A Serious Post About Privacy

If you are serious about keeping your personal information private and want to prevent corporations from using your personal data or taking advantage of anything you post on the internet all you have to do is post a note that states that you're not going to put up with this shit anymore. After posting the note you will receive all the peace and privacy you could ever want when you go and live in the woods without internet or human contact as this is the only way to achieve true privacy. You may be laughing but I am being completely serious (hence the title of this post) about the very important matter of privacy on the internet. Lately there has been a social virus infecting Facebook status updates across the globe. Those afflicted have been mindlessly posting copy and pasted 'legal' statements declaring sole rights to the things they blab on the internet or upload in the form of visual media and so on and so forth. These poor afflicted souls, whose symptoms present with apparent cerebral damage, ironically were most likely infected due to a lack of activity in the left cerebral hemisphere and frontal lobes. To guard against infection by this social virus you only need to spend a few minutes exercising your left cerebral cortex and frontal lobes. I recommend learning about privacy on Facebook as a means of not only exercising those portions of your brain but also immunizing yourself against viral panic that so often spreads through status updates.

You may have heard the anecdote about the picture-perfect family that discovered that their gorgeous family portrait had been taken from Facebook and used on a European billboard. These people did not have any sort of privacy notice up to protect their stuff- but they didn't have to. The company that made the decision to use that image made the conscious decision to steal from that family. The company was not in the right and is legally liable for theft. The family that was stolen from has every right to file a personal lawsuit against the company. No, short of not posting pictures at all, you can't prevent everyone from potentially stealing photographs or other media from your social networking page but you can easily limit the number of people who have access to that data by changing the privacy settings on your account or even on each individual post. If you want to make sure pictures of your toddler taking a bath are viewed by no one but family members you can easily adjust the settings to let you do that. I recommend you try messing with the settings for a few minutes of both permanent and per-post privacy selections.

But it's not just your pictures you want to protect. You want to protect your personal information as well. You don't want any random person armed with nothing more than Google to be able to dig up that you are a forty year old male living in the Denver area who checks into the local park via Foursquare every day when you walk your dog and that you're into both the Twilight Saga and competitive eating competitions and oh- this ten-digit number looks like a phone number. Change your general privacy settings so that only friends are privy to such information. You also don't want the company you work for to know that you weren't really sick on friday? Well, the easiest way to do that is to not post anything incriminating. But that can be difficult to sort out so the next best thing would be to not be 'friends' with or make links to the company you work for or be friends with other people that work there. You could try to exclude them through privacy settings but I wouldn't recommend it.

You may have also heard that Facebook steals data such as your likes and dislikes and sells it to advertisers.   Or that Facebook uses your information to customize things for you so they must just have a big database full of information that they can look at all they want and do whatever they want with. That's not true. Facebook does collect data- but only in the ways explicitly stated in their Privacy Statement. I recommend reading through it. If you find something that you are not okay with them doing then the only way to prevent that is to delete your account. If you want to be informed if they change the privacy statement simply 'like' the Facebook Site Governance page.  But despite what the fear-mongering stories you have heard would want you to believe people at the Facebook HQ are not looking at a list of stats next to your name telling them everything about you. The guys at the Facebook HQ are looking at aggregate data encompassing millions of users of which you are only one small plot point. Because the truth is that you're not special enough for anyone to want to spy on you specifically.

You may also have heard that Facebook is now a publicly traded corporation. You likely heard this in the context of: "Oh my god! Facebook is publicly traded that means they're going to be even more evil now!" In fact, the opposite is true. Facebook is now a publicly traded company and that means they now have shareholders that they must answer to whenever they do anything that might cause public backlash.

What you probably haven't heard is that it's not Facebook itself that you should be afraid of. It's the games you should be afraid of. You know how every time you decide to check out a new game you get a prompt asking you if they can use data from your page and your friends page and maybe even store cookies and other data on your computer? Have you ever read that particularly closely or even thought anything much about it other than that it was an annoying page between you and playing a new game that only required a simple click to get on with the game and not any actual comprehension of what they were asking? Unfortunately without clicking 'okay' you're not going to be able to play that game. Why? Because the makers of the games don't want to make free games and hope that you deign to give them some money in exchange for 'premium' pixelated items. They want to make money- period. And it's not just the games that want to steal your information. It's those cute little inspirational e-card applications, too. Any application or game that asks for some of your information doesn't just want to take your profile picture and put it on your little virtual farm. They want to know everything you're willing to let them have.

