Democratic Convention

I am not missing the fact that the convention is getting only a scant few hours a day of coverage on the national networks. I caught the Clinton's speaches yesterday, which I liked. Bill is an excellent speaker, and he made a few policy-points that most folk haven't heard enough of. Such as the various treaties we've pulled out of or otherwise cause to be killed.

Interesting factoid of the day: There are three journalists for every delegate.

I won't be catching Kerry's acceptance speach, as I'll be out of the house right then. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

The International Space Station, failure of dreams

The idea of a permanent American Space Station occurred after a series of Soviet space stations sparked the idea, and our experience with SkyLab gave us the understanding of some of the problems. In a classic series of events, the idea for the form of the space-station morphed from its original cold-war inception of two counter-rotating rings and a crew of sixty, to the current version that can limp along with two crew and .5 crew available for science missions.

The recent news that the death of the shuttle program has effectively killed ISS as of 2010 is just another slide of a long slide. The ISS was build and planned around regular shuttle flights, as only the Shuttle is capable of delivering the heavy Logistics Modules on which arrive science racks and certain components. The Russian Soyuz and Progress can deliver enough supplies to keep the ISS in orbit, so long as nothing really big breaks. The use of Soyuz also means that crew is capped at 2 for logistics reasons. Since the Shuttle program will be mothballed effective 2010, we're stuck.

What has struck me as interesting is the costs of the Iraq war. The numbers being quoted for how much it has cost us jibe very closely with the numbers cited in the past as the 'total cost' for the Space Station. The concept with the ring had a price in the low three figures (i.e. $115Bn), where the current model was said to have cost $5bn (but actually closer to $15bn in the way of things). As with any other person who thinks that the billions spent making the lives of Iraqi's miserable could have been better spent elsewhere, I can't help but think where NASA would be if funded like that for a few years.

Right now the ISS has been pared down so close to the bone that the very science it was built to house has to take a second place next to mere station-keeping. It is very true that the station, as it exists now, is not living up to it's mandate and is a big hole in space in which to throw money (right now, Russian money for the most part). This is a very sad state, as this was not meant to be.

Had the Crew Return Vehicle and associated Habitation Module programs not been scuttled in a fit of cost cutting the crew on the station would have been high enough to get serious science. Safety rules demand that any person on the Station have a seat in a re-entry vehicle (i.e. lifeboat), and the CRV was to have been that very lifeboat. With a CRV and a Soyuz docked, it would have been possible to have a permanent crew of 7. Since 1.5 crew are required for station-keeping, this would have permitted the science-only crew of 5.5 to run the experiments. With the additional lab-modules the additional crew would support, this would have allowed a lot more science than is being supported now.

Limiting judiciary power

The House of Representatives recently passed a measure that, they hope, prevents the Federal Courts from receiving challenges to State Defense of Marriage Acts.

Common Dreams, liberal
CNS News, conservative

A friend of mine put the chances of this law thusly:

The trial begins. First opening argument for the law:

"Umm..we'd really like you to make it constitutional to limit the power of the judiciary by an act of congress. Okay?"

Supreme Court: "Denied. Case closed. And don't let the door hit you in your ass on your way out. Lunch anyone?"

Total elapsed time: 5 minutes, 37 seconds.

Which is very true. Another article on the topic had this choice quote:

Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., the bill's author, likened the Supreme Court to the Soviet Politburo. ``As few as five people in black robes can look at a particular issue and determine for the rest of us, insinuate for the rest of us that they are speaking as the majority will. They are not,'' Hostettler said.

I particularly like the bit about comparing the Supreme Court to the Soviet Politburo. I believe the honorable Representative was attempting to allude to the phrase, "tyranny from the bench," in his statement.

As it happens, Mr. Hostettler was correct in his view of the representativeness of the Supreme Court. But he was not correct in the second part of his statement, "...insinuate for the rest of us that they are speaking as the majority will." The Supreme Court does not speak for the majority, the judiciary was created to act as the advocate of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. It is the Judiciary job to ensure that laws are enforced fairly, and that new laws do not violate the constitution. It does NOT speak for the Majority. The one input the Majority has in the constituency of the Supreme Court and the Federal Bench is in the Senate chamber during confirmation hearings.

If the Legislature and Executive feel that a piece of legislation, the DOMA in this case, is not strong enough to stand up to a constitutional challenge, they have two choices. First, pass an amendment to the constitution that strengthens the position of the legislation. Second, limit the judiciary from ruling on it. The first method failed in the Senate and will probably not come back up for debate this session. The second method was tried by the House and will definitely fail on appeal to the Federal judiciary.

