And that’s the difference between Mr. B and myself. He shakes his head in bafflement, I resume sharpening the M4 bayonet while crooning “Soon, soon, my precioussss…”
Kim du Toit
January 24, 2006
[I can relate to that–in so many ways.–Joe]
Category Archives: PNNL
Quote of the day–Ry Jones
He’s clearly nuts.
Ry Jones
December 27, 2005
[Referring to this guy thinking government regulation could prevent abuse of a mandatory Universal Biometric ID and such a system was inevitable. See also some of the on-line clashes I have had with him. He is also my number one suspect as to the person that gave PNNL the ‘tip’ to look at my blog and websites and if true is probably a conspirator in this felony. See about half way down on this page for more details.–Joe]
The law doesn’t apply to certain people
I have a five hour drive to work at the beginning of the week and a five hour drive home at the end of the week. Five hours of boredom–except my mind has lots of time to dwell on things. This time I was focused on the bigots at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In addition to the stress of the excess of adrenalin in my system without cruise control I found myself traveling above the speed limit numerous times and ended up cutting about 20 minutes off the usual drive time. I wouldn’t have mentioned this except after trying to sleep for a couple hours I decided to read a few blogs and immediately found Michelle Malkin has posted on something I can relate to.
It’s another example of where the law doesn’t apply to certain people but it does to others. Currently PNNL is in defiance (or has flat out lied about the existence of certain documents) of several Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act requests. And they still employee the people that committed a felony against me–costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income and appears to have destroyed my career. And that doesn’t even consider the adverse impact on national security due to the negative impact of losing my contribution on certain projects.
All the anger generated while driving may not have been entirely wasted–I thought of another way to put some pressure on them. I have some meetings arranged for talk about more traditional methods in the next few weeks but in the mean time I can start preparing a non-conventional surprise for the felons.
Security and freedom blogging
I recently received an email telling me they liked my little detours into security. I haven’t touch security recently for a number of reasons. Primarily my research in that area has be temporarily thwarted by PNNL defying the Freedom of Information Act. A FOIA request I made back in June which only required they make a duplicate of some of the files on a DVD and send it to me. I told them who had possession of the DVD, the project name, and the markings on the DVD. Very simple. None of the material I requested was classified and although it was originally considered Official Use Only that restriction had been lifted before I left and the material used on a proposal for a a completely open project which we won a contract for. They are in defiance of the law and my FOIA attorney is working on the problem but my involvement in security issues gets sidetracked by my anger over PNNL illegal activities. Unfortunately FOIA is a law that doesn’t have any enforcement teeth. It’s against the law from them to do what they are doing (or rather not doing) but there is no penalties for their illegal activity. Sort of like making it against the law for you to steal but if you get caught nothing happens–you don’t have to give back what you stole and you don’t get punished for your crime.
Anyway… sidetracked by my anger again…
Alphecca posted this about Bush authorizing eavesdropping on American citizens and wondered why a lot of the people on the libertarian/conservative side of the Blogosphere quiet or indifferent about it. I haven’t read any news reports that indicated anything of real news. From my readings (try The Puzzle Palace) and a few hints from other sources the NSA has been doing this for years if not decades. You shouldn’t act as if your electronic traffic is anymore private than if you were to have a conversation on a crowded elevator. Encrypting your traffic might make it as private as a conversation on a city street. I try to encrypt a fair portion of my email and encourage others to do the same. Most of my web browsing travels, at least part way, via encrypted channels. This is not because anything in the email or my browsing would be a problem for me if it were decrypted but because it raises the cost for the people doing the surveillance. The more people that do that the more likely they are to concentrate their limited resources on the people that are high probability threats to our national security. I talked about this at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in 2000 (do a search for “Huffman” on that page). If I had the time I would work on some other projects that would further consume resources and release them to the public. Basically, as others have pointed out, you can’t legislate restrictions on the government and expect them to obey the law. Government entities rarely obey the law (see here, here, here, here, and the first paragraph of this post for example) if it’s inconvenient for them to do so. Remember the famous Henry Kissinger quote? Of course this is the real reason for the 2nd Amendment–a last ditch resort for prevention of tyranny. But there are other things we can do to help that are much lower cost to us and exact at least a moderate cost from the agents of tyranny. Encrypting your electronic traffic is one of those things. It costs them far, far more computing resources to decrypt it that it does for you to encrypt it.
