When the first message on the ARPANET (the predecessor of today’s Internet) was sent by UCLA programmer Charley Kline, on October 29, 1969, the message text was the word “login”; the letters “l” and the “o” were transmitted, then the system crashed.

Forty two years later, the Internet is everywhere and rapidly becoming embedded in every device. Kevin Kelly sees the Net as evolving into a single “planetary computer” with “all the many gadgets we possess” as “windows into its core.” The Internet Society’s slogan is “The Internet is for everyone,” but Vint Cerf (who co-developed the TCP/IP network protocol that connects everything on the Net today) now prefers “The Internet is for everything.”

The world-wide adoption of a decentralized network that connects everything creates continuous technical, social and policy challenges that no one could have foreseen in 1969. Even as we take the Net for granted, the way we do the air that we breathe, decisions are being made by policy-makers, technologists and end-users that shape its future.

The success of the Internet has had a great deal to do with the development of open standards — often by volunteers — in groups such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Decisions in Working Groups (WG) of the IETF are reached by consensus on the group mailing list so that anyone active on that list can be part of the process.

The need to add capacity is a constant challenge. What balance of public and private funding, regulation or deregulation are appropriate, and which types of infrastructure (centralized vs. decentralized; fiber, cable, wireless) warrant investment are subject to ongoing debate.

The Net has provided a platform for incredible innovation and economic growth. How to reward innovation and creativity while encouraging the widest dissemination of new content and technologies? How to encourage disruptive technologies while mitigating their potentially negative impacts?

Does there have to be a conflict between freedom and privacy on one hand and security on the other? How can users safely share personal information using social media which rely on the sale of their personal data as a business model? What legal and technical protections are necessary for businesses to securely move into the cloud?

Internet users have continuously influenced key technology innovations and policy decisions. But keeping them in the decision-making loop as they increasingly take the Net for granted presents an ongoing challenge.

On June 14, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and Lawrence E. Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), will address these questions as keynote speakers for the INET Conference in New York City, sponsored by the Internet Society and the Internet Society of New York. [Disclaimer: As President of the Internet Society of New York I will deliver opening remarks.]

There will also be panels featuring industry leaders, members of civil society organizations, open source software advocates and government officials. The conference is open to the public although advance registration is required. It will also be streamed live.

Just as a democracy is never the rule of the people, but rather the people who participate in the process, the Internet has evolved through the efforts of technologists and activists — many who have volunteered their time to develop open standards, open source software and to advocate for an open Internet. It’s your call: What kind of Internet do you want?

Last week, Congress and the administration refused to seriously consider the problem of government spending. Despite the fear-mongering, a government shutdown would not have been as bad as claimed.

It is encouraging that some in Washington seem to be insisting on reduced spending, which is definitely a step in the right direction, but only one step. We have miles to go before we can even come close to a solution, and it will involve completely redefining the role of government in our lives and on the world stage. A compromise was struck at the last minute, but until Democrats agree to rein in entitlement spending, and Republicans back off the blank checks to the military industrial complex, it all amounts to political gamesmanship.

Unfortunately, the compromises always seem to be just the opposite. Instead of the left agreeing to cut social spending and the right agreeing to cut military spending, the right agrees to more welfare and the left agrees to more warfare. In spite of all the rhetoric, we will go deeper in debt, the Fed will print more money, and the value of the dollar will continue to plummet. How long will it be before foreigners stop buying our debt, and hyperinflation arrives? Throughout history, empires have always overextended themselves through conquests and wealth transfers leading to eventual collapse, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union. We are headed in the same direction and it seems only the chaos of the collapse of the dollar will stop the spending spree. Arguing over funding for Planned Parenthood and NPR, though important, only shows that leadership in Washington either won’t face reality, or don’t understand how serious the problem is.

Of course, an actual government collapse would create serious problems for many people who have come to depend on government payments for healthcare, retirement income, their children’s education, and even food and housing. However, these so-called entitlement programs are unconstitutional to begin with and have engendered a culture of dependence on wealth transfer payments that is out of control. It concerns me greatly that instead of dealing seriously with our situation, so many in Washington would rather allow the chaos that will ensue when all of the dependent people are suddenly cut off. Better to look reality squarely in the face and tell people the difficult truth that government is simply not capable of managing people’s lives from cradle to grave as was foolishly promised. We face trillions in deficits with any of the budgets under consideration. Keeping those promises is, sadly, just not one of our options in the long run. Better to admit the nanny state is coming to an end and we are no longer working on “compromises” but a transition — to a sustainable way of life, one that respects the constitution, the rule of law and property rights.

Albany, New York isn’t just the seat of a clown car state government — it’s also a college town. And college students, when boozed to the gills, can out-bozo politicians. (Well, almost.) On March 12th crowds of drunken students rioted in the Albany neighborhood known as the student ghetto. The lads and lassies, most of whom seemed to be from UAlbany (a major campus of the State University of New York aka SUNY), had prepped for the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade with hours of bar crawls and Kegs and Eggs house parties. Eventually the breakfast bunch spewed out onto the frosty streets.

