Three Felonies a Day (.com)

One legal expert argues the average person likely commits three felonies a day without realizing it. Here's a page of horror stories for you (I'm surprised "sharing a music album online" isn't on the list--in the U.S., the minimum penalty for sharing 10 songs is $7500, but since it's not a felony I guess it doesn't count). They say a federal grand jury could indict a ham sandwich*, which is just one of several reasons why the U.S. should not have the power to maintain surveillance on everyone in the world. Although some of these cases did not lead to convictions, you do not under any circumstances want federal prosecutors to come after you for any reason.

* choice quote:

Our criminal justice system, as presently practiced, is basically a plea bargain system with actual trials of guilt or innocence a bit of showy froth floating on top.

Oh and for those who are merely planning to visit the U.S., you should read this and pray that whatever government program led to that situation does not expand further.

On the other hand, if you support the U.S. no-fly list (you're too suspicious to be on a plane, but not suspicious enough to charge with any crime?), are you aware of how it affects real people? Consider this case. For every woman who's willing to launch a lawsuit against the U.S. government, I have to wonder how many have simply accepted their fate.

U of C pretends buildings=education

I got an email from U of C recently that said:

"Paving the Path for Tomorrow's Engineers: A major announcement that will transform engineering education at the University of Calgary." .... "Please join us to celebrate this transformative announcement."

What grand plan could they have to finally, belatedly, improve engineering education at the U of C, you ask? Oct. 9 the answer came in my inbox:

"Thank you to everyone who attended our event, “Paving the Path for Tomorrow’s Engineers.”

"Today’s announcement of $142.5 million by the Government of Alberta for the Schulich School of Engineering (SSE) Expansion and Renovation Project is a turning point for SSE and a major milestone for the University of Calgary in its Eyes High goal of becoming a top five research university in Canada. It also transforms engineering education in the province, creates capacity to graduate more highly-skilled engineers to meet industry demand and drives innovation in Alberta and beyond.

"The project will provide more than 18,000 gross square metres of additional space and more than 11,000 gross square metres of renovated space in the engineering complex, enabling SSE to increase its capacity by at least 400 additional undergraduate and graduate students. New and renovated teaching, learning and research spaces will enhance student experience and create exciting research opportunities. Construction will begin immediately and the building will open in 2016, a major milestone to celebrate the university’s 50th anniversary."

That's right. They actually claim that building a few new buildings (thanks Government!) will "transform engineering education".

Yeah, um, I lived through one of those transformations already, when they built the ICT building. It was built between some other buildings and had an enormous construction site, so students had to walk, like, half a kilometer between classes. Then when the building was completed, it was a nicer building than Engineering, sure, but it had not a single drinking fountain, the elevators were slow (albeit cool), and the educational experience was pretty much the same, albeit with more desk space. The university still sucked.

I cynically predicted this when I got the first email. "transform engineering education," huh? "aha," I thought, "so you're building some buildings then?"

Syria: Hmm

I was skeptical about the Afghanistan war, and outright opposed to the Iraq war, but now there's this Syria question. And this time I'm not 100% sure.

Some people are comparing Syria to Iraq, saying it's the same situation again. But it clearly is not.

In Iraq there was a question of whether Saddam had WMDs (and it was known that he didn't have nukes, with only the flimsiest of evidence that he wanted to produce them someday). In this case it's a known fact that Assad has chemical weapons (which is in the WMD category, although it seems like the title Weapons of Mass Murder seems more appropriate, given its lack of effect on infrastructure) and that a chemical weapon attack occurred; the only dispute seems to be whether Assad personally ordered the attack.

In Iraq there was peace (although the country was, for some, a bad place to live). In Syria there is an ongoing civil war that has already killed over 100,000 people and displaced a third of the population. America's invasion crippled the Iraqi government and some critical infrastructure (and opened the floodgates for terrorism); but Syria is already unstable.

So some arguments that would have made sense against the Iraq war don't make sense against a strike against Syria. On the other hand, there are clearly still various arguments we can make against even targeted strikes on Syria (let alone full-scale war):

• Syria has powerful allies, especially Russia but also Iran and China (read about the reasons for this). Without evidence to the contrary, I'd assume military action in Syria could lead to broader hostility with these allies. Who can promise we won't have a World War 3?
• Assad, not unlike Saddam Hussein, may be a douchbag. But as with Iraq, we might not like the alternative. Removing Hussein led to terrorism in vast quantities in Iraq (and even the good guys sometimes behaved badly); the confirmed death toll has exceeded 100,000 people. Similarly, besides Assad there are multiple factions in Syria that are basically enemies, and no reason to expect stability once Assad is gone. There is no way to control who takes his place, and it is not clear that the West should be allied with any one of the opposition groups.
• The U.S. is not the world's policeman, and its past behavior (as well as ongoing developments like the NSA mass spying programs) has not earned the U.S. the respect it would need to successfully take that role. If anything, the U.S. is known for consistently not taking the moral high ground, but for just pretending to.

