Imaginary Citizen

Flowing through time, like the ebb and flow of ocean waves, the triumph of liberal thought and the growing trend of participatory regimes hoists its flag after each victory. From the early days, when the biggest club, the strongest man, took his share by force we've progressed to the one-human one-vote republics of the 21st century. These stepping stones to freer society was earned through the philosophy of minds questioning the entrenched ideals to bring us greater benefit.

Once and again, after the birth of a freer society, detractors prey on its flaws. Hard line regimes will rally masses against phantom enemies. Usurpers will claim thrones under the pretext of better rule. People forget the ideals of their society as propaganda becomes the media. These same forces that have hindered progress assault Western democracy on its varied forms from Europe to North America.

The political landscape has deteriorated to the point where individuals rationalize Orwellian society for the comfort of its supposed security. Asked if torture is an acceptable means of interrogation, all citizens should answer with an emphatic "No", but no such refusal has occurred. It is hollow a gesture toward human rights when America refuses to release Chinese muslims to China, for the "fear they may be tortured", after having beaten and raped them for years.

There should be no question as to whether we should condone torture done by anyone. As we cannot condone such torture, we cannot help with such torture. Instead, there are upwards to a half dozen Canadians now who've been arrested, imprisoned without charge and tortured for years in countries such as Syria. Yet, where is the outcry against the implicit assistance offered by the Canadian government to torture these individuals? Instead, there are nothing but rationalizations.

When native protesters have their families threatened by the Ontario police and their phones tapped without warrant, there is silence. We ignore actions by CSIS, CIA, NSA, DHS, FBI and any other acronym the government can fathom, under the ubiquitous defence of "national security".

While we rally our political forces to attack the human right abuses of other nations, going so far as to charge the Sudanese president with crimes against humanity, we've done nothing to solve our own issues. It might be that our society has been so severely damaged and we've been blinded to this fact that when are superceded by an opposing political faction because the masses flock to its superior claim to righteousness, we will be left with only one question; "Where did we go wrong?"

However, reality is not so fatalist. It only takes the imaginary citizen, the one with democratic ideals and the steadfast ability to adhere to them no matter the circumstance. This citizen ignores the siren call of the "war on terror" to give up its freedoms for non-existent security. The grasp on these democratic concepts are well founded in education and reason, defending it against popular propaganda and mob rule. The imaginary citizen sees no clash of civilizations because it does not exist. War is merely a fabrication within the minds of the masses. This person can exist, does exist and merely needs to exist in sufficient number to ensure society progresses forward.

Death and Taxes

On the international stage Canada represents a multicultural and vibrant high tech society. It is forward thinking, progressive and as democratic as you get in the world. Even still, there are glaring flaws in the social fabric that must be mended to maintain that image into the future. One such hole is the relationship between Canada and its native (or Aboriginals, whatever you prefer) citizens.

The situation as it stands, has natives scrambling to get any possible benefit from a government that earns its mandate from a people resentful of each dollar sent into the hands of natives. Natives receive less, in terms of dollars per capita, social services than other Canadians. The deadly cycle of poverty, its associated social ills and the decreased socioeconomic power to deal with the issue has persisted from when the natives were first conquered to this day.

The question is, what if we treated natives as individuals, their tribes as nations?

Canada negotiates with the native tribes to set up native provinces, of equal status to other provinces, with the ability to collect sales tax, income tax and possibly even the municipal type taxes such as gas tax and property tax. As provinces they are entitled to receive income via the equalization program and thus ensure a proper per capita dollar funding level.

First, this eliminates the need for native communities to beg the province for money. Invariably, if any government program, such as even building a hospital, is discovered by the public, the funding is immediately labelled as "waste". The issue at hand is the flow of money. Natives, like any other Canadian citizen, pay provincial and federal taxes. However, neither tax is received by native bands and thus must flow back down from the province. If native reserves were simply provinces, they would receive funding directly, as well as federal funds through the equalization program and thus be able to spend money immediately.

