T/Y%

The EIU shares that Greece’s tax take is 47% of GDP, so it’s not a problem! WTF! GDP has shrunk by 25% since 2008 and avoidance leads to unfairness and the withdrawal of consent. The Greek Tax burden should not be measured as a proportion of GDP!

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Forever

A trip over to Clerkenwell to visit the ORG; a fantastic meeting on copyright reform and an action plan too. We developed ideas as to why “exceptions” and thus fair use is not enough and compared and contrasted public policy on the transition from patented drugs to generic prescription with the ‘forever’ duration of copyrighted culture.

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Authoritay

Back to Babylon 5. Nearly all science fiction explores politics and society and now I have started season 3, I have just viewed the episode “Voices of Authority” where apart from having a goodie called “William Hague” which is a bit disturbing, there are several speeches by the beautiful but proto-fascist Julie Musante, which still have resonance today, as the did in the 80’s in the UK, contrasting the need for personal security and the state’s safety, against personal liberty and the right to organise and protest. Not sure I really need it but I am probably the only person still watching it. …

More reasons to be doubtfull

More reasons to be doubtfull

I had reason to read the Register’s front page this morning and came across these three IT Security and e-voting gems. Firstly the New Zealand Government uses NSA surveillance tools to spy on the a number of APAC governments to help in their campaign to win one of the World Trade Organisation’s elected positions. Secondly the Australian ivote’s practice system has been compromised in such a way that cast votes can be infected. This project was lead by Vannesa Teague and Alex Halderman; Teague has previously spoken of the inherent weakness of [ei]-voting., not a fan it would seem. And thirdly, CISCO’s CTO gives up on security, or at leas that’s what the Register reports as a headline; the comments by Hartman, CISCO’s CTO are more nuanced but he definitely proposes that devices cannot be secure, and need to be monitored against change and current and future threats, and how do you do that in the home. …