“My Cloud and Only My Cloud”

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If you’ve browsed through this blog site, you know I write a lot about privacy. Enough so you should know, as I do, that we don’t have a shred of it, thanks to the Internet and “Total Information Awareness” by the government in the name of “fighting terrorism” and “ensuring our safety”. Left with the choice of rolling over and accepting that, or making some effort to claim or reclaim some of the rights, like, yes, privacy, that have been stolen from us, I choose the latter. My views are not universally shared. Translation: a lot of people don’t give a damn because their heads are buried so far up where the sun don’t shine. There are entertainment devices there too, no doubt, along with the concomitant snooping devices.

It with the foregoing backdrop that I took some pleasure today in reading a product review on Amazon. The review was for a product that lets you set up your own “cloud storage” on your existing Internet connection without monthly fees, without relinquishing your data as property you posses, and without service agreements that remind you that “authorities” can swoop in and demand access to your data (without you ever being aware of it) at any time. I quote:

I have yet to make the jump to cloud computing, because I guess that I just don’t trust it. I want control of my personal photos and documents and I don’t want anybody peeping in on them unless I authorize them. Oh I know, those cloud people say that everything is secure, but let big brother come along with their paperwork and watch how fast your personal info is shared with them. Then there is the problem of hackers.

– Island Dreamer

Thank you, Island Dreamer. I wish you knew how you cheered me up a bit with that spontaneous bit of backbone you showed. If only… if only…

And Now the News Not

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This week has brought us several non-news stories.

The Underware Bomber: Sure to briefly rouse you from your stupor with the keyword “underware”, the headline for this story should be: “U.S. Agent does what US Government tells him to do”. Not terribly exciting, but sure to instill more fear of Government Terrorism to be perpetrated on the citizens of the U.S.

Another story all over the mainstream media that is “so last year” — the Google Car in Nevada. I added my two cents to this story July 11th of last year. Why the sudden interest in this dog of a story?

 

Paper Shredding: Do’s and Don’ts

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Just a reminder that the courts have OK’ed “Dumpster Diving” for Law Enforcement, so that beggarly looking individual going through your garbage could easily be a policeman, detective, FBI agent, or whatever…

When it comes to shredding paper with your name and address or other sensitive information on it, follow these important DO’s:

  • DO avoid stirring up the shreds. This makes it more difficult for Federal agencies to piece them back together.
  • DO take your shreds to your local police station for “recycling” — this will help ensure your shreds are taken directly to the Phillipines with minimum disturbance so they can be more easily pieced together.
  • DO shred only important or “incriminating” information – like bank statements, cash receipts, or voter registration notices: shredding blank paper or packaging materials increases the amount of work required to snoop your shreds.
  • DO bag shreds separately, and keep shreds from each shredding session together. Shred snoops don’t like to handle garbage. Help keep our taxes low by reducing the cost to our government of piecing together your shreds!

Now that we’ve had some sadly ironic fun…

In the particular state I’m in now, folks try to do what’s good for the environment. They try to do what’s right too, but that’s were things often go wrong. After all, some of the greatest damage is done by people trying to “do good”. In this state, there are regular media campaigns encouraging citizens to “bring in their shredded paper” to, of all places, police stations, to have it recycled. It seems no one has questioned this “service” being offered by the police.

Why not recycle it like other recyclables? In the greater metro area, recycling is universally available. In one place we checked out, recyclables are placed in blue bags to separate them from non-recyclable trash. Some communities support “single stream” recycling, where all recyclables are placed in a single recycling container, and the recyclables are separated at the recycling center.

Given this wide availability of recycling, why would one bring their shredded documents, that contained shredded personal information, to the police? I’m sorry, but in a land where the NSA records all phone calls and Internet activity, and then stores it forever, this brings up images of Filipinos who once worked for the FBI and CIA going through the shredded material and meticulously bringing it back to its original state for snooping purposes.

I’d like to find a better explanation, but I can’t think of one.

They’ll be Watching Your Every Move (DNS)

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I have it from a manager (who wishes to remain anonymous) at one of the largest global ISPs, that the Federal Government will be paying millions of dollars for the company to collect and provide the source IP address and domain name for every DNS lookup that occurs on the public Internet.

