Category Archives: Freedom

Cool!

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This article is very interesting for two reasons. The first is:

A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks.

The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover. Encryption software is widely used by companies and government agencies, notably in portable computers that are especially susceptible to theft.

The development, which was described on the group’s Web site Thursday, could also have implications for the protection of encrypted personal data from prosecutors.

The move, which cannot be carried out remotely, exploits a little-known vulnerability of the dynamic random access, or DRAM, chip. Those chips temporarily hold data, including the keys to modern data-scrambling algorithms. When the computer’s electrical power is shut off, the data, including the keys, is supposed to disappear.

In a technical paper that was published Thursday on the Web site of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the group demonstrated that standard memory chips actually retain their data for seconds or even minutes after power is cut off.

When the chips were chilled using an inexpensive can of air, the data was frozen in place, permitting the researchers to easily read the keys — long strings of ones and zeros — out of the chip’s memory.

“Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power,” Edward W. Felten, a Princeton computer scientist, wrote in a Web posting. “Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.”

That’s cool enough, but this is just as cool:

The issue of protecting information with disk encryption technology became prominent recently in a criminal case involving a Canadian citizen who late in 2006 was stopped by United States customs agents who said they had found child pornography on his computer.

When the agents tried to examine the machine later, they discovered that the data was protected by encryption. The suspect has refused to divulge his password. A federal agent testified in court that the only way to determine the password otherwise would be with a password guessing program, which could take years.

A federal magistrate ruled recently that forcing the suspect to disclose the password would be unconstitutional.

Not that a child pornographer may be able to get away with his crime but that you can password protect your data and the government can’t force you to potentially incriminate yourself.

Apparently the government is always right

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Josh Horwitz apparently believes if a government declares slavery for blacks, or extermination of Jews, or capital punishment for homosexuals the law of the land then the targeted people need to just accept it. Not only does he apparently believe it is true he wants to ensure such a government won’t have to worry about serious resistance:

It is not because of sloppy draftsmanship that our Constitution prohibits treason and provides the national government with authority to “suppress insurrections.” A reading of the Second Amendment that finds a right of individuals to possess arms so that they can engage in armed rebellion against the government when they perceive it to be “tyrannical” is irreconcilable with these and other provisions of the Constitution, as well as our history.

Odd, isn’t it, that the same set of people that just successfully overthrew a tyrannical government in the late 1770’s would write a constitution with the intent the new government should be able to disarm the populace so future generations would not be able to do the very thing they had to do?

Of course the above is a rhetorical question. Horwitz has his head “in the sand” (this is a family friendly blog). If you read some of the amicus briefs you will see Horwitz gets his head handed to him.

More evidence for global warming

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Barb says the joke is getting old. I still think it is funny. Maybe I’m just slow on some things.

In any case there is more evidence of global warming climate change:

Are the world’s ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during his “Inconvenient Truth” lectures about mankind’s alleged impact on the global climate.

Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in recent years.

As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception — Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather.

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents.

As people continue to push for restrictions on human activities to prevent global warming climate change you know it has to be they have an agenda other than what they claim it is. It is my belief its about desire for government control rather than freedom. Freedom is too scary for most people.

It’s not about preventing crime

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A terrible crime is committed so government officials want to Do SomethingTM to prevent it from happening again. Never mind that prior restraint is supposedly illegal. Never mind that what they propose is illegal and a felony. They admit, in virtually the same breath they used to push their proposals, that their proposals won’t work:

But after the news conference, state Sen. John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat and longtime gun control advocate, acknowledged they would not have prevented the NIU shootings. Authorities have said the NIU gunman legally obtained the weapons he used.

If they know their proposal would not have prevented the crime then it’s obvious their proposal is intended for the stated purpose. It’s about something else. What is that something else? I can’t say for certain. In fact it may be they don’t even know. The question these bigots need to be asked, “Since you know this proposal won’t prevent such crimes, what’s the real reason you advocate more restrictions on firearms?”

