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So You Wanna Boycott RSA Conference 2014

Disclaimer: This is my opinion. I do not speak on behalf of my employer.

Folks in the information security industry are debating whether to boycott RSA Conference 2014 to protest RSA’s reported misdeeds concerning the National Security Agency (NSA). Boycotts can be powerful tools. But they can also lead to trolling or a loss of your own voice.

Mood music:

One of this blog’s missions is to promote more reasonable discussion. I’ve seen how people hurt each other with words in the security industry and elsewhere, and this latest issue is no exception.

It’s a waste of energy.

Some Background

At last count, eight well-known security practitioners announced that they were skipping the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco because the conference’s sponsor, security vendor RSA, allegedly pocketed money from the NSA to put a faulty encryption algorithm into one of its products.

The revelation is part of the ongoing fallout of former NSA technical contractor Edward Snowden leaking details of top-secret mass-surveillance programs to the press.

In this debate on whether RSA, and by extension the NSA, did wrong, you’re either a PR-obsessed grandstander or a coward who refuses to take a stand. It just depends on which side of the discussion you fall under. Those who are boycotting the RSA conference have been accused of the former, while those who are still attending are accused of being the latter.

My Two Cents

I’m going to RSA Conference 2014.

Based on all the information out there — and I’ve read quite a bit of it — I’m inclined to believe RSA took money from NSA to allow a flaw into its technology.

I agree that this shouldn’t come as a surprise because the NSA was, after all, created for those sorts of activities. That doesn’t mean there’s no cause for anger.

RSA customers rely on the company’s products to keep proprietary information safe from sinister hands. Taking money from a government agency to make spying easier is not OK. The argument that spying on American citizens is necessary to uncover terrorist plots is rubbish. It’s the same fear-based thinking after 9-11 that led to the PATRIOT Act. That’s my opinion. To those who disagree, I mean no disrespect. Good people can disagree.

Having said all that, you would think I’d be among the boycotters. I share their anger and respect their right to protest as they see fit, as long as no one is harmed in the process. But I’m not boycotting for a few reasons:

  • I’ve never gone to RSA Conference to support RSA the company. I go to network with peers and get a better sense of what the latest security trends are.
  • I can’t do my job from the sidelines. I have to be where the action is.
  • If you’re angry with RSA, isn’t it better to attend the conference and speak your mind? It’s a more powerful approach than staying home.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. I don’t claim moral superiority. That’s simply where I stand.

On Twitter the other night, Akamai CSO Andy Ellis — my friend and boss — said, “Whether or not one agrees with the RSAC boycott, we can celebrate [the boycotters’] freedom to express anger and disappointment. We need more of that.”

Furthermore, he said, we should be able to be angry without feeling the need to ostracize those who aren’t expressing anger, and vice versa.

He’s right.

It’s OK to rage, and it’s OK to boycott. Troll if you must. That’s your right, my friends. I’m going to follow my conscience and strive for civility.

RSA SecurID

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“A Christmas Story” Made It OK to Be Weird

Sunday, I settled in with Erin and the kids for our annual viewing of A Christmas Story. Like everyone else, I have my 10-15 favorite lines:

“It was… soap poisoning!”

“Notafinga!”

“You used up all the glue … on purpose!”

But those lines, as much as I enjoy them, are not why I consider this movie so special. The main reason is that the movie made it OK to have strange thoughts.

Mood video:

http://youtu.be/Ktzt096mlxs

When I was a kid, I always thought something was wrong with me because I’d dream up all these crazy thoughts and scenarios. If I got punished, I’d dream up all manner of revenge scenarios. If I wanted a certain toy, I’d dream up hundreds of scenarios of me playing with said toy.

All kids do that. For that matter, adults do it to. But it took seeing A Christmas Story for me to get that. Before that, I thought I was just a bizarre kid doomed to a future of sinister thinking that would make me an alien among more “normal” people.

It also taught me that mine wasn’t the only family that failed to fit all the Brady Bunch parameters.

I’m not a special case. The movie was an eye-opener for a lot of people.

