The Washington Post reports that the government is adopting high tech devices faster than in the past, but is missing a key element to the equation: security. That’s not to say that there isn’t always a security concern when it comes to newer technology, but the devices we’re talking about are wireless in nature, and that’s where things get messy. It’s one thing to go from Windows to OS X, or even the Blackberry to the iPhone, but when we’re dealing with government policies that restrict use of wireless devices for classified work, then you can forget about seeing government Operators using an iPad to take notes during interviews, or snapping pictures of a bad guy with a government-issued iPhone. These are both examples of how the government could be more efficient in terms of how it gets the job done, and how much money could be saved long-term by consolidating devices and materials, but ultimately, examples with little real-world merit.

It’s because devices like the iPhone and iPad, whose AppStore libraries are enormous and already aid thousands of people with work tasks already, make use of programs that haven’t passed scrutiny by government security experts. And even if the apps somehow did pass such scrutiny, the fact that these devices are capable of transmitting data wirelessly means that they’re already banned from use in classified contexts, and why they can’t even enter a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) where highly classified information is typically handled and kept. That’s why government computers held in a SCIF lack wifi capabilities, and when procured, must have respective hardware removed before going online. And naturally, they can never connect to an open network, for fear of their contents being transmitted to unintended recipients.

And it’s not just wifi that’s the problem, either. Pretty much any device that’s able to record audio, take pictures, or even tether to a desktop to exchange information is a no-go in a SCIF. Which doesn’t leave many devices for consideration outside the staple pad-and-paper.

So for iOS devices, or similar smart phones and tablets, to be used by Shady Land’s most sensitive Operators, several things would need to happen, all of which are highly unlikely:

1. Variants of devices would need to be manufactured that do not include hardware like cameras, microphones, wifi transmitters, etc.
2. An infrastructure would need to be put in place to push approved apps to all such variant devices.
3. Some mechanism would need to be put in place to transfer information between the device and a classified computer, so as to download information from the device to SCIF-housed computers.

Mind you, current-gen devices could be used by Operators that don’t need to enter a SCIF. The only obstacle in this scenario is the determination by some individual that every app utilized by an Operator is without major security concern, such that information gathered by the Operator is not clandestinely exfiltrated from the device wirelessly.

While the Washington Post paints a pretty picture of the government picking up their pace when it comes to high-tech, the reality is a little different, with bureaucratic obstacles in place, and legitimate security concerns slowing down adaptation considerably. The press is quick to point out that the President himself uses an iPad, but it wasn’t long ago that he was required to get a secure Blackberry in order to conduct business. In reality, the iPad he’s using is not intended for use with any classified information, and is likely more of a personal toy than it is a workhorse for national security matters. It’s a shame that such devices can’t be used in classified situations yet, but hopefully someone’s exploring a way for us to get there.

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In The New York Times, Nicolette Hahn Niman proposes five things the government can do to help stop cruel and abusive animal practices in the US. All are excellent suggestions, but the last we find most interesting:

The United States should launch a domestic Peace Corps for farming. America needs to repopulate rural America and stimulate beneficial jobs for young people. Our nation struggles with unemployment, and yet traditional farming is disappearing partly because it is more labor intensive. Training the next generation in sustainable agriculture and assisting them to start new farms could be a brave president’s boldest and most lasting initiative.

Combined with the first four examples, this idea is a fantastic one. The problem, of course, is that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is subject to the lobbyists who promote big business, and are woefully negligent on sustainability in agriculture, and even nutrition. A government-funded Farmers Corps would have to work alongside the USDA, but a non-profit, non-government organization (NGO) could work contrary to USDA recommendations (corn subsidies, et al) and yet still help boost the economy and environment.

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Apple is being asked by the U.S. Senate why they haven’t removed iOS apps from the AppStore that report on the location of sobriety checkpoints. That may be a reasonable question to ask if safety is on your mind, but the issue quickly gets muddled when you consider that what many of these apps are doing is re-reporting published information. Further, apps like Fuzz Alert, which TiPb specifically calls out do not limit reporting to DUI checkpoints, but on the location of speed traps, speed cameras, et al.

The obvious question is whether it is illegal to report the location of a DUI checkpoint. Apple can ultimately make a decision based on ethical grounds¹, but it appears that they’re relying on their lawyers for this one. So far as we can tell, an individual can freely publish information about a DUI checkpoint via other means², so reporting such information via an app is no different. Has the U.S. Senate asked similar questions to those operating web sites, or manufacturing GPS units, that offer similar information?

