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I’m back in NYC now and recovering from jetlag. You would figure with all the travel I do that I’d have a proven routine for dealing with jetlag. I don’t.
As always I consider my travels learning experiences more than anything. I learned a lot this time and met with plenty of interesting people. Like Brian Tannura an American in Japan who has become the vending machine king. A strange story of unlikely success that he explained on camera for my fellow ejovien’s (people who read my blog, just made it up).
My trip and speech at Korea University went over well. Koreans are much better English speakers than Japanese, no idea why that is, though the hotel staff preferred to speak to me in Japanese rather than English. They get more Japanese tourist than they do American. I think there is a strong sense of nationalism in Korea that is very much overt. I think the nationalism in Japan is much more hidden. People say young Japanese aren’t nationalistic but I was in Japan during the world cup, when push comes to shove the Japanese are extremely nationalistic.
Korea is wired with fiber to most homes. There is a huge hacking culture which was a surprise to me. Where there is access there are hackers. I was surprised because Japan, a very close neighbor has almost no hacking culture. Power of Community is a security / hacker conference organized in Korea that expects a few thousand attendees rivaling the attendances of the longest running hacker conference in the world, Defcon.
In Korea there is a strong sense of the importance of security and innovation, missing from Japan. And now I’m back in NYC in the cold of October wondering why I’m here with the weather turning against me.
There is a Japanese translation at the end of this:
Loosing the case has been disappointing. Before I filed the suit over Soumusho’s censorship the general opinion by those who I asked was, “This is Japan. This is the way it is…” Their assumption was that, right or wrong there was nothing anyone could do about it, especially a non-Japanese.
Once as a young kid I was smacked by a school teacher. When I complained to the principle of the school that the teacher hit me, I was told “That’s just the way she is.” This response made me furious. The teacher had not only broken school regulations by hitting a student, but she had also broken the law by assaulting a child. Even thinking now about how the principle could dismiss something so obviously wrong makes me angry. That day changed my life.
I don’t believe in “this is the way it is…” thinking when when it comes to things that are clearly wrong. Just because something is tolerated does not make it right. I appreciate Japan too much to believe that we should accept an injustice like censorship simply because “this is the way it is.” That’s why I filed the suit.
The governments defense was “we didn’t do it, the company did” and of course the Japanese company fell on its own sword and agreed that their decision to cancel my talk had nothing to do with the governments verbose concerns. But it doesn’t take a scientist to see these facts: my topic was approved 3 months before the conference by SIDC (the Japanese company) and PacSec steering committee. My complete presentation including slides were approved by SIDC and PacSec steering committee again 3 weeks before my presentation. Yet the decision to cancel my presentation was made by SIDC (a government contractor) minutes before I went on stage.
After discussions with my lawyers it seems to me that in the majority of the cases, the high court will not overturn a ruling. Even though the ruling was flawed by our (security practitioners) standards, it may seem extremely logical to 40-50 year old Japanese judges who aren’t technically savvy. If the judge simply read the conclusion of the lower court, which only argues the governments point that it was the doing of SIDC, I’m not confident they would disagree. And it doesn’t appear like we have a revolutionary argument to make them see differently. While I’m very upset about the outcome and of course the courts statements about my trustworthiness. I’ve decided not to move forward. I regret losing most of all for not being able to prove those who say “this is the way it is…” wrong.
