I've not really discussed this publicly before, but I suppose I ought to, simply to give another data point.

I support full legalization for essentially two reasons:

1. Medical

I have used a fair number of drugs for my tic disorder: lorazepam, clonazepam, alprazolam, gabapentin, and ziprasidone. (I think I've even left out one or two.)

None of them have adequately controlled my tic longitudinally, most have given me very unpleasant side effects (e.g. dyskinesia, dizziness, nausea, dissociative episodes), and while the oral lorazepam was mildly effective for acute control, it has very significant and long-lasting unpleasant side effects.

More to the point, all of these are oral medicines. There are no inhalant or injectable medications that I could plausibly get prescribed - intramuscular lorazepam certainly exists, but it doesn't leave hospitals.

The problem with that is that oral medicines take half an hour to take effect and (at the doses I need to have any effectiveness - e.g. 2mg lorazepam) take many hours to wear off.

Unfortunately for me, I can begin to asphyxiate within less than 15 minutes of the onset of an episode, and they rarely last longer than an hour. The effect profile is simply not well matched to what I need.

By contrast, an inhalant (like marijuana) takes effect within 15 seconds and the acute effects wear off within an hour or two. And for that matter, the side effects are far more pleasant. (I've heard of people using lorazepam recreationally, but I really don't understand why someone would. I don't like being dissociated.)

It's also much more effective, even putting aside the onset time issues. With pot I can go from sporadically asphyxiating and being completely unable to use my limbs because they're too spastic to completely relaxed in about two minutes flat. The best I ever got from any of my meds was a lessening of maybe ~3 points out of 10.

And... it's safer. Lorazepam has a pretty bad interaction profile, with potentially very serious complications including death. Pot has almost no harmful effects (the only serious ones I know of are linked to impurities, like with any smoked organic substance), and nobody has ever overdosed on it.

So to put it simply, I want something that can actually serve my medical need. I like being able to continue breathing and being able to use my hands as tools and all that stuff we take for granted.

And pot is the best thing I've come across to date purely on medical grounds.

I would be perfectly happy to use another drug if it was as effective, and I'd rather it weren't something that has associated tar etc., but such a thing just ain't available.


2. Recreation & taxes

First off, to be very clear: I actually prefer being sober. Always have, probably always will. Both with pot and other drugs, like alcohol and caffeine.

However, I think that it's absolutely clear that our culture not simply condones, but glorifies the recreational use of drugs: principly, alcohol and tobacco.

To claim that pot is more harmful than either of those, either to the user or to their surrounding society, is patently absurd. (Think: how many fights would you get in a bar where people smoked pot instead of drinking alcohol? How many people would get run over by someone who's high vs drunk?)

So the argument is simple: let people get high - they already do, and we already enthuisatically encourage it when it comes in the form of alcohol - and while you're at it reap a huge public financial benefit both from taxing it and from not having to deal with all the criminal violence (and prosecution) that surrounds the current black market.

That's not a moral argument, nor even a slippery slope one, it's merely saying that we already encourage things that are much worse than by any objective standard. So how about some consistency?

(For that matter, I think it'd be a net benefit if people moved away from alcohol to marijuana. Think of it as a harm reduction campaign. ;-))


Anyway, that's my 2¢. The second part is pretty humdrum, but I think that my particular medical needs are relatively unsual because of their severity and acuteness, which contrast with the more typical use of marijuana for long-term palliative care of pain and nausea.

California has a 10 cent per container refundable tax on various beverage containers - mainly soft drinks and such.

How about this: a 10 cent per cigarette tax, refundable on turning in the butt?

It'd create an incentive for the same people who poach cans etc. to also pick up all the cigarette butts that litter sidewalks, plus it's a tax on people who litter.

The intent of this proposal is to begin a transition away from easily faked and inherently physical means of signing and verifying documents to cryptographically secure means.

Right now IMO, one of the greatest barriers to the use of PGP/GPG signing of documents is the lack of officially sanctioned keysigning. Yes, I know there're keysigning parties and OpenWhatever and so forth. Those are only acceptable to hackers; they do not have the authority of (say) even a driver's license.

