All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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Strong Crypto: An Offer in Compromise for President Obama

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President Barack Obama talks with FBI executiv...
President Barack Obama talks with FBI executives after a speech during a visit to FBI headquarters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For months, US president Barack Obama played coy on the developing controversy over law enforcement bureaucrats’ demands that American tech innovators be required to build “back doors” into their products. That changed on March 11. In a talk at the Austin, Texas SXSW Interactive festival, Obama warned against “an absolutist view” of individual privacy and strong encryption.

“[I]f your argument is strong encryption, no matter what, and we can and should, in fact, create black boxes,” said Obama, “then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years. And it’s fetishizing our phones above every other value.”

Weirdly citing the unconstitutional institution of local DUI checkpoints on our roads and the US government’s barbaric post-9/11 practice of subjecting air travelers to sexual assault by Transportation Security Administration employees in the nation’s airports, Obama appealed to the American tradition of “compromise” to support his argument. All, of course, while averring that he is “way on the civil liberties side of this thing.” With civil liberties friends like Barack Obama, who needs civil liberties enemies?

With apologies to the late Barry Goldwater, absolutism in defense of individual privacy and strong encryption is no vice, nor is moderation in their defense a virtue.

But if President Obama really is interested in a compromise, I guess I’m willing to offer one. It begins with four words:

You first, Mr. President.

In 2008, you promised Americans “the most transparent administration in history.” You’ve since not just failed to deliver on that promise, but taken things in exactly the opposite direction.

Your administration has denied or redacted parts of more Freedom of Information Act requests than any since the Act became law in 1966.

Chelsea Manning languishes in a military prison, Edward Snowden lives in exile, Julian Assange remains trapped in Ecuador’s embassy in London, and numerous other whistleblowers have been imprisoned or otherwise persecuted, all for the “crime” of telling us things about the US government that you didn’t want us to know.

You’ve even assumed the power to order American citizens assassinated — while refusing to let the rest of us know who they are or why you had them killed.

In theory, YOU work for THE REST OF US. Since when does the employee get to read the boss’s email on demand, but not vice-versa?

So show us you’re serious. Start with pardons for Manning and Snowden and an end to the pursuit of Assange. Then start fulfilling instead of denying FOIA requests. And the thing with murdering people? That needs to end, completely, permanently.

Get on those things, then we’ll talk. But I’m going to go ahead and predict that this isn’t the kind of “compromise” you meant.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Jail Fees: Adding Insult to Injury

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While traveling by bus earlier this week, I made the acquaintance of a fellow passenger who had just been released from jail in Alachua County, Florida, after spending a year fighting charges he was eventually acquitted of. Interesting guy with an interesting story, and one that puts a burr under my fur about how the law treats those accused of crimes.

As you read this, keep in mind once again that he was acquitted — found “not guilty” of any crime. He was kept in jail without bail through the lengthy trial process because he was from out of state and considered a flight risk.

When he was booked into the jail, he was assessed a $50 fee for the processing.

While he remained in jail, he was assessed a fee of $4 per day for his room and board (which, he told me, consisted of a hot breakfast, then bologna sandwiches for lunch and dinner every day).

There may have been other fees, too, but we’re already looking at $1,500 he was required to pay just to remain in a place he would cheerfully have walked right out of if allowed.

When family and friends sent him money for “commissary” (the in-jail store where inmates can buy candy and such to supplement the jail diet), the fees were deducted from it before he got any of the money. And, he said, if an inmate is released “owing” the jail money, he’s issued a letter detailing a payment plan, with a warning that the matter will be referred to a collection agency if the money isn’t forthcoming.

There’s a term for that kind of scheme, but I can’t use it in a family-oriented column. It refers to uncastrated male cattle and what they leave on the ground behind them.

This is the third time I’m mentioning that he was acquitted. Do you suppose the sheriff’s office cut him a refund check for all those fees? Nope.

And  if he had been convicted? So what?

The theory behind the American criminal justice system is that it works on behalf of all of us innocent folks out here enjoying our freedom. I have my doubts about that theory, but if it’s true, shouldn’t “we” pick up the check for keeping people — even guilty people — in jail if that’s where “we” want them kept? This evil “fee” system needs to go.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: Rage Against the Voting Machines

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It’s not news to anyone that American elections have become long, costly, complicated, time-consuming affairs. Each campaign begins the day after the previous election, swamping news cycles and distorting public dialog for two to four years.

Of all the activities involved in the ongoing drama of politics, one should be quite simple: The final, affirmative act of casting a vote. Instead, voting has become more and more difficult, more and more complicated, and more and more subject to counting error over the years.

Sarah Breitenbach of the Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline project reports on a developing backlash against the problems of fragile high-tech voting systems. After Florida’s “hanging chad” debacle in 2000, most states and cities moved to new, theoretically easier to use, but technologically more complex, voting machines. Those machines came with their own problems, including very real fears that election results could be (and perhaps were) hacked and manipulated.

More than a decade later, after years of acrimonious debate, close elections turning on questionable vote counts, and concerns about close relationships between politicians and  voting machine manufacturers, this generation of machines is on its last legs and the search is on for replacements.

In that search, election authorities seem to largely be looking to the past. “Optical mark recognition” technology — the hand-marked “fill in the circle next to your choice” ballot familiar to every public school student since the 1960s — turns out to still be cheaper, more reliable, easier for voters to figure out, and hopefully more secure and trustworthy.

In truth, voting could be made simpler still. Many countries, by no means all of them lagging the US tech-wise, still use their eyes to scan and their hands to count plain old-fashioned paper ballots. For that matter, it still happens that way in parts of the US, as everyone who closely watched coverage of the Iowa caucuses on February 1 saw on their television screens.

In 1864, America conducted a presidential election in the midst of civil war. The polling places were crowded with soldiers furloughed so they could vote. The ballots weren’t just hand-marked and hand-counted, but weren’t even standardized or printed by the government . Voters could get ballots from their candidates or parties of choice, or hand-write their own. The results were reported by telegraph. And yet the results were known by midnight on Election Day.

Voting could, and should, be that simple again.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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