Why Secrecy At The US Supreme Court?

In a CNN article The secret Supreme Court: Late nights, courtesy votes and the unwritten 6-vote rule  Joan Biskupic,  tells us that the justices have a weekly meeting in secret.

"At their weekly private sessions, the nine decide which pending petitions to take up and, separately, cast votes on cases that already have been argued."

Justice Stephen Breyer is quoted:

"Regarding the general need for confidentiality, Breyer said, 'Transparency is usually a word that means something good, but I would say about the conference, it's important not to have transparency. ... It is very important for people to say what they really think about these cases, and that's what happens. So I worry about changing that and somehow bringing the public into the conference.'" (emphasis added)

 This really needed to be followed up.  Here are some questions I would have wanted to ask in that interview. (I recognize that these things might not come immediately to mind in the interview, but Biscupic is  described by CNN as 

"Joan Biskupic, a full-time CNN legal analyst, has covered the Supreme Court for twenty-five years and is the author of several books on the judiciary."

These are Supreme Court justices with lifetime appointments.  They can't be fired for what they say unless it rises to the level of impeachable by the US Senate. 

Justice Breyer, can you give some hypothetical examples of the kinds of things justices say that you think they wouldn't say if these meetings were public?

It's not that their language or behavior is objectionable because you say:

"What happens," Breyer told CNN, "is it's highly professional. People go around the table. They discuss the question in the case ... the chief justice and Justice (Clarence) Thomas and me and so forth around. ... People say what they think. And they say it politely, and they say it professionally."

Are there people outside the court who they feel accountable to and they would feel compelled to hide their real thoughts so these people wouldn't hear them?

If, for example, someone appointed to the court based on the strong support of the Federalist Society.  Do they say things that organization might object too?  If they said those things at these meetings, isn't it likely that other justices also appointed through the efforts of the Federalist Society would let that be known to the Federalist Society?

Is it because they are polite and reasonable to justices that their 'side' dislikes and that would be embarrassing?  

Are there things you might self-censor if this were to be public?  Why?

Is there an issue that what they say might reveal a bias for or against potential litigants at the court? 

Do they tell jokes that might be offensive to some groups in the US population? 

Are there concerns that US Senators who voted for a judge would regret that vote?  So what?  I mean simply, what would be the consequence to the judge?

Are you Ms. Biscupic perhaps too close to the court that you are reluctant to push Breyer beyond some line of appropriateness?  Would a different reporter who didn't have a relationship with the judges feel more comfortable asking such questions?  Or would such a journalist simply not have the access you have?  And would pushing further to ask these sorts of questions jeopardize your access to the justices?  I know nothing about Ms. Biscupic.  I could be totally wrong here.  I do know there have been concerns that the White House press falls into a relationship with the President and his press secretaries that can be jeopardized by asking unacceptable questions.  That's probably true about journalists who cover the court as well.  

Again, these justices have lifetime appointments.  What do they have to hide at this point?  And from whom?  I'd surely like to hear Justice Breyer or other justices answer these questions.  

I'd also note that I have, in the past, studied the concept of privacy in government, quite closely.  Nearly all public officials fear public scrutiny and in this day and age of social media, any ill-advised words could easily be copied out of context and tweeted to the world.  But Congress has adapted to C-Span.  And justices who feel the same concerns about becoming viral sensations would have a better understanding of the concerns that everyone else has.  

I would argue that all groups that are used to being able to talk, unaccountably, in private, resist when that protection is challenged.  

I recall working hard to get the Anchorage Municipal Assembly covered live by the local cable company when they arrived in Anchorage in the mid 1980s.  Assembly members on all political sides voiced concerns that such exposure would change how members debated.  But after a couple of months it quickly became obvious that a) citizens were tuning in and b) that assembly members forgot the cameras were running and didn't really change their behavior.  Recent turmoil at the Assembly was available for all to see first hand and not simply depend on how the media reported it.

So I would hope that journalists who have access to Supreme Court justices do dig deeper and push the judges to voice exactly how and why they would not be candid if the meetings were public.  

Links Of Interest: Hide Your House, Russian Mercenaries, Doctors Without Borders

Some things I've run into recently that may be of interest.  

1.  How To Hide Your House On Google (and other online) maps - street view.

"With the rise of increasingly convenient features such as street-level 360º photos available on Google Maps and other competing mapping services, there’s always a risk your personal data will be captured in a publicly available photo in a way you’d rather avoid—whether than means the outside of your house or the location where you park your car.

If you face this kind of a problem, there’s a simple solution available in many cases—you can ask the mapping service to blur or remove the picture. We’ll going to show you how to do that on the most popular mapping services."

Then it gives you step-by-step instructions.  Doesn't look hard 

2.  Another story I found fascinating - from NewslinesMag. A British reporter, a fluent Russian speaker apparently, pokes around the remains of what had been a Russian mercenary post outside of Tripoli. A story about the Wagner Group.  A couple of excerpts:

"From September 2019, photographs and reports had begun to emerge of Russian mercenaries in Tripoli. They were identified as units from the so-called Wagner Group, a secretive and highly controversial organization of mercenaries that fought first in Ukraine, then in Syria, and later in Sudan, Mozambique, the Central African Republic and Libya.

"Reportedly financed by the Russian catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned and indicted by the United States for his election interference efforts, the Wagner Group has been accused of acting as President Vladimir Putin’s shadowy expeditionary force, even though mercenaries are technically illegal in Russia. The group has also been linked to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, from whose ranks its ostensible head, Dmitry Utkin, and other rank-and-file members hail. And yet, as has often been the case with Wagner, beyond such reports and speculation over Wagner personnel’s involvement in the fighting, little detailed evidence had emerged.