ATF job description

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Kevin Cullen is from Boston so it’s no surprise he doesn’t have a clue about guns:

So, some cow chip-kickin’ senator from Louisiana doesn’t want Mike Sullivan, the US attorney in Boston, to become head of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms because Sullivan wants to make it harder for people to get guns.

Um, isn’t that what the head of the ATF is supposed to do?

Let me spell it out for you Mr. Cullen, you’re from Boston so I understand the concepts are difficult for you.

The head of the ATF, just like all other government officials are required to uphold the constitution. Until such time as the Bill of Rights is declared null and void it is the NOT the job of the head of the ATF to make it harder for people to get guns. In fact the “Head of the ATF” should be actually be the CEO of a convenience store by the same name (actually you should tack the ‘E’ on to the end of it but I’m not going to complain if that market is handled by a separate chain that specializes).

TSA is so screwed

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How are they going to defend against this new binary explosive?

[Thanks to JoeyD Sr.]

Quote of the day–Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

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Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is different from any other ideological and social system, and is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history. The ideological and social system of feudalism has a place only in the museum of history. The ideological and social system of capitalism has also become a museum piece in one part of the world (in the Soviet Union), while in other countries it resembles “a dying person who is sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills”, and will soon be relegated to the museum. The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt.

Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
Little Red Book
“On New Democracy” (January 1940), Selected Works,  Vol. II, pp. 360-61.
[I ran across this book in the Paper Source store in Bellevue, Washington yesterday. A very weird place to find it. I was interested in reading it but didn’t want to spend money that would benefit some communist so I found the book on-line. I need to read the Communist Manifesto sometime too. So much of Marx and other communist philosophy infiltrates our politics and even everyday thinking it would help to be able to identify it and point out the errors more readily. As you can see from the quote above their predictions and proclamations have less that stellar accuracy.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Patrick Henry

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You may in vain mention to them the duties upon tea, etc. These things, they will say, do not affect them. But tell them of the robbery of the magazine, and that the next step will be to disarm them, and they will be ready to fly to arms to defend themselves.

Patrick Henry
William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, Va. 1993), p. 279.
[If only it were true now.–Joe]

Ruling however they feel like it

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While I applaud this ruling I can’t help but be cynical:

Houston’s adult bookstore backers Wednesday hailed a federal court’s decision to overturn a 35-year-old state law that banned promotion or sale of sex toys. But the decision won’t go into effect until the court issues its mandate in early March — long after the industry’s lucrative pre-Valentine’s Day season.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law violates the privacy protections of the 14th Amendment.

“Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its law to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct,” the judges wrote in the 2-1 ruling. “This case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of of consensual private intimate conduct.”

The judges alluded to Lawrence v. Texas, a Houston case that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the state’s sodomy law in 2003.

So tell me why this same reasoning doesn’t result in the overturning of laws restricting recreational drugs, prostitution, gambling, and firearms? I can only conclude the judges rule however they want to rule then find a reason to justify themselves afterward.

Quote of the day–Jeffrey B. Teichert

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In the end, the only statistic that matters in Second Amendment discussions is that at least sixty million (and perhaps over one hundred million) people were murdered by their own governments during the twentieth century. Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Fifth Auxiliary Right, 104 Yale L.J. 995, 1025 (1995) (book review). In America today, the necessity of exercising the last resort of revolution appears remote. But a Constitution is not for the moment – it is for the ages. The people’s right to alter or abolish a despotic government is fundamental to their sovereignty. The means to exercise that right should not be entrusted to an exclusive military class, any more than the freedom of speech should be entrusted only to government spokespersons.

Jeffrey B. Teichert
February 12, 2008
District of Columbia, et al., v. Dick Anthony Heller
Page 21.
BRIEF AMICUS CURIAE OF ORGANIZATIONS AND SCHOLARS CORRECTING MYTHS AND MISREPRESENTATIONS COMMONLY DEPLOYED BY OPPONENTS OF AN INDIVIDUAL-RIGHTS-BASED INTERPRETATION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT

Community policy

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Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence made this statement (and here) the other day:

These incidents all highlight the tensions involved when individuals argue that their “personal liberty” outweighs the rule of law and trumps community policy as decided by our governmental systems.

