Datashock and Awe

I've had a lot of datashock recently. Datashock?  Why that's what you fell when you're hit with data that contradicts everything you took for granted about yourself.  I recently had a DNA test for instance, expecting that it would reflect the generations of genealogical data I'd been putting together for years and going back centuries.  Imagine the surprise to find that I'm half Scandinavian.

But that's nothing compared to what I found out.  You know that mysterious database used by every hardware and ladies' underwear marketer to send you catalogs and interrupt your most private moments with phone calls?  An article in CNN Money yesterday had me laughing about the errors in her publicly disseminated information the reporter found when she went to AboutTheData.com . I stopped laughing when I checked my own information.

I've been running a long and angry battle with companies like Experian to remove erroneous data from my credit report: 'aliases' that originated in clumsy data entry and became irrevocably enshrined, addresses I've never heard of, addresses that never existed, household members long dead and other items likely to follow me to the grave before Experian ever takes the time or makes the effort to look into revising the Gospel. It's the same story with various web sites that claim to have data about me and my house and other things. The stock answer to my assertions of error is that "Sir, we get our data from public records and they cannot be changed." Thus spake Zarathustra.

But that's nothing. AboutTheData  asserts, despite evidence to the contrary, that I'm 93 years old, have no children and my DNA and birth certificate be damned, I'm German.  Of course they know my credit cards and everything I have ever purchased with them.  they know the size of my house and what it's worth and what I payed for it and when it was built, but they also insist that I have a large mortgage on it which I don't.

This is the kind of data that affects one's life, one's well being, one's credibility and for the most part it's immutable, unchangeable, ineradicable. Now unlike the other people search sites like Pipl.com, AboutTheData does allow one to edit this farcical farrago of  data, although I'm tempted to let them think I'm 93. I'm tempted to tell them I'm dead actually, although I now understand why my mailbox is full every morning with prepaid funeral fliers, ads for nursing homes, walk-in bathtubs, home nursing services, motorized wheelchairs and crematoriums. (It would be nice if the IRS thought I was deceased, but I'm sure they have their own databases. )

But it's still a shock to think about how we assume, living in an "information age,"  that the information about your age is true, but it seems more and more that no one has any interest in correcting mistakes or even hearing about the ocean of ludicrous errors they spend so much money and bandwidth maintaining against the unheard protests of a baffled, astounded and rightly pissed-off public.

We are not alone

We're going to have to get used to drones.  They're available everywhere and getting better and cheaper as electronic toys do. HD TV cameras can be added that are now tiny and lightweight and cheap and can even see in the dark

I hope we don't have to get used to the constant surveillance they make possible and it's not just the invasion of our private spaces by government agencies I'm alarmed about.  Various people and groups of people with all kinds of ideas about what you're doing, aren't doing and should be doing are now able to watch and record from hundreds of feet above wherever you are.

PETA, one of those well-intentioned groups whose sentimentally extremist views about things like the personhood and civil rights of insects isn't the kind of  organization I want watching me if I'm out in the woods or down at the dock fishing seeing as for them, fish are sensitive and loving and self aware creatures and catching them is murder. But hunters are evil too as are those with leather shoes or eating sushi and PETA intends to   "monitor those who are out in the woods with death on their minds," according to a press release.  Those feral hogs we have here need to be protected against my violating their civil rights as well, and what about the local butcher shops!  Death on their minds! But according to the FAA, as long as you fly your Hammacher Schlemmer drone below 400 feet, there's no problem with areal reconnaissance. For extremists, kooks, voyeurs and fanatics, it's a whole new day.

"The average person has no worries" is the kind of  'reassurance' one expects from advocates of random and warrantless stops and searches.  Steve Hindi, president of yet another animal rights group called Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, or SHARK, assures us we have nothing to fear from him unless you have death on your mind.  He likes to watch bird hunters and post video on line and sending links to law enforcement. Perhaps the average hunter has no worries but what looks like one thing may look like another thing from a TV camera from 40 stories in the air and after all, Steve doesn't want you hunting in the first place you evil carnivore Bambi murderer you.

Of course flying your drone a few hundred feet above people with shotguns has it's hazards. Drones have suffered mysterious failures and there's a lot of giggling going on in the bird shooting community.  Might be some mirth in my back yard as well should there be an unidentified flying object hovering over my swimming pool, but I'm not sure the future doesn't hold endless drones over our heads and perhaps under our feet making sure we don't have aces up our sleeves or that we're not walking on the grass or filling out our golf score cards improperly or actually are playing cards with the guys like we said.  But let he who is without sin not worry, right?

