We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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This morning as I was reading the Daily Heap of Newspapers for some blogging inspiration but I could not get past the front page news about the WMD dossier and the tragic end of the alleged MoD ‘mole’. Dr Kelly has been ruthelessly used as a pawn in the game far less civilised than chess between Downing Street and the BBC. By the way, I agree with this analysis of the situation.
The reason I cannot get excited or outraged about the ‘sexed up’ dossier containting evidence about Saddam’s threat to the Western world and his WMD capabilities is that I expect that of anything that comes out of the many-mouthed hydra called Government. Do you really believe all those statistics about the economy, crime, schoolsandhospitals? I sure don’t and never have. True, the spin has acceralated under the Labour government and not only because of Alistair Campell, who is merely an embodiment of the New Labour cavalier attitude to reality. I am not stranger to the public relations techniques, however, I expect that even I would be taken aback by how calculating, manipulating and truth-spinning the whole exercise has become.
This is because the current set of politicians regards such practises as the very business of ‘professional’ government. Keeping the media ‘on-message’ has become far more important than the facts underlying the message itself.
Therefore, paradoxically, I think if anything the WMD dossier has been spun less than the usual stream of propaganda from Downing Street. This is because the tension before the conflict had been so high, that even the spin-doctors at No 10 would have appreciated the hightened exposure they were facing. I bet you that they actually took care not to spin too much and stay with ‘just the facts’.
That they failed so miserably is not evidence that they needed to exaggerate the threat Saddam posed to the Western world. It shows that, under scrutiny, even when the government tries to be honest and credible,their routine lies and disregard for the truth leave them looking like used car salesmen.
Governments lie because that is what governments do
To expect otherwise is to expect a government
not to act like a government.
Now, we have to be doing something right! The Guardian has written many articles about blogs – arguably they are the most clued up newspaper in the UK on the subject, however much it pains me to admit it – and so far not once they mentioned Samizdata.net. The latest omission occurred in their article on political blogs, a day after the VoxPolitics seminar in the House of Commons. We were there, in force, and made ourselves heard. To our surprise, we learnt that many people who are not our natural fellow-travellers (to put it mildly) apparently read us quite regularly. So it can hardly be said that we are unknown among the statist left and right.
- The Guardian have heard of us, in fact, maybe even read us but given our dislike for their ideology cannot bring themselves to mention us. Perhaps, the Guardian blog crew who have studiously been ignoring our existence hope that if they shut their eyes long enough we will have disappeared like a bad vision. Ain’t gonna happen, guys. If this is the case, the Guardian is biased and their reporting is poor.
- It is just possible they have never heard of us – stranger things have happened. However, we do get around and it is no mean feat to miss us in the blogosphere… Out of eighteen bloggers they mention in the article we know personally, in the flesh, seven of them and further three certainly know about us. So, if it is the case of the Guardian missing us, well, they did not do their homework right and their reporting is poor.
It’s a win-win situation.
The Guardian do not need to like us or our writing, agree with us or even rate us particularly highly. But to write about the British blogosphere as if we do not exist, means that they really do not understand what they are writing about as we are almost certainly the most visited British political blog. We know from our comments and emails that a goodly chunk of our readers do not always agree with us. We take their custom as a compliment since they obviously find us interesting enough to return regardless.
Another letter from the source in the British Army stationed in Basra.
I am sorry about the handwriting but I am very tired, haven’t slept much for a couple of days. I keep getting woken up in the night to reach to events because they want my input on what I know and I work long hours to begin with. But it is absolutely fascinating. I love the work out here. The patrolling is interesting although I do not get to do much of that, but the work I am doing now is great.
