Take Back The Internet

Folks, today a quick reading recommendation, from a man people in my industry listen to.

The U.S. Government Has Betrayed The Internet And We Need To Take It Back

“The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the internet – and now we have to fix it.” Read more..

This article is well worth your time, even if you aren’t a Techno-nerd, or think you are “up to speed on” the Snowden/NSA thing.

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Britons Wake Up. Too Late.

Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public

“Successive U.K. governments have gradually constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world.. The development of electronic surveillance and the collection and processing of personal information have become pervasive, routine and almost taken for granted.”

This NY Times article is an important read. It seems that people in England are discovering that giving one’s government too much power might not be such a good thing.

“It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives.”

All I can say is.. isn’t it a little late to think of that?

This article features one woman’s experience in a striking example of abuse of power, and it is a glimpse at our future.. unless we get smart now, and stop buying into the “it’s for your protection” (aka “combats terrorism”) lie. Surveillance is NOT necessarily a good thing, people.

Please read, Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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EU punishes Intel+corruption, greed, gov’t

“With this power, the EC is rapidly becoming the world’s gatekeeper for new technologies. In recent months, regulators forced Apple to accept price controls on its popular iTunes music store and launched three new attempts to dictate which features Microsoft can offer in its software products. In early April, commissioners released guidelines dictating how Internet companies like Google and Yahoo should collect, use, and profit from information online.
The EC’s willingness to manipulate the technology industry makes Europe the venue of choice for companies looking to cripple their competitors and gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace. By repeatedly coaxing regulators to investigate Intel, AMD hopes to level the playing field and compensate for its own mistakes.”

Folks, these lines are from an article I came across in one of my small local papers– a guest opinion piece written by Dr. Daniel Ballon.
It is a fascinating reporting on government meddling for the simple sake of greed and corruption, (disguised as a Noble Ideal) and how this (negatively) affects us all. I highly recommend it. It is an eye-opener.

Tip(s) of the day:
* Read Dr. Ballon’s excellent article titled, Intel punished for being too competitive. It is available here.
* (In case you missed it) Watch this short video from anti-malware vendor Sophos to see a demonstration of how clicking a link in an e-mail can exploit weaknesses in your computer, implant a trojan, and steal your (in this instance) banking info. See how the cyber-criminals do it..
* Visit my 10 item checklist and run down it to see if your machine is properly defended and configured for surfing the big bad Internet.

Today’s free link: Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities. Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows — under the GNU GPL license.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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What your car is saying about you*

The auto manufactures are competing to put the most computer into your car. The merging of digital devices and personal transportation is progressing with alacrity. We know this. The fact that there has been “chips” in our cars for a decade or so is also well known. OnStar™ GPS tracking of our movements has been successfully marketed as a benefit to us, and we pay extra for the privilege. And our car has a microphone, to listen for ‘our calls for help’ (but, only when we push the button… Right??).

I read that the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium, a government “safety and efficiency” program, (there is a detailed description on Wikipedia, I suggest you scroll down to the paragraph titled “public concerns”) has developed a prototype for an on-board vehicle computer designed to interact with the Internet that will use Linux. (These are the folks who want to put radars in cars, “to detect proximity to the vehicle ahead and automatically apply the brakes to avoid rear-end collisions”) And they want to use the Web so the cars can, “provide a direct link between a vehicle on the road and all vehicles within a defined vicinity. The vehicles would be able to communicate with each other (and the cops), exchanging data on speed, orientation, perhaps even on driver awareness and intent.” This, to “improve traffic flow.”
Hmmm…. Driver intent?!?

Of course, this is being touted as a boon to us dumb citizens. We are told, “this will improve the driving experience” (not to mention, make us safer). How could our car accessing the Web be a benefit? The VII-C says, “by alerting cars about approaching emergency vehicles, collecting data to map weather patterns with high precision, and allowing for ‘over the air’ upgrades of vehicle firmware.”

Hmmm… Let me think about that…
1) Don’t approaching emergency vehicles have flashing lights and loud sirens?
2) Weather??? Like, I’m not going to go where I need to go because there’s a cold front developing..?
3) Automatic updates (aka “patches”)? What does this imply? That there’s concern about viruses and hackers, maybe? (You bet there’s concern!)

Of course the key words here are ‘traffic flow’, and ‘transmit its location’. By publishing its onboard data via the Web, some person in some government office will be able to see where every car is, its speed and direction of travel, and by activating the microphone, will be able to listen to the conversations taking place inside.
Think about that. Frankly, it scares the pants off of me.

I want you readers to know that the government already has this ability to some extent. We are rapidly approaching the point where every car being produced has some type of GPS built into it. They track us through the cellular phone signals (but these are “unreliable”). To “get better gas mileage”, we have all kinds of mini-computers on board that record our speed and braking, and store that info for later perusal — this aids in “accident reconstruction”. But these are not enough. They want more and better tracking technology installed. They don’t want “recorded”, they want “reported”.

Do NOT violate the speed limit in a rental car. The onboard computers will snitch, and when you go to return it, you will be hit with a stiff fine. I kid you not. Joyriding is out, too: excessive acceleration, hard braking, and high lateral G’s are recorded and reported too, even if you never top out above 65. Yes, your car is a snitch. Divorce attorneys and Law Enforcement love the GPS recorder.

Let’s tout the boon to mankind: parents can benefit from these automatic recorders too. Want to know how your kid treated the family car? Where they went? If they braked too hard or accelerated too hard? If they parked at Lover’s Lookout? Just buy an adapter and plug in your laptop. You can play Big Brother and see everything the car did. (I’m still working on how you can send the signal that activates the car’s microphone, and listen in on your kid… That will be a money-maker!)

The miracle of technology is in our cars. We are being told it’s for our benefit and we believe it. OnStar is something we all think is great, and we’re convinced it’s a status symbol (remember when only top-end cars offered it?). Sometimes, I think our desire for security makes us kinda dumb, and I think dummies get what  dummies deserve.

I, for one, don’t want a single recorder, chip, microphone, GPS locator, or transmitter on my person or on my car. It’s nobody’s business where I am, where I’ve been, or… my speed and direction of travel. (Did you miss my article, “It’s time to write your Representative”? Click here.)
They are going to do this, folks, and they’re not giving us citizens much say (“not much” = none).

Tip of the day: Use a soft, lint-free cloth, very slightly dampened with plain water to clean your monitor screen. You do not really need fancy, or expensive products to do this.

Today’s free link: Today I’m putting out the call for your input in this section. Is there a free program or tool that you think is fantastic, but you haven’t seen me post it here? Send me your recommendation — the name, not the link — and I’ll run it through my testing. Those that pass will appear here, with accreditation.

For those of you who aren’t at all bothered by this, and have quite the opposite view; in that you want access to this info (perhaps you are the parents of a beginning driver), devices are available now. If your vehicle is newer and GPS equipped, all you need is a special plug (adapter), if your vehicle [or, the one you’re letting the kid drive] is older, you may want to take a look at this Wall Street Journal article: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB110911718132361463.html

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* Original posting– 8/17/07

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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