Voting computers

Dutch politics, Voting fraud
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Somewhat of an old story this, but still important. For some years now there have been doubts about the vulnerability of the voting computers used in Dutch elections which came to a head in last years national elections when several voting districts decided to use the oldfashioned red pencil again. In response a studygroup was set up to look at the whole voting process and recommend ways to make it more transparant. Almost three weeks ago this group gave its recommendation, which the responsible minister followed: to stop using the current voting computers. Instead, the study group recommended using a two stage process. The voter makes their choice using a voting computer which prints their ballot. The ballot is checked by the voter and if everything’s in order, put in the ballot box. Votes are counted electronically using these ballots and Optical Character Recognition technology; if in doubt these ballots can also be handcounted. So for the voter you have the convenience of voting electronically, without the vulnerability that this has, as the computer used by the voter does not record the vote…

Does this sound like something the US can use?

Books are terrorist material now?

Law in action, Security theatre
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It seems like, judging from the press reports on the conviction of the socalled “lyrical terrorist, in real life a not too bright 23 year old woman working in a WH Smiths at Heathrow:

In a box file in the family lounge was a printed version of the “declaration of war” by Osama bin Laden.

One of Malik’s poems, entitled The Living Martyrs, said: “Let us make Jihad/ Move to the front line/
To chop chop head of kuffar swine”.

A second poem was called How to Behead. “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/ It’s all about the flow of the wrist,” it read.

The Mujaheddin Poisoner’s Handbook, Encyclopaedia Jihad, How To Win In Hand To Hand Combat, and How To Make Bombs and Sniper Manual were found on her computer.

The court heard Malik joined an extremist organisation called Jihad Way, set up explicitly to disseminate terrorist propaganda and support for al Qaida.

Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, said she was an “unlikely” but “committed” Islamic extremist: “She had a library of material that she had collected for terrorist purposes. That collection would be extremely useful for someone planning terrorist activity.”

Do something for me, willya? Just put these titles mentioned above in Google and see what comes up? Take “How To Make Bombs” for example: quite a few hits there. That’s because this whole conviction is utter bollocks, in which this confused young woman who gets just a bit too involved in playing muhajedin is just
railroaded as an example of how tough British justice is on terrorism. This doesn’t make the country any safer.

Aaron would’ve had a good title here

Meta
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For some reason it’s nostalgia season at the Big Three of Centrist blogging: Matt Yglesias is remembering Den Beste, Ezra Klein is asking people which bloggers they miss the most and Kevin Drum has just run a contest for the wingnuttiest blogpost ever. That last one is comedy gold, not in the least for the appearance of Kim “I’m an expert on the pussification of the western male because I was too chicken to stay in South Africa after Apartheid collapsed” Du Toit all enraged that people misspell his name and besides, women do agree with him, honest!

All of which made me miss Aaron “Uppity Negro” Hawkins, who was a master in winding up the “special needs children” like Du Toit or Den Beste while making you piss yourself with laughter in a way johny-come-latelies like Tbogg or Sadly, No could learn something from.

And he could write funny about other things as well. That’s all from his time in Uncle’ Sam’s party squad back in Gulf War I. While this is a more domestical tale, but just as funny..

Also Aaron had good taste in music (introduced me to P-funk (as did Palau actually)), pop culture and well, everything.

And then he killed himself. September 3, 2004, more than three years ago now. Why? The usual reasons probably; he didn’t tell and I’d hate to speculate. It’s enough to say he’s missed. And bitter to think that one of the sharpest guys in the blogosphere felt the need to kill himself, when so many mediocre talents do reap fame and fortune from blogging.

Jean Charles de Menezes roundup

Jean Charles de Menezes, Policing
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I’ve wanted to say something about the Metropolitian Police finally being held responsible for their murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, but I think Palau said everything I wanted to say on Friday about the Met’s continuing refusal to accept this responsibility:

But if there has been a defining leitmotif of the Labour years it’s been this, this constant, mulish refusal to take responsibility for incompetence and error, this wilful blindness to one’s own fault and this utter certainty, despite all the evidence to the contrary, of one’s own rectitude.
Anything to justify hanging on to power for power’s sake.