Secondly, people bitch to who they pay taxes toward and in this case it would be the tribal government. As seen in the past, native protests against government or government-backed corporate actions have led to bloodshed. With provincial status and a tribe installed government, they can take up issues with a more local government rather than create an adversarial environment of "natives vs the government".

Thirdly, as a province, the land natives own by treaty will simply be enshrined. It is and forever will be, their land and under their province. This opens up a lot of economic opportunity without harming the right of natives to their land. For instance, a non-native individual can purchase a house on a native reserve, attend the local school, use local social services and the tribe will not lose an inch of soil. The non-native individual simply pays taxes, especially property tax, to the local government.

Although significant in importance but not the direct intent of creating new native-provinces, one would also assume that only natives can make tribe-altering decisions through a democratic process. The horror of the residential school system and what amounted to systematic abduction, torture and rape, would not be possible because no government except the provincial one could possibly institute such a program.

Hopefully, in several centuries time, when the natives have recovered economically, socially and most importantly, psychologically, there would no longer be a "native vs Canadian" issue. With equal political power comes equality in the long term, albeit a long and slow process. One day, the discrimination would be nothing but a bad memory in Canadian history.

-Ultrapunk

Edumacation

Education is the foundation of democracy, for a people that is well educated is also well equipped to face the realities and reveal the truths of life. It may be in the political realm, where the better educated can withstand the subterfuge offered by politicians and spin generated in the media. It may be in the science realm, where those with roots in a strong education system can discover the technologies of tomorrow, the medicines to combat the scourges of today and reveal the histories of yesterday. Even in every day life, education produces brighter minds that are able to problem solve, resolve conflicts and produce more responsible individuals because it is sometimes more important how the education shapes minds than what is learned.

In a world moving toward greater scientific knowledge, more complex social and technological systems and solutions to global woes requiring more technical expertise, the rock bed of modern well-performing societies will be the education system. In fact, it has always been the case where better educations systems yielded better societies. With the recent American election of President Obama, this thought has entered into the American administration. It is encouraging to see that the reign of terror of Bush, in his war on science, that anti-intellectualism and the blind refutation of science is beginning to come to an end. Obama offered a general philosophy toward improving the American education system. Here offered is a general philosophy toward improving the Ontario education.

The Gifted and the Struggling

One of the greater issues since the introduction of things such as gifted class and remediation has been the stigma attached to each. Attempts at discovering these individuals through not-very-private standardized testing and humiliating remedial classes have generally resulted in worsening and not improving conditions for students who perform out of the norm.

One of the key components missing from this system, by the opinion of the present philosophy, is a general lack of privacy. Standardized testing to check the performance of students is useful but tests are generally built one-size fits all and cannot be used to accurately judge an individual. Instead, standardized tests with secret results, shared only with the student in question, would be more useful for a teacher-student relationship.

The system would work as such; all schools offer an open to all extra-assistance time after normal classes have ended. This is meant for both gifted and poor-performing students to either receive more education or remedial assistance. Attendance is not required or recorded, the work done by students is private information. Standardized tests are used as a benchmark for students, whether they should consider, for themselves, whether to attend such classes. The results of standardized tests are shared only with the student. As this is all private information, no one may ask for it and should be protected by law.

Allocation of Resources

In Ontario, there is a fairly loose guideline on what subjects a teacher may be allowed to teach. Under the presented philosophy, a teacher may only teach subjects which matches their university education. For instance, individuals with a bachelor's of math (or bachelor's of arts/science in math depending on the university) may only teach math subjects. It would be a misallocation of resources to have biology degree-holders teaching English or Physiology majors teaching math. This assumes that anybody who can outperform in teaching a subject outside of their expertise is an exception and not the statistical norm.

Oversight

As part of the allocation of resources, the Ontario Teacher's Union should agree to subject itself to some type of oversight, however it may be handled, such as a neutral third party that evaluates teachers, in order to give the power to school boards to terminate the contracts of poor performing teachers. In the past, these oversight policies typically were in the form of political scapegoating of teachers and wild witch hunts, which has in turn led the Teacher's Union to simply back any and all teachers from losing their jobs. It reflects poorly on all teachers if the union mistakenly protects a poorly performing teacher.

