First OS X Ransomware Found in Transmission BitTorrent Client Installer

The Transmission.app installer was infected on March 4th, 2016 and it was found yesterday, so the window is small. If you installed Transmission this weekend, you should read this in detail. The malware waits 3 days before activating, so you have time to remove it. You can otherwise read it in detail because it's interesting. :) New OS X Ransomware KeRanger Infected Transmission BitTorrent Client Installer.

Trump is closer to what most Republicans believe than the ‘establishment’ candidates are

WonkBlog says Trump is closer to what most Republicans believe than the ‘establishment’ candidates are "Across these three representative issues, 60 percent of the Democratic electorate supports Democratic candidates’ policies strongly (or more so). But only 35 percent of the Republican electorate supports their candidates’ positions."

Maybe this provides a little more hope as well, For Voters, Facts Should Be the Lifeblood of Democracy. "James Fishkin has run his conferences around the world. Every time he holds one he gets the same results. They are nothing short of extraor dinary. Voters aren’t dumb. They are ignorant. When you expose them to the relevant information they are able to digest it and make sense of it. This suggests that democracy can work. It means charlatans can be stopped." The problem, as the article points out, figuring out a way to educate them that works.

Top Ten List of Things That Are Going Great in America

Kevin Drum has a nice list of the Top Ten List of Things That Are Going Great in America

CBS CEO: “For Us, Economically, Donald’s Place in This Election Is a Good Thing”

The Intercept reports: CBS CEO: “For Us, Economically, Donald’s Place in This Election Is a Good Thing” "Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, celebrated Donald Trump’s candidacy for the second time on Monday, calling it ‘good for us economically.’ Moonves, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference at the Park Hotel in San Francisco, described the ‘circus’ of a presidential campaign and the flow of political advertising dollars, and stated that it ‘may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.’"

This is the current problem with the fourth estate, it has to be run as a business. The incentive is not to provide the most informative news, but the news that delivers the most money. When TV started and radio frequencies were given out, providing news was part of the bargain that the media had to give to make use of the public airwaves. Not so much anymore and news divisions are just another profit center. So this year we have at least one party, who's primary is being run a wrestling match and it's being covered as one as well. You get what you incentivize and we're doing that wrong.

Top 10 Movie Twists of All Time

CineFix presents the Top 10 Movie Twists of All Time. It's a good list. It spoils lots of films (and warns you about it up front). They mention a lot of their runner ups, but they dive in on their 10 picks.

I'll try to do better, if you haven't seen these movies, go see them first then watch this fun compilation. I haven't seen Orson Welles' F for Fake but it's been on my list for a couple of years.

• Planet of the Apes (1969)
• The Sting
• Murder on the Orient Express
• Charade
• Wizard of Oz
• Fight Club
• The Third Man
• F for Fake
• Empire Strikes Back
• Psycho

I can quibble with some of their rankings, but it's a good list. They're hampered by having each ranking be a category, so two films with a similar twist, even if they're effective, don't make the top 10. So The Usual Suspects and The Matrix would have made my top 10. The Sixth Sense and The Crying Game might have as well (though I don't think those films were as good as their endings).

House of Games should have been mentioned. Twelve Monkeys too.

Other films mentioned that I highly recommend if you haven't seen them:

• Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
• Brazil (1985)
• The Spanish Prisoner (1997)
• Oceans Eleven (2001)
• Memento (2000)
• A Beautiful Mind (2001)
• Inside Man (2006)
• The Prestige (2006)
• The Man From Earth (2007)

Romney Looks the Fool Bashing Trump

I was in the car when I heard the end of Mitt Romney's anti-Trump speech today. It just seemed so hollow and I realized that the Republicans have no one of presidential stature that can speak for the party. The only two living past presidents are Bush Sr, who was never that liked (one term and he was never Reagan) and Bush Jr who has been largely discredited even by those that supported him at the time (though for different reasons than the Democrats discredit him). W wasn't a help to Jeb.

