One year ago today: April 11, 2019, a so-so Tennessee day.
Five years ago today: April 11, 2015,Archie was a dork.
Nine years ago today: April 11, 2011, on parental advice.
Random years ago today: April 11, 2013, the batbike at Ormond Beach.
Okay, the awaited electronic surveillance report. This is not a complete list of what information is being kept about you. For instance, they know your typing speed, pressure, spelling mistakes, grammar, and vocabulary well enough to uniquely identify you anywhere. Instead, this is the information most people willingly but foolishly give without question and the primary information used for identity theft. Outside of the credit card companies who have most of your life on file, there is also the tax department, voter registration lists (amazing how many people think that is secret), police files (yes, you have one) and dozens of sources ranging from high school year books to shopping cards.
This list involves only eBay, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Apple, MicroSoft, and Adobe. The most dangerous are Google and Microsoft, who have integrated their customer and usage data into a monster database that the FBI and CIA could only have dreamed of twenty years ago. This is not credit information, but profiling. Once you are profiled, they don’t care if you call yourself Mickey Mouse, they will know it is you and your identity becomes superfluous. Here is the list that most Americans have unwittingly given out.
1. Telephone number. A smartphone is a tracking and recording device. While older phones with no chip can be triangulated, this is expensive and time-consuming. Your movement is traced 24/7 even when you think the phone is off.
2. Date of birth. The reason you are often asked for this rather than your age is it narrows down confirmation of your identity far more than usually realized. Any search on your background is instantly narrowed by 1/365th, a significant statistic for the searcher
3. Gender. Knowing your gender halves the information from item 2 above. There is far more to this question on most forms than census purposes.
4. Physical address. This is the not what you think they want, a mailing address, but the address of your most valuable asset. That’s the real reason they won’t accept a post office box.
5. Facial recognition. This is the big one these days, culled from millions of pictures on Facebook. Whether this software is banned or not, there is no real protection from it. The most likely abuser remains the DMV.
6. E-mail. The original identity theft vector. Most common victims were those dumb enough to have an e-mail address featuring their own name. All your e-mail is recorded by law and scanned for keywords. Even encrypted e-mail is recorded for the day when quantum computers will decipher them. Many people remain unaware that e-mail is not downloaded to your computer, but resides on the provider’s server, where after 30 days it can be read without a warrant.
7. IP address. A key identity factor for those who use home connections, as they tend to be older and not use mobile devices. These were the first victims of Alexa-snooping.
8. Contact list. A goldmine. I know of no method to keep these private.
9. Cellular phone bills. They are a continuation of the phone company’s records of your long-distance calls. They care less about who you call than about the pattern established. This was the original form of profiling. Changing your phone number does not erase the pattern.
10. Search history is way down here because it is just not as important as it used to be. They say Google has enough search history to put every adult male in America away for life if they ever decide to do it. Related to this but not quite the same are every video you have ever viewed on-line and every website ever visited. Same with all uploads and downloads and how you have configured your browser. This information is like a fingerprint to Chrome.
11. Updates, particularly Windows updates. Take a snapshot of your hard drive contents, but as far as I know, do not yet copy the files. The updates are the primary method of getting spyware on to your computer.
12. Likes. Everybody on Facebook has a likes profile, including those who never use them. They are corroborating data, same as your photo uploads, and any games, books, music, and ads you click on. Individually trivial, collectively another fingerprint.
13. Purchase history. More closely related than you think are your newsfeeds and your purchase history. Facebook also tracks what you hide from newsfeeds.
14. Voice data, all “Skype” calls are recorded, it is not yet clear how this information is being used, but almost certainly involves not what you say, but biometrics. News of developments in this area vanished from the Internet around 2014.
15. Gaming, the interactive kind. There is a reason many of the newest “kid” games are funding by covert government departments. If you are unaware of the extent this games are being manipulated, watch almost any video titled “The Surveillance State”.
16. Wireless devices. The closest thing we now have to the dreaded IoT (Internet of Things). Soon, someone else will control your everything from your refrigerator to the guns in your cabinet. Like driverless cars that can “detain” you, be very afraid.
