Maybe There Will Be A Tomorrow After All

As a boy, I wanted to be an astronaut.  I knew the details of each stage of the Saturn V.  I had listened to the recordings of the moon landing on LP (that's "vinyl", to those of another generation).  I had assembled a model of the L.E.M. ("Lunar Excursion Module," I might have said dismissively if someone expressed ignorance) using airplane glue and gold-colored foil.  I became irate with Elliot when he chose to remain behind instead of venturing into the universe with E.T.

The failure of 20/20 vision as a teen, and the discovery that the military-style discipline required to actually venture into space was otherwise incompatible with my disposition, led me to write off the possibility of actually being aboard a spacecraft.  The idea of commercial (or non-government) space travel, meanwhile, had been largely relegated to the part of my brain that subsisted on a diet of Heinlein, Asimov, and other geniuses of "science fiction."

Definitely choose avocado-tone appliances, faux-wood
 paneling, and watching your mom smoke and read
the personals instead of intergalactic space travel.  

Last night, I stood in the back yard with my son, listening to the control room chatter on my phone (no wires!) as we watched a short, fiery streak ascend from the horizon. We watched the product of a space company (!) head through the atmosphere, and  saw the flare increase in brilliance as the rocket stages were ignited. I discovered that the spark - long since thought extinguished - remained a glowing ember, ready to be fanned and maybe to ignite the passion of possibility for another generation.

In Response to My Rep's Email: "Reviewing The Last Week"

Dear Congressman Gibson,

Thank you for your e-newsletter. It's a shame that you have chosen to become a partisan hack on this issue, when you've generally seemed to act in the interests of your constituents in the past.

Would you refuse to write a check for your children's tuition or the mortgage payment unless your wife delayed a visit to the in-laws, or agreed to schedule a visit to your family at the same time? Of course not: These are unrelated issues, and it would be irresponsible of you to hurt the very people you claimed to care about by abdicating your basic responsibilities to them. And then to send your kids a note blaming your wife? Reprehensible.

Fix health care through legislation intended to do so: If you have better ideas, make the case for them. Everyone wants better answers!  But this is taking-the-ball-and-going-home, pouting-in-the-corner behavior.

Grown-ups don't behave like this. America is sick of being "represented" by petulant children.

Pack your bags and tune up your resume: If you expect to be trusted with this job again, you're going to find yourself in the ranks of the unemployed.

Rest assured mine is one vote you're not getting next time around. I hope beyond hope that a grown-up will run for your office.

Sincerely,
Jon Luning
Dover Plains, NY

You're not a scientist, are you?

This post stems from a Facebook thread regarding HPV vaccination.  In the midst of it, statements were made implying a non-trivial risk from the vaccination itself.

Me:  Still looking for specific, documented, significant risks as a result of these vaccines, though. References to science (vs. editorials) always welcome.

Friend: Jon... Why? Science is always proving themselves wrong! How many drugs and food additives/preservatives that were once deemed "safe" have been re-called, given people permanent physical or mental damage or worse... Killed ! I'm baffled as to why you are so pro-science? You're not a scientist, are you?

I'm pro-truth. People make claims about the truth - specifically about ways the world works - all the time. Some of them are utter BS. Others are extremely reliable. Most fall somewhere in between, and it's difficult to evaluate the likelihood of their being true without understanding the evidence.

Science is a set of tools by which some truth claims can be investigated. In order to work, it requires a constant stream of inquiry, the generation of ideas based on knowledge gained so far, and the generation of experimental evidence which could disprove those ideas.

This is a big deal because many of the facts - the real truths - about the way the world works are not intuitive to the human mind. For example: Imagine I have a ball made of glass that weighs 1 lb., and a ball made of lead exactly the same size and shape, which weighs more (say 4 or 5 lbs). For a long time, people assumed that, if one were to drop these things, the lead ball - which is much heavier - would fall faster than the glass ball. Aristotle taught this in ancient Greece. But, in the late 16th century, Galileo is reported to have actually tried it - dropping balls of different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (Note: Throwing stuff from tall places is just one of the really cool benefits of doing science.)

