Seeking transparency in a threatening world... and answering Harari

First among links and midweek observations: 
Here’s a powerfully cogent interview with Yuval Noah Harari about our current crises. I have guardedly quibbled with some of his points in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow and elsewhere. But he is still one of the smartest observers around, unafraid to offer risky extrapolations. Perhaps we'll meet, someday. Meanwhile, do add this to your podcast list… and note the many overlaps with my arguments about reciprocal accountability, from The Transparent Society.

- A friend reminded me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister's Veil,” wherein a New England town is amazed when their preacher takes the pulpit wearing a black semi-transparent veil that obscures all of his face but his mouth and chin from view.  Naturally, I take it in some ways as an allegory for my work on transparency. And for today’s masked life? But in the story it’s not a covid-style face mask. Hawthorne had the veil across the TOP half of the minister's face, as I recall, making it more pertinent to this era of iris/retina/face recognition than pandemic aversion.

- There was no justice for Ahmaud Arbery, shot down during one of his regular jogs through his own neighborhood by father-and-son loonies who went uncharged by law enforcement… till an anonymous person posted video of the horrific event, putting the lie to the accused’s excuses. And I was told years ago that cell cams would make no difference. They are making a whale of difference!

(Late note, the "anonymous poster" was later arrested as an accomplice! Oh the trap of self-promotion!)

== Snowden says “no aliens or contrails…” but crypto’s not delusional?”

- Edward Snowden is an interesting case who few understand. Okay, I don’t either, though I have some insights. First, that he truly views himself as a decent, reasonable and even patriotic fellow, willing to pay a reasonable price for his acts of “civil disobedience,” possibly with his gaze set on the life arc of Daniel Ellsberg . (Prison in your forties and then a hero of campus coeds in your fifties.) Certainly any comparison to Julian Assange benefits Snowden, immeasurably. He’s in the news again:

"For the record, as far as I could tell, aliens have never contacted Earth, or at least they haven't contacted US intelligence," Snowden writes in his recent memoir, Permanent Record.  "Also — Yes, man really did land on the moon. Climate change is real. Chemtrails are not a thing.” He tells radio host Joe Rogan that he “had ridiculous access to the networks of the NSA, the CIA, the military, all these groups. I couldn't find anything," he continued. "So if it's hidden, and it could be hidden, it's hidden really damn well, even from people who are on the inside."

Of course it is conceited to think he actually was at the innermost layer of the onion. Still, it leads to an important point. Seldom parsed is what Snowden resents, what he recommends, what did change as a result of his actions, what he did not  find or reveal, and what he completely fails to understand. There definitely were changes in the aftermath of his revelations, e.g. in compartmentalization, so no single fellow would ever know as much, and in FISA procedures, making them slightly more accountable and court-like. But it is in the lattermost category that I come in, as author of The Transparent Society. For it’s here that Snowden seems utterly clueless.

He believes - along with millions - that our freedom and privacy might be safeguarded by hiding from elites of government, commerce, criminality or fascism. This stunningly stupid notion is backed up with talk of cyber-cypher miracles that would encrypt our lives outta sight… as if a flying gnat cam won’t just waft into your home and watch as you type, or make love. Crypto-faith is not just marlarkey, it has always been mysticism based upon zero possibility it would work. Ever.

How ironic that Snowden himself is an example of the thing that actually does work. Indeed, within weeks (I hope and predict) it will be a flood of revelation and transparency (e.g. the Deutsche Bank records) that applies the light of sousveillance where it’s needed most. And still, when that happens, our would-be paladins of freedom won’t get it — the lesson that light is the way.

 - And while we’re on hackers etc.: The 15 Biggest Ever Cases of Bank Fraud. Wow, a fascinating recounting of thefts and such, showing how much is being stolen by hackers and insiders… and this is not a complete list, by far! And the only long term solution is not “security.” It is transparency.

