Category Archives: Privacy

Human relations, Privacy, Social comment, Technology

Ways to make telemarketers have bad days

November 24, 2021 jkkblog 2 Comments

Been getting a lot of these recently on the cell phone (which is also the business phone). Not sure why, but they always present us with the same choice: just hang up, or waste a scammer’s time. Because I’m the sort of person who will hit at an adversary with whatever he’s got, even if it’s a blade of grass, I waste their time.

When we do this, we should be careful.

I will never be as good at this as Haven Riney, who literally wrote the book on messing with telemarketers (that’s the title), but I have picked up/developed a few good methods for those of us who aren’t as quick-thinking in the moment. Here are my own guidelines for doing this:

Always remember that you are bound by no strictures of courtesy, honesty, or other values you might uphold in real life. If they were honest, they would not telemarket; ergo, they’re thieves. It is not moral to reward thievery with kind politeness, much less with success in any form. In any form. Seriously. They are among the few people in your world who deserve not one bit of understanding. When they aren’t talking to you, most of them are scamming bewildered elders (this is stealing and fraud).

Those rare few who are in fact offering an actual real service are like people coming onto your property with a weapon, then claiming that the fact that it was not loaded means you should have treated them as friends. You can’t see whether it’s loaded, so to speak, so you owe no distinction between honest and criminal, nor any energy expended to try. They’re all adversaries if you don’t know them.

Yes, I know it’s the day before US Thanksgiving. They’re still the adversary, and they will still be the adversary when many of us are sitting down to dinner tomorrow. I am thankful for just enough native creative wickedness to give them what they deserve, and for the fundamental crassness to advocate it even at festive times.

While it could be fun and would certainly be moral to press the get-a-human number on the robocalls–objective being to seek out a human’s time to waste–I myself won’t go that far because it’s like giving them permission. They should never get any permission. If you think it’s a robocall and want to test, just go hoccccccch real loudly, as if you are about to expel a mucous. A robot won’t know how to interpret that (robots do not experience mucous). A person will ask whether you’re okay, or will hang up.

First rule: Never, never, never say “yes” to any question. There are scam artists who will take that one recorded word and use it to show some sort of proof of your agreement. When you answer that phone, that word isn’t in your vocabulary.
Second rule: First job is to suss out whether they have your real name (quite often if you are a homeowner), someone else’s, or have just called at random. If they have your real name and/or address, find out what it’s about just in case it’s actually a legitimate call. While it might annoy you for your auto repair shop to call and market to you, that’s not as evil as someone trying to sell you Inhumana Medicare Silver Senior Elder Suckup Advantage “that you deserve.” (You know, the sort of thing you get between watching segments of Crochet Wars on The Living Antiquity Channel, which promises to put money back in your Social Security and give you free continence products. That You Deserve. Whatever it is, You always Deserve It.)
Third rule: Try to avoid saying anything illegal. This article discourages any activity that violates US law. It’s not as if someone in Shaitanabad or Santa Sinvergüenza can exactly call the FBI and have you arrested–but be careful nonetheless. Bear in mind that buying or selling under false pretenses is against the law depending on how it’s done, while just talking to a caller under false pretenses is not. Do a little self-editing.

Clearly, if it’s someone you do business with, you have better choices and should consider that. For example, you can tell them to stop, and they would be wise to heed you. But before you do that, make sure it’s not them trying to help you. It might be the nurse from your medical provider with a message from your doctor. I never advocate being an idiot.

Assuming it’s not a legit call: If they have your real name, deny it of course, remembering that how you answer anything could tend to confirm it by mistake. If they ask whether you still live at 101 Maple Street, the logical question is not “no”; it’s “which city is that even in?” Make up any name you want. Count von Crappenburg. Imelda Reina de los Zapatos. Alexei Alexeyevich Romanov. Joe Schwantz. Barron Maples. You have no idea where that address is, or even what state it’s in, but you live at x address. If you know it, pick the address of city hall, or the sheriff’s office, or your local mall. Tell them you’re homeless and living in a tent along I-5 atop Mount Rubbish. Claim to live in an army barracks, or an army tank for that matter. Claim to be flying an F-13 and about to shoot down some North Korean Dong missiles. To any question they ask, you tell anything but the truth. They have no right to ask such nosy questions anyway, so this is the proper way to reply.

Once you have worked out that it’s not real, and have assessed and blunted potential dangers, you are free to have some fun. The only rule is to drag the conversation out as long as possible (wasting their time) and making it as fruitless and annoying as possible. Everyone doing this should be made not to like it. This isn’t the grocery checker, who is earning an honest living and deserves your kind patience and courtesy when she is overwhelmed. This is not the guy at the McDonald’s window, underpaid and probably mistreated by his manager, who deserves your civility and decency. This is not the saintly nurse who stayed on the job through two years of pandemic and will not stop caring for people, even for donkeys who refused vaccination and then had the gall to expect care for their coronavirus. This is not the waitress at Denny’s, who should never be punished because the kitchen is stupid, and whose livelihood depends on you tipping her fairly based upon her service. This is not those good people. This is a bad person in a bad business. This is your chance to punish them. For example:

Affect an accent. Any accent. If it mimics their accent, that’s fine. That would be considered at least borderline bigoted if it were a decent person, but remember: it’s not a decent person. They choose to telemarket or join scam operations, mostly offshore, spoofing phone numbers so that you won’t know who it is. If they have an accent, there is nothing wrong with mocking it, whether it’s a Deep South drawl or a Pakistani lilt.
Come up with a name, since you are not going to admit to your real one. The more credible it is, the longer the call might go. Batman Supergirl might not get much traction. Cecilia Yobukovskaya might do better.
If you speak foreign languages, use them when you see fit. One sentence in English, one in Spanish. Be careful with Spanish, lest they say “Purdonnamay, senior, no hobblo esspaniel, uno momentito pourfuvor.” If they do that, and you speak a third language, when the Spanish speaker arrives you can switch to that. Imagine the conversation later: “You ignorant asshat. The name he gave you means “smoke pole” in Spanish and the language he was speaking was probably Italian. What, you think every foreign language is Spanish? Who even diapers you in the morning?”
Think of a backstory and flesh it out. Look back to an earlier phase of your life and answer as that person. Think of the craziest person you know and answer as them. The nephew who became a meth addict? This is the only good that will ever come of that human tragedy.
Consider speaking very slowly and not understanding half of what they say. Use enormous amounts of regional slang that no one in Hyderabad is likely to know. Talk about interests you don’t have. Tell them that you are an ethical vegan and that meat is murder and ask if their company abides by vegan principles. (If you in fact are an ethical vegan, ask them something else, so as not to tell them the truth in any way.) Ask them if their company is organic according to USC 14.285.828a. Since I just made that one up, they probably won’t understand it even if they’re American.
Tell them that you live by the Shania Laws of Appalachian Islam and that it’s time for your daily prayers. (Get a confederate (upper case possibly) to sing the Call to Prayer: “Y’all come pray now.”)
Go wild. Ask if they have Jesus. If so, ask whether they can help you find him and let him out. Ask if they have Satan (they do, whether they know it or not), and encourage them to let him into their hearts. Tell them you have ten million dollars in the credit union, and that the credit union is actually complaining because it takes up too much vault space. Ask if they like vaping.
Repeatedly interrupt the conversation by admonishing an imaginary child or dog. (“Timmy! Don’t do that or you’re going in the stew!”) Apologize in advance for your Tourette’s, and have periodic outbursts. Claim a very interesting occupation, such as cat herdswoman or fertilizer processor or bison yoga instructor or dromedary veterinary assistant. Say “kushkushkushkush” as if telling a camel to kneel. Be Jed Clampett. Be Elly May Clampett. Best of all, if you can pull it off, be Granny. Irene Ryan was one of the funniest comics I ever saw.
Ask the nuttiest possible questions about their product or service. Does their insurance cover Peyronie’s Syndrome? Scrotal lesions? Does it cover therapy for obsessive-apathetic disorder? Organ failure? Piles? Tiles? What about pudding therapy? Will their home refinance loan have an interest rate below 1%? They say that your “Windows Computer” is spreading a virus and they want you to go to a website; go to your microwave, pretend to have mistaken it for a computer, and attempt to follow their directions. Will their home warranty cover cases of Orson? “No, not arson. That’s illegal. Orson is different, obviously. It mostly affects houses with Welles, and can be quite costly to repair.”
Got a confederate in the house? Have her start screaming in the other room. Tell your child that right now it’s encouraged to go totally cattiewhompus. Got multiple people? Have them fake an argument in the Pentagon. “Fuck you, General! We are invading Guam only with Navy ships!” “They don’t do very well on land, Admiral.” “Dipshit, it’s an island! The Army can’t even get there unless they swim! This is our turf, so go dig a foxhole!” Got a cough? You do now! Sneezing fit? Let ’em rip in the middle of everything the caller says, then ask them to repeat it. Got a kid whose hobby is making flatulence noises with his armpit? Get him to do it as loudly as possible near the phone.

If you had fun, wasted their time, and gave them no truthful or useful information, you did well. If you felt a twinge, that’s normal; behaving with a complete lack of consideration is not natural for most of us. In such a case, remember:

No one forced these people to call you.
Nothing they are offering is legitimate.
Nearly all of them are giving false phone numbers.
Most aren’t even using their real names.
All of it is a fundamental insult to your intelligence.
While you’re wasting their time, they aren’t preying on someone’s grandma.
You are performing a community service, a random act of caring for others. It’s one of the few community services you can perform by being as cruel as possible.

Leave scars.

Human relations, Privacy, Social comment, Technology

P3: Punishing porch pirates

June 15, 2019 jkkblog Leave a comment

By now most of you have heard of the new suburban crime: porch piracy. You order stuff from Blue Nile, or Yangtze, or Congo, or Amazon, wherever. In some cases, a postal worker delivers it; in others, a UPSS driver. In others, it’s an obvious meth-head. Either way, they may or may not ring the doorbell before they throw it into the exact spot that will keep you from opening your screen door to retrieve it.

And some amateur porch pirate, following the delivery vehicle around town, pulls up, leaps out, darts up to your porch, steals your parcel, runs back to his/her car, and drives off.

The police aren’t doing much about this. I understand. This doesn’t raise revenue, so it’s not important to them. However, the police will definitely prevent us from doing anything really decisive about this. For example, I’m pretty sure anyone who fills the porch pirate’s ass with 12-gauge rock salt will face much stiffer penalties than will the porch pirate. This falls into line with my view that the basic purpose of policing is to maintain social control while shielding bad people from real consequences. This view is controversial, and is rooted in my personal experiences. I don’t expect other people to agree with it.

But I bet even those who think I just wrote the most horrible thing still don’t themselves much like porch pirates.

Since we can’t really punish them (and this is me going on firm record as strongly advocating that we not really punish them in any illegal way), we’re going to have to get creative.

Do in such a way: wait until your next sizable parcel from a vendor who uses clear plastic packing tape and normal brown cardboard boxes. Turn it over (so that you do not damage the shipping label, which is usually right across the box closure), take a box cutter, and gently slit the tape holding the box bottom together. Take out whatever you ordered.

If you happen to make/receive regular trips to/from Somewhere Else whose resident also wants to punish porch pirates, you can gain added security. Get them to do the same with their boxes, and when you meet up, swap. The porch pirates aren’t going to stare intensely at the label or match it to the target address before they leave; the savviest might merely glance to make sure the label doesn’t show signs of the re-closure you plan to do. When they get home and start opening Santa’s haul, if the one containing the goodness has an address in Bug Tussle (and you do not actually live in Bug Tussle), they will think it was grossly misdelivered or something and open it anyway. They probably won’t remember where they got that one.

Okay, let’s get on with the fun.

Do you have cats? If you do, great! If you do not, you probably know someone who does. He or she probably talks about them more than you would like, but now comes your reward for enduring it with sainted patience. Pick the person you know that has the most cats, and ask if they have any heavily used litter box contents they could part with. Most people who own litter box contents are generous in spirit and will gladly part with clumps of cat-urine-caked litter and cat turds, especially in a good cause. There are people who hoard cats, but few who voluntarily hoard cat excretions–and that’s golden for your purposes.

You should also get some glitter, preferably a pound or two, and some powdered sugar. Another great tool for this purpose, to anoint what I will call the Goodness, is a Vietnamese anchovy sauce called nuoc-mam (nook-MOM). I put it on my Thai food. It’s very salty and smells very fishy. Do not ever, ever, ever, not even to your worst enemy, squirt this stuff into the heater vents of anyone’s vehicle.

If you grocery shop, you probably have a small collection of flimsy, crappy plastic bags, the absolute cheapest things the store could buy in bulk that stand half a chance of getting your groceries to your car. Now, because you care about climate change and the environment, you are going to do the ecologically friendly thing and repurpose two of the bags while disposing of them in an appropriate way. You are so green. Double the bags and fill them up with as much goodness as you can arrange: cat sanitation disappointments, powdered sugar, any condiments you may care to add, and glitter. Don’t tie up the top.

Now lay the bag on its side and reclose the box bottom around it, without spilling any of the goodness (for safety’s sake, do this outside, especially if you are butterfingered). Re-cover the bottom tape seams with fresh clear packing tape, taking care not to tilt the box. It may help to have an assistant, if you know anyone else who hates porch piracy. Do as good a job as you can at making the tape look professional.

Put it out on your porch and be patient. Sometimes porch pirates rush up and leave behind an empty box, to keep watchers from getting suspicious. Either way, as they walk away, they are almost guaranteed to spill the goodness. When they open it, with luck, it will spill all over their vehicle. Or, if they wait until they get home to open their haul, on the floor. Maybe on the dining room table.