It turned out that they fell at the same speed, and hit at the same time. Aristotle was wrong. You - or anyone else - can repeat this experiment (maybe not from the same place), and should get the same result. No matter how hard one argues or believes or anything else, under the same conditions you should get the same result. In practical and rough terms, the rate of falling due to gravity is independent of the mass of the object falling. When a statement is made that can be tested in the world, then it could be right or it could be wrong: The truth is independent of anybody's opinion. This is what separates facts from opinions.

Science describes a set of processes and "rules" for evaluating statements about reality. One rule is that the statement must be predictive: That is, it must have consequences that can be compared to reality. A statement like, "Every person shares the universal buddha-nature" is not subject to testing, so science is irrelevant in evaluating it. However, a statement like "All humans have auras about them, which can be seen consistently, even through sheets or walls," IS subject to testing.

The "rules" of science tell us what kind of test is fair, how to design experiments to test specifically the statement in question, and how to account for errors and other factors that could affect the results. When it was discovered that the act of taking a pill affected a person's symptoms, even if the pill really did nothing at all chemically, it became necessary to account for this "placebo effect" when designing drug experiments to see whether one pill worked better than another, or at all. (Even to the point when it was learned that if those running the experiment knew which were "real" and which were "fake", that this information could be unintentionally transmitted to experimental subjects and could affect their reactions. This is where "double-blind" studies come from, where those involved in the experiment itself don't know what's pill A from pill B from a sugar pill.)

Another "rule" of science is disclosure: Publicly explaining ("publishing") your hypothesis and experiment(s) so that others can check the logic of your experimental design and can also try to duplicate your results. This is the ultimate test: If you state a truth about the universe, and how you have discovered evidence in support of it, then it must be evidence that can be re-created by any others who - as long as they are honest in performing the experiment - will get the same results even if they don't initially believe the claim. This is why airplanes fly in Tokyo exactly as they do in New York.

So, when a claim is made like, "This vaccine has significant side-effects," that's subject to clarification and testing: What is the evidence? Is it anecdotal and uncontrolled ("I heard...") or experimental? How do reactions compare against people who are given a placebo instead of the vaccine?

The goal is to reach a real understanding of the risk, so it can be compared against the potential benefits.
Am I a scientist? On one level, sure: Part of my value to my clients in the ability to reliably determine obstacles to their objectives, hypothesize approaches to resolve them, assist in putting them in place, and measuring the results. Many laboratory concepts come into play. At other points in my career I've been much more of a true "scientist" and less of an "engineer." I've certainly had a ton of training in science.

In daily life, I use these concepts all the time, sometimes in very important situations. For example, would you let someone perform a procedure on you which had a 2% chance of giving you a stroke? What if the benefit was that you'd increase your chances of living more than a week from 50% to 90%? I had less than a minute to make this decision. The doctor - who amazingly enough answered my questions quickly, thoroughly, and politely - also had to manage risk scientifically: What were the chances I was a drug user? I denied it but if I was, and he gave me the standard course of treatment, I'd likely (90+%) die as a result. (He took the chance.)(So did I.)

The problem most of us encounter isn't "science", it's people - often journalists, sometimes scientists themselves - who claim implications beyond those supported by the evidence, or in advance of public scrutiny of their work. When a scientists releases that "hey, we took this enzyme that's found in X and found it did Y in a petri dish", this often gets translated by the people at Good Morning America to mean, "Science says you should eat more X."

Yeah, like this...

Far worse, though, in my opinion, are those who are blatantly trying to sell a "special remedy" and make claims that have no support, or only small or poorly-designed experiments as evidence. Typically, they don't make their process/remedy public, and nobody can duplicate their results. When questioned about why their experiment or idea is criticized, the answer is almost always, "There's a conspiracy to hide my results by the big (food, pharma, defense, oil, etc) companies." (In my experience, if they really had something, it's far more likely that big X would have bought them.)