Drones are the future.  Insurance companies are already 'offering' gadgets that record how fast you drive -- to save you money of course, but also to deny claims because you might have been observed at 5 over the limit.  Red light cameras don't seem to reduce collisions at intersections and may actually be causing more, but hey, you have nothing to fear in our brave new world where you have so many big brothers watching our for you.

Don't touch my junk

I remember once, long ago, arriving at O'Hare airport well after midnight with a pair of hungry, thirsty, overtired and near hysterical pre-schoolers following a full day of airport delays and stormy air travel that began in Jamaica. The agony of enduring hours of waiting and seemingly microscopic baggage inspection is impossible to forget as was the large Orwellian banner demanding "PATIENCE - A DRUG FREE AMERICA COMES FIRST." From my point of view, it sure as hell didn't justify the trauma and I don't have to add that it wasn't and still isn't 'drug-free;' but those were the good old days. They didn't strip search my 5 year old.

Yes, sure, a majority of Americans are willing to put up with the ritual humiliations that now accompany air travel; those same people that don't worry much about driving their luxury trucks at 100 while talking on the phone -- at night -- in the rain. Odds are they haven't had to experience more than being asked to remove a belt or their shoes or having been chastised by someone in a too-tight polyester uniform and rubber gloves about which size Zip-Loc they put their shampoo and toothpaste in or even having 'terrorist tool' nail clippers confiscated. Of course many of us still haven't been through the full-body cameras and the rude, abrupt, "up against the wall" attitudes of TSA tyrants. Many have been and many are now fed up with what's being mocked as Security Theater. Fed up is a euphemism here of course but in this week of peak air travel, some of us will undergo an attitude adjustment and begin to use more direct words.

Some will elect to deprive some unseen gnome of viewing their nakedness, or that of their spouses and children and choose a "manual" search. It may be more 'manual' then they expected. ABC News producer Carolyn Durand claims that

"The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around. It was basically worse than going to the gynecologist."

Raw Story reports that women have had to remove prosthetic breasts for "inspection." One man had a urostomy bag ruptured by TSA's claws and had to board an airplane while soaked with public humiliation and urine. Keep in mind, that no probable cause is involved here since profiling would be insulting. Keep in mind that you probably can't get there by Amtrak and driving to grandma's house may be more dangerous than flying.

Of course, to me, the Government's power to stick their fingers in your hooha is far more offensive than its power to prevent the bus company from making some of my friends sit in the back seats and expel them from the Woolworths lunch counter, but then I'm not a Tea Party 'Patriot,' I don't support Rand Paul's discomfort with anything infringing on absolute property rights and I'm not an oil company either. Neither am I like the troll who used Raw Story's comment section to rave about supporting the "Terrorist State of Israel." I'm just sick of arguable ends being used to sanctify extreme and offensive methods. I'm tired of losing my freedom to other people's fear and my country to the neurotic and fearful mob.

Things that ring in the night.

If there is any part of "our freedoms" that must be defended more than the right to risk irreparable disaster for profit, the right to sell fraudulent securities, bogus debt reduction plans and to buy election results, it's the right to harass people at all hours of the day and night in their homes, in their cars and at work in the process of fleecing them.

Yes, there are laws regulating telemarketing: no call lists, restrictions on times called, restrictions on robocalls that tie up the line until they're through telling you how evil Nancy Pelosi is or how they can get you out of debt by lending you more money at 400% interest. These laws are scrupulously ignored and lawbreakers are carefully protected by the phone companies who in turn are allowed to buy the privilege of ignoring not only the law, but common decency. Virtually all these calls, including the call that woke me at 3:33 this morning are untraceable. "Hell-O - are you late in your mortgage payments???" I was ready to kill someone, but thanks to an FCC that is owned by the telecommunications industry, I'm not allowed to do what I would be allowed to do if someone in a black ski mask showed up in my bedroom at the same hour. That I don't have a mortgage and am not in debt adds a certain edge to the anger. That I only got 4 hours of sleep hasn't allowed it to dissipate.

I may have to give up my land line. Even in a non-election year, I average about 8 telemarketing calls every day, usually most frequent at 8 O'clock AM, again around dinner time with a late peak at 9 to 10 PM. It rings when I'm in the shower, in the pool, up on a ladder trimming trees or under my car changing the oil. Of course it's nearly twice as bad this year.