"But this spring we obtained a small white Samsung tablet with a cracked screen, protected by a battered brown leather case. GNA fighters said they had recovered it from positions held by Russian fighters in Ain Zara, the area where Haitham had fought. We put it through extensive tests to ensure it didn’t contain some kind of tracking device or malware; we examined it minutely, searching for clues to its users and making sure it was the genuine article. It was."

3.  For a different view of foreigners working in poor countries, we have the group Doctors Without Borders  (MSF French acronym) which saves lives but its local staff says it also  perpetuates colonialism and racism.  I heard this riveting radio show on Reveal the other day.  Decolonize MSF is an organization trying to change how things are done.  It's troublesome.  The organization does a lot of great work around the world, providing life saving care who otherwise might die.  Yet, this radio report is really well done.  It maps out, through interviews, what structural racism and colonialism looks like.  Do go to the website with the audio.  Below is some description from that page.

"The organization, also known by its French acronym MSF, has about 63,000 people working in 88 countries. While foreign doctors parachuting into crisis zones get most of the attention, 90% of the work is done by local health workers. 

In the summer of 2020, more than 1,000 current and former staffers wrote a letter calling out institutional racism at MSF. They say MSF operates a two-tiered system that favors  foreign doctors, or expat doctors, over local health workers. 

On the eve of MSF’s 50th anniversary, reporters Mara Kardas-Nelson, Ngozi Cole and Sean Campbell talked to about 100 current and former MSF workers to investigate how deep these issues run. We meet Dr. Indira Govender, a South African doctor who in 2011 accepted what she thought was her dream job with MSF in South Africa, only to get a front-row seat to the organization’s institutional racism. Even though she’s officially the second-in-command of her project, she says it feels like a select group of European expats and White South Africans are running the show."  

We think of the doctors going from Western countries to help out in poor countries as being better than this and I'm sure many, if not most, are.  But this shows us how blatantly racist some are but also how the separate treatment of foreign doctors and native medical staff institutionalizes the separation between local staff (about 90% of the staff) from those who come to help from overseas.  

Maybe I can believe this troubling story because I've run into this sort of thing.  When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand I got pressed into helping a Thai dentist negotiate with the Israeli construction company paving the highway near the town I was teaching in.  She needed a translator and so I went along.  After it was over the Israeli negotiator offered me a job because he couldn't trust any of the Thais and was surprised that I could live alone with them.  I was shocked by his view of Thais.

And when I traveled home from Thailand I took the long route so I could visit D who was teaching in Uganda.  I'd met him while I was a student in Germany and we'd hit it off and we traveled together a bit in England where he was from.  There, he came from a modest background, didn't drive, and had dropped out of college without completing his degree to start teaching.  In Uganda he lived in this giant compound surrounded by a ten foot wall.  Inside was like a giant golf course - green grass, trees, and cute little cottages scattered all around.  D lived in one and his car sat outside it.  There was dining hall with white table cloths and napkins and there four or five course dinners served by African waiters.  D's main interactions with Africans was with his students at the elite school he taught at, maybe some African teachers (I don't remember meeting any of them), the waiters and other help in the compound where he lived.  Again I was shocked.  But as we talked it was clear that D was socialized to live separate like this.  That's how all the Brit ex-pats, or at least the ones he knew, lived.  He didn't learn any of the local languages because "everyone speaks English" in this recently independent country.  When I'd talk with Africans in the market or anywhere, they would be very reticent, and after a few minutes they'd say something like, "You aren't a resident are you?"   Coming from Thailand where we'd had to learn Thai before even getting to Thailand and living and working completely with Thais, D's situation was hard for me to believe.  This was not the kind of life he' d had back in England.  We had long talks while I was there and that continued for years via letters.  And eventually he visited Alaska and I later visited him in England.  He had some harrowing experiences there and one African he did get to meet was Idi Amin.  But that's another story - his to tell.  

But those experiences were 50 years ago!  I would have thought things had changed since then.  I'm sure they have, but not as much as one might expect.  

As someone who has contributed to Doctors Without Borders I'm forced to think about how to support the good things they do and push for change.  The program talks about a protest group within MSF - Decolonize MSF.  Maybe contributing to them would be the way to go.  

Blogging Fun - Visitors From Around The World Check Out Seven Year Old Post About Mr. Doob

 

Blogger says I have published 6914 posts since 2006.  There are another 594 drafts that never got published.  Statcounter gives stats on the visitors to the blog.  Their count is significantly lower than Google's (who bought Blogger a while ago.)  But Statcounter makes it easy to see details about who is visiting.  I've posted about this before, but it's important for people to realize all the finger prints they leave behind when they visit a website.  (I think you should be able to click on the image and enlarge it to see it larger and focused better, but after recent 'improvements' at Blogger, I can't tell until I publish it. After posting:  Yes, click on it and see it much bigger and clearer.)

In recent weeks I've notice a lot of people visiting a post entitled "The Yeti of Creative Coding - Who is Mr. Doob?"  When I originally published that in August 2013, there wasn't much about Mr. Doob and I scrounged bits and pieces to put the post together.  It was a fun post to write because Mr. Doob was (at that time at least) an elusive programmer who made cool graphics online.  I even found an interview with him that revealed a bit more of his bio.  

