There's wifi here, but all I can get is http, not ssh or sftp. So I haven't been able to upload my slides to the fast(er) server at UM. But that's ok, there's a workaround.
Here, since a few people at the conference claimed interest, is link to my Powerpoint slides Anonymity Law in the USA: Latest Developments, Familiar Problems.
One of my first research interests was the regulation of cryptography, and this quickly led me to the equally interesting topic of the regulation of anonymity. So I'm just delighted to be attending On the Identity Trail: Understanding the Importance and Impact of Anonymity and Authentication in a Networked Society in Ottawa today, as it's jammed packed with interesting people doing great work.
The conference is joint venture of a muldisciplinary team headed by Ian Kerr that works under the rubric On the Identity Trail and faculty from the Law and Technology Program at the University of Ottawa. Talk about critical mass!
The organizers asked me to report on legal developments in the US relating to anonymity, so I'll be giving a somewhat gloomy — and uncharacteristically doctrinal — presentation at this morning's session.
Did I mention it is about 60-70 degrees colder in Ottawa than Miami?
Jaye Ramsey Sutter (“in a bad mood & telling you about it since 1962”) walks much, much a harder road than I do:
Today the Supreme Court did a good thing, no more death penalty for those who commit crimes when they are juveniles. To hear people discuss it,however, you would think that the Supreme Court took away everyone's Christmas present. For a bunch of Christians, these Americans are strangely pro-death penalty. I am positive that Christ himself would support the execution of juveniles while they are still juveniles. Amen.
I wanted to discuss the opinion with my students. I wanted them to see what an actual opinion looks like. We went up on line in the classroom and saw it. As we talked about what it meant my students opened up about their legal issues and problems.
I was stunned.
One young woman asked about what to do when her boyfriend beat her. Should she call the police from their appartment, should she leave the scene, should she sleep on it and call the next day.
I feel odd discussing the elegance of a Supreme Court decision with its beautiful citations and form when these students experience such violence.
One young man, so full of energy and intelligence asked if his girl friend had a restraining order against him and she walked into their favorite club and he was there, should he leave or should she? I told him bluntly to be a man, don't argue over some childish right to be drinking in their favorite club, and leave. Just walk away. Why don't she have to do that, he begged. Why don't we skip over that part and you be the adult and leave, I replied.
How can we teach the civilization of this Supreme Court decision to people who live with such violence as part of their lives?
I don't think it was a wasted class. I think our textbooks and our curriculum should address the violence that is our students' lives. They asked me who to call if the neighbors are abusing their children. I replied that a call to the police would certainly work and that Child Protective Services would investigate. I told them if they did not call the police they were making the abuse possible because they are aware of it and are doing nothing.
And I'm going to conferences.
AP has the story about the whistleblowing complaint against Scott Bloch, the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the office that's supposed to protect whistleblowers and investigate their complaints. He's accused of instructing staff to deep-six complaints without even interviewing the complainant. And of refusing to enforce laws protecting gay workers from discrimination.
“While publicly congratulating himself for reducing the caseload … Mr. Bloch has failed to explain just what happened to all of the cases he closed,” said the complaint filed in Washington.
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Bloch came under fire last year when he moved to deny gay federal workers protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and removed references to sexual orientation from the agency's Web site and complaint forms.
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In a letter to Bush, the employees' lawyer, Debra S. Katz, wrote: “Mr. Bloch ignored your express direction that federal agencies enforce” anti-discrimination laws against gays.
What you have to understandis that all these whistleblowers are bad people. Not with the program or they would air dirty linen in public. They're probably Democrats. Which makes them near terrorists. And you expect Mr. Bloch to protect them?
Brad DeLong says he is cranky today.
Brad DeLong's Website: Sigh Greg Mankiw: I am cranky, and annoyed. And I am not asking for very much. All I want is:
- No more claims that we know that carving-out Social Security revenues to fund private accounts will have no damaging effect on national saving. It might work. It might not.
- No more claims that the U.S. is a small open economy. It isn't.
- No more claims that there is no reason to think that slower economic growth will carry lower asset returns with it. There are good reasons to fear this.
- No more claims that the household employment survey is as good a guide to short-term labor market trends as the establishment survey. It isn't.
- No more claims that an honest forecast of what George W. Bush's policies are sees the deficit cut in half by the end of this decade. It doesn't.
I think Brad should be cranky more often. But then I don't have to live with him.
While waiting for Mozilla Sunbird to at least get to a more advanced beta stage, I'm still relying on my old trusty calendar program, Sidekick 98. And I really rely on my calendar because while I have a head for figures I have no head for dates.
Sidekick 98 has been temperamental lately, especially on my office computer, and I've wondered if that might be because that machine has less memory than my home machine, I run lots of things at once including memory hog wordperfect, and my calendar file must be enormous. If that's right, possible solutions are to start a new file with less data (but that means a lot of manual copying of annual events and all of my life for the next N months) or move to the still-pretty-beta Sunbird (ditto on the copying) before it feels robust and full-featured enough to rely on.
Jotwell Blenderlaw