My Delusional Dream

This morning while sitting in my office, I received a telephone call from a presidential campaign seeking a donation. I found this interesting because I have yet to donate to any presidential candidate this year. While I was more than happy to donate some money to the campaign, a thought came into my head while dealing with the guy on the phone -- how do I know you're really working for campaign X? It would be trivial for someone to say they were with a campaign, start calling people, and get a few credit cards here and there.

My first inclination was to check the caller ID on the call, then enter the number into Google and see if it came back with anything. Unfortunately, the caller ID was blocked. I thought about it and realized that someone with a moderate amount of skill and planning, of which it seems most scammers have neither, could get an account at SpoofCard and make their call seem as though it was indeed coming from the campaign. Thus, I could not use this obvious piece of information as verification of the mans identity.

I realized that if they had my name and phone number they must have had other information on me too. I asked the gentleman on the phone where my information was obtained from, and he informed me that it was from a list of donors to a previous round of presidential campaigns. If that was the case, then they should have information such as my address on file also. Sure enough, they had my old address from 2004 on file. While this was enough to convince me that the man was most likely affiliated with a real political campaign it wasn't enough to convince me to donate money over the phone. A nefarious individual could still look up information about past addresses and then figure out which one would have been valid at the time. However, this is a lot of work for a relatively small probability of payoff.

I volunteered to donate money over the internet, and the man was very against the option, replying that is possible to process the transaction over the phone in under a minute -- that's funny, on a high speed connection I can find a candidate's web page and donate money in under a minute. Anyway, after some going back and forth I informed the marketer that he had succeeded in reminding me that I had been planning to donate money (it was even in my copy of thinking rock), but I couldn't do it online because it didn't feel secure.

So, for anyone who reads this, what actions can a campaign take to make sure that a recipients of marketing calls know they're legitimately calling from the campaign? Absent of political beliefs, what credentials would a person over the phone have to communicate to you to get you to donate?

Nearly two weeks ago I called Mike Doyle's Office asking him to support HR 2060, a bill that would save music and netradio as we know it. At the time I was told that he was meeting with Representive Inslee soon and hadn't yet made a decision on the bill. That was understandable given the fact that Inslee introduced the bill the day before I called.

It's now been two weeks and there are 51 cosponsors of the bill, and growing. Representaive Doyle still is no where to be found on the list of cosponsors. In fact, not a single person in Pennsylvania's house delegation is a cosponsor. The same goes for West Virginia's tiny house presence. Ohio has a single cosponsor, representative Tim Ryan (D-OH-17), who represents northeastern Youngstown and parts of Akron.

I called Representative Doyle again today and was told that no decision had been made yet on the issue. It's unfortunate that just when Doyle was showing that he may actually be tech savvy, he's dragging his feet on the future of music.

Here's something you may not know. When you're listening to streaming music over the Internet, that site needs to pay a compulsory royalty of 7/100 of a cent per song streamed. While this may not seem like a lot, it's already more than is required of satellite radio, and not really comparable to terrestrial radio because of the inability to accurately measure the people listening. Back in March, a decision was made that would increase this rate to 19/100 of a penny per song streamed, almost a 3x increase in the price. In addition, under the current regime, small time webcasters can choose to pay a percentage of revenue, this element has also been removed from the system.

In simple terms, NetRadio is on death row. To recover those sorts of rates is pretty astronomical. Basically they're asking for about $0.04/hr per listener, or $1/day per listener if you're listening 24 hours a day. Extrapolating that out, you're looking at $30/mo in just royalties needed per listener. That number does not include the cost of infrastructure. For an average listener who listens to NetRadio for a few hours a day at work, you're looking at a rate around $5/mo for royalties. Youch, you'd be hard pressed to bring in that level of advertising revenue in the new scheme. As it is most NetRadio is barely making ends meet.