The reason those scenes cause us to laugh so vigorously is because there’s a release — or, more to the point, a relief. Relief in knowing we’re not alone in our weird families and weirder thinking.

That’s what I call a Christmas gift.

Ralphie

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5 Reasons Not to Share Relationship Troubles on Facebook

One of the things I enjoy about Facebook is seeing who is hooking up with who. When I see friends and family basking in the glow of a new love, it makes me happy. But even on Facebook, love is a double-edged sword.

Mood music:

At some point, every relationship needs work. When that happens, Facebook becomes the last place you should share your feelings. Tossing laundry stained with the blood of your busted heart onto your wall for all to see has several bad effects. Not the least of which are:

  • It’s harder to make up when your anger goes viral. Once you say something in anger to your significant other on Facebook, it becomes a lot harder to take those words back. By the time you think better of it and press the delete button, most people have already seen it.
  • It’s harder for people to take your feelings seriously. This may sound cruel, but it’s the truth. When you take to Facebook at every rough turn in your relationship, friends and family become desensitized. One friend once Facebooked a live, running commentary of a fight she was having with her husband. Every time he said something that made her mad, she got on Facebook. I eventually called her out on it and she unfriended me. I hate to say it, but I don’t miss her.
  • Nobody likes drama kings or queens. This is an extension of the second point. If all you do on Facebook is complain about how wronged you feel, people are going to get tired of you. You become that annoying sound in the back of the room when people are trying to watch something on TV.
  • You shouldn’t be telling us about your problems. Remember that we’re not the ones you are having a fight with. If you’re telling all of us about your romantic problems, you’re clearly not present to talk through it with the person who matters most.
  • Today’s Facebook venting is tomorrow’s court document. Let’s say your relationship crumbles and you’re headed for divorce. Once that happens, the lawyer representing your estranged spouse will scour the Internet for every shred of anything you’ve ever written online. Depending on what you’ve said in the heat of the moment, those words will be used against you.

Having said all that, I’ll go on the record and admit that I’m not a perfect follower of these points. I’ve written blog posts about difficult relationships, and I certainly won’t be getting a prize anytime soon for mending all the fences that deserve my attention. What I post here goes straight to Facebook. In my defense, though, I’ve typically described things that happened deep in the past. It’s written long after I’ve had time to process the emotions and lessons.

And I always have my limits. If I’m having a disagreement with my wife, I’m not sharing it on the social networks.

She’d kill me if I did, and rightfully so.

I posted all my drama on Facebook and no one commented

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To the Asshole Who Wrote “5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder”

The Internet has made it possible for all sorts of assholes to have a forum. Although this is common knowledge, some people still manage to shock me.

The latest example is an article someone calling himself Tuthmosis wrote called “5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder.”

Mood music:

I always try to see the best in humanity. For all the bad seeds out there, I do believe we’ve come a long way in how we treat people based on such things as race, sexual orientation and religion.

Then there are people like Tuthmosis. In his article, he claims women with eating disorders make for good dating because, among other things:

  • They are fragile and easily controlled.
  • They are crazy, and crazy women are fantastic in bed.
  • Their obsession with appearance will improve their overall looks.
  • They cost less money because they won’t eat much.

That publications happily run this shit makes me sick to the bones.

If you see this, Tuthmosis, I just want to say one thing, on behalf of everyone — men and women — who has suffered at the savage hands of eating disorders and other mental illnesses:

Fuck you.

The publisher, Roosh, claims there is nothing wrong with this article. Fuck him too.

assholes

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Erin Cox Case: The Rush to Judgement Is a Two-Way Street

Some say criticism of North Andover School administrators in the Erin Cox case is a rush to judgement. No one knows what information was revealed behind closed doors, they say. And based on comments from other teens at the drinking party, Cox wasn’t the innocent, good friend the media has painted her to be.

On someone’s phone there’s video of Cox drinking and puking, they say.

Maybe that’s true. But the rush to judgement is a two-way street, as the local Valley Patriot newspaper demonstrated yesterday.