The Albany Student Press claims that the Albany police, in an effort to tamp down the annual festival of collegiate binge drinking, had rousted the house parties. Pushing participants outdoors where “frat boys and sorority chicks”* joined them in solidarity. The non-student press hasn’t mentioned any rousts. Whatever. Hundreds of students milled in the streets, wearing neon green tees and bellowing like cattle on jimsonweed. Smaller groups commenced to trash. Cars were pushed into the street and smashed. Appliances were hurled from balconies. Cans and bottles flew. Several cops were tackled. Most (though not all) in the crowd laughed to see such sport. Their cellphones captured the riot. YouTube took it viral. Suddenly, all eyes were on Albany’s student ghetto.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Albany pols and college officials freaked. Were they riled by the riot — or the nationwide publicity?

Callow binge drinkers have been stampeding in the student ghetto for years. And not just during the daze of St. Pat’s. A brief search of YouTube turns up numerous vids of students from UAlbany and the College of St. Rose (a private university adjacent to the student ghetto) making merry on many occasions. Heck — I lived on the edge of the student ghetto in 2000/2001 and can personally attest that every weekend, except for ones during breaks and vacations, was a holiday in the hood. Or should I say — a party in its mouth? The sidewalks were a mosaic of greasy pizza boxes, crushed beer cups, broken bottles, and vom. In winter the mosaic froze over, spring brought the big patty melt.

Walking through the student ghetto was an eyeball assault. Its once-beautiful two and three family homes were sinking into the sludge. Absentee landlords and young lugs living la vida transient don’t do upkeep. A virtual tour of the homes’ interiors can now be had on YouTube. Footage of semiconscious or completely zonked students being owned by their roomies is a staple on Student Ghetto, The Reality Show. If you look past the limp bodies in funny degrading poses, you can see the subdivided warrens, rats’ nest wiring, and broken windows covered with trash bags.

Code enforcement? What code enforcement?

I used to wonder if parents actually visited their kids’ digs. And what they thought if they did. After all, parents frequently pay for those digs. Some even send rent directly to the landlords. I also wondered if parents understood the intensity — and heavy underage aspect — of the student ghetto bar scene. It gave me quite a turn to see really young girls staggering out of bars blitzed blind and dumb. Particularly since the neighborhood is also a crime scene.

Muggings, assaults, and burglary shadow the student ghetto. Students are perceived as easy pickings; predators from other ghettos come to partake. In the autumn of 2008, a UAlbany senior was shot to death a few blocks from where I once lived. Drug trade? It’s like, historic. One street has an evil rep going back decades. From my window I watched deals going down on the corner of said street. The longevity of its rep made me cynical (wrongly, I’m sure) about notifying the Albany police. Instead I called the county cops and hoped for the best.

But back to Kegs and Eggs. Some 40 students were arrested. A few days after the riot YouTube footage was being used to identify more participants. Pictures taken from videos were released to the press. (Many of the alleged perps seemed in dire need of Clearasil.) Detective James Miller, official spokesman for the Albany Police Department, promised swift and certain justice.

On March 16th, a New York Daily News editorial blasted SUNY Albany for being known for “hard partying” rather than quality education. The editorial also denounced the “moms and dads” of the rioters, for contributing to a “culture you let sprout into criminal proceedings.” The next day, the first of the UAlbany students seen in the video pictures turned himself in. OMG! His father turned out to be Bob Sapio, senior executive editor of the New York Daily News. Was Dad’s face red!

Also red faced: Detective James Miller, official spokesman for the Albany Police Department. On March 18th Detective Miller (now on suspension) was arrested for allegedly driving drunk. In an official vehicle, while off duty. Miller apparently refused to take a breathalyser test. DWI cases can be more difficult to prosecute sans results from breath tests. In some cities, police officers aren’t allowed to refuse breathalysers. But Albany has its own way of doing things.

For instance, despite much local coverage of the Kegs and Eggs riot, plus related articles about housing conditions in the student ghetto, the neighborhood’s worst landlords have yet to be outed by the news media. And given the lack of code enforcement (a problem in more nabes than just the student ghetto) you’d expect some investigative reporting on who hearts who — politically speaking.

Another Albany oddity: the in-office longevity of Mayor Jerry Jennings. When Jennings ran for his first term in 1993 yes 1993 he waxed reformer about the student ghetto and vowed change. He renews those vows regularly. Particularly when public funding can be accessed via the vowing.

In April 2005, Mayor Jennings took an after dark walking tour of the student ghetto, accompanied by the late Kermit L. Hall, then president of SUNY at Albany. The town and gown twosome dialogued with students hanging in front of bars and tut-tutted over slum conditions. President Hall vowed to help rid the neighborhood of drugs, violence, and blight. Some $400,000 in government grants was set to flow through the New York State Division Of Criminal Justice into a “historic partnership”** between SUNY Albany and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC — as part of the crime fighting initiative Operation Impact. The Albany police were eventually outfitted with cool tech tools via Operation Impact. Department officials say crime in Albany is being fought more successfully thanks to those tools. Folks in and around the student ghetto aren’t convinced.