Every time you access, say, http://factcheck.org, your browser makes a DNS (Domain Name System) request to get the current IP address for the domain you’re requesting. Beginning in May, according to my source, that information will be collected and transmitted to the Feds, who will merge it with other data, such as who is paying for your IP address, and how they paid it. Other information it will be merged with will include your Facebook information, all the information Google collects, the emails you’ve sent and received, the porn sites you’ve visited, the proxies you’ve used to attempt to remain anonymous, and so on.

In short, the Feds already know more about you than you do. Soon they will know EVERYTHING about you. You can expect the IRS to knock on your door requesting pennies, or fractions of cents, for unreported transactions and the like in the near future.

My question remains: when will the public have had enough? A dysfunctional government that can’t even balance the budget has squandered bazillions of YOUR (our) dollars to wire you, your body, and your mind for sound and HD video. It’s not a healthy way to live, and no one with a shred of self-respect should be accepting this status quo.

Bon Voyage, Dick Clark

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One of the less delightful things about aging is seeing the population of your friends and acquaintances dwindle. I hereby mourn the loss of Dick Clark, one of those whom we feared might be immortal, but turned out to be mortal after all.

I made my acquaintance with Dick on the set of the “$10,000 Pyramid” game show at a decrepit old ABC studio on, I believe it was 57th street, in NYC back in the 1980′s. I was an engineer at ABC at the time. The cameras and studio equipment were on their last legs. The studio was dusty and dirty, as was the set. The set had cobwebs and scuff marks all over it. The set was drenched in light so bright you had to struggle to avoid squinting. The effect of all that light was to wash away the scuff marks, cobwebs, dust, and flaws in the images produced by the dottering cameras. Unfortunately, it also washed away the color and features of the caucasian faces that populated the stage, so Dick and the contestants wore a fair amount of makeup so they would look normal under all that light.

Dick was relaxed, and looking some 20 or more years younger than he was. Close up, and not viewed through the camera, TV pancake makeup doesn’t hide much, rather it tends to accentuate imperfections. Dick had a perfect smile, real hair, and looked 30 even though he was in his 50′s at that time. No wrinkles were evident. It was truly amazing. I thought “the rumors are true; he’s immortal”. I wondered how old he really was… hundreds, thousands, millions of years?

The folks in the control room weren’t so relaxed. They didn’t like being stuck in such an old, out-of-date studio, and they wanted to get out of there. A technical problem that was beyond their responsibility needed fixing. As I took care of it, Dick chatted with the contestants, technicians, and me in the same, casual and engaging way he did on-camera. Neither his surroundings, not the technical problems seemed to have any effect on his sunny disposition. I wrapped up my work there, and approached him to say goodbye. “It was so nice to meet you” I said. He looked me dead in the eye like it was a TV camera, smiled, and said “nice to meet you too, and thanks for coming down to take care of us!”. His response was totally genuine. I made it a point to occasionally drop by and say hello or exchange a wave and a smile.

People like Dick Clark was are a minority in the TV business. Far too many, who I will not name here, are temperamental, obnoxious, rude, impatient, and/or spoiled.

Goodbye, Dick. I’m glad I met you briefly while you were in this world.

 

Malicious Blog Comment Spam

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It never ceases to amaze me the amount of effort that is put into spamming, when the results are so statistically low. Every day we get hundreds of poorly crafted comments to this blog posted by bots in the hopes of having a web link appear. It’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spam that’s done in hopes of raising ranking on Google and the like. Google, for the most part, ignores this stuff, so the people doing it are a pretty ignorant lot. As are most spammers. After all, if they had some brains, they’d be making more money with less work, and not defecating where they live.

Today we found a much darker form of comment spam. It is malicious. It is a list of obscene words, links to child pornography sites, and the like that would trash the Google and other online reputations if it appeared on the site.

That’s the price of publishing a blog. If you want to maintain any kind of reputation, you have to manually moderate all comments. You can’t simply block IPs because there are zillions of spammers, and not all in the third world. We have logged hundreds in Los Angeles, for example. And so, spammers create jobs for comment moderators. There’s a duality operative here. For each badness of the spammers, a relative goodness manifests to counter it. Cat and mouse. Good cop, bad cop. White hat, black hat. Oh the wonder of the human race! Makes you wonder…

 

Wireless Freedom? Fail.

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You may have spotted the TV ad with the tag line “America’s Wireless Freedom”. Like many blatant corporate image ads, this one seeks to convince you that, by inference, freeing your imagination, you are somehow free.

