Jacques’ Brain Drain

It’s July Fourth. After another year of watching our elected leaders in Washington continue the process of turning a proud and powerful people into a petty and scared one, I have decided to make another attempt to wake some people up. Just this once, I decided to explain what patriotism means to me – in case some fool out there thinks that because I constantly criticize my government that I’m unpatriotic.

Patriotism is paying my taxes, even though I know the money will be used poorly and wind up doing no good. Patriotism is writing one more letter to that Senator or Representative, even though you heartily believe that it’s bound for the landfill instead of the desk. Patriotism is calling out a leader you like, and have much in common with for supporting a piece of legislation you despise – just because it’s bad law.

Patriotism is knowing that the telecommunications companies have spent the last decade cheating the American people – and then spending a great deal of time opposing telecomm immunity, and working for net neutrality. Patriotism is backing the creation of a national broadband infrastructure plan – knowing full well that it will put billions of dollars into the pockets of the same telecommunications companies that have spent decades ripping us off. Patriotism is swallowing your bile end doing it anyway so that some punk kid in East Podunk gets access to the great opportunities for education and personal growth that the Internet provides, and will provide.

Patriotism is being an author and still believing that copyright is too long, and too powerful right now. Patriotism is being a programmer and inventor and believing that patents, as they exist today, are evil. Patriotism is knowing that $4+/gal gasoline is bad for your wallet, and going straight into the pockets of people and companies you hate – and also knowing that expensive gas is good for our long term health as a nation. Patriotism is using a bicycle to go to the grocery store. Patriotism is voting your conscience instead of your wallet when the two differ.

Patriotism is caring enough about the troops that you did everything possible to keep them from going to war in the first place. Patriotism is understanding that if one or two come home in one piece it will be a miracle – and that the rest will bear scars, physical and mental, for the rest of their lives. Patriotism is doing everything possible to give those people a decent quality of life – even though it’s expensive, and even when you opposed the wars that got them hurt.

Patriotism is about getting your hands dirty. Patriotism is about doing the work – political and otherwise. Patriotism is about becoming, once again, a nation that is not afraid to be open, take risks and dare. It’s about being a people who rejects torture not because it can’t, in some circumstances, save a few lives – but because principles are important. It’s about saying “Americans don’t do that” – and holding our heads up, even when it’s difficult – and even when it hurts. Patriotism is about daring. It’s about being willing to dream, and willing to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work required to make those dreams real.

To hell with it. I’m done. No-one is going to read this damned thing anyway – and even if someone does it won’t do any good. Try to have a better 4th of July than me.

This is an outgrowth of a post I was making on Violet Blue’s blog which was too technical and not enough sexual (It’s a sex blog). The topic was firewall piercing.

For an overview of the topic, you might like this Wikipedia article.

I was going to write something back, but while her site is about sex and technology, I think that my response had too much technology, and not enough sex.

This is turning into a mini-howto on basic and advanced firewall piercing. While I do think that this is important for people who are worried about their privacy online, I also think that this discussion needs to happen elsewhere and not clutter up a sex blog with too much tech-talk.

For an SSH tunnel, I was thinking more along the lines of this:

ssh user@example.com -L localhost:8888:127.0.0.1:8888

Then running a tinyproxy instance bound to the localhost (127.0.0.1) address of the ssh server on port 8888. Set your web browser to use 127.0.0.1 port 8888 as your web proxy, and you’re done. Personally, I would recommend combining this with something like FoxyProxy, which would allow you to easily switch Firefox between normal and tunneled communications. This approach gives you a clean tunnel anywhere SSH is sold. (Coffee shops, most airports…)

If you’re dealing with a really draconian set of rules, you could use a listener on some port of the ssh server, and run httptunnel ( http://www.nocrew.org/software/httptunnel.html ) on both ends, and encapsulate the SSH connection in http (web) traffic. This can even be set up to work through a web proxy server.

On the server, this is run as:

hts -F localhost:22 8443

The client side configuration looks like this:

htc -F 8022 ssh_server.example.com:8443

The ssh tunnel is brought up with:

ssh -p 8022 user@127.0.0.1 -L localhost:8888:127.0.0.1:8888

(Note: those are all 1-liners)

For bonus points, put the httptunnel instance on port 80 of the ssh server, so as to make life more difficult for censors. This can be done by replacing the “8443” port numbers with “80” in the example above.

For double bonus points, run a recursive DNS resolver on the machine, and replace tinyproxy with Dante. That gives you arbitrary dynamic port forwards on the far end for any application that either (a) supports socks(4/5), or (b) is socksified. Dante can be found at
http://www.inet.no/dante/ , and a windows Socksifier can be found at http://www.freecap.ru/eng/ . Socksifiers are nice for handling windows application that expect a direct connection to the Internet – but are not needed for Firefox, and any other applications that have been compiled to run natively with socks.