While you can argue that drunk drivers may use such information to avoid getting caught, thereby potentially injuring or killing someone, isn’t there a similar issue with other published information? Having access to information on how to build a bomb isn’t illegal, but actually building one with the intent to use it illegally is. Police officers organizing in public locations is not a secret³, so simply making this information easier to access shouldn’t be an issue. Should we next ban apps that report on where local playgrounds are, because child molesters could use them to more quickly identify where young children hang out?

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Historians believe that at the end of World War II, the Third Reich managed to hide considerable gold stores before succumbing to the Allied invasion. Some of these gold stores were discovered shortly after the war ended, but others may still lay undiscovered, as though some sort of Nazi-pirate treasure.

Nazi archives show that battalions of Organisation Todt – the Third Reich’s main labour organisation – were shipped into the Leinawald in 1944 on the orders of Hitler’s armaments minister Albert Speer.

According to the working theory, the Germans buried what today amounts to $800 million in gold in an underground complex, marking it with sand workings in the shape of a human skull¹. Aerial photography and historical accounts confirm the general location of the gold stash, which remains hidden despite earlier attempts by treasure-seekers and the German government to find it.

There are a couple questions we have with the scenario, however. One, why did Albert Speer not mention any of this in his memoirs, particularly after coming to realize the details of the Holocaust and the likely source of some of that gold? And two, why would the German government seek out the gold in 1961, knowing that if it was found, the government would likely have to give it up anyway? If there were individuals alive at the end of the war who were aware of this cache, why wouldn’t they have invested considerable time by now to discover the lode and pilfer the riches?

The tale is a good one, and though there are probably several instances of hidden Nazi stashes still left to be discovered, stashes of this size are likely the stuff of legend rather than fact. We’ll know for sure in a month or so.

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When someone residing in Europe pointed out to us how distraught they were that online companies like PayPal require seemingly irrelevant banking information just to handle money already in the account, something occurred to us: in general, Europeans are very sensitive about privacy issues as far as commercial entities go. That is to say, they prefer corporations to have minimal information on people, while they are generally okay with their governments having this same information. Considering that Europe is a land that has had plenty of authoritarian rulers, particularly those who had no qualms with repeatedly ignoring the idea of a citizen’s right to privacy, the Europeans remains alright with the idea that their governments may, from time to time, ignore privacy in the course of, say, national security matters. At minimum, this suggests that Europeans have a strong degree of faith in their governments and investigative authorities. However, Europeans don’t seem to trust corporations as much; corporations are seen as much more likely to abuse information collected in the pursuit of profit.

On the flip-side, we have the United States, where citizens pretty freely give up private information to corporations as part of the cost of going about their lives (e.g. Facebook, Mint, PayPal.) However, the idea that their government might try to obtain some of this information is distasteful, despite the fact that the United States does not have the same history as European governments for blatantly disrespecting its citizen’s privacy; the United States government has never been as corrupt as, say, the Third Reich, European monarchies, etc. Why do Americans have so little faith in their government when it comes to national security matters, while seemingly more “progressive” countries don’t consider this nearly as large an issue? Meanwhile, Americans pass an enormous amount of private information to companies they believe they can trust, who naturally tend to sell this information for money.

Who has the right idea?

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God forbid Apple enforce its app store rules and pull the controversial WikiLeaks application. It’s not like the site isn’t available on the web. But let’s address the app store rules for a moment, and dismiss the silly notion that Apple is necessarily taking sides in this silly WikiLeaks debate.

The app store rules state that any app providing charitable donations must be free. Further, that any charitable donations be done via a web site or SMS. The WikiLeaks app, however, was not free, though the author explicitly stated that half of the app proceeds would be given to WikiLeaks. The author presumably split the proceeds on his own end and sent them in to WikiLeaks. So, no donations were done via the web, or SMS, by the app customer.

This alone is grounds for removal, but there’s another breach to the app store rules.

8.5 Use of protected 3rd party material (trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, otherwise proprietary content) requires a documented rights check which must be provided upon request.

