Google Destroying Blogspot?

or just making my life more difficult. We blogspotters have been forced onto an interface that looks more like Wordpress, which as far as I can tell is clunkier and gives us less control. I've considered migrating to Wordpress before – I could host my blogs on my own server and have greater privacy, etc. – but rejected it because the blogspot user interface was superior. Google has chosen to trash that advantage.

Testing image control and positioning with the image right.

Ok, maybe I can get used to this, but where the h*ll do I enter labels? 

Wozniak: Cloud Computing Will Cause "Horrible Problems"

"Wozniak didn't offer much in the way of specifics . . . . [but said, 't]he more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.'" Steve Wozniak was the inventor of the Apple I and Apple II computers.

More at Business Insider. You can find more re- the kinds of problems I worry about by clicking on the label, "Worldbeam," at the bottom of this post.

VAGINA, VAGINA, VAGINA.

So there. (In solidarity with Lisa Brown.)

Wikileaks-esque Sites

As of today, LeakDirect lists 23 of them (with links).

Somebody had to be first.

Recent Assange on Facebook et Al., the Media, War, Etc.

Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.

Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.

* * * * *

Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone – it’s not understanding what actually is going on in the world. It's only when you start to understand that you can make effective decisions and effective plans. Now, the question is, who is promoting ignorance? Well, those organizations that try to keep things secret, and those organizations which distort true information to make it false or misrepresentative. In this latter category, it is bad media.

It really is my opinion that media in general are so bad that we have to question whether the world wouldn't be better off without them altogether. They are so distortive to how the world actually is that the result is . . . we see wars, and we see corrupt governments continue on.

One of the hopeful things that I’ve discovered is that nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies. The media could've stopped it if they had searched deep enough; if they hadn't reprinted government propaganda they could've stopped it. But what does that mean? Well, that means that basically populations don't like wars, and populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don't willingly, with open eyes, go into a war. So if we have a good media environment, then we also have a peaceful environment.

(Emphasis supplied.) More at RT.

Autoprivacy

(Thanks, Ben!)

Student Thwarts Facial Recognition Software

"CV Dazzle" is based on the original camouflage from WWI and targets automated face detection and recognition systems by altering the contrast and spatial relationship of key facial features.



By Adam Harvey; more info at cvdazzle.com. (Thanks, Ben! Note: looks like you have to cut your bangs funny, too.)

About Anonymous

I'm still seeing a lot of confusion about what Anonymous is.

During the last several months, Anon constituencies have been most active in organizing peaceful online protests against services like MasterCard, Visa, and Bank of America (which are attempting to strangle Wikileaks financially) and in supporting the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East. For example, when Mubarek shut down most Egyptians' access to the internet, Anons provided critical help to the Egyptian people by creating and publicizing alternative means of access and other communications.

Part of the problem is that there have been both overt and covert disinformation campaigns going on about the Anons (as well as about Julian Assange and Wikileaks). E.g., during the Anons' DDoS "sit-in" against MasterCard, a rumor was spread that they'd actually hacked the site and had published a bunch of individuals' MasterCard account information. This was a fabrication; in fact, someone had published a list of account numbers that bore no relation to any actual accounts, in a deliberate effort to smear the Anons.

More recently, per The Guardian: "US spy operation that manipulates social media: Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda." And there's no reason to believe that the disinfo efforts uncovered so far are the only ones.

The Anons are at least as diverse as any other large group of people and certainly include pranksters. But the majority seem almost poignantly altruistic; and I believe the results of their major operations have been helpful. Before you accept as true anything about or purporting to be from Anonymous, please check it against a trusted Anonymous news source. For info about the known, "legit" operations, see AnonNews or AnonOps Communications. Other sites have existed but have been taken down; new ones continually arise; again, please use caution re- the source.

Here are a couple of legit Anonymous videos. In the first, they describe themselves and their general purposes. In the second, they describe one of their more recently-launched operations.

"Ten Things You Need to Know About the Infowar"

Or, Are We in Post-Reality Yet?

The full essay with links to sources and more is here. (To comment on it, please return to this post and click here or on "comments," below.)

Here's the précis:

1. A balance of power requires a balance of information. In the US and elsewhere, we've developed a serious imbalance, in that governments and big businesses know everything about us, and we know less and less about them.

2. What's new about Wikileaks is that it may be the first instance of an institutional system that confers the power that comes from the revelation of secrets on the people rather than their rulers. The potential to help restore the balance of knowledge and thus the balance of power between the oligarchs and the rest of us constitutes what I've called as the most important effect of Wikileaks' revelations.

3. The infowar strategy of exposing the secrets of corrupt regimes (which I call, the "Exposure Strategy"), as described by Julian Assange, is three-pronged:
(a) It gives us the opportunity to redress previously hidden injustices;
(b) It tends to deter injustices in the first place by heightening the likelihood and
thus the fear of exposure;
(c) It tends to weaken corrupt organizations by prompting them to tighten security, thus lowering their
own computational I.Q.