I spent some time catching up on my security reading and came across this on Bruce Schneier’s blog:
According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that characterizes today’s Internet, “consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.” Read the last seven words again.
What the FCC is now saying is that people cannot use encryption technology unless law enforcement has the back-door keys to it. Of course they have to know encryption is being used before they can stop you from using it or demand you give them the keys to the back-door. I covered that in my GRPC talk and I already distributed a tool to circumvent them to hundreds of people. What I haven’t done is tell all those hundreds of people about the hidden feature set in the tool–just the ones that paid money for the product.
I should work on some of my other tools. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance and I need to pay my share of that price. When the next tool is up and running I’ll talk about it more. In the mean time check out PGP and Thawte. The cost to you is low and the cost to “them” is high.
Someone at PNNL earns some brownie points
I previously reported PNNL screwed up a corporate American Express account I had at PNNL by not forwarding the bills to me after my wrongful termination. I received a bill from American Express last month then tried to call AE a couple times and had the call dropped or otherwise wasn’t able to get things straightened out. Honestly, I didn’t put much effort into it. I would get so angry over it that I just wanted to ignore it. I got another bill on Saturday and opened it up yesterday. Surprise! The bill has been paid. I presume someone at PNNL read my posting (I know some of them do read my blog) and made sure it got taken care of at that end.
Whoever you are, thank you.
Kim du Toit’s new blog
In case you hadn’t already heard Kim has a new blog up. In his email he said, “I got sick of anonymity.”
The new blog promises to show another side of Kim–a Kim more presentable to corporate America. I understand the sentiment. I have had my own problems with that.
Crossing T’s and dotting i’s
I got a call from Xenia yesterday. She said a big package arrived in the mail from PNNL. I asked her to open it and tell me about the contents. It was from Peggy Hevland who said they found some more stuff from my former office that appeared to be personal rather than work related. It was some paperwork I had filled out related to getting my security clearance. I didn’t have Xenia go through all of it but as near as I could tell it wasn’t anything important. They appear to be just tidying things up as best they can. Sort of like sweeping up the broken lamp and putting the furniture back in place after they broke into your house and raped you.
Barb had an interesting comment when she heard about it. I’d repeat it here but I generally don’t use that kind of language.
I wonder if they have run out of options on the FOIA and Privacy Act requests they have been defying and are trying to get things in order for the counter attack they know is coming.
Also of interest is that I suspect it’s someone from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that downloads all the pages off of my pnnl.info web site every so often. It’s nice to know they are still “thinking about me.” I often think of them too. That reminds me–I need to sharpen a couple of knives I used when I gutted and skinned my deer.
Harsh
I sometimes feel sorry for myself when I think of the crimes certain bigoted PNNL employees committed against me and are currently getting away with. But my troubles are nothing compared to what some of these people have suffered at the hands of like minded bigots. For example:
In 1993 I accepted a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence (my atty confirmed it wouldn’t affect my gun rights) in response to slapping my rebellious teenage son. A single offense, which 3 years later automatically made me a “prohibited person”. Now 13 years later I’m being charged with a felony because my son’s Ruger 10/22 was found in my home. I’m sorry but regardless of what several circuit courts around the US say, this is expost facto and unconstitutional. We learned that in 6th grade civics class!
I don’t have any problem with laws that are made public so a person would have knowledge of the consequences. But to take ones rights away retroactively is just NOT RIGHT! Even today judges do not warn defendants in domestic violence suits that they will lose their 2nd Amendment rights for life if convicted. If I had known that, I would have requested a jury trial and spent a fortune defending myself.
