If China Attacks America (A Must See)
By Daniel Miessler on December 22nd, 2011: Tagged as Politics
You must see this.
VETO the SOPA | The White House
By Daniel Miessler on December 20th, 2011: Tagged as Internet | Politics
It would be ridiculous for an ISP to block the entire whitehouse.gov domain on court order because a single user posted a link. It is difficult for any web administrator to know which links to copyrighted material are done with permission. This will kill the free flow of information and conversation on the internet.
SOPA is too blunt. Please veto.
Take two minutes to sign the petition.
Plane Crashes and Child Molestation
By Daniel Miessler on December 16th, 2011: Tagged as Culture | Politics
In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books he talked about how respect for authority has caused a massive number of plane crashes over time. Basically, the relationship between a senior and junior pilot was so severe in many countries that the co-pilot (junior) knew that his effective boss could bury him in an instant, and so he walked extremely delicately around him.
Unfortunately, this translated to not telling him when he was making a safety mistake, such as an incorrect fuel or course estimation. As a result, this fear-based hesitation essentially nullified the entire purpose of having two people in the cockpit, i.e. to serve as a check against one-another.
The same thing seems to have happened in a recent child-rape case at Penn State. Story after story I hear about, “Delicate situations”, and so and so being, “a very senior coach”.
Fuck that. That’s how plane crashes happen. It’s also how priests get away with child rape. Their positions are so respected that you basically need something on video before you’ll push beyond that sacred stiff-arm.
These are all the same problem: co-pilots respecting pilots too much, junior coaches worrying about the anger and legacy of a senior coach, or priests getting moved to another Parish instead of being fired. In all cases it’s a force of authority that suppresses an acolyte’s sense of conviction — whether that be morality or security-related.
This has to stop. The airline industry stopped it by giving very strict training on how there is no rank in an airplane. When people are there to check one another, rank means fear, and fear means holding your tongue, and holding your tongue means a chance of people dying.
We need the same sort of anti-authority training for any other arena where powerful people are not reported for crimes because the juniors are in awe of them, or because they think it’ll hurt their careers in the future.
If you find yourself in such a situation, step away from it. Look at it from the perspective of someone outside the system. You’ll see instantly what should happen, and don’t be afraid to take action. Rank and authority be damned.
::
Daniel Ellsberg on Secret Information | Mother Jones
By Daniel Miessler on December 1st, 2011: Tagged as Politics
“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.
“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.
“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks.
I’ve long thought that criticizing the POTUS or other top officials — who we though to be moral right before they received their uber-top-secret debriefings — was seriously flawed. I’ve had this debate many times with close friends.
They’re like, “He lied to us.” And I say, “Well, he might know something now that he didn’t know then, and now his previous self looks like a fool compared to who he is now, and he can’t even tell us why.”
This is quite likely very true, but it also has dangers. This could be true for Obama, for example, and I happen to believe it is. But it’s not 100% — even for a principled guy like him. People can still make mistakes regarding what is communicated to us within this scaffolding, which I’m also sure he has.
But the bigger danger is that someone can be a complete lunatic, or criminal, or manipulator, or tyrant, and then use this same defense. In order for someone to be sure this is actually happening, i.e. that the information is what changed his behavior, one has to be sure that he was (and still is) basically a good person.
So then we’re right back to perspective and bias.
Anyway, that’s what I believe about Obama: that he had all these massive plans about walking in and shutting down GitMo and doing x, y, z. And the people who knew what was up just smiled and nodded until his briefings.
Then, Obama walks out and suddenly stops talking about those things anymore. And the public, who knows very little about what’s really going on, proceeds to hold Obama to the standard of his previous self, i.e. the one who was as ignorant as they still are.
Frustration ensues — on both sides.
The only question for me is HOW true this is. As I said, this could be combined with him making errors in priority of communication. I have always said I’d like a clear statement from him saying, “Uh, yeah…so that stuff I said…it’s more complicated than that, and I’m going to do the best I can, but it’s not as simple as when I was campaigning because I didn’t know the facts. Unfortunately, you don’t know the facts either, and I can’t tell you what they are. You’ll just have to trust me on this.”
If he said that to me, I’d give him some trust, and I do even now without him having said it, but he hasn’t said it (to my knowledge), and that’s a problem for me.
But yes, this is a brilliant piece. It highlights something that’s always bothered me about opinionated ignorant people: they speak as if they have all the information when they have worse than none. They instead have some, which is functionally worse than none, because they think that some is all, and can’t fathom that some very little compared to the actual truth. ::
::
A Civilization Manifesto
By Daniel Miessler on November 17th, 2011: Tagged as Culture | Politics
This will be rough.
