Ones and Zeros

This is the first part of a series of posts describing what writing software is like from the view inside my own head. To make this more available, this is generally written for a non-technical audience but does include some occasional technical terms. However I’d also be interested in responses from other software people too. What’s it like in your head?

Software, like anything in a computer, is ultimately a long series of ones and zeros in computer memory (or on the hard disk). Just a very, very large binary number. When I put it that way, it doesn’t seem so hard. But when that “binary number” is well over 2 million digits long, well, it becomes another story.

That’s way too large to deal with by hand. So, there’s tools like computer languages which are just software to translate those computer languages into the ones and zeros, and software to help debug those applications. Our brains cannot deal with that level of detail, so, techniques and approaches like modularization and structuring computer code become necessary. We build up ways of abstracting detail into higher-level constructs. Like the phrase “make dinner” actually means a wide range of decisions and steps in the kitchen. Only in software, those steps and decisions are encoded in binary numbers that the computer recognizes as instructions.

Of course, in a computer, everything is a string of binary digits. Your files, your software, video, your MP3s, and your word processing documents are just ones and zeros. The interesting thing, the zen-like thing, is that all those files are either information, software, or random garbage. It just depends how you, through the software you’re using, interpret those bits. It’s all a matter of perspective. Ultimately there’s just a collection of bits in a file, or pixels on the screen - more bits displayed for your eyes. The computer knows data, we decide what’s information.

It can be a wonderfully creative and magical process to make something out of nothing. Making software is creativity exercised within a framework of rigid rules. Computers are painfully exacting. Creation is making something out of literally nothing. In software we make a consensual illusion of reality out of figments of the programmer’s imagination.

I was at Netroots Nation today when Harold Ford, the DLC Chair, basically told us that the FISA vote wasn’t a big deal and that future elections would hold those responsible to account.  He was partly right, elections are one way to hold people to account, but not the only way.  Lawsuits work too.

His argument was that the companies who violated the law should not be held responsible.  If they were told by a government official that it was ok to break the law and violate the Constitution, then there should be no problem.

Ford argued that the government officials should be held responsible instead.  Well, he’s half right.  Both should be held accountable.

Sometimes, we get lost in rhetoric.  Certainly Mr Ford was lost today.  (He routinely avoided answering questions by laying down a smokescreen of tangled clauses like an octopus squirts ink to get away from a larger predator.)

The way to not get lost is to refer to the original source.  So, here for the FISA apologists, is the full text of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and affects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but on probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In case of future debates, the full text of the Constitution is available online, and you can even get a nice little booklet from the ACLU as well.

A couple months ago I flew my small Cessna 172 to Austin. It was a two-day trip each way. I few between 2000 ft and 9500 ft in altitude, and did two or three legs in a day. Each leg required a landing and a fueling. My speed was about 100 kts.

Yesterday, my wife and I flew to Austin TX on a commercial airline. We got here in less than one full day, with two legs. We flew at 24,000 - 36,000 feet altitude, and went about four times faster than my plane can go.

Basically, the difference can be summed up by saying that commercial travel is faster, and easier in that it is less limited by weather and is larger and more capable but is more limiting in choices of destination and timing. Flying myself is much less limited in my choices of route and time. But, is more subject to weather and speed issues.

Once you factor in the drive to the commercial airport, the two-hour security time allotment, time to check your bags at one end and get them at the other then my little slow plane can be effectively faster over some distances! And when I fly, I don’t have to go through security nonsense and I can carry a pocketknife and water bottle too.

If I have to make a fuel stop that blows my time margin. Therefore any distance under 300-400 miles can be flown faster end-to-end in my plane than commercially. Add that to the flexibility and it’s a winner many times. (That distance would vary with the type of plane.)

But, longer flights or flights with weather or time constraints are best commercially.

I’ve been following the FISA bill progress in the House and Senate. And I’ve been emailing my representatives. (It’s the only way to vote between elections after all!) A day or so before the Senate passed their version of the bill I emailed Senator Barack Obama. He’s said before he wouldn’t vote for it, but recently changed his tune due to some small changes in the bill.

I emailed this:

“Do not expect any more contributions from me or my wife. All our contributions will go to EFF and ACLU. Do not expect us to volunteer as we were planning. You blew it with your vote on FISA. You blew it for you and your country.

How can you - a constitutional scholar - vote for this bill? How can you - an intelligent and perceptive person who thinks carefully about things - vote with with the authoritarians in the GOP?

What happened to your legal training and your obvious intelligence here? What happened to the fourth amendment? What happened to your integrity?

I’ve never met you, I’m unlikely to meet you. All I know is what I see of your words and your actions. I thought your words and actions fit together. I now see you talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. In spite of your fine words you’re like all the other politicians after all.

I’ve voted in every election I’m eligible to vote for in the past. But I’m not sure I see the point in voting anymore. If you - the best and brightest the Dems can find - can support Bush’s FISA bill then what hope have we? What hope has the country?”

My first surprise is that I got a reply. (Senator Jim Webb has never sent me a reply despite numerous emails, not even an automatic “thanks for sending an email” repsonse.)

My second surprise was that the reply was actually related to what I wrote. (Rep. Frank Wolf always sends a reply to my emails. However, he sends it in paper mail, weeks later, and the reply never has anything to do with what I wrote. In short, a waste of effort on his staff’s part.)

The response is below, unedited. My comments are interspersed in italics:

“Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting us and sharing your strong feelings about this important issue. Please find a statement from Senator Obama below.

We appreciate hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Obama for America,

—
Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

It has been demonstrated that the “privacy and civil liberties” of Americans are not being honored. The original post-Nixon FISA bill did so with a remarkable degree of latitude for the government’s necessity of surveillance of potential enemies. Why not simply re-approve what worked?

That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

He opposed it initially, but accepted it as a necessary condition in this case. I disagree with that tradeoff as it permits others in the future to figure they’ll be covered retroactively too.

After months of negotiation, the House passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act. Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.

This new FISA bill restores FISA in name only. The FISA court doesn’t have to be consulted for weeks after a wire tap. And, if the court disagrees that the tap was necessary, there’s no penalty or disallowing of the information gathered. And the administration can continue with the tap as well.

So, civil liberties are NOT protected, and no effective judicial oversight is established. This is nothing more than window dressing.

It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I voted in the Senate three times to remove this provision so that we could seek full accountability for past offenses. Unfortunately, these attempts were unsuccessful. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

One of the key problems in our political system is that is built on compromise. This works in many if not most cases. But, sometimes either reality or hard-line ethical considerations mean that compromise is not correct. There’s either a right or wrong solution. Global warming is one reality-based concern. Constitutional and civil liberty concerns like this one are another case.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people.

The most legitimate threat we face now is from our own government. It has more power to do harm that Al Queda does through the misuse and misapplication of its power. Al Queda will be gone in a generation or two. The precedences we put in place now will affect our grandchildren’s grandchildren as the Alien and Sedition and Posse Comitatus still have a concrete legal effect today.

Paid for by Obama for America”

Sen. Obama had to make a choice here. In the context of his ongoing shift to the middle, he made this choice in the wrong direction I believe. His oratory skills and clear intelligence driving them could have been a strong force for good here. I’m sorry he didn’t make that choice.