Keeping them honest, by now nearly everyone knows that their cell phone is essentially a tracking device, while many people are tethered to their cellular device 24×7. When your cell phone is powered, your every move is detected and recorded as a side effect of cellular technology (regardless of the “security settings” on your phone). Your every move is then scrutinized by business, government, and possibly criminals. The information is logged, along with the calls you make, the websites you visit, and the apps you use. This information can then be mined, along with the information gleaned from your fellow cell phone users now, and forever in the future.

The ad (below) from the CTIA (“The Wireless [Industry] Association”) is one of an ongoing flood of ads meant to focus your attention on the “wow” factor, and more positive aspects of cell phone use, so you’ll spend less time thinking about the disturbing consequences of being tethered to your phone.

This is the prime example of how we are being systematically robbed of our freedom. Through social and peer pressure, as well as pressure from employers to be “available”, as well as our subconscious fear of being alone, we are seduced into giving up our freedom by voluntarily wearing these tracking devices at all times.

The “Wireless Freedom” Ad

The CTIA’s YouTube channel has more advertisments of this type: http://www.youtube.com/user/CTIATheWirelessAssoc

Terrorist: Fail Word

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From the series: “Will 2012 be a fail year?”

Languages that are living (compared to, say, Latin) are ever changing and evolving. Let’s get real, folks. The meaning of “terrorist” has changed. By now anyone with a nominally functioning brain knows that the new definition of the word is “someone we don’t like or is a threat to the status quo” when used by governments or forces of the status quo. [The pun of the use of Latin here is both intended, and meant to appeal to those with nominally functioning brains]

When Bashir El Assad calls the Syrian people “terrorists” only a fool doesn’t recognize that the meaning of the word is the same as when it is used in connection with the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act).

Fasten your seat-belts, if 2012 isn’t fail it wil, in the words of chaos monger Newt Gingrich, be “wild and woolly”.

Occupy Boulder Fail?

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Will 2012 be a fail year?

I traveled to the People’s Republic of Boulder, as neighboring Coloradans call it: 10 square miles surrounded by reality. The purpose of my visit was to check in on Occupy Boulder; Boulder City had changed the law to prohibit occupying park space overnight, thus making the Occupy Boulder encampment illegal.

Boulderites, being very politically correct, obeyed the new law immediately, saying (as reported in The Denver Post) that they would focus their efforts during daytime. Only one person was arrested as the encampment picked up and dispersed. However, the Boulder courts are clogged with previous Occupy Boulder arrests, as the crimes involved mandate jury trials under local law. Efforts to change the legal proceedings to alleviate pressure on the local courts have been criticized as being anti-homeless. Which they are. Surprise, surprise.

Streaming live video on Global Revolution, I combed the area looking for evidence of Occupy Boulder. I was threatened by a dealer posing as a Colorado University student, talked with a homeless person denied any knowledge of anything, and obtained a confession from a groundskeeper said the last he’d seen of them was when they moved out the encampment.

The intersection of Broadway and Canyon adjacent the Municipal Building had a beggar with a cardboard sign on each corner. These people are professionals, and I’d given them a wide berth. They don’t take kindly to encroachment of any kind on their territory; when encroachment occurs, violence ensues. The most effective sign these people have wielded is by far the one reading “Need money for beer and prostitutes” (if measured by resultant income). On this occasion, however, one individual was holding a sign that said: “Greed Is Not An Option” with “99%” written in extremely small characters. I asked this one if he had seen any “Occupy Boulder” protesters. He answered “I AM the Occupy Boulder Protestor”.

Please view my interview with him:  http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19868453

Also at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4HFnerfFaI

NH Vote Count Fail

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Will 2012 be a fail year?

In the “they should have left well enough alone department”, the Republicans decided to re-count the Iowa caucuses results. They didn’t let the disappearance of many of the voting records get in the way of trying to change the outcome to their liking.

Watching the Republicans try to come up with a candidate is more fun than watching a barrel of monkeys. Hey, wait a minute! It IS watching a barrel of monkeys.

I suppose I should be more forgiving. After all, ballot box stuffing is an ancient tradition. So is rewriting history.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” must have been apocryphal. Some species must be willing to step up the plate and relieve this planet of its’ infestation by the pathetic humans.