I presume this means we should just ignore the “personal liberty” issue if it is in conflict with community policy because of the tension it causes. Here are some other community policy issues decided by our governmental systems that I’m certain Helmke will agree with:


From Leavenworth, WA September 2, 2007. Notice the weapons prohibition on the right.


From St. Louis Missouri, August 13, 2006.

And here are thousands of more laws and regulations affecting the possession and use of firearms. “Community policies” that severely restrict and in some cases ban the exercise of a constitutionally guaranteed right. And according to Helmke’s organization all these thousands of laws are not enough. The “community policies” get a “failing score” in his world view.

I can’t help but note the similarities between the “community policies” above and those from not too many years ago. Then, as now, there were people who argued their personal liberties trumped “community policy” and it caused tension.

[Except where noted the following pictures are from About.com: African-American History.]

From http://www.cah.utexas.edu/ssspot/lesson_plans/lesson_10.php
From http://www.cah.utexas.edu/ssspot/lesson_plans/lesson_10.php

And here are some laws representing “community policy” Helmke should feel comfortable with.

Helmke and friends argue they just want to prevent violence. They argue they just want “common sense” laws. They argue no business should be forced to allow “those people” on their premises. They argue no colleges/university should be forced to allow “those people” on their campus. They argue “those people” should be fingerprinted and registered by the government.

Those arguments are the same as those of the Jim Crow era and are no more valid.

The other similarity that cannot be ignored–same political party has been claiming “community policy” should not be trumped by constitutionally guaranteed personal liberties. Democrats–the party of bigots.

Quote of the day–Louis D. Brandeis

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Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Louis D. Brandeis
[Brandeis could have been talking about me. I’m a great believer in playing by the rules of your enemy. If the government declares me, via ignoring the law, their enemy then I figure I can play by the same (lack of) rules.–Joe]

Next on the restricted materials list

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I’ve long ranted about the futility of restricting explosive materials. Most of the time I’m a little circumspect on the details but after this massive explosion some news sources aren’t so circumspect:

Sugar dust is just one of a variety of forms of dust that can, under the right circumstances, combust and cause an explosion.

Explosions are not uncommon in places like grain silos, but have been known to happen in sugar factories in the U.S. and abroad, much like the one in Georgia Thursday.

The dust itself can be created in a variety of ways during the refining process.

Anything from sparks from machinery to a lit cigarette could have ignited the blaze.

The dust also has to have a certain concentration to support combustion fast enough to maintain the explosion.

Those are 100 foot high silos in the picture below.

Lets see them restrict access to sugar! It’s for the children…

Quote of the day–James Russell Lowell

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Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

James Russell Lowell
[Which is why we were supposed to have a Republic with a constitution which enumerated limited powers to the government and with guaranteed rights to the people. Unfortunately people found out they could ignore the constitution without consequences and we now have something much closer to a democracy with all the adverse effects.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Karl Marx

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The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

Karl Marx
[Just because Marx happened to be right about this year’s election doesn’t mean he had even a glimmer of a solution to the problem. Super Tuesday wasn’t.–Joe]

One shot, one kill at 2100 meters

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Ry reports on a new Army sniping record from Afghanistan by a Arfcom member. Awesome!

If you are wondering at all the amazing sniping shots coming out of Afghanistan you aren’t alone. I knew the high altitude would make a difference but I didn’t know exactly how much until I ran some numbers through Modern Ballistics. Below you see the numbers for the .50 BMG shooting a high end bullet/cartridge with a gun zeroed at sea level for 1000 yards at a target at 2300 yards (2100 meters) away for various altitudes. Notice the difference in expected group size as the altitudes goes from 0 to 10000 feet. Notice the windage difference. All those things help but still, the shooter and spotter had to be top notch and have a little luck as well. Assuming a target of 18 inches wide and 24 inches tall the altitude difference changed the odds of a hit from about 10% to 20% (not shown).

