Year: 2013

Then you’re definitely a blood phobic. As a former one himself, John Sanford was curious about the physical response associated with the fear:

Observing blood seep from a wound, flow into a syringe or spatter on the ground, blood phobics initially will respond like other phobics — that is, their heart rate and blood pressure will increase. But then something else will happen: Their heart rate and blood pressure will suddenly drop, causing dizziness, sweatiness, tunnel vision, nausea, fainting or some combination of these symptoms. … why would the sight of blood, or for that matter the sight of being stuck by a hypodermic needle, trigger a physiological response that is so different — practically diametric — to that of other phobias? This is the mystery.

Rachel Nuwer examines some possible reasons:

Some say that fainting at the sight of blood may be the human equivalent of playing opossum—pretending to be dead so that a dangerous predator will lose interest. Others think that the physiological reaction some experience at the sight of blood may be an evolutionary adaptation. If a caveman got stabbed in the foot while out on a hunting trip, Sanford explains, he may have a better chance of surviving if his blood pressure drops, helping him to avoid bleeding to death. … So besides being useful for dramatic effect in the movies, it seems blood phobia—perhaps like the appendix or wisdom teeth—is an evolutionary throwback that has largely outlived its usefulness.

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

A reader writes:

The analogy made by your software developer reader is misleading. The vulnerability is not like forgetting to lock your door, allowing someone to rummage around in your house. It’s like having a household policy that anyone who calls you on the phone, and asks for a specific family member’s email address, can have it. You don’t publicize the number, but millions of people have the number in their phones. So Auernheimer’s friend called the number millions of times, guessing at family names, and gave Auernheimer the resulting emails, which he then publicized. If you use a database to look up the emails when someone calls, is the caller illegally “accessing” (much less “hacking”) your database? Should someone who publicized those emails go to jail for several years?

Another:

Your reader misses the point about the nature of the data. This was not AT&T’s data; it was the data of their customers. Companies have an extra responsibility when it comes to data of their customers. They should be held liable for loosing that data, just as your insurance company will not pay out when you leave your door unlocked. Experience also shows that companies like AT&T would have done shit if Auernheimer had politely pointed out the security leak. Naming and shaming is the only way that works. He provided a public service – for free – and got jailed for it. Meanwhile, AT&T has not been held accountable for its lack of care of its customer’s data. Is that right?

Another:

Your reader’s analogy to “locking your house” is ridiculous, as most analogies between digital and physical spheres are.

AT&T didn’t forget to lock the door; they publicly posted the emails in a way that anyone could access them, and that anyone with computer know-how could copy them all.  There were no passwords or other security that would prevent someone unauthorized from accessing the email addresses.  Nothing was hacked.  Weev accessed ill-designed public websites in a way that AT&T didn’t like.  Think the opening scenes from The Social Network, only Zuckerberg is going to jail for several years and we never get Facebook.

The ability of the government to turn anything that a website owner doesn’t like into a felony is a problem with the computer crime laws, not a fun feature.  Beyond whether what Weev did in this case was right, the government shouldn’t be able to turn accessing public information or any misuse of a website into a crime, as it just opens up a whole can of worms criminalizing ordinary conduct.  Giving a site a fake email address?  Jumping on another computer so you don’t have to worry about your “read more” limit?  All potential felonies under an expansive view of the CFAA.  If this is a crime, it’s an example of why we need to reform the CFAA, and so far the government has moved in the opposite direction.

For more on the case and the technical/legal details look at this post by Orin Kerr, a computer crime expert representing him on appeal pro bono.  There are lots of other serious issues with the government’s theories, including a fun way of interpreting the law to make every CFAA violation a felony, despite Congress explicitly including a distinction between misdemeanor and felony violations.

The best legal summary for the argument that the opponents of Proposition 8 have no standing in federal court to reverse the state court’s ruling is here – Walter Dellinger’s (pdf). A reader chimes in:

As a proud, native Californian, I’ve thought a lot about the standing question (nerdy as that is). And I think your inclination on standing misses the key point: Politics.

You say, “But if a state’s elected leadership refuses to intervene to defend a popular initiative, doesn’t that make a mockery of the entire system?”

No, it doesn’t. The elected leadership are all political actors, and make political calculations, pretty much for a living. The decisions not to defend Prop. 8 were not made casually, and each one was made knowing that that politician would be subject to future elections.

I can’t see how that’s not an incredibly important fact. “The entire system” includes the proponents and the voters, and the politicians who represent all of the people. If the politicians make a decision that is widely rejected, they run a risk of not being reelected, a risk that gets higher as the rejection of their position increases.

Our governor and attorney general, and others, made their decisions not to defend Prop. 8, and if they are wrong about that, they have put their own jobs on the line. That, too, is the system. I think they made, not only the right decision based on the principle of equal protection, but as a matter of their own political survival. But no matter what, they are accountable.

So if the court rules that this particular set of citizens doesn’t have standing to defend Prop. 8 (in federal court only, remember — they had full standing to challenge it in our state courts, and did so), it’s not as if they are without remedy. Yes, it would involve extra effort to get those damn politicians out of office, but that is the same remedy we all have, all the time. And, in California, in addition to the initiative, we also have the recall, specifically to get rid of politicians prior to the next election, if that’s what we want. We got rid of a governor that way not so long ago.