== Vulnerabilities remain =

- This Los Angeles Times piece reveals how vulnerable our cell systems are to collapse when we need them most, when the towers go down, in a fire or quake. I’ve harped in this for two decades. See my interview in CACM about critical fragilities in infrastructure (reprinted in Polemical Judo.)

- I warned long ago (1997) in The Transparent Society  that ‘Deep fake’ videos could upend an election. This article suggests that Silicon Valley may have a way to combat them. It’s a critical problem, and tech will help, for a while. But over the long run, the answer to “lying witnesses” will be the same as it has been for 6000 years… more witnesses. This means we will likely have to maintain deniability by keeping our own diary-recording-logs of everything we do or say. It needn’t be the end of the world. 

- Meanwhile, a cogent Los Angeles Times op-ed talks about “Rules for a New Surveillance Reality,” and how some big thinkers aren’t giving in to the standard reflex among those fretting about Big Brother. Oh, it’s right to fret! We teeter on the edge of tumbling into the surveillance state that certain rising world powers are already building, at full speed. But it won’t be solved by whining “don’t look at me!” Or trying to pass useless laws limiting technology, ordering a halt to the tide. Or to a tsunami. What can work, because it has worked increasingly well for 200 years, is to insist that we have transparency and the power to supervise all elites who grasp these technologies.

  

== Again and again… blindness to what works ==

- Got me a message from Evan Selinger, co-author of Re-Engineering Humanity, who writes: “I've been arguing for a ban of facial recognition for some time. Do you really believe in a plausible future when overall the technology creates more accountability than harm? This is a genuine question, David! I'm admitting my bias in advance but am truly curious about your take. Thanks!”

My response:

Dear Evan, I appreciate that you are in our shared fight against looming Big Brothers and those who would draw curtains of darkness across our enlightenment experiment. I volubly and often urge folks to join ACLU and EFF and other shared efforts to preserve the experiment. Despite the tendency for activists like you to dismiss me as complacent about threats to freedom and privacy, I am in fact fare MORE sensitive to this historically-redolent issue, as I wrote in The Transparent Society.

Alas though. It truly is perplexing to me how sincere and intelligent folks imagine they can repress technologies that get smaller, faster, better, cheaper and vastly more numerous and mobile at rates faster than Moore's Law. Seriously, you are able to envision such a thing happening? Banning such exponential tech... with a LAW? One enforced by elites who will thenceforth be protected and shielded by such laws, from any effective supervision or accountability? Even if they start out sincere, such paternalists will always be propelled to use the techs "for our own good."

Banning face-recog is the latest utterly bizarre example of stunning myopia. Every year the programs get more efficient, smaller and spread more widely in dispersed – not centralized – databases and apps. Where you you think that leads? As Robert Heinlein wrote: “A privacy Law just makes the spy bugs smaller or more hidden.” Really, you can envision such a method working? I am a science fiction author, and I cannot imagine any conceivable way to do that. Unless...

...unless my method comes first. If all elites are stripped naked, then such a law might be enforceable, catching violators. Ironically, your approach can only work if I get mine first, and then your approach -- hiding and cringing from light -- becomes unnecessary.

As things are, with Face Recognition out in the open, flaws like racial or gender bias are being detected and pounced-upon, swiftly. That won’t happen if the systems get driven underground or kept by secret elites.

What is most bizarre about this is that the approach I recommend - reciprocal-lateral accountability - is exactly the core of the enlightenment experiment. It is the only thing that ever has worked, that does work, or that ever will constrain the human tendency toward cheating and power. It is the reason why Adam Smith and the American Founders prescribed methods for dividing power among mutually competing groups. And the downward-lateral spread of power and knowledge and sovereignty to ever-broader groups is precisely the only thing that has ever thwarted aristocratic cheating and other calamities. YOU are a product of 250 years of steadily increasing use of that method...

...which now seems to be totally invisible and counter-intuitive to all our brightest paladins of freedom. Like yourself. Alas.

