Wired State

Whimsley Wimps Out and Gives the O'Reilly Cult Operative Alex Howard the Last Word

Well, it's surprising that he let it go on as long as he did (most wouldn't go even one round) but in the end Tom Slee, author of the Whimsley blog, cut off my debate of Alex Howard, (which I originally discussed here) likely because conflict made him uncomfortable in the end, and he was likely under pressure from others appalled at allowing a confrontation of a web 2.0 god to go on for any length.

Alex Howard is allowed to have the last word, and it's a disturbing intellectual fraud:

The reason I'm unable to "admit" that what I do is PR, in other words and to your evident consternation, is that it's simply not true.

This is a really scary proposition, because it means that we can't insist on meaning and universal standards, that any cultist is able to fragmentize and undermine them and wrap his ego in their glory -- attack the false premise, and he cries "uncivil" and "troll"; attack the lie that an evangelist for software is in any sense a credible journalist at its root, and simply suffer silencing and blocking.

See, this is why I attack the open source software cult so vigorously. It's one thing if it undermines the old craft of journalism and old media with a new "business model" based on customer demand for "free" of course engineered into the architecture. But it's quite another if the open source cult then attacks the very premise of professional, critical journalism that tries to avoid bias by presenting various facts and views so the reader can decide himself.

Criticism of the open source movement is not new, and doesn't only come from me. Back in 2001 on the trendy tech magazine Wired, for example, Farhad Manjoo explained matter-of-factly after attending an O'Reilly Open Source Conference what was the dirty little secret of open source: big IT firms and other big businesses use Perl, Apache and Linux in their own systems.

Manjoo called this the dirty little secret of the big firms, who didn't talk about it, presumably to hide what each thought was a competitive advantage or even went against their own firm's devotion to proprietary software. But the dirty secret is about open source, too: all those legions of volunter geeks working with such dedication for free in a  modern-day collective communes hardly seem to fit with an ethos that involves ruthless capitalism by large corporations. Yet it's precisely because the big firms take over open source projects much of the time that we can even speak of them as being ubiquitous on the Internet (a favourite argument of open source cultists when you object to their culture is to tell you "the whole Internet" depends on it).

And when they take over the projects or simply just become a power user of the software, they manage it better -- the other dirty little secret of open source. As Majoo ercounts, this was said by one speaker at the conference, Fred Baker, then a "fellow" at Cisco and the former head of the Internet Engineering Task Force -- but to much disdain. What he means is that people who are paid for their work show up on time or get fired if they are lazy and that is an important aspect of the culture of functioning software. Another speaker from Morgan, Stanley claimed the problem with proprietary software is that you can't get answers quickly and fix bugs and you are talking to 1-800 numbers where the clerks can't even spell the product you're calling about. (This is a function of globalization of labour, the shipping of jobs overseas to cut costs, and the desire of Big IT not to use some of their vast wealth reserves for creating jobs in this country.) But I guess this speaker, W. Philip Moore, never had to try to reach a $50/hour IT consultant hired to make the Drupal on a website work, busy with multiple clients, or struggle with a Wordpress blog by combing numerous sometimes contradictory fan sites.

As I've explained, O'Reilly is aggressive and hegemonic in his various projects, including Code for America, and wants to walk into every city, scoop up the city's data such as lists of addresses, and make apps for them that will be either "for the public good" as he and his friends view it, or will "create business opportunities" for app engineers and others, also his friends and likeminded. I've complained that this isn't a democratic process, and that it's driven by the wacky notions of "open source business" which often aren't sustainable for anybody but the high-priced consultant.

And for once I had company, as Whimsely (Tom Slee) of Canada published a frankly critical blog called "Why the 'Open Data Movement' is a Joke". He made a frank, "Emperor has no clothes" critique of the sillyness and then troublesome indulgence of this movement in his own country's government -- so that the conservative Harper government, which he says has been secretive and backward on a number of important issues -- is covering up its flaws with a fake "openness".

I have a lot of respect for Whimsley, as he is one of the few bloggers critical of the open source/gov 2.0/open data etc. movements. He doesn't accept the facile technocommunist arguments for defeating copyright and embracing piracy as a business model or a collectivization tool. To be sure, he doesn't go as far as I do, and would never use a term like "technocommunist" or focus on the collectivization ideologies of these latter-day medicine men. Tom is more of a social democrat than I am; I don't use any kind of adjective in front of the democracy that I espouse.  This is common with Canadians -- I studied in Canada and I understand it and respect it. But I don't agree with it, and I'll contend it.

Someone might say that if there are so few critics of open source out there, why accuse him of "wimping out" and alienating his affections? Well, that's because Tom Slee doesn't have any affections for me to alienate. The few times he engaged with my blog, he let me know he didn't like it -- he disagreed about my explication of the problem with Katy Pearce and Sarah Kendzior on the "Central Asian" cats piece, for example. But like a lot of people, he was timid about having the debate with Howard. He found vigorous polemicizing on the issue made him uncomfortable and didn't want to go the next round. That's too bad, because the stakes for these issues are high: I wouldn't put some much effort into it if I didn't see this as a grave threat to our freedoms, as in "totalitarian" threat to our freedoms.

Even so, Tom as a much, much higher threshold for debate and polemics and counter arguments that most people in the blogosphere who become uncomfortable at the first "dislike". So he let this argument go many rounds, and one hopes he won't delete it under peer pressure.

It's important that he did, because one very obvious thing about Alex Howard immediately became visible: he was willing to denounce me not through argumentation, but by the sort of ad hominem attacks that he admonishes others not to use. He sought to discredit me by linking to the notorious Anonymous/4chan griefers' Bible, Encyclopedia Dramatica, which of course only discredits him. When I pointed out what libelous and stupid dreck is no this page, he backtracked and apologized -- clearly he had linked to the page merely thinking it was a handy way of explaining to "the commuuuunnnity" that I was "a troll". (Let me give him a better link, Tips for Google Witch-Hunters, that has my rebuttals as well, at least that's more fair.)

His apology was shallow, however, because he still sought in the end to discredit me by what the commuuuunity thought -- he cited my page on G+ that proudly proclaims that certain thin-skinned lefty "thought influencers" like Dan Gilmore had blocked me. Good Lord, that's a good thing -- have you ever looked at Dan Gilmore's plan for coercing journalists into using politically-correct terms? I've been debating Howard Rheingold's socialist-style collectivist models for the Internet since I first found him in Second Life trying to convert people to this ideology -- and I'm right to do so.

Tom Slee doesn't fall for the hype of the Internet hucksters on the collectivizing of property and removal of copyright, either, but in this debate, he finally closed it and gave Alex Howard the last word. In the end, a long drawn-out polemics on his blog only makes him uncomfortable and he may have succumbed to peer pressure (and dollars to donuts, he'll explain this differently, by saying that he didn't think the discussion was "productive"). He already has all the gov 2.0 heavies telling him he was wrong to ever post such a blog without essentially conceding that they are a wonder, and we all need to consult with them first, and only make "constructive criticism". I marvel, in fact, that he went as far as he did, given the enormous pressure he was under. Tom, in the end, no doubt worries about his blog being seen as respectable.

I don't suffer from that problem, because I know this is a really pitched, drawn-out battle and that people will take up different positions in it, and my position is going to be vigorously critical of open source to the last because it's about the culture of this cult, and not the mere technical software issues that we have to worry.

It's typical that in his last round where he tries to win, Alex Howard uses the old chestnut of the sort I've flagged at the beginning of this post -- that "89 percent of computers have Microsoft on them," a proprietary code as if to say "we may be a cult, but we aren't winning."

Of course, that's completely irrelevant, because the code running Windows is irrelevant to the code on the Internet and the culture of open source that is insinuating itself into the very body politic. Who cares if Linux lost the war for PCs because it is nerdy and clunky? Using aggressive viral tactics and bullying against critics, it is prevailing in *cultural* battles using its in fact non-open, non-due-process approach of swarming and insisting on "the tyranny of who shows up" and the forced migration of those who "don't contribute". Who cares if technically, open source cultists don't make every single purchase decision in the government today? Their proponents are in high offices of power and inserting gov 2.0 logic and exigency everywhere, undemocratically. THAT is what matters.

The correlary to the "Microsoft owns the computers" is that "we all" use open source software; that it is "everywhere" on the Internet -- Howard would use that argument if there were another round, because geeks like him always expect that they will embarass and shame any critic of open source software if they "suddenly realize" that they are "soaking in it" on the very Internet. Oh, blah, that's stupid -- again, it's about the culture: 12 Reasons You Don't Want to Adopt Geek Open Source Culture, Even if You Use Open Source Software.

Howard has also tried to turn this polemics into a pity-party about a supposed "attack on his integrity". Here this wealthy, influential software evangelist in Washington, DC working for one of the top web 2.0 lobbyists, the O' Reilly publishing, conferencing and coding empire, is going to claim he is suffering because a blogger has criticized gov 2.0 as open and even sinister in undermining democracy. Why the insecurity? Is it a home truth?

I didn't write that "hundreds of people" give "credence" and "validation" to a "tech cult." I wrote that institutions like Harvard and Stanford have recognized me and my work. National Journal and the Atlantic would not publish PR. Their editors published journalism that I submitted to their editors. For that matter, all of my posts the O'Reilly Radar have been edited and reviewed by a trained journalist

But the Atlantic publishes PR for its political perspectives constantly. It's one of the reasons why the magazine has gone downhill intellectually in the last decade -- horrid infatuation with web 2.0 and all Internet fads. Atlantic copies blogs all the time -- I know because my EurasiaNet blog pieces were reprinted there twice. They don't make the claim that everything they print is "journalism" just because they are a magazine! The act of editing copy that advocates a tech cult isn't adding criticial *journalism* to a piece, it's merely adding expert editorial skills.

Furthermore, Stanford is obviously in the pocket of Silicon Valley. We now have Ken Aleuta to documents this for us better. "Harvard" means "the Berkman Center" which is also in the pocket of big IT and the IT cults.

Howard simply refuses to concede what I think even (especially) Tom Slee could concede, and a good many readers: that O'Reilly is a company, not a journalistic outlet, and therefore communications around it are PR, not journalism: it's about the tech business and wealth for technologists, ultimately, not the public good, as it claims.