So while "another Iraq" arguments don't make sense, other arguments do. Given more sensible arguments based on the actual situation inside and outside Syria, it appears that intervention is very risky at best, and foolhardy at worst.

I appreciate Obama's argument that a chemical weapon attack--which breaks the international "taboo" on the use of WMDs--could be a slippery slope that leads to further use of chemical weapons in the future, if the international community does not respond with some sort of force to show that this behavior is unacceptable (even during a war). But if the U.S. responds alone or with only a few allies, it will not send the right message--it'll just look like another episode of "Team America, World Police" instead of the chorus of international condemnation against chemical weapons that we should be seeing.

Partly, that's why I'm supporting Avaaz's petition for diplomatic solutions in Syria. And partly, I'm supporting the petition because war is always, always, always risky, messy business that we shouldn't rush into.

The Post-Lecture Classroom

When I wrote about my lack of satisfaction at Calgary's univerity, I mentioned that I hate it when lectures--and nothing else--are used as a teaching method. Here's a better plan:

The study had students watch lecture videos at home, then use class time to work on activities. After three years of trials, the researchers found both a student preference for the new method and a 5% increase in exam scores. 'In 2012, that flipped model looked like this: At home, before class, students watched brief lecture modules, which introduced them to the day's content. They also read a textbook — the same, introductory-level book as in 2011 — before they arrived. When they got to class, Mumper would begin by asking them "audience response" questions. He'd put a multiple-choice question about the previous night's lectures on a PowerPoint slide and ask all the students to respond via small, cheap clickers. He'd then look at their response, live, as they answered, and address any inconsistencies or incorrect beliefs revealed. Maybe 50 percent of the class got the wrong answer to one of these questions: This gave him an opportunity to lecture just enough so that students could understand what they got wrong. Then, the class would split up into pairs, and Mumper would ask them a question which required them to apply the previous night's content... The pairs would discuss an answer, then share their findings with the class. At the end of that section, Mumper would go over any points relevant to the question which he felt the class failed to bring up.

Good luck, Mr. Snowden

According to the EFF,

The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.

In 2003, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein (a now-former telecommunications technician) said:

"While on the January 2003 tour, I saw a new room being built....The new room was near completion. I saw a workman apparently working on the door lock for the room. I later learned that this new room being built was referred to in AT&T documents as the "SG3 Secure Room." The SG3 Secure Room was room number 641A, and measures approximately 24x48 feet."

As EFF's timeline of (public knowledge of) the warrantless wiretapping program explains, In January 2005, the EFF launched a lawsuit against AT&T on behalf of AT&T's customers (Hepting vs AT&T) for violating privacy law by collaborating with the NSA's illegal domestic spying program. Evidence in the case included undisputed evidence provided by Mark Klein showing AT&T routes copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.

Clearly, the domestic spying program is at least ten years old and probably dates back to September 2001, when terrorism gave the NSA the excuse it needed to expand its mandate. Again from the timeline,

Ex-NSA Analyst J. Kirk Wiebe recalls: "everything changed at the NSA after the attacks on September 11. The prior approach focused on complying with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA"). The post-September 11 approach was that NSA could circumvent federal statutes and the Constitution as long as there was some visceral connection to looking for terrorists." While another ex-NSA analyst also remembers: "The individual liberties preserved in the US Constitution were no longer a consideration [at the NSA]."

Of course, congress never actually voted to put a warrantless wiretapping program in place. They did, however, vote to block the EFF's lawsuit against AT&T, whose discovery phase might have revealed details of what exactly AT&T and the NSA were doing together--perhaps (gasp!) allowing a court to decide whether the program was constitutional. As Snuggly the Security Bear explains, the "FISA Amendments Act" gave telecom companies immunity from liability for helping the NSA; then-senator Obama voted in favor of the bill after claiming to be opposed to immunity.

