Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Big companies and big governments would find their lives so much more convenient if you and I would just let them put all our personal data into one giant pile where they can sift through it.

For them and for all of us– just this morning in Ireland, the Irish Independent reports that Ireland’s national collection of personal data has been raided by various government employees for various reasons.

One “civil servant mole” (the Independent’s words) passed on private data that his brother used to burgle one businessman and try to blackmail others.

When confronted, the ‘mole’ told police that

it is a common practice amongst civil servants to check up on the financial status of friends, family, and acquaintances…Other records accessed out of ‘curiosity’ included those of a politician, pop star, and a ‘notorious criminal.’

The department was unaware of the breach until detectives..told them the criminal had sensitive information in his possession and he had received it from his civil servant sibling.

If you wonder why the “Data Protection Section of the Department of Family and Social Affairs” didn’t flag these ongoing abuses of personal data–that happens to be the department that employed the mole.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced this morning that Al Gore will get 1/2 the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Washington insiders say that lawyers for President Bush have quietly filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court, seeking to have that decision overturned.

“Don’t let those @$*?*!! Norwegians mess with Texas” says a memo being circulated to right-wing bloggers. The appeal will argue that Bush reduced hot air by keeping government scientists quiet about global warming, that Michael Crichton told Bush global warming is bunk, that Al Gore once claimed he invented the Internet, and that Bush looks sexier than Gore in a flight suit.

“I’m convinced already,” said a Supreme Court Justice who asked that his name not be used. “I just hope this moves fast enough so that in December we all get on Bush’s guest list for Stockholm, Norway! My wife says the Alps are lovely at that time of year.”

The House Judiciary Committee has a new and better way to unravel the long, tangled phone-jamming coverup. Thats the real news in this letter from Conyers to Attorney General (pdf)–something reporters seem to have missed, so far.

“What did the White House know and when did they know it?” Several million Republican dollars and years of Department of Justice “slow-walk” (detailed timeline here) kept investigators from tracking NH’s phone-jamming scandal up into Washington.

Meanwhile, Republicans who were in NH in 2002 all seem to have lawyered up and/or lost lots of memory.

So Conyers will pull on the string’s other end, at last! He will pull on the DC end, not the NH end.

On behalf of the House Judiciary Committee, he wants to get answers from the US Department of Justice about incident after incident in their non-pursuit of the Republican phone-jammers.

• Why did all decisions regarding the phone-jamming prosecution have to be referred directly to the US Attorney General’s office?
• Why was the FBI agent assigned to the phone-jamming case (there was only one, and she worked part-time on it) ordered not to trace any leads that led to Washington?
• Why did the US Department of Justice help Republicans block enquiries in the NH Democrats civil suit in 2004?

Thanks to Congressman Paul Hodes (NH-Dem), a member of Conyers’ committee, for setting this investigation in motion. Let’s hope Congress goes further and faster than the DOJ!

Thomas “TheWorld Is Flat” Friedman (with whom I rarely agree) wrote something good in today’s New York Times. “9/11 is over“:

9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

Friedman was inspired by an Onion article, “Giuliani To Run For President Of 9/11.” The Onion article notes that, if elected,

“Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”

The bullhorn of 9/11 has been used to justify Iraq and Guantánamo, political corruption of government function, huge national debts run up while rich people’s incomes soar and their taxes tumble. The bullhorn of 9/11 has been used to justify torture and to dilute habeas corpus.

And anyone who speaks out against any of this is quickly accused of treason to 9/11.

I agree with Friedman, 9/12 is long overdue.

I’m so outraged–suppose I fire a gun into a crowd and kill John Smith. Am I innocent of murder unless the DA can prove that I intended to murder Mr. John Smith?

That’s exactly the kind of reasoning, it seems to me, behind the latest outrage in the NH phone-jamming scandal. James Tobin’s lawyers claim that he’s innocent of telephone “harassment” because–even though maybe he should have known Democrats might feel emotional distress if folks jammed their phone lines on Election Day–Tobin’s real “intent” wasn’t to make anybody feel bad at all.

Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say here but I did just write up the whole story at Blue Hampshire–some of the comments there are from people who were there, talking about what it felt like to get phone-jammed. In better phone-jamming news (thanks to Frank and to Ri and to Bill for all emailing me the link) today’s NY Times has an editorial urging a real (not Gonzales-led) investigation of the phone-jamming.

What did the White House know and when did they know it? Several million Republican dollars and lots of Department of Justice slow-walking went into an effort to wall off investigation of any higher-ups in the NH phone-jamming scandal.

What’s new is that Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH)–a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee–is asking his own committee to investigate.

And with an overwhelming Democratic majority in the House (233 of 435 members), this request from Hodes is likely to get more traction than a request to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which never went forward.

More on this story at TPM and my post at Daily Kos.

Waiting for a mechanic

Originally uploaded by as_much

“Do not rent from U Haul,” the young policeman told me. “They are a bad company. Believe me, you do not want to rent from them again.”

One dirty un-airconditioned 14-foot van (we had reserved a 17-foot van but they didn’t have one) was waiting for me at 282 Lynnway in Lynn, MA, 20 miles from my house. This was the truck that U Haul had “reserved” for us, taking a credit card number hostage after we reserved a truck online. As the contract made clear, they expected our bill to reflect not only the truck’s rental fee but a mileage charge for 40 miles round-trip just to get the truck to the stuff we hoped to move.

The truck had only 1/4 tank of gas in it. It clanked and clattered as I drove it away. It groaned and grumbled whenever I pushed the speed up beyond 30 mph.

It totally quit when I got just 4 miles from the place where I rented it, blocking a lane of traffic on Revere’s busy VFW Parkway. I was able to pull about 6 inches of the truck’s nose into a store’s driveway before it stopped moving entirely. I will leave you to imagine the comments of other drivers, having to maneuver around my dead truck in traffic already bumper-to-bumper on a 94 degree hot and humid Saturday.

I called 911 to ask for help getting the road clear. They said they would send me a tow truck. I then called the U Haul “emergency service” number and spent 10 fruitless minutes listening to recorded messages, asking me to procure a pencil and paper and be ready with the name of a nearby cross-street in case they ever decided to answer.

The policeman came first, with a tow truck too small for my 14 foot van. We waited some more in the heat, and a second van came. The second tow truck towed my van to Action Towing in Revere, MA. The people who work for Action Towing are great–thanks so much, Bill and others, for all your kindness. They also got me a taxi back to the U Haul office in Lynn (which did not want the truck returned to them–that’s why it was towed to Revere, MA to await a visit of somebody from “the 800 number.)

While I was enjoying the kindness of strangers in Revere and Lynn, Frank easily found a U Haul truck in Cambridge, MA–something that corporate U Haul neglected to mention when kidnapping our credit card number to “reserve” a truck that promised them 40 extra miles of mileage charge. I got back to the Lynnway, explained the situation to U Haul folks there, and drove my car home again to help with the very last of the moving.

By 8 p.m. Saturday, we had returned the 14-foot Cambridge van to the U Haul office on Main St. where we got it. By 9:30 a.m. Sunday, we started getting text messages from U Haul that their Cambridge truck had not yet been returned. Phone calls and email to U Haul about this went unanswered. Finally I drove my car down to the Cambridge office, waited in line to speak to an agent, and was reassured that the email was “just a formality” reflecting the fact that the Cambridge office had been a bit slow checking in all the vehicles returned that morning. Estimate of my time wasted on this “formality”? At least two hours.

The rest of Sunday we had a vacation from U Haul. This morning (Monday), we started getting text messages that their truck from Lynnway had not yet been returned. I called the 781 phone number from the text message–“Just a formality” they assured me. Then I got more text messages asking me to call them “urgently” about the missing Lynn truck. I called them back–still “just a formality” but maybe I should now call their 800 number. I called their 800 number and had a long (and recorded) conversation with somebody there,. I explained that they were now the third office of U Haul to get the information that their non-functioning truck was waiting at Action Towing in Revere, because somebody else at their 800 number had told Action Towing that they couldn’t pick the truck up themselves until Monday.