For the legislation itself is an unconstitutional limit on judicial power. It's a nice try, but it will fail. First it has to get through the Senate, and the signs so far do not look good. This is government in action! Be thankful that we do not have a unicameral legislature.

Office of Big Brother vs. Big Brother inc.

Office of Big Brother vs Big Brother Inc.

The abuses of government in the lives of citizens are a big issue and have been for centuries. Our country was founded in order to redress problems relating to exactly that. To quote the Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security

The memory of governmental abuses was the prime motive behind the creation of the Bill of Rights. The framers of the constitution thought the items in the Bill of Rights to be fully obvious and did not need to be lined out. The States thought otherwise when it came time to ratify, and decided to write them down just in case. This turned out to be a very wise move.

The last 150 years has seen a dramatic rise in the power and breadth of private corporations. A series of Supreme Court cases starting in the late 1800’s helped define the idea of a ‘corporate citizen’. The first fifty years of that saw the rise, and eventual fall, of monopolies and trusts.

One of the biggest challenges the government has to performing anything covert and also large scale is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This act was passed to improve governmental transparency. It doesn’t apply to military and national security concerns, of course, but FOIA filings can build a framework around a hole.

Additionally, the national budget is a monstrous document that legions of media, foreign, and domestic analysts pore over for things like the above. It is possible to hide things in the defense allocation, but even the military will notice a billion or two going somewhere else. It isn’t even remotely easy for the government ‘spooks’ to create a clandestine domestic intelligence agency.

For one, this is why we’re talking about creating just such an agency above-board. Easier to get funding that way. But you can bet your bottom dollar organizations like the ACLU will be tracking every move that agency makes.

So what does the common citizen have to fear from Big Brother?

The Big Brother you have to worry about is not the one you were raised to distrust. There are many, many safeguards to prevent the Government from doing Big Brother things to you. There is a gaping void in the law that prevents private parties from doing the exact same things.

One of the things that civil liberties proponents absolutely hate is the idea of a national ID card. We already have something like that in the form of the Social Security number, but that isn’t the same thing. A National ID, sort of like a drivers license but with a federal number on it, would enable the government to track usage of that ID card. It would presumably be the access token into such programs as federal welfare, Medicare, and access to Federal Courts buildings. The idea has come up a number of times in our history and has been soundly shot down each and every time.

The same can not be said about the private sector. Every person who has ever spent lots of money has a file with one of the credit agencies. If you’ve ever filed for a loan, or exercised credit in any way you exist in one or all of the three big agency’s databases. The Direct Marketing Association generally has a good idea of what you buy, as well as your demographics. Tracking cookies for online advertisements give advertisers click-stream information about what sites you visit, even if they can’t tie the cookie-ID to a physical person.

In short, Equifax knows more about you than Uncle Sam.

Heck, Equifax (just to pick one of the three) is legally able to know more about you than Uncle Sam can know without a crime investigation in progress. Law Enforcement agencies have the power to supply warrants to get information relating to a criminal investigation, and they can get broad info that way. Private companies have no such restriction and can do it on a whim.

Workplace surveillance has been in the news periodically over the last twenty years. Many court-cases have come down on the side of the employers on this one. Since you are on private property that is not your homestead, you have no expectation of privacy. Additionally, if you are paid for being there the employer has a right to verify that what you are doing on their time is work-related. Enforcement of this can and does include such things as closed-circuit television monitoring, e-mail content archiving and filtering, web-site visit tracking, position detection technology to see where you are in a building, and telephone logs.

What complicates things even more is that more and more information that the government tracks but does not centrally associate is being published in internet-accessible forms. While the government may not be able to associate county property-tax data with a credit file, private organizations are perfectly capable of doing just that. Since there is money to be made from knowing everything you do, there is a drive to do just that.

Industries that depend on advertising revenue to make money, and the entire entertainment industry seems to qualify, can’t get enough detailed information about your daily habits. It makes it a lot easier for them to target advertising at you that is relevant to you. Associating what you buy, what media you consume, how often you consume it, when and where you take your vacations, how many vehicles you own and how old they are, how many miles a month you drive, how much money you (and your housemates) make in a year, what your savings rate it, and what your debt load is are all key things to know about a person.

Take a look at that list again. This is exactly the kinds of things that 1984’s “Big Brother” was tracking. Only it isn’t the government that’s doing it, it is private industry. And unlike the government, protections from this kind of privacy invasion are vastly fewer. Much like the heady days of the 1800’s when a sharp businessman could lock up an entire industry under his thumb, we’re in for a few decades of problems.