To those of us who have been paying attention the last ten years, the revelations by Edward Snowden, such as the fact that NSA folks can get "metadata" on any and all domestic phone calls in the US, is not the slightest bit surprising. When you've got secret rooms for intercepting all internet traffic, merely getting "metadata" seems like small potatoes, although the metadata is, in many ways, the most important data. As Kirk Weibe explains:

A common misconception is that an analyst must review the content of communications between people in order to establish a link between them. In fact, an NSA analyst would regard a person's association and the persistence of that association with other persons of being of greater relevance to a determination of whether the person is a member of a community of interest than the actual words used in a series of communications.

For instance, if you want to discover traitors to the British Empire like Paul Revere, metadata alone may suffice.

To get all that metadata on millions of Americans, the NSA apparently got themselves a piece of paper that says it was a warrant. I'm not a cop or a lawyer, but don't actual warrants have to be somehow limited in scope and related to some kind of crime? But don't worry, perhaps it's not even really necessary to have a piece of paper that calls itself a warrant:

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant in the briefing said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

What with this being entirely unconstitutional, you can see why President Obama and the NSA feel it so important to capture and prosecute Edward Snowden--the man who gave up a job that paid $200,000 per year, just to tell Americans the truth about what their government is doing--to make sure all the other NSA analysts don't develop any funny ideas about morality.

Of course, those that think terrorism is a vastly bigger problem than ordinary murder, or that the fourth amendment was a mistake, have come out in force to denounce the traitor. I can only assume this is why the tide seems to be turning, why more Americans are turning sour on Snowden:

...Public support for the former U.S. spy agency contractor who leaked details of secret American surveillance programs has fallen during the past week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

More than one-quarter of respondents said that Snowden should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, up 3 percentage points from a week earlier.

Just over one-third said he should not be prosecuted for revealing the National Security Agency's collection of Internet and phone data from billions of communications. That was down from a peak of more than 40 percent last week.

The percentage of Americans calling Snowden a "patriot" dipped from 36 to 32 during the last week, while nearly one-quarter of respondents said Snowden was a traitor, up slightly from 21 percent.

Well, America, if you don't demand to know what your own government is doing with the massive security apparatus you paid for with your tax dollars, don't be surprised if you don't find out.

As an American living in Canada, I must say, I am completely at a loss to understand America's mixed-up priorities and bizarre values these days. Enjoy your health care system America, the Democrat (ACA) and Republican ("let's do nothing!") plans are both substantially worse than the systems of any other industrialized nation. Enjoy your guns, you have 80% of the world's Gun murders (ignoring wars, I assume). Enjoy your so-called capitalism, which privatizes profit and socializes losses ("too big to fail"). Enjoy your racism, keep fighting the good fight against those wetbacks! Enjoy your democracy, in which two slightly distinguishable parties work feverishly to distance themselves from each other after passing laws to make sure no third parties are viable. Enjoy your media, which focuses on celebrities and tiny scandals while barely noticing the bigger things going on in America and the world. Enjoy your freedoms, just don't exercise them too much, because you are probably breaking any number of asinine laws right now and the feds have the freedom to indict you if it suits them.

Wake up America. This is corruption. It is more evil than revealing secrets, for evil flourishes in secret; it is more dangerous to America's future than a thousand terrorists, for evil from outside our borders brings us closer together, while evil inside our borders pushes us farther apart. Terrorists will never be able to destroy America's freedom, democracy, finances or constitution; only Americans can do that.

Since Ed Snowden has given up his freedom in order to speak to us, and is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison (whether it be a prison with bars, an airport terminal or an Ecuadorian embassy), we should at least hear what he has to say. I have been unable to find an unedited statement from Mr. Snowden, but here are some quotes from The Guardian's interview with him:

"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,"

"I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, [but] I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

"I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

"I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

"I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in.... My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

"you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

"I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

"What they're doing [poses] an existential threat to democracy"

"There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."