I know of another old timer that paid a $5 fine for domestic violence in 1947 and lost his rights and entire gun collection in 2000 due to this law. He is still happily married to the same woman 58 years later.
Bigotry is never pretty but when it’s enforced by the government it’s particularly ugly.
Busy day
I had planned to do the latest rifle postal match today. Results are due by midnight tonight. Then I got a call from someone else that is having some “unpleasant” dealings with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. We ended up talking for an hour or more. This person knew of other cases similar to mine where Battelle (the company that manages PNNL) decided to fire someone and then found the slimmest of pretexts to do so. Although the root of the problems we are having is very different we both had similar frustrations in getting action to be taken by the appropriate authorities. In both cases it appears that by the letter of the law there should be people at PNNL facing fines and/or jail but in practical terms the law doesn’t apply to them. We collaborated some and shared some information and brainstormed on different approaches. It was a useful exercise.
I got a letter from my Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) attorney. He resubmitted the FOIA request for material which PNNL previously told me doesn’t exist. I know the material exists because I created a lot of the material. He reworded things a little differently so maybe that will make a difference. There really needs to be some penalties for the jerks that defy FOIA and the Privacy Act. As near as I can tell the law says, “You must do this.” but there are no consequences if they don’t comply. After all the instances of injustice and illegality in their dealings I’m surprised there haven’t been some cases of heavy metal (lead comes to mind) poisoning or something at Battelle and/or PNNL.
After I had dealt with the phone call and a couple of other things that just had to be done today I was faced with doing the rifle match in both the dark and in the rain. I’ve done both, but never at the same time. I decided to pass on the match this time. I did some rifle shooting in the last month. I nailed a deer in the spine of the neck at 255 yards last week so I guess that will have to be sufficient for now. I really shouldn’t procrastinate so much on these things. If I need to shoot something I should just get out there and do it. I participated in an IPSC match (“combat pistol”) yesterday so it’s not like I’m completely ignoring getting some trigger time in. I wasn’t shooting all that bad but I wasn’t shooting very good either. I came in 4th overall out of 14. If I hadn’t had the one miss I would have come in 3rd. More practice is needed–after I start work I should have time to hit the indoor ranges in the Seattle area.
The jerks at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
I just got a call from American Express. They claim I am past due on a bill. When I worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory I was (nearly) required to have a “Corporate Account” with AMEX. The last travel I did for PNNL was in April and there were airplane tickets and a hotel room put on the card. There was also planned travel for the end of May a few days after they suspended me. I signed travel reports for both those trips and I thought everything was all settled. Apparently it wasn’t. Perhaps the hotel charged for a room that wasn’t canceled or something. I don’t know. In any case the jerks at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory didn’t forward me the statements that came to my former work address. The account has been turned over to collections.
For those of you that don’t quite understand why I have to pay the bill for a “company card” the way PNNL and AMEX arranged things was for the individual to be responsible for the bill. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory then paid AMEX for the charges which were legitimate company expenses. Fair enough. I could take my wife on a company trip, put all the expenses on the card, then pay the portion due to the extra expense of my wife at the end without having to split hotel bills, etc. It would also put more responsibility on the individual to not abuse the card. I didn’t have a problem with it… until now.
The bottom line is that AMEX now has a valid address for me and will be sending me all the missing statements. It’s my responsibility to pay the bill, try to collect from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and get my credit reports straightened out. A bad credit report could even affect the job offer I have in hand. I don’t think it would be possible to fully communicate the level of ‘annoyance’ I have for the jerks at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at this moment.
I brought my favorite rifle and pistol with me to the Seattle area where I am now. They both need to be cleaned. Cleaning them will make me feel better. Wish I had brought my chemistry set and had a place to play with it here. That would help even more.
