Din mobiltelefon er en overvågningsenhed, du kan ringe fra

Som Jacob Applebaum siger:

Appelbaum: Cell phones are tracking devices that make phone calls. It’s sad, but it’s true. Which means software solutions don’t always matter. You can have a secure set of tools on your phone, but it doesn’t change the fact that your phone tracks everywhere you go. And the police can potentially push updates onto your phone that backdoor it and allow it to be turned into a microphone remotely, and do other stuff like that. The police can identify everybody at a protest by bringing in a device called an IMSI catcher. It’s a fake cell phone tower that can be built for 1500 bucks. And once nearby, everybody’s cell phones will automatically jump onto the tower, and if the phone’s unique identifier is exposed, all the police have to do is go to the phone company and ask for their information.

Resnick: So phones are tracking devices. They can also be used for surreptitious recording. Would taking the battery out disable this capability?

Appelbaum: Maybe. But iPhones, for instance, don’t have a removable battery; they power off via the power button. So if I wrote a backdoor for the iPhone, it would play an animation that looked just like a black screen. And then when you pressed the button to turn it back on it would pretend to boot. Just play two videos.

Resnick: And how easy is it to create something like to that?

Appelbaum: There are weaponized toolkits sold by companies like FinFisher that enable breaking into BlackBerries, Android phones, iPhones, Symbian devices and other platforms. And with a single click, say, the police can own a person, and take over her phone. (…)

The first response people have is, whatever, I’m not important. And the second is, they’re not watching me, and even if they were, there’s nothing they could find because I’m not doing anything illegal. But the thing is, taking precautions with your communications is like safe sex in that you have a responsibility to other people to be safe—your transgressions can fuck other people over. The reality is that when you find out it will be too late. It’s not about doing a perfect job, it’s about recognizing you have a responsibility to do that job at all, and doing the best job you can manage, without it breaking down your ability to communicate, without it ruining your day, and understanding that sometimes it’s not safe to undertake an action, even if other times you would. That’s the education component.

So security culture stuff sounds crazy, but the technological capabilities of the police, especially with these toolkits for sale, is vast. And to thwart that by taking all the phones at a party and putting them in a bag and putting them in the freezer and turning on music in the other room—true, someone in the meeting might be a snitch, but at least there’s no audio recording of you.

Link (via Boing Boing).

Nej til forbud mod omskæring af drenge:

Rune Engelbreth Larsen rammer hovedet på sømmet:

Når spørgsmålet om et forbud mod drengeomskæring på den anden side ikke er helt så enkelt, skyldes det naturligvis en række yderligere overvejelser, der også, men ikke kun har at gøre med den årtusindlange tradition, idet et forbud vil få andre uoverskuelige følger, der ikke er begrænset til arealet af den pågældende drengs forhud.

Det er jo ganske indiskutabelt, at drengeomskæring vil fortsætte i stort tal illegalt efter et forbud, og at de hygiejniske forhold i givet fald næppe altid vil være optimale. Og går det galt, risikerer man, at ofrene ikke kommer på hospitalet, fordi det ville afsløre familien bag det ulovlige indgreb. Selv meget beskedne komplikationer kan med andre ord blive mange gange forværret.

En del muslimer og jøder ville utvivlsomt forlade Danmark i tilfælde af et forbud, hvilket kan tilfredsstille nogle, som hverken bryder sig om jøder eller muslimer. Men dermed er resultatet jo igen et andet end det tilsigtede (retten til selv at bestemme som voksen og myndig, om man ønsker medicinsk unødvendige indgreb foretaget eller ej), for nu foretages indgrebet bare uden for landets grænser.

Og hvordan skal forbudet håndhæves? Enhver jødisk og muslimsk familie vil selvfølgelig være under mistanke, og skal muslimske og jødiske drengebørn så tvangstjekkes af læger, eventuelt i følgeskab med politifolk og sagsbehandlere? Og hvad hvis de skjuler deres religiøsitet – hvor megen mistanke skal myndighederne have om den ‘forkerte’ religiøsitet, før de kan tvinge bukserne af drengene? Hudfarve? Etnicitet?

Læs bare det hele.

Man gyser ved tanken om brigader af socialrådgivere af politifolk, der drager ud i de jødiske og muslimske hjem og trækker bukserne af drengebørnene – som det i øvrigt også er sket for pigebørn i familier af somalisk herkomst. En slags institutionaliseret seksuel krænkelse eller i hvert fald ydmygelse, som forbuddet ville legitimere.

Ideen om et forbud er velment, men ikke gennemtænkt.

Liberal Alliance: Vi vil have en revolution

Apropos.

Jfr. også Ekstra Bladet:

LA går benhårdt efter den vælgergruppe, som partiet er konstrueret til: Yngre mænd, som vil have en liberal revolution. Det er også dem, de møder med deres strategi for agitation: annoncerne, radioindslagene og webben.