And no Republican presidential nominee has good standing. Bob Dole is 92 and hasn't been in office in 20 years. Perhaps he'd be liked but he's not talking and as soon as anyone mentions that Obamacare is basically his idea he'd be completely discredited. John McCain was liked but then he blew his reputation in 2008, picking Sarah Palin and loosing to Obama. Since then his power in the party has only declined because he's not conservative enough. And then there's Romney. He was never the real pick of the party, coming in second in each primary while everyone else took turns in first. He never had the religious wing of the party and by losing to (socialist, muslim terrorist fist-bumping) Obama he lost all credibility and hasn't been heard from since until today.

The party doesn't like anyone in Washington. Not McConnell, or other senior senators (ask Lindsey Graham). And in the House they had no one to take over after Boehner stepped down, having to beg Paul Ryan to take it. He's been mostly quiet, trying to wrangle the tea partiers and not get too much heat for making deals to keep the government running while doing nothing else.

So who is there for the "establishment" to trot out to discredit Trump? Using Romney is hilarious. My barber had Fox News on and they immediately brought up clips of Trump endorsing Romney and Romney saying exactly the opposite of what he said today, just four years ago. My barber said "who's the hypocrite now?". This might be the first election where the media learned from Jon Stewart how to bring out past clips in the news cycle to discredit whatever they say today.

I asked my barber (a born again Republican) if there's anyone who the majority of the Republicans respect that could speak for them? He immediately turned it around asking if there's any Democrat I could name. I said Obama and Bill Clinton. While they certainly have their detractors, both would be listened to if they came out with an opinion/endorsement. HIllary is probably going to win the nomination so she's by definition widely respected (as much as Romney was in 2012). I think on financial matters Elizabeth Warren is the most respected figure in the party. I asked him to name someone and the closest I could get is "I could name someone I like".

I think the best shot the Republican party has of regaining any semblance of control is this. They need to go to Roger Ailes and have him push the story on Fox that they uncovered a Republican establishment conspiracy that lied about climate change. It turns out climate change is real.

• This gets the country working to save the world
• It lets Fox off the hook for lying about it for so long
• They get to blame at least part of the establishment that the voters seem to hate
• It gives Fox a leg up on the Koch brothers
• It further discredits those that have fallen out of favor with Fox (Palin, Beck, Coulter)
• They can push for tax cuts on green companies and investments
• It lets Fox News discredit Trump (climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and Palin should be energy secretary)
• They still need to come up with a viable candidate (maybe Kasich who hasn't called climate change a hoax)

It's obviously a farfetched pipe dream, but that's as good as I've got.

Movie Review: Knight of Cups

Knight of Cups is the latest film by Terrence Malick. That should be enough to give you some clue about the film. Apparently the issue with Tree of Life is that it had too much plot, this film too is devoid of that problem.

Christian Bale is evidently someone having a midlife crisis. We see him in various vignettes, at party at a mansion, at a modeling shoot, walking down the street, walking on rooftops, at the seashore, under a dock, on a dock, in the LA river, driving in LA, driving in Las Vegas, driving in the desert, walking through a wind farm, well you get the point. Various people are in and around pools in all stages of dress. At times he's with his brother (Wes Bentley), his father (Brian Dennehy), his ex-wife (Cate Blanchett), and various women he's hooking up with (it's a long list including Natalie Portman and Freida Pinto). These aren't as much scenes as they are montages of imagery (sometime scenery, sometimes actors). If they do bring up a semblence of a plot point (an unwanted pregnancy), don't worry, they are dropped completely within a few minutes.

There's a seen of a tarot card reading, and by that I mean that there are images on the screen of Bale in a shop sitting at a table across from a woman turning over cards which look like they could be tarot cards. She speaks in another language and someone who might be standing behind her translates into English but it just sounds like the broken musings of the voiceover anyway. There's nothing that anyone would call a reading or a fortune. However, the film is broken into segments with title cards that seem to come from the Tarot (the moon, the hanged man, death, the hermit, etc.) I tried to see a connection between the titles and the following segment and never once found one. I mean that quite literally.