"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to,"

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

The Conservatives' War on Science

I've heard occasional stories over the past few years about the Harper Government's reduction in funding for science, muzzling of government scientists, and weakening of environmental regulation. But these policy changes are impressive when you see the shockingly long list compiled by John Dupuis:

• Apr 2006. One Tonne Challenge funding stopped
• Jan 2008. Office of National Science Adviser phased out
• Jan 2008. Nuclear safety watchdog head fired for ‘lack of leadership’
• Oct 2009. Document delivery outsourced at The Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (national science library)
• Feb 2010. Layoffs at The Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
• Mar 2010. Information restrictions brought in by government have severely restricted the media’s access to government researchers
• Jun 2010. Statistics Canada discontinues the mandatory long form census
• Mar 2011. NRC Press privatized to Canadian Science Publishing, removing Open Access to many articles
• Mar 2011. NSERC reduces funding for basic research
• Mar 2011. Tri-Council reallocates funds from discovery to industry research
• Jul 2011. Budget cuts to Climate Change and Clean Air, Substance and Waste Management, Weather and Environmental Services, Water Resources and Internal Services, Action Plan on Clean Water, the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan, Chemicals Management Plan, the Clean Air Agenda, the Air Quality Health Index, Species at Risk Program
• Jul 2011. NSERC Discovery Grants reduced
• Oct 2011. Canadian Environmental Network closes
• Dec 2011. Withdraw from the Kyoto Accord
• Jan 2012. Natural Resources Minister accuses foreign radical environmentalists of hijacking the system
• Feb 2012. Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) loses funding (later partial reprieve)
• Feb 2012. Closure of Kitsilano Coast Guard station
• Mar 2012. Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences closes
• Mar 2012. Guting the Fisheries Act
• Apr 2012. Cereal Research Centre cut
• Apr 2012. Muzzling of scientists at international conferences
• Apr 2012. Repeal of Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, download to provinces
• Apr 2012. Sustainable Water Management Division cut
• Apr 2012. Transport Canada Aircraft Services cut
• Apr 2012. The Centre for Plant Health relocated (later reprieve)
• Apr 2012. Scientists monitored at polar conference
• May 2012. 1000 jobs cut at Department of Fisheries and Oceans (details follow)
• May 2012. Ocean Contaminants & Marine Toxicology Program axed.
• May 2012. Centre for Offshore Oil & Gas Energy Research cut
  May 2012. Freshwater Institute cut
• May 2012. Centre for Off-shore Oil, Gas, and Energy Research cut
• May 2012. Maurice-Lamontagne Institute cut
• May 2012. Smokestacks Emissions Monitoring Team cut
• May 2012. Cuts to NSERC Discovery, Major Resources Support and Research Tools and Instruments programs
• May 2012. Mersey Biodiversity Centre slated for closure
• Jun 2012. Eliminate Experimental Lakes Area program
• Jul 2012. Arctic Institute of North America’s Kluane Research Station cut
• Sep 2012. Revamp Species-at-Risk act
• Oct 2012. DFO Habitat Management Program cut
• Oct 2012. Declining grant success rate for Post Doctoral Fellows
• Nov 2012. Bill C-45 weakens environmental laws and democracy, such as Navigable Waters Protection Act
• Nov 2012. Salmon research lab run by Frederick Kibenge at the Atlantic Veterinary College-University of Prince Edward Island targeted
• Nov 2012. Navigable Waters Protection Act altered to give developers more freedom to build around most Canadian rivers and lakes without obtaining permission from the federal government
• Dec 2012. Eliminating the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission
• Jan 2013. Very long list of scientist muzzlings from Democracy Watch
• Feb 2013. Restrict how researchers can share data
• Feb 2013. Department of Fisheries & Oceans muzzles its scientists
• Feb 2013. Information commissioner investigates ‘Muzzling’ of federal scientists, called a threat to democracy
• Feb 2013. Prairies Regional Office: Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency closes
• Mar 2013. Muzzling of scientists
• Mar 2013. Experimental Lakes Area environmental research project loses funding
• Mar 2013. The government votes against public science, basic research and the free and open exchange of scientific information are essential to evidence-based policy-making
• Mar 2013. $100 million cut from Department of Fisheries & Oceans over three years
• Mar 2013. National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy closes
• Mar 2013. Centralizing, Slashing Federal Web Info
• Mar 2013. Quit UN anti-drought convention
• Mar 2013. Unnecessarily sabotaging ongoing research at the Experimental Lakes Area and deliberately robbing international and domestic scientist of the 2013 field season
• Apr 2013. Create barrier to public participation in pipeline hearings
• Apr 2013. Environment Canada name removed from it’s weather website, replaced with government promotional links
• Apr 2013.Closure of Department of Fisheries & Oceans libraries
• Apr 2013. Prime Minister & cabinet take over power to dictate collective bargaining and terms for other salaries and working conditions at the CBC and three other cultural or scientific Crown corporations
• Apr 2013. Scientist at National Water Research Institute in Saskatoon muzzled
• Apr 2013. Minister blames David Suzuki, Environmental Groups To Blame For Pipeline Opposition
• May 2013. Minister of the Environment Peter Kent refuses to correct Conservative MP’s crackpot views on polar bears
• May 2013. Minister of Natural Resources insults oil sands critics
• May 2013. National Research Council overhauled to do business-friendly research rather than basic science
• May 2013. Hundreds of jobs cut at Agriculture Canada
• May 2013. Agriculture Canada cuts including Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, Semi-Arid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre and various centres for beef and dairy research
• May 2013. Free-speech report takes aim at Harper government’s ‘culture of secrecy’