Mood music:

Earlier in the day, Duggan published a story citing anonymous law enforcement sources in North Andover who claimed high school student Erin Cox was to appear in court on charges of possession of alcohol and that her family was returning donations from supporters.

Hours later, Duggan was forced to retract the story and publish this one, which drops the first claim and retains the latter.

Other publications blindly ran with Duggan’s new information and looked stupid for it later in the day. This Yahoo! article at least captured the uncertainty of it all.

This isn’t the first time Duggan has rushed out misinformation. On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, in the frenzy to be first with new details, he was on Facebook reporting an inflated death toll. He did so with the gusto of a football commentator announcing a touchdown. It’s an approach I’ve called him out on in the past. To his credit, Duggan pulled the original story and was honest about it.

This whole affair captured a human weakness we all share: We love to find things to get outraged about and then shoot our mouths off before we have all the facts.

I’m guilty of it, too. I once wrote a post defending Lance Armstrong amid all the allegations of doping. Then the facts came out and I had to admit I was wrong.

It’s always been this way, and it won’t change. We are, after all, human beings.

The best we can do is acknowledge that we rushed to judgement once we’re proven wrong. Doing so takes courage. Few things are as humiliating as discovering you’ve made an ass of yourself. But the truth always comes out eventually. The key is what we do with the truth once we have it.

Erin Cox

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Objects in the Media Are Often Smaller Than They Appear

After yesterday’s post on the Washington Navy Yard massacre fueling the stigma around mental illness, I got the usual assortment of feedback after that post published.

If you’re for gun control, you told me I was minimizing the reality of gun violence by suggesting more gun control laws will accomplish nothing. Those of you who don’t see this as a gun control issue took me to task for picking on NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre for suggesting the mentally ill be committed.

Mood music:

One good friend commented, “What he REALLY said was ‘that the nation needs to do more to lock up mentally ill people who are dangerous.’ He did not make a sweeping generalization about the mentally ill, just the subset that are dangerous.”

Truth be told, I agree with a lot of things LaPierre said on Meet the Press. The mental healthcare system is broken, especially in the schools. I also agree that it takes good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns and that security personnel at military facilities need to be better armed.

My main criticism here is with the media, which sliced and diced his words to make more dramatic headlines suggesting people are homicidal maniacs if they are mentally ill.

Wife and OCD Diaries editor Erin Brenner said of the phenomena, “Shocking things, like mass murders and mentally unstable people committing murder, get over-reported so that we think there’s an epidemic.” I agree.

I’ve been a journalist for most of my career and will believe in freedom of the press until my dying breath. But we also have the freedom to ignore the press. In my case, I try to find the more objective news sources and avoid the loud, obnoxious networks that are guilty of over-hyping the causes and effects of national and global tragedies.

Perversely, the hyperbolic drama of the mainstream media is contributing to the mental illness of many. When I was at my worst, I watched the news nonstop. If there was a shooting in London or LA, it may as well have been right outside my bedroom window, because in my sickness, that’s how it felt. The music and graphics TV news used magnified the feeling exponentially.

Is there a mental illness epidemic? Yes, but there always has been. Depression and mental disorders have been woven deep into the fabric of humanity since the beginning. But people are much more open about it than they were 20-plus years ago.

You could say that’s good, because a society more open about mental illness is more capable of devising remedies. Or, through the filter of mainstream media, you could say it’s bad; that recent shootings were the handiwork of mentally sick people. Therefore, there’s a mental illness epidemic, and if a depressed soul acquires a firearm, watch out. The truth is probably more of the former than the latter.

Just remember: Objects in the media are often smaller than they appear.

Breaking news alert

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Dumb, Racist Reactions to Miss America 2014

I typically try to avoid passing judgement on people in this blog. I simply react to events from my own experiences and move on. I also always try to assume that the best of humanity will win out over the worst. I still believe that.

Mood music:

Sometimes, though, people do things that are so stupid and embarrassing for the rest of humanity that they simply must be called out on it.

