This extract of a poem by Stephen Fry, in his new book The Ode Less Travelled, seems especially fitting for information security practitioners:
How rare it is when things go right
When days go by without a slip
And don’t go wrong, as well they might.The smallest triumphs cause delight –
The kitchen’s clean, the taps don’t drip,
How rare it is when things go right.Your ice cream freezes overnight,
Your jellies set, your pancakes flip
And don’t go wrong, as well they might …
Someone mentioned new software licensing regulations that are tied to the “Secure America’s Homes and Businesses Act of 2005 (HR 3632)”. So I went online to read the text of the act and discovered that homeowners are elligible for $5,000, and businesses for $50,000, when they install surveillance systems.
Check out the exact text on THOMAS:
(a) Allowance of Deduction- In the case of a taxpayer who elects the application of this section, there shall be allowed as a deduction for the taxable year an amount equal to the cost of any expenses relating to the purchase and professional installation of a qualifying electronic premise security system in a residential or commercial premise owned or occupied by the taxpayer during such taxable year.
`(b) Maximum Deduction- The deduction allowed by subsection (a) for the taxable year shall not exceed–
`(1) in the case of a qualifying electronic premise security system installed in a residential premise, $5,000, and
`(2) in the case of a qualifying electronic premise security system installed in a commercial premise, $50,000.
`(c) Definitions- For purposes of this section–
`(1) QUALIFYING ELECTRONIC PREMISE SECURITY SYSTEM- The term `qualifying electronic premise security system’ means any of the following:
`(A) Electronic fire or life safety devices, intrusion detection alarms, and any other burglar alarms or devices.
`(B) Video surveillance or other security cameras and equipment.
`(C) Access controls, including biometric controls, automated fingerprint identification systems, and other electronic access control devices.
`(D) Components, wiring, system displays, terminals, auxiliary power supplies, and other equipment necessary or incidental to the installation and operation of any item described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C).
Nice that they specifically call out the fingerprint identification systems. Any old fire or life safety device will do, but you’d better consider fingerprints if you’re thinking about access controls. Come to think of it, it is about time I installed that solar-cell array and battery backup sytem with a diesel generator for my house. After all, what good is any kind of physical security system if it can be switched off or if the main power goes out? $5,000 worth of security per home sounds about right, no?
And what do you think constitutes a legal residential premise?
`residential premise’ means any house, condominium, cooperative unit, boat, or trailer used as a dwelling by the taxpayer
Sorry, you can’t live out of your urban assault vehicle and still get the tax break for security. And that takes me back to my earlier point on a strange loophole in the laws that I see people trying to worm their way into. If someone works/lives in a large vehicle on private property it appears that laws covering a residence do not apply, nor do the rules set forth by the department of transportation.
Now, where is that new law about software licenses?
When I went to the Family Museum I half expected to see a history of the family, or perhaps even some discussion of what a family means to different groups of people. Instead I found rooms full of toys and other technology.
The museum seems to be something akin to a high-tech exhibit for manufacturers to represent their products to future generations and inspire consumerism, or competition — CES for toddlers. The kevlar showcase is one good example. Perhaps I should have taken their motto more to heart than their name: “Play and learn together”.
Back to the family, is it defined as a group that plays and learns together? Surely not. Page 15 of the museum guide sets this issue to rest:
$85 entitles two adults and their children under age 18 who reside in the same household to all basic member benefits.
Aha! I’m amused by the need to specify “reside in same household”. For how long? Does a weekend count as residing? A week? Month? I admire the fact that they do not specifiy “man and woman” although I also noted that two adults does not mean one parent and a baby-sitter.
Your babysitter may be added to your membership for a fee of $10
Pets are $2 per leg. Just kidding.
Brothers and sisters of the parents? Not allowed as family.
Grandparents? Considered family, but they need to get their own special pass.
$50 entitles two adults residing in the same household and all grandchildren under the age of 18 to all basic member benefits.
Ok, so enough of the identity information. How does one go about verifying the difference between family and a grandparent? Let’s say my father comes to visit and I give him my family membership card to take my daughter to the museum. Are they going to toss them out for not being a family, or charge my father a $50 membership fee or a $10 babysitter membership fee? How will they know my father is not me, especially if we have the same name? And let’s say that my brother wants to take my son to the museum, so he borrows my father’s membership card. Are they going to toss them out for not being a family, or charge him a $10 babysitter membership fee? What happens if you change babysitters frequently? Is it $10 per, or can you get a generic babysitter pass? Here’s a good one, try applying for a card with just a first initial and last name.
The truth is that the person checking the cards is empowered to make an executive decision and if they decide to stamp your hand with a little blue-ink symbol, you’ve been recognized as some relation to a family, regardless of what the revenue guidelines state.