PNNL.info site update or “The law doesn’t apply to us”
I updated my web site on the bigotry at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The changes were about the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request I mentioned in this post. PNNL responded this week saying:
PNNL completed a diligent, thorough search for responsive documents and was unable to find identify or locate any existing records consistent with your request.
As of May of this year those “records” (computer programs actually) did exist. I created a lot of them. My co-workers used that code (computer program code) in other projects. Those computer programs were delivered to numerous customers. If what they just told me was true then they would have had to rewritten numerous computer programs, tested them, updated all their customers with the new versions, ensured those customers deleted all the old copies, and deleted large portions of their source control archives–all within two months. Some customers were delivered source code (I did training for one customer on it), those customers would have had to also rewritten their derived works, tested the resultant programs, and deleted their source control archives. If they were able to do that then which government contract did they charge those efforts to? I don’t believe they did any of that. I believe PNNL chose to defy FOIA.
Barb said (paraphrasing), “What did you expect? They don’t care what the law is. They don’t have to follow the rules.” Of course in the practical sense that is true even if technically they do have to follow the law. I had two different lawyers tell me it looked to them that PNNL employees had committed a felony in the actions they took against me. Those people, as near as I can determine, still work there.
PNNL accused of more wrongdoing
From the Tri-City Herald: Suit alleges lab, Battelle sabotaged software:
A consultant for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has sued the lab and Battelle Memorial Institute, alleging they sabotaged a software program he was supposed to market, then stole his ideas on how to write a better product to peddle on their own.
[name deleted by request] claims the lab contacted him in 2001 to find potential buyers for PalmFon software.
…
[deleted name] in his 49-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Richland, alleges the software was defective from the start or made nonfunctional later so his company wouldn’t be able to sell it.
His lawsuit also claims employees at Battelle Memorial Institute, which runs the lab, realized after 9/11 that they had a hot item that could make millions of dollars for the nonprofit institute without having to go through a middle-man such as [deleted name] and his company, [deleted] Inc.
…
[deleted name] alleges that when the lab couldn’t get him to release his rights to the software, they gave him a final product that wouldn’t work. He says PNNL then began developing its own version of a parallel program that would compete with what he was trying to deliver.
I have no inside knowledge of the validity of the claims. I just know PNNL allowed some employees to commit felonies against me and get away with it–so far.
Quote of the day–Samuel Goldwyn
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Samuel Goldwyn
Blunt instrument updates
Today I checked on the status of a couple of the “blunt instruments” I’m using on Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Since I hadn’t heard back on them for weeks I sort of guessed they had been dropped and I wasn’t going to get anywhere with them. I was wrong.
The first person I talked to said the issue was still VERY much alive it was just that he had been buried in stuff and was reluctant to share the work load with others. He has a couple of hard deadlines to meet and couldn’t work on it this minute. My project had received some attention a couple days ago and would be getting more attention soon. I felt pretty good about things. He asked a few more good questions which I gave short answers to and then followed up with detailed email answers.
The second person I talked to said I had gone about things in the wrong manner. No big deal–the person in the appropriate channel will be contacting me soon. I got the feeling that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t called back twice to find out the story. I was very pleased with this. I was afraid I would just be told to “go away.” That could still happen but at least I believe I will get a chance to present my findings and have a reasonable chance of convincing them to take action.
One “blunt instrument” should be in there hands by now. That is the appeal of their denial of my Privacy Act request on all the information they have in their files, email, etc. about the “investigation” they did on me. I hired a lawyer in D.C. that specializes in FOIA/Privacy Act requests. They claimed the Privacy Act didn’t apply to them, but both my and the lawyer’s read of the Act is that it specifically says it applies to contractors that perform a government agency function–so “hand it over!” Nothing back on the appeal yet.
And since PNNL has received the FOIA request I talked about the other day by now I might as well reveal it here. I asked for:
A list of all Pacific Northwest National Laboratory computer programs that use the FlashTek software library or rely on derivations of the FlashTek software library and/or it’s source code.