Howard can't focus on the ideas, however, but keeps bringing it back to a slight on himself, each time O' Reilly is called a cult, and open source software called a cult, trying to gain sympathy and portray his interlocutor as "a bully". This "you're a bully" stuff practiced so assiduoulsly by the open source gang who are the original bullies ought to self-discredit. Regrettably, it works emotionally on their audience who imagine that anyone who sticks to his or her views, and refuses to be rounded up by the collective, is someone they can then pronounce "a bully". It's really a novel way of suppressing dissent -- claiming that the minority voice with a viewpoint that is not prevailing is in fact the suppressor of dissent. Clever, vicious, sinister.

In these sorts of argument, nit-picking and edge-casing and slicing and dicing "facts" are the weapons of choice. I quoted Nancy Scola, because Nick Judd's blog was about Nancy Scola's piece -- duh. That's not a misquote, as Judd's piece mainly consisted of quoting another writer. And in the piece linked to, I quote them both and link to the piece that everyone can see is Nick Judd's piece -- duh. That's why this sort of pestering reprimand should self-discredit.

I haven't said anything "untrue" in my pieces, but Howard thinks if he can play "gotcha' over an alleged "misquote," he can defeat me. But they only way he has prevailed is by relying on the discomfort of people who hate conflict to finally overwhelm them.

As for a more substantive statement, Howard says

For the record, I do not "hate representative democracy" nor non-technical people, nor has it been my observation that former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra or dCTO Beth Noveck do.

Well, that's nice. Except Beth is on the record saying she'd like to "blow up Congress". Chopra is more circumspect, but another person remarked on his project aptly that it was about "circumventing Congress" -- which is EXACTLY what it's about.  And Howard can't concede that, so he has to not only misrepresent them, but try to portray himself as more mainstream than he is -- his boss Tim O'Reilly wouldn't be busy storming into communities -- or the capital of the nation -- demanding data to be used by his select group of coders if he believed in doing things through the process of law passed by Congress. He doesn't. Hello!

Howard looks like a total gibbering symp when he pretends at the end of his "last word" to be magnificent, and "forgive me" for my "insults". I don't need forgiveness because speaking the truth about cults isn't "insulting" or "incivility" -- it's a public duty.

The criticism of the O'Reilly cult is advancing further, precisely because Tom Slee was tolerant enough to allow a person knowledgeable about all their debating gambits to go many rounds with their leading operative. Even Wikipedia cites a bit of Marxist-type criticism of Web 2.0 from the other side, making the same point that I make as a liberal, that labour is exploited.

 

 

 

 

21 Theses Against Wikipedia

Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the wall of the Church in 1517. Painting by Ferdinand Pauwels, 1872.

1. Wikpedia is based on the myth that anyone can edit it, but "anyone" can't really edit it, because it has a highly restrictive and arcane editing system that creates a very high barrier to participation and has a very low threshold for rejection.

2. Wikipedia editors are anonymous and unaccountable.

3. While Wikipedia always prides itself on its massive statistics of articles edited, it's actually a relatively few number of people editing most articles.

4. Wikipedia has an internal core group of editors empowered to make the judgement calls on all controversial entries.

5. These decisions on controversial entries or the arcane editing process itself aren't put to a vote of all editors or even a secret-ballot vote of the core group of editors; they are decided by cultic consensus or "democratic centralism".

6. There is no clear, transparent criteria for who gets to be in the core group of editors who make all the decisions on controversial entries.

7. There is no clear and transparent criteria even for what is a controversial entry.

8. Wikipedia is not part of social media and not even part of the Internet. While it is linked everywhere, its own links never link to anything outside its own servers, but only to its own pages.

9. Wikipedia is not part of modern Web 2.0. It has no "like" buttons; no "retweet this" buttons; no voting. To be sure, under some pressure, *some* pages now have a voting on a ranking of "Trustworthy/Not Trustworthy" but this "goes nowhere". We can't see the results of how the public is voting. Wikipedia takes no action.

10. Wikipedia creates a myth of non-profit culture and volunteer work and aggressively fundraises from individuals. But it is also taking large grants from financiers like George Soros, and is not publicizing on its website what its budget and expenditures are.

11. Wikipedia's cult-like founder Jimmy Wales recently subjected the whole world to thuggish blackmail by taking his site down, making it unavailable for users like teenagers doing their homework, merely because he didn't like an anti-piracy law being debated by Congress which hadn't even come to a vote yet. What else does little Jimmy not like that might make him black out his site?

12. Even while engaging in this histrionic stunt of blacking out his site, Jimmy Wales ensured that the site retained its traffic statistics so that it wouldn't lose its Google ranking.

13. The gravest crime against free thought committed by Wikipedia with collusion from Google is that it appears among the first returns on nearly every search, dumbing down thought, crippling intellectual curiosity, and curtailing research -- as well as ruining reputations and spreading lies. This is constantly referred to as something automatic or something nobody can do anything about. But it happens because of Google's secret algorithms; it happens because lazy people see something first and link to it again so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and when Google wants to change it, it's uncanny how it gets changed really fast (like the infamous vandalized entry of Rick Santorum).

14. When somebody is libeled and harassed in a biographical or other entry, they have no recourse. They can't appeal. They can't put a comment on the page with a refutation. They can only try to edit the page -- but as the subject of the entry, they'll have no credibility and will simply be erased by other secret and unaccountable editors. If they try to hire a reputation company to do the editing, they will be jeered at as well and ultimately overruled. They can't do anything except try to correct the record elsewhere on the net, but with far less visibility.

15. Wikpedia is way heavily overused especially by young students and dumbs down thinking. They are acquiring a view of the world based on what Wikipedia says, even though many of the entries are biased or incomplete or even vandalized.

16. Wikipedia deploys automatic bots on some of the editing chores and this opens up questions about how much human intelligence is involved in decision-making about controversies.

17. Wikipedia is always advertised as a selfless voluntary effort, but we can't see how selfless it is because we can't see the true identities of the editors, to see if they belong to corporations or political parties or other nonprofits with causes that are antithetical to impartiality.

18. Wikpedia is replacing journalism and putting journalists out of business although journalists, who are both accountable and trained, are better at writing current events.

19. Wikipedia is putting librarians out of business, although librarians are also better trained, accountable, and can use a wealth of human knowledge and their institutional base better to help readers and researchers than just a robotic page in the Internet.

20. Wikipedia is putting other experts out of work. Who wants to bother finding and communicating with and even paying an expert, when Wikipedia already has at least something on the subject, even if it is biased or wrong?

21. Wikipedia is incorporated into many other software and site and ap projects, so it is not only where it is marked and visible, but poisons many other areas with its bias and venom.

(I'll get to 95 theses in due course, as there are more, especially if you begin to single out really awful entries, like the one on the Soviet GULAG citing Vyshinsky -- Vyshinsky! -- as a humanist. If you have any contributions, leave them in the comments.)

 

So What's up with the Navy, Tor, and Jacob Appelbaum?

Positioned alongside a stationary platform, under simulated sea conditions, the USV Sea Fox receives fuel from a robotic fluids transfer arm via magnetic refueling fitting. Photo by Naval Research Lab. The NRL also researches circumvention on the Internet because it is a series of tubes.

 

So what's up with the Navy and Tor, the controversial circumvention tool made by a coders' collective where Jacob Appelbaum, a core member, is under investigation by a grand jury in connection with WikiLeaks? I've been writing about it here and started a debate about it on Stanford University's Liberationtech list.

I've constantly heard over the years so many times that Tor was invented and used by the Navy and then given over to the private sector to develop further -- because they basically needed more bodies (cannon fodder?) to spread around all the activity so that online, the exiting from the secret organizations wouldn't be visible. The principle of these capers involves having more users rather than less  -- Anonymity loves company" is the concept. There was this "altruism" implied -- "either secrecy for everybody, or secrecy for nobody". I had to wonder about that...

Time and again in arguments, I've seen this military origin of Tor become a kind of implied blessing, and a deflection of criticism, and an implication that "nothing could possibly be wrong with this outfit because they even originated in the military!".

Of course, people can take up different attitudes to this fact of military origin and possible continued informal involvement. Some anti-American types, especially suspicious conspiracy types abroad, might find any connection to the US military to be tainted. I wouldn't say that because I don't see the US as evil or authoritarian, and I believe it is a legitimate democratic state. I don't see some inherent evil in the US armed forces, although I am critical like many people of the wars abroad.

Others might find, even so, that connection of a civic movement to anything related to military security/secrecy would just not be a good idea, especially if you plan things like anti-war protests. I would tend to agree. The commingling of military/civic in this project raises questions for me.

Still others might find it appalling that anyone promoting WikiLeaks and stumping for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, as Jacob Appelbaum has been doing, would have any endorsement from our nation's military forces, past or present. It makes no sense. And I raise questions about this because *I just don't understand it*. It's...perplexing. And I can't believe that it's moral.

So what *does* the Navy really have to do with Tor *now*? Do they still use it themselves? Why would they use an open-source hacky thing anyway? Don't they have their own better stuff by now? Are they golf-clapping Jake because they have enemies in the army or State Department? Is there war not only in cyberspace but in the branches of government?

I saw a reference on Cryptome to the three original developers as all being in the Navy last year -- a year ago -- with the nrl.navy.mil emails (note: the message is posted a year ago, and I've seen references to these three here and there, but I don't know if the dates of the messages is the same as the dates when they were still in the Navy):

Creators of TOR:
David M. Goldschlag <goldschlag[at]itd.nrl.navy.mil>
Michael G. Reed <reed[at]itd.nrl.navy.mil>
Paul F. Syverson <syverson[at]itd.nrl.navy.mil>
Naval Research Laboratory

So I decided to write to all of them to see if I could get any comments on Tor, WikiLeaks, and Appelbaum.

Two out of the three emails bounced.

The emails of Goldschlag and Reed now bounce from nrl.navy.mil.  I confirmed that Reed is no longer with the NRL.

Syverson's e-mail goes through, he is still there, and he responded to me, but basically told me to take my inquiries to the public affairs office because he had no comment and couldn't comment on the Navy's work or his own work.

I dug up Reed's personal email and reached him, and he replied basically "no comment" as well, that he was no longer working on the project.

I couldn't locate Goldschlag. Anybody?

Founder Roger Dingeldine's paper explains more.

This is the question asked at Cryptome (and there's another interesting summary of this and discussion here):

On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk<joebtfsplk[at]gmx.com>  wrote:
>> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against
them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt has absolutely no control over it?  It's that simple.  It would seem a very bad idea. Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint&  consider it as a common sense question. Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that's very  good, because then they can't cut off access without undoing their own work.


