Liminal states

I’ll be appearing on John Quinlan and Harry Waisbren’s show Forward Forum this Sunday from 8-9 CDT, on the air in Madison and streamed live at WTDY.  I met Harry working on Get FISA Right, and so we’ll be discussing social network activism in general, looking at some of the experiences I discuss in Reflections and Cognitive diversity and the US 2008 Election.  With the election right around the corner, though, we’ll probably be devoting the bulk of our time to election protection projects, including Twitter Vote Report and the Voter Suppression Wiki; and Harry will set this in the broader context of Beyond Iraq: A Time to Break Silence.

Madison is a hotbed of activism and this show has a solid following, so one thing we’re going to try to do is use this appearance to galvanize the cyber-brainstorming on the wiki, collecting good ideas and sparking connections during the show.  It’ll also be a great chance to highlight what every voter can do — see Baratunde Thurston’s 12 Ways To Safeguard Your Vote In Under 10 minutes — and give an update on our North Carolina action alert.

In short it should be entertaining, interesting, and  useful.  Not sure about the details, but there may well be an opportunity for callins or perhaps a live chat — if not during the show, then after.  Harry will be getting a blog post with more details up on MadProgress … so please, tune in!

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Executive summary

• 40,000 votes at risk in North Carolina; please help get the word out
• for future action and media alerts, please join the  vswiki-alerts Google Group
• feedback, please, from activists, bloggers and voters about our action alert

Details

After posts by me on Pam’s House Blend Sunday night and Baratunde Thurston on Jack and Jill Politics last night, we’re on day three of the Voter Suppression Wiki‘s first-ever action alert.  The issue of confusing ballot design where North Carolina “straight party” voters need to make sure to vote for a Presidential candidate as well has been getting noticeably more attention: a couple of excellent posts by Chris Kromm on Facing South [1, 2] go into more detail on the “1% undervote” estimate and the implications of 40,000 or more votes not counting this election, and the Obama Straight Flip video is helping get the word out to Democrats via YouTube.

Of course, many of the people most at risk for losing their vote don’t read political blogs or watch YouTube.  And individual experiences in early voting, for example in this thread on NCBlue, vary greatly: some sites have helpful poll workers and “greeters” to remind people, others doen’t, and there’s plenty of room confusion.  So we think there’s still plenty of opportunity to help in getting the word out.  Baratunde summed it up well:

I would add that you should post this blog item to the walls of your facebook friends who live in North Carolina asking them to spread the word. Email it to family and friends down there. Call them. We cannot let this new voter participation go to waste!

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The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)’s Technology and Democracy 2.0 report on “e-Deceptive campaign practices” is getting released on Monday, along with a parallel report from Common Cause and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights covering the legal and policy issues.  Contributors include computer security legends like Peter Neumann (of Bell Labs, SRI and comp.risks fame) and Bruce Schneier, Erik Nilsson of Computing Professionals for Social Responsibility, Poorvi Vora of George Washington University, Juan Gilbert of the Human Centered Computing Lab of Auburn University, Lillie Coney of EPIC … and me.  Pretty illustrious company.  Mom will be proud 🙂

“Deceptive campaign practices” has a very specific meaning in election protection work.  From EPIC’s announcement:

Deceptive campaigns are attempts to misdirect targeted voters regarding the voting process for public elections. Election activity that would be considered deceptive could include false statements about polling times, date of the election, voter identification rules, or the eligibility requirements for voters who wish to cast a ballot. Historically, disinformation and misinformation efforts intended to suppress voter participation have been systemic attempts to reduce voter participation among low-income, minority, young, disabled, and elderly voters. In 2008, millions of new voters are engaging the political process through Internet communication, which presents an opportunity to review the technology and the incident of e-deceptive campaign practices.

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In a classic example of confusing ballot design, a “straight party” vote in North Carolina does not include the presidential contest.  If you want to vote for a president, you need to make an additional mark in the presidential contest even if you’ve chosen a straight party vote.  (See detailed instructions in the first comment.)

This policy has been in place for over 40 years (added by Dixiecrats in 1967), and historically has resulted in at least a 1% “undervote” — people not choosing a presidential candidate.  With huge numbers of new voters this year, there’s a lot of concerns that it could be even higher.  While there are signs up in polling places, and many (most?) poll workers give instructions as they give the ballots out, there are already many reports of people mis-voting.

This is exactly the kind of situation where we hope the Voter Suppression Wiki can add a lot of value, supplementing the other educational efforts.  So let’s give it a try, and help get the word out!