There's another bigger issue going on here. Sites such as Pandora and last.fm provide a wonderful way to introduce people to new music. Without these engines, we'd be stuck listening to whatever things ClearChannel decides to ram down our ear canals. Either that, or we'd turn to P2P networks to "sample" the music and then never get around to paying for it. Well, I suppose another alternative is to give up on music all together. That's something I'm not really ready to do.

Luckily, there are some good things coming related to it. In Congress, there is the recent introduction of H.R. 2060 - The Internet Radio Equality Act. The bill was just introduced yesterday by Jay Inslee of Washington and currently has no cosponsors. Without a whole slew of cosponsors, this thing stands little chance of surviving. So, it's simple, get your representative to cosponsor the bill. Call them up and ask them to cosponsor the bill.

Here in Pittsburgh, I'm sometimes torn about our congressman, Mike Doyle. As of late, he's been noted for his reference to Girl Talk in a house hearing. I'd hope that it's a safe bet he'll get around to cosponsoring the bill, but he has yet to sign on. According to his aide, a meeting between Doyle and Inslee is scheduled for next week to discuss the issue.

A few weeks ago I served as an election judge for Allegheny County. Today, four weeks after that election, the results have finally been certified. I'm a little worried that they claim they were finding misplaced ballots, but it's not that surprising, all things considered.

I had quite a few people raise concerns about the election while I was serving as judge, and I informed all those people that I would forward their concerns to the board of elections. Shortly after the election I mailed a letter with these concerns and my own observations of the process and how to streamline the process some. It's been three weeks now, and I still haven't received even a phone call. What's a guy to do? Post the letter in his blog. Yes, fellow citizens of Allegheny County, someone is trying to do stuff about this -- however, we'll have to wait and see if anything happens as a result of this.

Division of Elections
Allegheny County
542 Forbes Ave., Room 609
Pittsburgh, PA 15219-2953

Dear Sir or Madam:

On May 16th, 2006 I had the privilege to serve as an election judge for the primary election in the 14th ward, 26th district of Pittsburgh. It was my first time serving on election day, which made things very interesting. Overall, the experience was very positive. The rest of the election board was very skilled, hard working, and most importantly, experienced. Thanks to their hard work, we had almost no issues for our district. The few voter issues we did have were resolved in fairly short order. However, it is likely that the only reason we had the time to resolve these issues was because of the very low voter turnout, during the November election, which will see much higher turnout, we may not be able to adequately address all the voter needs.

In particular, there are some issues that I would be negligent if I did not address before the November election. One of the largest issues is the lack of a paper trail related to the ballots. I volunteered to serve as a judge because I wanted insight into how these machines worked and how the voters used the machines and what their reactions were. During the day, I kept a tally of the voters who asked questions about the machines and their lack of a paper trail. Of the 143 voters at our district, 12 raised concerns about the lack of a paper trail from the voting machines. Each of these people raised their concerns without my prompting. In particular, one voter wanted to cast a paper ballot to show her opposition to the current voting machines. When I explained that she would most likely be the only person to vote on paper that day, and that as a result, her vote would not be at all anonymous, she expressed grave concern and said she was ``stuck between a rock and a hard place''. She agreed to vote using the iVotronic machines only after I assured that I would forward her issues to the department of elections.

Many of these voters, eight to be precise, were aware of the issues with lever voting machines and their inaccuracies and lack of a true paper trail. However, they were concerned that with the lever machines small inaccuracies were common, but with the iVotronic machines, a large scale attack could possibly be launched. One voter, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was concerned that although we posted a zero tape on the wall, it was trivially easy to write a program that would print out zeroes next to each candidates name at the start of the morning. He also expressed the opinion that a similar program could be created to print the final tapes at the end of the night. If combined with machine tampering, it would be impossible to know if the will of the people was followed or not. Four of these voters expressed the opinion that voting with optical scan ballots might be better. I took a chance to explain to these people some of the problems with optical scan ballots, in particular, the exploit from Harry Hursti that allows for placing negative votes for a candidate. Only one of these voters correctly realized that the Hursti exploit relies on AccuBasic, a feature only present on Diebold machines.

