the policy north of the border agitated Washington. Shortly after Insite gained Canadian federal approval, President Bush's drug czar, John P. Walters, slammed the program as immoral. "There are no safe injection sites," he declared, calling Vancouver's policy "a lie" and "state-sponsored personal suicide."

Since Insite opened, there has not been a single death inside or connected to the facility among the more than 7,200 individuals who have used it -- including at least 453 people who have overdosed.

Unlike American conservatives, who often act as if it is their personal mission from God to see to it that as many people die from drug abuse as possible, many of the initially skeptical Canadian conservatives have been won over by the success of the programme. Even the police like it, as it helps keep the streets safe and frees them from harrassing two-bit junkies, giving them more time to go after the major dealers.

"I guess you see what you see," [the officer] said. I mentioned how different the area appeared to be since my prior visit, which elicited a sliver of a polite smile. "It's a lot better out here now," he said.

"I think the police often feel like they're shoveling water in terms of street-level dealers," said West, the Insite coordinator. He suggested the police were more interested in focusing on bigger drug traffickers operating in the city. In the neighborhood around Main and Hastings, more critical to the police department's role in the harm-reduction strategy is maintaining public order and safety. "They're really quite supportive of the site," West added. "They know it's another tool that helps them do their job."

"If somebody's dealing drugs right in front of an officer, I can assure you they'd be dealt with," said Constable Howard Chow, speaking by phone from the public affairs office of the Vancouver P.D. He noted that the squad assigned to the Downtown Eastside, one of the city's most volatile sectors, regularly conducts surveillance and sweeps to bust dealers. But he acknowledged there were priorities. "Is simple possession as harshly looked upon as trafficking, for example? No. Those officers are often inundated with calls down there. We use the resources where they're most needed." He added, "We support the site in terms of the medical research, and helping see that through for its potential benefits. We don't comment on the right or wrong of it -- that's not up to us."

Nor has the programme lead to an increase in robberies and other crimes, as conservatives initially feared. Instead, many property crimes decreased.

Another major plus is the savings to the healthcare system. Preventing just twelve addicts from contracting AIDS will pay for the programme's operating expenses for a year.

Despite all the scientific evidence that safe injecting rooms reduce the harm of drug abuse, people still worry about "the message" it sends.

There are other, less tangible considerations that can stand in the way of opening a safe injection site. "Plenty of people are going to feel like it sends the wrong message about a neighborhood," said Mark Kleiman, a former policy director in the U.S. Department of Justice who now heads the Drug Policy Analysis Program at UCLA. "Would you want one of these next door to you?"

Still, Kleiman says the potential benefits are undeniable. "Nobody's going to start using heroin because you've opened a safe injection site. Assuming you can keep crime in control, I don't see much downside," he said. "But there is a big upside in terms of public health and public order -- I'm not surprised this has worked well in Vancouver. So is it a good idea for us to try this? Certainly."

[...]

The Bush administration has often spoken of a "compassionate conservative" approach to social crises, but has emphasized only so-called faith-based and abstinence programs. Might they look at the results in Vancouver and consider exemption from federal drug laws for city governments under siege from drug-related disease and urban blight?

"Don't be ridiculous," Kleiman said flatly. "They're completely unserious about drug policy. It's an issue that's all about liberal-bashing to them, and playing to their base. I haven't seen them do anything counter to their own prejudices just because the science says they should."

Despite multiple calls seeking comment on Insite's results and legal status, Walters and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy did not provide any response.

Community leader George Chow, now a city councilor, initially opposed the programme, running as an independent on a campaign of opposition to the injecting site.

Three years later, Chow has changed his mind:

"It was a fear of the unknown -- people were afraid such a facility would bring in more chaos," Chow said, speaking by phone from his office at City Hall. "After three years that has not happened, even with an increase in the homeless. Without this facility the drug problem would have been far more out of control. There would be an even bigger problem with HIV transmission and other issues."

Chow spoke with measured but unambiguous praise of the program. Insite has had a huge impact on the neighborhood, he said, though it certainly hasn't solved all its problems. "There is no easy solution," he said. "I think a lot of people still look at this as a moral issue, and it's challenging -- but as a councilor, I believe we have to do all we can to deal with these health and social issues. This is most important, to work toward practical solutions."

