6 September 2013
Repeat
The Guardian has a review of a documentary called Mission Congo [ IMDB ] that just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It documents Pat Robertson's deceptions during and after the Rwandan genocide where he conned people to donate to his African diamond mining operations. At the time, the Virginian Pilot newspaper exposed his scam. The state government investigated and found his dealings fraudulent but politicians, backed by large donations from Robertson, did not prosecute. Sometimes an obvious injustice is just ignored.
During conversations on the possible invasion of Syria, I listened to an historian dispassionately list the half-dozen or so recent military actions the US went into based on lies-not-misstatements. Beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin incident which was the catalyst of the Vietnam War, the false testimony of the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter--organized by a PR firm--which was presented as a reason to invade Kuwait, and more recently the non-truths that were told in order to invade Iraq. On this last point, during the time that the government was peddling its wares, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder were exposing them (and very easily, they recall) as lies. Another item that was just ignored.
And this week brought the latest of the Snowden revelations: the US government can crack a large portion of encrypted data going over the internet. There is much technical nuance here that I'm still digesting and getting wrong, but there is definitely a there there. Schneier's essay is an absolute must-read and very quotable. However, not enough people are taking the software and hardware engineers to task for their complicity in this. When I found out that NPR killed stories that legitimately put into question the arguments behind the invasion of Iraq, I wished them the worst for betraying the trust they had. Now, knowing the depths that engineers go--good ones--to subvert a trusted technology, I feel similarly ashamed.
And, although I expect the general populace to ignore this ("for our security!"), I hope that it won't be forgotten by the engineers that respect how technology can liberate members of a society rather than stifle them.
- Human VMs posted by sstrader on 25 January 2015 at 10:53:46 PM
- The social anxiety posted by sstrader on 22 April 2014 at 5:07:47 PM
- Trends posted by sstrader on 22 September 2013 at 11:20:10 AM
- Repeat posted by sstrader on 6 September 2013 at 8:19:58 PM
- Technology and society posted by sstrader on 29 June 2013 at 12:44:54 PM Other entries categorized in Politics:
- It's not him, it's us posted by sstrader on 5 May 2016 at 9:26:33 PM
- More political transcriptions posted by sstrader on 20 March 2016 at 10:19:06 AM
- Health cost posted by sstrader on 18 September 2015 at 10:39:05 AM
- Assassination dept. posted by sstrader on 18 December 2013 at 11:58:24 PM
- Schadenfreude posted by sstrader on 30 June 2013 at 8:10:22 AM