It’s a simple argument to make that WikiLeaks is hosting proprietary content, and issues of over-classification aside, the fact remains that there is classified information accessible via the WikiLeaks that is not meant for release in the public domain. Even if you’re a WikiLeaks supported, you have to realize that this is no different than an eBook app being pulled which republishes a leaked, yet copyrighted manuscript. Simple because a leak occurred does not render the contents of that leak public domain.

Amazon pulled the plug on a WikiLeaks server under similar grounds, and though there was backlash against it, it’s not as though Amazon didn’t respond to a policy it already had in place. People can get as angry as they want about companies not supporting WikiLeaks, but in these cases, it’s not an issue of endorsement or support, it’s a matter of enforcing existing policies. Why should Amazon and Apple make an exception for WikiLeaks but enforce their policies for everyone else? By Apple enforcing it’s app review policy, it’s not taking a side, and isn’t being neutral in this matter an appropriate position for Apple to take?

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There are better technologies for businesses these days than relying on desktop PCs and Microsoft Windows, at least as far as most tasks are concerned. Marco Ament spoke about the issues surrounding adoption of ChromeOS, but the same goes for the iPad, or even Macs in general. Simply put, the immediate strain on the current year’s budget becomes an argument against such an IT revolution.

That’s why that PC on your banker’s desk is probably running Windows 2000, an 11-year-old platform: because it’s extraordinarily expensive to update it, and the current system works acceptably without any massive, one-time expenditures on this year’s budget.

The same is true in Shady Land, where finding a modern computer appliance warrants a “Eureka!” The reality is that Shady Land computing is abysmal: computers run operating systems that have already surpassed Microsoft’s “end of life” date, and where the base word processing application is three versions old. Database queries are done on a daily basis using what amounts to a VAX back-end, and there is no consolidated attempt to streamline this access. Why? Not only are there cost issues like in big-business enterprises, but here we have to deal with “lowest cost” bids that get us little bang for our buck.

And then there’s the issue of perceived longevity:

In the context of replacing business software platforms, longevity is a major requirement. For Chrome OS to be considered by any reasonably large business, their IT decision-makers are going to want to know that Chrome OS is going to be around and supported by Google many years from now.

At least as far as Apple is concerned, there are small waves being made in Shady Land to adopt Apple computers to support certain functions, even though the mainstay computer remains a Microsoft Windows machine. As Apple’s future is now more certain than it was back when OS X was released, IT managers should be able to lean on Apple products more now, yet there’s still resistance. Resistance likely linked to cost.

But when it comes to a platform like ChromeOS, or even something more solidly defined in the consumer space like the iPad (which can easily manage most tasks a typical Operator needs to perform in the office), the resistance from IT managers is fierce. For one, will the platform be around long-term? And two, how can security issues pertaining to the cloud ever be juggled?

That second question is a huge issue, because even if there was a guarantee that ChromeOS and iOS will be around for a long time to come, and requisite apps are available, Shady Land will never rely on a platform solution that stores data in the cloud, or even pulls updates from a server wirelessly. In fact, unless enterprise customers can roll out updates through their own servers instead of directly through Apple, and on a wired connection, it’s likely that Shady Land will never see these types of devices adopted.

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Much is being written about the philosophy of WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and naturally, most of it is in defense of material ending up on the WikiLeaks site. While there’s a lot worth commenting on, the more obvious logical flaws are easy to address.

Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it doesn’t quite match up with how recent newsworthy leaks (e.g. State Department cables) ended up on WikiLeaks. That is to say, the leaker in this case wasn’t noteworthy himself other than the fact that he had access to information, an access that wasn’t really warranted given his station. In other words, the concept of need-to-know was not adequately enforced, since this individual did not have a need-to-know regarding the respective leaked information.

If the leaker did have a need-to-know, they would have been a player in the “conspiracy” (as Assange labels it), making the leaks a more noteworthy example of whistle-blowing. While the media loves to use “whistleblower” in the context of WikiLeaks, the reality here is that someone in a lowly station leaked documents that they were not intimately linked with. That’s not to say that an outsider can’t comprehend the contents of a document they happen to come across, merely that they likely don’t comprehend it in full, and as such, make for about as good a whistleblower as your average Hollywood star makes a good politician.