A list, complete with contact information, of all PNNL customers and contacts that have copies of those programs.
Most, perhaps all, of these programs will have been produced in the Cyber Security Group at PNNL. The source code can be easily identified by a copyright notice similar to the following:
/////////////////////////
// Copyright FlashTek
// Joe Huffman
// Joe@joehuffman.org
/////////////////////////
In case the name “FlashTek” doesn’t mean anything to you, that is the name I use for all my private business stuff. From software to explosives FlashTek is my dba (Doing Business As) name. To speed up development of several projects at PNNL my coworkers and I used some of my previously developed code. PNNL never bothered to obtain a written license for that and I never bothered to ask for one. The implied threat with the FOIA request is that I will now ask for a license and/or demand they and all their customers stop using my previously developed software. This is a really nasty thing to do and I don’t really want to do it. If they would give me all the information I asked for via the Privacy Act request then I, almost for certain, would not bring up the software license issue.
There is one more “blunt instrument” that I haven’t checked up on. I’ll just wait a while for that one.
Previous posts:
Blunt instrument number five
Case blown open–maybe
Reconsideration
Kim duToit and hiding in the closet
I’ve had a couple people ask me if I had any clues what was going on with Kim duToit’s site, why it was down, etc. I also saw a lot of people visit my site via search engines with query strings about Kim. About all I could determine without given him a call (which I was hesitant to do because I don’t really know him that well) was that a connection could be made to the machine but it was refusing requests–someone had turned the site off.
AnarchAngel has the story, the essence of which is:
I have communicated briefly with Connie Du Toit, and there is a business issue requiring Kim and Connie to take the site down right now, and without any notice. They can’t provide details yet but expect some information in a few days.
The last few months have had a very sobering effect on me. Think about this:
Q: How many gun bloggers openly use their real names?
A: Not many.
Q: What percentage of those have had “problems” of some sort because of that?
A: A lot.
Q: How many anti-freedom bloggers do you know of that have “had problems?”
A: None that I know of. But I don’t “travel in those circles.” Anyone that you know of?
If you have to “stay in the closet” to be safe then how safe are you? Did the Jews in Nazi Germany increase their safety by “keeping their heads down”? It’s a predator/prey type situation. If you go into hiding then you are saying, “I am the prey.” You embolden the enemies of freedom. They become the full time predators. They are at the top of the food-chain. If we don’t bring a few of those predators down, feed on them, and scatter their sun-bleached bones on the range among our empty brass shell casing we have nothing but fear and hiding in our future.
Careful now. Think about this. Who are our true predators? They aren’t just someone that advocates for their own imagined safety at our expense. The predators are those that attempt to harm us personally (socially, financially, etc. as well as physically–which is unlikely) because they do not want our voices heard in open debate. If you were to target someone for the loss of their job just because they advocated some new restriction on firearms then you are no better than those that targeted me or Kim for our activism. In essence you cannot initiate “force”–you can only respond when they have initiated the use of “force” against you or another innocent party. Don’t think this means you have to “play nice”. Don’t just whine about things for a while. If they initiate “force” they have given you the signal for you to transform into a ferocious predator. You aren’t done until you are napping in the sun with a full belly and the vultures are feeding on the remnants of the carcass.
Also on this topic:
The closet
CCRKBA blasts bigotry
Fred of Fred’s M14 Stocks on being on a list
Thoughts on coming out of the closet
Coming out of the closet has it’s price
Coming out of the closet
Blunt instrument number five
I just pushed the “Send” button on another FOIA request to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This one will probably cause some people to mess their pants and perhaps lose their jobs. And that’s even if I don’t lift a finger from now on. The unfortunate part is that the people most directly in the path of this particular “instrument” are the one’s least responsible. It could cost PNNL a lot of money to deal with the implications of this. And that doesn’t count the embarrassment, loss of confidence, and potential loss of business they will suffer with their customers. Their best course of action at this point is to give up protecting the people that committed the felonies in the process of terminating my employment at PNNL. Things will be much more pleasant for everyone, except the felons, if they “see the light”.