17. Medical data. For all the rhetoric and assurances, this information has never been kept secret. The average doctor has no clue about computer or office security measures. Always ask your doctor if he minds keeping your records in a filing cabinet.
18. Documents stored in the “cloud”. Bogus, there is no cloud. Your data is not kept in packets all over the net as was promised by the “cloud”, but entirely on your provider’s server. All on-line services retain a copy of the files you send them. Worst offender: MicroSoft.
19. If you use an on-line calendar with memos, or discuss any private issues on Zoom, you are a bad guy’s wet dream. Same with messaging and chats. Do it in person, folks.
20. All forms of government ID (SSN, DL, State ID). Once you give it out on-line one, it is never private again
21. Credit card info, but far less important than not long ago.
22. Religious, political, and census views are targeted profiling. If it is anonymous, why do you have to tell them your name? Because folks, you are being lied to.
23. Way down this list are your education, income level, marital status, gender, and race. Why? Because all of this can be inferred from the above. So complete is the profiling data, these items are now considered secondary.
24. Grocery and gift cards are poised for the next big data and privacy breach.
25. Name. This is almost meaningless any more, since they know it is you no matter what you say or do. However, the reason you must state your name in many situations is not to establish your identity. If they are not sure it is you, type of thing, all charges would have to be dropped. It is to establish “psychological superiority” and get you blabbering answers on command.
There you have it. The list is not complete because many of the categories have subsidiary concerns. The only way to have any privacy any more, on-line or off, is to have started protecting your data 25 years ago. I have never entered my name, phone number, address, SSN, or any of the above information on to any non-government website. Ever. I have a complete standby set of information, an “electronic identity” that so far has passed every log-on security feature. I am the original js@aol.com (John Smith). I have no credit cards, and never pay by personal check. And a host of other measures that, sadly, too many people caught up in the on-line mess would consider inconvenient. But compared to what they put up with and consider normal, I get along just fine.
The Eye of the Sahara.
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I measured out the sheds for the passive air conditioner. If the power went out in the summertime, this place would be practically uninhabitable and no way you could sleep here. Thus, I did not balk when I priced out the passive air conditioner at a minimum $527, plus tax, plus any fittings to duct the air into the building. The specs say this length of pipe (100 feet) is enough to lower the internal temperature by 20°F. The problem is retail, the 10-foot pipe sections of 4” PVC are $20.31 each and the 45° elbows are $6.83. The total price compares well with a gas generator, mind you. I’m looking at cheaper drain pipe.
Alternate designs show piping run along bottoms of ponds or rivers. No doubt that would be illegal in Florida. I can’t find info on the material for the backplate. Black painted tin? It might be wise to build the chimney first in case that alone is enough to cool the sheds. I was out there today but required all the fans running top speed just to enter. I’ve got the parts to build a small squirrel cage blower operated by a foot pedal. The plan was to connect it to the burner to make that as efficient and smoke proof as possible. But it uses my old circular saw motor and really moves a lot of air, maybe too much. But centrifugal systems don’t compress the air and that’s what I want.
While reviewing my song list, I went over the 80 tunes played by my old five piece. They are still together, but you get that with bands that do more rehearsing than gigging. Amazingly, they’ve kept the same bass player all these years. Some guys just don’t need to play out like I do. However, I find only one mention of them playing, it’s at a pub. Their web site is mostly prose. Stephie, now a redhead, is still singing with them, let’s see, she’d be 62 now and I wonder if the lead guy’s poinked her yet? That dude knew nothing of the psychology of scoring with women and kept asking to the point of begging. No wonder she liked me best.
There is something not quite right about their demo sound. The average age of this band is over 70, along with most of what they play. I see they’ve scored a couple of fancy gigs, but overall I lost money with that band. That’s the group where the lead player had a night job, so he would not play gigs unless they paid at least as much as his job. Meaning this five piece band priced itself right out of the market. Music-wise, the band was tops, but I wasn’t there to win music awards. They also had the attitude the bassist was a non-influential entity, making it a point to not play anything he suggested (although I never had a problem making them think everything was their idea).
I found another brand new e-reader in the shed. It seems to be in new condition though the 2 gig memory card means it may be quite ancient. Will it play music? We find out tomorrow.