I also took a chance to explain to each of the voters who asked about the lack of a voter verifiable paper audit trail on the electronic voting machines why under the current set of laws we cannot have a paper trail in Pennsylvania. Namely that the current offering from ES&S produces a sequential roll of paper from which we could derive the votes of each voter. A few asked why they couldn't have a stub to take home, and I explained the issue with vote selling. One voter correctly surmised that if ES&S iVotronic machines were able to cut off each stub of paper and drop it into a box, that this would satisfy the requirements for the commonwealth. Given the size of the contract from Allegheny county, it is my belief that the county would be well served in pressing ES&S for such a device. If this is not possible, it would be nice to have information for voters regarding the requirements of voting machines in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a brief explanation of the security measures of the iVotronic voting machines. I strongly believe that the addition of a paper trail will be bring confidence to the electoral process, however, if that is not possible, a better explanation would help significantly. The other people on the election board in my district were unaware of the controversy regarding the electronic voting machines.

While the paper trail was the largest issue raised by voters, there were a handful of other issues that should be addressed. Firstly, while the machines are a step forward in terms of accessibility from the old lever machines, they lack a consistent user interface. In particular, the shift from having to use the touch screen to the vote button and back to the touch screen confused many voters. After about ten voters had been processed at our district, we began to give a brief tutorial to the voter about how to use the machine when we brought up their ballot. Many people indicated this was very helpful, however we're not sure how well it will work in November when we are much busier and cannot take an additional minute to explain the usage of the machine. Another common complaint about the user interface was that it was inconsistent about how to move around. In particular, we had numerous voters request assistance after getting to the end of page two of the ballot and not remember they needed to press ``review'' to continue with the process. Perhaps a smaller set of instructions that can be taped inside the ``wings'' of the voting machine would be helpful for explaining how to do common tasks on the machine.

Within our district we had several voters who had poor vision -- each of these individuals was offered the ability to use an audio ballot instead of the visual ballot, however none took advantage of this. I'm not 100% sure why this is, but one voter in particular indicated he would feel ``strange'' doing that. This voter instead took a long time and looked very closely at the ballot to read the names on the ballot. Another voter signed a declaration of assistance and had his wife help him. Neither of these two voters were blind, however the font size on the display was far too small for them to easily read. The demonstration provided on the ES&S website for the iVotronic shows a machine with a ``zoom'' option. When pressed, this zooms in the ballot with large print on a particular race. For these voters, such an innovation would be a wonder. I highly recommend looking into this for the November race as it will bring new freedom for these voters. For those who cannot read at all (because of blindness, illiteracy, etc), more information may be helpful to describe what the audio ballot is. As poll workers, none of us had ever used the audio ballot, and when I asked about it at the training session I was told that it takes a long time. The ability to present the same ballot in multiple ways is one of the strongest features of these machines, I believe that Allegheny county should be taking advantage of it.

There were four voters that asked about the openness of the new machines layout, indicating that they were slightly leery of the fact that anyone could see who was voting even if they could not see their votes. While some of this was just yearning for the curtain enclosed lever booths, others seemed generally concerned they may be influenced or feel rushed -- especially if a long line was developing. The best explanation I could come up with was that the open nature prevented someone from using a camera phone and taking a video of the casting of their ballot -- thus preventing a new avenue for vote selling. Is there an official explanation of why the booths are so open, or is it just a design issue?

There were several other minor issues mainly related to running of the election and not so much related to voter issues that should have been addressed too. Firstly, it was a poor decision to have the PEBs sealed in the ballot box at the end of the night as this required the election board to open up the ballot box which may have had optical scan ballots in it. Fortunately, our district had no optical scan ballots -- there was a single absentee, which was a military write in ballot that was filled out completely. Were thre a handful of people who voted by optical scan ballot, they ballots would be in nearly sequential order and their votes could be found out.

