Much as I’d like to report galloping good times, this is one quiet stretch in south Florida. The surest way to know when things are slow is I read the newspapers. And I see the feds have shut down the Bal Harbor police ring. This was a country-wide anti-drug unit that funded itself with the swag from drug busts. But unlike other police departments that surreptitiously pocket the money, these cops were high rollers.Yet I see that situation differently. Sure, these guys were renting limos and swilling champagne, but they had the right idea. Fifty years of conventional law enforcement has done nothing but swamp the jails with small fry. These copss were using drug money to fight drug money, which, if the truth were known is probably the only thing that could possibly work. And the feds stopped it. What does that tell us?
Odd coincidences include my new scooter mechanic driving the same make and model. And somebody also attempted to steal his muffler, same as mine. And in both cases they failed, but managed to crack a bracket that cannot be replaced without the whole muffler assembly. In both cases, they did manage to steal a particularly difficult to find (metric) bolt from under the frame, which I spent most of today hunting for. No luck, though there is a major supplier up in Margate, about 40 miles from here.
Next you find me reading up on radio espionage. This is the use of intercepted signals to gather information about enemies. It is normally a government undertaking, very hush-hush and all. Being the government, they call this “intelligence”, which if it really were makes that government department different from the rest. I had been researching what frequencies are being used by robotics when I stumbled on the history of “sigint”, for signal intelligence.
First, it was not much until World War II, when radios were small and rugged enough for field use. You don’t have to crack codes to snoop. Things like location, duration, timing, and message length comparison tell the witty listener plenty enough. This led to another topic, the British counterspy network. All the sources I read told exactly the same tale. Therefore, somebody is lying. They say the Germans only put about 30 spies across the channel and all were rounded up to be either turned or executed. I’m not buying that baloney. Nothing in England has ever been that efficient.
My deduction is that some other government activity other than spy-catching is behind it. And because the history books have been so carefully written to present the same “facts”, it means that mysterious activity is still in operation. Why? Wartime censorship is long past, so the remaining reason for such a cover up is that the government is still at it. That leaves two choices. Either the government is really that smart, or they are being tipped off. You decide.
For a laugh, you can look it up yourself. The books say the German agents were rounded over such things as paying the wrong train fare, being out at night, and trying to buy beer too early in the morning. Hogwash. That's all cover stories if you ask me. I have no conspiracy theory here, but nor am I falling for such a concocted version of things. That’s like asking me to believe the British led the world in jet engines, atomic research, and submarine technology at that same time. Nonsense. They were tapping into German research as a by-product of whatever they were up to. I have no idea what that might be.
ADDENDUM
Cloud computing. I’m not ignoring it. I’m waiting to see. Even though I know that centralized computing was always the better idea, it also poses a moumental security risk to every individual who uses it. Oddly, some of the first computers I used were dumb terminals tapped off the mainframe in the basement of the math department. My first computer was an Apple in 1980 and I immediately began to pirate the expensive software. Thus, I’ve seen both evils. Cloud computing is cheap, but it leaves all your data open to intrusion or even seizure. Private computers are great, but you will be gouged for software that rarely works right.
There is a pro-Google video making the rounds that now is the time to plow your savings into Google shares. Microsoft has posted its first losses ever, since their entire structure embraces selling overpriced software to individual users. With cloud computing, all the software is in one location and you pay a fee to use it. But beware, Google already has a terrible reputation for keeping your private usage on file. So, I’m watching the developments.
But I’ve already concluded that some real bucks could be made by the genius that can guaranty privacy in the cloud. Remember, the government is racing to build quantum computers with a primary purpose of cracking computer ciphers. Thus, ever-greater algorithms are not the answer, but some simple method of separating the cloud apps from your data, which in any case should be stored privately and away from the Internet. Even your most innocent data, like your address book, can and will be used against you if you put it on the cloud. “Hmmm, Citizen, it looks like you know six people whose grandmother came from Poland. Hands up!”
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