So Michael Reed answers:

BINGO, we have a winner!  The original *QUESTION* posed that led to the invention of Onion Routing was, "Can we build a system that allows for bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source and destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?"  The *PURPOSE* was for DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering of forward deployed assets, whatever).  Not helping dissidents in repressive countries.  Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks.  Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution.  Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter.  Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the better...I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin).  I should know, I was the recipient of that question from David, and Paul was brought into the mix a few days later after I had sketched out a basic (flawed) design for the original Onion Routing.

The short answer to your question of "Why would the government do this?" is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the government to have this capability...  Now enough of the conspiracy theories...

Well, yeah, I get all that "too clever by half" stuff. And I have to say I have a tad more concern than these seemingly ethics-free coders do about drugs, children, etc. But I want to ask this question a little more precisely. Why would a government continue to use, develop, and promote a product that had been used against that government in WikiLeaks? (Tor was used to move WikiLeaks, correct?)

More to the point, why would the armed forces of a government continue to tacitly or actively support a project where a "core member" was under investigation for his relationship to a case involving WikiLeaks and the theft and publication of classified documents?

I mean, this is really basic stuff here. This isn't "trolling" or "slander" or "bullying" as all the cadres at libtech retort to me. It's just normal, open-society type questioning.

I know for a fact that there are sympathizers to Bradley Manning's *plight* in the State Department, and belief that he is mistreated by some.  They don't seem to readily share the sentiment expressed to me by a former JAG lawyer: "Manning is right where he needs to be." There's a lot of...muddle... on this in some quarters.

Yes, there should be good treatment of Manning. Yes, Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, should immediately be allowed to see him, without guards present, under the usual UN conditions. But his arrest was lawful because he is charged with what are indeed unlawful acts, and the judges continue to be unmoved by arguments of the defense.

But let's not confuse any issues of his treatment or the failure to let in a UN monitor with exonerating the act of vandalizing the army's computers and then stealing classified documents to harm the United States and its sources.

Once again, I'll remind you that I am not a technologist, and have no relationship to Tor, Ultrasurf or any other circumvention device or project or outfit. I'm a blogger asking questions. In doing so, I'll make mistakes and I'll not understand anything. It doesn't matter. I'm relevant to the issue of the day. I have a right to know along with the rest of the public.

And I have to say I am hugely troubled and saddened at contemplating all the moral dimensions of this ethics-free hacking here. The DOD was happy to unleash drug sales, revolutions in repressive countries with dubious outcomes, piracy, and exposure of children to porn (or worse, feeding exploitation of children in porn) all for the sake of providing cover to do intelligence work under that? Again:

The *PURPOSE* was for DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering of forward deployed assets, whatever).  Not helping dissidents in repressive countries.  Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks.  Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution.  Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter.  Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for  the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the better...I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin.

How Stanford's LiberationTech List Perlustrates like the Soviet Glavlit

Wow, it's been a long time since I've seen or dealt with any texts with black boxes around "sensitive" or "suspect" speech. I'm not surprised it comes from Stanford's Liberationtech list moderator Yosem Companys, however (that's the name of a student there), as he is troubled by any speech that seems too critical of his close colleagues and friends.

From: Yosem Companys <[email protected]>
To: Catherine Fitzpatrick <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 4:11 PM
Subject: Suggestions

I've made some suggestions below to make this message less caustic: namely, removing personal references.  If you agree to make these changes, I'll be happy to send your message through.  I'd like to see the non shaded content you posted below on our list.

Otherwise, you're welcome to send your response directly to Greg and/or post a link on the Liberationtech list referring readers to see your message elsewhere online.

Thanks,

Yosem

My Response:

No, Yosem, I don't live in the Soviet Union, I'm not in the Soviet Writers Union, and I don't play perlustration games.

Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Not Surprisingly, "Liberationtech" Censors My Response to Appelbaum

Yeah, these guys always have trouble dealing with pushback to their bad arguments. They always use their heavy moderator's hand to suppress debate and calling to account the unaccountable, like Jacob Appelbaum.

Here's the message I got from the moderator, who is no neutral party, as I've discovered in a number of clashes with him, and who takes political positions in support of Tor and State Department funding of Tor against competing projects.

Catherine,

We were unable to approve your direct message to Jacob to the list because it was written in what was deemed as an accusatory tone.  As such, the message did not meet Liberationtech list rule #3:

3. Please keep discussions constructive and civil.  All topics, in so far as they relate to Liberationtech... are fine...  We have a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who posts inflammatory... messages to our community.

But please feel free to forward your message to Jacob directly, if so inclined.

Best,

Yosem

My response can be read here.  It's not "accusatory," it's merely polemical, answering point by point the claims of Appelbaum. People have trouble telling the difference these days, but then, they are apt to declare as "trolling" or "flaming" anything they don't like -- which is why closed mailing lists aren't really a democratic and free instrument for deciding matters of state -- which this is, because so much government money is involved.

 

Reply from Jacob Appelbaum to My Criticism and My (Censored) Response on Ultrasurf and Circumvention

Jacob Appelbaum, who I take on here, here, here, and here for his attacks on the proprietary circumvention software Ultrasurf, his distorted notion of Internet freedom, and his unaccountability in tendentious argumentation about Iraq, has answered me on the closed list of liberationtech -- closed because while "anyone" can sign up for it, they do not publish their messages and it can be heavily moderated.

And my response to him has been censored by the moderator, who won't let it through on the grounds that it is a "flamewar" or contains "personal attacks". So I publish it below.

One of the many ways that Appelbaum obfuscates himself is by putting on his message header posting to liberationtech, and his Twitter account, a website that in fact is always "down" -- appelbaum.net   I'm not sure how you can email from a "down" web server on to an email listserver, but obviously Jake is able to do that! [PS -- and despite the heckling from Collin Anderson, I'm not afraid to appear ignorant about how someone whose website is down is also able to send mail from that same server -- I ask questions about it because it really is odd that the website is never working.]

First, I'm putting my reply, which is in coherent paragraphs. Then, you can see his original reply below, with the usual annoying geeky snippets and carrots. When are we going to come out of the dark ages of the Internet from the Well or old usenets and such and leave that silly, cumbersome, and infuriating design in dialogue? There's got to be a better way. Of course one way is, um, thinking and synthesizing organically, and answering manually in whole paragraphs instead of clicking return and sifting through a big cut and paste.

My response -- removed by the moderator Yosem Companys:

Re: Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:40:09 -0400
From: Jacob Appelbaum <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]"
    <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Jacob Appelbaum's Ultrasurf Report

Jacob,

Altruism is what you claim in all your performances where you claim to be helping victims of oppression abroad to open their governments. We all know the timing of this and your manner of performing this "service" are politically motivated by a war for the soul -- and the funding -- of the Internet Freedom programs in the US government and in general, a war in cyberspace over the very meaning of Internet freedom.

Honesty in advertising? Ultrasurf obviously makes claims that you and others don't feel they can support. The question is how one goes about "fixing" that or even if it is really the problem you claim. Most people don't read TOS or read advertising claims -- they use software and if it is easy and helps them achieve their goals, they go on using it, if it doesn't, they stop. Consumers are more savvy than you are prepared to admit. You and other critics of Ultrasurf are not conceding that most users need not anonymity, which they already lost in a place like China with state-controlled ISPs, but breachability of regime-blocked sites.

If you want to harp on honesty in advertising, you should start first at home and acknowledge that the military pictures and claims implied by military affiliation on your website don't add up. We see no evidence that the military continues to use Tor or support Tor or you in any fashion; indeed, you are under investigation by a grand jury precisely for your relationship to WikiLeaks, which is in turn investigated for incitement of the hacking and stealing of classified documents from the US government. Shouldn't users get a disclaimer involving *that* on your can of goods?

I don't need to be in a "depth" about DC lobbying and Internet funding programs to state the obvious which needs to be said here: there's a great deal of hustling going on, there is jockeying for power, and you're thick in the midst of it. Whatever supporters you have in the USG -- and you're coy about them -- surely have to be wondering what they have gotten themselves into, and as this involves *taxpayers' funds* we all get to examine this despite all your claims of our ignorance and lack of "depth".

As for giving this report around, what was the *real* timetable, and can we get a second opinion, not from you? And why was it necessary to publicize it at all in the first place and not continue to work with Ultrasurf if your concerns were truly genuine and your motives truly collegial?  The necessity of a deadline or a publication in the first place isn't at all demonstrated and is only your own politicized imperative. The forced "outing" of these concerns in a tendentious package doesn't seem to have achieved your goals. Chinese users continue to use it in droves.

If you didn't give this immediately to the Chinese or Iranian or Syrian governments or their agents and think you should get credit for that (!), then...why do you think publicizing the report on your open web site *now* somehow exonerates you?! That's just plain wild -- and evidence of the alternative universe which you appear to inhabit. [PS: and his later claims that the Chinese has it "anyway" is ridiculous -- there is never a reason to make an authoritarian government's work easier for it.]

Naturally you "like" a USG Internet freedom program that evidently has funded your project. But you're part of a band of critics and re-tweeters that have savaged it, and clearly you think either you can throw it your way or do without it.

I don't "conflate" free and open source software with "peer review," I just don't share your views of it. There is absolutely nothing gained by fetishizing the "million eyes" of OSS. It's a cultic affectation that I simply don't buy -- not when the million eyes contain the authoritarian governments, and not when the million eyes can just as lief contain a stampede of brainwashed ideologues and not when million eyes very often devolves to the "tyranny of who shows up". Peer review by peers in a collegial if proprietary setting can work as well or even better.

Indeed, the belief in open source software as superior, and the set of cultural imperatives and notions that go with it, are religious in nature showing all the signs of cultic belief -- refusal to debate, demonization of dissenters, belief that everyone is wrong but the believer but is awaiting education or epiphany, imperative to convert others or the efficacy and surety of one's own faith cannot survive.

It's that last bit -- the proseltyzing imperative -- that gives it away in particular.

I'm afraid we'll simply disagree that proprietary companies "have" to have coerced outside "peer review" to be successful or safe. There's no support for this religious principle but -- faith. I don't believe it. The "serious" problems are dealt with by users and competent professionals. If some perverse-engineer is banging on the outside with hostile motives, it hardly makes for effective change, even at the psychological level, and the technological level isn't at all demonstrated. The forced outing of the "reverse-engineering" expedition undermines its authenticity.