2006年10月16日
この件が敗訴になったことには裏切られた気分でいます。総務省の検閲に対してこの訴訟を提訴する前に、私が訊ねた知人たちの一般的な意見は「ここは日本だ。そうなるのが当然なのだ…」というものでした。それが正しかろうと間違っていようと、特に日本人でない者であるなら、誰であってもこのことについて出来ることはないというのが、彼らの意見の前提になっていました。
私が子供だったころに、ある学校の教師に叩かれたことがあります。私がその学校の校長に対してその教師が私を殴ったことについて苦情を言った時、「それがその女教師の当然のやり方なのだ」と言われました。この校長の答えは私を激怒させました。その教師は、生徒を殴ることで学校の規定をやぶっていただけでなく、子供に対する暴行を加えることで法律もやぶっていたのです。今になって考え直してみても、その校長が明らかに間違っている事態を見逃したことは、私を怒りに駆り立てます。その日が私の人生を変えました。
私は、明らかに間違っている事象について考える時、「そうなるのが当然なのだ…」ということを信じません。何故なら、もし「何か」が我慢できるからといって、我慢できること自体はその「何か」を正当だとさせる理由ではないからです。私は、「そうなるのが当然なのだ」という単純な理由をもとに、人々は検閲のような不正行為を受け入れるべきだと信じることについて、日本という国にいくら感謝しても足りないと思っています。それが、私がこの訴訟を提訴した理由です。
政府側の弁護は「我々はやっていない。担当企業がやったのだ。」というものでした。もちろんその日本企業は、政府の回りくどい懸念に対して無関係な私の講演をキャンセルする決定を政府と合意したため、身動きが取れなくなったわけです。しかし、「私の講演トピックは、コンファレンスの3ヶ月前に（担当日本企業である）SIDCとPacSec実行委員会で認められたこと」「スライドを含む私の完全なプレゼンテーションは、これも講演の3週間前にSIDCとPacSec実行委員会で認められたこと」「私のプレゼンテーションをキャンセルする決定は、これも私がステージに上がる数分前に（政府事業の請け負い業者である）SIDCによって為されたこと」というこれらの事実は、別段科学者をつれて来て分析しなくても自明なことです。
私の弁護士と相談したあと、私にとっては、高等裁判所はこの件の大部分について地方裁判所の判決を逆転するとは思えないでいます。この判決は、私たち（セキュリティ専門家）の基準において欠陥であるにもかかわらず、40-50歳の技術に明るくない日本国民である裁判官にとっては、極度に論理的だと思えるであろうからです。もし高裁の裁判官が、政府側の論点をもとにSIDCの行為について議論している地裁の結論を単純に読んだら、彼らがそれに対して意義を唱えるかどうかに私は確信は持てません。また私たちが、高裁の裁判官がものごとを違って見えるようにできる、革命的な反論を持っているようにも見えません。私は、この裁判の結果に対してと、もちろん裁判所の判決文が私の信用度についてとった方向性に対してとても憤慨しているわけですが、私はこれより先に進まないことを決定しました。私は、「そうなるのが当然なのだ…」と言う者たちの間違いを証明する立場に居られなかったことを、遺憾に思います。
イジョヴィ・ヌーワー
I lost my case agaisn’t soumushou. That and work related stuff has left me a little less motivated to share my thoughts / feelings on the blog. Sorry for the absense.
Today I landed in Seoul, Korea. Next week I will give a speech at Korea University on VoIP security, Dug Song will also be speaking and we plan on hanging out with Korean hackers (techies) after the speech.
Its my first time in Korea. First impressions, people stare a lot. I went to a restaurant for lunch and watched as other dinners used a knife and fork to eat sliced pickles, the kind of sliced pickles you find on hamburgers. They also ate bread with a fork. They put the bread on a fork and dip it into olive oil and take tiny bites out of it.
While in Japan I came to the conlusion that Japan is a great place to start a company, assuming you have connections. The vast majority of consumers are concentrated in two major cities, Tokyo and Osaka. And because few companies tend to corner markets if you make one or two partnerships you can build a extremely large company overnight. If you don’t have any connections or can’t make connections, its not such a great place to start a company.
Take for example icecream. Lets assume you are at a party and meet the purchaser for 7-11 Japan and they agree to sell your icecream. Because the convience store market is cornered by 4 or 5 companies that are on nearly every corner in Japan, doing a deal, even with the smallest of the 5 could mean having your product placed in thousands of convience stores over night. Sounds good to me.
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