But at least you are in the fight. Bless you for that. 

And hell yes, I approve far more of a fellow like this who is in the fight, vigorously disagreeing and arguing with me about tactics and curious about possible ways that his own might need improving... than I do the arm-chair warriors and 'summer soldiers' who whine and grouse and use every excuse to stay lazy during "times that try men's souls."

And if you are ready to stand up and get involved in the fight for your posterity and civilization, I know a place where you can study either new and innovative tactics...

... or else get tips how to efficiently use your scant time and resources in more traditional ways. Either way, we need you. And the time is now.

Assange vs Snowden: A Tragicomedy. And the war on science gets explicit.

First, a bit that says it all, from a top Republican factotum: “Science is a Democrat thing.”  Um. They say it proudly, even explicitly, as when DonaldTrump just this week attacked meteorologists. "Trump ridicules weather forecasters for getting it ‘wrong the most’ when they made a spot-on prediction." 

They have to. Disdain geniuses who predicted the paths of every recent hurricane with uncanny accuracy 5 days out, saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Because virtually all of them (along with every Naval officer) confirm global warming.

Yes, science, but also every fact-based profession. Including medicine, law, teaching, journalism and the "deep state" enemies of the Intel/FBI/military officer corps (who are fleeing the GOP in droves, despite their crewcuts, because, well, fact and science (and climate change) are real. 

There is some guilt to go around. Any and all liberals who reject crewcut refugees from this madness, know this -- you are doing Putin's work. But if you head forth to lure just a couple of RASRs (Residually Adult-Sane Republicans) into the light, then you are doing your part to save civilization.

== Assange Theatrics and WikiTantrums ==

What a tragicomedy. We needed something like WikiLeaks (which I predicted in The Transparent Society). But this jerk turned it into a tool wielded by Putin against the west. He meant us harm. As we'll discuss below, In contrast, I don't believe that was ever Edward Snowden's aim.

What's astonishing is how little actual damage Assange and Snowden (two very different men, I avow!) did to U.S. processes or government or even officials. In a few cases, light caused some ruction followed by incremental reforms (more below). Which somewhat-guardedly pleased Snowden and drove Assange absolutely nuts. But no surprise there. Read about his behavior at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy.

Says Albert Gross: “Somebody has to write a farcical screenplay  (or TV series)  about this. The comic potential is too great. Sort of a mixture of two classic plays: The Man Who Came To Dinner and Molière's Misanthrope.”

And yes, some of my agency friends may fume about a few wikileaks harms… some spy methods revealed, some sources endangered or compromised. (There was one pretty bad steal from NSA.) But on any grand scale, it was reassuring to see how little “heinous” was going on… much less than Assange raved, or than many fevered folks expected. Take this discussion of “harms”:

“On the diplomatic front, WikiLeaks shared many examples of U.S. diplomats writing in unflattering terms about foreign leaders, causing the U.S. embarrassment.”

Um… I followed all this at the time. The Chelsea Manning leaks revealed a quarter of a million State Department cables and that was not good. Yet, what “unflattering” things were our diplomats saying? They were caught privately dissing vile dictators like Hosni Mubarak, despising tyrants and wishing they did not have to deal with them! These cables were outed just before and during the Arab Spring, proving that these vile dictators were not U.S. agents, but actually hated by our diplomatic corps. 

Result? Amid all the Arab Spring protests by students and liberals across that region, no American flags were burnt.

Thanks Chelsea! (Should she get a medal?) Seriously, that musta really stuck in Assange’s gorge. That and the fact that light seems only to help us, never to bring us crashing down. (Though I hope some “leaders” get seared into dust, by light. One of our innovations -- the leader is not the state. Much as the present Louis crise "l'etat c'est moi!" See "Trump team sues Deutsche Bank and Capital One to keep them from turning over financial records to Congress.")