So, the other day I collected from my Statcounter data all the visitors they reported who had visited the seven year old Mr. Doob page in the past 24 hours.  (They keep coming and the Dutch example above is from the latest Statcounter pages.  

Riyadh, Ar Riyad, Saudi Arabia

George Town, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

Sibiu, Romania

Pune, Maharashtra, India

Batangas City, Batangas, Philippines

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rogers, Arkansas, United States

Orem, Utah, United States

Centreville, Virginia, United States

Palm Coast, Florida, United States

Markham, Ontario, Canada

Bloomfield, New Jersey, United States

Bronx, New York, United States

Laveen, Arizona, United States

Villisca, Iowa, United States

Hamilton, Ohio, United States

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, United States

Ashland, Ohio, United States

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Medan, Sumatera Utara, Indonesia

Tampere, Western Finland, Finland

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Quezon City, Philippine

This was the order of the visits.  My guess is that you see more international ones when it's early morning (like midnight to 6am)  in the US.  

And if you want to see what's drawing them, below is the link.  A fun break from the other issues we're constantly dealing with.  

https://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2013/08/who-is-mr-doob.html  

The Great Hack - Why You Should See It

Netflix was dangling The Great Hack in front of me, but I just didn't want to deal with more bad news.  Let's wait for a better time I said.  Then I heard something somewhere about how good and important it was.  But then Netflix threw The Family and I could justify avoiding Hack with the assumption that Family was also 'educational.'

Well, we bit the bullet Thursday night and watched The Great Hack.    It wasn't nearly as depressing as I expected.  In part because I knew the general outline already, I just didn't know a lot of the details and people involved.  There are some real heroes here:

Carole Cadwalladr is an investigative journalist for the Guardian and focused maniacally on Cambridge Analytica and teased out lots of important information.

David Carroll is a professor of  who sued Cambridge Analytica for his own personal data.

Ravi Naik was David Carroll's solicitor in his data rights case.

Chris Wylie is the guy with the fluorescent red hair and nose ring who worked for Cambridge Analytica who became a whistle blower

Brittany Kaiser also worked for Cambridge Analytica  and also became a whistle blower and is  the major character of this documentary.

There are villains too, particularly Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica.  And Mark Zuckerberg doesn't come across too well either.

If Climate Change is the most important issue to focus on for the physical survival of humans on earth, then Data Rights is the most important issue to focus on for the political survival of democracy.  We may all think we're smart enough to resist the bombardment of fake ads, but I had to keep reminding myself, despite all the Lock Her Up chants, that Clinton was a very well qualified candidate.  Much more than the lesser of two evils.

All I can say is WATCH IT if you have Netflix and if you don't, find a friend who does who will invite you to watch it.  (The other day I suggested reading an article by convicted Trump supporter Sam Patten.  The Great Hack is a much easier way to absorb this kind of background information.

Get a better understanding of how Cambridge Analytica got enough Facebook data to be able to personalize ads that would emotionally anger voters into voting for the candidate they were supporting or get opponents' supporters to not vote.  Cambridge Analytica (and its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) did this in Trinidad, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Nigeria,

I'd also note that back in 1977 my doctoral dissertation on Privacy was completed and approved.  (At that time there were mainframe computers and the first personal computers became available as kits in 1975.  We didn't get our first computer - a Vic 20 - until 1981.  It was pretty primitive.)

But I argued back then that most people had focused on privacy as a psychological issue - a human need to keep things hidden from others.  But I argued that privacy wasn't so much a psychological need, but rather it was about power.  Who had the power to get others information and who had the power to prevent others from getting their information?  Hiding info wasn't so much about a psychological need as it was about  the consequences of others knowing.  Publicizing sex life and drug use was good for most rock stars, but a career ender for a teacher or a priest.  (At that time for a president too.)  Privacy, I argued, was about power.  And this film essentially meshed people's private information with data being the most valuable commodity on earth now and how the large tech companies have all the power and individuals have no control over their information.    I'd figured that this was a privacy was about power back in the mid 1970s, and it's why I think about why I try to read the privacy notices, despite the fact that the they are way too long and unintelligible.  

Surprise! Departure Time and Costco/Citi Bank Billing

Surprise 1:  Departure Time

I got up yesterday (Thursday) thinking that my daughter and granddaughter were flying home today (Friday) - that we had one more day of human sunshine at the house.  But my wife informed me they were leaving that day (yesterday) at 3:30pm.  This was about 9am.

Whoa, how could I make that big a mistake?  I checked my computer calendar and I had them down for today - the 20th.  So I looked for the email and got the Alaska Air reservation.  There it was:  July 19.  But it wasn't 3:30pm.  It was 11:07am!  (3:30 was their arrival time.)

Needless to say when I told my daughter, who was still in bed, there was a bit of hustle and bustle. But we got them to the airport ok.

It hurt to see them go.  But the last minute burst of packing and rushing was distracting.

It means we can get back to our cleaning out the house activities - more paper shredding, more sorting, tossing, giving away, the crumbling front steps will be replaced.   I think I've decided to not put so many pictures back up on the walls.  Instead, we'll just change what is up now and then and leave many of the pictures in the 'archives.'  It's just that we're trying to minimize storing stuff we don't use that much.


Surprise 2:  Paying Costco Bill Still A Pain

It's not the amount that's the problem, it's the complicated way Costco and Citi Bank (their credit card) do things.

