Johnny Long in Baltimore Sun

(See the earlier post on Johnny’s Hackers for Charity effort.)

Via GetReligion, the Baltimore Sun today runs the story Hacking as an act of faith. It’s a lengthy bio piece on Johnny Long. It’s got his dual life story: hacking and faith. The writer does a good job of explaining how his involvement at Grace Community Church and his branching out into the AIDS Orphans Educational Trust (AOET) and the Charity Hackers that support it.

It’s a good read. Then watch him introduce himself and his faith in last year’s Def Con presentation. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should.

Hacking for charity

Johnny Long has just returned from Shmoocon 2008 with the announcement of his new book, No Tech Hacking. The book develops his 2007 talk of the same name (Shmoocon’s talk was 30 minutes. The Defcon version is a full hour.) If you haven’t watched it, do.

What’s notable about his book is that the proceeds go to Action for Empowerment that provides for AIDS orphans in Africa. Additionally, he has started the project Hackers for Charity, which I contribute to.

Be sure to order his book through this link, as I plan to, to support African AIDS orphans and to support hackers at the same time!

Amazon, Kindle and Bible copyrights

The ever-strange Washington Times carries commentary on Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. Fred Reed raises the question about the problems of selling e-book content that is in the public domain. While it’s within Amazon’s business model to sell an “e” edition of a work published by a company, what happens when one charges for a work in the public domain?

From the article:

Kindle is close to being mass marketable. However, the economics seem hazardous for Amazon. The company makes money, legitimately enough, by selling physical books that are out of copyright. If you want your child to read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Amazon will sell you a copy. I don’t know what proportion of a bookseller’s income derives from the sale of books in the public domain, but it has to be considerable — the Bible, the classics and so on.

Reed glosses over the concept that the Bible is in the public domain. It is not. Particular translations of the Bible have copyrights applied to them. The (New) Revised Standard Version is held in copyright by the National Council of Churches. The English Standard Version is held by a division of Good News Publishers. The New American Bible by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Specific publishings of study Bibles are also held in copyright. My HarperCollins Study Bible is the NRSV. The Biblical text is copyright by the NCC and the support material held by HaperCollins, itself a holding of News Corporation.

In the US, only the King James Version is held in the public domain. For the UK, the King James Version is held in perpetual Crown Copyright and not public domain. I’m no copyright expert and won’t touch this one with a ten-foot pole.
So, don’t worry about Amazon raking in money based on Kindle “e” editions of the Bible. They will be paying out big bucks to the publishers and holding companies for the right to distribute particular translations and editions.

Christians closing the digital divide in Minneapolis

The Minnesota Daily reports that the Digital Inclusion Fund has offered $200,000 in grants to offer “new users of technology who historically might not have had access, such as immigrants and low-income families.” One of the grants, in the amount of $30,000, has gone to the (Roman Catholic) Church of St. Philip. This parish has started the Patchwork Quilt Digital Divide Initiative, that supports the World Community Grid, FightAIDS@home, and works locally with the poor to offer access to computers and the internet.

Access to the internet has become less a luxury and more of a utility. The telephone also made this transition. Once a curiosity for the well-off home, the telephone has become such a standard utility that receiving emergency 911 services depends on it. Not having a telephone number shuts one off from finding employment and housing and from participating in society at large.

The internet has not yet made this leap from technology to utility, but it’s getting closer. The digital divide comes from the high cost of entry. A new telephone can cost as little as $10 and basic access is about $30 per month. Even used computers cost far more than $10 and basic dial-up Internet access starts at $10 per month in addition to the cost of the phone line. Plenty of people are left out of this equation.

Many children do not attend schools that have computers or can teach computer literacy. Many schools do not provide access to the internet.  Presently the United States is a country that depends on computers as much as we depend on cars and we soon will depend on the internet as a utility like telephones, electricity and water.

Neglecting the social and economic issues around technology is a moral failure. This makes the Church of St. Philip’s efforts all the more refreshing.

US Senate fails to check executive abuses of privacy

This week the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended to grant telecom companies retroactive immunity for warrantless wiretapping. The Dodd-Feingold amendment would have removed this immunity, but was strongly voted down. The Washington Post carries the story:
Senate Authorizes Broad Expansion Of Surveillance Act.

Here’s the roll call of votes, which was strongly partisan. All 31 “yea” votes were Democratic with 18 “nay”-saying Democrats. Hillary Clinton did not show up for the vote.