For triple bonus points, run openvpn in tcp mode through a httptunnel. Using this option, you can dump ssh and the proxy altogether, and run arbitrary protocols. It does, however, require a bit more work on the destination (server) end.

Edit: Fixed typos in example

When writing and computers come together, you often come to a very strange place. On one hand, any rational person trained in how computers work and how to work with them knows, almost instinctively, that bits are far more ephemeral than words on paper. On the other hand it is equally clear that digital works can, in theory, express a permanence that is unsurpassed in recorded history. The difference depends on your definition of permanence.
It is obvious to nearly everyone that it is far easier to damage a disk drive, for example, in a way that completely prevents data recovery than it is to damage a book or manuscript to the same extent. Manuscripts exist in museums and libraries today which have survived fires, floods, physical damage of various types, being repeatedly dropped, shipped all over the world, and stored for hundreds of years – sometimes in horrible conditions. The important thing to remember is that these texts, after this type of treatment, are still readable. Destroying bits is a simple process. If I fail to pay my hosting bill for a few months, this server will be shut down, and the disks will be overwritten with data from another client. At that point, all but the most extensive recovery efforts would be completely futile.

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I have been both reading and writing about computers for a long time. One thing that I’ve found lacking in a basic explanation of key “obvious” concepts which are vital to understanding many legal and moral problems in current society and politics. These are not intended to be political statements. They are neither Republican nor Democratic – Neither libertarian or fascist. These statements are, as clearly as I am able to make them, fundamental properties of the digital world.

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I had an interesting copyright experience this morning.

I follow Violet Blue’s blogs—and when she went to the Forbes Web Disruptor’s conference, she recorded a panel discussion as a video feed. She mentioned in her comments that she wanted to strip it back to only audio, but the software she was using couldn’t handle a file that large. Since I usually listen to lectures and panel discussions while exercising, I stripped it, transcoded it to mp3 and loaded it on my mp3 player.

It was a good panel, and several people made interesting points, but someone else can write about that. What made me pause is that I had the file available, and could have easily made it available to whoever wanted it. Instead – I ended up putting it away in a private directory and sending her a link. Even that was technically unlawful. As things stand, I am being exposed to potential legal liability for trying to help out someone I admire who’s stuck out back of the beyond with marginal software. Somehow, I don’t think that this was what any of the lawmakers involved in copyright intended.

If damaging cooperation among people who respect each other’s work is not the intent of copyright (and I’m fairly certain that it’s not), than how can we fix the problem? That’s a much more interesting question, and answering it means taking a long hard look at how we reward people for creating works of value or beauty. In this context, that means thinking about the social nature of cooperation.

In a way, much of this gets back to some of the things Richard Stallman wrote about software. The key to his writings is a belief that people’s willingness to cooperate and share is one of the human attributes that holds society together. No matter what you have to say about his other beliefs, that basic premise is difficult to disagree with. This leads to some interesting situations—for example, the fact that Bittorrent works for infringing content, socially, says something about people. One of the things that it says is that people will continue to work together, to share things they value with each other, even in the face of personal risk. In effect, my personal benefit ends the moment I have a complete copy of whatever I am downloading – whether that’s a song, a movie, or a program. Any time I continue to stay connected to the network, I increase my personal risk without any direct personal benefit. The system continues to work because of a personal belief that I should “give back” to the community.

Law and society are interconnected systems. Changing one will, over the long term, always have an impact on the other. In situations where changes in society overturn unjust laws, or where good leadership leads to laws that promote a society that is more just – these effects can be extremely good. In other situations, such as where repressive laws have been used in an attempt to stop positive social changes or social resistance has stopped necessary legal reform, things have been less positive. In either case, it’s important to remember this effect when you look at changes in the law, whether those changes are historic or anticipated.

In the case of file sharing networks, the law and society are at odds. The question we have to ask at this point is to what extent we are willing to suppress socially beneficial behavior (sharing) to get a socially desirable benefit (compensation for media companies and, indirectly, artists). This is not a case where any of the absolutes come into play—it’s not about life and death, it’s about money. Money is important, and so are social institutions – but let’s be realistic about what we’re dealing with. Legislation is always a process of deciding to give up some of one thing to get more of something else. It is our responsibility as citizens to ensure that our government makes a good bargain, and to correct it when it fails. I don’t know what the correct balance is, but I know that the current system has failed and it’s time to reassess it starting at the beginning.

Update: She decided not to sue me