Nefaria.com

First, watch the following video:

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/002008/

Just a point of order before I get too far into this; throughout this post, I’ll use the terms “warning banner”, “warning message”, “logon banner”, “network banner” and “privacy statement” interchangeably… they all refer to just about the same thing and serve the same purpose.

Now if you are to take Beck at his word, this is scary shit right? Wrong. First of all, don’t take beck at his word [ever], he’ll give you brain herpes. Here’s the deal, that disclaimer that he’s taking such a big issue with? Yeah, it’s a pretty standard warning message actually. Take the U.S. Army’s website for example (warning, you’ll have to confirm a security certificate exception); one of the “scary issues” that Beck has with the warning on the cars.gov website is that it’s too broad (never mind the fact that it has to be… we’ll get to that in a second). If you read the security warning on the Army’s site, it too is broad and so is their terms of service. Moreover, all this bullshit about “America, do not try this at home.” is just silly fucking nonsense, meant only to scare people who do not know any better. This security message that Beck is all up in arms about is what is known as a “warning banner”. Warning banners are common on just about all corporate and government computers that are accessible from the Internet (…and have been common for a looooong time). Even some private computers, such as someone who runs a web, e-mail, ftp, etc. server from their home for personal use will have warning banners. In addition to those, it’s also common to see similar, broadly worded messages at the bottom of some e-mails (pursuant to the “e-mail” policy of some organizations). Their purpose is to cast a wide legal net so that in the event that someone abuses the system in question, legal action can be taken. The basic purpose of any warning banner should be to make the following point: If you attempt to circumvent the security measures employed by this system, succeed in doing so, and/or abuse this system in any way, legal action will be taken against you. Not to belabor the point, but here’s what the DOJ has to say about warning banners:

Network banners are electronic messages that provide notice of legal rights to users of computer networks. From a legal standpoint, banners have four primary functions. First, banners may be used to generate consent to real-time monitoring under Title III. Second, banners may be used to generate consent to the retrieval of stored files and records pursuant to ECPA. Third, in the case of government networks, banners may eliminate any Fourth Amendment “reasonable expectation of privacy” that government employees or other users might otherwise retain in their use of the government’s network under O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709 (1987). Fourth, in the case of a non-government network, banners may establish a system administrator’s “common authority” to consent to a law enforcement search pursuant to United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974).

If my name were Glenn Beck, I’d be throwing a tantrum upon reading eliminate any Fourth Amendment “reasonable expectation of privacy” … and I wouldn’t read the rest before running to the camera with a story about how the Communist-terrorist Obama administration wants to eliminate our Fourth Amendment rights (never mind the fact that the referenced DOJ website was in existence well before Obama took office)… but I digress.

Warning banners, such as the one Beck is holding up as an example of “scary shit that the Obama administration is doing” shouldn’t frighten anyone except for those who plan on doing exactly what the warning message tells them not to do. Warning banners are passive security measures; they need to be broad in order to apply to any/all possible cases of abuse. They don’t actually make the computer/network/website/etc. more secure (with the exception of causing would-be “crackers” to think twice before trying anything). Their real power comes from the fact that they can be used in court to show that the defendant had been warned in advance and knew full and well they were doing something that they shouldn’t have been doing.

In regard to this particular warning banner, I went to the cars.gov website to see what I could find out about it… it turns out, that the only way you’ll ever see the message that Beck is ranting about is if you are a car dealer participating in the CARS program. Given the potential for fraud on behalf of unscrupulous car dealers, I’d say that the strong wording of the warning banner/privacy message (whichever you choose to call it) is entirely appropriate. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens looking for information about the CARS program only consent to have their IP address tracked (which is something that all webservers do by default anyway).

This is just another example of fearmongering on behalf of a fanatic who cannot reconcile his world-view with reality.

### Update! Here’s some more information about this from Daily Kos, enjoy.

So last night I get this e-mail:

> > SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES
> >
> > It does not matter if you personally like or dislike Obama. You
> > need to sign this petition and flood his e-mail box with e-mails
> > that tell him that, even if the House passes this bill, he needs to
> > veto it. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone.
> > If the government gives benefits to 'illegal' aliens who have never
> > contributed, where does that leave those of us who have paid into
> > Social Security all our working lives?
> >
> > As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow 'illegal'
> > aliens access to Social Security benefits.
> > Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires
> > citizenship for eligibility to that social service.
> > Instructions are below. If you don't forward the petition and just
> > stop it, we will lose all these names.
> >
> > If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone
> > you know.
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> > To add your name, click on 'forward'. Address it to all of your
> > email correspondents, add your name to the list and end it on.
> >
> > When the petition hits 1,000, send it to comment@whitehouse.gov
> >
> > PETITION for President Obama:
> >
> > Dear Mr. President:
> > We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on
> > recently which would allow illegal aliens to access ur Social
> > Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives
> > require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the
> > United States .
> >
> > We further demand that there not be any amnesty give n to illegal
> > aliens, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal
> > immigrants

E-mail petitions always crack me the fuck up. Who the hell do they think they are petitioning to hm? Who gets the petition once all 1,000 “signatures” have been collected? I understand that to a lot of people, the internet is some big magical thing and these questions need not be asked, but to those of us who know how the damn thing works, how can this not be annoying as all hell? Maybe they’re smarter than I give them credit; maybe they are depending on the NSA to track this and forward it to the president as soon as the required amount of signatures have been collected… but I digress.