All software solutions are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. You've re-discovered the wheel here. We all get it. AV software very often classifies such software as malware. So what? Users work around this with far more alacrity than you're prepared to admit.  Digital signatures are one option which Ultrasurf has, and it's not certain that this is "because" of your report or that in fact it really offers any more "protection" against exposure and arrest and harm than any other thing on the Internet. Did I mention that the Chinese, Iranian, Russian, secret police are professionals, and you are amateurs? Have some humility.

I'm not required to provide a solution. My job here is to question *your personal accountability* once again in presenting a *tendentiously-framed finding* and doing it publicly. There is absolutely no benefit to be gained from the coercive *public* nature of what you're doing except to throw Internet freedom programs *your way*. You may have overplayed your hand here.

Peer review need not be open source or under your guidance or on your terms to be effective.

Why do we have to prove that Ultrasurf blocks child pornography?! That would be an impossible claim because you'd have to know the secret sites or even the major ones. Just because you can't do *everything* doesn't mean you can't do *something* -- and it's that basic credo of normal real life that those inhabiting the technological bubble with its binary thinking can never admit. Ultrasurf apparently opted to lesson headaches for itself and minimize (not eliminate) problems by blocking the obvious porn sites. So what? They are providing a service for people to get around *ideological* control for people wishing for political diversity, not helping people with their entertainment needs -- and that's ok. There are other options for that, so it's a red herring for you to raise it.

Ultrasurf isn't a human rights worker and doesn't have to make pledges to human rights workers -- it's a technological tool that may serve some purposes and not others. Their claim to provide anonymity may be less than it states, but *your* claim that they are eroded is in fact based on hypotheticals and edge-cases and your own suppositions from reverse-engineering. They were stalling you? But...why the imposed deadline for outing people you claim to be working with? (And with whom you apparently compete for funds?)

You've identified yourself as a "bully" -- I haven't used that term. But I do insist that you explain why on earth you can claim altruism and collegiality with these people at Ultrasurf if all along your plan was to "out" them. The deadline, the very act of discussing this openly all serve *no purpose* except to advance you politically. Users are not warned by an English-language blog on your site, and even if you hired a blimp would not necessarily follow your arcane logic.

As for evidence that what you're doing is helping authoritarian governments, I'll go back to *your own claims* in which you said you refrained from publicizing this so as not to give comfort to Syrian, etc. governments. Huh? So what changed?!

Open source bullying, coercion and ideological haranguing are not open society or an open market. The right to be wrong about software isn't coterminous -- as you've mischieviously suggested -- with demanding publication and forcibly outing people you believe to be wrong even if they are wrong. Opt-in, not opt-out.

As for your pointing to an old report, one of many bashing Ultrasurf by Chinese government officials or sympathizers, so what?  It's not material to the discussion.

No society based on Bolshevik-style *coercion* with the notion that "the end justifies the means" can possibly be considered open and free.

Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Message: 17
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:40:09 -0400
From: Jacob Appelbaum <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]"
    <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Jacob Appelbaum's Ultrasurf Report

Hi Catherine,

On 04/19/2012 03:16 PM, Catherine Fitzpatrick wrote:
> Jacob Appelbaum's agenda doesn't seem to be entirely altruistic here
> with this Ultrasurf report.
>

Where did I claim altruism? I am auditing tools that claim to be
perfectly anonymous because it benefits everyone to have honesty and
truth in advertisement for our community of tools.

I did however invest, as Ultrasurf acknowledged, a great deal of time in
disclosure to Ultrasurf. I also invested a great deal of time in making
positive suggestions, which were largely accepted by UltraReach. I hope
you'll note that the language on their website is drastically different
today if you compare it to the text on their website from a year ago.

Honesty in advertisement is important information that helps users to
make an informed decision and to ensure that Government funded projects
at least attempting to be honest in how they sell themselves to their users.

> There's a lot going on -- first, there's the desire of him (and his
> supporters) to attack the US government and "DC Lobbyists" merely for
> what they are, which is a hated government with a disliked Internet
> Freedom program, which has put him under investigation for his
> involvement in WikiLeaks (his buddies at the State Department
> notwithstanding).


This is nonsense. Not only do you have it all wrong, you're actually
just out of your depth. It shows.

I am not attacking the US government. To be quite honest, I gave this
report to those around DC that asked - this includes people at State,
BBG and of course, Ultrasurf - well before the report was released to
the public. I did this to ensure that we could broker a discussion with
Ultrasurf to ensure that Ultrasurf felt we were coordinating and being
responsible.

I did not give this to the Chinese or Iranian or Syrian governments nor
any of their agents or anyone that I felt would do Ultrasurf harm or
attempt to attack their users.

I actually rather like the Internet Freedom program, it's not perfect
but it's pretty good! So again - you think you know what I think but
you're mistaken.

> Second, there's the desire to attack any competitor
> of Tor, especially a competitor that adheres to the idea of
> proprietary versus open source software. These are religious
> matters.

Surely you don't suggest that for proprietary or open tools it is
reasonable to never have a third party security audit?

There is no competitor to the Tor Project in the field of online
anonymity. There are charlitants who claim to be perfectly anonymous and
untraceable - as we see with Ultrasurf - they do not live up to their
advertised claims.  You conflate Free and Open source software with peer
review, which is understandable but a very serious mistake to make.

If you suggest that peer review is a religous matter, I think you're
making an even bigger mistake. Do you realize that there has been *no*
peer review - even by funders of the tool? None. Zero. This is changing
now and that is because of my peer review of their claims. I have even
offered to help them and have given them a large amount of time in the
last six months because I want them to improve.

The fact that they are closed source presents them with a serious
problem and I'd love to hear your suggestions for a solution with it. It
appears that some governments, such as Syria and likely China release
backdoored versions of software. I have some samples of a common tool
which appear to have such a backdoor. AV software sometimes
automatically classifies Ultrasurf as malware. This is usually a
mistake. However - what happens when it actually includes malware *and*
it actually has something wrong with it? Say because it has been
tampered with in transit or an attacker, such as the Chinese, compromise
the download servers?

One solution is to offer source code and for trusted users in a
community to review them, and to ensure that any changes make sense or
fit with the established norms of the system. It's also possible to look
at copies of the program in every linux distribution, every released
copy on software mirrors and other places to compare with the expected
result.

Another solution is to offer digital signatures - this is something that
is now happening because of my report. The downside is that China and
the Stuxnet authors both clearly have the ability to falsify the
selected digital signature method selected by Ultrasurf.

So - again, we see no peer review and no safe method of verification.
I'd love to see you solve those problems and while Open and Free
software doesn't solve it all, I think it gets us a lot closer.

So do please offer suggestions and try not to punt.

>
> In other words, when a person who runs a competing open-source
> software solution, who has his reputation largely wrapped in it, goes
> and publicly attacks a proprietary software solution as inferior and
> even harmful, and attacks a software used by a government that has
> him under investigation, it's ok to question where he is going with
> this.
>

The facts stand for themselves. You're unable to evaluate those facts
and as a result, you simply, as usual, attack me. I mean, you're
welcome, I think the solution to "bad" speech is more speech.

> There is the added dimension of the pornography issue -- Appelbaum's
> slam on Ultrasurf for blocking porn distracts from the fact that Tor
> is notoriously used for viewing pornography, including illegal child
> pornography.


Do you have proof that Ultrasurf blocks Child Porn Catherine? I suspect
the answer is no - which well, I think that's because the answer is no.

The fact of the matter is that they block access to legal US
enterprises. I think that government funded services have a duty of care
not to restrict access to legal US businesses - this is why I am against
Amtrak censoring the internet - don't censor with public money.

In any case - just to settle this issue - members of police forces
around the world use Tor, as does the Internet Watch Foundation, to hunt
for Child Porn - they need anonymity, so that they can find the bad guys.


Do you have another suggestion for an anonymity solution that is good
enough for the Internet Watch Foundation to catch sexual predators? I
bet they'd love to hear it and most of all, I'm certain this list would
be interested in such a solution.

Frankly, I think that the good outweighs the bad in this case and I'd
encourage you to admit that you don't actually know the whole story.

> And there's the fact that Appelbaum has published his
> critique just as yet another criminal case involving the use of Tor
> for illegal drug sales is being publicized:
>
> http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/2012/045.html

I had no knowledge of this press release from the Justice department nor
would anyone else, I imagine. It's pretty ridiculous to suggest that I
timed the release of my report in response to that DoJ press release.

When I met them in December, we agreed upon a ninety day time frame for
release of the report. The report was originally scheduled for release a
month ago but Ultrasurf asked for more time. I planned the release for
Monday the 16th of April as a firm deadline and they were well aware of
it before publication.

>
> There is no reason to take his concerns public, as the notion that
> "users need to be warned" isn't sufficient, as most users couldn't
> read a blog in English anyway, and most users don't care about
> anonymity, which they lost to their ISP anyway. They care about
> trying to access blocked sites, and perfection in this effort isn't
> required.

I disagree with you very strongly and many others in the computer
security field, as well as other fields, believe that sunlight is a good
way to solve problems.

This report, as I understand it, has or will been translated into other
languages for the benefit of non-English speaking users.

I think you may be right about "most users don't care about anonymity"
but I'd like you to tell us all - if you claim as a human rights worker
that you won't disclose a report but you actually do disclose it against
their wishes - have you done something wrong? Is honesty in
advertisement important? I think it is very important and as long as
they claim to be anonymous and an anonymity service, I'd ask you to
consider what you're claiming to be irrelevant. The issue is that they
_claim_ to be an anonymity service - it has nothing to do with your
projections of a user, which are speculative at best.

>
> So this report seems a hostile, politically-motivated attack on his
> part.
>

Only if you disregard the fact that I have worked closely with them
until I felt they were stalling me and not fixing issues that needed to
be fixed. They sure are working hard to fix those issues now - after
nearly four months of dragging their feet - I think that's a good thing.

> What's important in the fight for Internet freedom are the following
> principles of non-coercion:
>
> o no one should be forced or brow-beaten into using open-source
> software; proprietary software is ok to use. If your opensource
> software is demonstrably better, it will sell itself without you
> having to artificially level the playing field with constant
> ideological attacks

We disagree about Free Software in this field and that is OK. In the
area of anonymity and security, I think that we must have tools that
regardless of their license, are open for review and verification. That
is why Free and Open source software is on the table. It makes it easier
and frankly, possible, to review claims.

I'm not forcing or brow-beating anyone. I presented a paper with some
serious concerns, I worked with Ultrasurf to correct a number of the
most serious, and I have encouraged further third party review to
improve their system.

If that's brow-beating - what is your email where you directly attack
me? It seems a bit duplicitous at the very least and it reeks of
political attacks against me for my associations that you despise.

