Category Archives: Technology

Rand Paul and the Patriot Act

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Passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, the Patriot Act was a rush to grant law enforcement sweeping powers that they had not had prior to its passage.  Most of the act is classified, and it it rumored that just talking about it is a felony.  Over the weekend, the Patriot Act was on the chopping block, with numerous politicians scrambling to save it, and the authorizations that it grants.  The most sweeping of those being the bulk collection of meta-data by the NSA. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) stood alone against its renewal. In fact, Senator John McCain (R-Az.) said:

"He obviously has a higher priority for his fundraising and political ambitions than for the security of the nation." (as heard on CBS World News Roundup - 1Jn2015).

Despite Senator McCain's opinion, many people would disagree, both in the United States and abroad.

That being said, it is clear that Rand Paul is not naive, admitting that the bill will eventually pass and the wiretapping will go on.

What surprises me is that Senator McCain even thinks something like a filibuster could or would have any effect on the bulk collection of data. As if the expiration of a law could stop it? And before you get on your soapbox and rant that "It is a law, it is no longer in force, therefore it is illegal," allow me to point out a few facts.

The federal bureaucracy moves with glacial inertia. It is very hard to get things moving but once you do, it is almost impossible to make them stop. This is even more so in the intelligence community with is not subject to any sort of real oversight. The bulk collection of data is a huge industry. There are building springing up like mushrooms to support the effort. Contracts worth billions of dollars have been let by the government and the companies that hold those contracts will do everything in their power to keep those contracts active.

Short of an international delegation overseeing the complete shutdown of the collection process (much like under the SALT agreements for nuclear disarmament) the bulk collection of data is here to stay.  Legally, or not.

The Corner Pharmacy

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Is the corner pharmacy a relic of the past? Oh, sure, if you want a quart of milk and some baby wipes at 3AM, it might be a convenient place to drop in. But if you are in need of medications, specifically, acute medications, they have to order them, and they will be available in two to four weeks. Maybe we should let Amazon know there is an untapped market here.

I am not talking about maintenance medicines. Those medicines you order 30 at a time to keep your blood pressure or your diabetes under control. Not the medicine that you know you need and that you can plan on when you pick them up. I am talking about those medicines that are meant to stave off something and you need them now. Pain medications, antibiotics. Those medications that, if ordered, are valueless by the time they arrive two to four weeks later. At best, the infection has been fought off. At worst, you will be dead (or in hospital).

Now, I am not saying that they need to stock all combinations of the medications that are on the market today. But one would think that basic pain medications, antibiotics, and other acute requirement medications would be on the shelf.  You would also expect that, if you were a regular customer, they would have your needs on file and since their automated systems can call you and tell you when your prescriptions are due for a refill, they could at least have those medicines on the shelf and ready for you to pick up. Even this seems to be too much of a challenge for most local pharmacies.

I do not understand why they are taking on supermarkets. Or rather, maybe I do understand better. Since they do not seem to stock medicines, as is their primary function, they have to make their money somehow.

Pod Garbage

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This year, the company expects to sell nearly three billion K-Cups, the plastic and tinfoil pods that are made to be thrown away — filter, grounds and all — after one use. (NYTimes)

Perhaps I have a different view of trash, but worrying about the various pods being thrown out, even in the quantity that are being reported, is a tempest in a tea pot. As someone that generally only drinks one cup of coffee a day, I find the convenience of the pods to be useful. I do not end up wasting coffee by throwing out coffee that has gone bad through lack of consumption. Sure, there is some plastic being thrown out, but I throw out more plastic through the various bottles that come with juice, milk and wrapped around meat. But I know that I am not the normal case. If you happen to drink a lot of coffee, or if your office uses them instead of bulk coffee, there is probably a lot more plastic involved.

But while we are worrying about plastic, there seems to be a minimum amount of concern over the heavy metal in compact florescent lights and batteries that are constantly thrown into landfills. There have been several reports about this, so it is not a surprise, but there is no hue and cry over this. In case you did not know this, compact florescent light bulbs are not to be thrown out - they have to be recycled because they are hazmat. Technically, because of the amount of mercury in them, if you break one, you are supposed to call the Hazmat team to deal with it.

But instead, we are worried about plastic cups. And we wonder why the United States is having issues...

