Revisiting transparency, tracking, & resilience

Although Facebook's facial recognition software has identified and archived more than a billion user faces, its latest incarnation - Meta - has announced that it will stop automatically tagging people's faces in uploaded photos and videos, and will delete the data it has gathered - although users can continue to manually tag friends in their photos. Yet... Meta will continue working on facial recognition systems for future purposes, as in its upcoming smart glasses or augmented reality.

I reiterate: No amount of screaming will stop this tide from coming in. Your phone and doorbell and digital assistant will recognize faces and if you ban the tech, all it will do is give a monopoly on such systems to secret elites. Instead of trying futilely to ban technologies of light, we must focus on preventing the harms. And the way to do that is with light.

Another example? Surveilling students: Big Teacher is Watching: How AI Spyware took over schools: Especially in the wake of online learning during the pandemic quarantine, a web app called GoGuardian increasingly tracks what students do online, not just at school, but at home as well: "For kids that means their every keystroke, click and search is recorded and analyzed..." Educators can view students' web search histories, know if a kid is playing a video game, watching Netflix or Youtube - or especially viewing porn. Some programs also monitor for potential signs of emotional distress among the students. Many of these machine learning algorithms process nearly everything that students do online, even outside of school hours, and some of these companies sell student data.

And again, if you focus on accountability that might prevent harms, then you may do some good. Banning this simply won't happen.

The latest controversial weapon against theft: What happens when individuals use bluetooth tracking technology - such as Apple's AirTag - to track down stolen items, such as gaming systems, laptops, bicycles, scooters... and, especially cars? Such products are "testing the limits of how far people will go to get back their stolen property and what they consider justice."

== Increased powers of vision ==

See: “From Macy’s to Ace Hardware, facial recognition is already everywhere: Facial recognition is popping up at our favorite stores, but customers are largely unaware.” And whatever is loose in the commercial world, you can be sure elites of all kinds – bad and good – have got it.

The latest: a winged microchip the size of a grain of sand - swarms spread by the wind could be used to monitor the environment - or for civilian surveillance.

It's called Brin's Corrollary to Moore's Law: The cameras get smaller, faster, better, cheaper, more moble and vastly more numerous at a far greater pace than Moore's Law. This has huge implications, by the way, regarding so-called UFOs. But ever more (or moore) so, it means we all will be seen. But sousveillance could make a world where we catch any snoops and watchers and effectively shout "MYOB!"  (Mind your own business.)

And it goes on. Take this headline from The Guardian: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance. 

On and on, it’s always the same. Our paladins and pundit defenders of freedom and privacy point at event after event that appear to portend a loss of both… and they are utterly correct to fretfully worry about looming technologies of surveillance, which could genuinely lead to the control-by-telescreen that Orwell chillingly portrayed! Yes, technologies like those Snowden revealed, or the latest “Pegasus” Israeli spy program that allowed agencies around the world to listen in on iPhones, or Moscow promulgated ransomware, or ubiquitous, unmonitored state face-recognition, could very well be part of the path to that hellscape… 

...though I think the “social credit” systems established by some authoritarian regimes are even more insidious and dangerous, siccing neighbors upon neighbors. 

So why am I shrugging about this latest furor? Because it’s always the same thing: screams of outrage followed by calls for impractical and futile "solutions." Ever since around 1994, the same clade of worriers - from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the ACLU (join them both! Your dues will help!) are spot-on in reporting the latest travesty… 

...and maybe 5% right re: HOW to respond to it.... 

... and 95%+ just plain wrong, in demanding that technologies be 'outlawed' or that high level elites of law or government or wealth or criminality or despotism be somehow blinded. 

To those pointing at technologies and surveillance and shouting warnings, I say "yes! That could lead to Big Brother, so what's the plan?" To those who cry: "Ban it!" I always answer. “Um, how? Show me a moment in human history when elites have let themselves be blinded. Or when “Don’t look!” privacy laws did anything but (as Heinlein put it) Make the Spy Bugs Smaller.

Across 30 years denouncing and trying to ban technologies of vision - including face recognition - are there any such technologies that your shadow-seeking tactic ever stymied for long?

== A simple test ==

Again and again I have assigned the same experiment. Go to the nearest zoo's baboon enclosure. Climb inside with a pointed stick. Go right up to the biggest alpha baboon and stab out his eyes so he can't look at you!

 Here's a clue. He... won't... let... you. 

He will, on the other hand, grudgingly allow you to look back at him.

The same is true of all animals, let alone the alpha elites we hire to protect us. Any power of vision we try to deny them will instantly become the locus of paranoia and a desperate (and sometimes justified) felt need to bypass restrictions on their ability to see. All you are doing is driving any Good Guy elites into criminality. 