>
> o no one who produces proprietary software solutions should be
> bullied into having to discuss their flaws openly or be forcibly
> outed as to their flaws;

You keep saying that I'm a bully but you fail to acknowledge that I
worked with Ultrasurf, flying to another state to meet with them,
disclosing the report to them privately and so on.

There was no bullying.

> it merely helps give ideas to authoritarian
> governments and doesn't really help users.
>

Do you have evidence for your assertion here? I'm guessing "no" but I'd
like to know. Yes? No?


> o if you don't like proprietary software, you don't have to wage a
> jihad against it, you can make your own opensource software that is
> supposedly better
>

It's not hard to do that and many people have done so.

> o pluralism is the best defense against authoritarianism, not
> everyone being forced to go to "the best" circumvention tool or "the
> ISP that secures your privacy". It's precisely when the market is
> open with a variety of options that authoritarian is undermined
>

It's nice that we actually, for once, agree. Pluralism in design choices
is absolutely required. It is an example of how a free market may work
in a practical sense and I support that concept entirely.

Security researchers who test claims are serving as a correction to
overvalued ideas or solutions in the market.

> o software does not have to be perfect to largely achieve its goal --
> 1/99 binary thinking is a killer of freedom

There is no perfect software but there are those who claim perfection
without acknowledging their imperfections. That is a real problem.

>
> o people have the right to be wrong about software -- an open society
> requires that right to be wrong and to float contrary hypotheses even
> if they are incorrect, politically or otherwise
>

I agree. I also have the right to show the world that there is something
wrong with that very software.

> o you don't have to be technically capable to criticize software that
> profoundly influences all of us as we increasingly move our lives on
> line.
>

You're right - you don't have to be literate in a field of specific
interest to criticize it. However, it sure would help if you
acknowledged that Ultrasurf's designated enemy is however quite literate
on the subject matter.

Today someone pointed me at this report authored by an academic in China:


https://www.scribd.com/doc/90338145/UltraSurf-analysis-by-Zhang-Lei-in-Chinese

> My thoughts:
>
>
> http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2012/04/jacob-appelbaums-obfuscation-about-circumvention.html
>

Thanks for your thoughts - I hope you'll address each of my points and
try to be constructive.

It's been a pleasure,
Jacob

What Software Circumvention is Really Safe?

The debate about Ultrasurf continues on the closed liberationtech list. Closed, because while open to join, they don't publish their dialogues. The tekkies denouncing my article about Jacob Appelbaum's review of Ultrasurf are using the argumentation that "only" open source software is safe because "only" open source software contains the ability for "the crowd" to examine all the bugs that might leave users vulnerable to surveillance from bad governments.

I reject that notion -- it's a subset of the "million eyes" theory of open source cultists, in which they claim that the more people you can throw at a software bug, the more likely you will get a solution (originally the slogan was "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"; this has morphed to "with a million eyes, all bugs vanish").

Of course, other problems in science aren't solved this way with the "millions" at all different levels of competence clumsily attacking a problem. You don't cure cancer by having zillions of 14-year-old kids see if drinking loads of diet Coke causes bladder cancer. You have select specialists with protocols with the scientific method examine whether certain claims are true, and test them. The scientific method, with its double bind and its hypotheses and rigorous testing in fact often isn't used in open source software development at all. It's anything goes, and people hacking and stabbing at things sometimes with really inelegant solutions and brute force to see "what works".

My reply:

Belief in open source software is just that -- belief. It's not fact. It's a culture and a set of assumptions, and all of them can be challenged. It doesn't matter if we are "soaking in it" and writing on an Internet supported by Apache servers. It's ok to challenge these premises and indeed, if we are really to have an open society, it's imperative.

Tor looks the other way while pornographers or drug dealers use their tool; then they bash Ultrasurf because they block some of these malfeasers and claim it's "censorship". There's the chronic canard that if you block the URL of Pirate Bay you are "censoring"--  as if they overwhelming purpose of Pirate Bay isn't in fact piracy, and as if those not engaged in piracy have no other site they can use. This is a legitimate debate, and I don't see anything to critique Ultrasurf on, in making this reasonable choice to block sites. Geeks block malware sites all the time and nobody claims censorship; some of them take a copyleftist view of piracy sites and therefore it indeed becomes an ideological matter. Tor could in fact have a policy even if not enforceable against the misuse of their product; they don't.

I'm not going to get into a debate about drug legalization as this is a list about "liberationtech" and I view drugs as very far from the notion of "liberation" as I've seen too many young addicts with too many pallavers about how it doesn't harm anybody, even as they steal all their parents' belongings and friends' cell phones to pay for their habit.

Again, the "million eyes" idea of open source could just as well contain a million biased cultists. There's nothing fact-based and algorithmic about solving bugs just by adding more subjective eyes especially in a context where aggressive sects could declare bugs as features or visa versa, and dissent can't be heard. A dedicated staff of a firm or consultants brought into a firm on NDAs can just as well look at bugs and find them. There's nothing magic about crowds, and most crowd-sourced or open-source projects that claim mass-ness and crowds and "democracy" actually in fact only have a very few dedicated cadres, and often anonymous and unaccountable at that, unlike a firm.

I find it reprehensible for opensourceniks to declare that proprietary software developers are exposing their users to harm just because they don't allow a zillion script kiddies and anonymous hacksters in to peer at their code. It's emotional blackmail, because it implies that unless you forcibly open up your code to the mob, you will be accused of harming your customers. It also distracts from the harm's real origin -- entities like the Chinese or Iranian governments. So I don't accept that argumentation. Here's Tor, open-source as the day as long, but funded heavily by the US government, and involved in cases, whether WikiLeaks or drug busts, that the USG is prosecuting. Doesn't that suggest enormous vulnerability?! At any moment, the USG may decide they've had enough of this double game, and pull the plug. Again, the only solution is diversification of tools and funding sources.

And of course, in the real organic world of dissent and opposition, genuine tradecraft requires that you do not make yourself vulnerable to the mediation of any machines, phone or Internet. Sometimes you can't do everything online; then do less. No form of communication is absolutely secure, and people who claim to ensure this are waiting to prove that pride goeth before a fall.

There's also this notion you invoke of "the security community" as if this is some monolithic and centrally controlled entity. But it's not. It's a vast mixture of entities and solutions and there isn't the insistence you claim that everybody has to use open source, and use open source as you claim.

As for "throwing you in jail in the worse case" -- whether in Minsk or Pittsburg, authorities are going to seize servers they think challenge them, and everyone has to ask whether throwing in their lot with alternative servers is a sound solution. Again, you don't seem to accept the fact that most people using circumvention are more interested in reading sites that are blocked than protecting the identity already known to their ISP anyway. That doesn't mean we shouldn't care about their safety, but users tend to undermine the kvetchy neuralgia of software producers on every occasion, and sometimes that is how freedom is in fact advanced in the world.

Jacob Appelbaum's Questionable Motivations for Slamming Ultrasurf

I wrote the other day about Jacob Appelbaum's obfuscation of Ultrasurf -- his deliberately obscure tekkie attack on Ultrasurf, a proprietary competitor to his opensource Tor -- because I felt the philosophical problems with his report would never get any attention, as only very technically-obsessed types would tackle it and everyone else would be scared off for fear of being technically inept or for fear of criticizing a fellow member of the geek squad.

I don't suffer from any of those problems.

So I made a comment today on Liberationtech questioning Appelbaum's motives. That's the right thing to do in an open society concerned about being under attack from sinister forces and contemplating the right way to resist them.

Liberationtech is a closed list run by Stanford University, the darling of Silicon Valley. Oh, they tell you it is not closed, because anyone can join it on their website.

But it is closed, because they don't publish the chat logs, the way other such listserves do related to universities or think tanks (like Johnson's List on Russia, for example).

It is closed, because it is heavily moderated. I've found that many posts that I've tried to put on it in the past get stopped by a very zealous geeky moderator who is very much steeped in the whole opensource Silicon Valley ideology and very keen to protect his fellow highly thin-skinned geeks.

The moderator will declare something "off-topic" or "too political" or "a personal attack" merely because it criticizes open source software. When an obnoxious Second Life persona posted a notice advertising her opensource products in SL, I complained but her spammy ad was allowed to stand and I was remonstrated.

I tend not to comment at all on the list as a result -- the chill on speech that heavy moderation inevitably brings -- just so I can see this closed list and not be banned from it and therefore unable to view this closed content. I prefer to spar with liberationtech on Twitter, where they cannot "moderate" me and sometimes have to explain themselves in public and moderate their own biased claims as a result. Openness of society is a good thing; it helps accountability. I don't think that notion of openness extends to stealing classified cables from a liberal democratic government and harming their diplomacy. I'm not for absolutism on this notion of openness regarding software as a property -- open source cultists sometimes claim they are for "choice," but they aren't really, they want to bulldoze people into taking their "choice" of open source.

Jacob Appelbaum's report is of course being discussed avidly on this list, mainly with gushing adulation and credulity and some minor tekkie things are being analyzed.

Here's my comment, in case it gets moderated:

Jacob Appelbaum's agenda doesn't seem to be entirely altruistic here with this Ultrasurf report.

There's a lot going on -- first, there's the desire of him (and his supporters) to attack the US government and "DC Lobbyists" merely for what they are, which is a hated government with a disliked Internet Freedom program, which has put him under investigation for his involvement in WikiLeaks (his buddies at the State Department notwithstanding). Second, there's the desire to attack any competitor of Tor, especially a competitor that adheres to the idea of proprietary versus open source software. These are religious matters.

In other words, when a person who runs a competing open-source software solution, who has his reputation largely wrapped in it, goes and publicly attacks a proprietary software solution as inferior and even harmful, and attacks a software used by a government that has him under investigation, it's ok to question where he is going with this.

There is the added dimension of the pornography issue -- Appelbaum's slam on Ultrasurf for blocking porn distracts from the fact that Tor is notoriously used for viewing pornography, including illegal child pornography. And there's the fact that Appelbaum has published his critique just as yet another criminal case involving the use of Tor for illegal drug sales is being publicized:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/2012/045.html

There is no reason to take his concerns public, as the notion that "users need to be warned" isn't sufficient, as most users couldn't read a blog in English anyway, and most users don't care about anonymity, which they lost to their ISP anyway. They care about trying to access blocked sites, and perfection in this effort isn't required.

So this report seems a hostile, politically-motivated attack on his part.