I saw Freida Pinto on a late night show, she said there was no script, she got several pages of enigmatic phrases that was supposed to help her. She saw Bale on set and wanted to discuss some lines to work on each other with, and then he told her that he didn't speak in the film. Here's another similar story. It seems obvious that they shot a bunch of footage and then spent a couple of years trying to edit it together into something coherent and failed utterly.

Bale and some of the characters have voiceovers (sometimes it's dialog but the camera is so infrequently on someone's face the assumption is it's not). That's fine in abstract, Malick's films are more poetry than prose and there should be a place for that in film. Two lines stood out to me and I found the quotes on IMDb.

Dennehy says: "You think when you reach a certain age things will start making sense, and you find out that you are just as lost as you were before. I suppose that's what damnation is. The pieces of your life never to come together, just splashed out there." I'm perfectly comfortable with the notion that there is no meaning of life. But seriously, if you're searching for one, hopping between LA parties, strip clubs and Las Vegas is so obviously not the way to find it. Now sure, many people have tried this method, but do need another movie about hiow unsucessful that will be? Do we need an abstract film on that?

A priest says: "If you are unhappy, you shouldn't take it as God's disfavor. Just the contrary. Might be the very sign He loves you. He shows His love not by helping avoid suffering, but by sending you suffering, by keeping you there. To suffer binds you to something higher than yourself, higher than your own will. Takes you from the world to find what lies beyond it." The priest is basically facing the camera when he says this, it's hard to not take it as the purpose of the film. Malick brought us this two hour film to make us suffer and through that we can come out better for it. That would be fine if it worked, but I learned nothing from the experience that I didn't know in the first five minutes.

It's sad that Malick has so much talent and so little to say. I hope he gets help.

4 Reasons Iran's Election Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think

The Republican party might be turning authoritarian and voting for nationalism but Vox points out 4 reasons Iran's election is a bigger deal than you think

Tens of millions of Iranians voted on Friday, for parliament and for the body that will likely pick the next supreme leader, in an election with still-uncertain but potentially major consequences for the country, its future, and its relationship with the outside world. So-called moderates swept the vote, seemingly defeating the hard-liners who've long dominated Iran's government.

It's worth a couple of important caveats. No two Iran analysts agree on who counts as a liberal-leaning 'reformist' versus a 'moderate' versus a 'hard-liner.' Iran does not have formal political parties, so we have to use fuzzy terms and imprecise measurements of which ideological factions are rising or falling. And, crucially, Iran's elected officials have real power, but they're limited by unelected authorities like the supreme leader."

1. The trend points toward a rise of moderates in Iran
2. Iranians approve of the nuclear deal and opening with the West — and push for more
3. It puts pressure on the supreme leader
4. The election's hidden and potentially historic significance: on picking the next supreme leader

The Myth and the Reality of Donald Trump’s Business Empire

The Washington Post has a good article The myth and the reality of Donald Trump’s business empire "Given all the ‘truthful hyperbole’ out there about Trump, it’s hard to know what to believe. Here are five of the most important things to know about Trump’s business career."

1. He has a talent for real estate, but that hasn’t always translated well to other industries.
2. Trump is not a self-made man.
3. Everything Trump touches turns to "Trump."
4. Trump’s record includes some unsavory episodes.
5. Trump's genius is building a brand, even a mythology.

One-third of all U.S. presidents appointed a Supreme Court justice in an election year

The Washington Post puts it in perspective, One-third of all U.S. presidents appointed a Supreme Court justice in an election year "The historical record supports that position: 14 presidents have appointed 21 justices during presidential election years. A half-dozen presidents, classic lame ducks, filled Supreme Court seats even though their successors had been elected. Six lame duck presidents appointed Supreme Court justices – before their successors took office."