Operation Impact is one of many initiatives that over the years, have been accessed by Mayor Jerry Jennings and a string of area college officials in efforts to re-imagine the student ghetto. Yet somehow, the neighborhood remains a place where impressionable young oafs and oafettes pick up the perception that civilization is far far away.

But change may finally be in the wind. City officials are now making a concentrated effort to refer to the student ghetto as the Education District…

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
Mondo QT

*Assigning blame for Kegs N Eggs melee, Albany Student Press, 03/26/11

**Governor Pataki Announces Historic Partnership with UAlbany and John Jay College to Develop Enhanced Crime Fighting Initiatives Impact, Office of the Governor Press Release, 04/04/05

Sean Patrick Griffin’s new book Gaming the Game won’t make disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy happy. In 2007, Donaghy was busted by the feds for conspiring with pro gambler Jimmy “Baba” Battista and their mutual boyhood pal, low-level drug dealer and all round dogsbody Tommy Martino. Donaghy had been supplying Battista with picks on games he refereed. (He was also betting those games through Battista.) Donaghy claims the devil, aka Battista, made him do it. Sean Griffin locates the devil that made Donaghy do it, in Donaghy’s own greedy soul.

Tim Donaghy, Tommy Martino, and Jimmy Battista had attended the same Catholic High School near Philadelphia. Tommy Martino was tight with both Donaghy and Battista. Donaghy and Battista were never close. But in late 2006, they became partners in crime.

Tim Donaghy’s version of events goes like this: after Jimmy Battista discovered through other gambling professionals that Donaghy was a gambling addict and was betting on NBA games, he extorted Donaghy into supplying NBA picks. According to Donaghy, Battista also threatened his family; implying that if Donaghy didn’t cooperate his wife and children might be “visited” by people from New York. As in, mob thugs. With 15 months in a minimum security federal prison behind him and an exculpatory book to peddle, Donaghy continues to paint Jimmy Battista in mobbed-up colors.

The Real Deal

Prior to conspiring with Battista and middleman Tommy Martino, Tim Donaghy was secretly betting on NBA games he officiated. He was also betting on games he didn’t referee, as well as other sports. By late 2006 he was dissatisfied with the paybacks he was receiving from his prime enabler (remember, we’re talking addiction) and switched to Jimmy Battista. Tommy Martino, a runner for Battista who also supplied him with drugs (as he did for Tim Donaghy), set up the meeting that got the NBA deal going. Jimmy Battista was stoked. “As a gambler, having an NBA referee tell you what games he likes was like taking a kid into a candy store and saying what flavor do you want.”*

As candy store guy, Tim Donaghy got a real deal; he didn’t have to cover his losses. Yes — he did make bad bets. According to Jimmy Battista, when Donaghy wasn’t referee his picks were much less reliable.

Jimmy Battista never asked Tim Donaghy directly if he was making calls to benefit his bets (don’t ask don’t tell being the rule) but he figured Donaghy “was going to do whatever it took to win.” Tim Donaghy maintains that all he did was handicap games from an ultra inside position. His winnings flowed from superior knowledge. The feds who prosecuted Donaghy never charged him with influencing outcomes. Though the plea deal Donaghy accepted did include a line about the possibility of his on-court performance being “subconsciously affected.” As for any lingering suspicions, Gaming the Game lays out new statistical research into the games Donaghy bet. Theoretically speaking, it does seem as if “Elvis” (Battista and Marino’s nickname for Donaghy, the King of NBA picks) might have shown his own interests a hunka hunka burning love.

Rest easy readers. Gaming the Game isn’t a compendium of statistical charts. Though important to the question of Tim Donaghy’s alleged doings, the stats are confined to an appendix. Plus, Gaming is far less about Donaghy than it is about the life and times of pro-gambler Jimmy Battista. As such, it’s a compelling character study and more historically interesting than a rundown of the corrupt actions of one greedy Gus with an edge. Sean Patrick Griffin, an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Pennsylvania State, Abington, and a former Philadelphia police officer, combines an eye for human detail with the ability to convey broad social themes. He’s a fluid, crisp writer and an A-1 historian of crime. Griffin’s earlier book, Black Brothers Inc.,The Violent Rise and Fall of Philadelphia’s Black Mafia, revealed a hitherto unacknowledged chapter in the history of crime in Philadelphia. Brothers was made into an episode of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) series American Gangster and has been optioned as a motion picture. Griffin’s knowledge of the crime scene in and around Philadelphia illuminates Gaming the Game.

Born in 1965, James “Jimmy” Battista grew up in a working class town near Philadelphia. He was a black sheep (hence the nicknames “Baba” and “Sheep”) in a close knit, morally centered family. His parents personified the work ethic. Despite his non-absorption of their other beliefs, Jimmy did soak up their attitude about work. From his early entry-level hustler jobs (as a cocaine distributing shoe salesman, he substituted coke for the silica salt packets in shoe boxes) through his learning curve as a paper-juggling bookie, to his glory days as a computerized pro gambler near the top of that industry’s legal and illegal ladder, Baba busted his hump. As an ultra successful pro gambler, he lived on the down low. No Damon Runyan excess, just a nice McMansion life with a wife and kids in a suburb forty minutes out of Philly.

