Safe Google-Magnificent Undulations-Would you say Vivid?

PAINTING THE SKY

 Sweet light on the California central coast.

more scenes follow below

WHAT IS REASONABLE?

     Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt opened the window on the tenuous world we inhabit at a Surveillance, Privacy and Civil Liberties conference Friday, but the light he let in captures a multi dimensional web where the map is being improvised as we go along and the perils are grievous.

     Schmidt explained how shocked he was to learn from the Washington Post that his own Google empire was being surveilled by the FBI.  Google now encrypts data between their data centers to protect privacy. Schmidt believes Google to be the safest information purveyor if you wish to avoid surveillance.

     The CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank, sponsored the first Surveillance conference hosting experts across the disciplines and issues involved in surveillance, privacy and civil liberties. I spent hours at the conference, thanks to  C-SPAN, that special blessing of our information age.

      It appears all of us will move into a time of greater use of encryption. An affect of the Snowden NSA leaks is  everyone now knows a lot more about who is spying and how they are doing it thus the free market response is a series of applications, technology, services and methods of operation to protect privacy.  

     Schmidt observed the rules of this new world are hammered out in a cat and mouse game where governments seek and push Google and the other tech companies who then respond. Legal discussions or suits ensue and become  the process to negotiate a path to established policy. It's all new and the dynamic is ongoing.

     The Google leader said we could almost "end all criminal activity" with greater surveillance but said we should not allow that. Schmidt said even the kind of surveillance used in Britain, facial recognition and other means employed by GC Hq (General Communications Headquarters) is counter to the American way of life. He said we must be careful to protect information privacy.

     Law enforcement has never discovered a surveillance technique it does not like. It gives you pause to learn how many local and state police departments use the FBI developed Stingray technology. That's the system that mimics a wireless cell tower. It's a cell sight simulator that forces all phones in an area to connect with it where it then gathers all of the stored data on a phone.  It can also deny cell service.  Think about it for a moment. The police can turn on a Stingray, which penetrates into your home, car or pocket and makes your phone connect with it where all of your private information is gathered up. How do you think Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, George Washington and our other founders would respond to that?

      Don't American's equate privacy with freedom and liberty? We do not tolerate a loss of freedom nor should we which is why we continue to fight over civil rights, gender equality, economic fairness. We remember the Nazis, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, et al.  We even intervene in foreign wars to "spread democracy" or "guarantee liberty." How seriously then are we considering implications of our communication practices? Your phone, pad or computer are extensions of your life and often are repositories of your most private or valuable artifacts or information. Don't you have a reasonable expectation to privacy/freedom from surveillance?

      Already batches of metadata have been collected. Algorithmic data analyzers are at work. How long should that information be kept? Washington Post National Technology Reporter Eric Timberg asked Schmidt about what happens in 20 years, or sooner, when he is gone from Google. Schmidt deferred to  Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saying they share values and a belief in privacy. Schmidt noted they are young men.

      So it seems that a "belief" by young entrepreneur tech capitalists is our firewall. The personal belief of the men and women who have created these marvelous systems and technologies is the wall protecting our privacy and information security? Sorry, being a rich inventor or genius seems a thin credential. Henry Ford, for example, was a notorious anti-Semite. Then of course this is a world with other players, China, North Korea, Russia, Isis, NSA, CIA, GCHQ, FBI, all of whom come with their own idea of privacy, freedom and liberty. 

      Still loving that cell phone or pad?

SANTA LUCIA UNDULATIONS

shadows

post rain greening

THE EVENING SHOW

From a bluff near Harmony Headlands

    See you down the trail.

CAT AND UMBRELLA-IS PRIVACY FREEDOM?-GOODBYE CHARLIE

THE CAT AND THE UMBRELLA

  An umbrella drying on the spa provides a perfect place for a Hemingway nap, interrupted by camera sounds.

  "Hmmm. You woke me up bub!"

  "Ahhh!  Big stretch and look at these polydactyl paws."