When we had to change to the Citi Bank Costco credit card last November, we didn't realize that we would get two cards with two different numbers.  And since my wife happened to be the person who signed up for them, she was automatically the primary card holder.  I have no problem letting her be 'primary' except that I'm the one who pays the bills.  So the first bill we got I had lots of trouble - the website didn't recognize my card number.  You see, when I use my card, it all goes to her card number.

And I couldn't even call in and work it out.  I had to give the phone to her to get permission to pay the bill.  She gave it.
So I was able to set up the user name and password.

Until a couple of months later, they didn't work.  I couldn't get past the security questions.  Turns out my card number has no value at all in identifying myself.  I have to use her number, but she still had to give permission.  Despite our pleas to let me have the ability to call in and talk to them without getting her permission - and their saying ok they were doing that - it didn't happen.

So when I tried to pay the bill they emailed me today, it didn't work again.  The rep this time was much more sympathetic than last time.  (Last month she denied that I had ever been made an 'administrator' even though we knew we'd called in and asked for that to happen.)  So Jazzalin made me an administrator yet again.  But I can't change a mailing address or security questions without my wife's permission.

I understand that some couples might want to put restrictions on one another or other users including children, but I don't understand why we can't have the option of one card number and equal access for both of us.

But then I got transferred to the tech side to figure out why I couldn't log in.  The rep did say that I had logged in successfully at 2:06pm (so I knew he was on East Coast time).  But the messages I got all said something like "Your info does not match our records."
He asked how I had gotten to the website.
Me:  "I used the link in the email statement I got."
Him:  "Ah, don't use that.  Go straight to CITI.com"
Me:  "You're saying the link in the email statement doesn't work?"
Him:  "There have been some problems."

There are enough refunds using Costco's preferred card to make not using it a real decision.  Besides, using their credit card doesn't give them any more information on what I buy than they already get from their membership card, and I don't usually carry much cash on me these days, and you have to have the credit card to get gas there.  So I'm resigned to using the card.

[UPDATE July 28, 2018: A reader emailed me to say she gets gas using her Alaska Airlines credit card, and that having two different card numbers was helpful when she lost her card.  Her husband's card still worked.]]

He also said it was Costco, not Citi, that requires the two different account numbers.  So I did send in my complaint to Costco too.

Another issue we discussed was Security Questions.  He said he's asked at meetings how and why they pick the obscure questions they pick.  He was told that so much info is available on social media these days that they need to be more obscure.  But he also realizes that some people - particularly older people - don't remember 'their first' whatever any more.  And I pointed out that you have to remember exactly what you wrote.  Spelled exactly the same.  Did you give your youngest brother's birthday as July 1, 1996 or just July 1?  Or July1?

But I also raised the issue of potentially giving hackers even more detailed information about a person.  Think of the recent scam attempts lately where someone calls and says, "We've kidnapped your granddaughter and you need to buy gift cards for $5000 and give us the codes within 30 minutes."  They now can convince grandma with obscure details like her granddaughter's first dog's name, or first car or the street she lived on when she was in elementary school.

Or someone stealing your identity can have that information too.

How much are we willing to pay for convenience?  And is it our convenience or the company's convenience?

I've spent at least three hours of my time dealing just with Costco billing in the last six months - that really isn't convenience.

A Story Recalling Meandering, And the Flaneur

This all started out fairly early Tuesday as I went along with my daughter and granddaughter to watch the little one bounce for a couple of hours.

But to be an observer I had to fill out an online waiver.  I understand.  Trampolining can be dangerous.  Someone I know broke his neck at a place like this (maybe even this one.)  He was lucky and after painful, scary months and months we was pretty much back to normal.  But there's a lot of liability with a place like this.

But I was only there to observe.  And the online form there asks for dribbles of information.  A paper form you can see what they're asking for all at once and decide if you want to share it all.  So I asked - how much more are they going to ask?
She didn't really hear me and said, "everyone has to fill one out."
Me;  "But I'm only observing."
She:  "Observers can be injured too."  [Isn't this the time people should leave?]
She:  "They don't use the information."
Me:  "Then why are they collecting it?  [I was being snarky.  I understood what she meant - that it's only in case of an accident.]  But even if they don't, someone can hack the computers."

Out of principle - that way too much information is collected about all of us - I decided I would not stay.  Besides I really didn't want to see my granddaughter risking her neck.

So I decided instead to walk around this South Anchorage neighborhood - between Old and New Seward Highways -

I'd only driven by on occasion, but had never really looked at carefully.  It's a funky sort of place with all sorts of housing and yards.

[I'd note the meandering reference in the title beckons back to a long ago post about meandering that comes from Charles Dickens opening to David Copperfield.  It's also a good description of how I often write.  The Flaneur references a post I did about a book by that title that I read while we were in Paris and is about just wandering with no goal through neighborhoods.]

This sign below the mailboxes - click to enlarge so you can read it - was the first that suggested people weren't cleaning up after their dogs.  "Attention Humans:  Please Pick Up After Your Dogs, Thank you."  Then it addresses the dogs.

There were big houses with big yards and gardens.  This one was next to a lot with a  double wide trailer.















Here's another inviting tree filled green yard that reminded me more of the mid-west than Anchorage.









Near another lot that reminded me of old Spenard.

And there were lots of trees and green.

But there also were dozens of zero lot line condos (presumably) scattered in the neighborhood.  Some had more green space around them than others.












If you look closely, Spyglass Hill is a private street, so I didn't go there.  As I wandered around I only saw one other pedestrian.  A woman with a walker and a tiny dog that took his job as her protector seriously.  She was laboring up the steepest hill in the neighborhood.