What Snowden’s better-targeted leaks did was cause a partial (I admit insufficient) overhaul of the FISA process, turning the 'FISA Court' into an actual court with adversarial ombudsmen to speak against each filing. It's not enough! But it was a step in right directions and hence Snowden has some cause to call himself an “Ellsberg.” Moreover, Snowden openly avows his civil disobedience merits some punishment! (Showing a rare understanding of “civil disobedience,” which only counts if there’s some punishment! We'll blog about this, soon.) 

That punishment must be satiable and proportional in a free and improving society, especially if our standards change because of the civil dispobendience, as ML King changed our standards. 

And no, I am not calling them equivalent. I will not pre-judge, but will leave it at this: Assange and Snowden are two very different cases. Two very different qualities of men.

== A metaphor for the perennial liberal problem ==

Watch this biopic about Hannah Arendt.  (I was visiting scholar at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. My father sat next to her, at the Eichmann Trial.)

The biopic is a fascinating story about a rift in most progressive movements -- the choice between  complexity (moving progress forward by analyzing how things work, including the obstacles ahead) and ideological purity (mobilizing the forces of progress with simplified incantations.) I sometimes get in trouble for doing the former, though I understand the need for the latter.  

Unfortunately, the latter impulse results in the Good Side of this struggle often eating their own, and I fear it may do us harm in 2020.

A moment in the film struck me. Arendt has fled to America. She is critical of many of our flaws. But when asked what she thinks of us, overall, she sighs, remembering Europe, and says "paradise."

Compare her to another Jewish emigré Leo Strauss, who ranted that America should be more like the Europe that had just committed suicide with imperialism and madness.  Strauss trained most of the "Neocons" who fed the right's Bush-era imperialist ravings.  ... till Rupert Murdoch decided he could do without any intellectuals at all, and flushed them like toilet paper.

I guess my point is that we don't have to motivate our reform efforts by saying all is crap... or that there's equal amounts progress and crap... or that we've fallen backwards.  Clearly, every generation of (especially) Americans has taken on new issues of inclusion and with some exceptions (the 1870s and 1920s) risen to the challenge of widening the circle at least a little.

The classic liberal worry is that any admitting of our prodigious progress might lessen the imperative to forge ahead. But each plateau only shows us how desperately urgent is the need to keep going.  May I attempt a metaphor?

We're like allied prisoners escaping a sunken U-Boat, rising 90 meters, then nine, then 0.9...  and each stroke brings us closer to the light that feels like it is receding!... Because each stroke upward feels a more burning urgency and a sense that we're running out of time.  And meanwhile, some damn nazis are grabbing at the ankles...

Yipe, what a metaphor. But the point is that urgency doesn't vanish if you admit that you've come a long way. Indeed, that admission empowers! Try it.

And speaking of metaphors…

“I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day. 
 
― Rhett Butler from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind

In contrast, this SMBC cartoon makes a seldom mentioned point. That consumerism is hard on the planet… but has lifted more humans out of poverty, elevated more children, and enabled billions of women to rise up enough to control and limit their birth rates… which has in turn fundamentally saved the planet. Ironies abound. But simplistic anti-globalism is not an answer. And the American consumer, especially, may be recognized someday as an agent of hope and salvation. 

On the Transparency Front: FBI vs Apple and the prescribers of "hiding."

On the Transparency Front – A New York Times article asserts that the blurry lines between foreign intelligence gathering and domestic surveillance are starting to vanish, altogether.  “National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy.” This article - Surprise! NSA data will be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism - is lurid and over-wrought in tone, but of course we need to make clear that we’re interested and paying attention.  In the long run, that fact can lead to a balance that protects common citizens.  

But... protects them… from being surveilled? Oh stop. Please. The dumbitudinousness of that ongoing fantasy is plumb wearying. 

Not one of the silly jeremiads that have demanded government blindness has ever – and I mean ever, once – proposed any plausible way that can reliably happen, over an extended period.  Across the history of our species, show me one time when a society’s elites were denied sight consistently or for very long. 