What's important in the fight for Internet freedom are the following principles of non-coercion:

o no one should be forced or brow-beaten into using open-source software; proprietary software is ok to use. If your opensource software is demonstrably better, it will sell itself without you having to artificially level the playing field with constant ideological attacks

o no one who produces proprietary software solutions should be bullied into having to discuss their flaws openly or be forcibly outed as to their flaws; it merely helps give ideas to authoritarian governments and doesn't really help users.

o if you don't like proprietary software, you don't have to wage a jihad against it, you can make your own opensource software that is supposedly better

o pluralism is the best defense against authoritarianism, not everyone being forced to go to "the best" circumvention tool or "the ISP that secures your privacy". It's precisely when the market is open with a variety of options that authoritarian is undermined

o software does not have to be perfect to largely achieve its goal -- 1/99 binary thinking is a killer of freedom

o people have the right to be wrong about software -- an open society requires that right to be wrong and to float contrary hypotheses even if they are incorrect, politically or otherwise

o you don't have to be technically capable to criticize software that profoundly influences all of us as we increasingly move our lives on line.

My thoughts:

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2012/04/jacob-appelbaums-obfuscation-about-circumvention.html

Catherine Fitzpatrick

 ***

Appelbaum engages in a petulant self-justification on liberationtech and elsewhere, referring to internal communications supposedly found from Ultrasurf that called him "anti-American" -- he wants to ring that chime for all its worth because then he can make Ultrasurf's people look like McCarthyites.

That's arrant bullshit, as it's ok to call out his questionable motives without being some sort of McCarthyite. "Anti-American" isn't the point at all. People can criticize their own government and not be unpatriotic. But they can't hide behind *that* liberal value and expect that their motivations are therefore exempt from discussion. They aren't. He's under investigation by prosecutors. He may be related to a crime. Therefore he is fighting back, and it's in his interests to try to portray himself as an innocent victim and the US government as evil. He hates it that there are other people in this business of Internet freedom who have very different views and values than he does, and he wants to attack them -- they are infidels. He'd like to portray himself as a Brave Freedom Fighter, and as a Tragically Misunderstood Artist. He's neither; he's an unaccountable punk.

Questioning his motives isn't calling him "anti-American" or claiming that people can't criticize America. It's engaging in precisely the kind of critical free discourse that he himself claims to uphold. Critics aren't patriotic; they can criticize their country precisely because it is free. But that doesn't mean they aren't exempt from moral opprobation, or exempt from criticism as unaccountable, deceptive, and manipulative -- all features he has manifested time and again.

 PS Ultrasurf has now published a response.

Why I Have My Doubts About the Magic Pike Software Ushahidi Golos Used -- Just like the Kremlin Does

I can't think of anyone more cunning and devious than the Kremlin gray cardinal Vladislav Surkov.  Sergei Lavrov is somebody we used to meet with here in NY at the UN and he was more of a perestroika liberal a decade ago than he is today; now he's the grand sourpuss of the Russian Imperium, presiding over everything from threats to Georgia to re-writing of World War II history. And Putin, of course, is a thug. Not only for what he said about drowning the Chechens in their outhouses. But for many things.

Yet oddly enough, I share their criticism of Ushahidi, the software platform that is the latest magic fairy-dust sprinkled technology panacea that is supposed to Empower the People and Bring Democracy if not Peace and Prosperity.

The Kremlin calls Golos an "outside interference." And that's exactly what it is. Not because it is funded by US foundations, government or private. I'm all for having the US have a democratic foreign policy that involves supporting like-minded dissidents abroad in democratic movements, with circumvention technology and social media. Good! If the Russians find this "interference in internal affairs," they are trying to turn the clock back before 1975, when the Helsinki accords affirmed that human rights concerns are NOT interference in internal affairs.

I will, agree, however, that Ushahidi and newfangled social media crowdsourcing technology is outside agitation, is rooted in "netroots" and not organic communities and is empowering only a thin layer of wired elite -- who are in fact terribly vulnerable to being coopted as we shall see, if not marginalized or simply DDOS'd out of business.

[Yeah, I get it that Golos uses some "Russian brand" of Ushahidi that "isn't" Ushahidi. But Ushahidi is open source. Golos tekkies surely looked at the code. If they adapted it or reverse-engineered it, so what? It's still Ushahidi! So I will call it that as a generic.]

Golos claims "7,000" violations were recorded. And that this is "20 times more" than in 2007. Really? How do we know? What if measuring lots of complaints causes more complaints to be made? A known bias that occurs in any system. What if a lot of those 7,000 complaints are hearsay, duplicates, or wrong? Is anyone checking? Who's going to watch the watchers now?

Let me explain.

I should do a separate post explaining the back story of Ushahidi, the very legitimate critiques to be had about it, the very relevant criticism about it from people actually doing emergency humanitarian work in the field, and more. And I will soon. Meanwhile, here's someone who has probably said it better than I could:

There is no crowd of open-source developers ready to attack every problem. In fact, most open-source projects are the product of one obsessed individual who wrote the software to meet his own needs. Often this individual was joined by other programmers who shared the founder's vision and, under his direction, created great software

But the short form is this: when you have a giant "magic" sieve that is supposed to sift out the democratic "golos" or Voice of the People (er, People's Will, anyone?) what do you have? In fact, you have a very big thing full of holes. It doesn't take Kremlin TV to point this out, for their own nefarious reasons. Democrats and liberals should point this out, too.

The first thing to understand about any piece of magical software is that it really only empowers one set of people: the coders. The software engineers.

Many people using magical pixie-dust software don't realize this. They think as users they are empowered and they are doing magical things with this magic pike. But they aren't. They are, as Jaron Lanier explains, making themselves into gadgets, and adapting themselves to the software.

So the first thing that goes wrong with crowd-sourcing software is that the crowd disappears and loses access to it even as the crowd grabs it because the geeks running it, who have a certain culture, a certain set of beliefs, a certain ethos (or lack of ethics, even), a certain bar-camp je ne sais quoi, become horrified. They hate what they get. What they get are "trolls". Or "griefers". Or "idiots". Or "the clueless" or just "random noise" and so they hurry to filter, curate, collate, manage. Managed democracy. That's what happened to the bunch running the forest-fire "crowdsourcing". It's really more "curated crowdsourcing" or, well, I'd call it "managed democracy". It's not truly open. Only you can prevent forest fires, I noted -- but the devs know better.

I don't know the specifics of Golos and how they used this magic pike of Ushahidi. But I wish they hadn't. Because its magic isn't real, and it has lots of problems. It's not only that if you really had everybody using it, it would produce a lot of senseless crap and a firehose of information that would paralyze the system.

It's that it prevents normal human judgement from being empowered, which is really what you want to empower instead of software.

Let's take the example of Haiti: lots of people call in to the map, let's say. So people with smartphones who have lots of garbage and debris still in their street call in because people are getting diseases. Or people call in because their well is filled with dead animals or human excrement. Or they have a child with a slight fever. Meanwhile, the person under the rubble doesn't have a smart phone and can't call in. The mother with the child who is actually dying from an injury or severe illness can't leave to go to the phone or her battery died. And so on. The system creates a mirror world that isn't the real world; humanitarians go running off to take care of garbage or fevers and the worse stuff is ignored because they don't go out and talk to real people anymore life, face to face, but wait for messages on smart phones. They get dumb from the smart phones.

You know what would have been so much better, and that is what we do in this country (and which was done in Russia, too, to some extent, but was crippled by the DDOSing of the main independent websites like Ekho Moskvy): exit polls. Get some really well organized journalists with cell phones and a really well-organized relay, and do exit polls and relay the information to some dedicated website outside the realm of the FSB's ability to DDOS it. Radio Liberty, perhaps, although they can be wary of getting involved in anything that seems like inciting unrest (and rightly so). Some honest broker that they can set up to handle the calls and the data and make the map -- but not based on Ushahidi, on human intelligence. Not based on zillions of dots for Golos, but the actual human voice saying who they voted for. To be sure, people don't always tell the truth, and sometimes in Russia, they also play to the interviewer in particular. Even so, you'd get the story, with some margin of error.

Ushahidi is designed to destroy organizations and organic structures, even as it cunningly hides its tracks and claims it is about "empowering people" and "linking communities" and all sorts of other wonderous things. (That one powerful original founder and his or her likeminded founding followerings of course would find that concept abhorrent because they think they were all wonderful and democratic.)

But it is, indeed, designed deliberately to forcibly replace organic institutions -- governments, civic movements, nonprofits -- with a meta-layer or network on the Internet run by coders. That's what's wrong with it, inherently. Coders who arrogate to themselves the power of meta-organizers, outside agitators, if you will, destroy whatever institutions there are to be destroyed in meat world (perhaps only metaphorically, but increasingly, really), and then refashion things by their lights.

It's pretty insidious. Only they can see what's happening in the system, and whatever claims they have of transparency, there are always issues. Always! There are always democratic discussions that ought to have been had about how the software functions itself, all the decisions, bugs, trees -- and these aren't had by the general public, in the belief that they "can't understand technology". But issues about velocity of information, display of information, prioritization of information, geolocation of information, verification of information, collation of information, algorithms installed on searches of information, relevancy and weight for information -- etc. etc. etc. -- these are all governance decisions that the public didn't have a say in, but must now, perforce, use, to have a "golos". Not fair. Like all software things. Not fair.

I saw the Tor freaks bragging on Liberationtech today, for example, that "no one can see their code because it's so complicated." Like...that's a good thing?! For democracy?! For freedom????

Now, from the perspective of some movements and parties and activities, if Ushahidi and crowdsourcing software and other social media have the power to destroy institutions, isn't that a good thing if the institution is the Kremlin? Or the institutionalized siloviki cabal running the Kremlin? (which I would hope at least most people would understand is worth keeping in a reformed and enlightened  *government*).

Well, yes and no. If you create something entirely "meta" and networked above and beyond the Kremlin, what is the Kremlin? It's an old fortress next to a red square. If you create something above and beyond "parties," what is Just Russia or United Russia or the ill-named LDPR? Just bunches of people arguing among themselves. The "real" world is now meta-meta, and is the Wired State, run by coders and their friends. Do these include the smart descendents of the KGB's Fifth Directorate to control dissidents? Oh, I don't know. Does it? Or not?

If the Kremlin, if they were using this same software (and it may come to that), would not be any different with it. They'd let it fill up with their own networks and own circles just like the devs of the "good guys" do. We've already seen the fake veneer of "direct democracy" (which is never really direct and never really democracy) in this voting on a fishing law -- anodyne fake stuff -- which is merely cosmetic, merely a feel-good.