I am ‘interviewing’ people to find things out, using as much knowledge of Arabic culture as possible and in the long term cases ‘getting inside their heads’. With each one, it is like a performance in which you try to build a connection, a friendship, so you must find the things you agree on. At the same time you must keep a core that is remote and calculating, wondering why is he telling me this, what is his motivation?…
A lot of the rest of the time I am analysing information, explaining it to others and briefing, dealing with ‘specialist agencies’. Sometimes I get to go find some things out myself, ‘discreetly’. And I also work out what we should do to catch the enemy, and recommend it. Yesterday afternoon we carried out an op [ed. operation] based on a suggestion from me to hurt the oil smugglers. Normally, we catch at very best a tanker. Yesterday we caught four and two ships. A team effort, but my idea, so satisfying. The idea is now being continued. Prison sentences last one day so don’t deter these people but losing that much stuff will hurt!
I was called in to co-ordinate the actual capture (or rather what to do once we got them). I made the decisions, ‘interviewed’ people through my interpreter, made the plan and even kept the smugglers reasonably co-operative. That is what I call a good day’s work.
This week New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed into law a provision that transfers liability for personal injuries on public sidewalks from the city to the adjacent building owner. In addition, a companion bill the mayor signed will require property owners to carry liability insurance that provides coverage for sidewalk injuries.
This legislation transfers liability for sidewalk accidents from the city to the property owners who already have the duty to keep the sidewalks in good repair.
So let me get this right. You do not own the bit of the pavement in front of your house/flat. Nevertheless, you are responsible for keeping in it good repair, clean it of snow, ice and other obstructions to pedestrians. At your own cost. For the Public Good. And you are also liable for anything that happens to your accident-prone, trigger-suing compatriots.
Call me old-fashioned but this is outrageous. The concept of being responsible for something you do not own and have no property right to is not only non-sensical but goes to the heart of your personal freedom. The New York City imposes a cost on you without any corresponding choice to dispose of that responsibility. They make you clean, repair and pay legal costs for the pavement whether you like it or not, in the name of Clean and Safe Pavements. You are made a slave to the passing pedestrians or rather the Public in general, which of course is a patriotic and public-spirited thing. That sounds familiar…
Oh, and now you are also forced to buy insurance to pay for the liability you have no choice in incurring. It seems that New York Mayor sees property rights his way.
I have ‘acquired’ a British army ‘source’ currently stationed in Basra. I decided to share some of the information on the blog as it comes from a rather different perspective than media reporting. It may not be as topical or ‘political’ as the headline news but I hope you will find it interesting:
This is my first letter from lovely Basra, city of a thousand exotic smells. I’m actually really enjoying myself so far. This country is seriously bizarre. Take the kids. Up to the age of five they are so cute it’s unreal. Every one of them could star in an Oxfam advert. They all look pretty, they all have huge grins, and they all seem really pleased to see us. “Hey meester! Hello meester!” And yet they are living, literally, in shit. In the poor areas the streets run with sewage. Saddam never bothered to put in a sewage system for these areas – or rather he didn’t maintain the one the British put in. I have never been so grateful for a poor sense of smell.
Most of the people are really friendly. True, in the poor areas the kids throw bricks at us when we are in vehicles, but that’s just their idea of fun(!) It’s really fun driving around the city at night or in the evening, standing up in the back of a Landrover with the hot air blowing past as you cruise around. Mind you, you have to be careful because the Iraqis drive like madmen. I think maybe the Americans in Baghdad have confused normal Iraqi driving with suicide bombing tactics. They just cut up everyone, driving is based on aggression, and they drive both ways on either side of the road. They just take the shortest route between two points regardless of what is in the way, so it’s not surprising that virutally every vehicle has a broken windscreen and looks like a junkyard refugee.
The only exception to the bad driving is when our armoured vehicles are on the road. Those they treat with respect. But Landrovers they now cut up like anything else. We are trying to get the traffic cops back to work, but they’re frightened to come back, and they aren’t generally much use when they do.
But patrolling around the streets is fascinating. It’s just really interesting to see a completely different culture, a totally different way of life. And it’s far more interesting than Northern Ireland, because here we can really do stuff. If we think a house had weapons in it, we can just go in and search. The other day, on a tip off, we collected an RPG launcher. The follow on search found a load of mortar bombs. And that’s just routine here.