Wherever they spill it will likely never be the same.

And the beauty of this is that you haven’t mailed anything illegal because you haven’t mailed anything to anyone. You put a box on your front porch, one that no one has the right to inspect or abscond with. One great mistake people make in life is answering nosy questions just to “be nice.” Why did you put it there? That’s none of anyone’s business, and they can go to hell for asking. Other people pile tons of stuff on their property and no one asks stupid questions about it, unless it’s the Homeowners’ Stasi.

You can put any legal substance you desire into a box that sits on your own property. Cat urine clumps are illegal to mail, but not to put into outdoor storage on private property in manageable quantities. You have deterred a porch pirate in the only useful way that is safe from the law: by leaving them something not terribly pleasant to steal.

Anyone seeking to report you for this, presumably for being a Big Meany to Poor Downtrodden Criminals, would also have to admit to having stolen the package. While the police would protect them from more direct retaliation by you, I’m pretty sure that if the porch pirates filed a complaint, the police would be laughing almost too hard to arrest them.

Since what they stole had low value, of course, it’s unlikely they would or will get in any trouble. But it is likely they’ll have a bad day and question their choice of careers.

If that’s all the compensation you can get, might as well get it.

Privacy, Technology

Perhaps a return, and migration

December 8, 2018 jkkblog Leave a comment

The ‘Lancer has been on hiatus since mid-summer. It now takes tentative steps to leave that status behind.

Those that have read regularly for some time may wish to know why. Honestly, I would rather not say; however, I feel that the owed courtesy of an answer outweighs my enormous reluctance, and I am well aware that my silence is not the expected behavior for handling distress. Most people would have hosed the whole blow-by-blow onto Facebook all along, in the modern trend of forcing the emotional finger down one’s throat in the most public possible way (being sure to take selfies). If that works for them, very well.

The more bothered I am, the more silent I grow and the fewer people I tell. This is because talking about it harms rather than helps me, and also harms those to whom I talk, none of whom deserve to hurt. It would hurt them because–as seems obvious to me–it would further harm me, and thus their reward for honest caring and kind intentions would be to see me feel worse. In some cases, they might compound that disappointment by faulting themselves for what is simply a personality quirk of mine. I care enough about my friends not to put them in a position where we both hurt more.

Basic principles: don’t ask for help you don’t want, and don’t lead people on to try and help you if your personality won’t let them succeed. Simple humanity, at least by my lights.

But just to reassure everyone, there is no terminal illness, no sudden death or disability in my world, no horrific physical injury, no marital disaster, nothing like that. Suffice to say: I have just spent this time dealing with some issues. I now begin to feel like talking once more. I hope this will suffice, and will be received with the same compassionate acceptance you all have generously shown. And for all those who follow, and did not unfollow, thank you.

What this also means is that I find myself thinking about posting on Facepalm again. For months, I have not felt like engaging the world on any but my own terms. That ruled out online forums; simple logic says if you don’t want the reactions, don’t say the things. And I then began to delete my Facebook wall postings. It felt kind of good, and I decided to keep going. In fact, I decided not to start posting new ones until I had wiped out the accumulated mass of, what, nine years of posts. I’m only done back to 2013, so I see completion as some way off, but within reach. I don’t regret it. I regret some photos and images I removed rather than hid from the timeline, but that’s it.

Onward to actual content.

A side effect of this process has been to realize that it’s time to split the sheets with Firefox. It has become turtle-slow, and bringing my outdated version current will break most of the extensions that make it worthwhile to me. Safari and Chrome are out of the question, as is Irrelevant Explorer (or whatever it now calls itself), so I settled on Opera.

This is not a simple process. Opera works differently, and in some ways I much dislike. I’m sure some of the speed improvement has to do with using fewer extensions and blockers, but maybe I didn’t need that many. The big privacy discovery was PrivacyBadger, a nifty tool that lets you block a lot of the crap they throw at you, then add them back one by one until you find the one key item that un-breaks the site just enough to get what you want. Between that, Ghostery, Disconnect, UnTrackMe, and Privacy Protector Plus, I think I’ve got this aspect where it needs to be.

I’m not sure what could possibly pierce the anti-junk armor of five different add-ins, but each one seems to catch a number of intrusions, so unless they are reporting redundantly, they’re all doing some good. The downside to Opera is that fewer add-ins exist for it. There will be compromise.

What Opera still needs in order for me to uninstall Firefox: a good weather add-in, a good reminder add-in, an easier way to block cookies from certain sites, a better bookmark menuing system, and for me to figure out the RSS feed. I guess it’ll be a long goodbye to Firefox, but not an unhappy one. One wonders if its open-sourceness and popularity led to a critical mess of clunky code. I don’t know. It and I are done now.

Now, if I can figure out how to block Google’s geolocation, that would be ideal. Right now that seems like herpes: no cure, and evidently no one even trying or wanting to try. But we’ll see.

Human relations, Privacy, Social comment

My current Firefox no-saying suite

February 24, 2018 jkkblog Leave a comment

One of my theories about humanity is that, in many areas, people divide into two natural or conditioned inclinations. One of the simplest is the question: what’s your default answer? Do you fundamentally prefer to say “yes” or “no”?

I believe that most people prefer to say “yes.” I believe that more people find it harder to say “no” and easier to say “yes.” People, companies, police, etc. take advantage of this to bully information out of the average person.

As a solid “no,” this does not mean that I cannot cooperate, that I cannot assent, that I cannot sometimes just go along. It means that, without a reason, the answer is a default “no.” For example, nearly anything my wife asks of me is perfectly reasonable. She’s my wife and it’s my job to help her in every way. Thus, her answer is nearly always “yes.” The post office, Amazon, my grocery store, telemarketers, and so forth do not enjoy her privileges. I don’t want to help or cooperate with them unless I have a good reason, such as “I would like my mail delivered correctly,” or “Amazon needs to know this information in order to ship me these cans of duster.” Will I put my grocery cart back in the collection space? Sure, because I think it’s a positive contribution. Can they compile a dossier on everything I eat and drink? Not with any help from me.

What seems automatic decisionmaking for most people is not automatic in my world, but it still produces a lot of “yes.” If I don’t make sure my recycling is clean, it’ll cause problems for something worthwhile, so it gets rinsed out. “Yes.” If my trash cans are not in a feasible spot, the trucks will not be able to get to them; “yes.” Lots of life circumstances come with good reasons. The bank wants to see my ID to let me into my account? “Yes.” I should hope they always do. However, the grocery store wants me to create a record of my purchases with a ‘loyalty card’? “No.” But we’ll give you a discount! No. I choose to view it that you impose a surcharge in order not to have this dossier created. I will mostly choose to shop someplace else. Thus, “no.” Every supposed discount can also be viewed as a surcharge for those not qualifying for that discount, which is not how our precious corporations hope you will think.