Legislation like HIPPA helps some of it. But financial details that are the lifeblood of the economy are much harder to keep private. The prolific use of credit-cards, each use of which adds a line to a database, makes this difficult. Some car dealers refuse to accept payment in good ole greenbacks because the money itself is likely to be ill-gotten in some way; a cashier’s check is far safer. Cash-cash, not check-cash, is mostly used for incidental transactions in our economy such as coffee, impulse buys, and express-lane stuff at the grocery.

Any domestic intelligence agency such as England’s MI-5 will definitely try to gain access to the already existing domestic intelligence databases represented by the credit agencies. There is a reason why most of the FBI have accounting degrees. Data housed in these already existing databases will provide analysts with the means to identify individuals worthy of more invasive investigation. But they will not be maintaining these databases by themselves. Private parties will do it because there is real money to be made from knowing this stuff. National Security just comes second.

Surveillance Society

The prevalence of closed-circuit TV monitoring systems in our society is something to behold. It is safe to assume that any time you are in a place of retail that you are being watched. Convenience Stores and lower end discount stores were the first to really put the systems in, primarily in order to thwart crime and reduce shoplifting losses. Since then, the systems have really taken off.

It is a safe assumption by most people that a CC-TV system will assist police in capturing law-breakers on private property. CC-TV has been a component in high-end security systems in the commercial (i.e. office) world for some time. Even high end home security systems are offering it.

It is now possible for someone with enough resources, and willing shop-owners, to put together a tape that shows a car driving down a street. It sounds mundane, but this tape would be the pieced together footage from security cameras as said car passed each place of business. On large commercial corridors such as Lake St. in Minneapolis or University Av. in St. Paul, you could conceivably get several miles of good coverage. This is in fact one kind of police work that is done.

While the cameras are privately owned, police frequently request access to the tapes from shop-owners. Even if that business wasn't involved in whatever it is. This purely voluntary submission of footage is then used to get an idea of the movements of who was in the area, or whatever the investigation needs. Shop owners are typically in favor of reducing crime in the area of their business so cooperation with officialdom is high. The trick here is getting at the tapes before they're either destroyed or overwritten.

What typically meets great community resistance is when the police themselves put up cameras. This has been going on in England for a few years now, but the privacy issues haven't been fully settled over here where we have much stronger privacy laws. What rights do the police have to look over public places? Can they use such evidence as a basis for a criminal charge?

An example. As a private property owner, I can place a camera just under the eave of my roof that looks out onto a street intersection where kids have been known to congregate. This isn't my property I'm looking onto, it is a pair of public throughs with sidewalks. No expectation of privacy at all. Perfectly legal for me to do this.

But if the police were to attempt the same thing, but instead use the light-pole ten feet away from my roof-line, it would be a different animal entirely. The camera is on public property, for one. Herein lay the privacy issues that haven't been fully addressed.

This could lead to Neighborhood Watch organizations that use CCTV or digital-camera systems instead of the more traditional methods of, "if you see someone suspicious, call the police." Digital cameras are getting really cheap these days, and wiring them into a broadband system for central storage is within easy grasp.

The only place you have an expectation of privacy is within your own home, and in your own head. Everywhere else is up for grabs. Some see this as a good thing, since everyone's movements are traceable with enough effort, evil-doers will have a much harder time getting away with it. Others see this as a bad thing, since the government shouldn't have the right to know our every location. The Supreme Court ruled a few years ago that the police practice of using an infrared camera to see through the walls of a house was a violation of that same expectation of privacy, so there is a judicial basis for this.

So just get used to having your every move on tape.

A VP candidate is announced

So it will be Edwards who will be accompanying Kerry on the ballot. This came as a bit of a shock to me, since I'm notoriously bad at selecting VP candidates. We'll see how this turns out in the end. I hope it is a good thing.

Edwards adds more of a southern flavor to the ballot. In fact, it's a southern ticket far as I'm concerned. I hope that bodes well. It should give us North Carolina, or at the least a strong showing in it. With Edwards being a one term senator, like Hillary, it makes for something of a golden boy aura.

[Should H. W. Bush get knocked off in November, I expect another golden boy to crop up in the '08 race. Republican MN Senator Norm Coleman.]

Edwards was the top pick, as it turned out. He is also the second top delegate earner in the primaries, which shows that the pair should have a very broad base of support. At least among likely National Convention Delegates. I'll reserve judgment on the conventions for another time, but I think delegate counts did factor into the decision. Kerry had it locked from way back, but Edwards was leagues ahead of everyone else when it came to counts. That has to, er, count for something.