Though Jimmy often worked at home, his family life was almost nil. He spent most of his time in the basement — in his home office slash betting center. Confabbing with other bettors and movers via Skype (harder to bug) and glued to a towering stack of TVs and monitors feeding him nonstop sports action and betting info from sources such as casinos and offshore sportsbooks. When a betting line made a mega move in say, Taiwan, a computerized voice alert (installed by Jimmy) would intone “Major Line Movement.”

When not busy in the basement Jimmy was on the go with his laptop and bag of cell phones. Doing business from other cities (including Vegas), other homes, and on park benches and in cars. He was a fan of T-Mobile, because buying a phone through them didn’t require ID. Sheep, as he was best known in the gambling world, used different phones for each major client. The phones were replaced frequently. His “disposable” phones were a major business expense; disposing of them was a job. The SIM (subscriber identity module) cards were tossed into rivers. The phones themselves went into an acid dip bath intended for cleaning restaurant grills. After the dip, Jimmy pounded the remains into smithereens with a hammer.

Then there was the hassle of transporting money and collecting debts. Re the latter, Sheep wasn’t a thug. He smashed phones, not faces. If someone welshed he just stopped dealing with them. Unrecoverable loss is part of illegal business. As for moving money, doing it in the U.S. was an exercise in paranoia. Think cross-state car trips with a million or so in cash stashed under the seats. Pit stops were fear stops. Sheep carried his food and water with him, along with a hospital “piss cup.”

Back in the Philly area, Sheep and his suburban, white-collar gambling colleagues were always worried that “the boys downtown” (Philadelphia organized crime of the Italian-American variety) would get ultra heavy with independent players. During one downtown mob war, Sheep and his then business partners temporarily relocated to Vegas, to dodge an expected rise in extortion demands.

By early 2007, Jimmy Battista was a slave to the rhythm. Years spent monitoring monitors and working phones while eating takeout had ballooned his weight. He took assorted drugs to ease the pressure of his work and had become addicted to Oxycontin. For the first time in his career he was betting while under the influence and losing like the suckers pro gamblers deride. He was heavily in debt, which was angering some of his most important business colleagues. His family was falling apart. And his always high paranoia level had been jolted to new heights by growing rumors of an FBI investigation.

Jimmy Battista did business with the crème de la crème of bookies and bettors. Some were mob connected. Apparently, an FBI team assigned to the upper echelons of the Gambino family in New York City picked up wiretap chatter about Tim Donaghy and his connection with Sheep. (The gambling world had been rife with gossip about Donaghy’s NBA betting for several years.) Another story says a mob-connected bookie with a business beef turned Sheep in. Whatever. What followed is history. All of which is covered extensively in Gaming the Game.

The research behind Gaming the Game is impressive. Sean Patrick Griffin, an academic and ex-cop, combines extensive reference to court documents, betting records, law enforcement files, and media coverage with on-the-ground interviews and multi-party corroboration. Gaming is also many leveled. Via its coverage of Jimmy Battista’s evolving career, Gaming is a history of the transition from paper-based betting to information age gambling. As a character study, it leads one to ponder the mysteries of human nature — and also, by implication, the mysteries of U.S. policies re gambling. Jimmy Battista was an immensely talented individual. Why chose a life so fraught with the dangers of (partial) illegality? Given his particular skills, Sheep could have been a contender on Wall Street. Where financial speculation, manipulating the odds, and a willingness to profit from another person’s fraud almost never brings down the feds.

Another character question: why did Tim Donaghy and Tommy Martino take plea deals and turn on Jimmy Battista while Battista kept his lip zipped? Sean Patrick Griffin has many interesting things to say about that. As he does about the overall legal and public relations strategies of “Team Donaghy.” Which he refers to as their “assault on justice.” As said, this book won’t make Tim Donaghy happy.

The NBA may not be thrilled either. Though Gaming the Game sinks some of the conspiracy theories that followed the scandal (including ones spread by Tim Donaghy) it poses plenty of hard questions about the NBA’s response to the Donaghy affair — and their ongoing stewardship. NBA officials (if they don’t feel too piqued) might find the section titled Some Suggested Research for the NBA quite helpful.

As example, since the 2003-2004 season the NBA has been collecting data on the calls and non-calls made by all referees. Though the collected data was originally intended for other purposes, current and future data will now also be analyzed with an eye toward spotting referees who might be fixing games. Sean Griffin suggests the NBA also make a retrospective analysis of the call data. Tim Donaghy claims that the winnings from his NBA bets (the ones which according to his plea deal concession, might have “subconsciously affected” his on-court performance) were fairly limited. Some folks, including a number of pro gamblers, think otherwise. Analyzing the data might clear up the issue once and for all. Plus, the suspicion lingers that other refs may have been gaming the game. A retrospective check for patterns of subconscious activity could help lay that suspicion to rest.