“Trumped" Starring Matthew Broderick & Nathan Lane

If the scammers in The Producers thought of electing Trump as their scheme...

Diffie and Hellman Receive Turing Award

The Turing Award is basically the Nobel Prize of computer science. Today, Cryptography Pioneers Receive ACM A.M. Turing Award "ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Whitfield Diffie, former Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems and Martin E. Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, recipients of the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award for critical contributions to modern cryptography. The ability for two parties to communicate privately over a secure channel is fundamental for billions of people around the world. On a daily basis, individuals establish secure online connections with banks, e-commerce sites, email servers and the cloud. Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking 1976 paper, 'New Directions in Cryptography,' introduced the ideas of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, which are the foundation for most regularly-used security protocols on the Internet today. The Diffie-Hellman Protocol protects daily Internet communications and trillions of dollars in financial transactions."

Here's a nice video explanation of their invention:

The Mindblowing Special Effects Used On 'Carol'

Funny or Die nailed it with this:

Side-by-side comparisons of movies and their remakes

"A quick three-minute look at how the same scenes were filmed in movies and their remakes." Lots of films, I'm not sure what the criteria was, but I'm amazing that barely any of the remakes are an improvement on the original shot. (via kottke)

My Spock - Hamilton / Star Trek Parody

Images of Earth From a Year in Space

In Focus shows Images of Earth From a Year in Space "On February 29, the NASA astronaut Scott Kelly will turn over command of the International Space Station to astronaut Tim Kopra, then prepare to return to Earth after spending nearly a year in space. Last March, Kelly and and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko launched into low Earth orbit aboard the ISS, and have since participated in hundreds of experiments while the effects of long-term microgravity on the human body were studied. Kelly also took hundreds of photographs during his year abroad, posting many to his Twitter account. As we await the return of Kelly and Kornienko tomorrow, here are some of his photographs from the past year."

Here, this is one of the least interesting photos in the collection, go see them all.

Update: Here are some more.

Oscars 2016 Predictions

I run an Oscar pool so I usually don't post predictions before the awards. Both because I don't want to tip my hand (though I've not done well the last three years) and because I'm usually pretty busy right before the awards. I thought about it this year, including both predictions and preferences, but just go read Vox's Todd VanDerWerff's predictions for all 24 Academy Award categories instead. I agree with about 90% of what he wrote.

I think this year all the big categories have clear favorites except for Best Picture which seems odd.

I've seen all the nominated films in 19 categories. If I catch Straight Outta Compton today it will be 20. I've seen none of the nominated foreign language films or documentary shorts and two of the nominees in animated features and song.

My favorite category this year is Visual Effects. I think all the nominated films (Ex Machina, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) are great (well I didn't love The Revenant but it's clearly an achievement) and I'm thrilled that this year there's no crap film like Transformers nominated. I also think it's a tough category to call.

If you catch the shorts, the animated ones are all kind of charming and the live action ones are (with one exception) harrowing (particularly for parents). I think Day One should win, but I have no idea what will win.

And for all the legitimate talk about #OscarsSoWhite I'm sorry that it seems lost that it was a really good year for women in films. All 10 of the nominated actresses did a great job in really good films that had good roles for women. I don't think the nominated male actors were nearly as good.

The Frozen Canyons of Pluto’s North Pole

NASA shows The Frozen Canyons of Pluto’s North Pole (in an enhanced color image).

"Long canyons run vertically across the polar area—part of the informally named Lowell Regio, named for Percival Lowell, who founded Lowell Observatory and initiated the search that led to Pluto’s discovery. The widest of the canyons (yellow in the image below) – is about 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide and runs close to the north pole. Roughly parallel subsidiary canyons to the east and west (in green) are approximately 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material. These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics."

The Best Explanation of LIGO I've Seen

Physicist Brian Greene was on Colbert this week and explained gravitational waves and how LIGO discovered them. It's pretty amazing TV. In just 8 minutes he explains it really clearly and entertainingly and gives a fantastic demo of laser interferometry.

