Prescient concern about "unbreakable" encryption in Dan Brown's fin-de-siècle "techno-thriller" "Digital Fortress"

In 1998, before he catapulted to celebrity status after publishing Angels & Demons in 2000 and The DaVinci Code in (according to the instance of Cortana on my Lumia 60 smartphone from Microsoft) April, 2003, Dan Brown, formerly an English teacher, wrote and published Digital Fortress, a novel with a professor of languages protagonist (clearly a prototype of his Robert Langdon, a professor of semiotics).

The reviews of Digital Fortress on Amazon.com paint a picture of a formulaic and poorly-written book, replete with technical errors and an easy-to-decode plot.  Not to mention characters so generic and wooden as to incite speculation about whether they are susceptible to termites.

What I found startling in it was the perspicacity and prescience of the author in highlighting an issue that is, as of last week, one of the most pressing concerns of the national security community, more specifically the national cyber-security community, and that is the issue of "unbreakable" encryption.

The MacGuffin in Digital Fortress is the eponymous Digital Fortress encryption algorithm.  Brown builds his story about efforts by his lead characters to thwart the distribution of this tool.  While doing so, they often find themselves discussing the very issues of privacy vs. security that fill the airwaves and blogs these days.

To experience an early treatment of these themes, you can buy the book yourself, through the link below.



If anyone buys the book through this link, a small percentage of the sale price will accrue to an Amazon account under the control of Etopia News, the muskopolis-20 account.

For an interesting discussion about the problems that unbreakable encryption creates for law enforcement, and the possible solution authorities may have found to the  problem (i.e., forcing the suspect to decrypt the data on his or her phone), click here.



  

An update on efforts to legalize cannabis in California in 2016

Gary Johnson used to be the Republican governor of New Mexico and was the 2012 Libertarian Party candidate for President.  Until recently, he was President and CEO of Cannabis Sativa, Inc., a company whose stated goal is “to brand and market the highest-quality cannabis products available today—and to innovate the future of casual cannabis.” 

He recently resigned this position in the burgeoning cannabis industry in order to run for President again.    

Asked what impact the candidacy of this proponent of cannabis legalization might have on efforts to legalize cannabis in California in 2016, renowned cannabis defense attorney Bruce Margolin told Etopia News that Governor Johnson “is a good guy.  He’s down for the reality” of the need to legalize cannabis.

Margolin also made reference to the Sean Parker-supported cannabis legalization initiative, which, he said, would allow qualified individuals to possess up to one ounce of the controversial plant material and to cultivate up to six live plants. 

He also mentioned the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative (CCHI) which has higher limits and does more to legalize and encourage the cultivation of industrial hemp. 

Patrick Moore, a member of the Managing Board of Directors of CCHI 2016, criticized the Parker initiative as “insider legislation,” that was “overly regulatory.”  Asked about the impact of that proposed legislation on the original Proposition 215, which legalized medical cannabis in California, Moore said that “Parker’s bill would annihilate it.”  Parker's proposition, he added, would “destroy cannabis culture.”

According to Moore, the campaign to qualify the CCHI measure now has “500 volunteers” working to collect the required 365,000 valid signatures by April 20, 2016 (“four-twenty”).  So far, he said, they have collected “up to 100,000.”  Several companies are working on this effort, he explained, including some professional signature-gathering firms working “on-spec” and others refusing to consider being paid who are working “pro bono.”

Moore was vehement in his support for legalizing and exploiting the economic potential of industrial hemp, saying that it could be a 1-5 trillion dollar per year opportunity for California, especially for farms in the Central Valley.

Moore said that for most of the 200,000 years humans have been in existence “80% of their diet was hemp seed.”  He referred to research by undergraduates at the University of Alberta, Canada, which resulted in the invention of a hemp-based super-capacitor “a thousand times more powerful with a thousandth of the inputs.”  He said that “hemp houses” are already being built in France.

He also cited recent hemp-positive developments in Germany, where, he said, Mercedes Benz now makes vehicles that contain 30-35 per cent hemp products, in their seating and interior fixtures.  Not to be out-done, BMW has produced a model made 60% of hemp, he added.