Alas, once I had left an arm and a leg with the guards, I wandered around trying to look like someone with a family. Eventually I found some poetry, tucked away among the toys and technology, which made me pause to think:
Very subtle. Money blowing in the wind. Consumers bowing down. I get it…
Overall, the museum seems like a good idea that is popular among children and their parents. I mean who doesn’t like grabbing and feeling bits of technology that tens of thousands of other children and parents have been grabbing and feeling? And howabout that kevlar? And the ethanol/biodiesel placard was interesting, although it was more geared towards touting the benefits of growing corn than any reference to the security implications of domestic energy and efficiency (alas, they also seemed to be lacking any insulation in the building and the lamps were all high-burn halogens). Schools apparently are not the best place for families to play and learn together, and so it makes sense that private enterprise would spring up to fill in the gaps. They even have classes and learning groups and they share space with the public library. But is it really necessary to break down the family into billable units?
At least he’s not harbored in a harbor, if you know what I mean.
I was just reading about runaway inflation in Zimbabwe, where bread costs about 30% more than last week — $66,000 Zimbabwean per loaf (that’s 66 US cents, if you can believe it). I was trying to get a better sense of the situation when I happened to read an op-ed piece in The Herald:
The case of Luis Posada Carriles has become an international embarrassment for the Bush administration. Ever since Posada illegally entered the US using a false passport and showed up in Miami in March 2005 expecting to be granted political asylum for his early career as a CIA anti-Castro agent, his presence in the United States has created a major quandary for the White House.
I do not remember hearing much about the Carriles case, you? And yet the Herald makes it seem like Bush himself is worried.
Here’s a little more background from the Washington Post:
Trained by the CIA in the use of explosives as part of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, Posada has been linked through the years with the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 people; bombings in Cuban tourist hotels that killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 other people; and a 2000 plot to assassinate Castro in Panama.
Does that make him a terrorist? To be frank, and according to the CIA definition, yes.
Just to confuse things a little there appears to be plenty of documentation linking Carriles to the CIA, so I would expect some might try and suggest he is a patriot for blowing up civilian aircraft…although President Bush himself declared “Any nation that harbors terrorists are as responsible as the terrorists themselves.”
José Pertierra, a lawyer representing the government of Venezuela in the extradition case of Carriles, had this perspective on the situation:
There are enough laws in the United States to keep this terrorist in jail. What is lacking is the political will to do so. From the beginning of this drama, George W. Bush has wanted to shelter, rather than prosecute, the terrorist. Somewhere in a drawer in the Department of State are the pleadings filed by Venezuela, asking for his preventive detention as well as his extradition. The Bush Administration thus far ignores them and instead mocks U.S. law, as well as three separate extradition treaties signed, ratified and conveniently used by the government of the United States in other cases in its war on terror.
Hmmm. It is not as though relations between Chavez and Bush are warm right now, and an ex-CIA operative must have some importance/relevance to Bush Senior (not to mention Cheney and Rumsfeld), but what is Bush Junior’s position on this guy? With articles like this one from the Foreign Policy in Focus, it will be interesting to see whether the mainstream press picks up on the debate:
Posada has confided to journalists and others that for four decades he had worked on and off with the CIA to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. In 1976, Posada teamed up with Orlando Bosch, another obsessed Castro-hater, and hired two Venezuelan killers to detonate a bomb on board a commercial Cubana flight over Barbados. Seventy-three passengers and crew members died. This was a blatant terrorist act. The hired weasels ratted on Posada to the police, landing him in a Venezuelan prison.
After a decade of inconclusive judicial proceedings, Posada’s Miami buddies bribed the prison officials and Posada “escaped” to Central America, where he worked for Lt. Col. Oliver North in supplying the Contras in their CIA-backed attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
In 1990 in Guatemala, an unknown gunman shot Posada in the face. He recovered, but didn’t regain full use of his voice. Even that didn’t stop him. In 1997, he recruited a Salvadoran to bomb hotels in Cuba. One bomb killed an Italian tourist. Cuban cops grabbed the Salvadoran, who named Posada as his employer.
Posada even boasted about his violence against Cuban tourism to two New York Times reporters in July 1998. How did he feel about killing the innocent civilian, they asked? “I sleep like a baby,” he replied.
*Sigh* I think I was hoping to live life without ever hearing the name “Oliver North” again, especially in relation to a current US President’s foreign policy in Latin America. I see an historic theme emerging here, however, and a recent briefing by Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy indicates that the US not only allowed Carriles into the country, but enabled him to do so:
Posada Carriles is in the United States thanks to the intervention of Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressmen Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, all of whom petitioned the then-president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, to pardon him and three other Cuban exile terrorists—which she did, as one of her last acts before leaving office.
So the US government supposedly helped get Carriles out of jail in Panama, and then “discovered” him trying to enter the US, and now refuses to extradite him to Venezuela? January 24th, 2006 was the deadline for his release, but I do not see any news at all in February on the subject. I assume he is still in US custody, but who is reporting on this issue now and what is the Bush Administration position? Will Carriles be tried for his crimes, let alone extradited?