Because the default answer is no–let’s call me a no-sayer–I do not make it easy for random organizations to get information about me. Why do I care? They aren’t entitled to know why I care, either. That’s how the no-sayer thinks. If I were suddenly exposed to media attention, I would first ask myself whether I were in a position to manipulate them for my benefit. After all, they seek access for their own benefit. If I were in such a position–if I had a reason–I’d consider it. If not, “no.” Why not? No answer. Don’t you want to tell your side of the story? No answer. Do you have cut vocal cords? No answer. Even a negative answer beyond “no” would provide information, crack the door open. Only “no” followed by silence is a complete zero for them. They are not entitled to an answer, nor are they entitled to know why they are not entitled to one and will not receive it. Nothing.

“What do you have to hide?” “None of your business.” “Why?” “Also none of your damn business.”

Car dealers hate no-sayers. The sales rep starts asking questions, and gets very annoyed if one won’t answer them. Most of the people who have no right to information will eventually obtain it because yes-sayers are afraid to be thought rude or uncooperative. I saw it all the time with collection agencies, as I inherited a Boise deadbeat’s phone number (and a lot of people in Boise end up broke, so that probably isn’t rare). A couple of these calls came in per week. The collection agents all felt entitled to answers to their questions about this indebted person. They did not enjoy being told that they weren’t entitled even to ask questions until they answered all of mine. They persisted in trying to ask the questions and acted as though I were very mean by insisting on my basic right. They were used to hammering down resistance through repetition, which suggests that it works. Far as I was concerned, they’d initiated the call; they could either answer me to my satisfaction, or get nothing. And since I had no reason to help them, my questions would never end; they would never get anything. Collection agencies provide a perfect example of where the no-sayer produces an unwanted consequence.

This brings us to the Internet, a place where it seems someone is always asking for our private information–and mining it without telling us. What other websites have you visited today, hmm? Fascinating! Browsing the Web involves expecting salvo after salvo of information requests, many of which one’s browser will answer accurately by default. This, of course, is inimical to the no-sayer. The firm no-sayer will tend, to the limits of his or her free time and technical aptitude, to seek out new ways to say “no.”

NO TREK. No: the final response. These are the voyages of the starship Neverprise. Its continuing mission: to refuse companies permission to explore my data; to seek out new ways to say and enforce “no”; to boldly “no” where no one has said “no” before…

Some of my readers may be interested in better no-saying for fun and privacy. I use a crapload (ten of which compose a crapton) of Firefox add-ins, most intended to assert my right to control the answer and direct it toward “no.” If I’m going to say “yes”, I’ll be needing a good reason. And if the add-on can allow me to give false information, when true information is not my obligation, that’s even better. I consider myself within my moral right to lie at will to any question I consider inappropriate (or where lying is dangerous). My car insurance company is owed an answer about what car I drive, where I park it, etc. Some random agency is not entitled to know that. I’m entitled to tell them I drive a circa 1910s Stanley Steamer that runs on virgin macadamia oil.

If you would like to say a whole lot of “no” to nosey websites, I’m here to help you. Here’s the current “no” lineup, a work in progress:

Adblock Plus, and Adblock Plus Pop-Up Add-On: one of the most basic ways to avoid seeing advertising. I will disable it on certain pages if I feel that is deserved.

Cookie Monster: this enables me to accept or reject a site’s cookies. There are limits to how well this can work, because most sites that require a login will require cookies. Nearly every other site includes a bullshit statement that “by using this site you agree to use of cookies.” I block the cookies anyway. Since they can’t enforce that, it means nothing; I don’t morally recognize any supposed agreement or contract with a stupid basis, such as ‘reading this means you agree.’ If the site won’t work without them, I decide how much I care about it. If I care a lot, I either accept the cookies for session only, or just do it from a browser that has no add-ons installed. That way, at least their cookies are in a jar that gives limited information. If a no-sayer cannot simply say “no,” the next best answer is this electronic noncommittal grunt. Call it numph-saying.

Disconnect: blocks most third-party tracking. No single add-on can be trust to block everything one dislikes, so it’s okay to double up if you don’t mind the performance impact. For me, it’s worth it to say “no.” The no-sayer’s obvious default answer to all tracking is “oh hell no.” One has to enable Disconnect’s content blocking on a site-by-site basis. So far I have not run into a site where blocking the tracking content impaired the site for me.

DuckDuckGo Plus: at this point, I am not sure I need this. DuckDuckGo itself, as a search engine, doesn’t track me. (For this reason, I turn off my ad blocker while using it. They asked politely, so I didn’t mind saying “yes.” It’s amazing how nice and cooperative I get when asked politely with a good reason.) The add-on claims to do a lot of privacy-related stuff. Maybe it does. If so, great. If not, it doesn’t cost me much performance (if any).

FB Purity: rearranges Facebook to one’s liking, enabling various garbage to be blocked and other aspects of it less odious. There is, of course, a limit to how much of FB’s data hydra activity one can prevent while being the product for its marketing (and make no mistake, you aren’t the customer; you are the product for sale). Most people just throw their hands up. As a stolid no-sayer, my response is “then I’ll block what I can; if I’m out of weapons, I’ll claw with my fingernails; if all I have is an eyebrow hair, I’ll slug ’em with that.”

Facebook Tracking & Ad Removal: I would like this just for the sake of its icon, which is a flipped bird. Gets rid of at least some Facebook garbage. Might be overkill combined with FBP. I’m willing to accept that possibility. I operate on the assumption that Zuckbook is forever re-engineering itself to defeat all ad blocking and self-customization, and that any add-on may cease working at any time without notice until it receives an update, so the more, the merrier as long as they don’t overload the browser and cause it to collapse.

Fakespot: this can be used to assess the bot production level of product reviews. If one suspects that a given product has a lot of bogus puff reviews generated by automated means, it’s worth running.

Flashstopper: halts video autoplay. I hate video autoplay. If I want to see or hear the video, I’ll elect to play it myself.

Forecastfox: a good weather add-in. Worth whatever tracking is caused by having to give it a location. (Since it cannot tell you the weather unless you tell it a location, the request is reasonable.)

Ghostery: another tracker blocker. The fact that it usually finds some tells me that the overlap with other add-ins is worthwhile. The interesting here is what it tells you. Wonder how come FB seems to know so much about your online habits? There’s a tracker called Facebook Connect that is found all over the place. This lets you put a stop to that. I just block every single tracker; if something doesn’t work, I’ll consider some selective enabling. So far it never has. When you win a bid on Ebay, for example, instead of the normal Ebay Stats tracker, you get about ten others that can only want to know what you bought. Blocking them all doesn’t impair your purchase, so this is just the corporate world continuing to compile its dossier on your shopping habits.

GoogleSharing: this is just delicious. This add-in mixes up your Google requests with others and sprays them at Google, thus peeing in the data mining pool–and there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do about it. Anyone who read the preamble will understand how little I like the idea of Google forming a neat little profile about me.

