Toward the End of Anonymity- Privacy’s Most Treasured Attribute

Cameras are everywhere today. All the TV crime and terror shows continually make use of cameras, private and municipal, to solve their cases and catch the bad guys.  But what about the 300 million or so good guys?  Are we expected to reside passively in the soup of the system, like it or not, waiting to be plucked out when we commit a transgression?  The answer appears to be yes, and we seem powerless to do anything about it.

The DHS has announced a new policy to photograph all vehicle license plates and track them via the thousands (or possibly millions) of cameras, ostensibly to monitor drug traffickers along our border.  Orwell must be rolling in his grave. The day is soon arriving when our personal whereabouts and our identity is known by government officials 24/7. 

Staple this new capability to the existing self-declaration of who and where we are via the cell phone we all carry around in our pocket and this pretty much seals our fate. At least until now we could think about tossing the cell phone on the side of the road to preserve our whereabouts, but now we have to toss the car to, and thumb a ride if we wish to remain anonymous.

Here’s Janet Napolitano’s announcement:

Janet Napolitano, "We’re partnering with the Office of National Drug Control Policy to implement Project Roadrunner, an automated license-plate recognition system. Project Roadrunner was conceived to target both north- and southbound drug trafficking and associated illegal activity along the Southwest border."

In Apple’s Rush to Make Money on the iPhone4- What About the Phone?

I want a new iPhone 4, but can I stand to hold it a certain way as Steve Jobs suggests to avoid "dropped calls"?  Apple’s antenna on the iPhone4 is obviously a poor design. The only mitigation may be to wear gloves or purchase the optional rubber bumper ring (which may actually be the fix in disguise). Clearly, phone calls take a back seat in the design priority to the more hip “apps” and web usage.  What most people don’t realize is these services actually need much less signal power to operate effectively. They can operate in weaker signal conditions than plane old phone calls. The reason is digital signal processing. 

Taken at the most basic level it’s akin to saying the same thing over and over, averaging the result and presenting the averaged result to the user.  For example, think of a number, say 5. In a phone call you would say “5”. The person on the other end might say, “I didn’t get that would you please repeat the number”. Then you get it.  With digital data in today’s cell phones, the system may actually say, “please repeat that 1000 times” and then average the answer. It works great for messages because they aren’t conveyed in real time and delays are accepted.  All cell phones are data interfaces first and phones second. The iPhone should have been named the iData.  Phone service was obviously not the priority.

As an electrical engineer and antenna designer I can say for sure that using a bare metal rim around the phone as the antenna will have profound sensitivity to how the user holds the device and how and where bare fingers come in contact with the antenna.  I’ve always been amazed that cell phones work at all given the way they are used. People expect them to work regardless of how they held, where they happen to be- while riding inside a metal cage (car, plane, etc) and even in tunnels.  We’ve all become accustomed to walking around the house to find a good signal in places where the service is on the edge of failure.

The telecomm industry knows that users expect high quality service and “drop free” operation. They try to account for this wide variability of user environment by providing very large margins of signal power needed to maintain a good connection. They’ve done amazing advances in performance with sophisticated digital signal processing algorithms and modulation schemes that minimize the impact of weak signal conditions, but user volume has continued to far exceed the cell phone network capacity. Until the telecomm industry increases the number of towers, upgrades the existing towers, and deploys a 4G+ network with capacity margin, people will rant about poor performance and walk around the house looking for a good signal- we’re humans- we adapt.

We Should Pull Out of Arizona

The great state of Arizona has seen fit to anoint itself to be superior to the Federal Government by placing higher importance on cleansing the state of their undocumented immigrants than all the essential elements of the US Constitution. A proclamation  of state sovereignty of this magnitude should not be taken on lightly. Maybe Arizona should step up to the problem more fully.

I propose the Federal government should follow their lead and abdicate its responsibility of border patrol along the Arizona/Mexico border.  Let Arizona take care of that. If Arizona is willing to take on the responsibilities of the Federal Government on immigration, why not let them go all the way?  Then the Federal Government can place checkpoints on the border of California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico.  The Border Patrol could stop all traffic coming out of Arizona and demand proof of citizenship. 

I wonder how long the Arizona law would stay on the books if they had to carry the full burden of border protection and simultaneously be treated as a weak and untrustworthy border state within our country at the same time?

Will Republican Representative Joe Barton Apologize to the “Small People”?

Joe Barton, completely unable to separate himself from his big oil financiers, having sold his soul to the devil to stay in office, started his grilling of BP CEO Hayward with an apology for  the "shakedown" President Obama was forcing on BP (the largest corporation in the UK). An apology ostensibly from the big oil companies he’s married to, but certainly not from the “small people” who elected him who are dripping in oil and dead fish. Come on Joe, where’s your apology to the “small people”? You know, those little munchkins along the coast who have been eking out a living, proudly maintaining their stewardship of the gulf that gives them life? How about apologizing to them on behalf of the big oil companies that bank roll your election? Bye, bye Joe...

To add further insult, after meeting with the President, BP Chairman Svanberg finds the worst possible word to describe the gulf coast people, then clumsily apologizes, claiming he used a “clumsy” choice of words. Even the word "clumsy" seems to have stumbled out of the mouth of this high born aristocrat. What is missing from his retraction is a clear understanding of what he really meant, because “small people” probably sounds better than “insignificant people”, or “bottom line collateral damage”, or “peasants”, all much closer to what this aristocratic head of the UKs largest corporation was thinking. But at least he had the poise not to be “super clumsy” and say what he really meant about this burr under his saddle that’s causing him to lose sleep, spend endless hours in the New World, and off the polo field.