I encourage you to do everything you can to help protect your information and privacy but you have to remember that these are the two most important things: Firstly, if you are worried about other people finding out a particular fact about you- don't post it. Second, if you want true privacy all you have to do is click delete otherwise you have to make due. (But if you're really worried about your privacy you shouldn't just click delete to get rid of your Facebook you should also avoid MSN and Live, Google and all Google products and services, and try especially hard to avoid the worst culprit that is Yahoo and all it's products and services.)

Congratulations! You've now exercised your entire cerebral cortex and frontal lobes and prevented a viral infection that could have caused brain damage. Next time you see some fear-mongering 'pass it on' warning take a minute and use your brain and maybe a little fine motor control to click over to Google and look up whether people are spreading lies and misconceptions again.

Electronic Birthdays

The approach and arrival of the fifth of September causes a stirring in the code that is tied to my e-mail address, facebook, and many various accounts across the internet. Sometimes in advance of the fifth and sometimes just at midnight that code will execute and a flurry of electronic birthday wishes filled with generic pre-conceived text that artful scripts have stitched my identity into in a effort of personalization. The in-box of my e-mail accounts will sprout a giant crop of special birthday advertisements from all the companies that have a hold of my e-mail and know when my real birthday is like mushrooms after the rain. These messages may once have been written by some person but any meaning in them is watered down by all the hands that touched the project and the number of years it's been since the message was first hammered out. The messages are further made cold by the hard coding that executes them. There is no person at one of these well-wishing companies that knows that today is my birthday and yet through the power of code and universal time systems I get a message telling me that everyone at this company wishes me a happy birthday.

I hate electronic birthday messages. Initially I found them mildly startling but now I tend to delete them without even looking inside. Because nothing said in that message is going to be remotely worth the several seconds they take to read. A long theoretically deeply heart-felt pile of text meant to endear me to some company whose service I already subscribe to is never going to be as special as a message in person or a phonecall from someone I actually know. But unfortunately the electronic birthday messages do not stop with the execution of some scripts to send me e-mail. Because social-networking sites don't stop with e-mail. They alert all of those people that are supposed to be my friends that the fifth of september is my birthday and prompts them to wish me a happy birthday.

What is wrong with Facebook reminding my friends of my birthday? Some people don't remember things like that very well. I know that's true. My brother's phone reminds him of things like mother's day and my birthday because his memory for that kind of thing is terrible. My memory isn't the greatest either but I remember the exact birthdate of about a dozen people and roughly when the birthday of a couple dozen more people are. These are the birthdays of the only people I want to wish happy birthday to. Not that I wouldn't wish a happy birthday to anyone else I know including random customers in the store but if your birthday is important enough to remember all the time or spend hours programming into my phone so I will remember it's important enough to at least call and leave you a message about. Otherwise you're probably not going to be terribly upset if I forget. I imagine you would agree with that.

So again, what's wrong with Facebook reminding my friends about my birthday? The fact that today I will receive many birthday wishes from people who haven't so much as said a word to me, even via the medium of Facebook, since the last time they were reminded to wish me happy birthday. Congratulations Facebook, you figured out how to create human spambots. I don't count these messages as being any more special than the ones written by someone in the marketing department of a company I happen to shop at because they're all electronic birthday messages. Every wall post I get that contains less than five words and at least one of those is "birthday" is  no less of a code-execution than any that showed up in my e-mail box from my cellphone service or internet provider.

In conclusion, if you want to use Facebook as a means of remember when my (or other people's) birthdays actually are you're more than welcome to but if you see that message and only take the few seconds to assuage yourself from any possible guilt you might feel at not saying it to tap out thirteen letters and hit enter then you have effectively become a spambot. If you want to take a little more time and write something whole lines long you have graduated to human being. But if you actually want to wish me a happy birthday as a friend or relative and not merely a fellow human being and you aren't going to see me in person in the near future to say it then that requires the whole minute or two of effort to find my phone number conveniently listed on my facebook page, punch it into your phone, and leave me a voicemail if I don't pick up. Otherwise, don't waste the few seconds of effort on fourteen keystrokes and contribute to the spam on the internet.