I checked on the status of two of the other “blunt instruments” (there are five total now) that are working their way toward them. I don’t have anything to report yet although I expected I something before now. This latest one I will be able to report on in no more than two weeks.
Thank you Queen of the Sky
My comment on a posting over at Diary of a (Fired) Flight Attendant was approved and the Queen herself looked at the PNNL info website (I could tell from the details in my log file that it was her). The links I left in the comment should get some more traffic. Plus the email I sent to a reporter might generator some more interest in the case.
More dooced stories in the news
You have to register to read them but excerpts follow the links.
Philadelphia Daily News: Your blog could get you recruited – or fired
For businesses, blogs and other forms of personal Internet communication constitute a new frontier fraught with promise and peril. On the one hand, companies are scrambling to use them as a recruiting and marketing tool, and are encouraging some employees to blog. On the other, they are wondering how to deal with the damage that current and former employees and dissatisfied customers can do on the Web.
The result is a “mild level of social panic,” Rainie said.
“The lawyers and the marketers are, in many cases, at least in covert war with each other.”
Miami Herald: Delta employee fired for blogging sues airline
A former Delta Air Lines flight attendant who says she was fired weeks after she posted photos of herself in uniform on her Internet blog has filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the airline.
Ellen Simonetti, whose job was based in Atlanta but lives in Austin, Texas, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, saying that male colleagues with potentially insensitive material on their blogs have gone unpunished.
The case could plow fresh legal ground on whether a company can take action against an employee for operating a blog. Simonetti was featured in a recent People magazine article that mentioned workers who were fired for blog content.
I really don’t have much interest in suing PNNL. It wasn’t PNNL, per say, that did me wrong. It was the individuals that used false information, such as claims I used government computers to host personal websites, that are to blame. In fact, I’ve had two lawyers tell me there were probably felonies committed. The problem is that it’s difficult to get a prosecutor to take the case and a private attorney typically can’t prosecute for a crime, just take civil action. I still have lots of things to try and just thought of a new one yesterday. It’s a rather nasty thing to do and it will hurt the wrong people, as well as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their customers, but if they don’t turn over the files on the investigation under the Privacy Act Information Request (their denial is being appealed) I’ll use it.
Quote of the day–Doug Huffman
We have a legal system, not a “justice” system.
Doug Huffman
September 8, 2005 9:27 PM
[Lots of other people have said this too. I am unable to determine the originator of the phrase. — Joe]
Performance reviews from PNNL
I finally got the performance reviews all scanned in and the “business sensitive” information blacked out. You can see an overview on this page with links to the actual images. When the images come up in your browser you may need to resize the image to be full size so the text is readable. Here are some quotes from my most recent review, completed in January of 2005:
- “Joe is a very good engineer and innovator. He has the ability to see through apparent complexity and find elegant solutions to difficult problems.”
- “Joe is also a good leader. He as technical credibility as well as a diplomatic disposition that allows him to direct teams to do very good work while avoiding conflicts.”
- “Joe has a great future at the lab due in part to his expertise and interpersonal relationship style.”
- “Joe did an excellence job on the [deleted project name] project. The client was very happy with the end result.”
-
“Joe brings a (sic) unique perspective and set of experiences which allow him to make contributions to the success of a project. Joe shows an excellent ability to plan tasks, manage scope, and lead a project team to the end goal of a project.” - “Over the last year Joe has assisted with various IED problems and has brought a number of solutions forward for discussion and evaluation, as his explosives background and personal research gives him a good feel for the issues involved.”
I received “Meets Expectations” on all but one item. That item was was “Acts with Integrity and Trust” where I received a rating of “Exceeds Expectations”.
