Tor: Is it still kosher?

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.

Source: The Guardian

Do depressed lab rats dictate international drug policy?

What would happen, wondered psychologist Dr Bruce Alexander, then of British Columbia's Simon Fraser University, if these animals were instead provided with a comfortable, stimulating environment?

In 1981, Alexander built a 200sq ft home for lab rats. Rat Park, as it became known, was kept clean and temperate, while the rats were supplied with plenty of food and toys, along with places to dig, rest and mate. Alexander even painted the walls with a soothing natural backdrop of lakes and trees. He then installed two drips, one containing a morphine solution, the other plain water. This was rat heaven: but would happy rats develop morphine habits?

Try as he might, Alexander could not make junkies out of his rats. Even after being force-fed morphine for two months, when given the option, they chose plain water, despite experiencing mild withdrawal symptoms. He laced the morphine with sugar, but still they ignored it. Only when he added Naloxone, an opiate inhibitor, to the sugared morphine water, did they drink it.

Source: The Guardian

In praise of restraint

The sweeping economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating era were made possible by John Howard's principled restraint in providing bipartisan support. But bipartisanship in the interests of good government ended with Labor's opportunistic scare campaign against Howard's GST.

Tony Abbott returned the favour with his ruthlessly dishonest scare campaigns against the carbon tax and the mining tax. Now how do you think Labor will react should Abbott propose a controversial reform in this term or the next?

The self-seeking, short-sighted, rivalry-fanned lapse in restraint by both sides makes further major economic reform highly unlikely until, by some hard to imagine means, the former norms of acceptable political behaviour are restored.

But don't blame it all on the politicians. That's too easy. As Professor Ross Garnaut observed in May, the past dozen years have seen ''interest groups'' - I'd say industry lobby groups - become less inhibited in pursuing private interests at the expense of the wider public interest, ferociously resistant to reform proposals involving private costs to them, and willing to pursue their private interests by costly ad campaigns and party donations.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/restraint-a-good-oil-in-short-supply-20131006-2v28x.html#ixzz3008DK8cC

Fiscal sustainability & living standards

Dr Martin Parkinson, Commonwealth Treasury Secretary in his recent speech (hat-tip to the SMH):

Contrary to how it is sometimes portrayed in the media, competing on the global stage does not mean driving down wages or trading off our standard of living. Far from it.