Watching

Patriotic Americans are not happy, even those who support Bush. The NSA spying makes us feel squwigy. We can't quite explain it, but it just seems to go against our principles of Liberty. It seems a bit too much like secret police, Nazi, KGB. Probably because it IS something those organizations would do; not America.

Don't fool yourself. This type of thing has been going on for quite awhile. In the 70's, the headlines read, "CIA Spying on America's Home". Back then, we did wire taps looking for pinko commies. Now, it's for 'terrorists'. Bush supports this type of surveillance by saying it's his duty to defend Americans. My reply, "Mr. President, we appreciate your principle of protecting us. We don't like how you're doing it." At this rate, you'd get the idea that Bush is trying to get Hillary in office.

I have no doubt that Reagan, HW, and Clinton used this type of surveillance. We're pretty sure that Nixon did. But, in the hands of a person with poor management skills, like Bush, I don't trust it. Surveillance will continue, and probably increase. But, my question is; "Who's watching the watchers?"

There needs to be some sort of oversight organization to monitor this surveillance, and I don't trust the goverment to create it. So, I encourage the technology community to do surveillance on these watchers. Let's find out just who is watching us, and we can watch them.

Which brings me to my main point: Google. I believe Google's unwritten mission is to make sure all information is equally available to everyone. Information is going to be readily available, but if the goverment (or worse, advertisers) has primary access to it, it WILL be abused. The only way to insure that information isn't abused to to make it available to everyone. That means WE get to watch what's going on in government just as much as they watch us. If they're going to monitor us, we should be able to monitor them. And we will.

So, Mr. President, go ahead. Watch us. Just don't bitch when we start watching the watchers. The lesson here is: If you piss off a nerd/geek/hacker, your life will be put on complete public display.

So, for a start, make sure you're aware of the Executive Orders.

Other News

If you've been reading my blog regularly, you'll remember the tree that was hit by the truck. I'm willing to bet the driver got a lawyer, held his boss at fault for sending him out in a too tall truck, and held the city at fault for having limbs hang too low. The City of Winter Park cut the tree limb off, along with a few others, just in case.

I'm able to move a bit better now. As the pain calms down, I can tell it's my left hip, not my back that hurts. When I was a gymnast, I flew off Horizontal Bar one day, went out way past the mats, and landed on the concrete right on my hip. Since then, I've had off/on difficulties with it, once a year or so. Sometimes it's gone for a few year. Doing really difficult, dangerous, and high effort stuff doesn't bother it. Turning to get the soap in the shower, getting up out of the car, putting on a rollerblade is how I've irritated it so far. I'd probably be okay if I joined the circus - as long as I didn't take a shower or get in a car.

My classes are going well, so far. But then, I've only had one class of each. Time to study.