So it is with some of the reaction to Nina Davuluri being named the first Indian-American Miss America for 2014.

Immediately after she was chosen, the racist comments started.

Here are some, according to The Guardian:

If you’re #Miss America you should have to be American,” said one on Twitter.

“WHEN WILL A WHITE WOMAN WIN #MISSAMERICA? Ever??!!” asked another.

One of my favorite sites, Public Shaming, captured these gems from Twitter:

Luke Brasili Tweet
Wendy Fraser Tweet
Shannon McCann Tweet
@em_adkins Tweet

Davulur handled all the racist talk with class, telling The Guardian, “I’m so happy this organization has embraced diversity. I’m thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America.”

Bravo to her.

For the rest of you: Go back to school and take some Social Studies classes. Clearly, you need a refresher course on what America is all about.

Miss America Nina Davuluri

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The Problem With That ‘Crazy Wife’ Video

A man decided to record his wife freaking out. Now it’s a YouTube sensation and the subject of a post on Gawker, a site seemingly dedicated to shit like this. People are gleefully talking about how bat-shit crazy this woman is.

I’m here to rain on their parade.

http://youtu.be/1JZZWA_sjJw

This video seems to be real, but it’s getting harder to trust what you see on the Internet these days. Under the premise that this video is genuine, I have some observations:

  • Sure, she’s acting worse than a three year old. But other than this video, those outside her immediate world of family, friends and colleagues know nothing about her. Labeling her as crazy is harmful and ignorant.
  • If I had to put up with someone like this on a daily basis, I’d probably be planning my escape. But I would not record our fights for the world to see. Why? Because nothing good comes of such things.
  • It’s one video showing one perspective. I doubt it tells the entire story of this marriage.

Every marriage has its bumps, and sometimes you have to throw in the towel and call it a day. But it’s a private matter. Just because your marriage sucks and your wife is nuts doesn’t mean you have to make us watch.

Now that I’ve watched it — I didn’t have to but I did anyway — I see more going on than just some poor guy proving that he’s a victim.

I see a woman who probably suffers from some form of mental illness. Even if she’s too volatile to stay married to, she needs help.

I see a husband fanning the flames of his wife’s insanity. He goads her. He ridicules her. He makes damn sure to set her off. That’s an asshole thing to do, especially if the wife has a mental illness.

Nothing good ever comes from pressing a troubled person’s crazy button.

I hope this woman gets some help. As for the husband, I can’t help but wonder if he helped make her that way.

crazy wife

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“Rolling Stone” Outrage and the Bandwagon Mentality

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence; nor is the law less stable than the fact. —John Adams, Summation, Rex v Wemms (1770)

I wasn’t planning a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the Rolling Stone cover story on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev. Then I saw all the outrage and realized there was more to this than the magazine’s editorial motive.

This is a case study in how caught up people get in the bandwagon mentality.

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Consider this: People are outraged over the magazine cover because they feel it portrays Tsarnaev as a teen heartthrob. But the picture has been floating around for months and The New York Times used in back in May. No one said boo at the time. The picture shows an innocent-looking kid who is anything but innocent, but it’s real.

Nevertheless, after a few people expressed anger over the Rolling Stone cover, people started tripping over each other to rage in a delirious rush to find a seat on the bandwagon. Some stores announced they wouldn’t carry this issue of the magazine because they were taking a stand against such sensationalistic madness. In my opinion, they’re just trying to capitalize on the anger and get some good brand PR.

New York Times Tsarnaev Front Page

Consider this: A few weeks back, amid a tidal wave of public joy over the Supreme Court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), The New Yorker displayed an issue cover that depicts Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie snuggling together in from of a TV displaying the justices. Most of the response was positive. People gushed about how this demonstrates how far we’ve come in accepting people for who they were, regardless of sexual orientation, race and so on.

But the cover takes liberties with the truth. Sesame Street has said that those characters are not gay. In fact, its puppets are without sexual orientation, period.