But I did wonder whether people might not be alerting NextDoor  (I think you may have to sign in to get to the link.) or the police if I had been black or worse dressed than I was.    Especially since I was taking pictures of people's property.

After wandering streets and alleys a while, I got to a bike path that started green and shady, but after about a quarter mile I ended in an industrial area.

It came out near a school district complex.













Past the student nutrition area was a nursery I had never seen before.

I wandered around outside, excited by this find.  (It turned out everything was outside.) But when I saw this item, I realized why all the rocks in my garden were picked up along highway construction sites.  A cubic yard of 'angular boulders"  was $195.  Gravel was only $95.  A cubic yard of gravel is a lot of gravel, but I suspect a cubic yard of the boulders has lots of empty spaces.



There were also also lots of different kinds of trees at serious prices as well.  I quickly deduced this was more for professional landscapers, but homeowners can buy here as well.


Lots of ways to spend your money on things I didn't know I needed.

This natural stone table (and stools) was only  $2786.

Rows of critters of all sorts.

I can see possible uses for these planters.

This dragon was certainly the most interesting item. I didn't check the price tag.



It's interesting to know this is in town in case I ever need something like this.







But then I made my way back out and got to a small strip mall.  I don't know what they do at this place, but it doesn't sound like a place I would ever want to need.

Then as I got back to Old Seward Highway. . .

First I saw the cross. Then I saw the sign.


I checked on line to find out who Justin was.






From his ADN obituary:

Justin Grey Ashley was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident Monday evening, July 8,

2013.
Justin was born on July 9, 1992 in Fremont, California to Brian and Charise Ashley. He grew up playing soccer and baseball and loved to ride his bike with his two childhood friends, Josh and Alex. He was a Cub Scout and bridged over to become a Boy Scout.
Justin moved to Alaska with his family when he was 12. He quickly made friends. . .

So yesterday was just a few days past the fifth anniversary of his death.   My sympathies to his family.  My brother was two years older when he died, so I have a sense of their terrible loss.

As I passed Judy's Cafe it reminded me of the place where they charged me an extra $.50 to NOT have cheese in my omelette.  I checked with K who was with me at the time and he said it was not Judy's.














I was getting close to full circle back to pick up the jumpers, when this car with a Begich sign pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of me.  He got out and struggled to get some sandbags that
were at the curb into the car.  I did mention to him that it didn't reflect well on his candidate to be driving on the sidewalk, though parking in the street wasn't a good idea either and he clearly couldn't move the sandbags very far.


At a dog kennel nearby, a woman pulled up and parked right in front of a No Parking sign and went in.





Almost back and I passed what looked like a single family home, but it had four mailboxes in front of it.


I got back just in time to get into the car and open the newspaper before my bouncing family members came out.  I'd had my adventure too.

I thought of the year we lived in Hong Kong when we decided that we could take urban hikes - and just walk three or more miles as we would in a more wild setting.  And there we could catch public transportation home from wherever we ended up.

FB Wants You To Opt In To Face Recognition - For Your Good, Not Theirs (Yeah Sure)

I got a notice from Facebook about managing my settings.  One was about personalizing ads and the second one was about letting Facebook use Face Recognition.  Here's what it said.  (For the visually impaired, I've written out the text in this image below.)

So, they want us to leave face recognition turned on so they can warn us if someone is using our pictures falsely.

As if that's the only reason they use it - to protect us.  I just don't believe that.  I googled to see how FB uses facial recognition and the results are vague, and I suspect incomplete.  But others are suspicious too.

USA Today has an article that supports my concerns.  It says in part:

"The question of whether you should let Facebook save your face is gaining in urgency as it  moves to expand its deployment of facial recognition, rolling it out in Europe, where it was scrapped in 2012 over privacy concerns and scanning and identifying more people in photos.
At the same time, the giant social network is attempting to quash efforts to restrict the use of facial recognitionin the U.S., from legislation to litigation. And consumer groups are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's widening use of the technology.
The biggest threat to Facebook’s collection of facial recognition data is a class-action lawsuit in California brought by three Illinois residents who are suing Facebook under a state law, the Biometric Information Privacy Act, one of only two in the nation to regulate commercial use of facial recognition."

Later the article says:

"Facebook’s facial recognition technology analyzes photos and videos to create a unique "template" to identify you. The technology is a shortcut that scans photos to suggest names of friends to tag.
The company says it has no plans to make people's facial recognition data available to advertisers or outside developers. But the more Facebook can glean from users’ photos about their interests, activities and social circles, the more precisely it can target advertising.
Facebook says it has tight control over its database of people's likenesses. Even if someone were to obtain a "template," it does not function like other face recognition systems.
'When we provide our biometric information to Facebook, we don’t know where that information is going,' Electronic Frontier Foundation senior attorney Jennifer Lynch said. 'Facebook says: 'Trust us to keep it safe.' But Facebook has shown time and time again that it makes the wrong choices when it comes to protecting users' data.'"

The fact that this explanation of why we should leave face recognition on ONLY talks about  how face recognition helps us and not how it helps FB should be a giant red flag.  This announcement makes it seem the whole purpose is to protect us.  That already is terribly misleading.

But for those who put their pictures up regularly, I'm sure the option to leave face recognition on to protect from stranger danger, is probably compelling.  Undoubtedly, some folks will be alerted to someone impersonating them (or at least their image.)  But billions more people will be giving up their faces for whatever ways FB comes up with to use them to make more money.