So, I propose:

1. Any office of the government that issues identification (e.g. driver's licenses) must also perform the following services for people and corporations:
a) sign public keys, provided that:
* the person, or officer of corporation, has their ID verified per normal standards for issuing any other gov't ID
* the key is exclusvely tied to the person's or corporation's real name,
* the key contains an accurate photo of the person's face, or the corporation's seal,
* the signature is revokable by the government,
* the key is at least as secure as 1kDSA/4kElGamal is believed to be currently, and
* the private key is only known by the key owner (i.e. the government may only sign, not get in on the private key);
b) revoke keys or signatures that it has signed upon request of the person or corporation (e.g. in the event of loss of passphrase);

2. Every notary must:
a) perform the above signing service for the same rate as normal notarization, with the same requirements;
b) get their own public key signed in a special way to indicate their notary status;
c) do the electronic equivalents of any services they perform on paper (e.g. if they normally will notarize paper affidavits, they must also notarize electronic affidavits, with all their usual wording and so forth attached)
d) have the option, for nominal cost, to record the cryptographic signatures of such services (but not the documents signed themselves) to a central database which is publicly readable - eg if they performed sign([contract X] + ["bob came in, showed me his driver's license, and signed contract X"]), then they can publish to the db the signature itself and the notarization portion of the document ("bob came in..."), but not the contract unless bob authorizes it; thus other parties can directly verify that Bob got the contract notarized

Opine?

Every record[1] that is for any reason required to be public[2], must be freely available[3] online[4] in complete[5], accessible[6], and original[7] form within one day of its being made public[8].

[1] e.g. court documents; records of transactions; budget details; laws; city council notes; intra-governmental emails and other records; gun registrations; tax filings; etc etc
[2] because some other law requires it
[3] for no access charge to anyone in the world with no subscription requirement; all costs borne by the publishing party at actual cost
[4] on the Internet or whatever replaces it
[5] including all information that any other form of it (like paper filing) has, except as required by law to be redacted
[6] using open, cross-platform formats (eg PDF, ODT, RTF, TXT, CSV, SQL, XML, etc); and for systems, having a standardized and documented API for complete access to third party tools, in a format that allows for data manipulation when dealing with kinds of data that allow it (eg budgets may not be just document files, but rather must be spreadsheets or relational databases)
[7] ... in addition to whatever it was actually written as originally / internally (eg MS Office) [though I hope that this would de facto force the phasing out of closed formats]
[8] modulo enough time for its publicity to be contested per usual procedures if necessary, given the 'piss from a pool' nature of the Internet vs paper; "made public" is the legal status, "put online" is the distribution method


Why? Currently 'public' doesn't really mean 'public', practically speaking. It should.

If there are things you feel ought not be public (eg concealed carry permit registrations? sex offender registrations? tax records? signatures on otherwise public documents?), then you should be arguing that in the first place, rather than arguing against this.

Other than that caveat: any comments or suggestions?

For one of my projects, I would like to make it possible for users to voluntarily positively identify themselves.

This means I would need to know:
a) that they are the person they say they are, by actual legal name;
b) that that person is a qualified, registered voter; and
c) where that person lives (to county level minimum, city preferentially, mailing address optional).

I want to be able to do this with
a) minimal user difficulty,
b) minimal privacy exposure (beyond knowing that specific information),
c) minimal cost, and
d) maximal provability to skeptical third parties.

I've considered a few ways to do this, that have problems.

1. Get direct credit card info, make a tiny charge or deposit to it (e.g. $0.01), and have them verify that amount.

PRO: Gives reasonable assurance of their name, plus a mailing address.

This is the method used by banks (including PayPal) to authenticate someone as a user of an account and (in conjunction with an online contract) authorize them to deposit/withdraw on it as an account owner. Minus the charge/deposit, it's also used by Amazon for their RealName feature.

CON: Directly collecting CC info is a problematic issue. The security requirements (and audit) involved is an expensive pain; and if one does it via deposit, it would cost me at least a few cents per user (which is probably prohibitive for my purposes).

Privacy issues are significant, in that I have zero desire (or need) to store credit card info a priori - I use third party payment processors like PayPal or Amazon - and I don't want to have users have any question about my doing so.

Finally, it's not really good ID. One can get credit cards in other names (for example, under a DBA), use an address that isn't the same as one's residence, or 'borrow' someone else's card.


2. Use PayPal or Amazon as third-party identifiers - have them prove that they own an account, and show that that account has been authenticated by the third party as belonging to the name in question.

PRO: I don't have to store CC info. Otherwise identical to #1.

CON: I (and my auditors) have to trust the third party, whose ID methods may be insufficient. I have to create some way (custom to that third party) to authenticate a user as tied to an account that cannot be mimicked by the user alone. People could use someone else's account to falsely ID.