My number is registered on that most pathetic of places, the Federal no-call list. I wonder why I bothered to register it. So is my cell phone and yet every loan shark and financial con man sends me text messages and calls me at the most inopportune times, so I have to remain unreachable, which largely defeats the purpose of owning one. Yes, this continues when one is overseas and for some reason, candidates all over the country continue to call me even when I demand to be removed.

Of course, I'm just a crank with no knowledge of how evil Liberals are and no proof that the ever further to the right corporate shills still calling themselves Republicans aren't the cause of our woes. After all, it's just freedom I'm objecting to and the will of the proletariat is that the will of the corporations be the law -- and isn't it typical of loser liberals like me to promote such Communo/Fascist ideas like a right to be left alone by scam hawkers and sleazemongers and political flim flam artists who have a far greater right to use a service I pay for than I do.

Big Brother's keeper

Tiger Woods named his Yacht "Privacy." It's obvious why he was seeking it, but we assume incorrectly that we have any right to privacy in these days of The Patriot Act and the mass marketing of fear.

Monitoring our phone calls, reading our e-mails -- that's old hat. Forcing us to produce birth certificates and citizenship papers for any cop who decides your car is weaving even if you're ancestors have lived in Arizona for 15,000 years -- coming soon to a Confederate State near you.

But wait, there's more.

Law Enforcement agencies are now adding vans equipped with side scan x-ray units that can inspect the contents of your car as well as the contents of your jockey shorts if you're walking down the sidewalk. Probable cause, my ass -- and yours.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go according to Time Magazine. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- the one Fox insists is so Liberaliberaliberal tells us we don't have a right to privacy if our cars are parked in our driveways. Search warrant? Don't make me laugh; they don't have to show you no stinking search warrant, at least not in the nine Western states under its jurisdiction, not to install the device or to use it to see who you visit or even how fast you drive . We have no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking our movements even if we pay cash at the gas station and at toll booths and don't use a cell phone. We're fools if we do.

Sound like a Libertarian, don't I? I'm not and I'm not because I am not blaming this on a straw man government, I'm blaming it on you. I'm blaming it on us. We voted for the people who are doing this, we supported the Patriot act, we wallow in the fear mongering the retailing of idiot rage that "justified" it. We fall for their distractions, their distortions and we bark and growl like Pavlov's dogs. When they push our buttons, we push their buttons on the voting machines.

Sure, the Ninth Circuit is Liberaliberaliberal, when they insist you can't use your religious beliefs to stop people from marrying, but they're not are they? They're not when they argue that your home is their castle as is your car, your mailbox and your telephone, and by pretending we're Conservative we vote for the people who appoint them to take our freedom and make us thank them for their trouble.

Bigger, more intrusive government

"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone."

-Justice Louis Brandeis-

Whenever there's a lot of outrage being sold, whether it's about protecting children, preventing tax shelters or defending the faith, it's fairly safe to assume they're selling something else and it's safer to assume it's something you wouldn't have bought otherwise.

There are few things easier to bundle with invasive, intrusive or even abusive government than protecting children, hence the carefully maintained impression that children are in vastly more danger then ever before and controlling the internet in the cause of controlling people and their unwanted thoughts and words attaches to our parental fears like a remora to a shark.

A free internet

"offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,"

says U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. Well of course! So does freedom of association and freedom of speech and assembly and of course, so does freedom in general. It also offers opportunities for dissent, for exposure of secrets of invidious nature and other things authoritarian and paranoid governments fear. So in order to protect the children, Cornyn would like to make sure that with every word you write, every breath you take, every move you make, he'll be watching you. listening to your calls, reading your mail, checking your financial records, tracking your movements: all these things we bought in the name of Bush's "warrontare" and yet it's not enough.

The plan is to have everything you say on the internet and a list of every search you make and every site you visit stored for the benefit of anyone who may want to investigate you -- for two years. Two bills have been introduced so far--S.436 in the Senate and H.R.1076 in the House. Both bills bear the same title: "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act. Both use the same words:

"A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."

And what is a provider or remote service? If you're got a home network with a wired or wireless router, you are! Better buy another hard drive and keep it backed up, you potential child molester, you.

"That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too."

says CNN.com's Declan McCullagh.

Alberto Gonzales may be gone, George Bush may be a bad memory, but the Republican Dream lives on. A country where nothing you do is private and nothing they do is public; a country where "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is seen as an unnecessary impediment to control.