The process for the handling of absentee ballots was confusing. Firstly, there was little guidance about what to do if a voter who was on the absentee list arrived to vote. We were told that they could vote and we should dispose of their absentee ballot, however this is in direct contradiction to the text of the voting card which a voter signs. On these cards, the voter is making a declaration that they haven't voted by absentee or any other means. Clearly, these issues need to be reconciled.

Another large difficulty we had was closing down the polls at the end of the night. There was no cohesive set of instructions for all the envelopes or source of all the documents. In fact, both districts at our polling place lacked the affidavit form we needed to sign if one initialed in the voter book. If this material were better organized, perhaps into a binder format with a checklist for the end of the night, it is my belief that things would go better and faster. As a judge, one thing I struggled with, and I noticed many others also were struggling with was what material to bring into Reisenstein school at the end of the night, what to put in the ballot box, and what to leave in the suitcase. A single checklist of tasks could make this much easier and save time for all those involved in the election process.

Finally, one point where there was much confusion was regarding cancelled ballots. In the training session we were told that a cancelled ballot would show up on the public count for the voting machine, when in fact they did not (this was confirmed by speaking with the judge in a neighboring district during the day who did not see any result from cancelling votes). Was this the same issue that prevented the sample machines used in training from counting cancelled ballots? Or are cancelled ballots only counted in the protected count, or not at all? If cancelled ballots are not counted is there harm in the judge opening up a ballot and showing a voter how to use it and then cancelling that ballot before bringing the voter her ballot? Being able to show exactly what happens on the ballot would make explanation of the ballot much easier than having to leave the area around the voter as soon as they opening instructions disappeared.

Overall I had a very positive experience serving Allegheny County on election day. It was a wonderful introduction into the nitty-gritty elements of democracy. The election went much smoother than most imagined. However, if voter turnout is high in November, which given the current Governor and Senate races in the commonwealth it probably will be, then addressing some of these issues now could significantly help out in the future. The favor of a reply to these issues would be appreciated as I believe it will make the election process run smoother and allow me to better serve the county. You can reach me at the above address, or by telephone at 412-XXX-XXXX.

Thank you,

Patrick Wagstrom

Ah yes, spring time in Pittsburgh. That wonderful time of the year when you leave the windows open, enjoy walks in the park, and get excited because baseball is now well under way. Well, most years this happens -- just not this year -- a combination of cold and rainy weather along with dismal starts from both the Pirates and the Twins has made May a little less than exciting. However, one thing still happened right as planned, the Pennsylvania state primary.

Yes, the primary, that wonderful time of year when you discover a real democrat is running against Doyle. However, aside from that race, and selecting the seven representatives for the state democratic committee, there really isn't much to do. Nope, for most people the primary on Tuesday was nothing more than a formality. What made it interesting is that it was the first time that Allegheny County used the new electronic voting machines from ES&S.

I was curious about how all of this was going to work out, so I volunteered with the county board of elections to serve as an election judge. Within the county, each polling place has 5 or 6 people assigned to it - a judge who is in charge of the polling place, two inspectors who are the ones who run the machines, and two clerks who check folks in. Some polling places also have a constable present to help maintain order -- especially useful when your senator, who lives in Virginia, tries to vote in Penn Hills. These folks get up dreadfully early the morning of the election and arrive at the polling place no later than 6:30 in order to have the polls set up and running by 7am.

Upon arrival, nothing is set up, but the machines had already been delivered. Before anything starts up, everyone must be sworn in. This requires at the minimum the minority inspector and judge to be present as the minority inspector swears in the judge who swears in everyone else -- a sort of checks and balances system. At this point the machines can be opened up and the initial zero tape can be printed out. This tape, which must be posted at the polling place, shows that at the start of the morning all machines reported zero votes cast. Throughout the entire day only two people asked to see the zero tape, but I suppose that's better than nothing. Along with the zero tape, a plethora of other literature is posted on the walls, some related to the duties of the election workers, some related to voters, others on how to use the machines, and of course, the American Flag and no smoking signs.