3. Get the user to submit a scan of a government issued ID, possibly in conjunction with a video or picture them doing something uniquely elicited (e.g. holding a sign that says "I am [name], and I [project slogan]").

PRO: Government ID is generally accepted everywhere. Combined with a photo or video of the person depicted, it's reasonably good ID. Plus, all government IDs have an address, so that is easy to verify.

CON: Privacy is problematic, again, though probably only minimally so. With government ID #, one can look up other information... but this same information can be obtained just from the name & location. However, there's a perception of real privacy associated with it; people would object to it being available to third parties.

More problematic is execution. Most people do not have access to a scanner and webcam or digital camera, and the whole rigamarole is a pain in the ass. Nice for some purposes (e.g. marketing photo montage).

Finally, government IDs can be faked - especially with a scanned or photographed copy. And there's no easy way to automatically process them to see if they match the text version submitted. (It'd take image processing yada yada, something I would rather not get into if unnecessary.)


4. Have user answer automated credit history questions - e.g. last address, mortgage company, etc - same as per what online banks typically require to open an account.

PRO: Pretty good ID (enough to open a new credit account, after all). Moderate extra privacy revelations.

CON: I don't know how one implements this; I presume you have to sign up for it through a (expensive) backend service that's only practical when used by large financial institutions.

Basically, it's probably too expensive. But if you know details, I'd like to learn more.


5. Have user simply give the info and electronically sign a statement swearing under oath that it is true.

PRO: Extremely easy to do. Zero tech involved, zero extra disclosures.

CON: Zero verification, also... with some exceptions.

a) Name and address combination can be checked against third party sources - e.g. government registries, credit card agencies, etc. (Probably for a cost, alas.) So at least, one could verify that that combination was legit (even if one doesn't know the user is that person).

b) This is the only level of verification that is actually required by law for what I want to do - name, address, signature affirming identity & understanding &c.

However, what I want is to be able to provide a *higher* level, for a number of reasons. It's very important to me to prevent sockpuppetry (I know multiple other techniques to fingerprint a particular *computer*, but that's subideal at best); to associate people to real names; and to know for certain that a particular user is an actual currently registered voter of a particular jurisdiction.


So... suggestions? More info? Other pros/cons I should consider?

Lots of people have discussed (e.g. On the Media's recent story) the problems with how research is published currently.

The journal system of publication was made in pre-Internet days to satisfy essentially two criteria (which I agree are critically important):
1. One should easily know the quality of research when reading it (implicitly everything published is high quality)
2. One should easily be able to subscribe to only the research that one is interested in (because the full amount is a way too voluminous)

However, the journal system comes with some major problems:
1. It excludes (by price) anyone without major funds or a university affiliation from reading them, even though the research was probably paid for by taxes. This distorts the public service foundational purpose of publicly funded research.

2. It tends to publish only the most dramatic positive results, resulting in a seriously misleading sense of the overall underlying truth because negative or neutral results are not seen (cf. The Economist)

3. It binds someone to a single search criterion: namely, whatever the Journal of Foo's editors think is interesting to Foo. So if you have multiple research interests, or you want to find *all* articles about bar, you have to engage in an extremely cumbersome full-scan search. (Anyone who's done database optimization should know that's really really bad.)


Both of these are of course incomplete lists; I've just pointed out the highlights.


Therefore, I suggest this:

*All* research that is, directly or indirectly, subsidized by public money must be published in a single central system. That is, every single project - regardless of its outcome, even if it's eventually killed or the answer is "we are unable to figure out how to do foo using the bar technique" - must go in.

Basically *all* non-trivial-time work done should be adequately written up, even if the result obtained is trivial or redundant or unimpressive, or if the methodology used was flawed (though of course this should be clearly stated). This also includes every dissertation & thesis made in any (even partially) publicly-funded institution.

Additionally, all research made about any drug, public infrastructure, etc - that is, where there is a significant public right to know the results - must be included.

Any non-publicly-funded researchers that would like to participate may do so on a completely equal footing. There is no exclusion requirement; people can still publish elsewhere as they currently do.

This publication must include all raw data & all as-processed data as an attachment, in any currently used open standard format that is most appropriate to the data. In the case of biotech or similar where the "raw data" is actually a bunch of petri dishes, then whatever is closest to it should be included, and some easy method for the transmission of samples to anyone who can demonstrate that they are capable of handling it in a proper manner is required. In any case, the format should be the most appropriate and accessible - preferably, whatever the researchers themselves used.