Honey: this digs up discount codes for online shopping. Haven’t saved any money so far, but haven’t had it long.

NoMiner: it seems cryptocurrency ‘miners’ (who need a lot of processing power in order to make money) are using our machines to do some of the processing. No. This is my most recent add. I think cryptocurrency is pretty questionable anyway, but even if it’s completely smart and good, my clock cycles are not public property.

NoScript: this one is among the few that can cause pains in the ass. Most websites use many scripts from many sites, a good percentage of which are designed to feed data hydras. One by one, I will enable these for this session only, until the portion of the page I care about begins to work. Some I just have to set it to accept all the time. Using this means that I sometimes have to use a clean alternate browser. I can’t fault the pages in question for not working when I block some of their functionality, but I can at least reserve the right to decide when to allow them to work.

Here’s a key part of the no-sayer’s code: one must understand that this has its consequences, especially with websites. Developers set all that stuff up to work together. They can’t prevent you from taking out pieces, but it’s like a vehicle engine: all the pieces do something, and if you take some out, some things will not work right. If you just want to drive during the day, you can disconnect your headlights, but you then cannot complain if you forget to reconnect them come dusk, and if you cause an accident through your neglect, that’s your own fault. Own your “no.”

PriceBlink: something like Honey, but will dig for alternate and better prices on online shopping. Good referent.

ReminderFox: my personal calendar. It’s how I remember to make that grocery run, or someone’s birthday, etc. Essential.

Remove Cookies for Site: this is what we do when we had to enable cookies in order to proceed, but want them gotten rid of afterward. If it doesn’t find any, then great; someone actually meant it when they said the cookies were session only. I never take their word for that. If it does find some, also great. I don’t use it that often, but on some really cookie-filthy sites it makes me feel better.

Remove Google Tracking: says it removes tracking from Google searches. Now and then I end up using Google to search, though not often. This makes me feel a little less nude about it.

Tab Memory Usage: kind of nifty, tells me how much data the current tab is using. Nice to know which sites are the most porcine.

The Camelizer: this thing rocks. You use it for an Amazon item you consider too spendy, and tell it your email and what you’d like to pay for the item. When you get your price, it notifies you, and you can proceed to purchase it if you wish.

TrackMeNot: something like GS, barfing out a steady stream of spurious search requests. Gives the data hydra something useless to suck on.

View Cookies: want to know what the current page’s cookies are? Good prelude to deleting them.

Web of Trust: this will flag search results with a little circle: green, yellow, or red. One that is red has been reported by enough users as malevolent in some way. Not all ways are relevant to all people; for example, one thing that will get reported is child-inappropriate stuff. You can check the reason and make your own decision.

Yahoo Mail Hide Ad Panel: self-explanatory. Yes, I know that Yahoo funds itself with these ads. No, I do not care. Yahoo has its problems and I have mine.

Does all of this slow Firefox down? Maybe. Is all of it necessary? Maybe not. Does it all make me feel like I am properly noncooperating with nosy people to the greatest extent possible? Yes–and some of you may find one or more of these useful.

Privacy, Social comment

Why I put up fights on privacy, junk mail, and so on

February 14, 2017 jkkblog Leave a comment

My guess: most people do not first look at any website or information request and ask themselves what data the issuers/owners are gathering, and how they will use it. I do.

Another guess: most people just toss the junk mail, probably without opening it. I do that with nearly none of it.

This makes me the oddball, a lifetime position of comfort for me. In fact, it is a position of such comfort that it comes with intellectual risk. There is always the possibility that my crowd-averse nature will go so far that it may become as mindless as a crowd. If my view is that the larger the group, the dumber its collective decisions tend to get, then a natural bias against conformity is not unreasonable provided I do not take that too far. Put another way, it’s also dumb and mindless to refuse to consider doing what everyone else does. Maybe everyone else is, in at least a few cases, doing what makes sense. The idea is to think, not to find a new way to refuse to think. If one is going to refuse to think, we already have ample incentive and opportunity there: just make the choices everyone else makes, and enjoy the warm sussuration of conformist reassurance, of crowd membership. Blind nonconformity isn’t any brighter than blind conformity.

But I can’t really win. What I do is like throwing grains of sand in front of a semi, one grain at a time. And I realize it. I do it anyway.

I block as much data hydra stuff on websites as I can. I don’t even bother reading New York Times articles; requires a login, end of consideration. I enable scripts one at a time until a given page works enough for me to do what I want to do there, or I decide I don’t want it badly enough. I go through life without running Google’s scripts or taking Google cookies. I send back piles of junk mail. Other junk mail I rip up, stuff into a business reply envelope, and mail back. Whatever’s going in the trash goes into it stripped of my identifying information, even to the extent of peeling address labels off shipping boxes, including any label that contains the tracking number. I mute the TV during commercials, or watch almost exclusively DVRed shows. I refuse to connect my TV to the Internet. I refuse to connect my game console to the Internet. I go into my Facebook ad preferences and remove any that are relevant, leaving only those that make no sense. Metaphorically speaking, I kick, scream, bite, curse, imprecate, slash, and knee the whole way as the world tries to drag me into Alwaysconnectedland and Surveillistan.

Why on earth? How is this worth my energy? Don’t I have better things to do? What good could this possibly accomplish? Did I mistake Don Quixote for a self-help book? Do I need mental help?

The answer to that last question depends on perspective. If you believe that only actions that effect external change have value, then yeah, you probably reckon I should go on medication. But you probably assume there’s anger involved, and there isn’t.

On the contrary, this is how I defeat anger. I have learned that I take more harm from meek submission against what I find offensive than I do from (mostly, nearly) ineffective resistance. In my world view, a great many things should cause tremendous outrage and resistance, and the world does not share my view. In my world view, the center of the moral continuum does not move, and the world’s moral continuum moves every day. I think the world needs memory care. Let’s say there are a hundred unjust killings per day for one year. Next year, there are five hundred. Suddenly the world will think of only a hundred as Good Old Days, and if it drops to two hundred fifty, will call that excellent. To me, the hundred unjust killings are still awful, two-fifty is two and a half times as awful, etc. Fewer is better, certainly, but my ‘normal’ did not reset with the world’s. This does not bother me. The world is wrong most of the time anyway. I lack the need for community reinforcement of my perspective, and as mentioned, tend to distrust it.

Thus, I have not adjusted my ‘normal’ to the advance of the surveillance state, to intrusive marketing, to a postal service existing in the main to deliver garbage no one wants, and so on. I don’t want to. I was once told by a famous author that I lived in my own little world (and he meant that as a compliment). He was wrong. I live in the real world with realistic expectations. I just don’t move my moral compass to agree with the rest of the world’s. If I move it, I do so without consulting majority opinion.

