Telecoms behind gay marriage--and UAT can help stop them

These recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman received calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT&T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage. United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a "Christian-based telephone company," with a "Faith, Family, and Freedom" campaign. Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage.

Mirman really gets them going--they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example.

These calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT. Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal.

United American Technologies is based in Oklahoma. The calls came from "Faith, Family, and Freedom," a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now Oklahoma's Speaker of the House. There are more details about these calls in Wikipedia's entry on United American Technologies.

(Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.)

Bad Google directions

Anson Kennedy got this wonderful set of directions on how to get to a location in New Jersey:
Stan Schwartz also received some creative directions:

Skeptical information and security information links sites

I've got a couple of websites of hierarchically organized links that I've maintained for quite some time, though I haven't really worked on them much lately. I currently get more spam link submissions than genuine link submissions to each, so I'd like to request contributions of legitimate entries.

One is my skeptical links site, which is fairly extensive, especially on a few topics such as Scientology, creationism, the websites of skeptical groups, and critiques of organized skepticism.

The other is my security links site, which is much less extensive, but still has some useful links, mostly on security and hacking tools and security standards.

Contributions are welcome--just go to the appropriate area and click the "add a site" link at the top of the page.

Presidential speeches tag cloud

Chirag Mehta has created "tag clouds" for a bunch of presidential speeches (including State of the Union addresses), with a slider so you can see how the topics have changed over time.

Chris Mooney points out that George W. Bush's State of the Union addresses have used "God" and synonyms twelve times, and "climate change" or "global warming" zero times.

Kearny Board of Education releases memo and statement

The Kearny Board of Education released a memo and statement last week regarding "the expression of personal religious beliefs by professional staff in the classroom." They have indicated that they will be hiring an outside professional to provide training to its teachers about "Constitutional parameters" and will institute a formal policy "expressing its strong commitment to the principle that personal religious beliefs of our institutional staff have no place in our classrooms."

Fear the "new atheists"

P.Z. Myers pointed out the beginnings of a backlash against "the new atheism" in the Wall Street Journal on January 5, now on January 16 Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis has joined in:

We’ve warned you about them before on our website—but now they’re on a much more aggressive march all across America. No longer are they just staying in their classrooms or writing books and articles in the comfort of their offices. They are “the new atheists,” and they are aggressively going after your children, your liberties, and your faith!
...

These atheists are not just publicity seekers. They are very serious about their mission. Dawkins, from England, was recently crusading across America to proclaim his atheism to newspapers, websites, and at public meetings.

According to Ham, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are coming for your children, and the best way to stop them is to give money to AiG so that they can complete their museum.

Anderson Cooper on Sylvia Browne

Anderson Cooper gives Sylvia Browne's bogus claims the kind of media treatment they deserve.



At about the midpoint, Cooper gives statistics for U.S. belief in psychics: 13% of the population, 8% of men and 18% of women. Those who've consulted a psychic, by region: South: 8%, West: 13%, Midwest: 11%, East: 19%. The latter numbers probably reflect Christianity acting as a deterrent to consulting a psychic.

(Hat tip to Respectful Insolence.)

Tidbits from the Economist

During my long plane flights this week, I used some of my time to catch up on reading back issues of The Economist. Here were a few of the stories I found particularly interesting in the January 6-12, 2007 issue:

"Medicine at the Top of the World" (p. 65):

LYING in an intensive-care ward is a world away from climbing Everest, but a connection will be drawn this spring when 45 scientists and 208 volunteers tackle the mountain to bring back information about oxygen deprivation. The reason they are going is that hypoxia (a lack of oxygen in cells, which can lead to death) is the one thing that links practically all patients in intensive-care wards—and there is no better place to study it than in the thin air of the world's highest mountain.

The story describes the Xtreme Everest expedition, which will take 250 people up Mount Everest, setting up mobile labs at various elevations to study hypoxia. The volunteers will climb up to 5,300 meters, and 16 climber-scientists will ascend to the summit to become the first to have blood drawn at the top of the world's tallest mountain.

The research will be used to try to identify the genetic basis of people's ability to handle hypoxia, which couldn't be easily be conducted on patients in intensive care due to not having enough of them in one place at the right time.

"The logic of privacy" (pp. 65-66):

A group of computer scientists at Stanford University, led by John Mitchell, has started to address the problem in a novel way. Instead of relying on rigid (and easily programmable) codes of what is and is not acceptable, Dr Mitchell and his colleagues Adam Barth and Anupam Datta have turned to a philosophical theory called contextual integrity. This theory acknowledges that people do not require complete privacy. They will happily share information with others as long as certain social norms are met. Only when these norms are contravened—for example, when your psychiatrist tells the personnel department all about your consultation—has your privacy been invaded. The team think contextual integrity can be used to express the conventions and laws surrounding privacy in the formal vernacular of a computer language.