Some type of agreed upon method of evaluating teachers, whether standardized or made to be more individualistic between schools, is necessary to improve the quality of education offered by the government. If job security is one hundred percent, there is no method of riding the system of bad apples. A fair process is necessary to vet through teachers. It cannot be expected that teachers to evaluate each other, if such evaluation determines contracts, as it would not be fair between teachers for reasons of loyalty and trust.

As part of such a process, there would also be a component where teachers work together to develop better teaching strategies. This might be in the form of random schools being selected for "experimental" education strategies developed by well respected teachers. It could also involve a teacher-internet or teacher-wiki, to gather information from all Ontario teachers. Sharing information would inherently lead to better education. Technology allows us to reach greater heights if we make use of it.

Respect

Lastly, respect for teachers is something which cannot be legislated. The teaching profession is the primary one in shaping our children's minds and building our social building blocks. They give us our future engineers, doctors, electricians, bricklayers and factory workers. It's a position that should be respected and only respected individuals may enter. This is a social value and one in which this philosophy holds dearly.

-Ultrapunk

Private Keys for Everybody!

There's a certain pleasure in amassing large piles of objects. Usually it's gold, sometimes jewels, other times it's a pirate stash. Few would stockpile passwords until its height surpasses that of the tallest skyscrapers. Instead, people use one perhaps two passwords and maybe a select few use upwards to half a dozen different passwords. In the online world, most accounts handled by a person are almost invariably protected by the same password or many different easy passwords. For a person attempting to break into another's account this is the perfect environment to thrive and fraud has been damaging the global economy for years. Many have offered solutions but it is not the technical issues that create the greatest barricade but political will and planning.

Here is a simple idea, and please comment on any flaws inherent to the scheme. First, the government gives everyone a private key, and we'll arbitrarily state that it will be a 512-bit key. The Canadian government would produce fifty million private keys and individuals will pick it up at a government office. We will pretend this government office is the "Ministry of Private Keys". The government retains the public-key portion of the private-public key and thus only the citizen knows the private key.

This key would be stored on a ROM USB stick, or whatever happens to be the easiest external storage device, and act as a black box with the private key never being accessed directly. This will prevent anyone, short of physically breaking open and manually inspecting each bit on the memory stick, from obtaining the private key. The only other method is through cryptoanalysis, but given a sufficiently strong encryption scheme this should be a futile effort.

When an user logs onto a website, for instance, TD Canadatrust's EasyWeb and accesses online banking, they encounter the typical username and password login screen. The website sends a plaintext challenge to the user, plus whatever is necessary to prevent man in the middle attacks, and the user sends back the encrypted form of the plaintext using his/her private key. The banking website then uses the citizen's public key to decrypt to obtain the original plaintext challenge. As a side note, challenges cannot be repeated in use, in order to prevent dictionary attacks. This adds a layer of authentication to the process.

In addition, challenges will likely have to be blocked from all except "trusted" sources. These would likely be websites certified by the "Ministry of Public Keys" to be using the government provided authentication service. In this way, an attacker cannot easily obtain a large number of plaintext-ciphertext pairs. As well, the physical device used to store the private key will not be wireless, as this would add a mountain of security issues.

If a user loses his username/password due to, for instance, phishing email, the attacker still cannot authenticate him/herself as the citizen because they lack the private key. If a private key is lost, then much like a credit card, it can be reported lost or stolen to the government, and it can be backdated to the date it was lost. The public key attached to that citizen would then be banned from use and all authentication would fail.

The public keys are stored on a "Ministry of Private Keys" server, with its security certificate embedded into Internet browsers. Due to privacy concerns, a bank cannot directly ask for a single public key. Instead, to obfuscate the request, a bank asks for a sufficiently large subset of public keys in order to hide the identity of the individual accessing the bank's website. In addition, the public key server retains no log of public key requests but because this is a weak link in the trust, the aggregated public key retrievals builds more trust. This portion of the scheme could use some more development to guarantee better security without trust.

