To Assange or not to Assange

I love Ecuador!  They are making for some very interesting silliness to help me recover from London Olympics overload and annoying US Election craziness.

As I type this blog, Mr. Assange is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy, hoping that the Bobbies are not going to storm the place and send him back to Sweden.  Harboring suspected criminals is great drama!

I don't know if he did what he is accused of doing in Sweden, but I am fairly certain that Mr. Assange is at least partially responsible for USCG computer security policies that prohibit me from using thumb drives in my unclassified computer.  There are many reasons that you should not freely share thumb drives, safe computing and scary viruses that can destroy all your important junk on your exterior brain devices......  but the things are darn convenient!

And very cute, which is quite tempting to a tchatchke lover like myself.  [ upon entering my office in Juneau, a colleague blurted out, "it's like a Chinese curio shop in here!"  Japanese might have been more accurate, as I LOVE little anime inspired doo dads like those produced by the German Sanrio company]

[borrowed from http://www.geekiegadgets.com/tag/hello-kitty/]

And since I tend to follow the rules which, if broken, could result in my spending many years in a lovely military location in Kansas learning how to make big rocks into smaller ones (at least that is the common joke), I refrain from using thumb drives in my work computer which is attached to "the network".  Many times, I think it should be called "the net won't", but that is a topic for another blog at a later date.

Back to our Australian friend.  Due to his prowess in getting people to share info which they should really keep in classified spaces, I cannot use useful items like the cute one pictured above to quickly transfer data from one computer to another.  I can, however, burn the data on to a CD or DVD, then put that large easily scratchable item into a computer which is NOT connected to "the network", and then, finally, put it on the illegal thumb drive.

I have attended many international meetings with multiple copies of my presentation on several different types of media.  I have even given some of those copies (usually CDs) to colleagues, so that if one person's luggage was lost, we still might be able to share the information electronically.

But back to our friend hiding out in the embassy.  I hope he is all settled in, because someone will surely grab him if he ever leaves the place.

I personally am hoping that the Brits revoke the diplomatic status of the building and send him back to Sweden.  He needs to pay for at least some of his transgressions!!