Thus, in my view, when confronted by a wrong thing, I have no moral obligation to “let it go” or “just say it’s okay.” That’s how the world handles most wrongs, via rationalization, and I can see why. If it didn’t, it would go around angry all the time; the level of wrong is at overload, so most people just rationalize away a given portion of the wrong. If they did not, I guess they’d feel guilty. I understand that.

Unlike them, I do something. Might be something small and unbelievably petty, but I resist. I throw my grain of sand. I have found that I take more harm from bottled anger than from practical resistance within my system of values. This is a better way to live while refusing to conform my moral compass to society’s mobile, amnesiac version. Do I think it makes me better than anyone else? I don’t think about that at all. I think the collected mass of humanity is so dumb, as my very religious father used to say, that they ain’t sure if Christ was crucified or run over by a milk truck. As individuals, that’s different, because when outside of the suffocation of groupthink, individual intellects and morals can shine. Some are better and smarter than me in some ways. Some are in every way I can assess. Some aren’t. Some are saints. Some are contemptible. I don’t think about that because they have their talents and values, and I have mine, and a diverse humanity is much to be treasured.

Plus, without a diverse humanity, where would I get a massive number of people to disagree with?

So I answer telemarketing calls in foreign languages, or pretend to be inarticulate, or pretend that a microwave is my computer.

I open junk mail that might have a business reply envelope, and stuff all the garbage in and mail it back.

I shred everything with my name or address on it. The labels I can’t peel off plastic mailers, I cut off and burn in an old coffee can.

The only discards I don’t shred the ID info from are those I stamp REFUSED–OBJECTIONABLE MAIL–RETURN TO SENDER. Why should I have to dispose of their garbage? Ah, but the PO has to dispose of unwanted junk? Great, let the PO do it, since they enable this whole situation by giving junk mailers a lower price.

A provider asks if she can share some information with the insurance company. I say “if I have a choice, then no.” When told I do not, I tell her to tell them the minimum that will make them go away.

Someone calls and begins firing questions. No. No one gets to ask any questions until I finish asking all my own questions, and if they asked even one inappropriate question, my own questions could take a very long time. I do not desire to earn this person’s approval by “being nice.” Nosey people do not deserve “nice.”

A lawn service sticks a flyer onto my house. I call the deputies to find out what it will take to get them punished for that. A sergeant advises me to put up a NO TRESPASSING sign. I do it. I resent random businesses sticking crap to my house. In the newspaper box, that’s one thing; on my house, forget it.

A marketing company sends me an unwanted survey. I owe them no truth, especially if they ask a single question I consider nosey (the one about my income is an automatic). I have some fun. I create a fake name and comically dysfunctional household and fill out the survey accordingly. I’ll get junk for years based on their sale of that data, and I’ll know where it originated. I got sample adult diapers from one outfit for years.

Like many of you, I mute commercials unless I can fast-forward them, but if I have to mute them, I look away. I presume that companies are well aware that many people mute the commercials and that visuals must carry the load. If I look down at my book, even those do not get to stamp images into my mind.

“What are the last four of your social?” In the first place, I hate that it’s so commonplace they don’t even feel they need to say ‘social security number’ in full. In the second, I resent even more that it’s become a default password, so it sets my teeth on edge. I growl: “Decline to provide. We do not use that as a password.” Try it and you will find that nearly every business that has used that as your default password will have some other way of ascertaining your identity (I have no fundamental problem with that).

In general, I ask about the motivation of anything government or corporations shove at me. I begin by assuming that the motive is control (government) or control and profit (corporations). The burden of proof otherwise is on them, and if they do not bother to meet it, I will do my level best not to cooperate in some way I can get by with. For example, I never did get an Idaho driver’s license. Why not? Because fuck you, Butch Otter; my Washington license was still valid, and I didn’t really give a shit what your state law said unless you were prepared to push the issue, and I knew you were not. Of course, I am not confessing to anything of the kind in Oregon; I still live in Oregon. All I can say is that Oregon is many times more authoritarian than either Washington or Idaho, and therefore much more satisfying when (in theory) one finds a way to (in theory) disobey one of its laws. Oregon works very, very hard to avoid loopholes. If you found one, you did well.

Why direct that at Otter? Because I have learned, and I believe, that the top person is responsible for everything. He’s the governor of Idaho (that little DWI incident a few years back is kind of overlooked; pick one of his multiple excuses), and I reserve the right to hold him accountable. Can he control everything? Of course not. Is that my problem? No. Does he care about my problems? Ha! Am I obligated to care about his, in that case? If you’ve read this far, what do you suppose my answer is? So if I had a problem with Idaho’s state government, I had one with Butch. I reserve the right to lay it at his feet, and to curse him over it.

I do these things not because I harbor delusions that I will change the system–though if everyone did them, it certainly would. I’m not doing this as my contribution to humanity, though I sometimes let myself think that in weak moments. I’m doing it because I take more emotional and psychological harm from mindless compliance than I do from wasted time.

That simple.

Privacy, Technology

Deceiving Facebook advertising

December 7, 2016 jkkblog 2 Comments

Ever since the Ad Preferences thing became general knowledge, Facebook users have known a good way to feel creeped out. Yeah, we knew they would do this, and we can’t stop them.

However, I have figured out a way to ruin it, at least a little.

First off: why do that? “What part of ‘free service’ do you not understand? If you impair their ability to make money, you will no longer have a free service! You use this voluntarily! No one forces you!” Answer: because we aren’t getting paid enough. We, the users, are the product. Our compensation is not tied to the revenue we generate for a publicly traded company. Our views are the deliverable. If Facebook were to pay us, that would be one thing, but it never will. Because it never will, it’s moral to mess up their income stream.

How would one do that? At first, I though that deleting all the ad preference indicators would make sense. I then learned an odd thing: if you delete them all, they are soon repopulated with many more even if your FB usage is way down. I’ve been very busy the past couple of weeks and have spent far less time on the site. I checked last night and my “Ad Preferences” were as big a stew as I had previously accumulated (before the first Big Deletion) in years. If you delete them all, it seems, they are repopulated. Quickly. Like an ant colony.

All right. If you insist on keeping a dossier on me, I will ruin it. I will turn it into the hottest garbage I can.

Next time, don’t just delete all your ad preferences. Next time, go through them all and delete all those relevant to you: your leisure, your work, your beliefs, your hobbies, your passions. Leave only those that are complete whiffs. You like quilting? Delete any having to do with fabric. Oregon Ducks fan? There’s help for that condition, but in the meantime, keep any displayed ad preference that indicates you might like the Beavs or the Huskies. You voted for Jill Stein? Leave Mitt Romney on there and remove Jill. Make sure that all the remaining preferences represent lies.

There is nothing Facebook can do about this. It amounts to urinating in the data pool. It also takes less time than deleting them all, and is much more amusing. You’re a millennial? AARP is on there? That one gets to stay! You’re a stay-at-home mom? Facebook thinks you like diaper pails? Hell, no, you do not!

