Category: Disaster

An open letter to the Defence Minister

February 24, 2008

The Honourable Peter Gordon MacKay
Minister of National Defence
National Defence Headquarters
Major-General George R. Pearkes Building
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0K2

Dear Sir:

I was alarmed to learn via the National Post that Canada is currently
negotiating an agreement with the United States to allow American
troops on Canadian soil and vice versa for the purposes of mutual
assistance during civil emergencies.

There is no question that the US and Canada as part of NATO must
rehearse and communicate coordinated military maneuvres and strategy.
American troops on Canadian soil, even in the event of an emergency,
is an entirely different — and to me, horrifying – prospect and unless
the locality affected by the disaster (ie province, municipality)
specifically asked for the assistance and expertise of the US military
and coordinated the request with the federal government, not to be
borne.

Why do we want US troops on Canadian soil when they mismanaged the
Katrina response so badly that the US became the shame of the
developed world?  Civilian Canadian responders were on the ground in
the lower lying parishes faster than the US military anyway.

As a citizen of Canada and resident of BC, the first thing I thought
when I read that is that we’re going to have US troops walking up and
down the streets of Whistler in full combat gear during the Olympics
in 2010.  I can think of other, equally gloomy and distasteful
scenarios.

Unless the full text of the agreement is publicized prior to
government approval (I am assuming that this will be passed by an
order in council rather than being exposed to the harsh light of
parliamentary democracy) this proposed coziness with the American
military is a looming disaster for Canadian civil rights and
sovereignty.

Please publicize the details of the agreement.  Perhaps I’m upset over
nothing — but at this point I can hardly be sure.

Yours very truly,

Allegra Sloman

DRM letter to Mr. Prentice

Dear Sir:

I am not in favour of the Canadian government legislating what it cannot adequately and clearly explain, in the light of the powerful interests pushing for the DRM legislation.  I am not in favour of how fast, given the other important matters facing Canadian legislators, the bill is going through.

I am a content producer.  I hope to some day make my living using the internet as a songwriter and op-ed writer. I have a burning interest in copyright law and I’d be leery of supporting the incoming legislation without more explanation.

I have uploaded a song, currently on Youtube, which is protected under a creative commons licence.  BUT what will happen under this new law if I make a video and this video is uploaded to a server that uses drm software? Can I remove that protection from my own video? As I understand the legislation, I can not modify or kludge any DRM that any legal entity attaches to my work even though I control the copyright.  As the person who made the content in the first place, this is a real kick in the head, and not exactly a spur to my creativity, unless it’s to put more rants about DRM legislation on my site.

If I understand the legislation correctly I won’t be able to adopt new technologies for old content.  Let me tell you something.  I work with geeks and they are NOT sending you emails or begging you to reconsider the legislation.  They will merely, because it’s what geeks DO,(small edit here) subvert and end-run EVERYTHING your government tries to enact with respect to this legislation, and they will laugh at your discomfiture and ignorance (and mine, frankly) while they are doing it.  I have absolutely NO ability to circumvent DRM.  But some of my friends, who are REFUSING TO COMPLAIN about this legislation because they don’t want to be singled out for special treatment later, sure as heck do.

Did you ever consider that the technology to support this DRM was made by human beings who may just have built a ‘back door’ into it which will make the legislation the laughing stock of the free world?

My rights as a content creator are going to be messed over by this legislation, from everything I see, and my friends and colleagues will work tirelessly to pull the teeth of the legislation as fast as you can enact amendments to it! Seems like a waste of time, and an attempt to wring the last little bit of lobbying money from buggy whip media industries.

Don’t do it Mr. Prentice.  The flood of emails and letters you are getting is now the same weight as a tombstone for your political career; please let me know that you’re smarter than the rest of your government, and more far-sighted than the frightened media moguls who are trying to buy a few more years of profits on the back of your career.

Allegra Sloman

I am indebted to Douglas Green, who posted to a CBC website, for providing me with a template for this letter.  If I had a way to contact him and ask his permission, I would have done it, but somehow I don’t think he’d mind.  The link to his comment of November 29 is here 

The unexpected losses

Update to this post. 

 

I’ve been pondering the Storm Worm.  Since I’ve been thinking about a piece of software that is a ‘contiguous and not quite self-aware artificial intelligence’ for the last year or so as part of a fiction, finding out about the Storm Worm has made me very uneasy.

My first problem is direct and unequivocal – personally unpleasant.  I make a living from the inertnests.  The VOIP lines that carry the customer voices to me are dependent on the existence and functioning of the internet, which is beginning to look like another Ponzi scheme.  The contact management software is also web based.  Even if by some miracle we were able to switch back to ‘land lines’ after the internet crashes – and it will, and more than once – driving so many voices back to copper will put international telephony into turmoil.

My second problem is unpleasant for my children. Who will benefit from international telephony and the internet crashing?

Think about it.

Essentially, everybody who hates science; everybody who hates freedom; the buggy whip media; and the richest people on earth, who will be insulated from the worst of it. Theocrats, neo-cons, the super-rich and newspapers all have something in common now; imagine if they were able to bring porn, citizen journalism and science to its knees in a single stroke; imagine if various governments in the world were able to profit immediately thereby by locking up anybody they felt like with impunity because there was no one to report on it and the hysteria that surrounded the collapse of the internet made all geeks suspect.

I should have been name Cassandra, so filled am I with dire predictions.  It may be the Russian Mafia behind it… and I’d bet money that’s so – but like 9/11 more than one interest group will profit by the collapse of the internet.

What on earth can I do about it? Is there a silver lining?

Homily went well (see Thanksgiving…)

and now I am off to Victoria for a while, back Thursday night.  I will probably not be posting nearly as much, so try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone.  If you can’t at least have the decency to invent a new kind of trouble.

I light a candle for Daughter Katie, whose niece Sapphire has been stolen by the Ministry.  I light a candle for everyone involved, including the heartless pricks whose idea of a good time is scoop a baby after tossing the mother into handcuffs the Friday before a long holiday weekend.  The child in question was NOT AT RISK.  The parents are young and stupid and to put it vaguely but tellingly “multiply diagnosed”, but Sapphire is not being physically or emotionally abused, she’s entirely on target for growth and developmental milestones, and Katie got to watch this go down, and it’s not turning her into ‘a better citizen’ if compliance and unquestioning patriotism is the desired end state.

Okay, NOW I’m going to Victoria.

Fight the power and may God rain down judgment on the Ministry.