In summary, I respect "science" because it's a useful and proven process for helping distinguish truth from falsehood in regard to some claims. I don't support every person or company that "does science", because it's entirely possible to misuse a tool or to use it properly, but to achieve evil instead of good. What I NEVER support are those who make truth claims based entirely upon authority, or in contradiction of well-tested knowledge, without providing clear and convincing evidence to back up those claims. And I'll outright fight with those who would impose the consequences of baseless claims on others against their will, or in a way that causes harm to others.

"It happens all the time: They all become blueberries."

I think our key disconnect is that you equate the results of the scientific process with opinions or dogma. Science isn't a religion or a political party, it's just a set of tools. But it's a useful one, as there's a significant difference between "some people who got this shot got sick, and other people who got the shot even died!" vs. a controlled, double-blind experiment with 1,000 subjects that showed that 80% of those who received a shot puffed up like giant blueberries. All those statements may be completely true, but only the last one tells us anything really meaningful about the shots.


Like Aristotle, anyone can sit in their comfy chair and make up "facts" about the universe, which may or may not be true. "Science", instead, is like the Galileo example - where someone does the leg work to discover what the truth really is.

That's why I'm more interested in hearing about the latter than the former.


---

Berkeley has a great site on Understanding Science: how science really works

The Inevitable Privacy / Government Posts, Part IV

(this is the fourth and final part of a series. It starts here.  Part III is here.)

A Modest Proposal

(It's quite frustrating to find that Swift has become hackneyed, especially when one believes that an entirely new dimension of irony is available from his words. Oh, well...)

With all these issues arising over privacy on a government level (thanks, NSA) and on a personal level (thanks, Google Glass), it might just be that the answer we're looking for it right in front of our eyes.

I don't need this or this.  Just this ashtray.  And this paddle game.

Simon Cameron is often quoted as the authority on honest politicians as:  "one who, when he is bought, stays bought."  By this measure, we are represented by some of the most honest politicians in the short history of our democratic republic.  It's just a shame that the market was a little too rich for the blood of most individual American citizens.

Throughout this series, I've been somewhat critical of America's obsession with entertainment media, and any who know me are aware of my distaste of "reality" shows.  Yet, the same concept can be the first element of an approach to fixing government that the American public could understand, and possibly approve.

During the commentary on domestic spying and privacy, I've repeatedly heard opinions along the lines of, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear with having your activities recorded." While this statement is either naive or downright evil when applied to the population at large (a discussion for another day) it may provide the the second part of the answer to accountable government that we've been looking for.  In outline form then - with many, many unresolved details and nuances - here it is:

"Full Disclosure"

• Upon announcement of forming an interest group, throughout any campaign and, if elected, until the expiration of the term of office, any candidate for a seat in the U.S. Congress, or for any federal elected position, shall be subject to "continuous recording."
• Subjects of "continuous recording" shall be outfitted with one or more devices which shall reliably record the area around the subject (typically) from the subject's point of view, and shall record all sound around the subject, including the subject's speech and any sounds or speech audible to the subject.
• The sound and video recorded by these devices shall be reliably and securely captured, and reliably and securely transmitted for permanent storage ("the permanent record").  Device-stored data will be erased from the device once it has been verified as being included in the permanent record.
• Except as otherwise provided for, the contents of the permanent record shall be released into the public domain 24 months after it is recorded [note: just a proposed time-frame, but it needs to be well-considered and definitive, maybe based on specific office].
• The subject may note specific dates, times, and periods of activity which can reasonably considered as personal, and request that the permanent records of these time periods be sealed and withheld from public disclosure. 
• An independent judicial panel will review the requests above, and will determine whether the public interest supersedes the subject's privacy in each specific instance, and may determine that some, all, or none of the permanent record for that period be released as scheduled.
• There may be provisions to allow more immediate release of the permanent record, perhaps on the basis of a request from the subject, or from another individual recorded in the permanent record.

In a nutshell, that's it.  The intent is total accountability for any elected public servant at the federal level.  When acting to pursue elected office or when serving in that office, candidates understand that everything they do will be part of the public record.  This also means that it will be known and understood that any conversation held with an elected official or candidate will also become part of the public record.

