Doc Edward Morbius ⭕​ @dredmorbius@toot.cat

An administrative announcement.
Motherfuckers.

This One Trick Will Revolutionize Your Use of Social Media: Block fuckwits.

On social media, the advantage is that a large userbase and participation. The disadvantage: it's 99.9999% crap.

What's working for me is to filter ruthlessly. If someone is disruptive, ideological, insane, or crazy-making, I'll block them without thought (I used to agonize over that, I don't any more).

High signal is rare, but odds of missing out by blocking idiots are low.

#BlockFuckwits

https://web.archive.org/web/20180303151553/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm7Tq

"Pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures -- for good reason."

- Alma Whitten, former Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering, Google

On authors who were publishing information technology panopticon concerns in the 1980s, or earlier

A quickie dump.

Paul Baran / RAND

• "On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy"

• "On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American Character and the Role of the Engineer, or, A Little Caution in the Haste to Number"

• "The Coming Computer Utility -- Laissez-Faire, Licensing, or Regulation?"

• "Remarks on the Question of Privacy Raised by the Automation of Mental Health Records"

• "Some Caveats on the Contribution of Technology to Law Enforcement"

Largely written/published 1967--1969.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html

Willis Ware / RAND

Too numerous to list fully, 1960s --1990s. Highlights:

• "Security and Privacy in Computer Systems" (1967)

• "Computers in Society's Future" (1971)

• "Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens" (1973

• "Privacy and Security Issues in Information Systems" (1976)

• "Information Systems, Security, and Privacy" (1983)

• "The new faces of privacy" (1993)

https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/w/ware_willis_h.html

Misc

Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988) Notably reviewed in the Whole Earth Catalog's Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age (1988).

https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-age-of-the-smart-machine-the-future-of-work-and-power/oclc/60966402 https://archive.org/details/inageofsmartmach00zubo/page/n7/mode/2up

"Danger to Civil Rights?", 80 Microcomputing (1982)

https://archive.org/stream/80_Microcomputing_Issue_26_1982-02_1001001_US#page/n295/mode/2up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877)

"Computer-Based National Information Systems: Technology and Public Policy", NTIS (September 1981)

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_5/DATA/1981/8109.PDF

"23 to Study Computer ‘Threat’" (1970)

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/12/archives/23-to-study-computer-threat.html

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Privacy and Information Technology" bibliography is largely 1990--present, but contains some earlier references.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/it-privacy/#Bib

Similarly "Privacy"

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/privacy/

Credit Reporting / Legislation

US Privacy Act of 1974

https://www.justice.gov/opcl/privacy-act-1974

Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 - Queensland Government, Australia

https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/inforce/current/act-1971-050

Arthur R. Miller, The assault on privacy: computers, data banks, and dossiers

https://archive.org/details/assaultonprivacy00mill/page/n7/mode/2up

"The Computer, the Consumer and Privacy" (1984)

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/04/weekinreview/the-computer-the-consumer-and-privacy.html

Richard Boeth / Newsweek

The specific item I'd had in mind:

Richard Boeth, "Is Privacy Dead", Newsweek, July 27, 1970

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/11/is-privacy-dead.html%EF%BB%BF

Direct PDF: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/712228/1970-newsweek-coverstory-privacy.pdf

Based on an HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851736

#privacy #surveillance #panopticon #PaulBaran #WillisWare #RAND #ShoshanaZuboff #RichardBoeth #CreditReporting

My present Recaptcha policy:

Request audio.

Respond "Fuck you Google"

Repeat until access granted, or the joy fades.

Bonus: All audio AI parsing tends to "Fuck you Google".

Epidemics Show Societies Who They Really Are
https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm112520_podextra.mp3

The Ancient Heresy That Helps Us Understand QAnon
https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm112320_cms1069983_pod.mp3

Two from #OnTheMedia
#podcast

A Space Alien Cat's Person of the Year suggestions

Assking on Diaaspora, Dr. Anthony Fauci, healthcare workers and SARS-CoV2 were mentioned, three that had occurred to me.

Others:

• Patient Zero, whomever that was.
• The WHO.
• Front-line / key / essential workers.
• Denialsts.
• Tucker Carlson / Sean Hannity / Rupert Murdoch / Newscorp.
• Charles Koch. He read his brother's obituary, a sneak preview of his own might be justice.
• Disinformation.
• The Plutonomy.
• American Voters.
• The Mercers.
• Black Lives Matter.
• George Floyd.
• Catastrophic Risk.
• Societal Dysfunction.
• ANTIFA.
• Xi Jinping.
• A changing Earth.

Honorable mentions: Joe Biden, AOC. Their time will come.

Previously: POTY?https://www.joindiaspora.com/posts/7e2d56e00be00139f63f002590d8e506

#POTY

Unread

https://xkcd.com/2389/

#IronLawOfFiniteAttention #xkcd

I am thankful for those who understand.

#thanks

I'm way late to the party discovering #MarianaMazzucato. Or more accurately, realising I'd already run across her work.

She's an Italian-American #economist now in the UK, doing interesting work on #innovation, #technology, #GovernmentResearch and #economicPolicy, #monopoly, and #TheoryOfValue. Much is similar to ideas I've been pursuing for the past decade (almost certainly influenced by the penumbra of her work).

This Wired profile was buried in my article backlog and has been there for months if not years. I only consciously registered her name a few days ago.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mariana-mazzucato

44 bits

So, a redditor tracked down the location of a monolith placed in the Utah desert a few years ago, recently discovered by authorities, who did not disclose where it was.[1]

It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[2]

Geospatially, assuming 10m² resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique region on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans).

Searching for a ~1m² monolith visually within a 10m² square is reasonable.

GNU units:

You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2)
        Definition: 43.798784
You have: ln((1 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2)
        Definition: 45.535749

49 bits buys 1m accuracy, 63 1cm, 69 1mm. Anywhere on Earth, land or sea.

For comparison, cellphone positioning accuracy is typically 8--600m:

• 3G iPhone w/ A-GPS ~ 8 meters
• 3G iPhone w/ wifi ~ 74 meters
• 3G iPhone w/ Cellular positioning ~ 600 meters

https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accurate-is-the-gps-on-my-smart-phone-part-2/

https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

The power of disparate data traces to rapidly narrow down search spaces on a specific item, individual, or location, is what makes #BigData aggreggation so powerful, and terrifying.

Notes:

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/jzw628/help_me_find_this_obelisk_in_remote_utah/gdfbzee/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25199879

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/

#privacy4 #location #33bits #44bits #data #deanonimization #DataAreLiability #surveillance #SurveillanceState #SurveillanceCapitalism