The point here is that the functioning of Assange’s “hydra” isn’t going to be severely damaged long-term. Assuming that the government looks at what happened as more than a mere PR disaster and actually attempts to make change to the system, they’ll re-address need-to-know and better ensure that people with access to documents are more intimately linked to them. In other words, (using Assange’s language) if you’re not specifically involved in a particular conspiracy, then you don’t have access to any documents regarding that conspiracy. And this reassessment means that long-term, the conspiratorial hydra is only going to get stronger, not weaker.

If this were, instead, a case of a real whistleblower leaking documents on a project they were directly involved with, then the leaks would be more noteworthy: there’d be clear evidence of a problem within the conspiracy, and one that would warrant more dire action. All this current situation highlights, however, is a weak link that can be fixed relatively easily, because the weak link isn’t integral to the system. A real whistleblower, on the other hand, would be.

These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance.

Hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance still shouldn’t have access to the same documents. Clearance does not imply access; clearance plus need-to-know warrants access. Assange somehow thinks that the government’s enforcement of need-to-know was just, and that’s why WikiLeaks will damage the system. But, he fails to realize that there’s an overabundance of players here, and not all of them are on the field; compromising a non-vital player isn’t ideal for the team, but if, in response, you cut the player and remove the position from the roster entirely, then the problem is solved.

The question for an ethical human being — and Assange always emphasizes his ethics — has to be the question of what exposing secrets will actually accomplish, what good it will do, what better state of affairs it will bring about.

One has to ask, though, whether publishing a “dump” of data is more effective than vetting out what gets published. That’s not say that Assange is in a position to properly vet any of what he posts, merely that it may seem, to the casual observer, that publishing thousands of often-unrelated documents is more for show and esteem, than to promote any real change.

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Electronic surveillance (generally referred to as “wiretaps”) are a standard tool in a law enforcement officer’s arsenal. Without this capability, law enforcement organizations simply would not be able to identify key intelligence in complex criminal or national security investigations. It doesn’t take an episode of The Wire to illustrate just what kind of information law enforcement officials would not be privy to if electronic surveillance were not an option, especially as reliance on technology is ever-increasing.

As the New York Times reports, U.S. authorities can be stymied when subjects of investigations use encrypted or peer-to-peer communications. In these situations, law enforcement officials need to obtain a court order to serve the respective service provider. The problem isn’t that this part of the process doesn’t work, but rather that the service provider receiving the order may or may not have the technical capability to provide monitoring capabilities. For example, a service offering secure communications between two parties, may not have built-in mechanisms to decrypt customer traffic. As Cryptography 101 will teach you, this is particularly true if cryptographic algorithms used to encrypt such traffic are worth a damn; good cryptography is mathematically sound. More simply put, if encryption is implemented correctly, then the only way to undermine a cipher is to attempt a brute force crack, as no back-door would be available. As soon as a developer introduces a back-door into an encryption package, then the security of the mathematical algorithm behind the cipher is compromised.

This may all sound academic to the layman, but what certain government officials are proposing is that all internet service providers be required to consider law enforcement requests from the get-go; service providers would be required to implement an architecture such that the respective service could be “tapped” by agencies with proper court orders. The idea is to have every internet service operating domestically be able to provide intercept data to law enforcement without any delay, which is sometimes the case today when a court order is served, followed by the government investing months of time to develop the technical intercept capability the court order requests.

Today’s solution may not be ideal from a safety perspective, as it means some bad-guys will be able to continue their activities for another several months before necessary technical capabilities are developed, but that’s the cost of business and freedom; to require developers to consider law enforcement requests from the get-go is to effectively make every internet service developer a government agent. Why should Joe Developer be forced to spend uncompensated development costs on a particular (possibly inefficient) infrastructure in the event that the government may serve a court order on his company down the road? Not only is this unfair to the developer, but it’s also unfair to the customers, who assume that an advertised product does not secretly contain back-doors that can be exploited. While the government could make use of such back-doors in good faith after a court order is issued, the mere existence of the back-door makes exploitation by bad actors a much stronger possibility. This danger is compounded by the fact that bad guys will know that every internet service would contain a back-door, which means they’ll certainly look for one until it’s found.

The solution here isn’t to force developers to comply to arbitrary design guidelines, it’s to put resources behind the law enforcement agencies requiring such intercepts to take place, such that it doesn’t take several months to develop a particular intercept capability. This means hiring more and/or better developers on the government payroll, paying them rates competitive to private industry, and compensating companies served with court orders to develop the capabilities the government needs.