You have to wonder what else the Conservatives will manage to "accomplish" before the next election in two years or so.

And they're patenting food!

As a computer engineer, I've been a longtime opponent of software patents, but there are other areas where patents are not beneficial to society either, such as Monsanto's patenting of seeds. They're famous for suing farmers and for generally using intellectual property law to throw their weight around in the physical world of living organisms. And it isn't just Monsanto--other companies have collectively patented the human genome in the U.S..

So Avaaz has a petition going right now against Monsanto's moves in Europe. Please sign it!

And don't forget, the popular idea that patents benefit small inventors is a myth. In reality, patent litigation is very expensive and vastly easier for large companies to use than small ones or individuals; also, as you'll see at the link, individual patents are sometimes easy to circumvent, depending on how they're written; but large companies have large patent portfolios to increase the chances of having some patents that are hard to circumvent, and patents that, while easily circumvented, the defendants were unaware of, so that lawsuits can be launched against accidental perpetrators (the latter case is more common).

And here's a paper from two economists arguing that patents should be abolished entirely. I haven't read it yet, but I know I'd be more receptive to that idea than Mr. Baylis's proposal that people should be jailed and given a criminal record for infringing a patent.

I have never patented any of the programming ideas I've come up with, and hopefully I never will. I want my ideas to be used to benefit the world, not as obstacles for other programmers to "find a way around". And there are lots of computer scientists in academia who also publish papers for the good of mankind--not as a tool for personal profit (which the patent system rarely provides anyway, see above). Certainly it would be nice if there were monetary awards for inventing and innovating--but these rewards should be given for ideas that are freely shared, that actually enter widespread use in society, not for ideas that are locked away in some patent written in legalese, ideas that people can be punished for using even accidentally.

Canadians support electoral cooperation

That's what this poll says, anyway.

Since Canada has a first-past-the-post voting system, it is subject to the vote-splitting problem. I'd be shocked if you're not familiar with the problem--but not that shocked, so I'll just explain briefly.

Most politicians earn their seat with less than 50% of the popular vote, and sometimes as little as 33%, and this occurs because of vote splitting: I may strongly prefer both candidates A and B over C, but I am only allowed to approve one of them on the ballot. Often more than 50% of the people feel the same way, but candidate C will win if the vote splits between A and B.

This seems obviously undemocratic to me. I have seen dozens of proposals for voting/election systems, and FPTP is the one and only system that has the vote-splitting problem.

In order to overcome the vote-splitting problem, some NDP and Liberal folks are proposing temporary cooperation--instead each party running 20 candidates in 20 ridings, each party could run 10 candidates in different ridings (the ridings would be selected mathematically to maximize the chances of winning for each cooperating party). This avoids vote splitting, since voters are left with only two choices.

But other folks in the same parties are calling this "undemocratic" because it "reduces voter choice". This is a very disingenuous thing to say, because the current FPTP system only provides "choices" that don't matter. After all, it is well-known that most people's votes don't count in FPTP. For example, if 10% of the population votes for the Green party all across the country, it is still possible for the Green party to end up without a single seat in Parliament, because 10% is not enough to win any single riding anywhere (only regional differences can overcome this problem, which is why regional parties like the Bloc Quebecois have had a disproportionate amount of power in the past). So I ask you, what good are "choices" if our choices can't possibly win the election?

Electoral reform is the key to fixing this problem, but the party in power (the Conservatives) will fight against electoral reform as long as the status quo benefits them. We need electoral reform to bring true voter choice--to make sure that votes really count for something. And to get electoral reform the Conservatives must be reduced to a minority power in Parliament, and in order to accomplish that we will need one-time, temporary cooperation between the other parties. Don't spit on the proposal for being "anti-voter-choice", when the final result will be improved voter choice in the future!