There are plenty of details that would need to be worked out, but all are surmountable. It's unlikely that this would become law before being implemented.  Rather, candidates could arise who would voluntarily commit to these requirements.  Rather rapidly, each candidate for office would need to decide whether to be a "Full Disclosure" candidate, or not.

Some of the arguments against this proposal are fairly predictable, and I will briefly address the most obvious:

Every American is entitled to have some areas of privacy in their lives, and this is just too invasive, even for politicians.

Clearly, our elected representatives do not feel this way, based on the laws they have passed and activities they have approved.  But, even if we believe this in theory, candidates will have to make a conscious decision:  An individual who runs for office today forfeits a great deal of privacy that many of us take for granted.  This would certainly increase the degree of that forfeiture but, knowing the requirements in advance, nobody is forced to run for office.

How could we trust judicial oversight to properly balance the public's right to know what their representatives are doing against the valid personal space of those representatives?

We trust the rule of law and judicial independence as essential in maintaining the balance of power in the federal government.  This type of approach is the one actually chosen by our current representatives to protect our individual rights in the context of national security, so it would make sense that they would have just as much trust when it was them under the microscope, no?

How would we possibly be able to secure.... (technical details about recording, encrypting, securing, and storing data)?

We have some of the most amazing technical resources in the world available in this country.  From my personal knowledge, there is no technical challenge presented by this proposal that cannot be addressed using existing technology.  I welcome comment, though, and hope to actually see others propose tangible solution proposals.  (I am not in a position to fund this technology development, and have no plans to do so, but would be happy to provide assistance to any who wanted to make this concept a reality.)

Wouldn't there be ways to get around it?

It may be possible, and that possibility will need to be addressed, but decent technology would make this detectable, and policy could be build around that fact.  For example, it might be immediately and publicly announced if a subject was bypassing or disabling or had discontinued use of the devices.  Generally, this would need to be seen as a requirement (either ethical or legal), where the subject is expected to cooperate and help ensure a complete and correct record.

Many of the fine Americans currently serving in elected office would simply be unwilling to continue lending their talents if these kind of draconian disclosures were required.

Good.

This is intended to disrupt the status quo, which includes those fine Americans who are so dismally failing to do the business of this nation.  The basic consequence of this proposal would be accountability of office seekers and holders for their activities and statements.  If that seems to be too much to ask, then America can thank them for their service, and there will undoubtedly be a long line of others willing to step in and do the work that needs to be done in an open and unashamed manner.

Some of the business of Congress involves wheeling and dealing, and maybe even the kinds of compromises and pressures that Regular Citizens don't actually want to know the details of.  This proposal would keep business from getting done.

(Also known as the "You Can't Handle The Truth" argument.) The poet John Godfrey Saxe is credited with writing that, "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."  Yet Upton Sinclair's revelations on the latter topic did not end the production of sausage, but only tempered the obscenely disgusting process that created it, and ultimately gave us (among other things) better sausage.  A review of the state of our government at this time makes is abundantly clear that not only is little sausage being made, but constituents are the ones being led to the metaphorical abattoir.

This really is part of the discussion:  Do we want to have a country that requires its government to operate ways so shameful that they cannot ever be revealed to the light of day?

What about real honest-to-gosh national security discussions, which could run for periods longer than the default period until disclosure?

This would have to be made provision for, but would likely still be subject to judicial review on a case-by-case basis.  (A proposal to, say, make all of a particular Committee's meetings automatically exempt wouldn't work, as it would create a "cone of silence" without regard to valid national interest.)  Despite possible delays of release, an important principle would be that the record would be made public at some point.

Aren't there some things about the nation's business that should never be revealed?

Your spider-sense should tingle as soon as you hear someone make that argument.  Right now, I believe the answer is: No.

If this starts out as voluntary, then won't those who are elected without offering Full Disclosure simply refuse to work with those who do?  Won't those elected with Full Disclosure be persecuted, victims of mud-slinging, and otherwise not allowed to play in any reindeer games?