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

These are the original words of the Pledge of Allegiance here in the United States of America. The pledge has gone through three subsequent changes. In 1923 the pledge was altered so the words "my flag" were replaced with the phrase "the flag of the United States". In 1924 the words "of America" were added. In 1942 the pledge was adopted as the official national pledge. In 1953 no less than six referendums were put to congress to alter the pledge yet again. In 1954 the first and only official amendment was made to the pledge. This amendment was the result of intense campaigning by a group called The Knights of Columbus but only made real headway when President Eisenhower attended a sermon based on the Gettysburg Address and the pastor made the claim that the pledge could be the pledge of any nation. He said that Lincoln's words "under God" were the words that defined the United States as a nation. The words "under God" were what set the United States apart from very similar pledges made by communist nations (keep in mind this took place during the communist scare). So in 1954 the words "under God" were added to the pledge.

In 1954 the pledge went from being merely idol-worship in the view of some religions (Jehovah's Witnesses in particular) to being unconstitutional according to the United States constitution. The rights of religious freedom granted by the first amendment are seriously violated by the words "under God" in the national pledge. In 2002 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the phrase "under God" to be unconstitutional. In 2004 the Supreme Court heard an appeal of the Court of Appeals ruling but rejected the case because the man pressing charges "lacked standing". The Supreme Court thus avoided ruling on the controversial issue.

The above is not "my opinion" it is the truth. The truth is the truth whether you believe in God or Quetzecoatl. And the truth is that not only should the phrase "under God" be removed from the Pledge to allow it to be constitutional once more but also children (and people in general) should be given a choice about reciting it and not be pressed to commit idol-worship if that is against their religion. After all, freedom of religion is a major tenet of our country and our country was founded by pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution in Europe.


To be honest I wrote this post in response to the various "viral" status posts that were being passed around Facebook which, among other things, stated that they wanted to "flood Facebook" with a statement of the pledge that deeply emphasized the phrase "under God". I feel (and yes the following are my actual feelings and opinions which for obvious reasons need to be separated from facts) that saying the Pledge in this manner is using the country to further their monotheistic goals- a complete opposite of what America is all about. I found the pledge stated in this manner to be offensive. Clearly someone who loves their country so much they're posting the pledge on facebook ought to love it enough to take a look at the constitution occasionally and also to love it enough to care about its foundations and laws. And as I said, this last paragraph is just "my opinion". My opinion about the country I love and its foundations, laws, and tenets but hey- if you disagree with me that is a completely irrational but valid and perfectly legal opinion for you to have under the First Amendment which also protects freedom of religion.

Willfully Disengaged

I don't want to say that I'm willfully ignorant. I'm not that. I make an effort to read things that aren't fantasy. I think I probably consume non-fiction at a rate equal to my fiction reading at this point and considering how many books I read in a year I think that's pretty good. As the definition for ignorant is lacking in knowledge or education I think it's safe to say that I am not willfully ignorant. But there are some things I do to insulate myself from the way the world is. I think these things probably make me a happier person if not necessarily a better one.

In the world containing the internet it is possible to immerse yourself in the news all day every day. There are hundreds and thousands of news websites. You could read them or watch them all day every day and never see it all. Alternately, you could get all that fed to you in tiny bites from a news stream. You can see all those headlines, get a little gist, and read only the things that look interesting to you. Or you could be more traditional and watch the news or read a paper each morning. You could get the two-minute news every hour from a radio station if you wanted. You could also do some combination of the above where you have the news on in the background in the morning and then at work you have the news feed going and you look up articles about certain events or blurbs that interest you.

That same world, the one with the paper, the radio, the television, and the internet also makes it fairly difficult to avoid the news if you want to. I stopped watching television in highschool all together because it was otherwise impossible to not see any news on it. Even watching in the afternoon when the blah kind of mindless programming was on meant subjecting myself to news updates and "coming up on the six'o'clock news" style advertisements during the breaks. I could have tried to leave the room or change the channel but that, ultimately, probably wouldn't have been very effective and not only that but it would have drastically reduced any enjoyment I derived from the activity to begin with. So I came to the conclusion that it was probably better to just stop. I do watch television now but by television I mean "television shows". I watch television episode by episode on Netflix in an experience no different than watching a very long movie that has been broken into pieces. I choose what I want to see and I watch it. There is no channel surfing, no news, no just watching whatever happens to be on because it happens to be on. In fact, since they switched to the digital stream I cannot even watch regular tv if I wanted to despite the fact that my roommate has a HDTV... because there's no antenna or anything to go with it.

