Front page of indiewebcamp
Politicians who don’t know squat about the science of Ebola and the effects of quarantined health workers are making decisions that haven’t been shown to quell the tide of the disease.
Quarantine the politicians so we don’t have to listen to read, or have to obey their idiotic statements.
Just my thoughts
Another grand child on the way, looking forward to testing out that Forever Diaper. Check out SkyMaul
From a Google+ post from David Brin: “Get your flu shot. Seriously.
You are a member of a civilization and the vaxxers (sic, anti-vaxxers actually) are very silly people. The Health system doesn’t need you in bed, this winter. Stay off their radar and be well.
And freaking vote! Make all your friends who are women, young, minorities or sane white people vote.”
Medium is a newish website where interesting people tell great stories.
Backchannel is a new channel on medium where Steven Levy has moved from writer to editor. This channel is a combination of tech and culture and if you are interested in either you should check it outl
We seemingly hear about another data breach, information leak, or other indication that the data about us is no longer under the control of the entities who have collected it every week. This data is about us, our financial records, our DMV records, our personal identities, whatever.
Whether is is Target, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, Healthcare.gov, whomever, data about our identities are being systematically harvested by crackers who have no legal reason to obtain that information. It is unclear if these, and other organizations, don’t care or can’t care about safeguarding our information, the results are the same. Criminals have access to, and use our information for their gain, and there is nothing we can do about it, other than go ‘off the grid’, and only use cash, which we have stored under our mattresses for all transactions.
The organizations I listed above are the tip of the iceberg. Many, if not most, corporations and government entities who have been breached fail to report the intrusions unless they must do so due to legal reasons. They don’t want you to know that they haven’t met their fiduciary responsibility to protect your information. Even when they do admit to the breach, they do everything they can do to minimize the fallout from it
Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously said in 1999: “You have no privacy, get over it.”
I used to make a distinction between data I gave up willingly, to Google, Facebook, Amazon and any other internet-centric entities and ‘brick and mortar’ entities where I have shopped, visited, passed by or whatever. It does not matter anymore. I bought some items in Home Depot, and Neiman Marcus and my financial information was potentially leaked to criminals. I have never had a credit card number stolen during a transaction on line, but my card numbers fell into the hands of criminals anyway.
There is no solution that will prevent the release of my information to criminals.
Both proprietary and open-source software are rife with defects that can be exploited by an ever increasing horde of people who are up to no good. I don’t even know who has my information and how well they are protecting it.
Telephone companies know where I am and whom I am communicating with. Retailers know what I have bought, where I bought it, when I bought it, and they have a pretty good idea why I bought it. Social networks know who my ‘Friends’ are what I ‘Like’ and ‘Unlike’, what links I follow on the web, how long I am on their sites, and any number of other ‘analytics’ about me. Other than using cash for all purchases, and only communicating with people face-to-face, and not traveling on any road that has cameras potentially recording my movements, I am at the mercy of these companies and how well they protect the data they have.
So, what can I do?
Let’s not create laws that protect us from some specific vulnerability, or some specific technology. These laws should be built on principles that would be applicable to any vulnerability or technology. We don’t need to be chasing our tails on this.
Be prudent, and you’ll be safer than most. Like I said, you can’t be totally secure, but if you make it just a little bit harder to be hacked, the criminals will move on to the next easy mark.