Jonathan

Arts & Letters Daily links to this remarkable essay by the author of a forthcoming “history of Stalin and his courtiers.”

Robert Cringely writes thoughtfully and at length about the numerous vulnerabilities of new governmental info-tracking schemes. Problems are unavoidable, both because of the vast scope envisioned for these databases and because they will be created and administered by government officials who will lack both the incentive and the ability to prevent theft and misuse of sensitive data.

No sane person is in favor of terrorism or lawlessness. But at a time when intelligence agencies are under fire for being not very intelligent, when our leaders are sometimes in too big a hurry to cast blame and take credit, we are building huge information gathering systems that we can’t completely control, we can’t completely validate, that can be turned against us by our enemies, and that can ultimately be used to justify, well, anything.

Of course he’s right. CARNIVORE, CALEA, TIA, etc. have been and are being driven by concerns about organized-crime and terrorism. Most citizens are unaware or unconcerned about problems with these systems, government agencies have lobbied vigorously for them, and legislators have consequently brushed aside concerns in allowing them (though TIA’s status is uncertain). But the existing systems are all vulnerable to hacking — and have been hacked, as Cringely points out — and the proposed TIA system, which promises to be much bigger than the previous systems combined, is likely to be at least as vulnerable to such problems and to false positives as well.

(Link: Don Luskin)

UPDATE: This is encouraging, though I think it’s too early to know if the level of public opposition will prove sufficient to stop the government’s data-mining program for good. TIA legislation has been “killed” at least once before, yet the security bureaucracy and its legislative supporters got it reintroduced in slightly different form. Time will tell.

The city government of Hollywood, Florida, on behalf of residents who don’t like to have certain kinds of Jews as neighbors, is using zoning laws to harass the Jews while it leaves members of other religious groups alone.

The Jews voted with their dollars and their feet to live and worship in Hollywood. Their neighbors are free to leave if they don’t like the situation, but instead are using the city’s legal muscle to try and keep the newcomers out. (Religious Jews always live near their synagogues, so forbidding synagogues in residential areas makes it difficult for religious Jews to live in those areas.)

There would be an outcry and lawsuits if any American city tried such tactics against blacks or gays or members of other minority groups. What’s different here? Nothing, except that the Jews in question are a very small minority and Hollywood thinks it can get away with pushing them around. This is an appropriate occasion for an anti-discrimination suit against the City, and it’s nice to hear that the Chabad people are planning one.

The mayor of Hollywood is trying to protect herself and her cronies by vigorously supporting anti-religious zoning restrictions, but insisting, somewhat belatedly, that they be applied evenhandedly. No thanks. One of the main problems with such restrictions is that it’s easy for cities to get away with not applying them evenhandedly. That’s part of why they are useful to politicians. Hollywood is only vulnerable here because it applied its own rules in such a heavy handed and blatantly discriminatory way as to make its adversaries’ case for them; the City might well have gotten away with it if its officials had been a bit more subtle and tactful. And who is the mayor of Hollywood, an ex-social worker, to say that organized religious observance is inappropriate in residential neighborhoods? That kind of arrogance in government officials is a much bigger problem than are low-key Sabbath gatherings in people’s residences.

Bigwig of the Silflay Hraka blog posts photos and commentary about the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp in 1945. The photos came into his possession by accident and he thinks they may never have been published. They are gruesome reminders of why we fought but also of why we are fighting, and are worth looking at even if you have seen such things many times before. Bigwig’s comments add quite a lot, as do some of the comments left by his readers.

Bigwig is ambivalent about posting previously-unpublished historical images on his blog. I don’t think he should be. Blogs are perfect for this sort of thing. If he had given the photos straightaway to a museum or other institution they might have been filed away for years until someone got around to looking at them. Now he can scan them onto his blog and people will see them immediately, and he can still give them to an institution for preservation. This was a great idea on his part. The more people who use blogs to post historically significant photos and reminiscences, the better.