Back to Timmy, Tommy, and Jimmy. Before being busted Jimmy Battista entered drug rehab. After a lot of legal wrangling, all three men eventually served about a year in federal prison. As always, Tim Donaghy thought he deserved a better deal.

* All quotes in this article are from Sean Patrick Griffin’s Gaming the Game, Barricade Books, Inc.

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
Mondo QT

Last week we once again heard numerous voices calling for intervention in Libya. Most say the US should establish a “no-fly” zone over Libya, pretending that it is a benign, virtually cost-free action, and the least we could do to assist those trying to oust the Gaddaffi regime. Let us be clear about one thing: for the US to establish a “no fly” zone over all or part of Libya would constitute an act of war against Libya. Establishing any kind of military presence in the sovereign territory of Libya will require committing troops to engage in combat against the Libyan air force, as well as anti-aircraft systems. The administration has stated that nothing is off the table as they discuss US responses to the unrest. This sort of talk is alarming on so many levels. Does this mean a nuclear strike is on the table? Apparently so.

In this case, I would like to make sure we actually follow the black letter of the law provided in the Constitution that explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to declare war. This week I will introduce a concurrent resolution in the House to remind my colleagues and the administration that Congress alone, not the president, decides when to go to war. It is alarming how casually the administration talks about initiating acts of war, as though Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution does not exist. Frankly, it is not up to the President whether or not we intervene in Libya, or set up “no-fly” zones, or send troops. At least, it is not if we follow the Constitution. Even by the loose standards of the War Powers Resolution, which cedes far too much power to the president, he would have no authority to engage in hostilities because we have not been attacked — not by Gaddafi, and not by the rebels. This is not our fight. If the administration wants to make it our fight, let them make their case before Congress and put it to a vote. I would strongly oppose such a measure, but that is the proper way to proceed.

Constitutional questions aside, Congress also needs to consider the interests of the American people. Again, we have not been attacked. Whatever we may think about the Gaddafi regime, we must recognize that the current turmoil in Libya represents an attempted coup d’etat in a foreign country. Neither the coup leaders nor the regime pose an imminent threat to the United States and therefore, as much as we abhor violence and loss of life, this is simply none of our business. How can we commit our men and women in uniform to a dangerous military operation in Libya when they swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution? We must also understand that our intervention will undermine the legitimacy of whatever government prevails in Libya. Especially if it is a bad government, it will be seen as our puppet and further radicalize people in the region against us. These are terrible reasons to put our soldiers’ lives at risk.

Finally we need to consider the economic cost. We don’t have the money for more military interventions overseas. We don’t have the money for our current military interventions overseas. We have to rely on the Fed’s printing presses and our ability to borrow from China to fund these wars. That alone should put an end to any discussion about getting involved in Libya’s civil war.

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I had the opportunity to raise some of my concerns regarding US foreign policy and the costs of our interventionism around the world.

Many observers claim that the recent overthrow of governments in northern Africa and the Middle East will result in more liberty for individuals across those regions. I sincerely hope this proves to be true, but history is replete with revolutions that began as a cry for freedom against oppressive governments but ended badly. There are no guarantees that Egyptians, Tunisians, or others will be better off after these heralded regime changes.

We do know, however, that these conflicts in Africa and the Middle East can be made worse if the U.S. government attempts to intervene and support certain candidates or factions. Such intervention would not further US interests or win us new friends, but in fact would undermine the legitimacy of any government that may emerge after the end of old regimes. Just as we would resent and reject any political force that came to power here with the sponsorship of a foreign government, Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, and others are not likely to take kindly to what they view as one US puppet being replaced by another US puppet. It is ironic, but the US government’s endless promotion of “democracy” overseas actually distorts and undermines democracy in targeted nations. The involvement of a foreign power often undermines true self-determination.

Radicals who understand this may use rising resentment and anti-Americanism as leverage to gain power, thus defeating the stated purpose of US involvement in the first place. I have never understood how the US government justifies subsidizing a newspaper or political party abroad in the name of promoting independence and pluralism. It makes no sense.

Unfortunately it seems to me that the administration has learned nothing from recent events in the Mediterranean region. Secretary Clinton emphasized several times at the committee hearing that “nothing is off the table” with regard to a US response to internal civil unrest in Libya. Since when is it our obligation to use political pressure or even military force to solve every problem overseas? Washington is currently buzzing with talk of “no-fly zones” and even a land invasion of Libya to aid rebel groups seeking to overthrow the Gadaffi regime. Some military leaders, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have rightly warned the more enthusiastic interventionists that such military operations can be enormously costly both financially and in lives.

The costs of trying to run the world are unsustainable, and we simply don’t have the money. Morally, it is inexcusable for the US to pick sides in such conflicts overseas, no matter how odious either side may be. Financially, it is no longer possible. The 2012 budget request from the administration for “international affairs,” which is code for “foreign aid”, is two and a half times larger than it was just nine years ago! As our economy shrinks at home, our obligations increase abroad. As our infrastructure crumbles at home, we continue to spend billions expanding infrastructure in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. If the interventionists have their way, no doubt we will be soon pay to reconstruct the infrastructure we destroy in a Libyan military operation. It does not take a genius to see that we are going broke, but Washington remains in denial and intent on business as usual. I fear that if we continue this way we may soon be out of business altogether.