Go ahead and tell me you can’t possibly compare the two covers, that Sesame Street is a children’s show. The characters on Sesame Street are very real to children, and The New Yorker made two of the characters out to be something they’re not.

New York Bert and Ernie Cover

Personally, I wasn’t bothered by The New Yorker cover. To me, it was an artist merely expressing his emotions over the death of DOMA. I wasn’t bothered by the Rolling Stone cover, either. I thought the image with the headline and summary set the reader up for an important case study in how a seemingly good kid goes astray, espouses evil and becomes a monster.

Someone noted yesterday that terrorists crave the limelight and want to be on the cover of magazines. Perhaps that’s true. But we need to see their faces, too, so we know who our enemies are. That’s why evil people make the cover of news magazines all the time.

When there’s a bandwagon to jump on, however, the truth gets trampled underfoot. People latch on to memes on Facebook every day that have absolutely no basis in truth. The image and text capture the outrage they feel, so the facts become unimportant.

The outrage over the Rolling Stone cover is, to me, another example of that. With emotions still raw (mine included) over the Boston bombings, people want ways to vent their spleen. Seemingly offensive photos and magazine covers will do the trick every time. Maybe that’s not a bad thing; having outlets to express our pain is healthy and helps us move on.

Yet when we spend too much time on a bandwagon fueled by rage, we’re bound to choke on the exhaust.

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Be The Blessing

This was originally written after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Many tragic events have happened since then, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns, the resulting economic calamity and now race riots in cities across America after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being pinned down by a white officer. Now more than ever, we must put aside hate and be a force for good in the lives of our friends, family and neighbors. In other words, be the blessing.

***

I get frequent messages from readers. One was from someone tormented by current events — be it the government spying on citizens or any number of potential calamities.  She asked how to make it stop.

I didn’t have an answer. I have no psychiatric degree — only my personal experiences.

Mood music:

The reader’s message said, in part:

I deal with scrupulosity, ruminations over heaven and hell, conspiracy theories and intrusive thoughts. It’s gotten to the point where it’s become impossible to function when I read a new headline about what the government is doing to us. I get depressed and I get obsessed. I see my intense fear and read things about the government tracking us, and suddenly I regret all the research I did about conspiracies over many years. I don’t know if I even believe it all, but I somehow feel like the more I know, the more I can somehow save my family.

I don’t know what to do about current events. I don’t know how to save my family from government tracking (even though we’re not doing anything illegal or anything that would be of concern), yet I feel like my OCD is making me out to be this inadvertent target due to the fact that I’m always obsessively searching through conspiracy websites attempting to find “answers.” How did this stop? How do you deal with this?

I can relate to her fear of current events. It’s something that used to paralyze me on a regular basis. I felt the need to give an answer broader than the fear of current events part, because to me that’s merely a symptom of the bigger problem people like us must confront. And so I mentioned how, for me, the biggest helpers have involved:

I noted how, even after adding these tools, I still struggle. Some days I forget to use some or all of those tools for a variety of reasons. Using them actually takes more energy than I have some days. And if something really big dominates the news, it will still have an impact on me. The Boston Marathon bombings come to mind.

After I hit “send,” I remembered something a friend wrote not long before she died of cancer. Renee Pelletier Costa wrote about her despair over leaving all the people in her life and how her pastor replied simply, “Then don’t leave.” That statement made her realize that in a world she couldn’t control, she could still use whatever time was left to be a blessing to others.

That was a huge point for me as an OCD sufferer. I can’t control most of what goes on in the world around me, but I can still carry on each day in ways that make the difference to family, friends and colleagues. It can be as simple as saying good morning to someone and holding a door open for them. You can talk to them about their struggles — or better yet, just listen to them. Bring them a coffee. Make them laugh. Any of these things go a long way when someone’s having a shitty day.

The NSA will keep spying on us. Stocks will rise and fall. But none of that can keep me from being there for my family, from playing guitar and doing other things that make life worth living.

To the best of my ability, I choose to be the blessing. What happens from there isn’t up to me.

Boston Marathon Explosion