Is there any honest broker that could run Ushahidi sufficiently and truly democratically and fairly?

No, there is not. That's because the entire process of software production -- decision-making about how socialware is made to serve actual communities -- is not democratized and won't be for some time (and perhaps never, because of the geeks' grab for power).

Today, the secret police merely take down the sites. Tomorrow, they infiltrate the bar-camps. Look out! They're already everywhere.

Is anyone else troubled by the idea that Russia has only one independent election monitoring group? Shouldn't there be dozens? In a country the size of Russia?! Shouldn't each party and news outlet and group be starting up watchdogs? Something about that "one-ness" doesn't add up for me.

Global Voices is talking about the "net hamsters" and deciding that now it's all about the hipsters and the cool kids and not "violent nationalists". We're going to be ENDLESSLY hearing about how this election was "won" (well, successfully challenged and fraud exposed) "due to social media". Until, well, it really becomes clear how the Internet can't really win things because it's not sufficiently democratic and liberal. It is vulnerable at one very obvious point: it is in the hands of coders. Switch out some of those coders already bar-camped by the Kremlin, and your meta is now Surkov's meta.

The reality is, these people protesting are nationalists, too, just not Putin's or Nashi's nationalists. I wrote yesterday that now that smartphoners and Facebookers like Alena Popova (business woman, start-up supporter) and Ilya Ponomaryov (head of Duma technology committee) have experienced what it's like to get arrested and beaten by police (something the dissidents and human rights activists have already known for 50 years), we will see if they become radicalized -- with Putin's help -- or co-opted -- with Putin's help.

I'm expecting the latter. I'm expecting Just Russia, as the one lone commentator noted in Popova's FB stream, to join or merge or get eaten by United Russia and I'm expecting any holdouts to get marginalized and called that most horrible of Russian names, the marginal. We'll see.

And the reason I think this is because they have been weakend by software. Watch the cell phones all go off in a heart-beat like they did in Turkmenistan. Or watch certain people suddenly lose their accounts like they do in Turkmenistan. Or simply watch a few people get strategically beaten up badly like Kashin.

 Nick Judd at Tech President seems shocked that invincible software and the meta-republic that is the Wired State has taken such a beating in Russia. How could this be, when the Russian-American commission pledged to help civil society with technology! How can this be when Yandex claimed they wanted software developers to help civil society!

 

 

Alexander Howard @Digiphile Washington O'Reilly Correspondent Blocks me on Google+, Fears Debate

One of the things I've watched with a very weather eye since its inception a few years ago is "Gov 2.0" or "the open government movement" or "open source goes to Washington." That's because I see it merely as a Silicon Valley stalking horse of big IT and the ethics-free hackers trying to take power. Lobbying is a sacred tradition in our country. Lobbying is legal! Lobbying is good! Lobbying should be regulated, and registered. So it's not that they lobby that bothers me; it's that they say that what they do isn't lobbying.

What the Wired State hackers and big ITsters do who claim they oppose evil corrupt corporate lobbyists is pretend that they aren't lobbyists, they aren't evil paid agents, but are authentic, true, "direct democracy", the "netroots" if not actually the "grassroots". They pretend that because they have social networking technology, they are "of the people" and "for the people" even if not exactly "by the people" because no one has elected them. I really do hate the scam this entails. I hate the sheer hubris and phoniness of this pose. Of course they are lobbyists, and well-paid lobbyists, at that.

To describe Alexander Howard as a "journalist" is really stretching it. He doesn't report news; he shapes public opinion about technology. Different! Different!

Chief among the snakeoil salesmen of Silicon Valley is Ted O'Reilly. He has a huge publishing empire of course, is beloved by many a geek, and has a huge position from which to serve as one of the great Silicon Valley influencers. I have read him for years and watched his videos and speeches for years and I see him as basically peddling that "your information wants to be free, my information is available for a fee" kool-aid that I find the essential Big Lie of the Internet as we know it.

Alexander Howard is the Washington O'Reilly correspondent. At first a few years ago or whenever it was that he started out on Twitter, with the handle "digiphile," he seemed like this nice guy who was kinda curious and kinda enthusiastic about technology and basically an interesting geek, despite, of course, the sect that he came from (O'Reilly).

But I found that as time when on, he has become more and more outspoken and influential and less and less willing to debate anything.

When I saw him peddling the Participatory Budgeting stuff (which is a kind of political-sect-meets-software-sect operation), I really had to sigh. Why does someone like this do the agitprop work of Working Families? (These politicians who are "experimenting" with the Participatory Budget, the latest fad in "direct democracy" are from or related to Working Families and other leftist platforms).

Hence, this discussion, which I cut and paste here AFTER logging out of Google Plus, because on my dashboard, it shows "this post no longer exists" because I'm blocked from this thread, and Alex is shown as someone who "doesn't share with me" and Google suggests that I "add him to my circles" and maybe he'll share with me.

Sigh.

He's blocked me -- that's what that means. Google is really Orwellian. They should inform people when someone else has blocked them, or inform them when they are blocked from a thread or deleted. That's just normal, common courtesy. That they don't is function of a) geeky insecurity and thin-skinned demands for "privacy" which is a cover for lack of accountability b) discomfort about transparency about how much their "open" systems are actually filled with closed stuff like this.

Here's what Mr. Open Gov does to me, a critic of his peddling of a software cult. Howard couldn't be more wrong when he claims that "the means of production haven't been socialized." *Of course they have, Alexander* because a software program/website/opensource outlook has collectivized the action, and with only one certain "progressive" perspective, has invaded a public space under camouflage of "democratic participation".

Proof of what I'm saying is easy to establish: you don't see this method applied in or near a Republican office or even something to the center or right of these leftists. That's how you know. It's not a neutral tool.

Notice if you criticize anything on the left, and if you utter the word socialism, you are immediately branded as a nut, a Tea Partier, etc. etc.

Some other comments --

o note how Howard accepts only "constructive" criticism of Gov 2.0. Why does it have to be "constructive"? why are we genuflecting to this cult?

o Working Families is criticized even on the left. It is associated with the controversial ACORN. I'm for health care, better public schools and jobs, but I would try never to vote for any candidate that I see on that cult list unless there was absolutely no other choice. I really don't like the "fusion ticket" method for that reason. This party could never stand on its own, and it bleeds into Democratic Party politics and tickets and gains a foothold.

o Working Families has supported openly and recruited for OWS. That's definitely not a mainstream Democratic Party position.

o Imagine, if you criticize socialist parties and people with questionable organizing tactics and extremist beliefs, you are suddenly "unable to give up your guns" (!) or are for "expensive housing" and "inaccessible health care". What a loon! I don't have health insurance, you dumbass. My kids go to public schools. Do yours???

o Howard says he has no religion of software. But the entire open-source open gov movement does tend to be religious and magical in its thinking about how it will "empower people" or bring about "progressive" goals.

o I've bothered with Alexander Howard over the years precisely because I thought he might be intelligent enough to reason with. But proximity to power may have dimmed that intelligence. If he can't take somebody "messing up" his lovely propaganda piece about a software sect helping a political sect, what can you do? Do what you have to do in any closed society -- route around. Log out of G+ and not bother with him or them at all -- or log out and search for his public comments and continue commenting on them anyway, as relevant.

o Dominic Amann  -- if he doesn't want to hear it from me, he can hear it from the devs at Disqus and Drupal who believe they have indeed baked their beliefs into the software. As for Working Families, it has 35,000 registered members. This is a city of some 8 million people. The Democratic Party usually wins. Ok, then.

o the most creepy part of this exchange is this:

When one looks at the aggregate of the comments you've made on my updates here and elsewhere on the Web, however, along with the public attacks you've levied in person, there's a pattern which many parts of the community has both recognized and called out repeatedly.

This is awfully, awfully creepy. It makes it seem that there is something called "the community" (there isn't). It makes it seem that he, Alexander Howard, is in charge of, or in some sort of leadership position in this putative "community" and can decide to pronounce on someone's behaviour or not (he can't). It makes it sound like there are "many" people who are somehow unhappy or disturbed or righteously indignant about my vigorous attacks on the closed society of "open source" (there aren't, although he may imagine it).

So there you have it. Another closed, tiny  mind of the "open source" movement. Proving my point, yet again. Afraid of debate. Afraid of labels, especially the label "socialism". Afraid of controversy or strife.

Below, the post G+ the social net-nanny tells me now "no longer exists" -- *chuckles* -- but which Google the search engine can still find:

Alexander Howard  -  Yesterday 2:51 PM  -  Public

A well-calibrated endorsement from an expert on participatory budgeting.

#opengov #gov20 #edem

Tiago Peixoto originally shared this post:

It is not that simple, but pretty much of the basics are here. Still, a very nice advocacy piece for citizens and officials who want to start engaging in the debate. Well-calibrated for US audiences.

Shareable: How to Start Participatory Budgeting in Your City

+3

1 share  -  Catherine Fitzpatrick

17 comments  -  Alexander Howard, Jim Stogdill, Dominic Amann, and Catherine Fitzpatrick

0 older comments

Catherine Fitzpatrick  -  How socialist planning by the few can apply a thin veneer of Gov 2.0 glam, and call it "democratization". Just by wiring up and showing up. Resistance? Hell, yes. THAT'S THE ELECTED OFFICIALS' JOB BECAUSE THE PEOPLE ELECTED THEM, NOT YOU SOCIALISTS.

Yesterday 3:08 PM   

Alexander Howard  -  To quote Wikipedia (one of your favorite sources, I imagine):

socialism "is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy."

participatory budgeting is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, and a type of participatory democracy, in which ordinary people decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget.

Citizens participating in the budgetary process is not "socialism," by that standards or any other. The means of production have not been "socialized" in this paradigm of budgeting. Regardless, it's up to cities and their citizens to decide whether to adopt these methods for allocation, not to "YOU SOCIALIST" -- whoever they are.

Since I believe that you're a resident of NYC, perhaps you might raise your concerns to the proponents of Participatory Budgeting in New York City and see if they hold water.
http://pbnyc.org/

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Yesterday 3:24 PM   

Catherine Fitzpatrick  -  Yes, I will sure be doing this, since I didn't elect PBNYC, and I see instantly what kind of people they are. It's not democratic deliberation, that's a scam and a ruse. Democratic deliberation takes place in the institutions to which you elect people, not in side bars erected by socialists. Socialism is EXACTLY what this is about, Alex, because they want to take over the budget by force when they are not elected and apply their notions of "social justice" which are not the majority's. If they really believe they are "leveraging expertise" and all that other buzz word nonsense they can form a watchdog NGO and interact with elected politcians or gasp run for office and see if anybody shows up to elect them. This is just the latest in yet another stealth-socialism methodology to try to take by duplicity, coercion, and propaganda what cannot be obtained by true democracy.