I’ve always been attracted to the idea of identifying unifying characteristics of desired society, and defining those ideals as sacred to the group that embraces them. The Constitution does this, of course, but it deals with principals where I aim to talk about behaviors. I come to this from decades of observing dissimilar people living with each other. I’m struck by how different they are, and most importantly, how much they dislike one another.
I’ve always wondered if there was a way to insist that people be nice to each other. A way of building unity and pleasantness into a society through a philosophy, or a set of ideals that everyone is pounded in by parents, taught in every grade of school, pushed through public service announcements, etc. Here’s a first attempt at capturing ideas that will go into such rules (which I’ll create properly later):
You should be pleasant to those who pass you on the street. Smile, give a greeting. Nod. Whatever. Do not ignore someone unless there is a reason (you’re on the phone, talking to someone else, etc.)
Speak quietly while in public. Whether on the phone or speaking with others, attempt to use a volume that will reach your audience and nobody else.
Smoking in public is extraordinarily rude. Smoke can be detected and cause annoyance hundreds of feet away, and going to the entrance of a building to do so will not help, as that’s the door for non-smokers as well.
Assume the best of others at all times.
A standard language.
Give people ample personal space in public. Do not crowd or rush them to gain advantage in some way. We are not competing here. We are cooperating.
When in public, be aware of those around you, and be willing to engage them in eye-contact, polite conversation, or a simple smile. Do not tune out to those around you because you consider them different than you or somehow unimportant.
The tenets above are behavior-based, and these metrics, i.e. how people treat each other, are the only grounds on which someone can be judged. Membership in our country/city/whatever is based on these concepts alone, and judging others negatively based on any other criteria will not be tolerated by our society.
A belief in education. Work is not enough. You must be educated in order to participate as a full citizen of an advanced society. The nuances of building a society, and the ability to filter bad information and avoid being manipulated all depend on education. The question is not whether you will do well in school, it’s which school you’ll do well in.
Others…
[ Not really sure about a couple of these... ]
Finally, and most importantly, the purpose of the charter is to say that if you can’t embrace these ideas you’re simply not welcome here (wherever the place is that embraces this). If you wish to be rude to others, think yourself separate and above interacting with those around you, or better than someone because of their race, religion, etc. — you simply can’t play in our sandbox.
And our sandbox will be the best one, because we’ll have the best people here from everywhere in the world. The only thing we’ll have in common is an agreement on the Constitution (think U.S.) and these core behavioral beliefs. These combined make us the most pleasant place to live, with the smartest people in the world clamoring to join the community.
We must end the Balkanization of our largest cities and countries. This is how to do it. Insist on cohesion and unity. Make it part of the identity of society.
::
Oppose the Protect IP Act
By Daniel Miessler on November 17th, 2011: Tagged as Internet | Politics | Technology
Go to http://americancensorship.org/ or contact your representative directly.
America the Banana Republic | Politics | Vanity Fair
By Daniel Miessler on November 7th, 2011: Tagged as Politics
I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be “banana republic.
I highly recommend this essay by Hitchens on the direction our government is heading. It captures brilliantly a number of the intangibles of our situation.
Kleptocracy: The Government We’re Moving Towards
By Daniel Miessler on November 7th, 2011: Tagged as Politics
Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, (from Ancient Greek: κλέπτης (thief) and κράτος (rule), “rule by thieves”) is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service.
Why the Media Keep Ignoring Ron Paul
By Daniel Miessler on November 6th, 2011: Tagged as Politics

People are asking why Ron Paul continues to be ignored despite his winning multiple straw polls. It’s simple, really.
The GOP and the mainstream conservative media know that he can’t win a contest with Obama, and, even worse, they think he’d be a disaster even if he did win.
That’s not the funny part. The amusing bit is that they’re exactly correct.
Ron Paul is a lot like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman: the idea of them is much better than they actually are, and if you give them a microphone enough times with freedom to speak, they’ll say things that will disqualify them from most any kind of office.
The GOP elite know this, so they’re hoping he’ll just go away.
What’s interesting is that Cain is the same exact way. And Perry and Santorum aren’t far off.
There are few candidates on the GOP side that could speak at length, in an open way, without saying something so stupid that they have a double-digit ratings collapse within a week.
Romney, Gingrich, and perhaps that nice fellow from Utah. That’s about it.
The GOP leadership have to be secretly freaking out. They can hardly scare up anyone that believes in evolution. They’ve got a lot of escaped mental patients to choose from, and Obama is going to make the vast majority of them look silly just by sounding like a normal human being in contrast.
Romney really is their only option. Nobody else can beat Obama — especially not Paul.
::