 

 

 

The TSA is behind the curve

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This will come as no surprise:

The Homeland Security Department is banning all liquids from carry-on luggage for nonstop flights from the U.S. to Russia. The ban comes after the department warned airlines that terrorists might try to smuggle explosives on board hidden in toothpaste tubes. The warning said terrorist might try to assemble explosive device in flight or upon arrival at the Olympics. (www.wtop.com)

There is very little that I hear coming out of the Department of Homeland (In)security anymore that leaves me dumbstruck, but this was one of them.  The first thing that went through my mind was who is running the Game Theory office at the TSA/DHI, and have they ever seen a James Bond movie? Plastic explosives in a toothpaste tube is de rigueur in spy craft. Open any kids book on espionage and there it is.  So for the TSA to now, thirteen odd years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, ban liquids again is pretty stunning.

And then I am taken back to the Confessions of a TSA agent that appeared only a couple of weeks ago in Politico. The United States Government (in other words, you and me) are spending $150,000 per machine for full-body scanners, that do not work, and even if they did, there is a high likelihood that no one is watching the monitor anyway. And as been discussed numerous times, the x-ray machines, both above and below the security screening area cannot tell the difference between peanut butter and C-4, or chocolate powder and explosives.

So why, exactly is the TSA banning liquids on flights to Russia?  Because if no one complains about them banning liquids in this test scenario, they will be able to ban them in general, except for those of you silly enough to shell out $80 (or more) for their Pre-Check program, where the agency will, with your permission to boot, know more about you than anyone else.  All because they cannot procure, use, or understand the equipment that we are already paying too much for.

 

 

National Handwriting Day – 23rd of January

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It is that time of year again, National Handwriting Day!  From my friends at Fahrney's:

This Thursday (January 23) is National Handwriting Day in the United States. Established in 1977 as a day to acknowledge and celebrate the handwritten word it was created by the Writing Instruments Manufacturing Association “as a chance for all of us to re-explore the purity and power of handwriting”.

On the topic of handwriting, specifically writing letters, I finished reading To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing and really quite enjoyed it. It was a little bit of the history of the written letter, despite Simon Garfield's initial statements that it was not the purpose of the book. It was a bit of biography, because after all, that it what most letters, that are kept become, the basis for a biography, and a review of the evolution of the post as we know it today. It was a fascinating read. And while he did not outwardly attempt to say that this medium of electronic "mail" is bad, he certainly highlighted many of the failings of not putting pen to paper and sending a letter.

So for National Handwriting Day, I encourage everyone to pick up their pen and write someone they know a letter. Put a stamp on it and mail it! And once you have done that, it is also time for the Annual Handwriting Contest! And like last year, I am going to put my mind to it and my pen and see what I can come up with. You should too!  Deadline is the end of January.

So let's get writing!

If you wondered, is the US a Police State? The answer is – yes.

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Over the last few months, the citizens, residents, and visitors to the United States have been regaled with stories of how the Government of the United States has been invading their privacy, opening their mail, listening to their phone calls, and generally monitoring their daily lives.  Of course, this is all in the name of security and to protect the public from the bad guys.

Up to this point in time, the revelations have been about how the National Security Administration are capturing your metadata, but not actually listening to your calls or reading your mail in real-time - they claim. But we have always suspected that other aspects of our life were under scrutiny.

Today, we got our answer:

The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment information. (New York Times)

What starches my socks is not that the TSA is doing this.  We pretty much knew they were doing this, even if we did not know they were doing this. No, what really galls me is that the TSA has a new program, called TSA Pre, which:

...allows select frequent flyers of participating airlines and members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Trusted Traveler programs who are flying on participating airlines, to receive expedited screening benefits. Eligible participants use dedicated screening lanes for screening benefits which include leaving on shoes, light outerwear and belts, as well as leaving laptops and 3-1-1 compliant liquids in carry-on bags.

And to get this benefit, you have to fill out an on-line application, have an in-person interview and, most importantly, pay the TSA for the privilege every five years!  Currently the fee is $85.  Now some frequent flyer programs include this in the ticket price, but for the average Joe Flyer, you are on the hook.  Yet the TSA is already doing a complete scan before you board for free!  OK, so it is not really free.  I have already paid for it with my taxes, fees, and other departure costs rolled into the ticket.