On the other hand, the last 250 years shows that we can seize and hold some powers of supervision and transparency and apply then to elites, the innovation responsible for all our current freedom and - yes - privacy.

Imperfectly? Then make that the focus of our activism! And yes, there are dozens of ways to do that in The Transparent Society.

I say this not out of complacency. I fear Big Brother more than almost any of you do! And that is why my prescriptions are less about raging futilely at the next example of elite spying and the next, and the next forever… 

... and more based upon things that have actually worked at creating this rare island of relative freedom and privacy across humanity’s dismal history.

The method that works - assertively stripping elites of their own shadows, instead of absurdly trying to hide in our own - should be obvious to our paladins… 

...but apparently it is so counter-intuitive that they never, ever grasp it, no matter how many times their screams of "Shadows! Give us shadows!" utterly fail. They always, always fail.

Yet, still, they reflexively rail against light (the only tool that ever preserved freedom), calling for bans on things that cannot be banned, succeeding only in clouding the vision of those elites who are on our side, while empowering those bent on re-establishing 6000 years of feudalism.

Finally.... 

A talk I gave for the Foresight Institute on transparency, reciprocal accountability and pyramidal vs diamond-shaped societies is well-summarized here.

And, here's an interesting article from Edge re: "reciprocity altruism" and prisoner's dilemma.

Sousveillance, Surveillance and Accountability

It's been called "Brin's Corollary to Moore's Law." That cameras get smaller, faster, cheaper, better and more mobile at a rate much, much faster than Moore's Law.  This article clues you in to the latest aspects, e.g. lensless cameras that won't even have that telltale glint. Micro air vehicles (MAV) - drones the size of flies, that will follow you and "go-pro" your life, whether you're the camera's owner or not.  And cameras that see around corners.

The lesson to all this? Stop imagining that you will ever protect freedom and privacy by hiding! 

We can live in this looming future while retaining some freedom, even enhancing freedom! 

But only if we learn to stop worrying and love the drone.

In The Transparent Society I have a chapter titled “The End of Photography as Proof of Anything at All.”  And yes, way back in 1997 there were fears that digital image processing would ruin our ability to trust images. Now see this stunning new product – Face2Face – that uses RGB video data to superimpose expressions and face movements onto a target persona in a video. In the demo, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are shown grimacing, smiling or mouthing words, exactly mimicking the studio actor… visually plausible at the low resolution of this YouTube example.  But of course easily refuted by any group that analyzes the footage in a modern lab.  The question is: will that suffice in the minds of millions who see such doctored images, then refuse to listen, when those labs denounce the fake?

Public figures will take to recording themselves 24/7, in order to have time stamped refutations, ready at any time.  (Put that one in the predictions registry!)

Meanwhile, Kuwait has become the first country to require residents —1.3 million citizens plus 2.9 million foreigners - to enter their DNA on a national database. 

Slowly at first, then more rapidly, drone surveillance has been entering our skies, with every agency from the FBI and ATF to local sheriffs acquiring unpiloted aeronatical vehicle (UAVs) equipped with cameras and more. The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation express concern, but how do you draw the line between legitimate uses and Big Brother? 

My dear friends in EFF etc are right to be concerned. But any notion of restricting such powers by law or regulation? Over any extended period? When the drones are getting smaller and cheaper and more numerous and capable at rates vasty exceeding Moore's Law?  

Here's an ultimate irony.  The only way you could ever enforce such restrictions is if citizens and their NGOs (like EFF and ACLU) have extensive powers of sousveillance and supervision over the Protector Caste.  Only then could we know what they are doing, well enough to say "stop looking!"

But think this through, will you? If we have such supervisory power, we won't need to say "don't look!"  Because if we can supervise the drone controllers and their commanders, then their looking will be circumspect and respectful and studiously unintrusive. 

Again and again it must be repeated: Screaming "don't look at me!" is a pathetic whine.   The only way to hold power accountable is to forcefully and effectively say to those with guns: "We are watching you in every detail. So be professionals."  

Only then will public servants nod and say: "Yes, boss."

An example of this process is this current debate over changes in the FBI's rules for accessing the NSA's PRISM program that monitors traffic to and among foreign telephone numbers. Already ethically and legally iffy, "section 702" searches can sweep up information about U.S. citizens who are at one end of such conversations.  Believe me, I am deeply unsatisfied with the current state of affairs, especially the wispy layers of supervision - almost none of them adversarial - that keep these programs from being Orwellian. On the other hand, we are arguing about them. And our officials know that trying to hide it all from us completely will not work. All that will do is result in a phenomenon they'll find deeply irksome.  More Snowdens.

The solution is to negotiate a win-win… a positive sum set of reforms that empower our protector caste to do their increasingly complex and difficult jobs… while submitting to much improved systems of supervision and accountability that will enhance citizen confidence.  The alternative, a steady decay in trust between the protectors and protected, is utterly pathological. Solving that decay should be the caste's number one priority.  How sad that it would be so, so easy to do, except for some unnecessary reflexes and bad habits of thought.