Joel & Ethan Coen - Shot | Reverse Shot

Another great episode of Every Frame a Painting:

LIGO

Last Friday I went to an MIT Panel on LIGO which was fascinating. Here are my notes.

Panel

• Moderator Rainer Weiss, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, invented laser interferometer gravitational wave detector, co-founded LIGO, also started COBE to detect Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
• Lisa Barsotti, Principal Research Scientist,
• Edmund Bertschinger, Professor of Physics, theorist, cosmology and general relativity
• Matthew Evans, Assistant Professor of Physics,
• Salvatore Vitale, Research Scientist, data analysis, extracting signal from data

Rainer Weiss

• LIGO started in the 80s at MIT building 20, now gone
• No one cared about the old building so they could tear down walls, remove wiring, etc.
• Trucks on Vasser St shook building
• 1.5 meter prototype, two grad students
• F&T Deli in old Kendall Sq pre T stop. Ideas discussed at table there because they didn't kick you out. Now plaque there.
• Tons of students at all levels with all kinds of papers and thesis

Edmund Bertschinger

• If a tree falls and no one is there does it make a sound? No, because sound is waves hitting ear
• LIGO is the first direct signal from as close to a black hole as we will ever get
• To see this black hole would need a telescope that can resolve 10⁻²⁰ radians, 12 orders of magnitude smaller than we can
• Gravitational waves are oscillating tides traveling at the speed of light
• The distortion seen is like continents and oceans stretched from the moon tides
• LIGO built not to discover but as an observatory

Salvatore Vitale

• Animation, showed waves
• Different masses produced different signals
• Was 2 black holes of 30 solar masses each
• These were stellar black holes as opposed to those at the center of a galaxy (which would have been much more massive)
• The most massive black holes previously known which were not at center of a galaxy was half this size
• These black holes merged 1 billion years ago and weren't spinning that fast
• Mass tells us about the environment they were in
• Signal didn't deviate from General Relativity formulas
• 62 solar masses is result, 3 solar masses emitted in merger as gravitational waves in 0.2 seconds
• Sun has lost 0.03% of mass in last 5 billion years, so this was HUGE energy and yet it still took something as sensitive as LIGO to detect

Lisa Barsotti

• Amplitude of a gravitational wave (h) is 10⁻²¹
• L is length, so ΔL = h × L
• So try to use larger distances to see more movement, but still really small
• even if we could use the whole earth (L = 6,350km), that would require very precise measurements
• H atom is 10⁻¹⁰
• if L is 4km then it's 4x10⁻¹⁸ = proton diameter / 200
• it's crazy small we are superheroes
• One detector in Livingston, LA and one in Hanford, WA
• Each 4km tubes, 1.2m diameter, 10ms travel time between locations at c
• The more light you have you essentially amplify the wave
• Up to 125W entering interferometer, up to 1MW in each arm at full power (now operating at 100kW)
• Detector hears noise of interferometer + gravitational wave

Matthew Evans

• Three kinds of noise to be minimized and removed from signal:
  • Quantum Mechanics - Photons bouncing off mirror moves mirror makes noise, mainly high frequency noise
  • Thermal Noise - materials aren't at absolute zero, so brownian motion, lower frequency
  • Seismic Noise -, vibrations from outside world, lowest frequency

• incredible isolation, big scary laser, massive super optics
• 120 W laser
• roughly. 50 BBH merges each year I a volume of 1 Gpc³
• about 10 million galaxy's per Gpc³
• Advanced LIGO range now 0.1 - 1 Gpc depending on system mass
• We can expect 5 or more BBH events in next observing run (due later 2016)
• gravitational waves from Big Bang - frequency one over the age of the universe
• Future improvements:
  • Squeezed states of light to reduce quantum noise in the interferometer
  • Thermal noise reduced with better materials and cryogenics
  • Next big leap from a longer interferometer, up to 40km is doable, 400km is not