____________________________________
*For those who can't see images and whose text readers can't read text on images, here's the text of the image above:

Face Recognition
Before you manage your data setting, these examples can help you decide what choice to make.

• Face recognition technology allows us to help protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you or tell people with visual impairments who's in a photo or video through a screen reader. 
• If you keep face recognition turned off, we won't be able to use this technology if a stranger uses your photo to impersonate you. If someone uses a screen reader, they won't be told when you're in a photo unless you're tagged.

The Cost Of Airshows, What I Know About You, And Unobtrusive Measures

As the title suggests, I'm trying to kill three birds with one post.  But everything is connected and so I'm showing just three of the interconnected issues here.

Let's start with the cost of airshows.

I wrote a post in 2012 called Air Shows And The Cost Of Military Fuel.  I gathered what information I could and made some very general calculations.  I wasn't terribly happy with it because there were so many unknowns.  But there wasn't all that much out there and apparently still isn't since that post still regularly gets a fair number of hits from all over the world.

But as I checked StatCounter* this morning, I noticed a hit from Lockheed Corporation.  And then one from Boeing.  And another one last night from the US Senate.

click image to enlarge and focus

What I Know About You

That image above is a Photoshopped grouping of three different records from StatCounter.

StatCounter is one of many tools websites, including blogs, can use to track visitors to their sites.  I moved to StatCounter from Sitemeter after Sitemeter gave me all sorts of problems.  I suspect my regular readers got tired of my complaining and were happy when I switched and they stopped hearing about it.

Everyone who surfs the web should know about the information that is collected from them by each website they visit.  Sitemeter packaged that data about each individual visitor in a whole page that included more that StatCounter individual reports.  But StatCounter packages the info in a way that makes it faster to view and breaks out a lot more information in different reports.

But all these programs simply use the information that your computer collects on visitors and packages it in different formats.

If you click on the image, it will enlarge and focus so you can read it.  I don't get all this information from everyone.  First, I suspect there are a lot of visitors StatCounter doesn't even report.  I say this because Google Analytics says I have a lot more visitors than StatCounter reports, but it doesn't give me such detailed info on each visitor.
Also, some visitors have scrubbed their info - whether their internet provider does that, or they have done it themselves.  Another way is to use a proxy server which hides all the info.

I'd also note that if you use the private browsing feature of your browser, that only hides info about what sites you visit on your own computer.  You still leave tracks at the websites you visit.

I have put this sort of info up now and then because I think most folks really have no idea of how much info they leave around while surfing the web.  And I'm often surprised at how organizations leave their names up so people can see that they have visited.  And part of me doesn't want to post things like this which may alert them and cause them to disguise their identity.  I like knowing that these visitors visit.

I'd also note that all this information - plus more - is how browsers and others make lots of money selling it to advertisers.   These are, unobtrusive measures, because most people leave these tracks without knowing.  The main way people have any clue about any of this comes from the pop-up ads we get after visiting a particular site.  If you delete the cookies, some of them will end.

Unobtrusive Measures

"Unobtrusive measures are measures that don't require the researcher to intrude in the research context. Direct and participant observation require that the researcher be physically present. This can lead the respondents to alter their behavior in order to look good in the eyes of the researcher. A questionnaire is an interruption in the natural stream of behavior. Respondents can get tired of filling out a survey or resentful of the questions asked.
Unobtrusive measurement presumably reduces the biases that result from the intrusion of the researcher or measurement instrument. However, unobtrusive measures reduce the degree the researcher has control over the type of data collected. For some constructs there may simply not be any available unobtrusive measures."

The site goes on to identify three different types of unobtrusive measures.

I mention this because these tracks that people leave on websites are a form of unobtrusive measure.  My use of it is very informal and unorganized.  Every now and then I'll suddenly get a bunch of hits for an old post and it will alert me that something is happening related to something in the post.  Once I got a bunch of hits for a post about the director of the Alaska DMV, mostly from Texas.  So I started checking and found out she'd taken a job as the head of the Texas DMV.  The counter alerted me to that.

Another time a post suddenly got a bunch of hits and it turned out a British newspaper had a puzzle and my post had one of the answers. Here's a 2009 post that chronicles that event and several others where I was alerted to something by the hits on a particular post.

So, for what it is worth, today I got three hits on this post about the cost of fuel for airshows.  Three isn't a lot of hits, but when they are from Boeing, Lockheed, and the US Senate, it suggests that perhaps someone is looking into that issue.

Now, I don't know if the visitor from, say Boeing or the US Senate, was doing this officially or it was just someone privately surfing while at work.  But given the three hits from these three I suspect there's an interesting reason.  Is a budget committee examining the costs of air shows?  Or is it something else buried in the post?  For most google searches I no longer get the actual search terms - that's something they've done to improve user security - so I don't know for sure what they were looking for.  I just know where they landed.

"Ex-mayor sues San Diego over wife’s implant rupture"

Now that's a headline you don't see everyday.  The LA Time's lead sentence is:

 "Former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock and his wife are suing the city over a 2015 fall she took on a damaged sidewalk that allegedly ruptured her silicone breast implants and eventually required replacement surgery."

I never heard of Hedgecock until I read this article.  There's a lot here, just in this one sentence, to allow people to make all sorts of conclusions.

1.  He's a former San Diego mayor suing the city he headed

2.  Damaged sidewalks can be a serious issue.  My wife painfully broke her wrist a couple of years ago because of just such a sidewalk in Santa Monica (we didn't sue Santa Monica)

3.  She had breast implants

As I say, there are lots of ways to react to this story.  Here are three that jump out to me immediately.