The IEEE Computer Society has an excellent and simple description of technical aspect of how digital surveillance works. (PDF direct link) This is how the system will continue to work with the system firmly in place.

Because wiretapping without court oversight is illegal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The Dodd-Feingold amendment would have OK’d this move but its defeat lets AT&T (and other telecoms) off the hook for the illegal spying. The Senate and the Courts have so far declined to keep checks on executive authority. Hopefully the House might be able to

The President had this to say, according to AP:

In order to be able to discover enemy — the enemy’s plans, we need the cooperation of telecommunication companies. If these companies are subjected to lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars, they won’t participate; they won’t help us; they won’t help protect America. Liability protection is critical to securing the private sector’s cooperation with our intelligence efforts.

The listening itself isn’t illegal, but doing it without court oversight is. What happened to the 2006 Democratic surge that was supposed to end unchecked executive authority and start to restore civil liberties? Can the House stop the spying and protect the fourth amendment?

Scientology, Christianity and open technologies

ABC News carries this report of Sunday’s protest against the Phoenix Church of Scientology. Lately Scientology has been the subject of a great deal of ridicule. Much of this is deserved but the attention has been more focused so far in 2008. Anti-scientology protesters throw the word “cult” and scientologists throw the word “terrorist” back.

One of the core definitions of a cult is its focus on secrecy and hidden knowledge. Scientology fits this definition and then some, as did the gnostic cults and the cults of Isis and Mithras in past generations.

This good summary in Diogenes Allen’s Spiritual Theology (p. 41):

Civic religion formed the public worship of gentile people. But alongside civic religion there flourished many mystery cults, whose central feature was the promise of life after death. Each cult claimed to provide its adherents with a secret knowledge (gnosis) that was given only to its members. We know little of these cults, but to turn from one of these to Christianity was to turn from secret rituals to what was freely shared, namely, knowledge of Jesus Christ as savior. Rituals and incantations were not a substitute for moral and spiritual regeneration.

We know so little of these cults primarily because knowledge about them was kept hidden. When the adherents died, so did the secrets. This method might be an acceptable one when considering the recipe for Chartreuse, but it’s a lousy way to have your religion endure the ages.

The transition from mystery cults to the openness and freedom of Christianity changed the world. The desire to publish the Bible widely and to distribute the writing of early bishops and doctors aided the widespread adoption of the codex and later the book.

Christianity stands apart from, say, Mithras, Isis and Scientology on these grounds. All believers should have equal access to Scriptures and theology. As a result Christians ought to have a commitment to technologies such as free software and policies such as net neutrality and copyright reform that further these principles.

H.R. 4137 passes; House to confer with Senate

The EFF blog reports that the House passed H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act. The act has admirable aims of reducing the cost of higher education, expanding Pell grants and retaining the Upward Bound program. Also attached to the bill is Section 494, “Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention.” It’s explicit aim is the elimination of peer-to-peer file sharing, particularly copyrighted materials. You can get HR 4137 from the House website here in PDF format.

The amendment to the original COA Act is 485(a)(1)(P) is the new subparagraph:

“institutional policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement, including—

(i) an annual disclosure that explicitly informs students that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, may subject the students to civil and criminal liabilities; a summary of the penalties for violation of Federal copyright laws;

(iii) a description of the institution’s policies with respect to unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, including disciplinary actions that are taken against students who engage in unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials using the institution’s information technology system; and

(iv) a description of actions that the institution takes to prevent and detect unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on the institution’s information technology system.’’

In order to police digital copyright infringement, all network traffic needs surveillance. There’s not a good way to tell if the movie you are uploading is for a film production class or is an illegal copy of Spiderman 3. What’s that email attachment–an mp3 or photos to your parents? To the network, it’s all zeros and ones and should all be watched for possible infringement.

There are two principal side effects of this policy. One, campus networks and computers are made slower through the analysis of all of their traffic. The policy requires more and faster computers and staff to support itself, hardly intuitive for an “affordability” act. Second, students are put at increasing risk. Not only are they presumed guilty and open to constant internet surveillance, they are risk of a triple threat if caught: academic discipline, civil liabilities and criminal liabilities.

This letter from the American Federation of Musicians speaks in favor of the act, specifically for this amendment. The letter repeats the canard, “Musicians may make music for love, but they also must eat and feed their children.” While true, this does not mean that college students should be condemned to constant internet surveillance, especially when students are responsible for only about 15% of digital theft.

My representative, Carol Shea-Porter co-sponsored the bill (gory details here). My question to her and the many others who supported the bill: how does increased capital cost (computers, infrastructure and buildings to house them) and increased staff costs help reduce the enormous financial burden of higher education?