• Conclusions:
  • General Relativity is correct even in the strong field regime
  • Large stellar mass black holes exist in binaries and merge
  • Direct detection of gravitational waves is possible

Q&A

• Salvatore was first person to see the information come out of the data (the masses of the bodies)
• One location got the data 7ms ahead of the other and they're very proud of it
• Measuring amplitude so goes down with 1/distance, not 1/distance²
• Detector in Pisa Italy come online in 2016
• Another being built in Japan for 2017-2018
• Another copy of LIGO in India
• Not spherical waves. Technically quadropolar. Perpendicular to plane
• Just a sphere expanding won't create gravity waves, need things moving around each other to form a quadrupole system
• Though a lumpy supernova might
• Gravitational waves interact so weakly with matter, not absorbed by planets, etc.

Apple v FBI

One of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Rizwan, had an iPhone (it was actually a work phone owned by his employer). Now the FBI has it but they can't unlock it. They've looked at other info, they can get call records from Verizon and they asked for and Apple gave them iCloud backups of the device, but those stopped in October. Now the FBI wants Apple to provide them with software to help them unlock the phone. Apple has said no but the FBI got United States Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym to issue a writ to compel Apple to help them, and Apple has said no.

Techdirt in a addition to a description of the order, has the actual order itself. No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor. Wired has it too, pdf.

Here's Apple's reply, A Message to Our Customers. I think it's very well worded. Here's the heart of it:

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

Here's a technical analysis by Dan Guido saying, Apple can comply with the FBI court order. It's mostly because the iPhone in question is a 5C which doesn't have TouchID or the Secure Enclave as later models do. More info: Errata Security: Some notes on Apple decryption San Bernadino phone and tl;dr Apple’s technical capabilities under FBI AWA order.

There's also a debate about the governments use of the All Writs Act to compel Apple. I've seen some debate on the point, but Apple says this is "unprecedented".

The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

Now the writ itself says on page 11:

Further, based on the authority given to the courts under the All Writs Act, courts have issued orders, similar to the one the government is seeking here, that require a manufacturer to assist in accessing a cell phone's files so that a warrant may be executed originally contemplated. See, e.g., In re Order Requiring [XXX], Inc. to Assist in the Execution of a Search Warrant Issued by This Court by Unlocking a Cellphone, 2014 WL 5510865 at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 31, 2014)

I wonder what company XXX is? Apparently even Judges being asked to issue similar writs don't know (see footnote at bottom of page 8 in this pdf! Ars Technica says the All Writs Act has come up in other cases, but cites several experts saying "The DoJ went with the nuclear option" and they can't think of similar precedents.

Joshua Gans writes about Game Theory and Apple’s Encryption Challenge. It's interesting that Apple can do this but the FBI (or NSA) can't. Also interesting is that Apple can't do this on more recent iPhones and this is clearly another salvo in the debate of should companies like Apple be able to make devices with secure encryption technology.

Ben Thompson provides a really good summary and makes some good points in Apple Versus the FBI, Understanding iPhone Encryption, The Risks for Apple and Encryption.

This solution [a government backdoor using a master key in future products] is, frankly, unacceptable, and it’s not simply an issue of privacy: it’s one of security. A master key, contrary to conventional wisdom, is not guessable, but it can be stolen; worse, if it is stolen, no one would ever know. It would be a silent failure allowing whoever captured it to break into any device secured by the algorithm in question without those relying on it knowing anything was amiss. I can’t stress enough what a problem this is: World War II, especially in the Pacific, turned on this sort of silent cryptographic failure. And, given the sheer number of law enforcement officials that would want their hands on this key, it landing in the wrong hands would be a matter of when, not if.

