Pictures from Lilah's Camera

These are some photos that I downloaded from Lilah's camera. The photos of the eagle were taken by me as we tried to capture this local resident of Bremerton on his (or her) majestic perch.

Enjoy!

ID Theft

There is this article over at CNN on identity theft.

The article basically points out the obvious: having your identity stolen is terrible. They conclude the article with this statement:

Police, prosecutors and financial institutions are nowhere near claiming victory in what has become a high-stakes battle of wits, and identity thieves are constantly remodeling their schemes to stay ahead of investigators.

Here's a thought (and yes it has some holes): if there are people who are this talented and you can't beat them, hire them. If a $600,000/year salary will net you one of these experts who can stop 100 more from cracking your system, hire them! And once you do hire them, LISTEN to them. If they tell you that this certain protocol has to be followed, don't tell them it's too inconvenient and then ignore the advice.

I know it's probably not this simple a solution or else it would have already been done. But then again, it's might be a lot like that show: It Takes A Thief, where people think they're safe in their homes until some professional (ex)thief breaks into their homes (all in the name of entertainment, mind you) in like, nothing flat, thrashes the homeowner's stuff, steals what's valuable, and then departs without ever a worry--all because there was this incorrect illusion of safety.

So are we living under that mis-representation in our approach to digital security? And when will we take an aggressive approach to our digital door locks?

More Than Just the Cigars.

If I may be so bold as to ask an unpolitically correct question: Why are we still enforcing a trade embargo against Cuba?

Seriously, I think of myself as one of an entire generation of younger-than-thirty-somethings who have no real clue why we can import and export with Communist China, can forgive East Berlin all its former evil doings, can now sit across the table from a Russian Parliment, are making amends with Pakistan, in discussions with Syria, and are best friends with the only Country ever nuked (and by us no less) and here we're still holding a grudge against Cuba.

A 40+-year trade embargo. Wow! And why; why 40+ years? What speical form of current threats are the Cubans poised to unleash on America that hold us to this embargo? If it's because they're communist, what about China? They're communist, too, and yet we trade with them to the tune of billions of dollars. Ah! Is it because they're broke? Well, so are Canada and Mexico and we still like them.

Yes, I understand there was a missile crisis some four decades ago. There were a lot of nasty things going on over the past forty years : a War in Korea was just cooling, a War in Vietnam was just heating up, there were plane hijackings and hostage takings in the 70's, the Cold War was prevalent throughout at least half of this time period, skirmishes in Panama, a US raid on Somalia, War in Iraq (x2), Palestine vs. Israel... a whole bunch of mean and nasty things going on in the world and here we are sitting on this grudge against a very small, very poor, and very near-by country.

What am I missing?

Aldous Huxley Was Right

Only, he had the wrong culprit, and after seeing all the uproar over the NSA collecting phone habits, apparently so do most Americans.

So how many phone calls are made a day? I'll take a simplistic approach to this question and say that I make 20 calls a day between home, work, and my cell phone. So, we multiply my 20 phone calls by the 265 million citizens of America (I said this was simplistic...) and I will claim that on a daily basis 5,300,000,000 phone calls, that's 5.3 trillion, are made every day, in America alone. That's probably a bit of an over estimate, but let's just say it's "a lot"!

USA Today had two quotes about the NSA incident worth reading:

"Actually, the program doesn't involve monitoring the content of telephone conversations, USA TODAY reported. The NSA is expert at using computers to review vast quantities of digital data — such as phone numbers — to identify patterns of activity."

"We doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial," Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. He noted the court had said "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties."

So, if a lot of phone calls are being made every day and all the NSA is doing is connecting the dots between phone numbers, I will make the claim that YES this is smoke and mirrors, but it is the press who is pulling the wool over our eyes by making this to be more than it really is: the government doing its job, not the President being sneaky and deceptive.

Actually, to take it one step further, I will go so far as to say that the government can collect just about any information and data on me that they want: at least they're consistently being monitored and are readily held accountable for their actions. See, what gives me the Heebie-Jeebies is when I stop and think about everyone who data-mines my life and isn't held accountable for such actions.

So there's this big hub-bub about a possible breach of privacy by the NSA knowing American's phone habits, but then these very same people turn around and swipe their Safeway card at the grocery store and give Corporate America a detailed list of what time of the month and how frequently they shop, that they're buying diapers for children and in what age groups, how much alcohol they drink, what drugs they prefer, what parts of town they frequently shop in, what coupons they use (indicating which newspapers they read), their preferences toward organic or processed foods, the magazines they read, the cigarettes they smoke, the laundry soap they use, and every single bit of this information is collected, categorized, analyzed, prioritized, and sold to other corporations every stinking day!

Wait, there's more! Then these same people who are absolutely outraged over this breach in privacy use their credit card to make that supermarket purchase and instantly tell Equifax and some bank how much money they spend. This is the very same credit reporting agency who already knows how much money they make, where they work, who they have credit with, how good their credit is, where they own property, what type of car they drive, who they're married to, what schools they went to, what alimony they pay, who they bank with, where they're insured, where they travel on vacation, how they get there, how long they were gone, and you guessed it, sell this information to other companies who judge you by their reports.

I just want to laugh and cry out loud at the same time. You'd think the worst was over, but no!

Then our happy privacy advocate is so outraged that s/he comes home and jumps on the internet...

wait for it... wait for it...

where their local ISP keeps a log of every website they visit, which email providers they prefer, (and by the way all those emails are kept indefinitely by some computer somewhere), and even their searching habits--as in which political parties they read about and which nominees they like or dislike, what kind of car they're considering buying, the social diseases they're researching, the plants they're going to garden this year, the music they like where they get it and how they pay for it, the books they read, the sports they follow, the religions they practice, the high school sweethearts they want to reunite with, the social commentary they write on Blogspot when they should be working. Do I need to mention what type of snooping your employer is doing?

People are worried about the NSA data-mining the digits they dial and they've completely ignored the fact that Corporate American can predict the next time they're going to get sick, the average time it's going to take them to recover, and how much money they're going to pay for (and which brand of) Over-the-Counter cold-remedies.

Get a clue! The government is trying to do an impossible job against overwhelming odds for people who apparently are more concerned about 1984 than they are about 2001 where HAL can recreate your entire life at the flick of a database switch.

Pics From Around the House

Nothing better than a smile from Lilah as she makes her way home from her NEW job, right here in Bremerton! The sun is out, there's time for yard work, the construction crews down the street are still making noise.

Ahh, the world is a much better place at 4:30 in the afternoon.

:j