Good job SnakeaterM24!

Modern Ballistics Data Created: 02/04/08 09:24:30

Firearm: Default
Cartridge: .50 BMG HMI with 750 gr. A-MAX
Conditions: Standard Conditions.
Range: 2300
Altitude (ft):           0   1000   2000   3000   4000   5000   6000   7000   8000  10000

Drop (inches)         2263   2193   2129   2070   2016   1966   1920   1877   1837  1765
Height (inches)      -1609  -1539  -1475  -1416  -1362  -1313  -1267  -1224  -1184 -1112
Height (moa)        -66.84 -63.93 -61.26 -58.82 -56.58 -54.52 -52.61 -50.83 -49.16 -46.17
Height (mils)       -19.44 -18.60 -17.82 -17.11 -16.46 -15.86 -15.30 -14.79 -14.30 -13.43
Windage (inches)    258.89 244.21 230.39 217.47 205.43 194.19 183.72 173.94 164.81 148.27
Windage (moa)        10.75  10.14   9.57   9.03   8.53   8.06   7.63   7.22   6.84   6.16
Windage (mils)        3.13   2.95   2.78   2.63   2.48   2.35   2.22   2.10   1.99   1.79
Mid rng Ht (in)       78.8   79.2   79.5   79.8   80.2   80.5   80.8   81.1   81.4   81.9
Midrange (yds)       532.1  535.4  538.6  541.8  544.9  547.9  550.8  553.7  556.4  561.8
Zero (yds)          1000.0 1008.1 1016.0 1023.6 1031.2 1038.7 1045.9 1053.0 1060.0 1073.4
Near zero (yds)        5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3    5.3
P.B. Size (in)      157.66 158.35 159.03 159.69 160.33 160.95 161.56 162.15 162.72 163.82
P.B. Range (yds)      1182   1192   1202   1212   1222   1231   1240   1249   1258   1275
Velocity (ft/S)       1118   1157   1200   1245   1290   1335   1380   1425   1469   1553
Energy (ft-lbs)       2082   2229   2397   2581   2772   2970   3173   3382   3593   4018
PF                     839    868    900    934    968   1002   1035   1069   1102   1165
Time (S)             3.941  3.857  3.779  3.705  3.637  3.573  3.514  3.458  3.406  3.312
Group (inches)       81.20  77.10  73.25  69.68  66.37  63.31  60.47  58.02  55.56  51.17
Group (moa)           3.37   3.20   3.04   2.89   2.76   2.63   2.51   2.41   2.31   2.12
Group (mils)          0.98   0.93   0.88   0.84   0.80   0.76   0.73   0.70   0.67   0.62
Groups <= desired    0.00%  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%  0.00%  0.20%  0.40%  0.60%  1.20%  1.20%
1 grp of <= desired    0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  500.0  250.0  166.7   83.3   83.3
—–
Constants:
M.V. (ft/S)        2794   M.V. SDev (fps)    10.0   B.C.               1.050 
Mass (grains)      750    Sight Ht (in)      1.50   Indicated SA (moa) 27.19 
SA Offset (moa)    0.00   Incline (deg)      0      Wind (mph)         10    
Wind error (mph)   2      Wind (deg.)        90     Temp (F)           59    
Barometer          29.53  Gravity            32.17  Shots per group    5     
Bullet acc. (moa)  0.50   Desired Grp (moa)  1.00   Group Simulations  500   
—-
Firearm name: Default
Firearm notes:
Cartridge name: .50 BMG HMI with 750 gr. A-MAX
Cartridge notes: BC is for Hornady A-Max.  MV is for max load of H50BMG.
Conditions name: Standard Conditions.
Conditions notes:

Quote of the day–Paul McCracken

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I am not an Economist.  I am an honest man!

Paul McCracken
[More stuff on economists as I continue listening to The Big Three in Economics by Mark Skousen. Did you know that Marx bragged about “making a killing” in the stock market? Or that Adam Smith, a big proponents of zero tariffs, worked most of his life as a customs official collecting tariffs?–Joe]

Quote of the day–Karl Marx’s mother

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If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it … it would have been much better.