Ecclesiastical and technological voting guides

During  election years, churches regularly provide voting guides to help remind Christian candidates of moral issues that imply certain political platforms. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops produces one that typically gets some media attention. The National Council of Churches also produces a voting guide, which I had never seen before.

Last week, the Washington Post delivered a digital voting guide that sketched the technology policies of each candidate. John McCain and Hillary Clinton have no articulated policy and, unsurprisingly, Ron Paul feels the federal government ought not have a policy on principle. Mike Huckabee seems to have a muddled but positive policy supporting net neutrality.

Barack Obama seems to have the fullest technology policy and has gone out of his way to speak at Google.

Also, Meta Filter provides a list of the web server software that the candidates are running. Of the presently-running candidates, only Obama and Paul are completely using Free Software. McCain and Huckabee run hybrid proprietary and free systems. Clinton runs all-proprietary.

I’m not expecting the NCC or the USCCB to add this to their voting guides anytime soon. However, technology presents moral issues to which Christian voters ought attend. Supporting free software, net neutrality and opposing telecom immunity would be among these.

Religious hacking: Christians on atheists

(Read more on this topic at Notes from Off-Center. Thanks Drew!)

Iain Thompson of vnunet.com writes on an unusual Myspace defacing in his article, “Christian Hackers Attack Myspace: What wouldn’t Jesus do?” Counter to the recent press on the Anonymous hacking group attacking Scientology sites, this time it appears that “radical Christian hackers” are behind this attack.

(Apparently, this story is now dated but it’s just making the rounds to Christdot. See the Athiest and Agnostic Group article on Wikipedia.)

I’m far from defending the action. It’s a childish and immature act of vandalism. However, it isn’t much more than that. This is a defaced Myspace group and not burning heretics. Hardly the worst form of religious discrimination. At the same time, it fails standards of Christian charity and anyone’s standards of decency.

Thinking of intolerance, has anyone looked at the Atheists & Agnostics group page? Especially the pictures page? At the time of writing, there are 43 pictures there. About a quarter of them are explicitly bashing Christians: Adam and Eve, Mother Angelica, an image of the Virgin Mary in toast, an Israelite throwing stones, a Baptist Church sign, DaVinci’s Last Supper are all parodied. The rest are self-promotional bits and fan photos.

What other religions are parodied? None. Only a few make generic reference to God or Faith. No one here wants to attack Allah, the Dalai Lama or the goddess Durga. Just a chance to take a cheap punch at Christians with a less than clever graphic of an Icthys fish eaten by a Darwin fish. This behavior is typical of many atheists, from the prominent folks like Dawkins or Hitchens down to one of the ordinary 35,000 members of this Myspace group, they are less interested in declaiming faith as giving kidney punches to Christians.

To me, the story here is that an Atheist group took many cheap shots at Christians. In return, a Christian group is returning cheap shots. About as exciting as man-bites-dog: a usual story but with some reversal.

I will not condone this act of vandalism. Some of my sympathy goes out to the Atheist and Agnostic Group, but only so far as the response to immaturity has been immaturity.

Here’s the report from the group leader’s Myspace page:

Update: 1/30/08, 10:00 p.m. EST.

Thanks sincerely to all who sent emails or forwarded the press release (real big thanks to the Secular Student Alliance and the Humanist Chaplain from Harvard). Myspace hasn’t yet responded, and our group is still deleted.

Short FAQ based on some of the emails I got:

Q1) How do you know the group was deleted for religious reasons?

A1)I have no smoking gun. I cannot produce any internal Myspace memo saying “crush the heathens”.

However, I assert that our group’s history up to its recent deletion (1/1/8) establishes a prima facie case that we were deleted for religious reasons:

Note first that I ran the group for almost 3 years, and was very careful to not violate any TOS.

We were deleted two years ago due to complaints from a group called the “Christian Crusaders.” They would search Myspace for profiles they found offensive, and then mass complain to customer service.

Their strategy was to send so many emails to customer service that someone, somewhere at Myspace would delete the profile or group.

It worked. They were able to get us deleted for a few weeks til myspace restored us (pre-news corp; Tom Anderson, himself posted to our group offering to protect us). The “Christian Crusaders” also got many other groups and profiles deleted, including a large pro choice group.

Three months ago, my account was hacked. The hacker took control of the group and renamed it “Jesus is love”.