To much of the public it’s simple. Blair is responsible for the safety of the public. He didn’t do that, he did the opposite. He should go. Like his namesake the forner prime minister, Blair argues he’s not guilty of any personal wringdoing therefore he’s squeaky-clean and should stay in the job.

Anyone who gets up in the morning in a crowded city and gets on a metro or a tram or a tube system will have seen that CCTV footage of Jean Charles de Menezes’ extra-judicial murder and will have seen themselves in that blurry video, on the floor, scared out of their wits, about to
have their brains very deliberately blown out on the carriage floor.

But Londoners have real cause to fear; their police chief thinks that the deliberate murder of an innocent man by his subordinates is not a serious matter enough to resign over. ‘Mistakes happen’.

Palau hints that the reason various government officials and Nwe Labourites, including London mayor Ken Livingstone have rallied around Ian Blair may have something to do with the police chief’s habit of taping phone calls, ala J. Edgar Hoover back in the day. Personally, I think
it’s simpler than that. The first instinct of New Labour when confronted by a fuckup has always been to deny responsibility and shift the blame away from theirselves. Mistakes may be made, but they should not have consequences for the people in charge, who always do the best they can in difficult circumstances. Livingstone has long ceased to be a rebel and has fully reintegrated himself into the New Labour project, hence has no problem defending Blair.

Speaking of Livingstone, Jamie K tears apart his defense of Blair:

Of course counterterrorism is hard. The point is that counterterrorism is irreducibly hard. If you make it “easier” by tolerating a permissive attitude towards killing innocent people, then that is what will happen. To reverse Livingstone’s thought experiment: what happens if an armed police
officer in pursuit of someone who he believes might be a terrorist but isn’t quite sure starts making calculations along the lines of “I’m legally immune so I’ll shoot him anyway, just to make sure.”

Alex does away with the idea that “our security” means we cannot criticise the security forces:

More seriously, where do these people get the idea that organisations with safety critical functions work better in the absence of criticism or responsibility? It can’t be from experience; Kettle is a career pundit, having started out as a leader writer. The whole history of safety engineering is the exact opposite; if you’re playing with the big boys’ toys, you cannot afford to skim over your mistakes, ever. There are very good reasons why airlines have senior training captains and CHIRP confidential-reporting forms, companies have external auditors, and newspapers have editors.

Or IT companies have software testers, for that matter.

Alex also has a post up about all the things we still don’t know about the shooting and how the Met seems more interested in smearing de Menezes again than finding out exactly what happened that day. Standard operational procedure it seems with the Met; see also the Forest Gate affair.

Apologise for being tasered!

Policing
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Remembered that Florida student who got tasered for asking John Kerry questions? Remember how many socalled liberal bloggers and commentators thought he got what he deserved and called him insane, immature, an attention seeker? Well, it worked. The guy has written a letter of apology to his school for having the audacity to be tasered:

He said Meyer’s apology was completely self-prompted. He started drafting it immediately after his release from jail Sept. 18.

“In society, as in life, there are consequences for not following the rules,” Meyer wrote. “In this instance, not following the rules has imposed consequences for many people other than myself, people who have seen their school, and perhaps their degree, tarnished in the eyes of others through no fault of their own.”

Griscti said Meyer didn’t plan his outburst, as the UPD report might have suggested.

However, Meyer’s remark to officers in the police car, when he said they “did nothing wrong,” was accurate. Meyer had no animosity toward individual officers, Griscti said.

You see, in America it’s no longer enough to be punished by the state for thinking you have rights, you also need to be sincerily sorry for your crimes and beg for forgiveness. Any resemblence to a certain Asian dictatorship big on self-criticism sessions is of course purely coincidental.