I started by created an incident page, linking out to various reports of this, including an article in the Charlotte Observer, the snopes.com page, the alert from Black Box Voting.com, and a Daily Kos diary … and a brainstorming thread for ideas about getting the word out more broadly.  This is a decent initial reference for anybody wanting to understand or write about the story — or to double-check its validity.

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When it comes to election protection and voter suppression, there’s perhaps no one more knowledgeable than Color of Change’s James Rucker.  That’s why Rucker will be our special guest on Meet the Bloggers this Friday at 1pm Et/10am PT, as we discuss these critical issues.

Joining Rucker will be Jon Pincus (Liminal States) and Brad Friedman (The Brad Blog).  Both have written extensively about this topic, and they will chat with show host Cenk Uygur about early reports of voter suppression and fraud, as well as campaigns to combat this problem.

— Meet the Bloggers

Brad focuses on the political context of voter suppression, in 2008 and over the last eight years.  I delve into a couple of incidents (the deceptive Philadelphia flyers, the West Virginia Secretary of State’s ad with misleading information for student voters), and spend a lot of time encouraging people to take action.

Speaking of which, from our “what you can do” action plan page, here’s three things that everybody can do today:

1. check your registration and know your rights. Voters Unite has a state-by-state list of how to check that you’re registered, or use Vote For Change’s online form. Election Protection’s Elections 101 page is a good place to go to start learning more about your rights.
2. spread the word. Make sure our friends and family have double-checked their registration and know where they’re voting.  If you’re a blogger or journalist, write about voter suppression and the grassroots election protection movement — and let your readers know what they can do about it.
3. get involved. Introduce yourself and help out with the Voter Suppression Wiki — or join in one of the many other great projects working to bring “one person one vote” closer to reality

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Within an hour after the announcement of the Voter Protection Wiki, we were tipped off that there’s another voting rights wiki in town, and it’s a doozy.  And sure enough, today SourceWatch is announcing the Election Protection wiki.* From their announcement:

Recent presidential elections were marred by controversies and disputes. Scores of individuals and organizations have been working to investigate and reform US elections, issuing reports and information on topics such as electronic voting machines, voter suppression campaigns and student voting rights. However, this information is spread across many different websites, news sources and databases. The Election Protection Wiki seeks to provide a single web portal for accessing this disparate information. Its information is non-partisan and factual; anyone of any political persuasion will be able to both read from and write to the wiki to help us all protect every American’s right to vote.

SourceWatch is best known for Congresspedia and their “Superdelegate Transparency Project”; they’ve got experience, a community, paid staff, and excellent connections with politicians and non-profits in DC and all over the country.  It’s a great thing for American democracy.

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originally posted on Pam’s House Blend

Debbie Stone: Do you think it’s over?
Mike Tobacco: Yeah, sure.– the final lines from Killer Klowns from Outer Space, right before it becomes clear that no, it’s not over

Ah well.  After Monday’s brief shining moment of resistance from the House, the politics of business as usual asserted themselves.  With the aid of “sweeteners” (aka bribes) to bring holdouts on board, relentless arm-twisting from both parties leadership, and the sense even among skeptics that something needs to be done today, the bailout bill passed the House today.

Will the bailout bill as currently constructed work to stop the crisis? Most economists, even a lot of those like Roubini and Krugman who support the bill’s passage under the “better than nothing” theory, are skeptical — and so am I. I guess we’ll know in a few months, if not sooner. Which means that we should expect some major restructuring of the bill as things move forward.

And if as expected much of the money flows directly to the pockets of major shareholders and Wall Street executives, will Congress act to restrict profiteering? Lehman’s already handed out $2.5 billion in bonuses, and according to the Treasury’s reassuring conference call with financial institutions, the “restrictions” on executive compensation will be easy to evade. Again, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this.

One way or another, the fight for Wall Street accountability is far from over.

What next for No blank check for Wall Street? There are a few important things to do at this point:

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No blank check for Wall Street is a group of people demanding accountability for Wall Street for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. We welcome those who oppose a bailout as well as those support a bailout with accountability.  Please see our website for more.  Our Facebook page and #nobailout on twitter are the best ways to follow events.  For earlier posts in this series, please see Jon Pincus’ page on Pam’s House Blend.  Help get the word out!

Executive summary

Partnering with MixedInk, we’re going to be working on two open letter on the Wall Street bailout

• http://mixedink.com/letter_to_congress/no_blank_check_for_wallstreet/ is addressed to Congress, with our recommendations for legislation, to be delivered this week — so please get involved now!
• next, we’ll write a follow-on letter to the presidential candidates, with our reactions to any legislation that’s passed and thoughts about next steps, and deliver it on October 14 — the day before the presidential debate on domestic policy.