Addendum: Leadnow.ca was encouraging people to send letters to Justin Trudeau in favor of cooperation for electoral reform. So I thought, what the hay, and sent this:

Mr. Trudeau, I was very disappointed with your statements denouncing proportional representation and trashing the idea of cooperation to pass electoral reform. I don't hold out much hope that you'll actually listen to people who have studied electoral systems and electoral reforms, but I already blogged about this so you might as well be in the loop.

I don't have to tell you what the vote-splitting problem is. I have seen dozens of proposals for voting/election systems, and our FPTP system is the one and only system that has the vote-splitting problem. To overcome it, we need electoral reform, and to get electoral reform, you'll need the support of the NDP, the support of the electorate, and most of all, to do well in the next election.

But you seem to be saying that cooperating with the NDP would be undemocratic because Canadians don't need "fewer choices". This is a very disingenuous thing to say, because the current FPTP system only provides "choices" that don't matter. After all, it is well-known that most people's votes don't count in FPTP. For example, if 10% of the population votes for the Green party all across the country, it is still possible for the Green party to end up without a single seat in Parliament, because 10% is not enough to win any single riding anywhere (only regional differences can overcome this problem, which is why regional parties like the Bloc Quebecois have had a disproportionate amount of power in the past). So I ask you, what good are "choices" if our choices can't possibly win the election?

Electoral reform is the key to fixing this problem, but the Conservatives will fight against electoral reform as long as the status quo benefits them. We need electoral reform to bring true voter choice--to make sure that votes really count for something. And in order to accomplish that we will need one-time, temporary cooperation between the other parties. Don't spit on cooperation for being "anti-voter-choice", when the final result will be improved voter choice in the future!

I would say one more thing, because you're in favor of only a very modest reform to use Alternative Vote (a.k.a. Instant Runoff Voting). I would much rather see a system that honestly attempts to assess voters' desires, such as direct representation or mixed-member proportional (MMP). I'm sure that you could sell IRV/AV to the average voter who doesn’t know any better, but no one who has studied democratic systems, and all the myriad possibilities that exist, would want to settle for IRV/AV, a riding-based system that is unstable in close races and is unjustified from a mathematical perspective.

A key problem with all single-riding systems is that they are geographically biased. To illustrate, imagine that 40% of the voters prefer party A and 30% each prefer parties B and C. Reasonably, this should produce a minority government. However, imagine you could randomly shuffle where everyone lives, so that the same 40-30-30 split exists in every single riding. In that case, the same party would win in every riding, and take every seat in the country! This occurs with every riding-based system: FPTP, IRV/AV, and even superior systems like Ranked Pairs and Range Voting. I ask you, why should winners be picked based on where the voters live instead of what they want? Of course, people are not shuffled in reality, so what this means in practice is that (1) no riding-based system is ever proportional, (2) these systems give too much power to regional parties like Bloc Quebecois, emphasizing divisions among people, and (3) they give too little power to small parties like the Greens.

Unfortunately, big parties tend to like this bias against small parties (and independents), so they don’t do electoral reform, and this is just plain wrong on principle.

There are other problems with riding-based systems too, e.g. if a party expects to win 10% of the seats, it must field 10 times as many candidates as it actually needs, so as to have a candidate in every riding! It also makes politics costly and stressful for the candidates, by guaranteeing that most candidates will not win a seat. These systems encourage negative ads, too, because instead of demonstrating your value as a candidate, you can instead convince the voter that "the other guy" is bad; negative ads don’t work so well if each voter has lots of choices. Finally, these systems constrain voter choice–for example I live in Calgary but I can’t vote for the Liberal in downtown Calgary, why? Just because I’m in the northeast! And neither Liberal will win anyway!

In summary, the AV/IRV proposal is literally the smallest possible improvement that could be made. AV’s better than first-past-the-post, to be sure, but it’s nothing to get excited about.

Goodbye, Aaron Swartz (and Alfred Anaya)

It's been a bit hard to get motivated to post in my blog recently, what with the lack of readers and all. But I'm getting various activist emails, and there are such important discussions going on about... stuff. It'd be a shame not to say something...

So hey! Let's talk about overzealous federal prosecutors, shall we?

First up, the case of Aaron Swartz has been on my mind a lot, because in some ways he reminds me of myself. Aaron was a former internet activist and computer genius, who, for reasons that he never disclosed, downloaded over a million academic papers from JSTOR, a repository of scholarly knowledge. Although students at MIT, including Aaron, have free access to JSTOR, they are not allowed to download files in bulk. Aaron was eventually caught and arrested for it, and lost his copied files.