This is why I’m just a tiny bit worried about Tim Cook drawing such a stark line in the sand with this case: the PR optics could not possibly be worse for Apple. It’s a case of domestic terrorism with a clear cut bad guy and a warrant that no one could object to, and Apple is capable of fulfilling the request. Would it perhaps be better to cooperate in this case secure in the knowledge that the loophole the FBI is exploiting (the software-based security measures) has already been closed, and then save the rhetorical gun powder for the inevitable request to insert the sort of narrow backdoor into the disk encryption itself I just described?

Then again, I can see the other side: a backdoor is a backdoor, and it is absolutely the case that the FBI is demanding Apple deliberately weaken security. Perhaps there is a slippery slope argument here, and I can respect the idea that government intrusion on security must be fought at every step. I just hope that this San Bernardino case doesn’t become a rallying cry for (helping to) break into not only an iPhone 5C but, in the long run, all iPhones.

Rich Mogull in Why the FBI's request to Apple will affect civil rights for a generation says:

The crux of the issue is should companies be required to build security circumvention technologies to expose their own customers? Not “assist law enforcement with existing tools,” but “build new tools.”

The FBI Director has been clear that the government wants back doors into our devices, even though the former head of the NSA disagrees and supports strong consumer encryption. One reason Apple is likely fighting this case so publicly is that it is a small legal step from requiring new circumvention technology, to building such access into devices. The FBI wants the precedent far more than they need the evidence, and this particular case is incredibly high profile and emotional.

He also previously explained Why Apple Defends Encryption "Apple is nearly unique among technology firms in that it’s high profile, has revenue lines that don’t rely on compromising privacy, and sells products that are squarely in the crosshairs of the encryption debate. Because of this, everything Apple says about encryption comes from a highly defensible position, especially now that the company is dropping its iAd App Network."

As he points out, "Google is fundamentally an advertising company that collects data on its users." For Google to use that info, it has to have access to it, so available to the government with a warrant. Microsoft until recently has a history of working with the government. Most of Facebook's and Twitter's information about you is already public.

The ACLU is, not surprisingly, on Apple's side here. "“This is an unprecedented, unwise, and unlawful move by the government. The Constitution does not permit the government to force companies to hack into their customers' devices. Apple is free to offer a phone that stores information securely, and it must remain so if consumers are to retain any control over their private data."

Even a Congressman agrees with Apple, it's probably no coincidence it's one with a computer science degree from Standford, Rep Ted Lieu (D-CA), Congressman Lieu Statement on Apple Court Order .

This court order also begs the question: Where does this kind of coercion stop? Can the government force Facebook to create software that provides analytic data on who is likely to be a criminal? Can the government force Google to provide the names of all people who searched for the term ISIL? Can the government force Amazon to write software that identifies who might be suspicious based on the books they ordered?

Forcing Apple to weaken its encryption system in this one case means the government can force Apple—or any other private sector company—to weaken encryption systems in all future cases. This precedent-setting action will both weaken the privacy of Americans and hurt American businesses. And how can the FBI ensure the software that it is forcing Apple to create won’t fall into the wrong hands? Given the number of cyberbreaches in the federal government—including at the Department of Justice—the FBI cannot guarantee this back door software will not end up in the hands of hackers or other criminals.

Researching this I learned this is not the first time that a government agency has used the All Writs Act to coerce Apple to break into an iPhone. The EFF wrote about a case last October, Judge to DOJ: Not All Writs. The documents for that case are here and apparently the Judge still has not ruled on the matter.

In one of those documents the government says:

Apple has an established track record of assisting law enforcement agents by extracting data from passcode-locked iPhones pursuant to court orders issued under the All Writs Act. The government has confirmed that Apple has done so in numerous federal criminal cases around the nation, and the vast majority of these cases have been resolved without any need for Apple to testify. In the course of handling these requests, Apple has, on multiple occasions, informed the government that it can extract data from a passcode-locked device and provided the government with the specific language it seeks in the form of a court order to do so.

Interesting past history, but they're clearly trying to move away from this and it's for the privacy of their customers. I'm on Apple's side here. Not the least of reasons is that our own government is when other governments try to do this. This is from March 2015, Obama sharply criticizes China's plans for new technology rules.