Everything necessary should be included in the central system.

Human subject data should, where appropriate, be psuedonymized first (i.e. replace names with numbers, but keep data-to-subject associations).

The system will have:
1. completely free online access to everyone everywhere, and at-cost access in physical form (e.g. a journal consisting of the reviewed research about mirror neurons)
2. pre-publication review, so that you can publish work in progress to reviewers (-only, if desired), and the publication will be marked as non-final - though with some expiry time such that e.g. if you've not been heard from in 6 months it goes ahead with publication
3. anonymous authenticated review (so that every researcher can authenticate themselves as being someone in the field [e.g. by virtue of having published in it before w/ high quality ratings], and comment anonymously on pre-publications, like in the current peer review process)
4. a robust tagging, linking, and categorization system, so that one can easily find referred-to and referred-by research, stuff on the same subject, using the same technique, by the same people, funded by the same people, by advisors / colleagues / students of the same people, etc
5. a robust ratings system, so that people can authenticatedly comment on and rate the quality of various aspects of some research (e.g. methodological robustness, interestingness, novelty, thoroughness, relevance to other questions, questions raised for further study, etc); post-publication review being non-anonymous
6. a prominence-based feed system, so one can subscribe to e.g. high-quality high-novelty neuroscience articles without being bothered by the flood (similar to e.g. the Slashdot Firehose system)
7. a modern open-standards API (e.g. REST + XML, RSS) to allow existing systems to interact with it
8. an easy way to make and see translations of any publication
9. mandatory exclusive use of open standards (e.g. UTF8/16, ODT, PS, CSV, XML, (La)TeX, SQL, etc) - no closed standard or otherwise restricted material allowed
10. mandatory by-sa license for publicly-funded work, choice of by-nc or by-nc-sa for non-publicly-funded work
11. itself be completely open source (but single authoritative installation) and allow people to improve it through the same methods used e.g. in linux circles


Writing the app itself is not IMO all that hard.


Basically, I think that the current state of science (and journals) is seriously broken in this regard despite agreement that something like this would be a better system - and that it won't fix itself because nobody institutionally has the motivation or leverage to except the government - and the government wouldn't bother without a mandate. The 'public funding' bit is essentially just a lever to get an initial critical mass in by fiat; ultimately, I would want *all* research done *everywhere* to feed into the same single system.

Comments?

First, I'd like to give one of the most blatant examples I know of.

I'm not interested in discussing drug policy here; this is simply an illustrative example.


Definitions per the Controlled Substances Act:

Schedule 1: high abuse potential, no medical use, and no safe use under medical supervision
Schedule 2: high abuse potential, has medical use, abuse may cause severe psych/physical dependence
Schedule 3: less abuse potential than s.2, has medical use, abuse may cause moderate/low physical dependence or high psych dependence
Schedule 4: low abuse potential vs s.3, accepted medical use, abuse may cause limited physical/psych dependence
Schedule 5: low abuse potential vs s.4, accepted medical use, abuse may cause limited physical/psych dependence vs s.4

The legislature has found that GHB (which is dual-listed as S.3 under the trademark Xyrem O.o), pot, various opiates, MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, etc etc., have "no medical use" and no possibility of safe use even under medical supervision - despite studies on all of them demonstrating medical efficacy and safe usability.

However, certain other drugs are not scheduled:
* nicotine: at least moderate abuse potential, minimal medical use, abuse can cause severe dependence with mild to severe adverse health consequences (cancer, lung problems) and mild risk to others' health (2nd hand cancer / lung problems) - Schedule 2? 3?
* alcohol: high abuse potential (AA anyone?), minimal medical use (efficacy of small amounts is still under debate), abuse can cause moderate to severe dependence with mild to severe adverse health consequences (Korsakoff's Syndrome) and significant to severe risk to others' health (drunk driving) - Schedule 2? 3?

EDIT: To cite Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse David Nutt, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore, The Lancet 2007; 369: 1047–53




My point here is not to make any argument about drug policy per se, but rather that the current legislative "findings" violate the specifications listed in the law - the specified class members neither fit the class as described, nor are a complete set of the things that fit the class as described.

However, the justification of the law is based on the specifications, not the findings as such.