  "Looks like little sister Joy is curious." 

  "Hey, I was here first!"

  "Good, she's gone.  Now if Mr Camera would leave me alone I could get back to napping."

TIME WITH THE CITIZEN

   The complex detail and playing time will rule this film off  people's list, but it is a film citizens should see.  CITIZEN FOUR is a nearly two hour examination of leaker Edward Snowden's act of leaking the documents that alerted the world to the pervasive surveillance under which we live.

    Most probably have an attitude about Snowden and what he did, but it's my take that until you've looked very closely into this, as documentary maker Laura Poitras has done, you've made your judgement without benefit of intimate, revealing, complex and important detail.  CITIZEN FOUR is about detail and implication. My bias is journalism; information gathering, fact checking, analysis with opinion or judgement coming last.  

    Even with all I have read and studied, I was still undecided about Snowden- a patriot, hero, trader, goat, grandstander? I've been given a closer examination of the leaker, his motivation, the absolute lying by US Government  officials, the specifics of the surveillance, the handling of the story around the world, an ultra-pervasive British spying program and the relationship between Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story and Snowden. 

    It's still a confusing situation on which to draw a judgement. It is clear to me Snowden was a young idealist and perhaps even a bit naive in his actions.  Seeing him now in Russia, you see a changed man. He looks worn, fatigued and even beaten emotionally. He says he did the right thing, but I sense he didn't fully estimate the toll it would take.

    Did he do the right thing?  Paths diverge at this point.

Those whom this nation tasks with its protection, security and law enforcement face a more difficult and lethal challenge than civilians can begin to understand. It is a hostile world and information and intelligence is a tool and weapon. Technology has provided keys to amassing that information. But should all citizens be subjected to a loss of privacy in an effort to provide security.  As an analyst in the documentary says, privacy is freedom and liberty. Loosing any privacy is a loss of freedom.

     It is not as though a monolithic dictator or fascist regime is using the gathering of the data to their specific advantage, but it is only a step from having the data to that kind of reality.  

     Presently information is being collected and gathered by a variety of agencies and in numerous ways. Now, this is a muddled kind of security, but the lack of federal coordination and the inability federal agencies to communicate well and to cooperate is a hedge against the information's singular mis-use. Still, in my mind, that is no defense. The point is, we are all suffering from a loss of privacy. Some of it we give up willingly. Social networks and commercial organizations gather and collect lots of data. It is something else when the federal government lies to us about what they are doing and what they are doing with what they gather. It is quite more serious when they use the cover of national security. Politicians have used that cover before, for all of the wrong reasons.
     Some have said if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. That is faulty thinking and is tantamount to  permitting a stripping away of any expectation of privacy, your most intimate freedom. That thinking is a slippery slope.

     The public has a right to know almost everything. The safety of agents, troops and critical operations must be maintained and that by nature puts some information out of public view, but in our process of governance there should be congressional oversight and judicial review.  We have a right to know that we were being spied upon and that our government lied about it. Had it not been for Edward Snowden, all of this would have been academic if not non- existent.  Did he violate a law? Yes. Did he tell Americans that his government was also violating the law? Yes again. He also revealed how.

      Attend Citizen 4 with friends and you may disagree with what it means to you individually, but it raises the kind of issues a democratic republic needs to address in the 21st Century. It is a bit slow, even tedious, but freedom is worth all of that.

IN THE SURF

    

GOODBYE CHARLIE

     Charlie Skinner, president of ACN died with his boots on but I hate it. As the extraordinary HBO series The Newsroom comes now to the finale, Sam Waterston's expertly portrayed old hand news executive goes out in a rant and rage. The networks new owner, a tech company billionaire is imposing  his silly but all too real reliance on social networks to guide news content and well, old Charlie's heart just couldn't take it.  I was particularly fond of the Waterston character who's life and death could have been drawn from real case studies. That is the beauty and brilliance of Aaron Sorkin's drama-there's a whole lot of truth in that fiction.

See you down the trail.