A.   When is it reasonable to sue the city over bad sidewalks and when should the pedestrian just be careful?

B.   Why would the former mayor sue his own city?

C.   Do we really need to know about her implants and what difference might it make?

A.   When is it reasonable to sue the city over bad sidewalks and when should the pedestrian just be careful?

My mom lived on a street with Italian Stone Pine trees that caused 6 inch upthrusts of the sidewalk and the roots rumpled the streets so bad that city had to put up white and orange striped saw-horses to warn the cars.  There was frustration among the neighbors that the city didn't fix things (they eventually did after about five years), but people knew to walk carefully.  LA is so big that if everyone who got injured tripping over a sidewalk sued, it would bust the budget.  So it seems to me there are a several (not mutually exclusive)  reasons why someone might sue:

1.  to get the city to take fixing the sidewalk seriously

2.  because one couldn't afford health insurance and needed to pay the doctor bills

3.  because a lawyer said you could make a lot of money

For me, the first two are legitimate - especially if you donate most or all of what you win for #1.  

B.   Why would the former mayor sue his own city?

Checking out Mayor Hedgecock on Wikipedia, this seems fairly easy to figure out.  He was elected in 1983.  

In 1985, Hedgecock was charged with several felonies related to receiving over $350,000 in illegal campaign funds and was forced from office because of the scandal.[5] All the key players, including Hedgecock's associates and the financier himself,[6] admitted in sworn statements that they knowingly and willingly broke the law when they conspired to funnel the money from a wealthy financier into Hedgecock's 1983 mayoral campaign.[7] Though Hedgecock claimed none of it was true, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and was found guilty of twelve counts of perjury, related to the alleged failure to report all campaign contributions. Since California, like most other states, does not allow convicted felons to hold elected office, Hedgecock was forced to resign on December 5. His first trial ended in a mistrial by to a hung jury after the jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction. However, two of the 12 jurors in the first trial submitted sworn statements that the jury bailiff, Al Burroughs, provided them alcohol and tried to pressure them into finding Hedgecock guilty. State prosecutors then conducted an investigation into the possibility of criminal jury tampering. As part of the investigation, Burroughs admitted trying to influence the verdict. Under California Superior Court rules, any attempt on a bailiff's part to influence a verdict is "serious misconduct" that can be grounds for reversal. However, prosecutors refused to release the transcripts of their investigation interviews to Hedgecock's attorneys.[8]
An appellate court in San Diego ruled in 1988 that the judge presiding over the second trial "who had announced from the bench that he believed Hedgecock was guilty -- was wrong to block release of" the transcripts to the defendant. Hedgecock was still denied access to those documents for two more years until he appealed to the California Supreme Court, which ordered the transcripts released. In that appeal, the Supreme Court threw out the 12 perjury convictions and set aside the remaining conspiracy charge pending a hearing on Hedgecock's motion for a jury trial on grounds of jury tampering.[8]
The defense finally obtained the transcripts in October 1990. The next month, Hedgecock reached a deal with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in return for no jail time or retrial. As part of the deal, a judge reduced the felony to a misdemeanor and dismissed the case on December 31.[8]

I can understand there was no love lost to San Diego from  Hedgecock.  But it does sound like he was guilty and eventually got off most of the counts because of attempts to sway jurors, which is indefensible, but is not necessarily related to whether he was guilty or not.  

C.   Do we really need to know about her implants and what assumptions do people make about them?

I really can't think of any reason we needed to know about the implants.  I don't see how it matters what injury she got, except, perhaps if there was a statute of limitations issues and it took a long time to understand the injury had happened.  

It seems to me there are a number of basic reasons to get a great implant

1.  to attract attention by getting really big breasts

2.  to build self esteem because one has almost no breasts at all (#1 probably fits here as well)

3.  to help in transitioning from male to female

4.  as part of recovery from breast cancer or other damage to one's breasts

According to UPI, Hedgecock met his wife in 1970 and they were married in 1975.  So he isn't married to some much younger woman with humongous breasts.  I'm guessing this was related to breast cancer.  And it's really no one's business.  

Which leads to another question:  Should the media even mention this?  

There's a dilemma here.  If they don't mention it, people will want to know what medical problem arose.  The public will speculate all sorts of possible damage.  And one could argue that if they really wanted to keep it private, they didn't need to sue the city.  But that means that people with legitimate complaints, but who must reveal private conditions to complain, are less likely to seek justice.  

It certainly didn't need to be in the headline - except to get readers to read the story.  (I was going to use a different verb there, but it seemed in bad taste.)

Looking through more of Hedgecock's biography, he seems like an interesting guy.  He was (is?) a surfer, which is pretty much part of growing up in Southern California.  But his father was ill and he had to work.  He had severe enough acne that it got him out of the draft during the Vietnam War, according to Revolvy.   He attended UC Santa Barbara and Hastings Law School and worked as an environmental lawyer.  He was involved in rock music as a promoter and musician.  Wikipedia reports:

"In the months before the infamous Altamont Free Concert, security was provided by the local Hells' Angels motorcycle club to whom Hedgecock paid a signing bonus of a case of Jack Daniel's.[16]
In 1986 he formed a band with well-known San Diego journalist Thomas K. Arnold called The Arnold-Hedgecock Experience. Arnold was a writer for the Reader, San Diego Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and numerous other publications; in the early 1980s he also engineered 1960s pop star Gary Puckett's comeback. They recorded a cover of "Louie, Louie" and donated proceeds to St. Vincent de Paul, a local charity; they played several concerts around town, including opening for The Kingsmen in Oceanside in front of 10,000 people.[17]"