Ultimately JSTOR decided they were willing to drop the matter and so were state prosecutors, but then the Feds appeared and made his life hell for the next two years, as they piled on charge after charge and restricted his freedoms. As prosecution attorney Carmen Ortiz explained, "Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million." I heard that 97% of federal cases result in guilty pleas, and that out of the cases that go to trial, 90% of defendants are found guilty. I hear that defending against a federal case is unbelievably expensive, and the risk of obscene jail time so dangerous, that defendants are basically forced to take a plea "bargain" regardless of the merits of their case.

But Aaron steadfastly refused to accept a plea bargain, and for reasons that are unclear, committed suicide January 11, 2013.

Many activist groups and individuals (including myself) believe that the law under which Swartz was charged, the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is both unreasonable and dangerous and needs to be amended. It basically makes a crime out of violating the terms of service of a web site, which is crazy since people do it all the time. Ever set up a Facebook account for someone under 13? That's against the CFAA so it's technically a Federal Crime. Some websites restrict the minimum age to 18, and there are any number of other "bad bahaviors" which are against website terms of service--none of which should actually be a crime.

So Demand Progress (with which Aaron used to be involved) and other activist organizations have been lobbying congress to pass "Aaron's law", which would limit the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and exclude "crimes" that are nothing more than a breach of contract. But other congresspeople, as if in response, instead are attempting to expand the CFAA to make it even more draconian.

In response, Demand Progress (and me!) are requesting people to call their congresspeople and have the CFAA limited, not expanded; click the picture for more information.


Besides that, if you are in science or academia, I would urge you to publish your academic papers in open-access journals. (I don't understand why you wouldn't in the first place, unless you're paid extra for preventing the general public from seeing your research.) Certainly as a non-academic, I often like to Google for the latest algorithms--but I ignore any papers that are marked "$15 to download", and sometimes I read "drafts" that are free rather than the final paper. Let me put it this way: I publish MY research freely; it's a nice club, you should join!

I would also like to draw your attention to the case of Alfred Anaya, who was found guilty and given a prison sentence similar to what you would expect for a murderer--for doing something that, although a bit fishy, is technically not a crime. Apparently, he is being punished not for what he did but what he saw and heard--which actually wasn't very much at all. Click here for the gruesome details.

Or, if you'd prefer to read a more personal perspective on what it's like to be squashed by federal prosecutors, read this account from a former girlfriend of Aaron Swartz.

More electoral reform, please.

Martin Cauchon wanted to gather some opinions from the Liberal supporters, so I put in another good word for electoral reform there (though there's no question about democratic reform specifically--I answered under "WHAT INNOVATIVE POLICY WILL HELP THE LIBERAL PARTY RECONNECT WITH CANADIAN VOTERS?"):

Zachary Timmons has a great answer**, but if I were to pick one single policy to push right now, it would be electoral reform–introduce a system that honestly attempts to assess voters’ desires, such as direct representation*** or mixed-member proportional (MMP). I’m sure that Justin Trudeau’s proposal for IRV/AV could be sold to the average voter who doesn’t know any better, but no one who has studied democratic systems, and all the myriad possibilities that exist, would want to settle for IRV/AV, a riding-based system that is unstable in close races and is unjustified from a mathematical perspective.

A key problem with all single-riding systems is that they are geographically biased. To illustrate, imagine that 40% of the voters prefer party A and 30% each prefer parties B and C. Reasonably, this should produce a minority government. However, imagine you could randomly shuffle where everyone lives, so that the same 40-30-30 split exists in every single riding. In that case party A would win every race* and take every seat in the country! This occurs with every riding-based system: FPTP, IRV/AV, and even superior systems like Ranked Pairs and Range Voting. What this means in practice is that all these systems give too much power to regional parties like Bloc Quebecois, emphasizing divisions among people, and too little power to small parties like the Greens. Unfortunately, big parties tend to like this bias against small parties (and independents), so they don’t do electoral reform, and this is wrong on principle.

There are other problems too, e.g. if a party expects to win 20% of the seats, it must field 5 times as many candidates as it actually needs! It also makes politics costly and stressful for the candidates, by guaranteeing that most candidates will not win a seat. These systems encourage negative ads, too, because instead of demonstrating your value as a candidate, you can instead convince the voter that “the other guy” is bad; negative ads don’t work so well if each voter has lots of choices. Finally, these systems constrain voter choice–for example I live in Calgary but I can’t vote for the Liberal in downtown Calgary, why? Just because I’m in the northeast! And neither Liberal will win anyway! Trudeau’s AV proposal is literally the smallest possible improvement that could be made. AV’s better than first-past-the-post, to be sure, but it’s nothing to get excited about.