One of the hardest components is creating a secure factory to build the USB keys with the private keys installed on it. Every single private key must be a potential private key to have been used and there should be no way to know which private keys were used. The bit length of the private key should be sufficiently large that it is statistically impossible to have a collision of two keys. Keys should be sealed until picked up by a citizen at a "Ministry of Private Keys" office. These keys must be placed into a guarded vault, perhaps by mounties, until they are used. In short, there should be sufficient confidence that the keys are never tampered with until they reach the hands of the intended citizen.

The scheme is intended to provide people with better online security with the services they use the most, such as banking, shopping, and other popular activities in an effort to reduce fraud. The two primary aspects intended to be achieved is security without loss of privacy. Only the holder of the private key can know the key, the government has no access. There are far too many ideas and schemes forwarded by political factions attempting to convince their constituents that all privacy must be destroyed in order to obtain a safer society. This is simply not true and an affront to democracy.

This scheme may not be a unique idea, but unless this is backed by a sufficiently empowered entity, such as the state, sporadic use of private key encryption schemes, like PGP, will only be for the technical elite. The common man will simply be left poor in the digital world.

Added Dec 17, 2008
As a change to the system, rather than using Public Key servers, the government would act as a security certificate authority. The certificates, containing a citizen's public key, would be sent to a bank and the bank would then check the certificate's authenticity in order to obtain someone's public key. This way, the only way the government can invade privacy is by monitoring all Internet traffic, a much more gargantuan task.

I also received another suggestion that citizens should be able to create a private key themselves. However, I'd need details on how the common person can be expected to understand the creation of private keys in an easy manner, as well as do it in a clean environment. Clean environment means that the computer system used to generate a private key is free of viruses or trojans capable of compromising a private key from the very beginning. While it is entirely valid and logical to have a citizen create his own private key, I find it somewhat dangerous to leave that task to anyone not well versed in mathematics and cryptology. It is not a very large stretch of the imagination to see social engineering seriously eroding the value of a private key in that manner. The method should be simple but also completely safe (so that no one would easily gain knowledge of the private key in use).

-Ultrapunk

No World Order

It is never right to castrate a group in society when they are the reigning politically disenfranchised. This simple thought is a theme played out in our greatest literary works, in modern media and yet its understanding is elusive. Empathy for individuals down trodden by the times and unfortunate circumstances is given only when the group feels they belong to the same strata of community. It can be so terribly easy to ostracize those poor in political power and exclude them from the wealth of resources the "majority" enjoys.

There is a lack of perspective for any group in power to understand the plight of those not. If there is a lack of understanding by white individuals in Canada, there is a story that can be read at the footnotes.[1] The racism, the lack of power, the violence endured, the utter humiliation this Canadian endured in China seems so clearly wrong, so clearly horrible and yet when the same act occurs in Canada, where white individuals are in power, the reaction is the same as the Chinese in the story. Anecdotal evidence is easy to come by in Canada such as when a peaceful native protester has his life, family and friends threatened, user comments are filled with congratulations.[2]

If one day a different group is empowered in society, then is the rest no longer Canadian and undeserving of respect and inclusion? This is a question Canadians should ask themselves. When we create a mechanism which can disenfranchise one group, there is no defence against it disenfranchising any other group in the future. Breaking the third person perspective for a moment, I do not wish it upon anyone to experience racism first hand, be its target, feel the fear or humiliation and the powerlessness of your situation, in order for you to gain the lousy split second window for a new perspective or a paradigm shift. It should be unnecessary for a person to have the empathy to understand the situation of those targetted by racism. Yet why is the mantle of community inclusiveness, the rally against racism, held primiarily by the minority groups?