More recently he's been a conservative talk show host who caused a stir by inviting a White Nationalist onto his program and five years late got national attention again when

"he claimed on his radio program that public schools in the United States teach “hatred of white people” and “hatred of white privilege” and that public schools are 'as anti-American, anti-West and anti-white as you could imagine.'[14]"

In times past, people were known in their communities and people knew how to judge what they said based on past experience.  Our world got much more anonymous as transportation improved and people could move around and recreate themselves.  But with social media today, anonymity can quickly be countered.  But if people don't do a little homework when they read about some event, they can jump to conclusions that aren't warranted.  Or they can give someone the benefit of the doubt they don't deserve.  Most importantly this goes for politicians running for office.  A recent ADN story gave several reasons why people didn't vote in the recent municipal election including lack of time and lack of interest.   And I understand, but really, it's not all that hard to do the work of living in a democracy.  So in this post I wanted to know a little more about this story, and it didn't take too long to find out.  Though it did take a lot longer to write it up.  

GCI More Important Than The Rest Of Us

ADN explains why Alaska members of congress voted to end internet privacy protection:

"The rule would have required internet service providers (ISPs) to get consent from users before collecting information from their web browsing history for any purpose, including advertising.
Other internet companies like Google and Facebook don't have to do the same; though they have more limited access to browsing history, they do use the information they gather to make money advertising to users.
Murkowski, Sullivan and Young for the most part said that their concerns about piecemeal regulations outweighed their desire to protect individuals' data.
'So we looked at this one very carefully. Where I came down on it at the end was: What this rule did was it set up basically two standards depending on what the platform was. And that made no sense," Murkowski said after voting in favor of repealing the FCC rule. "It would have created confusion.'"

Their explanation means two things to me:

1. They value fairness for corporations over fairness for US citizens
2. GCI has more clout in Alaska than the people of Alaska.  Remember - Ted Stevens died in a plane crash going to a GCI retreat on a GCI plane with GCI execs, as he had done over the years

Of course, this was also the Republican party line anyway.

Snow Jobs - Literal and Figurative (Or How Much Did Murkowski, Sullivan, And Young Get To Give Away Internet Privacy?)

The Literal Snow Job

There were about 10 inches of fresh snow yesterday in Anchorage.  Here's our backyard.

And here's our mountain ash tree in front after a gust of wind.

The Figurative Snow Job

The Verge compiled a table of contributions from telecom companies to US senators and representatives who voted 'yes' yesterday to grant them the right to sell people's internet browsing information without permission and without anonymizing it.    The got the data from Follow the Money.

You can see the whole list at the Verge link.  I'm just looking at our Alaskan senators and member of congress.


Senators
Murkowski, Lisa Republican AK $66,250

Sullivan, Daniel Republican AK $10,550

Member of Congress
Young, Don Republican AK 1st $28,650

The Joint Resolution 34 passed in the senate 50 (all Republicans) to 48 (all Democrats) with two Republicans absent.  Going through the contributions, Sen. Murkowski was the 21st highest recipient among the Republicans.  (They didn't list how much Democrats got from these companies.)  Sen. Sullivan received the 3rd lowest amount, which could indicate his lack of influence or that they know his vote is locked anyway.  I'd note that one senator received $0 - the newly appointed Sen. Strange from Alabama taking Sen. Sessions seat after his appointment to Attorney General.

Rep. Young got the 65th highest amount among the Republicans who voted for the bill, which puts him in the top 30%.   There were 215 Republicans who voted for the bill, 15 Republicans who voted against it, and 205 Democrats who voted against it.  Six Republicans and three Democrats did not vote.  

The 15 Republicans who voted against the bill are the interesting group.  Here's the list (From GovTrack):

Vote	Party	Representative	District
Nay	R	Brooks, Mo	AL 5th
Nay	R	McClintock, Tom	CA 4th
Nay	R	Coffman, Mike	CO 6th
Nay	R	Yoder, Kevin	KS 3rd
Nay	R	Graves, Garret	LA 6th

Vote	Party	Representative	District
Nay	R	Amash, Justin	MI 3rd
Nay	R	Zeldin, Lee	NY 1st
Nay	R	Faso, John	NY 19th
Nay	R	Stefanik, Elise	NY 21st
Nay	R	Jones, Walter	NC 3rd

Vote	Party	Representative	District
Nay	R	Davidson, Warren	OH 8th
Nay	R	Sanford, Mark	SC 1st
Nay	R	Duncan, John	TN 2nd
Nay	R	Herrera Beutler, Jaime	WA 3rd
Nay	R	Reichert, David	WA 8th

Note:  I did NOT go back and double check the amounts each candidate received.  I did spend a little time on the Follow The Money website, but I wasn't sure how to duplicate the search they did.  There are a number of variables that could probably change the amounts.  Thus, I also couldn't check to see how much the Republicans and Democrats who voted against the resolution received from the same groups.

Additional more:  Several people have started lucrative crowdsourcing pages to get and publish the private browsing of all the members of the US Congress.  But Techcruncher and others say this isn't likely to happen.  They say that non-anonymized data is NOT available, plus private purchaser can't just come in and buy the data unless the ISP agrees.  The Freedom of Information Act only covers the federal government, not private companies.  And after giving millions to members of congress to get this done, they aren't likely to turn around and stab them in the back.