And what of other drug hubs such as Toronto and Montreal? "I would advocate for a national plan, with more facilities like this in other cities," Chow said. "Not just an injection site, but also including treatment and education programs. This, of course, requires more money and resources."

Windows XP -- if we only knew then

The Washington Post discusses Windows XP's upcoming fifth anniversary, and notes that if Microsoft knew back in 2001 what it now knows, it would (should have?) delayed the release of XP to fix a lot of major problems.

This operating system has needed a steady diet of patches to stay close to healthy. On a machine with a September 2001-vintage copy of Windows XP Home Edition, installing every bug-fix released as of August ballooned its Windows directory from 987 megabytes to 2.43 gigabytes.

You can think of Windows XP as a house with a second floor built of spackle, wood filler and duct tape.

And even with all those updates, the operating system has met only a few of its goals while falling short of others in a catastrophic manner. And it's done so for reasons that can't all be blamed on XP's design or Microsoft's own actions. That, in turn, means that its long-delayed replacement, Windows Vista -- now due to ship in January -- may run into the same problems.

[...]

Software that looks ugly can work ugly, and XP has been too forgiving of that as well. The operating system has done little to ensure that programs move in and move out in an orderly manner; they can throw supporting files and data all over the hard drive, then leave the junk behind when software is uninstalled. As a result, something that should have been fixed in Win 95 -- the way Windows slowly chokes on the leftovers of old programs -- remains a problem.

Microsoft also did nothing to make the system registry -- the collection of settings that constitutes a single, system-wide point of failure -- less of a nightmare. It should have slain that dragon five years ago, instead of waiting to move away from it in Vista.

Microsoft did get one aspect of system maintenance right in XP -- software updates -- although it needed to ship a major system patch first. With the changes that Service Pack 2 brought in August 2004, you don't have to touch a single setting to have Windows get the latest fixes for you.

But Microsoft has had trouble getting users to trust its automatic updates. Some of the suspicion can be understood (remember how Microsoft installed its "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" anti-piracy software through this mechanism), but it becomes self-defeating when people keep copies of XP in a less-secure state because they think somebody in Redmond is out to get them.

[...]

The root problem is XP's inability to police the conduct of any program. Its default "administrator" setup grants the user and every application the run of the entire system.

That's why each new Windows-transmitted disease -- such as invasive spyware like Aurora or MoviePass.tv -- is so hard to eradicate. The only guaranteed cure for such infections is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch.

Hoodwinked Americans

Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon, asks why it is that 31% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks, even after President Bush has publically admitted that he had absolutely no connection at all with the attacks?

"Because they're stupid" is too pat an answer. Yes, many of them are just dumb, but even dumb people can follow the bouncing ball. The President has admitted that Saddam wasn't involved, why won't people listen?

(Not that he would admit making a mistake -- no, the story now is that nobody ever suggested Saddam was involved, no sir-e, Bush has no idea where people got that ridiculous idea. Maybe the terrorists suggested it.)

Still, even if almost one third of Americans believe this falsehood, things are much improved compared to September 2003 when 69% of the country was convinced that Saddam was behind the attacks.

What does it say about the potency of the Bush administration's propaganda abilities that this myth was believed by so many Americans in the first place, and that it still endures quite vibrantly? And is there any more potent evidence of the profound failure of the American media to fulfill its central function of informing the citizenry and exposing government falsehoods than the fact that America went to war while most of the country believed this fiction, and that almost one-third of Americans continue to believe it? Regardless of one's ideological orientation, shouldn't it be considered highly disturbing -- to put it mildly -- that such a large percentage of the electorate believes in rank fiction with regard to such critical matters?

The Bush administration can't take all the credit, or blame, for the endurance of this lie. There are deeper things at work. After all, it was just a few months ago that a poll showed that 30% of Americans couldn't remember what year the 9/11 attacks happened.

That's right. Just shy of five years after September 11 (the defining moment of the last half decade, the day "everything changed") and almost one third of Americans didn't know what year it happened. (It is too much to hope that it was the same one third that believe Saddam was the mastermind behind the attacks.)

6% gave an earlier year, 8% gave a later year, and 16% admitted that they had no idea whatsoever. An additional 5% couldn't even name the date and month correctly.