The lack of understanding and respect between communities is the greatest barrier against a mutual comraderie. While everyone is a human being, each individual can and should be respected for what they are without change. It is not an inevitable clash of civilizations that brings Western society against Islamic society, it is the lack of understanding about what makes up each community. China is not some unimaginable monster of growing power anymore than the European Union or the United States. It is not just a matter of human rights and a warm fuzzy feeling in your chest that requires all societies to begin the road to understanding one another; with the development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons to future devices such as nanotechnology and genetic engineering, it becomes a matter for the survival of our species.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_metz/20061025.html
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/22/opp-wiretaps.html

-Ultrapunk

Operating on an Operating System

In today's market there are two choices; Microsoft and Apple. It is the choice between two vendors each vying to be more vile than the other. One paints the other as horrid and unclean, uncool and nerdy, wracked with viruses and other ailments. The other calmly points out the other is incapable of running a majority of applications. They both contain serious issues and each is prohibitively expensive. Their cost, of several hundred dollars for an operating system, is quietly hidden away in a computer bundle purchase. Hundreds of millions of consumers stand and say in the defence of this pyramid of monopolistic stupidity, "They're just a business!", "This isn't communism!" or perhaps the ubiquitous "They're there to earn money!"

There is a solution to the woes of the operating system world. International standards to create an interoperability test. This test, a suite of simple facsimiles of applications from games to animation to math programs to office tools, comprise a core of applications which must be able to function properly on any accredited operating system. The test applications would be freely available, and a simple download and double click to run. All operating systems must pass this test and thus by passing this test is capable of running all applications in the world.

In a free market, an individual has sole discretion to decide which operating system to use for any application. Perhaps the user wishes to use a light-weight gadget free OS, or perhaps a heavy-weight gadget packed OS, or perhaps one known for its security, or one known for its ability to function with animation tools. The current market provides no such choice. The crown jewel of capitalism, consumer choice, is missing from the operating system market. Developers do not have the resources to build applications capable of functioning on platforms from Windows to Linux, they must pick and choose. They choose the operating system with the most market share. In the early days, Microsoft had luckily obtained a significant market share and by this random chance holds the entire market with their monopoly. Applications should be OS independent but they are not, restricting consumers to few choices. Either they use Windows or they have a computer which they cannot use. This lack of choice is justification for market intervention by the government. Market winners should be determined by innovation and ingenuity; not luck.

The entry cost to the operating systems market is prohibitively high. The development of an operating system is meaningless if there are no applications which can run atop it. The cost of developing both operating system and an accompanying suite of applications is too high for any small team of individuals. This bar against development stifles innovation and product development. Capitalism is the freedom for people to improve society with better products and let consumers decide superiority. If the market does not provide then the government must intervene to eliminate entry costs.

Corporations are built to shareholder value and shareholder profit, not public good. It cannot be expected that corporations will cater to the will of the people for their sake. The monopolies of today will be perpetuated unto tomorrow and again the next day. Only the action of government, through the voice of both reason and people, can pierce the shield the corporations have constructed. It is not an assault on profit-making, nor on market-organization, but on monopolies attacking the very principles the market system was meant to be built upon.

The ability of all operating systems to pass a single interoperability test set by an international organization opens the door for a world where developers create applications that work on any platform, can be judged from any angle and consumers that have a plethora of choices. It is the world capitalism was meant to create.

-Ultrapunk

In Soviet Olympics Gold Medal Gets You

There is a popular question in western society on its role in the international community. The level of commitment that it must give to developing nations, to each other, to its people and to rising powers. This issue has recently manifested itself over the issue of the Beijing Olympics.

There has been a massive recent outcry over the Beijing Olympics, deploring the country for human rights abuses and lack of freedom. It goes so far as to ask for boycotts for the Olympics and may go beyond that to the thought of attacking trade relations with China but most importantly, Tibetan independence. It is interesting to note that the one missing voice calling for a boycott is the Dalai Lama.[1]

Human rights and freedom are important but one has to steel themselves to the possibility that protesting against China may not be well grounded. The arguments appear to centre upon several items. First, Tibet was free and democratic before communist China had taken it. Second, international hostility will bring positive change in China. Third, western society is superior at dealing with human rights issues than China.