I could, if I chose, watch the news online or have a little stream of it to my desktop all day long or I could read it in the newspaper at work. Now that I am out of highschool and caring about the news is no longer a requirement to lead a productive life I just don't pay any attention to it ever. I sometimes check the weather after I find out about a storm from somewhere else and I occasionally hear the bizarre, isolated news story on the radio. But other than that the only news I hear about I hear passively from other people. I never ask about it, I just hear about it if they feel the burning desire to talk about it for some reason. This has made for some interesting thoughts about the way that information goes through networks. In this case, the network of people I know and interact with.

As it turns out, most of the news that I hear comes from strangers at work. I also disseminate most of the news that I hear to different strangers at work. I suppose it must be that strangers feel more comfortable talking about some neutral topic like the news or weather than anything else. I also find that the news I hear from strangers is more-or-less accurate or at least obviously false. I usually average out the weather forecasts of various people to get a much more accurate prediction than meteorologists ever give and I can easily tell when strangers are lying about things (usually unintentionally). The lies tend to be glaringly obvious because they have a certain grammatical feel the way a "trick" question has a certain feel. So hearing news orally is not a problem.

The other place I see a lot of news (or get it from there via my roommate) is on Facebook. The problem with news related from Facebook is that Facebook does not relate just the news. News can come along with theories and opinions and get morphed into entirely new "stories" with a modicum of truth in them and the force of people you know behind them to make them seem like real "news." News from Facebook is suspect because it has a reputation of being bad or flawed and yet because it always comes from people you know it's hard to resist the seductive logic that it must be true. And then there are the times when it is true. Your average person can easily distinguish between true and not true because they have a basis on which to lay the facts- a basis of news even if their basis hasn't been refreshed in a few days they can still determine, if they think about it, whether some piece of fresh news is true or false. Without a basis for the news however anything I see on Facebook has the potential for being true or not true at the same time the same way Schrodinger's cat exists.

Recently the weather was turning toward not being winter anymore as it tends to do eventually where I live and my roommate saw on Facebook that there was slated to be a huge storm the next day. A huge storm after a couple weeks of fair weather. Not totally unlikely given that I live in Maine and it's been known to hail in July here. But there was another factor. The storm was due to hit on the first of April. This one factor made me disregard everything I knew about weather and focus only on what I knew about people and about facebook. I concluded that it was probably a wildly-propagated joke. The weather was so bad on April first that aside from one of the stores (a store which is legally obligated to stay open) the mall where I work was closed. If the storm had been forecast for the last day of March instead of the first day of April my conclusion would have been that there must be a storm coming because after all this is Maine that I live in.

More recently than the weather incident there was another bit of news I learned about from facebook. The Government was going to shut down. Not the state government and they weren't just talking about black-out days that they do at the DMV. Facebook was panicking about a total shutdown of the government and any government spending and yelling angrily about how they weren't going to pay the military and how they had to pay the military. Of course they have to pay the military. They stop paying and they stop being the military. It was just as easy for me to see that this bit of news was wrong as it had been for me to assume that the storm was a hoax. This time I was reminded distinctly of Randall Munroe's comment about how Twitter was the best way to watch panic unfold in real time. Facebook's Newsfeed (intentionally) works the same way. I was watching a massive panic unfold where the only goal was the breeding of more panic and not the spreading of real information. This, unlike the storm, really was wrong. The Government had announced they weren't shutting down anything essential. Essential to them included Military, Health, Wellfare. Anything to do with any of those things wasn't to be shut down and of course included in that was all the bureaucracy as well. The only things I could really think of that they would have actually shut down were federal museums and National Parks.

So there are some hazards to disengaging from the news and certainly you might think I was a bad person because it took me whole days to learn anything about the mess in Haiti and I didn't think about it multiple times a day every day. Because I wasn't forced to by the news. I don't hear pundit's spewing nonsense and political lies or things that actually really don't matter to me. Not hearing the news except from other people applies an interesting filter. A filter that in turn must be re-filtered. It's maybe immoral and somewhat dangerous in terms of misinformation but what it also is is interesting. Knowing everything about everything leaves you nothing to talk about much less wonder about.