Otherwise I have been in my office stuffing my head full of information on SADR, SCIRI, INC, INA, Imams, tribes, crime gangs, politicians and every other madman around here. They all seemed to be called some combination of Ahmed Mohammed Al Unpronouncable. Arabic names will be the death of me, not least because they have about nine different spellings. But I’m getting there – I know far more about the politics of Basra than any sane man would ever want to. In another letter, I’ll tell you about WMD sites and arresting looters.
BBC reports that the European Commission president, Romano Prodi, has been summoned by the European parliament to answer questions on a growing fraud scandal in the EU’s executive.
The EU’s administrative commissioner, Neil Kinnock, has revealed that up until 1999 there was a relatively extensive practice of setting up secret and illegal bank accounts. Millions of euros are thought to have disappeared.
Mr Kinnock told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday there was evidence this “utterly reprehensible” practice was continuing.
As a result, he has ordered an immediate inquiry into other Commission departments and is sending a fraud questionnaire to the European Commission’s most senior officials to assess the extent of the problem.
Are we surprised? No. The growing number of scandals emerging from the EU hints at deep-seated fraud and corruption. Soon it will perhaps become unnecessary to produce an argument against the EU. Just recording it’s blunders should do the trick…
The Telegraph reports that the Conservatives yesterday joined civil rights groups in voicing opposition to the Government’s proposals to introduce compulsory identity cards and criticised David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, for masking his true intentions behind “spin and obscurity”.
Plans to announce the scheme in the Commons before Parliament rises today have been shelved – officially because of pressure on parliamentary time – but the Home Office said yesterday that the proposals for the ID card were “progressing well”, with an announcement expected in the autumn.
Oliver Letwin, the shadow Home Secretary, said he remained “highly dubious” about any move towards a compulsory ID card.
The issue of an identity card is too important a one, with too far-ranging implications for our liberties, for the Home Secretary to resort to spin and obscurity.
Home Office estimates of the cost of the scheme range from £1.6 to £3.14 billion but Simon Davies, of Privacy International, says the true cost will be very much higher. Mr Davies led a campaign against an Australian ID card in the 1980s. Initially the plan was popular but opposition grew strongly when the scheme was finally unveiled and the government was forced to abandon it.
We know from industry estimates that a ‘smart’ card with biometric information such as the one proposed will cost well over £100 per head, so the final cost will be more like £5.5 billion.
This is a high risk political gamble for David Blunkett. He knows that popular opposition will mushroom once people understand the implications of the card, so he is being meticulous in concealing his ultimate ambitions.
The Telegraph reports the Treasury reacted angrily to a European Commission proposal for simplifying the VAT regime across the EU that would give tax breaks to the French while penalising British parents. Frits Bolkestein, the EU’s Dutch tax commissioner, admitted that the tax on children’s clothing could rise to 17.5 per cent – the British rate of VAT – but that the move was necessary to end what he said was unfair economic distortion.
The scheme unveiled yesterday is part of the continuing attempt by Brussels to force through tax harmonisation – standardising tax rates across the EU. Gordon Brown has rejected the suggestion, claiming that taxation is a matter for national parliaments.
The Commission scheme to “streamline” VAT would abolish zero-rating on children’s clothes and shoes in Britain and Ireland, ending the permanent opt-outs the countries secured when they joined the EC in the 1970s.
But following intense lobbying by Jacques Chirac, the French president, for a special exemption on restaurant bills, the Commission proposes to cut VAT rates for French diners from the present 19.6 per cent to as low as 5.5 per cent. Also, the Dutch will retain a zero rate for their cut-flower industry and the Italian media empire of Silvio Berlusconi will be spared VAT on broadcasting.
One official described the horse-trading behind the scenes as shameful.
Isn’t it interesting that a Dutch commissioner, a French director-general, and the Italian presidency all got what they wanted?
Quite.
ComputerWorld paints a wonderfully gloomy picture of an IT security meltdown and a complete redirection of current security practises (or lack of them):
Predictions: A Web services security breach will wreck the supply chain. And stolen fingerprints or eye scans will thwart biometric systems.