Nor is this just a dichotomy of private folks against the state. Police agencies have been using "stingray" technology to make fake cell towers to sift for target/suspect phones… and now it seems the technology has leaked to major corporations, foreign spy agencies, commercial IP thieves, and even criminal gangs… an all-too familiar devolution of powers that we should worry about when drones start being used in felonious activity.  IMSI catchers - or cell-tower spoofers -- are now available on gadget sites for a few thousand dollars.

"Two years ago, China shut down two dozen factories that were manufacturing illegal IMSI catchers. The devices were being used to send text-message spam to lure people into phishing sites; instead of paying a cell phone company 5¢ per text message, companies would put up a fake cell tower and send texts for free to everyone in the area." 
And: "By 2010 senior (Indian) government officials publicly acknowledged that the whole cell network in India was compromised. “India is a really sort of terrifying glimpse of what America will be like when this technology becomes widespread,”"  

To some, the 'obvious solution' is ever more encryption, a race that average people intrinsically can never win. I prefer self-erecting mesh systems, but those will require better hardware than the cell companies are willing to sell us, and we'd still have to trust one mesh-organizing consortium over others.

In the long run, what all this proves is that we will never be able to base our safety and freedom on some illusion that others do not know something. Concealment may have practical aspects, here and now, but its sanctuary is temporary, at best and ultimately delusional. We can still have safety and freedom! But only if we realize that freedom and safety do not depend upon preventing others (who are much mightier than you) from seeing.  

It comes from being able to see them, well enough to deter what they might DO to you.

== a canny metaphor ==

A member of this community came up with the following illustration of this key point:

“Our collective folklore contains a story about belling the cat. 

Not one about blindfolding the cat.”

Wow… cool metaphor! 

Note that a cat can easily remove a blindfold, but can't do much about the bell on the collar.

Is it easy to bell a cat?  Find for me where I ever said this was easy.

== Block Chain and BitCoin ==  

Interesting. For those of you who have been following the development of block-chain based, autonomously validated currencies like BitCoin, there have been many, many questions. Such systems “mint” new coins not from a central agency or cabal of secret managers, but rather by a system of “mining” in which you can (for example) create a new BitCoin by computer-solving a difficult mathematical puzzle or problem. Setting up such a system so that no government or bank can ever take charge of it was immensely clever.  And yet, quite predictably, BitCoin mining has come to be dominated by a few savvy, well-equipped players. 

And let’s be clear about what’s inherently vague. We have no way to know whether those miners happen – by now – to overlap with certain, well, agencies, who have all the computational power they would ever need. Seriously, you doubt that a system designed to bypass government is not, by now, almost wholly run by government? Truly? There's a bridge I know that's for sale....

But never mind that aspect. Across the last half-decade, innovators have put forward variants on the block-chain cash model. One of the more interesting alternatives is CureCoin, which asked: “shouldn’t all that computational power that is poured into coin mining actually accomplish something?”  CureCoin miners win new units by solving problems in protein folding that are brutally complex and essential for advances in organic chemistry and cancer research. They hope thus to amplify the all-voluntary system already in place, called Folding@home, which in turn was based on SETI@home, the first voluntary distributed computational network.

The CureCoin system leans also toward philanthropic applications and donations, but the coins themselves are negotiable currency, like BitCoin. Do I know anything more about it?  Nope, and I certainly cannot vouch. In fact, those among you who are experts are invited to report back here, after giving it a try. 

== How Transparency makes a difference ==

And you didn’t see this coming? New lip-reading technology could help solve crimes by deciphering what people caught on CCTV are saying, researchers have claimed.  Along with lie-detection and personality profiling, these techs will either ensure that we have Big Brother forever… or else Big Brother never.  One word will make the difference.  Transparency.

A cache of leaked emails appears to reveal that billions of dollars of government contracts were awarded as the direct result of bribes paid on behalf of firms including British icon Rolls-Royce, US giant Halliburton, Australia’s Leighton Holdings and Korean heavyweights Samsung and Hyundai, all of it funneled through an obscure petro company called Unoil and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.  As author of The Transparent Society I have to ask… you are surprised that stuff leaks?  

Finally, see this: How Mickey Mouse evades the public domain -- with lobbying and ever-changing copyright law.

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.

  

Science Fiction and Freedom

While in San Francisco for a panel on artificial consciousness, I had an opportunity to stop by the headquarters of the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- dedicated to preserving your freedom online and off.  As part of their 25th year anniversary celebration, EFF released Pwning Tomorrow, an anthology of science fiction stories by Bruce Sterling, Ramaz Naam, Charlie Jane Anders, Cory Doctorow, David Brin, Lauren Beukes, and others. You can download it for a donation to this worthy organization.