So what is the point?  Already, the United States has more secure screening processes in place, compared to the rest of the world.  I can leave my shoes and belt on in Europe and Canada.  The x-ray machines can already pick out my laptop.  And frankly the screening outside the US is much better than what the TSA is doing.  So why should I be paying the TSA?  They already know more about me than I do.  I have already paid the fee, several times over, and they already have done the in-person interview, every single time I fly.

I am opposed to the police state the United States has become.  There are a number of reasons for this. But to charge the flying public to go through security is really taking the cake. As the saying goes: There's a sucker born every minute. Clearly the American public is the sucker, and their own government is taking advantage.

“Requires Facebook” is a recipe for an automatic fail

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For the better part of the last four years, I have managed, quite well I might add, to do without a Facebook account.  Yet, despite this, more an more applications seem to be depending or relying on you having a Facebook account in order to use them.  This is true of a wide range of things from comment boards to business applications.  What baffles me is why anyone would tie their application to Facebook.

Sure, I get the idea that the general public is stupid when it comes to technology.  They cannot remember their passwords (which is why Apple put a fingerprint scanner on the new iPhone), they cannot manage to understand what a URI is or why it matters, and basic interfaces confuse them, but Facebook is hardly the panacea, and worse, it opens the end user up to even more insecurities and potential application and privacy leakage.

So from this point forward, if your application, chat room, or comment board requires a Facebook account to use, I will give it an automatic fail and one star rating.  Real application development does not rely on some other application for its security model. And the general public should not accept any application or solution that does.

Srsly?

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If you have been following along with me for any period of time, you know that I have a thing about language.  And not only language but formal use of language. And a few people will tell you that I cannot spell to save my life (thank goodness for the red wavy line).  That being said, when I get an email like this, I cringe:

BABE... i guess your not getting any of my email huh? ive been tryign to email u so many times but this dam laptop is such a piece of garbage and keeps freezing.. anyways how u been?

Of course, it is a spam message. At the bottom of a very long, almost unreadable, 1000 word message is a come on link that I assure you, you do not want to click. It is a typical example of this sort of thing, but what really surprises me is how bad the language is.  Not just the random capitalization (and lack there of) and the slang shortcuts but just bad English. It concerns me that someone thinks this is the right way to to send mail. And since they have sent it, that people might actually write and talk this way!  If this is the future of the English language, I have a very dim view of the next generation.
Not to mention the spammers.

On Snowden

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Whether or not you think Edward Snowden is a hero or a villain, he is getting the politicians to say a number of interesting things.  Take for instance, this blurb from Paul Ryan (R-WI) that was replayed on the CBC news on Monday evening:

If we are not able to convince our allies or other countries to help us with this, that doesn't speak very well to how we are being viewed in the world, it does speak well to our credibility.

Let me highlight one part of this: …it does not speak well to our credibility.  What Mr. Ryan does not understand, or at least does not seem to grasp, is that the credibility of the United States is pretty much a joke in the rest of the world.  And the Snowden leaks are only the latest example of why the United States is the butt of the world’s jokes.

There have been several reports, reported by the BBC, and the CBC, but surprisingly not by any US news outlet of how trade with the EU and the United States is in rough shape because of US policies, public or not, on issues like transparency of government, crime and punishment, climate and environmental issues,  and of course, privacy.  The Snowden revelations are only the latest bit of glass being thrown into the international communities eyes.

This is a global economy.  Information is, for the most part, is available with a few key strokes, not just the unclassified, but much of the so called classified information, if you have the time and patience to sort through the minutia to find it.  Big data sifting can be done with almost any server today, so if you want to know what is going on, it is not hard to find out.

Yet there are many in the United States that do not want to know what is going on and see all of this as a great blow to the efforts and image of the United States.  To these individuals, Mr. Ryan included, I say this.  The image of the United States was irreparably damaged when the United States invaded a sovereign nation with little more provocation that they might have had weapons of mass destruction, and, having found nothing, did not so much as say sorry. Further, has left the country in worse shape economically and socially than when they invaded it.  And that is only one of many events I can point at.

I cannot help but laugh at the politicians and other pundits that are worried about the credibility of the United States.  You should worry more about other, more critical things.  This one is a tempest in a tea pot, designed to distract from the fact that these same politicians are the same ones that allowed the NSA to do this in the first place.