Moore sounded confident that the CCHI would qualify for the November, 2016, ballot.  If both the CCHI and the Parker initiative appear on the ballot, and both are approved by a majority of the voters, the one with the highest vote total will go into effect.

For more about the legalization of cannabis, visit the Facebook page of The Path to Cannabis Legalization. 

Links to Elon Musk-related entities

Here are links to Elon Musk-related entities:

PayPal

Tesla

SolarCity

Peter Rive interview

SpaceX

Powerwall—Tesla Home Battery

OpenAI

Elon Musk:  Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

test post

FAA sets out Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) (“drone”) registration requirements

Etopia News posed some questions today to Ian Gregor, Public Affairs Manager at the Federal Aviation Administration Pacific Division, about their recently-promulgated regulation requiring owners of certain weight Unmanned Aircraft Systems to register their flying robots with the FAA.  Here’s what he had to say:

Q: How many of these vehicles have been registered already? 

A: We expect to release registration numbers after we’ve had a chance to compile them following the holidays. The registration system continues to operate smoothly and we are seeing steady activity on the part of aircraft owners.

Q: What is the deadline for registration of newly-acquired systems?  What is the deadline for legacy systems owned before the regulations went into effect?

A: If you operated your UAS before Dec. 21, 2015, you have until February 19, 2016 to register your UAS. If you purchase your UAS after Dec. 21, 2015, you must register before you operate it outdoors.

Q: What are the penalties for not registering? 

A: Failure to register an aircraft may result in regulatory and criminal sanctions. The FAA may assess civil penalties up to $27,500. Criminal penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment for up to three years. However, our near-term focus is on educating people, not taking enforcement action against people for failing to register.

Q: What steps does FAA envision taking to enforce this rule?  

A: The FAA, along with our government and industry partners, is engaging in a wide range of educational outreach initiatives to make sure people are aware of the registration requirement and what flying safely means.

Register your drone with the FAA here. 

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) will probably “end up with 100 people in each location”

Etopia News recently reported that Toyota Research Institute (TRI) CEO Gill Pratt would be appearing at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas on January 5, 2016, as part of the Consumer Electronics Show to speak in more detail than previously about TRI’s plans to spend a billion dollars over five years researching machine learning and artificial intelligence for automotive, robotic home care, and who-knows-what-other future applications in the shadow of, and in cooperation with, two of the country’s premier scientific and technological universities, Stanford and MIT.

Now Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokesperson, has responded to an Etopia News follow-up inquiry asking for further details about TRI operations as it starts up with this statement:

“All of these questions will be touched upon in our press conference on Jan 5 in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, in particular, the first group of researchers to be hired, the ongoing relationship with the two universities [Stanford and MIT], [and] the first set of projects.

“We’ve already announced that there will be two physical locations, very close to Stanford and MIT respectively.  Work begins in early 2016.  I think we plan to end up with 100 people in each location.

“Gill Pratt’s speech and the press release will be posted to our Newsroom Web site at 1:00 PM that same day [at] www.pressroom.toyota.com.

“And as I mentioned, CNET, the official channel of the show, is planning on Livestreaming.”

Toyota is already doing cutting-edge research related to safe automotive navigation, as indicated in "Toyota to Display New Map Generation System at CES 2016" and "Toyota to Boost Investment in Artificial Intelligence by Strengthening Relationship with Preferred Networks Inc."

TRI CEO Gill Pratt will divulge “more detail about the new company” at CES

According to Toyota spokesperson Cindy Knight, the newly-appointed CEO of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), Gill Pratt, will appear at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at 1:00 pm on January 5, 2016, in the ballroom created by combining Islands A, B, F, and G at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, at which time he will reveal more details about this new company, which was recently established by Toyota Motors Corporation to conduct cutting-edge research and development of machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve automotive safety and create effective home care robots, among other possibilities, many yet to be announced, or probably even envisioned.

According to Ms. Knight, his presentation will be streamed live on C|Net.