There is a way to stay free and empowered citizens, even if we are surveilled. Yes, it can be so, despite the inevitability of elites getting to see.  It happens to be the very same trick that got us our current, anomalous levels of safety, privacy and freedom, three things I refuse to give up or “tradeoff” against each other. There is a method. But it takes more work than whining.

== The FBI vs Apple ==

Ah, the ongoing drama. The following riff, written a month ago, is already obsolete... or is it? I'll comment on the latest. But first --

“The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’ to unlock the phone,” Edward Snowden says in this recent interview. “Respectfully, that’s bullshit.” And while I am not a cracking expert (nor do I always agree with Snowden) my own instincts coincide with his on this point - that there is an awful lot of theater in all of this. The FBI is requesting that Apple create custom iOS software that disables the safety features in the iPhone of San Bernardino, California, shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, but Apple CEO Tim Cook has resisted such demands so far.

Apple needs a public image that they will defend their customers, come hell or high water. Also, if they make it easy for the FBI to gain access, then other governments like China will be able to demand the same - (though in fact, Apple is very cooperative with the Chinese government).

At the same time, the public has mixed feelings and Apple will lose sympathy if it seems that some major terror act was made easier by encryption.  

In The Transparent Society I speak of the 'ratchet effect." Civil libertarians who rely on notions of preventing elites from seeing will do fine... until some day when the citizenry is scared by some traumatic event.  At which point all the carefully erected "do not look" protections will topple away. This is why I do not put any faith in "do not look" rules, as any kind of long term safeguard.

Earlier, I offered this wager: "there's a good chance that the current iPhone imbroglio is all one big Potemkin act, a stage show put on to let Apple look tough as a defender of customer rights."

The latest? First, exactly as I predicted, the FBI eventually proclaimed: "Never mind! We managed to crack the iPhone without your help."

Second... A proposed bill in Congress, the “Compliancewith Court Orders Act of 2016,” authored by offices of Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr, would require people to comply with any authorized court order for data—and if that data is “unintelligible,” the legislation would demand that it be rendered “intelligible.” According to Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It’s effectively the most anti-crypto bill of all anti-crypto bills.” Indeed, recently, some of the world’s top cryptographers warned of the dangers of weakening encryption on behalf of law enforcement… that any backdoor created to give law enforcement access to encrypted communications would inevitably be used by sophisticated hackers and foreign cyberspies. 

To be clear, the bill seems to have no chance of passing, as-is. But next time something bad and panic-worthy happens? Remember the Ratchet Effect?  Again... (and again and again)... if you base your defense of freedom upon public appearances and assurances that elites cannot see, then you are spectacularly delusional.

We are better defended by the other approach, fierce application of supervision powers, allowing us to look back at the elites who are going to look at us, anyway.

== We must look back ==

Windows 10 covertly sends your disk encryption keys to Microsoft: Here's a disturbing article by Cory Doctorow, though I can’t verify: “Windows 10 has many unprecedented anti-user features: a remote kill switch that lets it disable your hardware; key-logging and browser-history logging that, by default, sends it all to Microsoft, and a deceptive "privacy mode" that continues to exfiltrate your data, even when you turn it on.”  

To which I reply… sure it’s disturbing. And you expect elites to behave any differently than this? Ever?  

Doctorow's vague-general "Danger Will Robinson!" cries are typical among the millions who are right to sniff the aroma of looming Big Brother… but utterly wrongheaded to recommend the solution of “let’s hide!”

Dig this and finally dig it well. You will not stop elites from looking, by whining and complaining. You will not stop them by encrypting and tech noodling.  You will not blind elites by passing laws that restrict what they are allowed to see. You will not stop the descendants of monkeys from looking at stuff!  Especially when they are sitting on the highest branch.

What we can do is remain free and left-alone by looking back.  By dropping the sick-stupid and cowardly obsession with hiding… 

...and instead concentrating our efforts on supervision, on sousveillance and looking back at power.  On applying accountability.  On seeing.  