In an interview with Reuters, Obama said he was concerned about Beijing's plans for a far-reaching counterterrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys, the passcodes that help protect data, and install security "backdoors" in their systems to give Chinese authorities surveillance access.

"This is something that I’ve raised directly with President Xi," Obama said. "We have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States."

Drew Hartwell gives a nice overview of Tim Cook's recent advocacy, Tim Cook just escalated Apple’s fight with the FBI – and his own role as corporate activist

On a good note, The President's NSA Advisory Board Finally Gets a Tech Expert. Steve Bellovin is a great choice.

Left-to-right character movement in movies

I love this stuff...

via Kottke

Donald Trump is the real ideological heir to George W. Bush

Matt Yglesias makes an interesting point Donald Trump is the real ideological heir to George W. Bush.

In their signature editorial "Against Trump," the editors of National Review complained that "Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution" and that Trump's obsession with winning reflects "a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power."

He goes on to point out that "Muslims are the new gays"; that both W and Trump were about tax cuts but not necessarily smaller government; and nationalism, though Trump's is inward vs the neocons external power projection.

The theme of the 2004 campaign was that "Democrats were weak, indecisive, and vaguely foreign" (remember french speaking Kerry?), not that they were "insufficiently committed to the precepts of Burke or Hayek." As Trump now says, they're losers.

But the key continuity is that Trump realizes — in a way that neither Jeb nor Marco Rubio nor the Republican establishment writ large do — that nationalism rather than philosophical commitment to small government is at the core of conservative politics.

The GOP mainstream responded to the failures of Bushism by keeping the same failed foreign policy but trying to ditch the flexibility on spending, even though there's never been any indication that spending money on farmers, oldsters, and schools is unpopular.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it but he also points out something I hadn't realized before: "But it seems noteworthy that Trump isn't publicly feuding with other Republican Party leaders. There are no high-profile clashes with Paul Ryan, no backbiting from Mitch McConnell, and no snarky putdowns of Mitt Romney."

Donald Trump Isn’t Real

So I read a lot of articles via RSS (in Reeder 2 on OS X and iOS using Feedly as a backend). I subscribe to Instapaper Daily that pushes popular articles to their RSS feed. Today this one showed up. Donald Trump Isn’t Real. As it's presented, in Reeder 2 from the RSS feed using Readability for formatting I didn't see the date or byline. So I'm reading it and like a couple of early points:

Donald Trump was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2013. He’d been involved with professional wrestling for over a quarter century. At first his interest was on the business side, because so many of the events were held at his hotels. But then he began appearing in the ring as an actual character.

His greatest moment came in 2007 with the pay-per-view series called “Battle of the Billionaires,” when he verbally went up against the WWE’s chief executive, Vince McMahon. The feud started when Trump interrupted McMahon on Fan Appreciation Night and upstaged him by raining thousands of dollars in cash down on the crowd in the arena. It continued with a verbal barrage and proxy match, and ended with a triumphant Trump shaving McMahon’s head in the middle of the ring.

He goes on with the wrestling comparison which seemed somewhat apt. Then I got to:

But in Iowa on Monday night we saw the limit of Trump’s appeal. Like any other piece of showbiz theatrics, Trump was more spectacle than substance.

So I knew it was a couple of weeks old. Then:

What happened in Iowa was that some version of normalcy returned to the G.O.P. race. The precedents of history have not been rendered irrelevant.

And now I wanted to finish it to see how wrong it was.

But can [Rubio] rise to this moment? Can he see that the Trump phenomenon touched something, even if the blowhard candidate offered people nothing but bread and circuses? Can Rubio take his growing establishment base and reach out to the working-class voters with a message that offers concrete assistance for those who are being left behind?

Finishing it I had to check who wrote this and when. David Brooks on Feb 2. Definitely funny. I don't know why the Times can't find someone better.