Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Big Brother Is Watching You, Too

Years ago, Gregory Rawlins predicted that the real problem with the Internet would be not so much that Big Brother (the government) would want to watch everything everybody did, but all the pesky "Little Brothers" (the advertisers) would want to interrupt everything everybody did with incessant clamoring for money and attention. His prediction has certainly come true. However, there are those in the U.S. government who want to know everything about everybody too. Here's a link:

 http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/the-department-of-homeland-security-continues-the-quest-for-total-information-awareness/

Of course, their goal is just to keep everybody safe by intercepting crime. Oh, right. Sure it is. They're not interested in power...even the inconsequential, almost endearing sort of power the school nerd used to get by tapping into the school computer to find your phone number so he could call you. Just to chat. When he needed conversation to keep him awake. While he was working his way through college. As a nightwatchman.

Actually, I'm sort of grateful now that I was on chatting terms with the school nerd, so I was warned about this kind of thing so far in advance of so many people. I know: Nobody with whom you wouldn't want to chat, even in the middle of the night, should have your phone number. You shouldn't be photographed--much less have your picture in newspapers or on the Internet. If someone calls out what sounds like your name in a public place, even if you recognize the person, you should never acknowledge that it was your name or that you know people who blurt out your name in a public place.

I'm not paranoid; I've just spent a lot of time in Washington. Well, I also happen to be marked. I happen to have (a) one of the longest pedigrees in North America, and that's only the White ancestors; and also (b) a basic-human-type face, dark wavy hair and sort of light olive skin, that could be found on any continent and reminds a lot of foreigners of someone back home...including people from all the countries where we've been at war lately. (By "lately" I mean "since Vietnam.") My identity is not valuable to a home-grown credit card thief, since I don't do credit and therefore have a credit score no thief would want. My identity is valuable to illegal aliens and terrorists.

And it's been stolen by one illegal alien, already. And although she (a) was at least thirty years older than I am, depending on which of her passports is accurate, and (b) was a French West Indian with a heavy accent, and (c) had a complexion described on her passports as "Negro (dark)," and (d) was five inches taller than I am in flat shoes, and (e) usually wore high heels, which I don't wear, employees of our federal government accepted the claim that she was I. And although her motive for stealing my identity was just to harass me, personally, in an estate case, she was a habitual evildoer who had been involved in half a dozen different kinds of fraud and what's been called the female form of serial murder, before and after divorce made her an illegal alien. (She was one of those private nurses whose patients all willed her substantial shares of their estate shortly before they died; two of them were young.)

Could bribery and blackmail have been involved in convincing U.S. government workers that this illegal alien was I, or was even anyone I wanted to know? Could the Pope be a Catholic? And could bribery and blackmail be used to give evildoers access to everything they'd need to steal your identity for their own evil purposes? Could a bear squat in the woods?!

So I know these things. I know that, whatever they may say back home, in Washington everybody knows that your identity is much more valuable, much more enticing to thieves, than your computer, your car, or your TV set. I suppose it's possible that some people (e.g., conceivably, Alan Greenspan or John McCain), some elderly or half-grown idealist types, might imagine that storing people's identity information on a computer could be done in a way that would not put those people at risk. I don't actually believe that this is possible, but I'll grant that they might. Maybe. If their intelligence, which in the cases of Greenspan and McCain is formidable, is very limited when it comes to computer technology and computer security. But even if they have fallen for some computer security vendor's claims about his product, you shouldn't.

Nobody can actually protect you by having any confidential information about you. Maybe their intentions are good--there's no need to argue about that. Maybe they honestly think they have the ability to use your confidential information for only good purposes. But they're wrong.

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