– Disse mennesker gider ikke se på en rødlig variant af det blå eller en blålig variant af det røde, siger Hans Engell.

– Der er vælgere, som ønsker revolution med rødt, socialistisk mål. De stemmer på Enhedslisten. Og der er vælgere, som ønsker en revolution med blå, liberalistisk [sic!] mål. De har nu Liberal Alliance som mulighed.

Tak til Ole Sandberg for screenshots og spotning.

Game of Thrones

Jeg har nu set de første seks afsnit af TV-serien “Game of Thrones”, og det har været en god investering af min tid. Faktisk er det den bedste TV-serie, jeg har set, siden jeg så de fire første sæsoner af LOST (jeg er ikke begejstret for dennes slutning), som den foreløbig ser ud til at overgå. Foreløbig ser det ud til at kunne blive den bedste af de “nye” amerikanske TV-serier, og det siger faktisk ikke så lidt, med præstationer som LOST og THE WIRE og BREAKING BAD at holde den op mod. Go see.

Note til skribenter: Brug aldrig et ord, du ikke forstår

Det kan gå grueligt galt. Så blot, hvordan det gik my man Robert Browning:

In 1841, Browning published the long dramatic poem Pippa Passes, now best known for the lines “God’s in His heaven/ All’s right with the world.” Toward the end of it, he sets up a kind of Gothic scene, and writes:

Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!

The second of these lines created no stir at all, presumably because the middle class had truly forgotten the word “twat” (just as it had forgotten “quaint,” so that Marvell’s pun on the two meanings in “To His Coy Mistress” has fallen flat for six or eight generations now). A few scholars must have recognized the word, but any who did behaved like loyal subjects when the emperor wore his new clothes, and discreetly said nothing. No editor of Browning has ever expurgated the line, even when Rossetti was diligently cutting mere “womb” out of Whitman. The first response only came forty years later when the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, collecting examples of usage, like Johnson before them, and interested to find a contemporary use of “twat,” wrote to Browning to ask in what sense he was using it. Browning is said to have written back that he used it to mean a piece of headgear for nuns, comparable to the cowls for monks he put in the same line. The editors are then supposed to have asked if he recalled where he had learned the word. Browning replied that he knew exactly. He had read widely in seventeenth-century literature in his youth, and in a broadside poem called “Vanity of Vanities”, published in 1659, he had found these lines, referring to an ambitious cleric:

They talk’t of his having a Cardinall’s Hat;
They’d send him as soon an Old Nun’s Twat.

“Twat” blev altså i Brownings kilde ikke brugt om noget, en nonne kan tage på hovedet … sprogbloggen citerer Oxford English Dictionary, der som sin mest konkrete betydning har pudendum muliebre. Av.

Hvorfor skal bankerne have milliarder gratis?

Så sker det igen. Spanien får nu 100 mia euro af danske, svenske, polske og tyske skatteydere. Pengene skal gå til deres banker der er gået helt ned pga. finanskrisen. De har alle satset store penge på at boligpriserne skulle stige og stige, og har nu tabt dem alle. Bankejerne og bankdirektørerne vil fortsat tjene milliarder, og fortsat kunne spekulere som de har lyst – mens resten af samfundet skal spinke og spare.
Den fornuftige løsning ville være at der med de 100 mia euro var et krav om et statsligt ejerskab på 49% af alle bankerne der har brug for assistance. En ejerdel man senere kan sælge og bruge pengene på velfærd og jobskabelse.
I øvrigt – kunne vi have gjort det samme i Danmark under finanskrisen da vi skulle understøtte bankerne – og have rigeligt med penge til velfærd og jobs i dag.

Det ser ud til vi insistere på at smadre velfærdsstaten for at have råd til bankdirektørernes løn og bankernes profit.

link til 100 mia ud i lokummet

Næstved Kommune og Amy-sagen

Adventures and Japes siger det, der skal siges:

The borough council decided to put her in a group home. [Børne- og kulturdirektør i Næstved Kommune]  Per B Christensen said the following:-

“Her problems are too much for a foster family to handle.

She needs to be placed with professionals who can distance themselves emotionally.”

Bear in mind, psychologists are saying that’s exactly what she doesn’t need in their professional opinion. (Because it is emotional neglect and it will scar her beyond repair.)

That Per B Christensen can say of an 11 year old child who has been traumatised by rejection and physical abuse that what she really needs is to be brought up by strangers who will never love her shows how inhuman Per B Christensen is. How dare Per B Christensen? How DARE he dress up saving money as meeting a vulnerable child’s needs? What sort of man is Per B Christensen? I don’t know if Per B Christensen has children or nieces/nephews but I sincerely doubt that if any of them were traumatised before their teens that he would recommend that they be institutionalised because their needs were too great.

The borough council have also banned Amy from seeing her sister and the foster parents she was thriving with. This is sheer vindictiveness.

Du kan følge Politikens dækning af sagen her.