4. The counter to the Exposure Strategy is "public relations," which uses our most primitive emotions and drives in order to induce us to disregard truth and to act against our own best interests, at least up to an as-yet-not-fully-understood point. When p.r. is deployed successfully, the truth simply no longer matters; it's as if we've been immunized against it. And note that, to the extent "public relations" is effective, it neutralizes all three prongs of the Exposure Strategy; i.e.,
(a) Injustices exposed need not be investigated, prosecuted, or corrected;
(b) Future injustices are therefore not particularly deterred;
(c) Corrupt organizations need not tighten their security, and thus can avoid having to lower their own
computational I.Q.

5. How far p.r. prevails over the Exposure Strategy will provide an important indication of the extent to which we now live in Post-Reality.

6. Computers are the new guns; but an infowar is not just a war using information as ammunition; it is a struggle between old and new power structures over who will control access to information.

7. The infowar is in essence a class war over knowledge as a form of wealth. As a corollary, information is a commodity for which there are markets that are (absent effective regulation) manipulable.

8. Greater transparency maximizes efficiency and profits for a group as a whole, but individuals within the group profit most when they're not transparent while others in the group are.

9. So long as a system as a whole remains mostly transparent, it's a more-than-zero-sum game; but where transparency has sufficiently deteriorated, the competition among "players" devolves into a race to see who can loot the most the fastest, even if valuable resources are wasted in the process.

10. By virtue of the internet, humanity is (again) on the verge of a potential transition from a system in which powerful elites exploit the governed in a less-than-zero sum game, to a more transparent, collaborative, more-than-zero-sum game system. If the system as a whole remains mostly transparent, the growth in mankind's collective intelligence and well-being may be about to explode. But this beneficial effect could be retarded, perhaps even partially prevented, if we fail to protect the internet and facilities like Wikileaks from those who seek to control them.

More here.

Ten Things You Need to Know About the Infowar

I'm working on an essay to put flesh on these bones, but wanted to get this out there without further delay. The essay will have lots of links to sources, plus images.

UPDATE: The guts of this post has been moved here.

WikiLeaks: Why It Matters. Why It Doesn't?

This video has been around for a few months and is long, but it's very good – I'm not aware of a better summation of many of the issues involved (I just went back to it as a source for an essay I'm working on). If you can't make it through the whole thing, my faves were the moderator, Paul Jay; Neville Roy Singham; and every bit of Daniel Ellsberg (including his comments near the end).



UPDATE 2011-03-07: Greg Mitchell celebrates his 100th day of blogging the WL story today with an article on his top Cablegate revelation picks; see also Kevin Gosztola's top 100 leaks in 100 tweets.

Future Attribute Screening Technology

No joke. More at Wikipedia.

Free Phone via Google Vs. --?

As reported rather breathlessly by The NYT, you can now make and receive phone calls to/from regular phones from/at your computer for free, without using iChat or Skype, although you have to set up Gmail and Google Voice accounts to do it. This is "a big deal" because:

The ultimate, of course, would be free calls from a phone, to a phone. But until now, all we’ve been able to do is dance around that concept.

For example, chat programs let you make free calls, computer-to-computer. Skype lets you make free calls from your cellphone, but not to regular phone numbers. Skype and Line2 let you make calls from your cellphone (when you’re in a 3G area or on Wi-Fi), to actual phone numbers — but not free.

What Voice Calls from Gmail does is open up another variation, one that [enables free] calls “from a computer, to a phone.” . . . What if Google released an app like that for Android phones, or the iPhone? . . . At that point, you could, for the first time in history, make unlimited free phone-to-phone calls.

. . . That development would cause conniptions at the cellphone companies, that’s for sure."

Of course, some of us might actually still be willing to purchase our phone services from AT&T et al. in exchange for greater privacy. But then, they'd have to provide privacy.

Big Brothers Are Ganging Up on Us

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

* * * * *

“We’re right there as it happens,” Ahlberg told [Wired,] as he clicked through a demonstration. “We can assemble actual real-time dossiers on people.”

This is particularly disturbing if you've kept up with this.

PS: Why is Nineteen Eighty-Four not available through Netflix?

Replacement for Clusty

Good news: as a replacement for Clusty (search engine that used to protect users' privacy but has been bought by the corporate borg), a c-Blog reader suggested Ixquick. Check out the Wikipedia entry.

I plan to try to replace the search box on this blog soon.

Clusty - Yippy - WTF

For some years, I've used Clusty as my primary search engine, because supposedly they don't track your keystrokes, etc.; i.e., maybe, unlike Google and virtually every other search engine I'm aware of (and I'm no expert, but), they actually were not evil.

