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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spin Control

Sunday Spin: A little levity, a little history

OLYMPIA – Slogging through stories of budgets and taxes, the average reader might think Olympia is a pretty dreary, humorless place. Some days it is about as gray as the fog that rolls up from the South Puget Sound.

But not always. Take last week’s committee debate on a bill to allow you to sue someone who gains unauthorized access to your webcam, and watch you doing something without your permission. Serious stuff, to be sure, but committee staff took the extra step of explaining a key computer term for software that makes such misbehavior possible, a Trojan horse.

“The term is derived from the story of the wooden horse used to trick defenders of Troy into taking concealed warriors into their city. . .” the bill analysis – obviously written by someone who knows Homer isn’t just a character on “The Simpsons” – said in explaining how such malware gets into someone’s computer.

Good job at providing historical context, Rep. Brady Walkinshaw, D-Seattle, said before the committee gave it a unanimous vote and moved onto the next bill, which involved a delay in returning firearms that have been seized by police.

“I’d like to take the Judiciary Committee back to the Peloponnesian War, if I may, for a second,” Rep. Matt Shea, R-Spokane Valley, said in raising objection to that bill. “The lesson learned out of that is that things can change very quickly.”

Some might argue the lesson was how to spell Peloponnesian. For those a bit shaky on Ancient Greek history, that was the war between Athens and Sparta some 2,500 years ago. Same general area as the Trojan War; quite a bit later.



The Spokesman-Review's political team keeps a critical eye on local, state and national politics.