Contextual integrity, which was developed by Helen Nissenbaum of New York University, relies on four classes of variable. These are the context of a flow of information, the capacities in which the individuals sending and receiving the information are acting, the types of information involved, and what she calls the “principle of transmission”.

I'm always interested in the intersection of philosophy and information security, since the former was my field of undergraduate and graduate study, while the latter is my profession. The article briefly describes how Adam Barth is attempting to apply linear temporal logic to codify conditions of information transmission into rules that can be used by computers.

"In praise of mess" (p. 69):

This is a book review of Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman's book, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place. The Economist reviewer admits to the bias of having "easily the most untidy" office at the magazine, and I have a similar bias. The book argues for the benefits of disorder and procrastination, and the reviewer notes that the authors "are witheringly contemptuous of the bogus equation of tidiness and morality--for example in corporate 'clean desk' policies." Yet the reviewer notes that the book overstates its case ("the case for tidiness in some environments--surgery, a dinner table or income tax returns--is really overwhelming") and suffers from repetition and disorganization that reduce the pleasure of reading the book. The reviewer concludes: "Even readers who love mess in their own lives don't necessarily like it in others."

Misinformation about blogger registration

The blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie. This press release claimed that this section of the "Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007" would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government.

Slashdot promoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said. In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid. And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter. And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue.

Specifically, Section 220 required "paid grassroots lobbying firms" to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that "is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period."

The Captain's Quarters blog was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie. Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my "Fundamentalism is Nonsense" pamphlet (6th edition, 1986):

Richard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country. He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan's National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX). Viguerie also publishes the magazine Conservative Digest [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].

The reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman's 1982 book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives (Doubleday).

Viguerie's efforts were successful, and Section 220 was removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20.

Phoenix mortgage fraud

The Arizona Republic has just caught on to the fact that there's a lot of mortgage fraud going on in Phoenix:

A wave of mortgage fraud is rippling through pockets of the Valley, inflating home values through scams called cash-back deals.

Left unchecked, cash-back deals cost homeowners and lenders millions of dollars and could erode confidence and values in Arizona's real estate market.

The fraud involves obtaining a mortgage for more than a home is worth and pocketing the extra money in cash. Neighbors may then discover home values in the area are exaggerated. Homeowners stuck with overpriced mortgages may never recover the difference. And lenders end up with bad loans that, in the long run, could hurt the Arizona real estate market, the largest segment of the state economy.

While the extent of the fraud is unclear, an Arizona Republic investigation into these cash-back deals found organized groups of speculators have bought multiple homes this way, leaving whole neighborhoods with inflated values. Add to these the individual deals done by amateurs who hear others talk about the easy money they made from cash-back sales.

State investigators and real estate industry leaders want more enforcement and greater public awareness to stop the spread of cash-back deals before the damage mounts.

"Mortgage fraud in the Valley has become so prevalent people think it's a normal business practice," said Amy Swaney, a mortgage banker with Premier Financial Services and past president of the Arizona Mortgage Lenders Association.

Under federal law it is illegal to misrepresent the value of a home to a lender. Everyone who is a party to the deal is subject to prosecution.

Felecia Rotellini is a Notre Dame law school graduate and former assistant attorney general who is now superintendent of the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions. Her agency regulates mortgage lenders, state banks and credit unions in the state. Alarmed by what she was hearing from lenders and real estate agents, she has just pulled together state and federal regulators to form an Arizona mortgage fraud task force.

"People need to understand these cash-back deals are illegal and stop," she said. "We are going after mortgage fraud."

I think this is likely to be too little, too late. When I was actively suing telemarketers using illegal prerecorded calls to residences in 2003, the worst offenders were mortgage brokers. In the process of going after some of them, I found signs that some of them were engaged in other illegal activities as well, such as defrauding other lenders, defrauding their customers, defrauding the IRS and Arizona Department of Revenue, and transferring assets between entities prior to filing bankruptcy to evade creditors. I found the Arizona State Department of Banking (now known as the Arizona State Department of Financial Institutions), which regulates mortgage brokers, to be completely uninterested in investigating--though they did send some warning letters after I won judgments against brokers, which prompted some of them to pay their judgments. They said that they did not have resources to investigate my claims of violations, even though I offered up specific areas of the law that they are supposed to enforce (they don't enforce the Telephone Consumer Protection Act or FCC regulations).

There's more on this subject at Ben Jones' Housing Bubble Blog.

UPDATE (January 22, 2007): Arizona Senator Jay Tibshraeny has introduced a bill making mortgage fraud a felony. But it's already criminal activity covered under current laws--adding more laws against it doesn't do anything to cause those laws to be enforced.