Processing voters is relatively easy and straight forward. One of the election works takes the PEB over to the machine and sets up the ballot for them, they then start to vote. The user interface is a bit nightmarish and inconsistent -- but it looks like that's something they can fix in the future. On our setup, one needs to select all their candidates, then hit a new touch screen button labeled "Review", then hit a blinking red button not on the screen that says "Vote", then hit the green button that appears on the touch screen that says "Confirm". It's confusing for lots of folks. We found that if we gave the voters a quick tour of how to interact with the machines that they usually could figure it out.

On occasion we had voters who had some issues with the machines. Usually, thanks largely to the setup of the machines, we could get a very good idea of what was going on without seeing their ballot. I think throughout the entire day I only saw one persons ballot and that was because they forgot they needed to press the review button after viewing page two of the ballot. Overall, we did not have to cancel a single vote and every one of the 143 voters at our polling place used the machines. There was one voter who wanted to use a paper ballot, but the worker who has processing them did not provide the correct information and made it sound as though the paper were only if the machines broke -- this was not the case on Tuesday -- any voter could have used the paper ballot. In our case we lucked out because dealing with paper ballots would have been much more difficult for us.

Turnout was VERY low for the election. By noon only about 60 people had voted -- by the end of the day we hit about 23% turnout - 143 people. The afternoon was certainly the slowest time, lots of time to talk to Ian and learn how to do Sudoku and that sorta stuff. At 8pm everyone was certainly eager to close the polls. Scratch that, at 7:30pm they were eager to close the polls and started taking stuff down. They were very disappointed when we discovered that we cannot close the voting machines before 8pm. When 8pm rolled around closing the machines was pretty straight forward, using a special master PEB we closed the machines sequentially and printed out a tape of the final tally at the end. The tape came out, and told us who won each race in our district. Unfortunately, we have no way to verify that this was the case.

The hardest part of the night was dealing with all the other paper work required. Unfortunately, the instructions are in a dozen different places and seemed to be conflicting. For the November election I'm going to make one master list of what needs to be done so we can just follow that. We produced four copies of our final tallies, sent one with the minority inspector, posted one on the front door of the school, and I took two with me to the county elections board -- along with the absentee ballots, which are counted at the central county location.

Dropping stuff off at the county was a mad house. Hundreds of election judges dropping off dozens of boxes. Security was pretty good though, plenty of officers directing people and watching the ballot boxes. I was in and out in about 20 minutes. Paperwork all stamped, and in another few days I should get my $120 for my hard work.

In another few days I'll write up some stuff on issues voters had with the machines. Particular regarding the number of voters concerned with both usability of the machines and the lack of a voter verifiable paper trail.

Recently I've been trying to keep my blog out of the political realm. I'm perfectly aware that there are much better pundits and analysts with much better connections that a lowly Ph.D. candidate. Also, I sort of agree with Jon Stewart, partisan bickering is just bad for America.

Occassionally though, a gem comes across that is too good to miss. Might I introduce you to Operation Clean Sweep. It has but a single goal, defeat EVERY elected legislator in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It doesn't matter if they're democrat, republican, or some other third party. The premise is that those who govern Pennsylvania are out of touch and need to go. Given Senator Jay Costa's complete ineptitude at even providing information about where he stands on issues, much less responding to my letters, I would tend to agree.

Well, it looks like Seantor Santorum (aka Senator Man-On-Dog in the street) sold out to AccuWeather with senate bill 786. The basic gist is this: AccuWeather provides the same data that National Weather Service does, but for a fee, so the NWS shouldn't be able to provide the data. Idiot. Here's my letter to Specter on the issue. As usual, it's not even worth my time to email the same letter to Santorum.