That may not blind them, but it will put severe restraints on what they can do with any info about us.  What they can do to us.

This is what they fear us doing. And it is why they subsidize the current wave of handwringing moans and articles crying out “stop looking at me!”

== Hacking Transparency == 

A cogent run-down on reasons why it is so hard to cope with cyber-attacks, to determine who is responsible, or even be sure that one has happened at all.  

A nightmare scenario, brought into real life... when hackers fooled some Ukrainian civil servants into revealing information that then let the hackers take down part of the Ukrainian power grid.  A scenario right out of the pages of Ted Koppel’s new book, Lights Out: A CyberAttack, a Nation Unprepared; Surviving the Aftermath. 

The Orwellians are out there, preparing.  North Korea’s “Red Star” computer operating system – based on a Linux/Redhat distro – has rigid firewalls, prevents user tinkering, and watermarks all media: “reportedly tags every bit of media it comes into contact with, whether it is on a drive connected to the computer or on the computer itself, including files that aren't even accessed. Once tagged, the media files can then be traced back to whomever has them and, presumably, the source of them.”  

A very interesting article about a speech by an NSA official on the processes involved in hacking into a corporate or national network.  

Hackers invaded a shipping company’s systems to download cargo manifests, allowing Somali pirates to board a vessel, ignore the fortified crew, and use barcode scanners to find valuable cargo to carry off.  

Back in 2012, Youtube added a new feature that allows you to automatically blur all faces in a video. Today, it's going a step further: you can now draw a rectangle around any object in a video and YouTube will then blur it and automatically follow it.  Self-controlled editing gives responsible folks a chance to do the right thing before posting.  

Stay alert. The world needs lerts.

  

Transparency trends gather steam

First an announcement...

Edward Snowden and David Brin will among the keynote speakers at the Bard College conference, Why Privacy Matters, held October 15-16. Register online. Should be interesting! (One of the two will be attending by Skype.)

Again with this transparency thing!

Reaction has been mostly favorable to my editorial in the Global Post, wherein I suggested that cameras are becoming a Great Equalizer in urban America, the way the Colt 45 was in the Old West... and that small investments in cam-technology for minorities might fundamentally alter power and safety on our city streets. In addition to "black lives matter" why not also chant for the pragmatic thing that's making the biggest difference?  "We want more tech!"  Now, let's try to actually implement it.

With this in mind have a look at The ACLU's policy on cop cams.

The latest news is actually a qualitative shift. "Arlington Texas Police Chief Will Johnson on Tuesday said he had fired officer Brad Miller over the shooting of Christian Taylor. Johnson says he's troubled by some of the actions Miller took while responding to a reported burglary at a car dealership early Friday morning."  

Notice the differences in this case. There was no video footage, yet a white officer is being held accountable, despite the fact that the fellow he shot was probably in the act of committing a felony, at the time.  Read further and you'll see this is exactly along the line of progression that I have forecast... that a time would come when decent cops will gather the guts -- partly in their own interest -- to start cleaning house of their bad-apple colleagues. Stay tuned and see if this spreads.

== Change is Unstoppable ==

Online “security expert” Bruce Schneier’s blog surveys the most recent wave of online ideas and revelations and offers new terminology for a phenomenon that has been monthly, without let-up, since the last century:  "Organizational Doxing".  Hm... nice. And welcome to the light side of the force, admitting at last that:

(1) the tsunami of revelation is unstoppable, but that

(2) it needn't be the end of the world - or even of some privacy - if we acquire habits of reciprocal accountability, and do it...

(3) ...thorough-militant sousveillance-supervision of elites.

One might have hoped for reference to earlier works on this topic, such as The Transparent Society (1997)... if Schneier finally got around to reading it, and thereupon took note of how diametrically opposite his earlier strawmanning-missives were, to the book's actual content. Well, better late than never.

