Happy birthday to Cindy.
I spent a long time talking to Gwen and Ernie about Rorty, relativism,
and realism. (I can't say of them, as I said of Zack, that they
"would rather have chocolate donuts than
moral realism" because neither of them can eat chocolate
donuts.)
I had a BBC meeting at the new Indian restaurant on Valencia. I
discovered that there are six Indian or Pakistani/Indian
restaurants in the neighborhood of 16th and Mission (one on
16th between Mission and Valencia, one between Valencia and Guerrero,
three (!) on Valencia between 16th and 17th, and one at 16th and
Harrison).
Probably we're going to go right to LNX-BBC 2.0 and start work on that
tomorrow afternoon. It will use a 2.4 kernel because of features
that we need, even though 2.4 has been a bit flaky for some people.
I hope it will stabilize by the time we're ready to make our
official release.
I still have a lot to write about from my trip to L.A.; I've barely
said anything about it here. It wouldn't be the first time I was
slow to describe a vacation trip in my web diary. I think I'll
at least try to get up-to-date with the present without waiting
to catch up on last week.
I came back from LAX on a plane, to my surprise. Since my passport
is expired, I didn't think I'd be allowed to fly these days. But
the agent at the ticket counter saw my expired passport and indicated
that it was a whole lot better, as far as ID goes, than an out-of-state
driver license, which is what most passengers had. It's virtually
impossible to verify an out-of-state driver license; they all look
different and some are extraordinarily easy to forge. (For
example, there's a company that will do that on the DEF CON show
floor every year.)
On the other hand, I paid for part of the ticket with cash. (I
don't have so much credit these days.) This made me a
"selectee"; my
ticket and itinerary were stamped all over with "SSSSS". I was
sent for "secondary screening" (where my checked bag was x-rayed
in front of me by a security officer).
When I got to the security checkpoint on the way to the gate, I
noticed the extremely long lines and the armed National Guardsmen
wandering around talking to police officers. The screeners were
carefully examining items of carry-on baggage one at a time,
and matching them up with individual passengers. I took all the
coins out of my pockets -- I'd already put my Leatherman and
sewing kit in checked baggage -- and still I set off the metal
detector.
The result of this was that I was not only searched with a
metal-detecting wand, but I was told to open my belt (which
had a metal buckle) to prove that I wasn't concealing anything
under it. Then I was frisked (by a female screener) and
finally allowed to go ahead.
I've only been frisked once before; I don't remember the
exact circumstance, but it might have been when I was going
to court (for the DVD CCA case appeal) or to the Hall of
Justice (for the Free Dmitry protest amplified sound permit)
or something like that. I didn't like it at all.
When I got to the gate, I and all the other selectees were
called out by name to a special screening table; there I was
wand-searched again, frisked again (again by a female screener),
and my carry-on bag was hand-searched by a second screener.
Immediately after this, I was told to board the plane right
away. (I wasn't allowed to go anywhere else in between being
searched and boarding the plane; if I had, I would have had to
be searched again.)
So that was no fun. On the other hand, it was quite the contrast
from the time in early 1999 when I (inadvertantly!) carried on
a desktop computer power supply, a complete toolkit, an x-acto knife,
a soldering iron, and a full bottle of isopropyl alcohol, without
being asked any questions at all. (I was coming back from DEF CON
and I'd brought a complete set of computer tools and parts in case
I'd ended up participating in some of the events there.)
Another odd thing: this time through, although I was frisked twice,
and ultimately had my person or my possessions searched by at least
five different people, nobody even bothered to ask me whether I'd
packed my own bag, or whether anyone had given me anything to carry
on the plane.
Some commentators -- on Salon or something -- suggested that all
of this still does no good against people who are actually trained
in fighting, because they can kill you with their bare hands or
fashion weapons from eyeglasses or CD players or pillows or whatever.
Or disguise dangerous substances as foods or medicines, or use
weapons invisible to x-ray scanners.
In this way, airport security measures seem analogous to the security
afforded by DRM systems. Both are likely to be ineffective
against a sophisticated attacker, but are effective or at least
impressive to a novice attacker. You can sometimes get DRM proponents
to admit that they are only really expecting to stop the novices.
(Sometimes they say this in media interviews, sometimes at CPTWG
presentations.) Would airline security folks make the same sort of
admission?
I'm almost done with "Believe (Richard Rorty Remix)".
This was an awfully busy week around the courts; the COPA argument
was held before the Supreme Court, and EFF had updates in the
Bunner, 2600, and Felten cases (and news about the Sklyarov case).
We lost our two DMCA cases on the same day -- definitely a setback
to the effort to get the DMCA declared unconstitutional -- and filed
a motion for summary judgment in the Bunner case.
I worked on aspects of the Bunner motion and was very happy with how
it turned out;
check it out.
The most
recent EFFector has news on Sklyarov, Felten, 2600, and
Bunner.