Karl Marx’s mother
[I’ve been listening to The Big Three in Economics by Mark Skousen. Fascinating stuff about Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Hegel, and several others. Then there are the unsolved problems of economics. If I were younger I might consider trying to solve some of them. It’s all very interesting stuff. And of course the huge impact these various theories had on the entire world. Marx is responsible for more deaths and suffering than any other human who as ever lived. Adam Smith played a huge part in the industrial revolution.–Joe]

Think of the security advantages

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It’s not exactly a trend but it’s a start. I think the TSA should mandated it. It would make more sense from a security standpoint than what they do now. And it would only be slightly more offensive to some people. Others, including myself, would consider it less offensive.

Fly naked on nudist holiday flight.

Someone HATES the TSA

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I think the TSA has an impossible job. I think they are way out of bounds on the 4th Amendment. I think they are blowing smoke just to try and keep their jobs. I think they should be abolished and that $5,000,000,000 per year should go toward something useful. But I don’t hate them.

This guy hates them. And I guess I can see his point. Here is a sample:

Hate is a pretty strong word. But it’s not strong enough to express how I feel about the TSA — the Transportation Security Administration or Thousands Standing Around, depending on your point of view — which runs those security checkpoints at American airports.

I may fear the IRS, and I may dread the DMV — but for shear bureaucratic stupidity and its affront to personal liberties, the TSA has earned a special place of loathing in my heart.

[…]

My family and I – which means all three kids, including the baby – were returning home from vacation last week and dutifully filed in line for the ol’ “Papers, please” routine at the Honolulu airport. I handed our five boarding passes and our ID to the lone TSA guy who gets paid to look at boarding documents and, according to TSA chief Hawley, use them to root out would-be terrorists every day. But this genius couldn’t find any of our names on the boarding passes and handed them back to me, demanding that I show him where the names were. Heck, I didn’t know. It’s not my yob, man.

[…]

Apparently there was something in our “behavior” and/or our “documents” which triggered the crackerjack TSA security guards’ suspicions. Yes, a middle-class white family with three young children, including a 16-month-old baby, returning from vacation set off alarm bells in some bureaucrat’s mind. So we were instructed to move to the side for “enhanced” screening while all of our carry-on bags, including the baby’s stroller, were hand-inspected.

Out of morbid curiosity, I asked if this was simply a “random check” that we’d been so lucky to be honored with. The terse reply from the agent on the front-lines of the war against terrorists was a simple, “No.” So our selection couldn’t even be explained away by the stupidity of random selection; these people intentionally singled us out as a potential security threat.

Barney Fife then proceeded to get a female agent to pat down my wife and two daughters before feeling me up-and-down himself. At which point my wife was instructed to hold the baby out with outstretched arms like Rafiki did with Simba on the rock ledge in “The Lion King” for a pat-down. Absolutely ridiculous.

In the meantime, another crackerjack TSA agent was busy rifling through our carry-on bags, and lo and behold, he caught my wife trying to smuggle onboard a tube of skin cream which exceeded the federally-mandated 3-ounce limit. Goober informed us he was confiscating the potentially lethal tube of Lubriderm, much to the relief of the other passengers standing in line who clearly were worried it might be used to send us all to a watery grave in Davy Jones’ Locker somewhere over the Pacific.

With one of our bags now 5 ounces lighter, we finally were allowed to leave Checkpoint Charlie and proceed to the gate. Now for the kicker.

When we finally get home and unpack, I discover that the girls had inadvertently packed a pair of metal scissors they found at the condo where we stayed in their carry-on knapsack. Neither the TSA’s expensive, super-sensitive X-ray machine nor hand-inspection of the bag detected this pair a metal scissors – but they did find the Lubriderm! Don’t you feel safer now?

And here is a video of someone actually sneaking a simulated bomb through security. Anyone that doesn’t believe we need to explore different means for airplane security is either willfully ignorant or has some agenda they aren’t sharing.