I'm a writing to express my opposition to S.786 - "A bill to clarify
the duties and responsibilities of the National Weather Service, and
for other purposes".  This bill appears to be a shameless sellout by
Senator Santorum to the interests of AccuWeather and against the
citizens and taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  Not only
does it work against private citizens but it also could put our
national security at risk.  I'll address the two issues seperately.

As a private citizen, and Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon
University, I enjoy receiving the weather forecasts directly from the
national weather service.  I've written several small tools that do
this and integrated them into a variety of applications (my desktop
computer, cell phone, etc).  This pulls information such as the
temperature, precipitation, and forecast directly from the National
Weather Service.  It's of a great use for me and I'm glad that my tax
dollars help pay for such a valuable service.

However, under the terms of the proposed bill, section 2(b), the only
information that the national weather service can provide for free,
directly to citizens and non-citizens alike, is the severe weather
forecasts.  For me to access the weather data that I find useful in
planning a day out in the park, or my daily walk to the university, I
would need to utilize a commercial service such as AccuWeather
(located in State College, PA, no doubt a major reason why Senator
Santorum proposed this bill).  The problem is that I don't know if
they've changed the forecasts at all.  I don't know and I don't trust
the science behind what they do.  I know the people at the National
Weather Service are competent scientists who do a very good job at
providing accurate weather.  I have no way of knowing if AccuWeather
(or some other commercial provider) is using this information, or
modifying it based on their own assumptions.

Of course, this is placed under the guise of not allowing government
competition with the private sector, however there are some things
that work better when done on a municipal or federal level, like
roads, plumbing, and weather.  I'm already paying for the information
in the form of my taxes, I don't see why I should be forced to pay
AccuWeather or some other service to access the data that can be
better provided directly.  This also will stifle innovation in the
methods of disseminiting weather information, as is often the case
with closed interfaces.  The last time I checked, AccuWeather and
other commercial weather providers, had not found a to integrate
weather into a feather of my Digital Video Recorder, like I have.

The lack of this data is also dangerous because of how it can cripple
valuable resources like SkyWarn, a network of ham radio operators who
provide weather warnings.  Without this information, they would be
unable to provide valuable information about precipitation and wind
speed for large storms.  Ham radio operators have shown time and time
again their value in instances of national emergencies, we should not
cripple this valuable service to bend to the wishes of AccuWeather,
which last time I checked made money without this land grab.

Finally, there is an additional portion of the bill that worries me,
specifically section 2(d).  Part 1 on this seems well founded enough
in that it prevents people affiliated with the NWS from providing
information on the weather before the official service announcement.
However, there are thousands of weather stations in the United States,
some monitored by individual citizens for the NWS, this would prevent
them from notifying others about local conditions if the NWS has not
issued a notice on the condition.

Secondly, part section 2(d)(2) seems particularly ominous as it would
prevent any government employee (wheteher from the NWS or otherwise)
from commenting on a weather phenomenon outside of the scope of what
was issued in the official notice.  This will go further toward the
"talking head" syndrome that our country seems to embrace where
unqualified people comment on subjects of which they have little
knowledge.

This bill is truly dangerous to America and not in the best interests
of your constiuents, the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Thank You,

Patrick Wagstrom

Update: Apparently it only costs $7500 to buy Santorum's Soul. I wonder if it would only be $7,500 to legalize man-on-dog or man-or-horse?

Pennsylvania House Bill 30 is currently making it's way through the Senate in the state of Pennsylvania. It seems like it's a good thing, ecouraging investment in broadband, supporting voice over IP, and that sort of stuff. But a closer read shows the whole think smacks of corporate interests. In particular, Section 3014, Subsection H (page 70 of the current version as of right now, PN 4778) has the following:

