George Rebane
NSA strikes deeper into our lives. The IEEE reported last week that NIST has compromised its random number algorithm to our nation’s electronic spymasters. Specifically –
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has an image problem. Last month, revelations surfaced indicating that the National Security Agency (NSA) may have planted a vulnerability in a widely used NIST-approved encryption algorithm to facilitate its spying activities. And cryptographers are also questioning subtle changes that might weaken a new security algorithm called Secure Hash Algorithm-3, or SHA-3. Encryption experts say NIST’s reputation has been seriously undermined but that the security community would like to continue using it as a standards body if it can show that it has reformed. (more here)
Given the muffled diktats by secret court orders, there is no credible reform that NIST can profess. And Forbes reports that the private secure email company LavaBits has also shut down, rather than compromise its customers, subsequent to the FBI demanding that it open ‘back doors’ to allow the bureau to read emails sent through its servers. (more here)
New Fed chairman nominee Dr Janet Yellen does not perceive America’s systemic unemployment problem. Economist Yellen made her bones under her mentor, nobel economist James Tobin (of Tobin’s Q Ratio fame), whose Keynesian interpretations of monetary policy held sway in the US through much of the Cold War years. Yellen believes that the prime function of the Fed is to manage the business cycle by tuning money supply and interest rates so as to minimize unemployment. (more here) She gives no hint that she recognizes how accelerating technology has changed the economic landscape for the country’s workforce, and seems to be convinced that continuing to apply the demonstrably failed policies of the 1930s is the way to fix and maintain America’s economy.
As an economic Austrian, I shudder to think about the immediate future years as she inherits the debt, deficits, and debilitating policy of perpetual easing (currently at $85B/month). That the latter is now an established and freely accessible spigot will give her great comfort as the rest of us worldwide scramble for alternatives to the dollar.
[update] The problem of evil. I was perusing the AP news site in bed this morning and came upon a piece reporting that ‘Shutdown Driving Debate Over Role of Government’. In it this center-left news service describes the purposive atrocities that our federal government has instituted “to make things as difficult as possible” for Americans during this shutdown. The piece echoes RR’s long-held notions about big government – better late than never.
Today’s news is full of horror stories about the gratuitous and intentional shutdown of services, closing of facilities, and denying access to public venues that have nothing to do with the normal workings of government staff. In fact, staff has been added where possible, and asked to work extra in order to intimidate and deny Americans what they could still enjoy during the shutdown. A sinister case in point is TSA now announcing at airports that you may be arrested for making jokes about their security procedures which today includes regular groping of your genitalia. (more here and here and reaction to shutdowns here)
A highlight of AP’s light bulb going on is their questioning of what the country would be like if most of those 800,000 federal workers were dismissed (recall my interim plan was to furlough them permanently with full pay). Many (most?) Americans are beginning to understand that life could be much better without them, and most certainly no worse than it is with them 'doing their jobs'.
These pages record my (and our readers’ wide ranging) thoughts on the more ideal and/or proper role of government. But here I want to just touch on the notion of evil that invariably is spawned in all organizations (public, private, religious, …) as they grow. After a certain size the complexity of such institutions gets to be such that the constructive feedback paths are reoriented and replaced by feedbacks that are destructive to the original intent and mission of the institution. Add to that the inevitable dark side of human nature, and you get the large scale atrocities that decorate ‘modern history’. And in the small scale you get the unavoidable product of central planners with examples like Obamacare (read Anthony Watts’ recent experience with California’s insurance exchange).
But what is evil? Dictionary definitions are mostly lame and confusing (example here). Most definitions make evil out to be a notion that is understood only relative to a belief system that contains certain mores, religious beliefs, ideology, and/or legal code. But in the real world most of us understand that evil is simply something that increases human suffering in an intended way or through purposeful neglect. De facto (vs de juris) evil is ecumenical, it exists in and of itself, free of any interpretations from approved belief systems. According to my lights, all big governments naturally exude evil, as do many small ones and as do other bloated institutions wherein proper feedback and feed forward paths have been corrupted and/or severed. Evil seems to spontaneously arise through the mixing of power and ignorance in various measures suitable to the occasion. More to be said about it on a future post.
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