The answer is probably Yes.  This is where is gets difficult:  In order for this to work, there would need to be a grass-roots consensus that we actually DO want our representatives to be honest and transparent in representing our interests.  While this idea, and anyone who takes is seriously, will be ridiculed and vilified, what will really matter is whether people actually want a government that is working for them - the citizens - or one that continues to work for the highest bidders and social-club buddies.

Congress controls a 3.8 trillion-dollar budget, and each of its members is required to run a constant publicity and marketing campaign in an attempt to return to office:  To do this, money is accepted from pretty much everywhere.  To those who donate, whose interests are being met by the system today, whose livelihoods depend on the continuation of secret deals, perks, and lousy governance - this kind of change would be catastrophic.  Every effort will be made to ignore the idea and, if it somehow gains traction anyway, every effort will be made to defeat it.  Count on it.

So, if any candidate were to equip themselves in this way voluntarily and run for office, they would be in an unenviable position.  They would be hated by both parties, by many of those who rely on the status quo, and by everyone who could be convinced to hate them.  Questionable items from their background would be discovered or manufactured. Their mental state would be questioned.  Their donors (if any) would be harassed. They would find it difficult to get access to advertising. They might find their finances under review by local, state, and/or federal entities.  Generally, it would suck to be them.

But it's quite possible someone will stand up and take that abuse in order for things to change.  Maybe it will be an incumbent, or maybe someone new.  Maybe it will just be one person, or maybe it will be a dozen, or hundreds.  Maybe it will change everything, or maybe nothing will change at all.

But, as a country, we're at a crossroads:  With all of the fretting about privacy and security - with the utter failure of our legislative, executive, and judicial branches to do the essential work of the United States - with all of the technology, talent, and boundless data storage available today, we have both the capability and the need to make this kind of choice.

But will we - collectively or individually - have the will to do it?  It would require courage on the part of those who would seek these positions of service, and it would require courage from each citizen, in both speaking and voting to support something new and different.  Will we have the moral courage to choose honesty, rather than just talk about it?

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

The Inevitable Privacy / Government Posts, Part III

(this is the third installment of a series, which starts here)

It's Time We Had A Little Talk...

In various ways, and by various interpretations, it's fairly easy to argue that almost all of the players involved in this creeping, pervasive digital Peeping-Tom-ism acted with some of the best of motivations, such as a desire to preserve the country seen as being under threat, and the desperate need to modernize counterintelligence after a small group's attack revealed it's creaky and outmoded ineffectiveness.

Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There are those who will downplay the significance of the recent leaks by Edward Snowden, either because they consider the journalism itself second-rate, or because they are as unsurprised as I am in these revelations, and assume that any good citizen would already be aware of this. This isn't really central to this series, so I'll leave it for another day, except to say that Snowden's disclosures are important not because this is really shocking, but because it stirs the pot.  The discussion allows for opinions like those linked above to enter the discussion, and perhaps have a chance to be mentioned and considered with at least as much depth as King of Thrones or entertainment awards shows.  The true eye-opener is not that we were unaware, but that - like children under your roof or that cute little baby alligator - this this has grown imperceptibly over time, and is now a lot bigger than you once thought possible.

And this is important, because it's not a singular realization.  The fact of the matter is that, over time, we have lost what really matters:  We have lost the conscience of our nation.

Americans love the story of the lone underdog, who speaks truth to power, reveals corruption and abuse of the public trust, and saves the day for Joe and Jane American. And, from time to time, we'd had those underdogs, and had come to expect a sort of institutional humility,  even when insincere.  We want to believe that our government is accountable to the people.  That our national does not sit here, lounging across the North American continent merely to consume a steady stream of piña coladas and dance music, while a small number of folks wield extraordinary power contrary to every principle of ethics and democracy we think we know.  Sure - there would be a small number of folks with extraordinary power - that's a given:  But they were to be folks known to us, chosen by us, and accountable to us.  This recourse to firings - to protests - to the demand to be treated as meaningful participants in our own government - has been the source of that institutional humility.  It's been what we imagine as the happy ending to the cinematic drama of American life.