== Politics-Economics of Star Wars ==

"Between authority and anarchy lies argument..." Adam Gopnik offers a cogent, if-brief appraisal of the late Antonin Scalia, and the essentially political nature of the Supreme Court ...

... framed with biting reference to the Star Wars Jedi Council! A riff that’s very much in tune with my own critique in Star Wars on Trial.  Well worth your time.

Following up on my blog-essay-review of the latest Star Wars film… Nautilus Magazine interviewed me about Star Wars. I’ve already said that I found the latest version, from J.J. Abrams and Disney to be pleasantly diverting, with very strong characterization, okay dialogue… if unimaginative plotting. It’s greatest virtue is showing almost no sign of the relentlessly awful, anti-enlightenment preaching George Lucas crammed increasingly into his epic saga, over the years. Here is my full review of The Force Awakens… and here is the Nautilus interview, pinning me with followup questions!

See this thorough appraisal of the galactic economics of Star Wars.  The sort of thing that might help to transform a sillier-than-Tolkien fantasy series into actual science fiction.  From "It's a Trap: Emperor Palpatine's Poison Pill" by Zachary Feinstein:

"In this paper we study the financial repercussions of the destruction of two fully armed and operational moon-sized battle stations ("Death Stars") in a 4-year period and the dissolution of the galactic government in Star Wars. The emphasis of this work is to calibrate and simulate a model of the banking and financial systems within the galaxy. Along these lines, we measure the level of systemic risk that may have been generated by the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star. We conclude by finding the economic resources the Rebel Alliance would need to have in reserve in order to prevent a financial crisis from gripping the galaxy through an optimally allocated banking bailout."

Almost perfectly in synchrony and fascinating parallel, this article looks at the reaction in China to release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which has led, as well, to the first real surge of (legal and illegal) viewings of the other six episodes.  I was struck especially by this bit near the end: 

“Some are learning that the saga is as much about politics and individuals fighting against a repressive government as light sabers and spacecraft—but the lesson they’re taking away isn’t what George Lucas may have intended. “A democratic parliament seems to be chaotic while a dictator-run empire seems to be stable. That’s worth our thinking,” one blogger wrote on Douban.”  

A good insight.  Except, of course, that (as I've shown in Star Wars on Trial) contempt toward democracy is exactly the lesson George Lucas intended. He said so openly and publicly. How ironic that that message is ignored in the West, but Chinese viewers notice it, clear as day.  Go figure.

Here’s an interesting article about why politics matters even… perhaps especially… in the Star Wars Universe. “Lucas took inspiration both from ancient history and current events, sometimes even using the films as social commentary. If anything, in order to capture the public imagination, the Sequel Trilogy needs more, not less, politics.”

Alas, the author, Dom Nardi, starts with a wrong premise… “The Civil War was essentially a debate between North and South about the authority of the federal government.”  

Sorry, but that’s just wrong. Starting in 1852, the southern states, having dominated the US federal government for at least 30 years, used its power - through US Marshals and Supreme Court decisions, to unleash platoons of irregular southern cavalry on rampages across all northern states, grabbing neighbors almost at random and hauling them away to misery. 

When local militias tried to resist the slave-hunter parties, southern presidents called in federal troops to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. The South was all in favor of a strong federal government and wanted to use it to repress northern abolitionist newspapers, a goal laid down explicitly in the secession declarations. (Actually read them!) They only became anti-federal the instant it appeared the presidency would no longer be their private sinecure.

Exactly, by the way, their reaction when President Obama was elected.

But that is an aside about a pet peeve.  My real complaint here is that Dom Nardi doesn’t note the fundamental political fact of the Star Wars series, which is contempt for democracy — even the remote possibility that something like the Republic can function.  The secretive and extra-judicial Jedi order may - at the command of Yoda alone - withhold crucial information (a withholding that in fact leads to disaster.) Only the Empire is shown as efficient and capable of getting things done.

== More Science Fiction ==

Speaking of the recurring American fever.... What would happen if the U.S. split apart into warring states -- set off by a far-reaching conspiracy?  I've read (in manuscript) a new novel by Sean T. Smith about a near future hot American civil war. Washington and San Francisco get nuked pretty early. TEARS OF ABRAHAM is a page-turner filled with vivid, believable action and characters you care about, along with sober, thoughtful insights into what it may mean - when the chips are down - to be an American. The book will be released (pre-order now) March 22. 

The same day, my new short story collection, Insistence of Vision, will be released.. with some of my best recent stories.

Oh, SFWA has established a new Speaker's Bureau -- with links to authors willing to make public appearances, and speak about the literature of the future. I've striven for 15 years to see this happen.  It is still primitive.  But yay to Cat Rambo and the other SFWA volunteer organizers!