Today, the Clusty home page changed to Yippy, and says, "Welcome to the Cloud!" That was not reassuring. As I wrote in 2007:

As my three readers know, I'm very concerned that, at least partly through the instigation of right-wing authoritarians but also partly through the more or less semi-witless facilitation by the rest of us, the internet is rapidly being transformed into a potential top-down surveillance and mind-control system easily manipulated by gummints and corps (for more details, see my previous posts on the subject, most recently here).

I never thought I'd see Microsoft as on my side, but in its current battles with Google, that's how it's shaping up. Google is actively promoting its "cloud" model of the internet, in which not only software but most of your data live on the 'net -- i.e., in hardware owned and controlled by others -- while Microsoft continues to favor a distributed model in which most of your software and data live in your PC.

See also another, earlier, 2007 post in which I wrote,

Free speech in general and the internet in particular seem to worry control freaks.

As of 2000, just five megacorporations – Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) – controlled over 90% of the media industry in the U.S., with General Electric's NBC a close sixth (see here, here, here, and here).

In 2003, despite the largest public outcry in FCC history, the FCC adopted rules loosening restrictions on media ownership (stories here, here, and here). Although courts ultimately threw out the rules, the FCC is now trying again (stories here and here).

Certain people have spent a lot of money to gain all that control, and notwithstanding claims of hard times in the media biz, the investment has proved profitable; but one of the main benefits that might have been hoped for – control over the agenda and messages reaching audiences of any significant size – is threatened by the 'net.

Internet freedom, neutrality, etc. have accordingly been attacked on a variety of fronts.

In an earlier post, I discussed conservatives' plans to replace the internet as we know it with something called the "Worldbeam" (a.k.a. the "Cloud"), a system in which, instead of storing all your personal docs, files, and software on your own computer at home, everything would be stored on larger computers elsewhere, and you would just have a box that would be little more than a gateway to the Beam.

Instead of buying your own copies of applications, the most basic might (or might not) be provided on the Beam for free, and you'd pay license fees for anything fancy, so vendors could force you to upgrade whenever they liked. Although access to your own data would theoretically be protected by a password or other security, the gummint or others who controlled the Beam could access, modify, or simply delete any or all of your or others' data much more easily than now. [ . . . ]

I was worried, but thought it would be some years before the "Beam" replaced the 'net as we know it.

Duh. It's finally dawned on me, there's no need for those desiring Beam-like control to engineer any single, vast switch-over to a new system. They're simply colonizing the 'net little by little – and many of us are unwittingly helping them.

Think MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, MeetUp, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, Ancestry.com, and yes, Blogspot – you upload or create tons of data about yourself and your activities, opinions, social and other relationships, and personal preferences into online facilities that are maintained and controlled by other people. You may or may not even keep copies on your own computer of everything you put on the 'net. Think online banking and investment, every airplane ticket you've ever bought and hotel you've booked, every comment you've ever posted, and every purchase you've ever made esp. from vendors like amazon that keep track so as to make recommendations. Think on-line spam filter services (I realize AT&T is probably already giving the gummint copies of every e-mail that passes through AT&T's "pipes," in direct violation of our constitutional rights -- see here -- but hey, we managed to shut that down, didn't we? Oops, guess not.) [ . . . ]

The fact is, many of us have for some time been eagerly shifting vast portions of our lives into Beam-like facilities that are based somewhere out there and are only nominally under our own control. . . .

So I clicked on "about" Yippy to find out if this was just a name change, or Clusty had been acquired by evildoers, or what; and what I got was not reassuring:

About Yippy

MISSION STATEMENT:

We are the creators of all that is good and helpful. Our mission is for the good in everything. Our products and services are for those who desire a protected place in which to conduct computing and online activities through the .yippy VPN grid. Yippy is simply hardware mated to dynamic software sets through a worldwide LAN using a virtual ubiquitously connected web-based operating system. . . . Yippy will promote the positive and shun the negative of the digital world.

What we do is just good!

YIPPY is foremost the world's first fully-functioning virtual computer. A cloud-based worldwide LAN, YIPPY has turned every computer into a terminal for itself [i.e., for YIPPY – that's the point of cloud computing]. On the surface, YIPPY is one-stop shopping for the web surfing needs of the average consumer. YIPPY is an all-inclusive media giant; incorporating television, gaming, news, movies, social networking, streaming radio, office applications, shopping, and much more . . . .

The custom YIPPY OS is fully-operational and currently installed and running on existing hardware devices. . . . Computing must be made more personal to the end user and contain programs relevant to their personal lifestyle. This is accomplished through a VPN network grid with the ability through DB to cookie cut software packages together quickly and efficiently for consumers or businesses.