 3   (H) PROHIBITION AGAINST POLITICAL SUBDIVISION ADVANCED AND  
 4 BROADBAND SERVICES DEPLOYMENT.--  
 5     (1) EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR UNDER PARAGRAPH  
 6   (2), A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OR ANY ENTITY ESTABLISHED BY A  
 7   POLITICAL SUBDIVISION MAY NOT PROVIDE TO THE PUBLIC FOR  
 8   COMPENSATION ANY TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES, INCLUDING  
 9   ADVANCED AND BROADBAND SERVICES, WITHIN THE SERVICE TERRITORY  
10   OF A LOCAL EXCHANGE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY OPERATING  
11   UNDER A NETWORK MODERNIZATION PLAN.  
12     (2) A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION MAY OFFER ADVANCED OR  
13   BROADBAND SERVICES IF THE POLITICAL SUBDIVISION HAS SUBMITTED  
14   A WRITTEN REQUEST FOR THE DEPLOYMENT OF SUCH SERVICE TO THE  
15   LOCAL EXCHANGE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY SERVING THE AREA  
16   AND, WITHIN TWO MONTHS OF RECEIPT OF THE REQUEST, THE LOCAL  
17   EXCHANGE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY OR ONE OF ITS AFFILIATES  
18   HAS NOT AGREED TO PROVIDE THE DATA SPEEDS REQUESTED. IF THE  
19   LOCAL EXCHANGE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY OR ONE OF ITS  
20   AFFILIATES AGREES TO PROVIDE THE DATA SPEEDS REQUESTED, THEN  
21   IT MUST DO SO WITHIN 14 MONTHS OF RECEIPT OF THE REQUEST.  
22     (3) THE PROHIBITION IN PARAGRAPH (1) SHALL NOT BE  
23   CONSTRUED TO PRECLUDE THE CONTINUED PROVISION OR OFFERING OF  
24   TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES BY A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THE  
25   SAME TYPE AND SCOPE AS WERE BEING PROVIDED ON THE EFFECTIVE  
26   DATE OF THIS SECTION.

This would effectively kill Philadelphia's WiFi Plan. Why? Because it's bad news to Verizon who would actually have to compete. I see nothing wrong with a "political subdivision" providing broadband services. After all, if it's a free market, the local exchange companies would just have to provide better service. But I guess we all know that service and local exchange don't go together. Anyway, I called my state senator about this already this morning. The person who answered the phone was very helpful (much better than the people I get at the federal level). Let's hope my phone call makes a difference. If I understand the current standing of the bill correctly, all that needs to be done is approval by the senate and then a signature from Governor Rendell. If you're in PA and get a chance, try to call today.

Like most people, I find how both parties are using September 11th as a political device morally apalling. I also find the purple heart stickers that republican delegates are wearing a disgrace and shameful. But back to the main topic. The New York Times has an interesting article about the lives of a lot of the former workers at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. It's an interesting contrast between them and what the delegates are saying.

What follows below is the text of an email that I sent to John Kerry today trying to get his response on the IICA act and on general copyright policy issues.

One of the things that has driven the American economy over the past decade is the relentless advance of technology. Much of this technology was conceived and developed by the people who understand it best, the technologists. Recently, Congress has seen fit to intervene in this progress by proposing restrictions on the development of technology. Specifically, I'm speaking of the IICA (Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act) proposed by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. This current act would make technology that could possibly be used to violate copyright illegal. Thus, such wondrous devices as the VCR and the iPod would have never seen the light of day under such a bill. One could even argue that a pencil would be illegal under the legislation.

As a technologist, and a student in the Engineering and Public Policy Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon University, the creation of new technology and ways to share media is of great importance to me. In your acceptance speech you even made reference to the ability to store and entire library on a chip, which would be arguably illegal under such a bill.

My question for you is straight forward. Do you support the IICA bill as it is currently going through congress? If it passed during your term as president would you veto such a bill? What is your view on the eternal extension of copyright through bills such as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act?

These are all very important issues to me and a large segment of the younger, more tech-saavy population, that have not been addressed up to this point. Thank you for your timely response.

Patrick Wagstrom
Pittsburgh, PA