The Bangus Ultimatum

The article (republished in Accordion Guy) reads like a joke now, but it’s an all-too-real cautionary tale of what could happen when bloated entities try to extend their turf to technology they don’t understand.

Turns out back in the 1980’s, the U.S. Postal Service tried owning electronic mail, proposing a ridiculously crippled implementation (Come on - postal workers carrying tape?). Rather than providing the best possible service, it was designed more to preserve its existing business model.

Joey is right to think deja vu: “Just as Hollywood’s attempt to regulate technological innovation may someday seem quaint and ridiculous, the ideas and statements put forth by representatives of the Post Office sound laughable in this age of readily-available internet and computers as everyday appliances.”

A panel of judges in Florida orders the release of breathalyzer source code to DUI defendants:

“It seems to us that one should not have privileges and freedom jeopardised by the results of a mystical machine that is immune from discovery, that inhales breath samples and that produces a report specifying a degree of intoxication,” a February 2004 court ruling stated…

If CMI keeps refusing to subject the application to an independent audit, it is unlikely that a judge can force it to do so. This would render the results of the test inadmissible in court.”

UPDATE: Breathalyzers aren’t the only machines of legal consequence that have embedded code. Think about the processors and the programming behind computing your tax (the BIR claims it used datamining to sniff out tax evaders), the tabulation of votes (at least at the central level), and the determination of DNA matches.

Without access to the source code, they are for all intents and purposes “mystical machines” - and making conviction contingent on such “black boxes” may raise due-process concerns.

I’ll chalk this one up as another reason for government-led adoption of open source (or shared source, or at least open standards). “Certainly, the courts can require the disclosure of even proprietary sourcecode through the discovery process, why go through the extreme of modifying ourt entire tech procurement policy?” Buy why wait for the courts to review code post-facto (after the damage has been done, and expensive litigation started?) Are we not entitled, as taxpayers, to have an objective assurance that the code that our government purchases, the code that could send us to jail (or to death) are working the wayt they’re supposed to?

So now that I got a status page, a “further afield”-like section and a photo in the about page, I can finally say that I’m done with the redesign. Wordpress is truly a gift to the world and a pleasure to work with (I think I’m falling for it.) I hope the new code will make the site look and work better for the 4 or 5 people who still read it

Got this from Pinoy Tech Blog - Netopia is lobbying for Internet Censorship in RP. I’m wondering what Netopia doing fiddling around with legislative lobbying. What’s their angle on this?

This is something that has to be nipped in the bud. I’m talking extreme sanction.

1. discuss and blog about why this is a Bad Idea.
2. do our own lobbying. letters would have to be written and sent, media contacts would have to be called.
3. a grassroots campaign - buttons on web sites, forwarded emails and text messages, pamphlets for actual internet cafe users.

Anyone out there as blog hopping mad as I am?

Excerpts from posts and comments I wrote in other blogs:

it’s called public choice theory. politics has its own system of costs and benefits, and rational actors who seek to maximize the latter. rent seeking, pork, and bad legislation subsist because the payoffs are big and the costs (impeachment, imprisonment- yeah right) are so paltry

- comment on The right direction is toward systemic changes, Oct. 25 2005

isn’t it possible to be about *both* freedom of speech and of the press and the right to privacy? a conflict of rights, depending from whose end you view it, is involved. following the american stream of thought, the SC has read the constitutional provisions as a hierarchy of rights. to the extent that freedom of speech/press facilitates the discussion of matters of public concern, it trumps privacy. the problem indeed is whether tiongco’s marital arrangements constitute a matter of public concern.

- comment on On the TRO against PCIJ, Nov. 5, 2005