Therefore I propose the following (very rough) draft of a meta-law.

Every legislative finding that declares the members of a class must be based, where possible, on the preponderance of currently available scientific evidence (PCASE).

If any finding is not based on PCASE, or if available evidence has significantly changed since the last review of the finding, then any citizen may challenge the finding to be revised in accordance with PCASE.

The legislature's findings shall be interpreted by the courts as being an initial decision based on the legislature's review of PCASE, rather than an element of the law per se. If any part of the law is a mere list of members of a class that is otherwise explicitly defined, or whose underlying composition can be understood based on the legislative intent, then that list shall be interpreted as a finding in this sense, and the definition of the class as law.

Wherever possible, the courts shall interpret findings in the light of the classifications specifically expressed in the laws, and when reviewing a challenge to a finding, shall ensure that the revised finding constitues a sensible category.

Wherever possible, courts shall combine ongoing cases that deal with review of the same finding, using the combined evidence cited in all such combined cases.

[insert something here to prevent "special casing" things as a way to get around proper classification, e.g. "things that are foo, plus bar because we feel like it" should be interpreted as nothing more than "things that are foo" ]

[insert something here to prevent legislative prevention of scientific investigation that might disprove findings, unless there is PCASE to believe that even attempting such investigation would be very likely to result in severe public harm, and that this requirement should be interpreted with a strong bias towards freedom of science]

To finish the example above, in order to not have alcohol and tobacco classified as Schedule 2-3 substances, the legislature would need to change the law so as to allow for certain classes of drugs to be used recreationally. This wouldn't necessarily require reclassification from Schedule 2-3, so much as an additional classification (perhaps on the basis of the expected damage and likelihood of dependency, psychological benefits, etc).

To not have a bunch of drugs *de*classified, again, the schedule definitions would need to be changed - for example, to explicitly outlaw hallucinogenic substances (even when medical efficacy, safety of use, and low abuse potential have been established).

Which way the legislature in their infinite wisdom choose to rule is up to them; they would simply be required to be consistent about it, and in accord with what the law says it does.


The draft obviously needs a lot of work, but I would hope that the final form would be less than a page in length; the intent is straightforward enough, though it is indeed quite broad.

It'd need to be passed as a proposition no doubt, since no legislature would ever restrict themselves to this sort of truthfulness.

In any case, the intent is basically: the legislature has the power and responsibility to make laws, decide what classes of things are treated in what manner, etc, and this proposition does not challenge that.

However, we should not have cases where non-evidence-based findings are used to create laws that do not, in fact, do what they say they do. If you want to make something legal or illegal (or whatever), say so explicitly, and do so in a way that deals with conceptual categories of things.


I'd appreciate suggestions from people who understand and agree with my intent for how to better construct this, and reasoned arguments from people who don't as to why it's a bad idea (or what I should explain to make it more understandable).

I've been thinking a bit about the current state of politics & laws, and have a few concerns. My government is failing me in various ways, and not addressing issues that I believe to be important.

Traditionally, getting a proposition onto the ballot requires hiring door-to-door people, a multimilliion dollar budget, etc... but this is the age of the internet meme and viral marketing. I suspect that, for a popular idea and with a context to do it, this could be done almost enitrely by volunteers. In California, it requires only 434k votes in 150 days to get an initiative on the ballot, and 695k to get a constitutional amendment. We can do this.

So, to those of you who have an interest in both politics and computers, I hereby request your assistance.

I want to create a website, http://makeyourlaws.org, that allows people to create laws in a truly democratic fashion - that is, through direct vote rather than delegation to representatives.

To summarize, there are three stages and areas of the site:
1. Idea voting a la BillWatch.us
2. Fleshing-out, analysis & review a la wikipedia, Secretary of State / Attorney General, and factcheck.org
3. Signature gathering & proposition submission a la petitiononline.com, except on paper with real legal validity


I have one proposition with universal appeal to start with:

All voting machines used in the state or created by companies doing business in the state must:
a) create a voter-verifiable paper trail
b) be completely open source in every aspect of their design, including blueprints and source code (companies may however retain other copyrights)
c) be publicly audited for security & other concerns, and pass in the version used
d) be accessible to voters with disabilities
e) be secure against all tampering (i.e. if anybody can find and demonstrate an exploit, then it is immediately invalid)

Additionally, companies that knowingly attempt to produce voting machines that have security flaws, back doors, or the like, are subject to heavy penalties.