It took almost a month of constant emailing to Myspace just to get them to restore the group. I lost my profile (3000 friends; dozens of blogs), and the hacker banned many regular users.

Banning on a Myspace group is oddly permanent / can’t be undone. So, I sent more requests asking Myspace to un-ban my regulars.

I got an email back– finally; after about 3 weeks of requests for help– saying “thank you for the information. We have scheduled the group for deletion.”

Literally 5 minutes later, the group was deleted. I think it’s ironic that Myspace’s response to my persistent and sincere request for help was to delete the group!

I hope that puts our deletion in context. Add to that, the biggest xtian group here was deleted not too long ago (post news corp) and Myspace Tom personally restored it.

Do I think Myspace is an evil atheist hating conspiracy– no. Do I think an agent of Myspace deleted my group because it was an atheist group. Yes.

I realize this is circumstantial evidence; but I think the case outlined above is strong enough to warrant my conclusion, and I am waiting to see if Myspace replies.

Q2) You realize that Myspace is privately owned; you have no right to free speech there; they can delete content at will?

A2) I do; but I think Myspace deleting atheist groups is equivalent to a restaurant refusing to serve minorities. Myspace provides a free service, yet it benefits tremendously ($$$) only because users provide content. As a for-profit, I suspect Myspace has some duty of equal protection to all members of protected classes. If Myspace deleted the largest African American group here, no one would tolerate that. Why should we tolerate it for any minority group?

I’m not trying to be dramatic. My experience is nothing like the typical civil rights violation, but I believe it is nonetheless a violation. I’m not sure where the line is drawn between trivial violations and ones-worth-fighting for. I personally think this one’s worth fighting for.

I feel our group had value; we helped give a misunderstood (and often despised) minority a sense of community. The fact that 35,000 people took the proactive step of joining the group (even if most never posted) suggests that it had value. The emails I got today from regulars and strangers suggests that it had value.

Personally, the three years I invested in maintaining the group (and the blogs on my deleted profile) had value to me. So, I think trying to get the group back is a rational investment of my time.

Further, I’m not asking for a march on the capital. I just want our group back.

The purpose of parody religion

Via Episcopal Cafe, Stephen Prothero wrote “Is religion losing the millenials?” for February 4′s USA Today. He focuses on an exercise for his Boston University students taking an introduction to religious studies class: invent your own religion. By building up one’s own, the fundamental properties of what makes religions religious gets exposed.

The practice is not unlike assembling a computer, oil painting or knitting a sweater yourself. You not only learn the structures and principles but also gain appreciation for the time, expertise and wisdom that goes into their shape and development.

Students would name a new religion (e.g., Congregation of Wisdom), identify its sources of authority and truth (TV trivia game shows) and particular figures and saints to look to for guidance (Jeopardy!‘s Ken Jennings). Also featured are Dessertism (the stomach is the path to the soul), Sertaism (salvation through a good night’s sleep) and Eudaimonism (following the teachings of Bob Marley’s music).

What is absent from these religions is the place of immutable traditions and dogma. While ethical teachings are in place (don’t smoke pot; don’t drink to excess), no rigid moral system is enforced. There are few concerns about a Deity or an afterlife that it offers.

One suggestion might be that dogma, morals and traditions are on the out with the up-and-coming generation. This is leaping without looking. Perhaps a closer suggestion would be that college students are shallow and faddish, unable to appreciate the depth of the Big Boy religions (like preferring nickel beer to a complex single-malt whisky). But, as Prothero concludes in the article,

Yes, the religions that students conjure up in my courses tend toward vagueness and relativism. Often they seek to entertain as much as to enlighten. But because they are invented rather than inherited, these religious creations provide a glimpse into the concerns and convictions, hopes and fears of young Americans, who are slouching not toward Bethlehem or even atheism, but toward new ways of being religious — innovative ways that ancient religions ignore at their peril.

To construct a religion ourselves, we express ourselves. This is true for all creative efforts. Building up a religion as an exercise, as a joke or as parody isn’t new. The Church of the Subgenius and Discordianism have been at it for years. More recently, Pastafarianism and the Flying Spaghetti Monster have attracted attention, alongside Landover Baptist Church.

What I see in the efforts at Boston University is the hallowing of common experiences for college students. Dessertism exposes the longing to transcend the institutional dining hall. Sertaism offers salvation through sleep to students pulling all-nighters in the lab. Pastafarianism enshrines basic skepticism. Eating and drinking, sleeping and watching TV, even smoking pot and drinking beer–daily and even prosaic events–find a holy place in these constructed religions.