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Yesterday 4:10 PM   

Catherine Fitzpatrick  -  OMG, this is even worse than I thought, it's part of the Working Families cult and cabal. yeessshhhh.

Yesterday 4:19 PM   

Uriah Maynard  -  Whine whine SOCIALISM whine whine CULT whine whine SOCIAL JUSTICE IS BULLSHIT whine whine. Do you listen to yourself, Catherine? Because you sound like a tea party nutjob extremist. Planning budgets as an open process? SOCIALISM! Public schools? SOCIALISM! Highway funding? IT'S A SOCIALIST CONSPIRACY, I TELL YOU! Jesus fucking christ, get a hobby or something.

Yesterday 4:53 PM   

Dominic Amann  -  +Catherine Fitzpatrick - Sure, you would much prefer deliberation to take place in the offices of elected officials, behind closed doors with only the lobbyists and campaign donors to influence the politicians. Much more democratic than actually allowing the voting public to attempt to sway them.

I mean if ordinary people without tons of money were able to sway politicians, we might get, you know, some Wall St crooks thrown in jail, or get billionaires to pay as high a percentage of taxes as I do. Perhaps while checking on the definition of socialism, you should check on the definition of democracy, conspiracy and cult while you are at it. You will find (if your brain is actually functional, and not completely overridden by tea party dogma) that there is in fact a conspiracy, and you will find it BY FOLLOWING THE MONEY. Not by focussing on a few poor people trying to get government to do what they were voted to do (instead of what big business is paying them to do).

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Yesterday 5:04 PM (edited)   

+1

  

Jim Stogdill  -  I once attended a school board meeting in my town. I guess I must be a socialist. Damn my luck.

Yesterday 5:27 PM   

+1

  

Catherine Fitzpatrick  -  Yes, coming from the Working Families cult, it is socialism, and as a liberal, I oppose socialism because it harms our freedoms. It's not about the Tea Party or being a "nut job" but about being a good liberal. The mystery is why you aren't a good liberal and don't see this for what it is -- a scam.

The four people running this have a decided political agenda and viewpoint in NYC. If this was the open empowering pluralistic "people's" thing you claim, we'd see a wide variety of perspectives -- Republicans, Democrats, Independents -- all making use of it. Instead, we see Working Families cultists. If a district in Queen is now all Republican, why would Democrats in the minority or the Working Families cult get to decide how the discretionary money should be doled out in that district, just because they show up with smart phones?! They don't. This is decidedly UNDEMOCRATIC and empowering only those with a certain agenda and perspective. Which is why I call it out.

Yes, I'd prefer deliberations behind closed doors with ELECTED officials than having sectarians show up and grab things by their lights, yeah, I sure would! But I don't have to wait for smoke signals from behind closed doors. I call up my elected officials or email them. Do you? I see them walking around my neighbourhood, in fact, and I talk to them about housing, heat, recycling, health, etc. issues in the area. Do you? As a single working mother I don't have lots of time to go sit in meetings and fight sectarians from Working Families, but I do shout out when I see that they might encroach on the more liberal DEMOCRATIC leaders I've elected, NOT THEM.

I have a lot more faith in lawyers or business people from my neighbourhood I've seen all my life with political and management experiment parsing out money that my FREE MEDIA tells me is being done so I do have some check and balance on it, than I do have for secretive political cults like Working Families doing this with their various pretend-democrat cadres showing up for meetings and taking over. "The tyranny of who shows up*. It's not about Wall Street. It's about My Street, big guy.

Um, I don't subscribe to Tea Party dogma. Indeed, when I read their materials -- I read materials from all viewpoints -- I see it is dogmatic, supersticious and unfinformed. You know, like the Marxists in Working Families? Like Internet People like yourselves and like Jeff Brown, who is a total obsessive loon? You know, like that.

I follow the money in my neighbourhood with the people I elected. I don't need the smart-phone set to take my tax dollars away from me.

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9:32 AM   

+1

  

Dominic Amann  -  +Catherine Fitzpatrick - you simply shouting about CULTISTS and SOCIALISTS is empty and meaningless. I can just as easily shout out about UNEDUCATED and IGNORANT people who think they know what's good for themselves - and I would be equally undemocratic. Everybody has a "certain agenda and perspective". That is because no two human beings are identical.

If you happen to be right about Working Families (and I don't really know much about them other than I happen to agree with a few things I have heard), your style actually harms your cause - because you come across as a libertarian nut job instead of a democrat. As is more likely the case, (and what you appear to be), you are a shill for the tea party, pretending to be a democrat and bashing the tools some democrats are using to counterbalance republican ownership of fox news, the tea party and powerful corporate interests. I see an increasing number of "letters to the editor" and blog posts that are from "I normally vote liberal" or "I consider myself unbiased" followed with "but on this issue I am changing my vote..." which, after the first dozen or so, start to smack of some kind of low level orchestrated campaign to sway the opinions of the drones who feel that voting is an exercise to pick the winner.

Much the same thing happens in tech columns, where MS has paid shills who opine and advocate on MS behalf in any debate they can find. Apple has a similar thing going, but they don't have to pay their shills ;).

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9:56 AM   

Dominic Amann  -  +Catherine Fitzpatrick - equally inconsistent in your post is that somehow it is Ok for you to harrangue your elected officials - call them up, converse with them on the street about issues that matter to you, but you are bent on denying another group of people the right to organize and encourage others to do exactly the same thing.

Perhaps you need to actually explain to those of us who are uninformed exactly what makes Working Families dangerous / marxist / socialist - otherwise I am afraid that all you are doing is name calling, and that carries absolutely no weight with me whatsoever.

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9:59 AM   

+1

  

Dominic Amann  -  +Catherine Fitzpatrick - thanks to you, Catherine, I am now better informed about Working Families. They appear to stand for "well-paying jobs, affordable housing, accessible health care, better public schools and more investment in public services". Frankly, these ought to be the goals for ANY political party or grass-roots organization. Seriously, are you asking your poiliticans for lower paying jobs, or more expensive housing, or less accessible health care, or worse public schools etc?

Or are you saying that these policies are a smokescreen for some nefarious communist plot to take over the country and force you to give up your guns? If so, then I am very curious as to your evidence.

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10:19 AM   

+1

  

Alexander Howard  -  Despite the name calling and yelling early on, I'm heartened to find commenters on Google+ willing to take on the arguments on the merits, particularly in thinking critically and independently about them.

10:30 AM   

Catherine Fitzpatrick  -  There isn't any "name-calling" here, Alex, stop clutching your pearls. It's ok to call Working Families a cult. Are you familiar with them at all? Do you live in New York? Do you follow socialist politics at all? Or do you just paste out of dictionaries and Wikipedia from your perch in California or wherever? I am thinking critically and independently about this completely misrepresented report about some very biased software and "direct democracy" proponents -- that's EXACTLY what I do (and you don't). Direct democracy is ALWAYS suspect these days because it's a code word for a self-selected "progressive" bunch with smart-phones trying to take over.

You find criticism of your software religion every time to be somehow crazy, nutty, biased, guilty of Latin Boys School "crimes" like "ad hominem attacks' blah blah.

But do YOU EVER think critically of the software and the cults associated with it that you hawk so regularly and often, Mr. Digiphile? It's ok if you don't, but don't then try to tar others who do as nutty name-callers.

Participatory Budgeting is yet another attempt at people with very, very definite and sectarian leftist political views to make themselves appear as if they are broadly democratic and "fixing" what they say is a corrupt, unrepresentative capitalist-ridden system. That's their right to do. But the rest of us who aren't in that less than 1 percent occupying Wall Street don't see it as they do. We're happy to go on voting in the Democratic Party. We're happy to go on discussing budgets with elected politicians with other social media like Twitter and Facebook and email without the "help" of software cultism engineered by four politicians from a very definite tendency to look like something its not.

"Participatory Budget" has red flags all over it, and reasonable, liberal, intelligent people should be calling these out all over the place. Instead, they are gullible, they mindlessly pass it along and retweet it and copy it and give it legitimacy.

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11:41 AM (edited)   

Alexander Howard  -  +Catherine Fitzpatrick I live and work in D.C., a fact that's readily apparent to anyone who follows me or my work. I don't find constructive criticism in the sphere of open government or Gov 2.0 to be "nutty" or "crazy" or "biased" in general, to use your words, not mine. Governments are trying to adjust to a very different landscape brought on by technological disruption. Many people are critical of those moves, with justification.

I'm happy to stand by my own record of critical thinking, none of which includes the conflation of religion or cults with software, which is the signature thrust of your own oeuvre.

When one looks at the aggregate of the comments you've made on my updates here and elsewhere on the Web, however, along with the public attacks you've levied in person, there's a pattern which many parts of the community has both recognized and called out repeatedly.


It's abundantly clear that your behavior over the years speaks for itself.

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11:56 AM   

Dominic Amann  -  +Catherine Fitzpatrick - so its not name calling if you say so? Because "it's ok to call WF a cult" why - because you say so?

Names used by yourself without explanation or relevance: socialist, marxist, cultist, agenda, digiphile (excuse me - don't you actually run a blog yourself, and espouse the use of twitter and facebook - and aren't you right now using a bleeding edge techological media?)

You have yet to state ONE THING that WF support or espouse that is undemocratic, or even that you personally disagree with. The entire "substance" of your statements is name calling. If this is the extent of your critical thinking, you merely wind up sounding like Sarah Palin.

And what the heck is "biased software"? Have we not only invented artificial intelligence, but gone on to endow it with unmerited opinions already? I must have missed the memo or the nobel prize.

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12:14 PM (edited)   

Jim Stogdill  -  Where is that unsubscribe button. +Catherine Fitzpatrick Perpetually cranky or just a crank? Criminy. I don't know why you are so angry at the world, if I knew i'd probably feel some sympathy, but why go out of your way to piss in this end of the pool?

12:17 PM   

Alexander Howard  -  +Jim Stogdill +Dominic Amann I've followed the advice of many people I respect and blocked her from hijacking any more of my discussion threads on Plus. Goes against the grain but there it is. Thank you for the comments.

12:21 PM   

+1