Apparently, the Bush administration isn’t just out to defend marriage against the assault that homosexuals have begun against union before God, but to defend consensual sex.
In a move that appears to be saying, “Nothing to see here. Move along,” the United States has apparently been getting in Germany’s face, telling Frau Merkel that she should be policing her country’s borders to keep out sex workers. This article from the International Herald Tribune refers to Eastern European “sex slaves”, but what about the civil rights of sex workers?
Citizens of any EU country have a right to live and work in any other country in the Union. If a Czech or Slovak woman wants to go to Germany and fuck for cash, isn’t Germany required to let her?
But I’m sure Daddy W only wants to protect women who aren’t offering their services up consensually. The State Department talks about human trafficking… I’m sure they’re in favor of allowing actually consenting folks to do what they want with their bodies, right?
June 5th, 2006
Over at Americablog, John’s looking for a list of Republicans who’ve put the institution of marriage in jeopardy with divorce or adultery… I’ve got to say that it makes me smirk.
I’m half convinced that the best thing to do about this business about a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is to ignore it and let it fall flat on its face, and half petrified that if we do nothing, that it’ll get passed.
Advice welcomed in the comments. 
June 4th, 2006
While walking on Bleecker Street this afternoon, an attractive woman smiled at me and said “Hi”, so I looked over. She then asked, “Have you got a minute for gay rights?” I shook my head and kept walking.
This kind of thing is to be expected when you’re walking through Greenwich Village, as there’s a pretty high concentration of homosexuals and gay-friendly businesses in the area. People believe that “gay rights” are something that requires support in the form of money or petition signatures or volunteer time.
In a conversation about feminism lately, my mother said, “Well, you’re a feminist.”
I don’t believe in women’s rights, or gay rights, or disability rights. I don’t believe in rights for groups. I believe in the fundamental nature of the rights of individuals.
Consider the first three paragraphs of the Libertarian Party’s Statement of Principles:
We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.
We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. Even within the United States, all political parties other than our own grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.
These principles hold that the kind of rights that might be associated with “gay rights”, “women’s rights”, and similar movements… are the kind of rights that naturally belong to those groups. I won’t fight for the rights of a segmented group, I’ll fight for the rights of all of us. If all a group is seeking is freedom from an unnatural restriction of their rights by government, I’m already on their side. If they’re seeking special treatment, then I’m not going to.
“Government needs to get out of my shit” is the kind of movement I’d sign up for.
May 29th, 2006
While I guess it’s good to spot potentially violent behavior and threats in teens, especially since research has shown that teen brains process information differently, I’m not so sure that school administrators don’t cross the line.
It’s hard to tell what has been sensationalized by the press and what hasn’t these days. From this story:
On Thursday, a student at TeWinkle Middle School in Costa Mesa, California, was told he faces expulsion for allegedly posting graphic, anti-Semitic threats against a classmate on his MySpace site, according to the The Los Angeles Times.School officials said 20 of his classmates were also suspended for viewing the posting, and police are investigating the boy’s comments as a possible hate crime.
Suspended for viewing someone’s postings on MySpace?
Can someone wake me up when this country’s a little less fucked up? I need a nap.
March 3rd, 2006
The Christian Science Monitor has a story on ADVISE, a Department of Homeland Security project devoted to Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement of information across the Internet. Bringing together information gathered from web sites and corporate databases to try to detect anomalous patterns which hint at possible terrorist activity, flagged for human analysis.
Does the linking of all of this readily available data constitute something nefarious?
Supposedly, all that a pattern match will provide is an indication for a human to give a closer look. A closer look at what? Well, perhaps terrorist activity.
But this automated electronic analysis is akin to psychoanalysis of the entire nation.
Much of a person’s behavior happens in plain sight of others, but is tempered by a risk assessment that considers the consequences of exposing a narrow amount of information.
I tell people when it’s my birthday. Don’t you? I don’t consider my name to be a secret. With those two pieces of information, it’s trivial to get a copy of my birth certificate. On there is my mother’s maiden name. My social security number has been used for everything from my student identification number at college, an identifier for health insurance companies, and been required for tax purposes by entities that were likely to have to end up sending me a 1099. Some of those companies no longer exist. Some have probably had data theft.
In any case, I’ve given up information about myself, sometimes naive about the risks, sometimes having considered the consequences of sharing some bit of information.
OK, so someone could steal my identity. But anyone who’d have access to ADVISE could probably pull up far more information on me than that.
But what couldn’t they pull up all kinds of information on?
Well, let’s see what else they could do… perhaps they could pull up my medical records to see what diagnoses there have been, and what medications were used. Creepy, but what the hell, right? I’ve got nothing to hide. The HIV tests I’ve had have all come back negative, and there’s no reason for them not to have.
Since the list of corporate databases they’d have access to isn’t specified, let’s assume they have access to my Amazon.com shopping cart history. I’ve bought many books and CDs from Amazon, as well as various gadgets. Some were for me, some were to give as gifts. While I eventually ordered from another site, I once had in my shopping cart every Ani Difranco CD that Amazon carried.
I’ve never purchased, however, anything from Victoria’s Secret. Nor Frederick’s of Hollywood. A check of my Visa or Mastercard charge history may have had 3 or 4 purchases ever from a store that sells primarily women’s clothing. What Visa will be able to tell you about is the tickets I bought to see Tori Amos.
Boy, from the data, if you were doing some kind of automated analysis of me, I’d probably be flagged as “possibly gay”. I’ve gotten HIV tests, but don’t buy women sexy lingerie. I’ve bought music by artists that are known to have large homosexual followings.
Of course, jumping to this conclusion would require incomplete data… like missing when I paid for birth control pills with my debit card. But what guarantees are there that the data will be complete while the computer tries to figure us out?
Why would it matter if I were gay? It wouldn’t. But what does matter is that the analysis of public and semi-public information to gain psychological insight a) can certainly be wrong, and b) isn’t limited to terrorist behavior. I can’t see the results of this automated analysis requiring a warrant. What fishing expeditions might be performed? What political smear campaigns will get their ammunition from ADVISE? Conversely, what if a DHS employee is a double-agent?
Might the compilation of public data on everything lead to exposing secret information about vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure? Small weaknesses may not present a hazard individually, but the trauma caused by a thousand or a million targeted pinpricks could be devastating. Who knows what’s been shared about all of those tiny weaknesses. After all, exposing any one of them individually might have negligible risk.
Paralyze enough people into inaction by using the things that they didn’t realize they’d let slip a tiny piece at a time, and there’s plenty of opportunity to do unchecked evil.
February 9th, 2006