Have fun. We may not win the privacy war, but some of us will fight it just for enjoyment and pride.

Privacy, Social comment, Technology

Blowing off Steam

August 23, 2016 jkkblog Leave a comment

For those who don’t know much about PC gaming, Steam is an online service that provides copy protection, game e-tailing, and probably does other stuff as well.

I wouldn’t know for sure. Way back when Valve was announcing a game called Half-Life 2, there came an announcement that one would also have to use a service called “Steam.” One would have to permit one’s computer to phone Steam to validate one’s non-piracy right to play the game; not just upon install, but all the time. I had loved the first Half-Life to the level of remembering specific moments in the story and how I’d handled them. I also am not prone to automatic acceptance of pretty much anything. Me being me, I took at look at that and said: “nah, ain’t doing that, don’t need a game that badly.”

Most people did not take this stance. Most people just accepted the concept, just as most people accepted debit cards and juice bag drinks. I did not just accept it. And over time, I have come to understand that it means the end of my buying new PC games. When my old ones will no longer work under new systems, I just won’t be a gamer any more.

It wasn’t about unwillingness to buy. I don’t mind paying for software. I do mind the idea of having to keep spyware running just to play a game. For my OS and applications, it’s one thing; I hate it (oh, trust me, how deeply I hate it), but the price there would be my livelihood (and yes, I realize they know that and that’s why M$ does it, and yes, be assure that I take time to take that as personally as possible). I can be forced into it for a word processor, though I’ll remember that they did that. I can’t be forced into it for a game.

Thus, no Steam for me.

It ripples outward. I kept taking PC Gamer for quite some time, and would have continued, but now they no longer list in reviews whether a game uses Steam copy protection. When last they did, most games seemed to use Steam, so I infer that Steam is now assumed and thus needless to state, like “requires monitor.” With that, PCG lost its relevance to my world, and it’ll join about ten other print mag subscriptions in the recycle bin.

It’s not the only area in which I’ve done such a thing. There is increasing social pressure to own a “smart” phone, a device I consider mostly loathsome and unusable, not even very good for the basic purpose of speaking to others. For example, if someone under 40 organizes a meeting nowadays and creates an event on Facebook, and at the appointed time the venue turns out to be closed, the organizer will not post a sign on the closed door. The organizer will update the Facebook event, taking on faith that everyone checks Facebook from his or her phone. If you don’t, you’re left out. I realize that this will see me left out of a certain number of social events.

Once, I might have minded. Now I simply ask myself what I am really missing. That’s not sour grapes, but experience. An event with a bunch of people with smartphones will probably lead to the barbarism of a bunch of people staring down at their groins, madly “checking in” and posting Instagraphs (whatever they are), and making sure the whole world knows their status. I wouldn’t be a good fit anyway. At a group gathering, if I don’t mute my cell phone, you know that either something very important is going on, or I forgot, or I have so little regard for the value of the gathering that it’s valid to ask why I’m even there.

At some point during such obstinacies, the original issue becomes less important than the obstinacies themselves. No, I won’t take a debit card, even if I could see rare applications for it. Why? Because by now, debit cards can go to hell for their own sakes; I’ve enjoyed boycotting them for at least twenty years, and I see no reason to abandon the fun.

I don’t have phone conversations with disembodied voices, either. I will press numbers, but I will not speak understandably. Companies and government need to continue to hire human beings to do business with other human beings, and I’m not going to make it easier for them to get rid of more human beings. Making it harder for me? Okay, we can play that game. I view human interaction as important, and worth some invested time in order to foster.

It might seem like I have a fundamental aversion to new ideas. I don’t. I just have a fundamental aversion to new ideas that are pressed or forced upon me, especially when it’s one that is mainly for the forcer or presser’s benefit. Please consider that clause carefully. That’s my complaint about Steam: it’s there so that it can send information from my machine. That does not benefit me. That benefits game companies, maybe, but I’m not here to benefit them; therefore I’m fine if they go to hell. Same with smartphones. To me they look like a tiny chiclet keyboard and unusable screen at data rates that bloat up faster than a dead steer in August. Seems like $500 to begin the suffering, then $100+ per month of ongoing suffering. Go to hell, not doing it. Automatic bill pay? Seriously? Let me get this straight. I’m to let them take money out of my account without even reviewing the validity of their charges? What if they make a major mistake? You’re saying I should trust the company to do the right thing and be honest? Yeah. I’ll get right on that. I think I’ll be the one making decisions about who gets paid with my money, thanks.

I don’t look down on anyone who chooses to accept situations that I have rejected. I do think more highly of anyone who stopped and thought before making that acceptance. Can’t live without gaming, and decided to kneel and accept Steam? At least you thought. At least you did not just kneel by reflex. That’s really all I advocate: accept it for a considered reason, not just because a corporation ordered you to do so.

In the end, there may be more isolating choices, and I’ll have to decide what’s worth it to me.

I know one that is not, and it is Steam.

Privacy, Social comment, Technology

By viewing our site, you agree to reams of crap

January 29, 2016 jkkblog 2 Comments

We see it all the time, do we not? “Use of our site constitutes agreement to [a massive Terms of Service that has probably been read once in history, by the paralegal who mashed it up for the lawyer’s signoff, and contains gods only know what].”

I am making the case for paying such TOS little to no heed.

Here’s my approach: I don’t recognize them. Yes, they probably in theory have the law on their side; no, I don’t care. I will not comply, and they can go to hell for trying to give me orders. Here is my reasoning:

No one put a weapon to the organization’s head and caused it to publish a website viewable by the random general public. The information now has the moral privacy rights of a billboard, or the side of a city bus, or the painted front window of a business.
I am not planning on misappropriating their information, nor plagiarizing it. If the site has downloadable content, it looks to me like a pile of flyers with a sign that says “take one.” Any information whose distribution they wish to restrict, they will put behind closed doors (requiring login and password, perhaps more). The New York Times does just that. In turn, I decided not to keep visiting the Grey Lady in her assisted e-living home.
If the site doesn’t like people using itself unless one allows all the data mining and other widgets to work, fine; have the designers break it for anyone who will not. Oh my heck, they say, but that results in a lot of complaints? Too damn bad, not my problem. If the company does not care about my problems, as evidenced by a bulky TOS, it gives me no moral reason to care about its problems. I have the loophole here and I see zero reason not to use it.
Absent some moral reason, only enforceable laws and claims matter. One can claim that someone ‘signed’ an agreement all one wants, but unless one is willing to sue to enforce it, and would win, it means nothing. If the law or claim cannot or will not be enforced, the question then becomes whether it has moral force. For example, taking too many napkins at the burger joint: how many is too many? Legally, it’s probably as many as you can pull out before being noticed and kicked out. Morally, it’s as many as necessary to maintain some semblance of civilized dining. Morally, the business has trusted you without putting up an admonishing sign, or putting the napkins behind the service counter, or trying to tell you that your eating here constitutes acceptance of these terms. Trust deserves validation.
The best case for a moral reason comes from sites which ask politely, but do not penalize anyone for declining. Fark.com is one. DuckDuckGo is another. In those cases, with no compulsion, the site’s offer has moral validity and deserves reasonable consideration (and will get same from me).