Oops.

Instead, we are seeing accountability go away - from individuals and institutions: As our agencies implement policies that create very intimate bedfellows of corporate and public governance, it no longer becomes an option to let the rabble poke about with sensitive policy matters.  Like security in our national defense, the additional prong of security in our livelihoods became a ticket to negating accountability.  Principles must yield, "we must think practically about this," or people might get hurt, killed, or even *gasp* poor.

Nice house you've got there.  Be a shame if anything were to *ahem* happen to it.

Protest as Primal Scream Therapy

The Occupy movements were a reaction to a feeling.  Despite the attempts of some professional protesters to the contrary, the sound of all those people on the streets was not a cry for a definitive solution, but a basic yell of pain.  Not just economic pain, but a far more fundamental and telling pain:  It was the loss of our collective conscience's ability to be heard.   For the first time, it began to become very clear that it made little difference who was elected to office at the national level: On the minor issues, the differences were those of cold and structured paternalistic craziness versus warm and structured maternalistic craziness; of mad idiots who believed that they were anointed by God to lead the world versus mad idiots who believed that they were anointed by Gaea to let the world lead itself.  On the large issues:  issues of accountability, issues of personal respect, privacy, and autonomy?  The Who told us already.  Yet we permitted ourselves to be fooled again and again.  Voices were raised in the realization that we no longer had a voice.

But even those voices were silenced.  Within the course of a week, I was on the streets of New York first as a protester waving an American flag, and then as a businessman in a suit.  I saw Bloomberg's use of crowd suppression, infiltration, and dispersal tactics utilized to amazing effect:  A protest of what I would guess was tens of thousands of people was slap-chopped into little pieces and made to look like a couple of thousand.  Media interviews were always with the "fringe" types.  Meanwhile, Wall Street truly lived in fear: Twenty-foot "security zones" outside building doors.  Dogs.  Three forms of ID to get in to a meeting, and one of them had better be a tie.

In elections, even those thought (or claiming) to be "different" and "independent" weren't.  The system was well-established.  Anyone who spends a day talking to staffers and visiting Congressional offices knows this.  As citizens, we are pretty much the pesky three-year-old in the room: "The grown-ups have to talk now, sweetie, maybe you can go out with your friends and see who sings the prettiest or something?"

"How can politicians represent you when they are paid $millions to represent others?"

It would take something radical to change the character of government in the U.S.

Coming up in the final installment of this series:  A Modest Proposal

The Inevitable Privacy / Government Posts - Part II

(This is part 2 of a series.  The first post is here.)

So Everything Was Super

FISA, passed in 1978, set up safeguards to protect U.S. citizens from spying activity, and putting a system in place to allow court and Congressional oversight if these things.  And, more or less, that was the deal.

Until September 11, 2001.

The intelligence community's reaction - like that of every person and institution on the planet - was extreme and visceral.  By the beginning of October, 2011, President George W. Bush asks his advisers about the various interpretations of what would be possible in leveraging the existing intelligence collection infrastructure to apply to more generally targeted (i.e. domestic) targets and sources. He gets an earful.  Within days, he has authorized an expansion of NSA authority well beyond anything documented to that time.  Effectively, authority is granted to collect data about the activities and communications of U.S. citizens, including those taking place entirely within the borders of the U.S.

Without going into the details, which are well-documented in several places, including as evidence in EFF's legal cases, a series of legal interpretations escalate into virtually unfettered surveillance power, to the point where taps are placed on the core fiber switch points throughout the U.S.  As the costs of mass storage continue to drop in accordance with Moore's Law, and as unlimited funding for "the war on terror" continues to appear from many sources, a system takes shape that is capable of capturing and preserving almost every aspect of communication: spoken or written, direct or deduced, that has come within reach of anything digital.  This includes your land and cell phone calls, every email and fax, every web page you've visited (on purpose or not), every search term you've ever entered, every cable channel you've flipped through, every book listing you looked at on Amazon, every toll booth you've taken your car through, every stop light you've driven through.

"Just smile and wave, boys.  Smile and wave."