The temporary shutdown in Egypt of Internet and other telecommunication services, as well as similar interruptions in other Middle East countries experiencing large-scale protests and rebellions, has galvanized hackers and human rights activists as well as U.S. foreign policy makers. The consequences may be not be what anyone expected.

The technologies for secure, private, fault tolerant communication via the Internet exist but have not yet been widely implemented or bundled together in a single, user-friendly system.

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf was asked in a recent interview whether there was technical solution to a government shutdown of the Net. The Internet “is controllable by the government, [so] it’s possible to turn off the Internet,” he said. The solution, mesh networking, “can be done without benefit of things like routers provided by Internet Service providers.”

Mesh networking makes each device on a network capable of routing data to any other device, with the ability to rapidly change paths in the event of an interruption or blockage.

A current project of Cerf’s, the Interplanetary Internet, designed to overcome the delays and interruptions to communications during space exploration, could also be adapted to handle a partial shutdown of Net communications by an authoritarian government during a political crisis.

Eben Moglen, a Columbia law professor and software freedom advocate, first proposed the Freedom Box – a tiny device that could provide private, secure, fault-tolerant Internet access using mesh networking – at an Internet Society of New York event in February 2010. He has since founded the Freedom Box Foundation, has some early prototype software and expects to have a fully working device available for under $100 in twelve months. Another project, diaspora, was inspired by Moglen’s proposal and is developing a more privacy-friendly alternative to Facebook. The Freedom Box and diaspora both use a decentralized, peer-to peer model for improved security and to give the user more control.

On February 15, Hillary Clinton’s gave her second annual Net Freedom Speech, which denounced the Egyptian government for its Net shutdown. The State Department now has a number of initiatives and grants for the development of Internet censorship circumvention technologies.

But governments often have different agendas and policies for different situations. Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarek was viewed as a “force of moderation” before he became a “dictator” when the geopolitical winds shifted. As Clinton was making her speech, Wired reported that the FBI Pushes for Surveillance Backdoors in Web 2.0 Tools and an antiwar protestor in Clinton’s audience was roughed up when he turned his back to her. Would he have been unscathed if he had tweeted his protest?

Even with the best intentions, high-profile Internet freedom initiatives by nation-states can have unexpected consequences. Evgeny Morozov says of Clinton’s speeches:

Clinton went wrong from the outset by violating the first rule of promoting Internet freedom: Don’t talk about promoting Internet freedom.

The state of web freedom in countries like China, Iran, and Russia was far from perfect before Clinton’s initiative, but at least it was an issue independent of those countries’ fraught relations with the United States.

Today, foreign governments … are now seeking “information sovereignty” from American companies … Internet search, social networking, and even email are increasingly seen as strategic industries that need to be protected from foreign control.

The U.S military has developed open source software for secure, private communication on the Internet, however. The Tor project, which develops Tor, a tool for private, encrypted communication on the Internet, is used by many dissidents in authoritarian countries, as well as by Wikileaks, and was originally sponsored by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

But not every such project has been as successful. The Haystack program, designed to help Iranian dissidents, actually endangered them because it was easily intercepted by the Iranian authorities due to flaws in its design. It received a huge amount of hype but the developer, Austin Heap, refused to allow security experts to examine it. Nonetheless, the U.S. Treasury Department granted Heap an Office of Foreign Assets Control license to export the software to Iran, in effect endorsing it. By the time it the software bugs became publicly known, the damage had been done.

Open source software advocate and cyberliberties activist Eric Raymond was also helping Iranian dissidents connect to the outside world at that time. He reflects:

… to protect your network, and yourself, you have to accept that you are going to have relatively little information about what your network partners are doing and what their capabilities are …. my rationally-chosen ignorance left me unable to form judgments about whether people in my network were lying to me. More subtly … it left me unable to form judgments about whether they were lying to themselves.

I don’t mean to excuse whatever lies Austin Heap may have told, but I do mean to suggest he may well have been his own first victim.

Open source software, where the inner workings of a program are available for public scrutiny, is essential when developing tools for secure communication in a highly insecure environment.

But open source is not a panacea. Take the case of OpenBSD, an open source operating system bundled with thousands of applications, which has been optimized for security by a team of the world’s best security experts. OpenBSD is sponsored by a nonprofit foundation and many of the programmers volunteer their time.

At one point the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) gave OpenBSD a grant, then rescinded it when OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt made remarks critical of the Iraq war.

In December 2010, de Raadt received an email alleging the FBI had paid some OpenBSD ex-developers to insert backdoors into the software. He was skeptical but immediately made the email public and invited an independent review of the relevant program code. A few bugs were fixed but no evidence of a backdoor was found. So even though the allegations turned out to be false, they succeeded anyway – as an act of psychological warfare – by destroying trust in the OpenBSD project.