It makes sense for private companies to consider electronic surveillance requests when developing their products, because if served with a respective court order, they might not want to deal with the headache that retroactively developing an intercept capability will entail. But that decision, to design a service around a court order that may never appear, should be left to the developers, not the government. The government’s job, meanwhile, is to work with internet service providers to develop the tools necessary to meet court order requests, and if they think bad-guy use of a service is possible down the road, then they should work on developing the right tools well in advance, and not wait for the court order to be realized before intercept tools are explored.

For example, how late into the game did authorities determine that Faisal Shahzad was using a service the government couldn’t intercept? If it was a service as commonly employed as Skype, then why weren’t intercept tools developed well in advance? Any tech blogger out there could come up with a list of promising internet services, especially those used for communication. That’s the type of list that should proactively be looked at by the government in order for appropriate tools to be developed, whether or not their employ is immediately evident.

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Yesterday we caught wind of Paul Karl Lukacs getting detained at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) after returning from China this past April. It began with a simple question and answer.

“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron. “None of your business,” I said. “Excuse me?” she asked. “I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.

And of course, this spiraled about where you’d think it would. Lukacs followed other requests, like moving his bags, providing ID, and following officers, but he refused to answer any questions. And though admirable at some level, at least in the sense of bringing awareness to an overlooked issue (citizens have a right to return to their own country unconditionally), it’s hard to follow this series of events and not think Lukacs wanted to profit from his 15 minutes of fame. Otherwise, why be so curt rude with the passport control officer? Lukacs could easily have responded with, “With all due respect, I’m not required to answer that question as a pre-condition to re-enter my country of citizenship.” Nor did Lukacs, in his blog narrative, seem to suggest that he made any effort at all to be nice to passport control, which may not be a necessary course of action, but a sensical one given that Lukacs knew he was about to start a chain reaction of shit.

But what’s worse is Lukacs’ take-aways from the experience, which run afoul of common sense and paint Lukacs with a degree of ignorance.

2. They’re Keeping Records. A federal, computer-searchable file exists on my refusal to answer questions.

Lukacs assumes that there’s simply a record of him not having answered questions like these before, but fails to consider the possibility that the records exist to document contentious interactions between passengers and security. And “contentious” is the right word in this context, because as we noted earlier, Lukacs didn’t address the issue in an amenable way, but rather in a manner with no outward regard for anyone else, without even attempting to explain, in detail, why he took the stance he did; if all Lukacs did was repeat his “pre-condition” line, it’s no wonder he ruffled feathers.

3. This Is About Power, Not Security. The CBP goons want U.S. citizens to answer their questions as a ritualistic bow to their power. Well, CBP has no power over me. I am a law-abiding citizen, and, as such, I am the master, and the federal cops are my servants. They would do well to remember that.

Why does Lukacs believe that airport security has a set of guidelines designed, for no other reason, than to force U.S. citizens to “bow to their power”? Doesn’t that seem rather, well, schizophrenic? No doubt, there’s a degree of “mall-cop” syndrome among some airport security employees, but that phenomenon is not universal. Just because Lukacs doesn’t understand why certain questions are asked, doesn’t mean they’re intended to be malicious. Lukacs expresses his ignorance (arrogance?) further by using the slang term cop instead of using the respective individual’s actual titles. An emotionally charged rant or not, the use of “cop” is demeaning, as it suggests that law enforcement officers are merely individuals charged with capturing or snatching people – precisely the Orwellian motif that Lukacs is channeling.

What we find peculiar is that the core of Lukacs’ message is noteworthy, and yet instead of finding an appropriate way to communicate his observed deficiencies when United States citizens cross back into the United States, he makes a mess of the whole affair. He does a better job of explaining his message in his followup post about the ordeal.

A federal judge in Puerto Rico – a territory sensitive to the rights and privileges of its residents’ U.S. citizenship — said it best: “The only absolute and unqualified right of citizenship is to residence within the territorial boundaries of the United States; a citizen cannot be either deported or denied reentry.” U.S. v. Valentine, 288 F. Supp. 957, 980 (D.P.R. 1968).

One would think that Lukacs could have paraphrased this appropriately when standing before the passport control officer, but what’s likely is that Lukacs decided to remain silent upon the passport officer’s questioning on not much more than a whim, and only later found a way to intelligently argue his point. That’s not to say he didn’t have a basis for his decision, merely that it was executed extremely poorly, much like some of his later commentary.