Below the surface:

YIPPY is an advertising vehicle. Recurring revenue is generated by unobtrusive ad programs that are strategically placed in the OS driven locally on the device. These advertising impressions would be demographically and geographically quantified by the user’s registration and extremely valuable to the bottom-line. The consumer is exposed to not only ad banners in an array of IAB standard sizes, but rich media advertising, video advertising, CPC, CPA and in-player banner advertising delivered directly into the entertainment stream. All advertising is database-driven and fully customizable according to the needs of the marketer. Advertising can be delivered via geolocation or targeted to particular demographics according to the section of the site visited. Do you want to advertise only to visitors who use TWITTER? How about only to users who are interested in football? YIPPY can deliver that. Time-on-site statistics are also significantly higher on the YIPPY platform due to the inherent enticement provided by the web-based OS.

The YIPPY video player features an array of licensed television shows with unlimited capacity for expansion. . . . With YIPPY, you can tailor your ad dollars to your audience. . . . The YIPPY player also supports the capacity for shows to be controlled by trusted partners [emphasis supplied] through a web-based upload form. . . .

Oh, we should say that we are a very far-out group of people. Everyone is a certified genius here and we work together for our goals for the love of it all. Good vs. Don't be Evil ... We are too smart to sell out to Porn, Gambling and other things that infect our society for profit. Good always wins, and conservative values will bring us our victory in the market place.

Summing it up !!!

God controls all creative thought it's what you do with it that defines who you are.

"!!!" indeed! At first I thought this must be a hack or joke.

Per Wikipedia, On May 14 2010, Clusty was acquired by Yippy, Inc.; no other helpful info available as of this writing (at least not through my new, Yippy search engine).

So here's the problem. It doesn't matter how good or evil the company really is, BECAUSE if it's privately owned, once it's got a lot of users, somebody "evil" can come along and buy it or take over its Board of Directors (I put "evil" in quotes 'cuz I don't think I believe in good and evil, but use it as shorthand for something else that's a whole 'nother discussion).

That's why it's better if certain things are owned by the gummint – oh wait, that's privately owned now, too (literally as well as figuratively; e.g., AZ, CA et al. selling off public infrastructure and assets to private corps. at fire sale prices).

That's why I keep saying, there are certain chunks of internet and other facilities that need to be literally owned by the USERS.

Even that's not a sure fix; but we need to start slowing the "evil"-doers down enough so the rest of us have a better chance at catching up.

And can anyone recommend a new replacement for Clusty – quick?

Privacy Compressed: "The New Normal" at Diverseworks

. . . in Houston, opening Fri., Jan. 5, includes some of my favorite artists, such as Eyebeam R & D, Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, and Trevor Paglen. Curated by Michael Connor; more at the-new-normal and at Diverseworks. Also, on YouTube, there's video of a panel discussion of the show here and of Connor discussing the show here.

Dept. of FB Apps

Should you have the right to know who commissioned the creation of the Facebook quizzes you take? At All Facebook, you can't see who commissioned them, but at least you can see which developer made them – except that in some cases, even that info's left blank. E.g., "Who is your one true love," "How annoying are you," "Which member of the 'Scooby Doo' gang are you?," "Do you know yourself [in German]," etc.

I heard the gummint has a Dept. . . . . (just kidding; but I wouldn't rule it out).

If Cameras Don't Catch Criminals, They're There 'Cuz – Why Again?

Per the BBC:

Great Britain has spent some £500 million [as of today, nearly $820 million] on surveillance cameras, over a million of which are installed in London.

An internal police report has found that last year, only 1 crime was solved by each 1,000 cameras in London. In one month, the system of cameras helped catch just 8 our of 269 suspected robbers.

"David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: 'It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent. . . . [the camera system] leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

"'It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.'"

(Thanks, Ben!)

To be fair, a police spokesman added,"[w]e estimate more than 70% of murder investigations have been solved with the help of [camera system] retrievals . . . ." But one could also ask whether even more might have been accomplished if the same funds had been spent on more detectives or other strategies.

"This [Data] Will Self-Destruct in Five Seconds."

"Vanish is a research [?] system designed to give users control over [their] . . . personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.

"For example, . . . a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should "vanish" in 8 hours. . . . after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.

* * * * *
"An enormous amount of private data is now stored on the web or in the cloud, outside the end-user's control. . . . Web-based email systems may back up the message, potentially forever, even if you delete it. Similarly, when you send a message via Facebook or create a Google Doc, you have no idea where and for how long copies of your data will be stored.

" . . . . There are known examples of data remaining in the cloud long after users explicitly request that data's deletion. Private data could be exposed by accidental misconfigurations on a web service, be compromised by hackers, or be used in legal proceedings.'"

(Emphasis supplied; via boingboing, via Ben – thanks!) More at Vanish.

Of course, this means the gummint can "vanish" its own records, too – but lately there's been little to stop them from doing that the old-fashioned way.