After 10 minutes on the phone with the 800 number, they suggested I should now call folks in Lynn and re-give them all the information that I had given them in person on Saturday when I returned there by taxi to get my car. I explained that the people in Lynn had told me that the truck was no longer any business of theirs and I needed to talk to the 800 number–to the very people who now were asking me to call the people in Lynn.

That was this morning. At 1 p.m. and then again at 5 p.m. I got more text messages from U Haul asking me what I’d done with the truck I rented in Lynn, asking me to call the 781 number. I called the 781 number again–“Just a formality” they said, so I shouldn’t worry.

I’m so glad to hear that I shouldn’t worry, aren’t you?

“U Haul?” said the young policeman. “Don’t ever rent from them. Believe me, I see a lot of things in this job. You do not ever want to rent a truck from U Haul.”

The good-old U Haul that helped us move stuff for 20+ years has been replaced by some corporate monster that I’ll never deal with again.

Filmmaker Errol Morris says human faith in what Othello called “the ocular proof” is often misplaced–but not because he doubts the existence of “a real world” or “a fact of the matter”:

…photographs attract false beliefs – as fly-paper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because photography can make us think we know more than we really know.

Morris created those iconic “switcher” ads for Apple as well as a number of well-received documentaries. One of my favorites is his short “Oscar night” film–watch it now!– that includes Gorbachev praising Russell Crowe and my friend Sidney Coleman telling Morris:

The movie is playing a game with you. And it’s a game you’re happy to play.

Errol Morris, now making a movie about Abu Ghraib, is wrestling with some angst about truth and images. I wish any of the political candidates now soundbiting our ears had anything as interesting to say.

***

p.s. And I do believe it’s Millie‘s birthday today–happy 82, Millie! Millie loves comments, so get over to her birthday blogpost and leave one!

Hey, I made yesterday’s Concord Monitor!

Most of the editing to [potential US Senate candidate Jeanne] Shaheen’s Wikipedia profile has related to Iraq: Either adding or removing tidbits about her support for the war in 2002 or adding information about her criticism of the war since then.

Among the more notable edits: Someone working from a D.C.-area computer posted a link of the Shaheen YouTube clip to Wikipedia. (We checked – it appears not to have come from a Senate computer. The other Wikipedia editing conducted from that computer involved touching up the definition of “APR.”)

Then liberal blogger Betsy Devine got involved and snuffed out some of the newer additions to Shaheen’s profile, including the video link.

A sort of wiki-expert who has spoken at conferences and the like, Devine explained her doings this way: “Statements from right-wing think tanks or right-wing newspaper editorials denouncing Shaheen are not appropriate news sources. If they are introduced as examples of opinion or controversy, the opposing POV must get equal exposure. Campaign puffery is of course also inappropriate.”

Heh–well, when I rough-drafted that into a Wikipedia discussion page, I didn’t expect it to end up in dead-tree newsprint.

Yours now sort-of expertly,
Betsy

p.s. The new Simpsons Movie is really fun and funny–Frank and I are now baffled by its lukewarm reviews.

p.p.s. Thanks to Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire— without whom I would never have seen this story.

People voting in Cambridge, MA, November 7, 2006

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Just in: California’s test of its paperless voting machines show that all are hackable, reports Ars Technica.

The news comes less than a week after Senate Democrats declared it’s “too late” to demand paper trails for 2008.

Nonsense!

Paper-trail legislation has been creeping through Congress since Rush Holt introduced it in 2003. Holt re-introduced, citing vote irregularities in Ohio, after the 2004 Presidential election.

Despite many co-sponsors, the bill couldn’t get out of committee, thanks to Representative Bob (“Friend of Diebold”) Ney (R-Ohio), more widely known for mandating Freedom Fries.

It’s more than a year from now until November of 2008. That’s time enough for black-hat hackers to create and offer up for sale the kinds of code tricks California researchers identified–many of which require no more access than a few minutes privacy with one machine. The kind of privacy that you expect when you’re voting.

It ought to be time for the Democrats we just elected to make sure that all votes will be counted fairly in 2008. That’s much more important than investigating Gonzales.


Update: It turns out the Democrats agree–and (even before I wrote this blogpost) had already crafted a compromise bill to for secure voting in 2008.