Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Speaking of Censorship . . .

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Well, speaking of censorship, I just have to comment on the ongoing Wikileaks bruhaha. In case you haven’t been following, Wikileaks—a well known media organization that seeks to obtain and disseminate secret information from governments, companies, etc.—obtained and published a large number of secret cables from the U.S. Department of State. This followed hot on the heels of other releases related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obviously this is a huge embarrassment for the U.S. government, and now, since releasing the files, Wikileaks has been on the receiving end of a concerted effort to shut the site down. It has been attacked with ‘denial of service’ attacks (possibly initiated by our government), it has been exiled from various hosting providers and DNS services (particularly those based in the U.S.), and many of our Congressmen are clamoring to ‘throw the book’ at Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Some are even calling for him to be charged with treason—a charge that could possibly result in the death penalty.

I don’t much like Assange, and I don’t have any particular affinity for Wikileaks as an organization either. I’m all for transparency in government but, having said that, there is a legitimate interest in keeping some things secret for national security reasons. I think that media outlets should use some discretion. But we must put blame where blame is due: Wikileaks is a media outlet, and the United States has a long and storied tradition of free press. Media outlets are protected under U.S. law from prosecution for publishing leaked information. In other words, Wikileaks may have done something immoral, but it has not done anything illegal. Even if it had, it is hosted in Switzerland and is therefore not subject to U.S. law anyway!

Crimes were committed here. The people who stole secret information and gave it to Wikileaks have mishandled classified information; that is a crime, and the culprits should be charged and prosecuted. There might even be an argument for charging the leakers with treason, although I think that’s probably overkill. But Wikileaks, like other outlets that published information from these leaks (like, say, the New York Times), is immune from prosecution under our well-established First Amendment media protections.

One final point: Internet providers like Amazon.com that have exiled Wikileaks from their servers have every right to do so, but the government has no right to coerce them to—which I am sure is what’s really going on behind the scenes. Bear in mind that over the last several months our government has engaged in unprecedented domain name seizures and web site shutdowns (under the flimsy guise of copyright enforcement). Amazon.com and others know that the government can pull the plug on them in a heart-beat without any kind of due process these days (‘change’ indeed). It is therefore unlikely that these providers will stand firm if/when a government agency, ahem, encourages them to kick something like Wikileaks off their server.

The views expressed in this entry are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, Web.com.

Art, Offense, and Censorship

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It is shaping up to be a strange week. Yesterday, I praised President Barack Obama (D) for his proposal to freeze pay for federal workers. Today, I am going to criticize a group of conservative Catholics.

A video called ‘A Fire in My Belly’ by David Wojnarowicz was on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery as part of an installation featuring 105 works of American art and culture from over the last century. This video, about four minutes long, includes a sequence of ants crawling on a crucifix and other seemingly anti-religious images—potentially offensive, yes, but nothing outside of the modern-art mainstream. Watch it for yourself.

When William Donahue of the Catholic League found out about Wojnarowicz’s piece being on display at the National Portrait Gallery, he and the organization issued a breathless press release in protest. In response to the following criticism, the Smithsonian Institution removed the piece from its exhibit and now some members of Congress are calling for an investigation and/or removing federal support for the Smithsonian.

Speaking as a conservative Catholic myself, I can say that this is absolute absurdity. Wojnarowicz’s work was not created with federal funding, and it appeared in a museum that also displays plenty of religious art (including Catholic art). The ‘ants on a crucifix’ scene formed less than 5 percent of Wojnarowicz’s video, and the video made up less than 1 percent of the exhibit. I don’t have the numbers to back it up, but I’m reasonably certain that Catholic art makes up a higher percentage of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection than this tiny bit of supposed anti-Catholicism.

Yeah, sure, the ants on the crucifix were probably unnecessary, but I didn’t exactly feel attacked by it. The video didn’t really say . . . anything. It’s your standard, mediocre crap masquerading as high art. I found it more pretentious and meaningless than offensive.

Read more . . .

Federal Worker Pay-Freeze

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Lest I be accused of an anti-Obama bias . . . I applaud President Barack Obama’s (D) proposal to freeze federal workers’ salaries for the next two years.

Most private-sector workers in the United States have gone without pay raises for the last two years without any serious reduction in their tax burden, so it stands to reason that federal workers should also have to survive without raises. I don’t say this because I hate federal workers—heck, my sister and many of my closest friends are employed by the U.S. federal government—I simply don’t think federal workers should get raises when almost everybody else in the country has to do without. I don’t think Obama’s proposal goes far enough, however, to resolve the serious problems with the federal workforce that have gone unresolved through many Republican and Democratic presidential administrations.

I spent eight years of my life as a federal contractor (three years part-time and five full-time) with the Department of Treasury and civilian offices in the Department of Defense. I saw both extremes of the federal workforce. In my anecdotal experience, about 30 percent of federal workers are awesome, dedicated people who take their jobs very seriously and work very hard. They understand that they have taken on a public trust, and give their absolute best efforts in service of the taxpayers. The remaining 70 percent, however, ranged from mediocre to the worst ‘do-nothing’ stereotypes with-which federal workers are so often condemned. It was constantly disappointing to me as a contractor how pervasive poor performance was in the government workforce, and how poor performers were constantly auto-promoted into positions of more and more responsibility that they simply did not deserve.

Read more . . .

Announcing Website 22

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I’m very pleased to announce the launch of a major revision to Off on a Tangent, bringing the site to version 22.0. This new version bring a lot of upgrades and improvements, as well as a pretty significant change to the ‘look and feel’ of the site. I’ve also done a lot of back-end work to ‘re-sync’ with the current state of the WordPress blogging and content management system, since I had a lot of old stuff still floating around in the templates. I’m also now using a more ‘standard’ setup for my templates to ease future maintenance.

Here are some of the notable user-facing changes:

  • Overall New Look: While the basic palette is about the same as it’s been for a long time, I decided to go for a bit of a different look this time. You’ll notice that the whole site is a little more ‘gray’ or ‘platinum’ and a little less ‘blue.’ The menu and search bar is now pinned at the top of the screen. The random photo bars at the top and bottom subtly update the photos periodically. There are lots of little refinements and improvements scattered all around.
  • Better Sidebar: The side-bar is much changed, with my most recent Facebook update (in its entirety), a ‘tag cloud,’ and more . . . including a random quote that now refreshes itself every twenty seconds. I’m also now using AddThis to provide sharing functionality, which lets you share quickly and easily with your preferred social media outlets.
  • Mobile Improvements: Mobile isn’t as simple as it was when I started offering a mobile site. Some people want the ‘full web’ experience on their phones and devices (which can now handle it), while others prefer the stripped-down and simplified mobile sites. To accomodate both user types, and a bevy of new ‘somewhere in-between’ devices like the iPad, the site no longer automatically chooses which site you get. You pick which one you want (or flip back-and-forth at-will).
    • If you go to https://www.scottbradford.us/ you get the desktop site.
    • If you go to http://m.scottbradford.us/ you get the stripped-down mobile site.
  • New Easter Egg: The secret, hidden joke page from Websites 20-21 has been retired and replaced with a new one. See if you can find it.

As always with major site updates, there’s a chance that something won’t work right. I’ll be spending some time today and tomorrow cleaning up any bugs I find and polishing up any loose-ends I missed. If you find any problems, please contact me and let me know!

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.