The contention of a free and democratic Tibet is a fabrication by protest groups to legitimize the claim of Tibetan independence. It should be noted that since the Yuan Dynasty when the Mongols conquered the Tibetan Empire in 1230s, the area has been a part of China ever since.[2] Even then, Tibet was never a democracy but rather a theocracy. The Tibetan Empire itself was much the same as any other government of the time with its history of internal and external discord. Creating an idyllic image of Tibet as done in the protests appears to be built largely out of ignorance.[3] It remains an open question of how Tibet may have developed outside of Chinese control for that 700 year period but that is more of a sci-fi story than for any real discussion on today's matters. It's much like questioning what the world would be like if Rome had not fallen. Even today, it is hard to estimate the level of support for separatism inside Tibet, where the support matters, rather than outside Tibet. Even the Dalai Lama asks for autonomy rather than independence.[4]

Under the belief that international hostility and condemnation of China will bring about positive change, protesters in western governments have committed to disrupting the Olympics.[5][6] Whether a rising power like China would even be affected by these actions remains questionable but the largest reactions have been from Chinese individuals. In Wuhan, Chinese protests against the French erupted in the face of what they saw was blatant hostility against the Chinese.[7] While the unnerved communist party of China will stop these protests in due time, the rise of anti-west sentiment is terrible. What few appear to understand with isolation and hostility, is that most actions are reciprocated. If one should act hostile towards China today, China has no obligation to act friendly towards the west tomorrow. Change in China must come from the Chinese not westerners settled in their White Man's Burden mentality. As the Dalai Lama has stated, there is only so much the outside world can do, it's up to the Chinese to decide how they wish to live. We can interact with China, we can trade, we can perform quiet diplomacy and these are the actions that will help us live with in a world that is not merely the west dictating policy to others, but a world where all people can live together and also enjoy human rights and freedom.

There is an underlying belief that the west is immune to human rights abuses. It goes so far as to believe that parallels cannot be drawn with other nations because they are weak or apologist. In the most appropriate parallel, the French crackdown of riots that broke out amongst its North African and other minority neighbourhoods was neither condemned nor even looked poorly upon. Instead, most nations assisted or congratulated the French on stopping the riots despite the deportations and demolition of houses. In the most amazing reversal, the Chinese crackdown of violent Tibetan riots brings worldwide condemnation. Rather than condemn both, only China faces the brunt of human rights abuse allegations. Last week, United States released a Pulitzer prize winning journalist from jail as a suspected terrorist (and there are still others in jail, including a Canadian journalist), but condemnation only reaches China for jailing media personnel.[8] The recent Australian attack on the aboriginal population with forced abductions, relocations and nanny-state laws has gone without notice. The land disputes continuing in Canada earn a few condemnations from the UN but few would even know it had occurred. The United States, in the America-led invasion of Iraq has led to 600 000 dead (according to Lancet Journal) and 4 million refugees (according to the UN).[9] We would condemn the Khartoum government in Sudan for 300 000 deaths in Darfur but refuse to do the same in Washington, now that Iraq is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. It is no surprise that Chinese individuals, born in other nations and in China, feel attacks are being launched for no other reason than to fabricate a new enemy for this day and age when the War on Terror becomes a dull media sensation.

It is our world and everyone should strive to better it. The concepts of cooperation and dialogue should always reign over hostility and suspicion. Without working with one another to improve the world, we only lead ourselves to conflict. When one chooses to take a hostile stance with China it gives the communist party the right and democratic obligation to take a reciprocal stance. Do not believe in the inevitability of war, believe in the inevitability of peace.

-Ultrapunk


[1] http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/10/dalai-olympics.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet
[3] http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/dalailama/
[4] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24097313/
[5] http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=428251
[6] http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCASP11894820080419
[7] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/19/china.france/index.html
[8] http://www.ap.org/bilalhussein/
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties