Mea Vita: Carpe Diem

I think the phone company and our federal government's Do Not Call registry (https://donotcall.gov) are letting us down.

Books and beauty

When I was in high school, I worked as a page at my local library in Huntington, NY. I was in charge of 770 – 799, which covered sports, music, photography, and videography. I remember trying to get through a book in my section, Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, without any luck. Last year, I tried reading it again and failed – I simply didn't have enough interest in bullfighting to get through it. Although the library has moved to a beautiful new location, it still holds my childhood memories.

This morning, I paid a visit to the new library that opened a number of years ago. I saw a children's librarian listening to a book report for a youngster which reminded me of my summers at the library during elementary school. As a kid, I would have to read ten books before the end of the summer. After reading each book, I'd get a sticker to place on my report card. After the fifth and tenth book I'd summarize one, of my choice, to the children's librarian, who'd always smile in a welcoming way while I retold the tale. As I recalled this memory, I saw a kid summing up his latest book to a children's librarian. While looking on, I took photos of the quiet architecture and landscaping. Although I'm extremely discrete about my iphoneography, I wasn't clandestine enough.

Upside, Downside

Traveling between San Diego and Huntington gives me an opportunity to observe some stark differences in attitudes. While San Diego's known for its laid back attitude, New York is known for its uptightness. Throughout this past week, in Huntington, I continually noticed a contagious anxiety coupled with a low level of situational awareness. Yesterday, I discussed this with my former sixth grade teacher who's keenly aware of the issue. We agreed that it's due to a lack of worldly experience. (In her mid-seventies, she's a highly independent traveler who makes her way up and down the East Coast and the South to attend events and visit friends.) I have noticed the impatient agitation over the past week when driving while waiting second in line at a red light. On most occasions, I've watched the car in front of me continually creep forward, anticipating the green light, to the point that the car's rear axel was forward of the limit line while the traffic light was still red. This morning, I came face to face with this attitude when snapping a few photos at the library. A librarian confronted me, wanting to know why I was taking photos. The attitude's similar to that of being confronted by a police officer probing for a possible crime or violation. I gave the librarian a warm smile, to defuse her anxiety, and told her that I used to work at the library in high school. No, there are no policies about taking photos in the public library (especially in a discrete way); it was simply a lack of understanding of why someone would take photos of unseen beauty. Throughout this area there is a large fear of "different," followed by questions that are not so much intended for understanding, rather the questions are asked with a tone of a lack of acceptance.

I think a lot of fear comes from an imagined lack of control, understanding, experience and initiative people have in their environment which leads to a personal isolationism, both mentally and physically. I've observed the exact opposite when I've giving group tours of Apple's Infinite Loop campus. The Apple campus is not open to the public, but the public does have physical access to Apple's parking lots and sidewalks on the private Infinite Loop street. I suspect that many other, less outwardly focused companies, would confront other individuals and groups, on their grounds, and ask them to leave.

Focus outward and seek to understand, tolerate, and accept before rejecting and ridiculing. Different doesn't necessarily mean wrong. ❖

Anxious Excitement Kills The Sale

The Second Amendment is the only article in the Bill of Rights that specifically addresses a rapidly changing technology. What if our forefathers wrote the Constitution today? Would the Second Amendment be the right to a car, computer, or Internet access instead of the right to bear arms?

Unlike the 18th century, technologies and issues now become outdated or irrelevant faster than ever. One needn't look past the Third Amendment to see an outdated issue in the Bill of Rights. The Third Amendment has never been the primary basis of a Supreme Court decision. And it may never be given that the United States has transitioned from a militia, to a standing army, to what now seems like a permanent war. A permanent war not against a state or government, but rather an idea: drugs, terrorism, etc. How do wars like this end? Who surrenders and signs the peace treaty leading to the release of the prisoners held in Gitmo? It seems to me that ending all terrorism in the world would be the equivalent of ending worldwide crime. A noble, yet impractical goal we should still strive for with the understanding that it cannot be fully achieved.

The key purpose of the Second Amendment was to give American citizens a daily tool while keeping the government in check. The balance of arms between the people and local communities, compared to the federal government, used to be even. Today, a rebellion by Americans against the federal government would be a disproportionate fight. Private citizens do not own or control weapons of mass destruction (nor should they). Two hundred and fifty years ago, people could not arm and stash a flintlock pistol in their pocket. Also the firearms of that time, from pistols to cannons, were single shot. Percussion cap weapons, the predecessor to bullets, weren't introduced until the 1820s.

I'm not suggesting that we add a Constitutional amendment banning firearms. Nor do I have a solution to ending gun violence. Part of my argument is that having the Constitution address a specific technology may have been a bad idea. More importantly, the Constitution is about giving rights to citizens, not restricting them. There's no place in it for banning alcohol, barring gay marriage, or restricting suffrage.

Simply because the Framers wrote the Constitution doesn't mean it's an absolute human right. Unless you think minorities shouldn't vote and alcohol should be banned. Bearing arms is a right, driving is a privilege – which is more practical in today's America? So, I leave you with no answers, only questions.

What happens when the government of China or North Korea attacks the US?
You'd expect retaliation similar to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor.

What if the goal of the attack isn't to directly harm the US government, but rather a specific business, say, a bank? And, what if it's not a physical attack (with atoms) but, rather, a cyber attack (with electrons)? In this case, since attribution for the attack is difficult, a response can be dicey.

While not an act of terrorism, a cyber attack is similar to terrorism in that it's asymmetrical.

DIME on PMESII 

As I wrote three years ago, defenders in the cyber world do not have the advantage they have in the real world. About ten years ago I studied DIME on PMESII at the Joint Forces Command. When a government wants to impose their will on another less-than-friendly government they have options other than military attacks or spying. Specifically, the actions they can take in irregular warfare are diplomatic, informational, military and/or economic (DIME). Cyber attacks definitely fall under the informational.

U.S. Response

Let's say the NSA discovered, hypothetically, that the government of China was behind the cyber attack that compromised millions of Target's credit cards. How would the United States respond to these attacks? NPR's Fresh Air covered this topic in depth a few days ago. But, the bottom line is, in the name of a proportional response, a counterattack would probably be just as undetectable as the initial offensive. After all, it wasn't a direct attack against the U.S. government or the Constitution, nor was anyone harmed or equipment damaged.

Is it time for commercial ventures to do more than simply provide defensive options?
Author: Joe Moreno

I recently befriended a guy who used to work in the mayor's office. During his tenure he oversaw several key transportation initiatives related to making the city more green and efficient. After speaking with him an idea came to mind regarding the importance of opening up government data to third parties via APIs. This is, by no means, a new idea, but it became obvious to me what can be gained once that happens.

Currently, if I want to access my DMV information, I have to visit a website developed by the government. Government websites are notorious for their poor design. Yesterday, I visited an FAA website to make an affirmation and this is what I saw...

Click to enlarge

I spent a couple minutes looking up and down the webpage wondering where to click to register my affirmation. I finally discovered that the entire green shaded area was a "button" to click on for affirmation. Although spelling out "click here" is usually a poor design choice, this is clearly a case where that would have been helpful. Even better would have been a simple button reading "I Affirm." If you look closer at the screen shot, you'll see there's actually a second button (the mauve shaded area) below the green one.

Data Wants to be Free

The reason I harp on poorly designed government websites is it would be simpler for governments to mind the data and let third parties design the websites and apps to disseminate it. Much of this data should be in the public domain, such as where a bus, train, or letter carrier is at any given time. Private government data, like my DMV information, can just as easily be accessed without compromise in much the same way that third parties access your Facebook or Twitter account.

The private company, Car2Go, does a great job at sharing data. Car2Go has their own free app and they publish their car data APIs for third parties to access and develop against. Car2Go doesn't make any more or less money if a customer uses their app or a third party app. Third parties are incentivized since they can sell their apps. Car2Go makes their money on the car rentals while third parties make their money selling their own apps.