The same is true for license agreements. The law has let the software industry construct a bizarre situation which now allows, for example, a car company to install software in your vehicle and thus claim that you haven’t really purchased all of your vehicle, that you don’t really own it. In service of the legitimate cause of fighting piracy, the law has let them construe it that you don’t ever actually own anything tangible, just a license.

That’s crap. To me, morally, a piece of software looks more like a book (or a coffee maker, etc.) than like a legal right to do a thing. I believe that if I bought a copy, I own that copy. The law says otherwise, and I do not care. If I duplicate the book and sell copies, that’s morally wrong. If I copy part or all of the book and claim it myself, that’s morally wrong. But if I tear a page out of the book because for some reason I don’t like it, I see nothing morally wrong with that. And if I want to hack the software for my own use and purposes, I see no moral problem with that either. It’s when I rob the producer of sales, or misrepresent the producer’s work as my own, that I step over the moral line. If it’s shareware, though, I should (and often do) pay if I plan to use it.

It is an example of how corporations and government frame a situation the way they prefer, and we allow them to get by with it by speaking in their terms, acknowledging the moral legitimacy of their framing. We could cease to do that.

“The TOS says you agree to take cookies and not to block our ads.”
“That conflicts with my own TOS, which say screw you, since there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“But you made a legal agreement!”
“Great. Sue to enforce it, and see how well that works. I don’t recognize agreements done in slimy ways, like four pages of fine print written in legalese full of hidden gotchas. If you want us to make an agreement, make it up front, sensible, and readable. If it’s not stupid, maybe I’ll agree to it. If it’s stupid, I’ll just say screw you.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Then stop me. There are a lot of things I would stop you from doing as well, perhaps, but I can’t. Better hope I never can. In the meantime, tough; screw you.”
“But the ads are part of our revenue stream!”
“The implication is that I care about your future. I don’t; we all have our problems. If you feel that way, then break your site for anyone who blocks them.”
“That’s not feasible!”
“I’m still waiting to hear how your problem is my problem. Some of your scripts, cookies, and such serve useful purposes for site operation; some are just data mining and shoving stuff in my face. My own TOS, which are not written down but which I consider binding, say that I should avoid all data mining that I can, and that once your site attempts it, you forfeit all moral anything and I can use your site however I want provided I don’t damage it.”
“If everyone looked at this your way, we’d have to become a pay site.”
“No one held a knife to your neck and required you to publish a website. You think it looks like your office filing cabinet. I think it looks like a billboard. I can look at the billboard all I want, and I don’t owe the billboard any data about myself. And if the billboard demands data, I get to flip off the billboard. Do what you have to do, but I’m not letting you frame this from a standpoint of legal or moral superiority. Legally, there’s nothing practical you can do. Morally, you have done the opposite of establishing moral high ground, turning the gesture of flipping you off into a pleasing act of rebellion. Party on.”

The philosophy in play here is simple: we are not morally obligated to comply with a situation/agreement/TOS just because it has some tortuous legal basis. Law is not morality and shouldn’t ever be mistaken for it. And when we forget that, we are letting government and corporations define all the terms, set all the parameters, dictate right and wrong.

They’d like that, wouldn’t they? They do like that. They hope you will troop along in submission.

And what of my own website, this one? Well, I’m the maintainer, not the user. I can’t do anything about whatever rules WordPress imposes; it imposes some on me, and I have to abide by them or they’ll kick me off. I have no difficulty with that in an ongoing relationship as a trade for a permanent hosting platform, since I get something of value.

But perhaps some users don’t like something about whatever TOS WordPress may have. If so, someone will probably circumvent them, with a minor impact on me–one is user data. But how, then, do I feel about the missing visitor data? I feel great about it. My right to compile visitor data doesn’t reach the moral level of my readers’ right to privacy, and if I ever try to say that it does, someone needs to put me out to pasture. Therefore, if you are reading this yet blocking a bunch of cookies or scripts or what have you, okay. I have no opinion on it. If I were the type to set up hoops for you to jump through, I’d be doing that. I am not, and it’s not feasible, and you could just ignore them, so it’s a stupid discussion that we need never have. I am just glad you are a reader, and that you visited today, and I hope you come back again regularly. Thank you for not plagiarizing or misappropriating; those are all I do ask, and I appreciate that you do not do them.

I hope more of us, in more situations, will require a better reason for obedience than “because a corporation tells us so.”

Homeownership, Privacy

Let’s wait until drones are completely out of control, and it’s too late to do anything

August 13, 2015 jkkblog 3 Comments

Why not? We did it with jetskis, cell phones, cell phone cameras, and quite a few other technological advancements.

Suppose a game-changing technology comes along. There are a couple of approaches we could take:

Stop and consider the implications, and restrict at least the worst potential abuses. We’ll probably miss a few, but at least we won’t let people get comfortably entrenched in some of the bad behaviors. When the other bad behaviors become issues, we’ll restrict those. Orderly adjustment.
Do absolutely nothing until they are ubiquitous and people are used to misusing them. Then, and only then, come in with draconian rules that are poorly thought out, unenforceable, and cause far more annoyance than if reasonable basic rules had been enacted at the start.

Guess which way we roll as a society?

This is foolishness. It is not an infringement of freedom to say “You cannot drive while using that device.” It is not an infringement of freedom to say “We are going to restrict some areas so you can’t ruin it for everyone with that goddamn noise.” It is not an infringement of freedom to say “You can’t use that to invade people’s privacy.” Unless, of course, your definition of ‘freedom’ includes freedom to put other lives at risk, screw up every decent lake for everyone else, and so on.

Drones are the Next Big Bungle.

We’ll find out when they start to endanger air traffic near airports.

We already found out how easily they can wind up in supposedly secure locations (White House lawn, for example).

We’ll find out as they become the police snooping tools of choice.

We’ll find out as they become neighbors’ snooping tools of choice.

We’ll find out as people start to take out .22s and shoot them down.

We’ll find out as citizens hover them over protests to capture police responses on film.

We’ll find out when some poor helicopter pilot, who was following things called rules, collides with one.

We’ll find out when a few other things happen, thanks to drones, that are sufficiently undesirable I’m not willing to mention them lest I give bad people ideas.

And by the time we step in to lock yet another barn door after another horse has already escaped over the hills, the impact will already be made.

The Editorial Maverick

Category Archives: Privacy

Perhaps a return, and migration

Deceiving Facebook advertising

Let’s wait until drones are completely out of control, and it’s too late to do anything

Blogging freelance editing, writing, and life in general. You can also Like my Facebook page for more frequent updates: J.K. Kelley, Editor.