As we make progress on the letters, we’ll be using Facebook as well as other mechanisms to make sure that politicians hear our feedback.  We think they’ll listen.

Please get involved — and please help get the word out about No blank check for Wall Street!

Details:

As An Assessment of Bailout Bill Options from a Former Congressional Staffer on Naked Capitalism (ooh!) makes abundantly clear, there’s no good way to predict what will happen next with the Wall Street crisis.  In the short term, the ball’s in Congress’ hands: the next vote’s expected Thursday or Friday, and public support for a bailout is dropping.  Even if some legislation passes, that doesn’t mean the crisis or the discussions are over — an obvious next milestone is the upcoming Presidential debate on the economy, and there’s talk about a lame-duck session of Congress in December.  Looks like No blank check for Wall Street might be around for a while.  I hope the web stays up.

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The $700 billion dollar bailout legislation will result in a huge expense to taxpayers — with all the benefits going to corporations and large stockholders. Most economists  think that this plan will fail to address the underlying issues that caused the crisis. And there are many other issues for concern in the bill, such as whether the mechanism to prevent excess compensation will actually work in practice.

There’s no excuse for Congress to repeat the folly of the Patriot Act and pass half-baked legislation that creates huge problems for our country. Let’s send a mesasge to Congress: rather than allowing the decision to be driven by politics, false urgency from the Bush Administration, and Wall Street greed, we should take the time to have a full debate, making sure to include the input from economists AND consumer advocates … and make sure we’re not giving a blank check to Wall Street.

Here’s how you can help.

If you’re on Facebook:

1. Sign up as a fan and watch your “updates” for what’s next
2. reply to the No blank check for Wall Street thread on Nancy Pelosi’s profile
3. share this link with your Facebook friends, and ask them to reply — and to forward it to THEIR friends

If you’re not on Facebook:

1. sign up for our annoucement email list and check your email for what’s next!
2. email this information to your friends, and ask them to help
3. phone or email your legislators and tell them how you feel

DRAFT!

Final version posted on OpenLeft and Pam’s House Blend

Executive Summary: please check out the No blank check for Wall Street Facebook page, add yourself as a fan, let your friends know, and blog about it.

How to help:

If you’re on Facebook, it takes next to no time to sign up as a fan.  While you’re at it, please post a link to wherever you’re reading this to your profile, and share it with your friends; and maybe even write a note about it.

If you’re on other social network sites, please check the current list.  If you don’t see your site, please help out by starting up a No blank check for Wall Street! page there as well.

If you’re a blogger or journalist, why not cover this as an emerging story?  If it pans out, you’ll have a scoop.  When you get a chance, please add your article to the coverage page.

And if you use email, please send mail to your friends and ask them to join!

Details:

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Draft posted August 14. Substantially revised August 17.

The second of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference.

Back when we lived in San Francisco in the 1990s, we were huge fans of Fuji TV’s Iron Chef, then shown with subtitles on a local cable station. When local chef Ron Siegel repeated his winning “lobster confront” menu at Charles Nob Hill, word got leaked to the Iron Chef mailing list and we managed to get seats … wow! And I’ll never forget the time that Bobby Flay in his exuberance jumped on the sushi board; so of course when I was at Caesar’s I had to have lunch at his Mesa Grill.

Iron Chef is also a good lens to looking at Black Hat from the perspective of the consulting I’m doing for San Francisco-based startup Coverity. This gives a completely different picture of the conference than the political and front-page-news of Vegas Baby! Black Hat, glitter, and pwnies. It’s just as interesting though, thanks in no small part to Fortify’s Iron Chef Black Hat.

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The first of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference.

Vegas, baby!

Continuing my tradition, I was in Las Vegas for Black Hat but didn’t attend the conference proper. My brother was able to come up from LA to meet me, so I decided to hang out with him instead — Vegas, baby!

This meant my Black Hat “attendance” was mostly networking at a couple of parties. Which certainly gives an interesting perspective on the conference ... in these more social settings, discussions are wide-ranging and informal, and there are opportunities for all kinds of different connections. Sites like Infoworld, Wired’sThreat Level , and Microsoft’s Ecostrat blog have great coverage of what happened during the sessions at Black Hat and Defcon, and are well worth checking out. Here’s my idiosyncratic view.

Kevin McLaughlin’s Learn From Lincoln, Says U.S. Cyber Chief on ChannelWeb is a particularly interesting lens for Black Hat, describing a talk by Rod Beckstrom (Director of the National Cyber Security Center in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security).

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