Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Some Optimism, of a Sort

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I don’t know if he is a reliable narrator, but Michael Moore tells a good yarn in The Day I Was To be Tarred and Feathered.

I mention this because it sort of parallels something I’ve been thinking recently: the wheels are really starting to come off the Republican insurgency. It’s only starting, and there’s some considerable momentum left before it collapses. And meanwhile a lot of people are going to be hurt. Indeed there will be a great deal of misery in the next two years due to what the national party does in Congress and to what state parties do here in Florida and in other GOP-dominated states like Wisconsin. But they’ve overplayed their hand. People are going to hate the results, and I think the pendulum will swing the other way so long as progressives are able to clearly explain who is responsible (and so long as most Democrats don’t decide to play along).

Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Whoever said it, I think it’s true.

Posted in Politics: US | 1 Comment

Shopping Horrors Await

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Grant McCracken argues in The Coming Point-of-Sale Revolution that the future of in-store marketing is lots of perky people smiling at me. They might even punch me.

It is worth a read. But it also creeps me out as an idea. Just the thought of it — or is it the thought of me thinking about how I think about it? — makes me feel like (or think I’m thinking like) Lou Grant (starting at about 2:26 in the clip below).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNyj4FV56JY

Posted in Shopping | 1 Comment

Good Question

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Brigid Crawford asks, What Does Marital Status Have to Do with Fitness to Practice Law?.

Posted in Law: Practice | Comments Off on Good Question

IPv6 Considered Dangerous (Updated)

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

The blog was down much of the day while I was busy in Baltimore and Washington (how does it know to die whenever, and almost only whenever, I’m out of town?). Here, according to support, is the cause:

The apache service did not like the initial IPv6 assigned to the domain. I changed out the IP and reset the apache service for the domain and I can now view the domain.

I don’t actually understand how this is possible, but if this is the straight dope, it suggests IPv6 adoption is going to be much rockier than I ever imagined.

Update: I asked for further and better particulars, and got this:

The tech who helped you is not in the office. Therefor I cannot give you an definitive answer. However, I had a similar issue on another machine. It appeared to be a kernel bug. The IP was visible to the VPS guest, but could not use. It appache cannot listen on an IP, it will not start. The best course of action was to simply renumber the IP. Hopefully this gives you more insight. If you have any additional questions, please let us know.

Posted in Discourse.net, Internet | 1 Comment

None Dare Call it Perjury

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I admit crim pro is not my strong suit, but why isn’t the conduct described in Islamic Shura Council v. FBI (C.D. Cal. Apr. 27) simple perjury by a government official?

The Government’s in camera submission revealed that the Government initially misled the Court in two material respects. First, the Government’s representations regarding its use of “outside the scope” were inaccurate. The Government initially represented to the Court that the Government provided all information that “include[d] any reference to plaintiffs in any document in any file,” and any information withheld as “outside the scope” of Plaintiffs’ request was “non-responsive.” (Opp’n to Pl.’s Mot. Summ. J. at 3, 11.) Mr. Hardy’s second declaration stated that, in truth, documents “that would otherwise be considered to be responsive to plaintiffs’ request” were excluded from production or redacted as “outside the scope.” (Second Hardy Decl. ¶ 5.) Second, the Government’s representations regarding the number of responsive documents were false. The Government previously represented that it had identified only a limited number of documents responsive to Plaintiffs’ FOIA request. (First Hardy Decl. ¶¶ 19, 31–43, 45–46.) Mr. Hardy’s second declaration acknowledged that the Government had identified a large number of additional responsive documents, but that the Government did not disclose the existence of these other documents. (Second Hardy Decl. ¶ 13.)

The first declaration was, if I am reading it right, under oath. And there were lawyers involved in many stages of this too.

(Case spotted via Volokh. Neither he nor the judge call it perjury.)

Posted in Law: Criminal Law | 2 Comments

Timing

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I remember flying up to DC shortly after they turned the air traffic control system back on post-9/11. People here in Miami were weird about it — they treated it as a very dangerous thing to do. For some reason I didn’t feel threatened at all. That said, the experience at the airport, in which a great effort was made to search everything, and in the air, in which for the first time we told to stay in our seats for the last 30 minutes of the approach to DC, was decidedly off-putting. The atmosphere on the plane was oddly strained.

Now, once again I’m flying early Tuesday to the DC area (although actually landing at BWI and spending the day in Baltimore), right when the airport security staff are likely to be at their jumpiest. Who can blame them?

Still, I cannot help but think that the giant security apparatus, and the huge dead-weight costs of people going to the airport early and wasting time, is one of the clearest signs that that we are not, despite recent events, succeeding in the ‘war on terror’ because we are letting our choices and expenditures be defined by those who do not wish us well. Maybe we’d be better off trusting those metal cabin doors to protect us from hijacks, and accepting that even so there can be no perfect safety in a complicated world.

I’d take the risk, but I’m not the one who would have to explain it if something went wrong, and those who do have gigantic institutional incentives to be, and even more to be seen to be, risk-averse. Thus, the FBI openly is being transformed into a domestic intelligence agency, one charged with preventing rather then solving crimes. In a perfect world, of course, prevention is better than cure, and punishment is not even cure. But there is no way an FBI or any other public agency can seriously undertake this mission without, and there is no other word for it, spying on a lot of people. I think history has a few things to teach us about how that works out for societies as a rule, and I wonder how much we are heeding those lessons.

On Wednesday, I’ll be in DC visiting family and friends. On Thursday and Friday I’m going to the GIGANet Doubleheader. My part of the talking will be about IP numbers on Thursday, and about ICANN on Friday. There’s a written paper for the Friday talk.

Posted in 9/11 & Aftermath, National Security, Talks & Conferences | 1 Comment