* Oops, that statement was incorrect. The point is that if you shuffle people perfectly, and if they vote along party lines, the same result will occur in every riding. However, depending on the electoral system, the single winner of all the seats would not necessarily be party A.
** Zachary Timmons answer was:

I think I will participate in this question mostly by giving support to other answers which can already be found here. However, I would like to say this much:

I hope to see Canadian values restored: values such as honesty, openness, dedication to peace, scientific progress, technological innovation, hard work, etc. The Canada I knew as a child was ‘the Peacekeeping Nation’; now, it is…well, history will tell. We are no-longer the Peacekeeping Nation. We no-longer respect the environment. We no-longer care about our aboriginal peoples, despite the enormous contribution they have made in the forming of our country. We no-longer care about our immigrant population, nor do we invest in their descendants, despite the fact that a majority of our population is European-Canadian (“white”), descended from European immigrants who came hundreds of years ago. This is wrong. We need to fix this.

We need to Restore Canada. You may be getting tired of my responses, because I am largely saying the same thing over and over again, but I want to be heard, and I want it to be clear.

The word ‘restore’ has plenty of conservative elements to it to appeal to those for whom conservativism (real conservativism) is important. However, we also need to emphasize a willingness to move forward, and become a strong leader in the 21st century. A leader in a world that loves Causes, and is dedicated to human rights, animal rights, environmental rights, etc. So as a second element, I suggest that the Liberal Party become a champion of Causes.

As a champion of Causes, it would not be the job of the Liberal Party to denounce and attack other parties. On the contrary, it would be the job of the Liberal Party to invite all parties to cooperate and join in championing these Causes. Value openness, commerce, scientific progress, and a careful examination of social justice. Educate people to recognize important elements of society, such as misogyny and racism, and to seek to reduce these things in themselves and the people around them. Empower the people to take control of their rights, and exercise them freely, and to lend a hand to others to help them do the same.

*** Direct Representation is not be confused with Direct Democracy, which is not scalable, i.e. it is impractical at large scales and not conducive to good government.

Letter to Joyce Murray

In 2011, the Liberal Party of Canada had their worst election ever, getting only 19% of the popular vote and 11% of the seats, and for the first time in history they formed neither the government nor the official opposition. For a party accustomed to getting more seats than the popular vote warranted, it must have seemed unfair to get so few seats in Parliament... but perhaps it helps explain why electoral reform, one of my favorite causes, is being discussed in the upcoming Liberal leadership election. I am backing Joyce Murray for her support of Proportional Representation, although the polls say she won't win the leadership.

Hi Joyce, I just donated $100 to your campaign for one reason: because I want modern democracy to come to Canada.

I studied a lot of voting systems in college and of all of them, my favorite system is one called Direct Representation, which breaks the tradition of "one seat, one vote" in Parliament in favor of giving politicians power proportional to the number of voters who voted for them. The MP with 200,000 votes gets four times as much power as one that got 50,000, for example. The other thing I love about DR is that voters aren't forced to vote local--I live in Calgary Northeast, but I don't have to vote for someone from Calgary Northeast.

DR has other interesting properties too, but I know DR doesn't have much political traction, so I do support proportional systems such as mixed-member proportional and Stephen Dion's P3 idea as the "next best thing".

As you know, Justin Trudeu and Marc supports only minor reform via Instant Runoff Voting aka Alternative Vote. IRV is a mathematically unsound system that does not meet the monotonicity criterion nor several other common-sense criteria used to judge voting systems, and picks winners in an unstable way in close races. And like all riding-centric single-winner systems, it produces results that are not proportional and that depend on where people live and where district boundaries are drawn. Why should it matter that I live on the east side of the city rather than the west or the south? Heck, why should it matter that I live in Calgary and not Vancouver? This is a strange criteria for restricting which individual I am allowed to vote for!

The fact is, anything is better than our current FPTP system, so I would vote "yes" in any referendum for reform. Nevertheless, IRV isn't a serious choice for people that truly believe in democracy, and without some amount of cooperation with the NDP, even that modest reform will probably not be possible. If Justin wins instead of you, Joyce, please pass this letter on to him.