The next time you find yourself on a marginal government website think about how great it would be if a professional web design firm got a hold of it.

From a technical point, there's no way that HealthCare.gov (Obamacare) could have rolled out successfully.

Scaling a website of that magnitude, with millions of users from the git-go is unheard of. Even if Google, Facebook, and Twitter engineers developed it it would have still failed to launch smoothly.

Managing Growth

Generally, rolling out large scale websites is done in stages. When Gmail launched in 2004, it required an invitation so Google could control its growth. Facebook originally rolled out only to college students at select universities. Twitter, on the other hand, had no way to control its growth and it frequently went down (AKA: the Fail whale).

Since the world's best web engineers wouldn't have been able to launch a website like Obamacare, what made government contractors think they could do it?

When I find myself writing a long e-mail explaining something or I repeat myself on the same topic then it's worthy of a blog post.

In the past ten days I've found myself responding to conspiracy theories from several different people so now I'm more than happy to pontificate on the topic.

Generally speaking, a large public conspiracy becomes very obvious after the fact.

Moon Landings
Did we really land on the moon? Of course we did – do you really think it would have been possible to keep so many people, who participated, quiet. (Remember Capricorn One)? What would be their motivation to remain silent so many decades later? At some point in the future we'll take tourist trips to the moon to visit the Apollo 11 historic site which will look the same as it did when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin departed in 1969. But there's no shortage of people who think the Apollo moon landings were a conspiracy. These people end up getting punched in the face, literally, by a former astronaut.




9/11
What does a real life conspiracy look like? To answer that question we needn't look any further than 9/11 which was clearly a conspiracy. It's no small coincidence that four planes were highjacked at the same time with the same mission — those 19 highjackers were working together. That's what a conspiracy looks like.

On the flip side, conspiracy theories postulating that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade Center towers couldn't be further from the truth. I've heard arguments about how elegant and controlled the collapse of the towers looked, but, realistically, skyscrapers are like a house of cards. They're mostly filled with empty space and they fall in on themselves much like a house of cards we built as kids – there's no toppling them over like a tree.

Inside of a tree: rock solid; inside of a skyscraper: mostly empty.

Tin Foil Hats
Of course there are more extreme conspiracy theories where people believe the government is listening in on all of our conversations... um... you know... I hate it when they're right for the wrong reasons.

Learning about jury duty from an "actual juror."

What better way to pass the time on jury duty than to blog about it?

I've never served on a civilian jury, but I have participated in courts-martial. In the military, the jury is referred to as the members and the foreperson is called the president. In the summer of 1996 I served as the president of a special court-martial. I had no idea what the case was about until the first witness took the stand and described her consenting sexual encounters, in detail, with the accused who was a Marine sergeant.

Some key differences between a military trial and a civilian trial is that the members (jurors) are allowed to question witnesses after the defense and prosecution are done. To avoid any inappropriate questions the members write them down on a slip of paper which the bailiff passes to the judge for review. If the judge has no concerns then both the defense and the prosecution have a chance to review the question and object before it's asked of the witness.

Another key difference about a court-martial was that we, the members, also chose the sentence for the crime. Since we found the sergeant guilty our choices varied from no punishment, other than the guilty verdict, to time in the brig (prison). As the members, we deliberated and voted on each possible punishment starting with the least severe until we had a consensus. We ended up sentencing the sergeant to reduction in rank to corporal and forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for several months. Realistically, a guilty verdict was a career ender since this conviction would give the sergeant a black mark preventing his reenlistment.

The charges against the sergeant were adultery which is rarely prosecuted unless there's a confession or overwhelming evidence such as a video. Adultery along with sodomy and oral sex are still violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In other words, these acts are crimes for active duty military personnel – even between married partners.
Well, it looks like my name was called for an eight day trial. I'm one of 47 for this trial. Let's see where it goes from here.

Library of Congress Main Reading Room (LoC file photo)

My newly issued Library of Congress library card.

Adams Reading Room: Checkout slip and book in hand.

I love big government! Seriously, I do. And I bet that our country's forefathers would love it too.
Politicians