In the follow-on, through revisions of FISA, including extensive revisions in 2007 - our representatives in Congress granted legitimacy to most of this, to one degree or another.  By "granted legitimacy",I'm talking about the granting of retroactive immunity to telecom companies and other tech companies who have cooperated with the NSA and other agents of the federal government.

The people theoretically elected to provide the oversight, and the voice of the citizenry in the government made this call:  That the concept of security was more significant than the rights of individual citizens.

I Don't Have a Tin-Foil Hat

Not me.  Really.

Before going any further, most of those who know me and are reading this are aware that I'm not a conspiracy-theorist type. I'm an information sponge, and to understand the realities and motivations of the individuals involved to come to an understanding of the situation.  I'm open to additional evidence on most questions, though there are certainly those who feel my standard of evidence are rather strict.  That's OK: I don't share their taste in hats, either.

So, to say that I find nothing revealed in the last week shocking may come as a surprise.  But the fact of the matter is that what we're seeing are just the details of the specific plans and authorizations that have been available to us for years.  But, for the most part, we don't care.

We don't care because some of it is difficult to understand and because, even when understood, it's a difficult set of questions to confront.  It's a little embarrassing, and it requires that we tread on uncomfortable ground personally, and as a nation that claims to be a bold experiment in democracy and Enlightenment values.  It's sort of like having to have "that talk" - but with the government instead of with a child.

How we handle that uncomfortable talk will probably determine what kind of country the next generations will live in.  More depth on that in Part III.

As always, thoughtful commentary is welcome.  Trolls and those seeking therapy or metallic wardrobe advice need not apply.


Back to Part I                 On to Part III

The Inevitable Privacy / Government Posts - Part I

Everything Old Is New Again (unrelated link)

Having been in this game for a while, it really is inevitable that I would be asked by several people "What's the deal?" with respect to the NSA / PRISM / privacy "news" over the last week or so.  So, before my voice (and fingers) give out, here's the short (not) recap of some facts, much opinion, and some modest proposals. I'll do this as a series, so that people googling into the middle won't be burdened with context.

Those graced (or cursed) by following me on Twitter may have already seen Jason Purlow's excellent re-cap of NSA-related un-privacy history, including ECHELON, the policy decisions - back to Truman - that enabled it and it's successors. If not, it's a good read.  (From a historical perspective, if not a gastronomic one.)

My generational cohort - whose technical growth came of age in the 70s and 80s - find none of this to be remotely surprising.  Not due to a penchant for unsupported conspiracy theories, but from the perspective that many of us have worked for, or provided tools and support to, the endeavors at Fort Meade to varying degrees. In the minds of many, this was the equivalent to getting a job in the BatCave.  The U.S. has almost always spend lavishly and secretly to leverage technology as a means of national defense.

Compromising on Being Compromised

The trade-off has been - at least in theory - that the missions of the folks with the amazing deep tech were focused on international issues:  Capturing conversations between foreign nationals, breaking supposedly-secure messaging channels, and processing and linking data in what has always been a war of technology.  (The stories are legend of bounding infrared lasers off of embassy windows to capture sound vibrations - and the conversations within, or of using the radiation patterns emitted by display screens to determine what was being displayed on them.  Very "Q" sort of stuff, and most of it real.)

Would you like to play a game?

And, really, as Americans, we liked this.  As long as nobody was using it for domestic reasons, it seemed a completely acceptable compromise between privacy and security.  (Keep in mind, that this was the age of Reagan, where a recurring theme of politics and popular entertainment revolved around Global Thermonuclear War as an imminent possibility.)

At that time, the risk seemed low:  For "the authorities" to utilize this kind of data against U.S. citizens would require revealing blatantly illegal activity on the part of the NSA, the Congressional oversight process, and whichever of the domestic "authorities" were coming for you...  Pretty unlikely, in a time where "hackers" were pursued for things like stealing long-distance phone service or smackdown of inter-campus e-mail "to see if it could be done."

In Part 2, we'll see how things changed.  

In the mean time, feel free to share reminiscences of those early days in the comments.