Along these lines, see this from a review of a forthcoming book:  Windows into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in An Age of High Technology, by Gary T. Marx:

"We live in an age saturated with surveillance. Our personal and public lives are increasingly on display for governments, merchants, employers, hackers—and the merely curious—to see. In Windows into the Soul, Gary T. Marx, a central figure in the rapidly expanding field of surveillance studies, argues that surveillance itself is neither good nor bad, but that context and comportment make it so.  In this landmark book, Marx sums up a lifetime of work on issues of surveillance and social control by disentangling and parsing the empirical richness of watching and being watched. Using fictional narratives as well as the findings of social science, Marx draws on decades of studies of covert policing, computer profiling, location and work monitoring, drug testing, caller identification, and much more, Marx gives us a conceptual language to understand the new realities and his work clearly emphasizes the paradoxes, trade-offs, and confusion enveloping the field. Windows into the Soul shows how surveillance can penetrate our social and personal lives in profound, and sometimes harrowing, ways. Ultimately, Marx argues, recognizing complexity and asking the right questions is essential to bringing light and accountability to the darker, more iniquitous corners of our emerging surveillance society."  

== Miscellaneous Items ==

What level of disclosure is appropriate? How can public accountability be balanced with the privacy essential for scientific inquiry?   An editorial exploring this as a zero sum tradeoff… "Transparency versus harassment..." a concept I do not actually accept. 

I am not so sure about this next item… Under the new Chrome feature “Dmail,” email panic or regret can be fixed by clicking the "revoke" button after a message has been sent. When sending a message, users can also decide whether they want the message to self-destruct after one hour, one day, one week or never. This is different from an earlier feature: Google’s "undo send" feature unveiled in June giving Gmail users with email panic or regret up to 30 seconds to take back the offending message. 

Should someone be able to send you a hateful email and deny you a record of it?  Weigh in on this.

The app Jott’s AirChat feature allows users to send data and texts without a connection to the Internet. Jott uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios to create a closed network with other devices that are within 100-feet of each other, needing no smart phone or data plan. 

You might check out the novel Darknet, by Matthew Mather, about an AI that develops out of a Wall Street hedge fund's automatic trading system. A scenario I've long held to be the most dangerous of all possible sources of AI.  

The future of the internet looks a lot like BitCoin: "the same technology that secures transactions on the Bitcoin network—and thereby renders them transparent, nearly instantaneous, censorship-resistant, and free of the need to trust anybody—can be used to process other, more complex financial negotiations and to securely store any kind of digital information on the Internet."  The mighty SF author Karl Schroeder looks into the future of chained trust transactions in a story contributed to our transparency-based sci fi anthology, Chasing Shadows, which will appear next year.

== Hackers and Worrisome Devices ==

The dating website Ashley Madison, whose slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair," purports to have 37 million members as cheating spouses. Now hackers are threatening to release all of the site's personal information — including its members' sexual fantasies and financial information — if the company doesn't take Ashley Madison offline. Of course this was to be expected. Anyone who actually believes promises of confidentiality in this modern era is so foolish that such delusion would normally disqualify a creature in any other species from breeding. On the other hand, do the hackers actually believe they have accomplished anything? 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) sent a letter last week to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department asking regulators to look into “always on” technology. The group cited technology from Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others as worrisome. 

Examples: Google Chrome is reportedly able to remotely install code that allows the software to listen to users without their knowledge. The code was originally designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection. The Samsung SmartTV has a built-in microphone that is equipped with voice recognition technology that allows users to give verbal commands to the TV. In order for Samsung to convert your speech to text, the voice commands are sent over the Internet to a third-party for interpretation. However, since the TV is “always on,” the microphone is recording every word you’re saying at all times.  Others of concern include NestCam and Canary Connect, Amazon Echo and Microsoft Kinect. 

 Oh and… “Through a Wi-Fi connection and a built-in microphone, the new Barbie is able to hold (unsupervised) conversations with a child.”

There is only one solution.  I have been saying it for decades.