CBP officers are law enforcement… who can detain you, arrest you and testify against you in criminal court. You place yourself in jeopardy every time you speak to them about anything. CBP officers are not your friends. CBP officers treat returning U.S. citizens as potential criminal defendants. You should likewise treat them as if they were corrupt cops on a power trip, targeting you to goose their arrest statistics. The best way to protect yourself against their depredations is to refuse to speak to them or to answer their questions.

Here, Lukacs alleges that because law enforcement officials have the authority to detain, arrest, and testify, that you ought to treat them as “corrupt cops on a power trip,” and refuse to speak to them as a form of protection. The problem is that this conclusion is not deductively valid, and at best, it’s a fallacy of hasty generalization.

If a federal officer claims you lied to him, you can be arrested and charged with the crime of making false statements… “Wait,” you ask, “what about telling the truth?” Doesn’t work. If, in the course of your conversation, you mis-remember something or speak inarticulately, you can now be arrested. Innocent mistake? Prove it in court after being jailed, charged, tried and paying for a lawyer. Cardinal Richelieu is alleged to have said, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” That’s also how the false statement charge works. Any cop or prosecutor can concoct a “lie” from your statements. The only way to protect yourself from a false statement charge is to refuse to speak to federal law enforcement officers.

Does anyone at this point really believe that Lukacs is firmly grounded in reality? That law enforcement officers are arresting people because they can, based on a “loophole”? Following Lukacs’ reasoning, you’d think we’re all living in Orwell’s 1984 and should fear the thousands of “cops” whose job it is to arrest random people who don’t show proper fealty to the empire. We do not live in an era where we are prone to arrest because of some imaginary inquisition.

But Lukacs at least has the pretense to respond to being called “rude.”

To the authoritarian mind, there are only two responses to a demand: submission or defiance, and anything less than total submission is defiance. A Lutheran grandmother from Savannah with manners from an antebellum finishing school would be hassled if she refused to answer CBP’s questions.

Only, the reality is that we’re not dealing with a mechanical “authoritarian mind,” but rather with security personnel who are unequivocally human. Perhaps if Lukacs had been polite, he still would have encountered push-back, but likely, his treatment would have been better, and the whole process quicker. Appealing to reason, and emotion, is a common factor in charismatic individuals, who undoubtedly get their way over uncharismatic people in most social situations. Lukacs, quite clearly, is of the latter ilk.

Further, why is politeness a one-way street? Many commenters relayed stories about rude, abusive, mean and intrusive CBP officers. The entire cop ethos is based on intimidation and domination.

Politeness isn’t a one-way street, but in this situation, Lukacs was the one seeking a specific outcome, and since the obstacle in that outcome was the passport officer, then there’s more reason for Lukacs to be polite. (Never mind the fact that passport officers are likely advised not to make much small-talk with travelers in order to keep moving lines along, and that their whole job consists of repetitive questions and procedures. That’s not to say that they should be mean, but rather that it’s expected that they be curt. Lukacs’ response, however, was not expected, and should have followed with some deeper explanation.)

But Lukacs is, as we noted earlier, the type of person who likes to paint figures of authority negatively. This is abundantly clear in his belief that the fundamental values of a law enforcement officer is based on intimidation and domination, which, if anything, ascribes to Lukacs a heavily distorted perception of civil servants who happen to wear a badge; not only does Lukacs not respect law enforcement, but he cannot fathom the possibility that people would enter that line of work with the desire to do good, and thwart evil, because they must inherently be bad people who want to intimidate and dominate others.

In the end, it’s hard to cheer Lukacs’ actions at SFO, as it seems he’s more concerned with making the point that all government officials are corrupt and seeking to subjugate the masses under a reign of fear, rather than address his final point that “Travellers who have presented proof of U.S. citizenship should not be detained for refusing to answer questions.” Maybe Lukacs was never taught that “you can catch more flies with honey,” but maybe it’s time he learned, since he clearly has a couple good messages to pass on. But how about he do it constructively, and perhaps try to figure out why certain procedures are as they are, instead of focusing his ire on the guy at the bottom of the totem pole? Why invalidate your point by burying it in a flurry of hatred and Orwellian gospel?

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