George Orwell said:

… ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance…. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

At first it would seem that a social networking service like twitter, recently used by many protesters in the Middle East, would fit Orwell’s definition of a “simple weapon” that “gives claws to the weak”. But in fact the situation is much more ambiguous. Twitter is a for-profit corporation which must maintain large data centers and a complex infrastructure. And they are subject to many financial, legal and political pressures.

Internet freedom initiatives must be independent of political connotations, run on a decentralized infrastructure, and use technology that is subject to public review by security experts. Most importantly, users must have complete trust in the skills and integrity of the people providing those tools and services.

If they don’t the cure could prove worse than the disease.

Note: Wikipedia has a good list of other anti-censorship software.

Remember the late great Tea Party? The grass roots movement that made the political establishment quake? For one glorious moment it seemed as if a truly independent, average Joe/Joan movement might be gathering steam. A memory from that halcyon time: assorted TV pundits telling Republican leaders that Tea Party people “don’t like you guys either.” To which said leaders would put on a humble face and mumble something about how Republicans had lost their way and needed to get back on track. The out-of-control spending, corruption, and support for endless wars were missteps off the path of Republican core values.

In truth, no missteps were made. The Republican core was intact. Albeit shared with the Democrats. Out-of-control spending, corruption, and endless wars R both parties.

Though the following factoid has disappeared into the memory hole of ideological rewrites, a goodly number of those initially drawn to the Tea Party did not support endless wars. They supported the troops ’cause that’s a question of loyalty. But adventures-in-nation-building weren’t their thing. They were also concerned about losing civil liberties via Homeland Security overkill. And most Tea Party protesters blamed Wall Street, as much as government, for the financial meltdown of 2008. Lest we forget, the Tea Party really took off when the too-big-to-fail banks and other financial entities that partied with housing bubble paper were bailed out by taxpayers.

For a brief period the left was equally vociferous re the bailouts. But the moment of rapprochement between progressives and Tea Party types, along with the potential for game-changing coalitions, passed when it dawned on the left that coming down too hard on taxpayer infusions and massive government interventions might not set the right tone for passing health care reform. The Tea Party was way suspicious of government (almost as much as the 60′s counter-culture had been) and it was the wrong time to fan such suspicion. Instead ’twas time to ridicule and revile the masses of average Americans who feared that a government redo would make the failings of U.S. health care worse instead of better. That this fear might be based on, say, observation of the role federal policies played in inflating and eventually collapsing the housing market buttered no progressive parsnips. As for the fear that Obamacare would be Homeland Security in a nurse’s uniform, how paranoid was that?

While the left was in the basement mixing up the medicine and the Tea Party was on the pavement thinking about the government, the Republicans seized the time. Coming back strong as champions of the people and enemy of the political elite. (Insert row of laughing emoticons here.) Hoovering up the Tea Party and making it their own. The more the left trashed “tea baggers” the more the independent spark in the Tea Party dimmed. Tea talk started sounding more and more like the type of Republican conservatism dished by Limbaugh & company. Critiques of state capitalism, particularly as practiced during the Bush years, were out. So were thoughts of a third party. Union bashing was in. With public employee unions cast as evil incarnate.

After several years of government hearings and investigations into the 2008 financial meltdown, Republicans and Democrats have been unable to reach agreement on who-done-it. Republicans put the blame on the government sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; Democrats pin it on an insufficiently regulated Wall Street. No prime movers of subprime sleaze (hello Angelo Mozilo), or political enablers (hello Friends of Angelo), or major Wall Street sludge jugglers (too many for a shout out) have been prosecuted. Nor have new lending regulations staunched the growth of mortgage fraud in taxpayer-backed housing programs. However, we will be able to hang some teachers out to dry.

The concordance of big government and big finance that pumped the housing bubble and hence inflated hauls of real estate derived taxes (including property taxes) was not why so many local governments overextended themselves during the boom years and now face disaster during the bust. The real villains were teachers, firefighters, police officers, sanitation workers, and secretaries in public agencies. Aka Joe and Joan Average with a government job. Who, according to the bashers, are not average at all ’cause they get better benefits and more job security than a private sector employee or a small business owner. That being a private sector employee or a small business owner has its own set of advantages butters no conservative parsnips. The right, which typically decries attempts to stir up class warfare, is passing out flaming torches and whipping up envy. Screaming for folks to be stripped (preferably in public?) of their collective bargaining rights. Working to turn the American middle-class against itself.

And I thought only lefties were into creating social chaos…

Incidentally (or not) while the billionaire Koch brothers donated $43,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of union-busting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, housing and Realtor groups kicked in $43,125. Not that Republicans in general are uniquely blessed by the real estate industries. In New York, another state with budget problems, the NYC real estate crowd has been particularly generous to Governor Andrew Cuomo.

As for Joe and Joan Average, who really represents them? The left or the right? Answer: neither. At least, not reliably. Under certain self-serving circumstances both do an occasional good deed. But when push comes to shove in our state capitalist times, Joe and Joan are on their own. Which is less discouraging than it sounds. Being independent means never having to say you’re sorry for noticing that your representatives, no matter how rhetorically righteous, primarily rep big money conjoined with government power.

Third party, anyone?

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl
Mondo QT

During the past few weeks, Congress has been locked in a battle to pass a continuing resolution to fund government operations through September. Both supporters and opponents of the bill, HR 1, claim it is a serious attempt to reduce federal spending. However, an examination of the details of the bill call that claim into question. For one thing, the oft-cited assertion that HR 1 reduces spending by $99 billion is misleading. The $99 billion figure merely represents the amount that HR 1 reduces spending from the President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2011 budget — not reductions in actual spending. Trying to claim credit for a reduction in spending based on cuts in proposed spending is like claiming someone is following a diet because he had only five slices of pizza when he intended to have 10 slices!

In fact, HR 1 only reduces real federal spending by $66 billion compared to last year’s budget. This may seem like a lot to the average American but in the context of an overwhelming trillion-dollar budget and a national debt that could exceed 100 percent of GNP in September, it is barely a drop in the bucket.

One reason that HR 1 does not cut spending enough is that too many fiscal conservatives continue to embrace the fallacy that we can balance the budget without reducing spending on militarism. Until Congress realizes the folly of spending trillions pretending to impose democracy on the world we will never be able to seriously reduce spending.

Congress must not only reject the warfare state, it must also reject the welfare state. HR 1 is more aggressive in ending domestic spending than foreign spending, and does zero out some objectionable federal programs such as AmeriCorps. However, HR 1 leaves most of the current functions of the federal government undisturbed. This bill thus continues the delusion that we can have a fiscally responsible and efficient welfare state.

The failure to even attempt to address the serious threat the welfare-warfare state poses to American liberty and prosperity is the main reason why supporters of limited government and individual liberty ultimately should find HR 1 unsatisfactory. Only a rejection of the view that Congress can run the economy, run our lives, and run the world will allow us to make the spending reductions necessary to avert a serious financial crisis. This does not mean we should not prioritize and discuss how to gradually transition away from the welfare state in a manner that does not harm those currently relying on these programs. However, we must go beyond balancing the budget to transitioning back to a free society, and that means eventually placing responsibility for social welfare back in the hands of individuals and private institutions.

Despite the overheated rhetoric heard during the debate, HR 1 is a diversion from the difficult task of restoring constitutional government and a free economy and society. It is time for Congress to get serious about cutting spending, not merely tinkering around the edges of the proposed budget and kicking the can down the road for future generations. If we fail to act decisively now, there will soon come a time when both our money and our capacity to borrow will run out. When that happens, our ability to negotiate and play political games with spending priorities will be over. To avoid real chaos, the time to start dealing with our bloated government budget is right now.

Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) presented its results to the Financial Services Committee. As with most other politically-appointed commissions, the results of the FCIC’s investigation were easy to predict. Established by the same congress that gave us national healthcare and with a majority of its members appointed by those who seek to solve every problem with more government intervention, it was no surprise that the commission’s findings would favor increased government intervention in the economy. Minority members were not substantively involved in the commission’s operations, and the commission attempted to exclude their dissenting views by granting them very limited space to do so.

However, even the minority members of the commission failed to consider the most important cause of the financial crisis, namely the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy. Almost a century ago, in 1912, Ludwig von Mises published his great work The Theory of Money and Credit. This was the first systematic description of Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), which explains the origins of the business cycle in monetary expansion. This theory explains why so many businessmen make so many of the same errors at the same time. Yet not a single member of the commission undertook an analysis of the financial crisis from an Austrian economic viewpoint.

Instead, blame was placed on failures in financial regulation and corporate governance, excessive borrowing and risky investments, and expansion of subprime lending, among other factors. But none of these explanations can answer why this crisis occurred. Why was there excessive borrowing? Why was there an explosion of subprime lending? Why were there failures in corporate governance? Why did virtually no one except Austrian economists see this coming?

Without the Federal Reserve’s massive expansion of credit throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, there could have been no excessive borrowing or explosion of subprime lending. Through easy credit, the Fed initiated the economic boom that created the dot-com bubble. When that bubble burst the Fed pumped additional liquidity into the system, which led to a new boom that created the housing bubble. And now the Fed’s additional trillions of dollars in monetary pumping is creating yet another bubble. This is the exact opposite of stability in the marketplace and has nothing to do with free markets. It is central economic planning at its worst.

It is imperative that the historic record accurately reflect what actually happened. In the popular press we see columnists attempting to blame the financial crisis on the “small-government,” “free-market” policies of President Bush. Hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus payments, a $700 billion bailout program, and trillions of dollars of Federal Reserve credit facilities hardly represent small-government and free-market principles in action! On the contrary, these government interventions by both major parties demonstrate quite clearly our nation’s acceptance of crony capitalism.

Schoolchildren today are taught the myth that Herbert Hoover was a small-government President who did nothing to stop the Depression, while the truth is exactly the opposite. Fed Chairman Bernanke failed to understand the true cause of the Great Depression, so his policy prescriptions to combat the current crisis are understandably flawed. Unless we confront and correct false economic rhetoric, truly understand the causes of the economic crisis, and do away with our loose monetary policy, we will find ourselves in ever more vicious business cycles.