Bye-Bye Incompetents
The fakers, charlatans and incompetents will be purged from the IT security industry. In three years, 40% of the current gaggle of alleged security professionals will leave the industry—some to other professions, many to prison for egregious misrepresentation of their skills.
XML Catastrophe
In the next two years, there will be a major XML Web services security breach. The consequences will be much more severe than the defaced Web sites and stolen credit cards that caused mostly embarrassment in the early days of e-commerce. Instead, automated production lines will grind to a halt, company bank accounts will be emptied, 100-company-long supply chains will break, and the most proprietary corporate data may be disclosed.
Surgical Strikes
Three or four years ago, hackers were taking a haphazard, shotgun approach to Internet attacks, but now they’re using their tools to penetrate very specific and lucrative targets, especially enterprise networks containing valuable intellectual property. These highly targeted attacks are on the rise, each one more intelligent and harmful than the last. By 2005, targeted attacks will account for more than 75% of corporate financial losses from IT security breaches.
Stolen Fingerprints
Biometrics is perceived as the ultimate in security, but what does somebody do once their bioprint is stolen? Within three years, hackers will have all sorts of scanned fingerprints, retinal patterns, etc., and these will be used to bypass biometric network security. When your credit card is stolen, you phone Visa and have a new card issued. When your bioprint is stolen, do you call God and ask for a new set of fingerprints or eyes?
Firing the Clueless
P.T. Barnum knew that a sucker was born every minute. Since most cyber risk is directly attributable to insider activity, including the social engineering of digital dullards, a renewed focus on background checks is necessary. The chief security officer of the future, working with the HR chief, is going to find and fire digital “suckers” before their dimness puts the enterprise at risk.
There is more. Go and get scared… I am.
Infoworld reports that the European Commission announced plans to combat spam yesterday, promising “concrete action” by October.
Research commissioned by the European Commission shows that by the end of this summer more than half of all the e-mails in the union will be spam. Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society announced confidently:
Combatting spam has become a matter for us all, and has become one of the most significant issues facing the Internet today.
Yes, spam is annoying but let’s get things into perspective… In the typical bureaucrat fashion, you first build up a problem and then you solve it and bask in the glory of central control…
The EC promised that the concrete action would focus on effective enforcement based on international cooperation among different countries. It would also include technical measures for countering spam, and raising consumer awareness of the issue.
I wonder how this will be achieved. More monitoring, more data pooling and generally more interference with ISPs and private companies.
The Commission’s plans are designed to coincide with a new law on data protection that forbids unsolicited e-mailing. This directive is due to be transposed into the statute books of the 15 European Union member states in October.
Great. What we need is another directive forbidding this or that. And pray, do tell how will they enforce that…?
Under the data protection law, e-mail marketing will only be allowed with prior consent from the recipient. This “opt-in” approach does, however, permit marketing companies to target their existing customers.
Yes, a good idea, but why does it have to be regulated from the top? How gracious of the EC to permit marketing companies to target their existing customers. Arguably there is a widespread ‘conning’ of customers by many Web firms promising that they will not share private information and then selling or renting their customer lists anyway. But as this article indicates customers and markets are a much better way of handling this kind of issue than a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels.
They ask why we don’t get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot? Yes, let’s get rid of them all. I don’t because I can’t, but when you can, you should.
– Tony Blair in Sir Peter Stothard’s book about Downing Street during the war
I second Brian’s post on the same topic. The Evening Standard reports that one in 30 Britons now has their DNA stored on a national database of genetic fingerprints. The database reached the two million mark today, and is one of the world’s largest. It is used to help solve an average of 15 murders and 31 rapes each month.
The government is trying to make it easier to add DNA entries to the database. A law before Parliament would allow samples to be stored from people when they are arrested and retained regardless of whether they are convicted or not… Have a brush with the law and you are on file for life. Currently a sample can be stored only if a person is charged.
The move is expected to dramatically increase the number of samples stored but has led to claims from civil liberties groups and the Liberal Democrats that the system is being abused by the government.
Home Office Minister Hazel Blears said that only criminals should be worried by the scale of the database.
Law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from the retention of DNA samples.
Yes, we do.
The State is not your friend
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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