Apparently (and, as always) nobody checks their facts. A quick search on snopes.com gives us all the information that we need to know about this. Another thing that always fascinates me about these is their ability to change over time. For example, the original e-mail mentioned President Bush, rather than President Obama (which is funny, seeing as how I never got that one… I wonder why). I wrote a response, but not before harvesting ALL of the e-mail addresses from the message body, to, and cc fields (with the help of sed and grep of course) so I could send my [intentionally provocative] response to every last one of ‘em. I know that I’m fighting an uphill battle, but at least I’m fighting

My response:

So, does everyone believe everything that hits their inbox nowadays? 

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp

DISCLAIMER: I'm about to say some offensive s**t so if you are easily
offended, stop reading.

###

I mean it. If you read any further, don't reply to me all hurt expecting
an apology; your words will fall on deaf ears.

###

Last chance.

###

Ok, I get it... hating the president is cool now that we have a black
guy in office, fine, but seriously people... where the f**k was all this
outrage when Bush was raping our constitution, involving us in illegal,
unnecessary wars based on lies (Iraq), draining the economy whilst
giving enormous kickbacks to his friends (the very people who put his
dumb a$$ in office to being with), and spying on each and every one of
us under the guise of "national security", huh? where? Nowhere. Don't
try to act like you actually care now because it's painfully clear that
you're being disingenuous.  

If you forwarded this to your friends, family, whatever, without first
checking your facts then you're an idiot. If you SIGNED YOUR NAME to it
without ever even questioning it's authenticity, then you're a bigger
idiot. One might argue that it's people like you who are to blame for
our current situation---Yes, you. You who bent over and took it straight
up the cornhole because "9/11 changed everything" ... you who let your
government run wild directly afterwards while you sat by in silent
agreement (just as long as we were killing Muslims) ... and you, who
probably still do not have a single f**king clue about the damage to our
country that the past ~8 years has wrought. Every last one of you should
be terribly ashamed of yourselves.

Terrorists aren't destroying this country; blind obedience, complacency,
anti-intellectualism, and laziness are. Do you really think that... even
if the bill mentioned in this e-mail was real, that signing your name to
an e-mail and forwarding it to other people actually constitutes some
sort of political action? Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave.

I know that the majority will probably just delete this reply… sadly, they’re most likely the ones who really need to be reading it. Also, there were actually about ten lines above and below each ‘###’ but wordpress ate those. I know that this won’t make a difference though; hell, just a few minutes ago I got a reply (to my reply) stating: “i dont know. i just forward them. i did hear something about that recently on the news.” … two things, (1) No the hell you didn’t. (2) Thanks for proving my point.

Just another “conservative” displaying their utter disregard for fact:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/First-Case-of-Swine-Flu-in-by-E-Nelson-090429-628.html

This begs the question; even if the swine flu outbreak in the 1970’s did occur during Carter’s administration, so what? What exactly are you getting at Rep. Bachmann?

Are y’all ready for an early-morning cup of ignorance? A little background info first; there’s an e-mail making it’s rounds on the ‘net that contains the following text:

I believe I’ve located the source but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet—it also could be that the e-mail was the source of the article; who knows. Anyway, aside from the fact that this frantic plea is an obvious piece of fearmongering, I entertained it’s claims long enough to disprove them.

I’m not sure if this e-mail was a hoax or propaganda, either one is equally likely. What we have here is someone mixing truth with fiction—the usual conspiracy bullshit; S. 277 is real, but the claims made in this e-mail are patently absurd. Read the bill. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this bill is to provide incentives for people to volunteer in their communities—that’s a generalization, but the prospect of “involuntary volunteer” camps initiated though this bill, is < 0. Which leads me to the most glaring flaw in this e-mail: if the author were genuinely trying to prove his/her case, then why not link to the actual text of the bill (rather than fox “news” or other questionable sources?) I think we all know why. But it does contain a broken link to a PDF file that supposedly supports it’s claims; there’s just one problem though, it doesn’t. Neither does the linked fox “news” article; and the Canada Free Press article? All commentary, no backup.

I wonder how many people that received this e-mail noticed that the following url: http://help.senategov/Maj_press/2009_03_18.pdf is missing a “.” between the senate and gov portion of the domain name? The website that I cited as the possible source of the text also contains this link and the text portion is missing the dot as well, but the href portion of the link points here:

mailbox:///C%7C/Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner.backup/Application%20Data/Mozilla/Profiles/default/ea23c0xc.slt/Mail/west.pop.cox.net/Inbox?number=1608772594

In case you’re interested, here’s a working link to the PDF file that the e-mail references:

http://help.senate.gov/Maj_press/2009_03_18.pdf.

My opinion is that this is just another attempt to associate President Obama’s image with Soviet-style Communism. This campaign has been going on for a while now; every time you hear a Conservative talk about Obama, it’s one of the first things they mention; “Obama’s a commie!!1!1! blah blah blah”, which is really quite sad because in most (read: all) cases, the only thing they “know” about Communism/Socialism/Marxism is that it is “evil”. I wrote a post a while ago about how the majority of Americans don’t know jack about Marxism, Communism or Socialism—the only thing they know is that Soviet Russia was “Communist” and that’s all they need to know about the subject. They aren’t open to any debate about the merits of Marxism or Marx’s contribution to philosophy or society; instead, they are content with blaming acts committed by people who chose to twist and stretch his philosophy to fit their own personal wants on Marx himself. Don’t misconstrue that as an endorsement of Marxism or Socialism… it’s not.

This post has nothing to do with defending Obama or his image—that’s his job, but when I see ignorant shit like this, I feel that it is my civic duty to set the record straight. But I must admit, trying to keep up with the tide of bullshit that I see on a regular basis really tests my limits… that’s why this post isn’t a lot longer.