Hayward and Svanberg will be lucky if they only lose their jobs over this fiasco, and not end up in jail for their culpability in what is certainly America's worst peacetime manmade disaster in history.  Neither will likely come to pass. The “small people” will suffer, but not he “big people” who are paid millions to make profit, and oh yes, prevent disasters that might nibble away into their profit. Justice will be served if they are forced to feed the “small people” and then go out of business in the process.

Why I Fell Asleep During the President’s Oval Office Address

I anticipated the President’s address with a measure of hope and skepticism. I hoped there would be some new and refreshing actions to bring relief to the people of the gulf coast, and to somehow accelerate the process of stopping the leak- now estimated to be as much as 60,000 barrels a day- 12 times higher than initially estimated. Is this the last new estimate? Could the problem get much worse?  

I was skeptical that he would do or say anything new. I was right.  All I heard the President say before I fell asleep is BP screwed up and we’ll make sure they pay reparations to the good folks in the gulf coast who are devastated by the spill.  The President also made an audacious claim that “in the coming weeks and days” 90% of the oil leak will be trapped, but if PB isn’t successful the President will be further assailed for not being on top of the problem.  

Then my eyes started to glaze over when he declared a renewed urgency to wean America from dependence on oil.  As a Democrat and supporter of the President, even I winced at the political bent of the discussion. While I agree with him, his emphasis diverts attention from the immediate problem.  He should have focused on just three things:

1)     Stopping the weak

2)     Cleaning up the mess

3)     Assisting the people of the gulf

I’m all for weaning America off oil, but let’s plug the leak before we do anything else. If this gusher is not plugged soon, Obama will be another  Jimmy Carter- quick to identify solutions, but completely helpless or unable to implement them. What started out as a disaster born out of a poorly regulated industry, largely under Republican encouragement, is now seen as a national brush fire the President can’t extinguish, and the Republicans will get yet another boost in the mid-term elections as a result of this fiasco.  He will likely lose control of both the House and the Senate to the very Republicans that were instrumental in creating the problem with laissez-faire oil regulation. 

He needs to step up his actions, not words. He needs to be quick, directive and decisive. First address the national emergency, then address our longer term energy needs. The oil spill is languishing longer than we can tolerate and without clear actions, and soon, President Obama will be painted with Jimmy Carter naiveté and a curse of ineptness will haunt him and his entire agenda for his remaining term of office.

“The Greatest Generation”- A Reflection on Memorial Day

The Great Depression left a mark on every American. They were a fiercely independent lot. The depression was a sucker punch to the gut of everyone, but not a permanent calamity; everyone worked through the hard times doing whatever they could to raise their children and pursue a life of happiness. FDR gave them hope and he spoke eloquently to the people, and they loved him because he had sincere empathy for their plight, but these Americans were not downtrodden by nature. The great American dream was still alive. 

Then Pearl Harbor unified Americans as nothing else could. The selflessness of every citizen to work for the war effort was beyond description. My mother had just graduated from high school. She moved to Washington DC, got a room in a downtown boarding house, and took a job in the Pentagon as a secretary. She was 18. She was typical of her generation. Every man, woman and child was dedicated to the war effort- the men and women went to war and women went to the factories making planes, ships, tanks, and trucks.  Children scoured the neighborhoods for recyclable products- metal, rubber, glass, tin cans, even string and rope.  They lived with everything rationed- food, rubber, gas, silk- if it had a war use it was rationed.  They made many sacrifices and they did all this willingly without whining or protesting.

Their bonds to each other were sealed strong and deep through all this common adversity. For the Greatest Generation every day is Memorial Day. They live a modest life modestly- rooted in their depression era upbringing, war rationing and unthinkable sacrifices of lives. They hold their lost loved ones close to their hearts and memories- in their own private way they continue to mourn discretely and without being noticed. For everyone else, Memorial Day is our remembrance of their sacrifices. We owe them our lives. We owe them a Memorial Day.

Why Sarah Palin May be the Next President

The pendulum of political power swings back and forth, not on perpetual energy, but fueled externally by the negative energy from the political party out of power.  Small swings occur when the party in power is moderate or centrist. When the party in power is more activist or more conservative, then the swings are wider and the resulting backlash is more dramatic.  Look back a President Hoover.  The Depression occurred because a 10 year bubble on Wall St broke, and Hoover was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Hoover was a conservative and a minimalist toward government intervention, and that raised the ire of every American who saw their American dream become a nightmare. Roosevelt won a commanding victory, not for what he stood for as much as being- not Hoover. 

Obama won the election largely on the resentment of Bush, and not because Bush opposed Education, Health Reform, financial regulation, or environmental regulation, or even because he invaded Iraq.   Iraq started out as a campaign issue, but the economy was tanking in 2008 and McCain was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once he was even considered a moderate Republican and shunned by the conservative right.  He lost because he is a Republican and the problems of the economy were widely blamed on too little regulation of major investment banks, not unlike the great depression scenario. Try as he may, McCain couldn’t shake free of the Republican culpability for the sinking economy.  If the economy hadn’t crashed I would venture that Obama may not have won. Obama won largely because he was- not Bush.

So now we see the pendulum swinging back to the right, the far right I might add.  The economy hasn’t recovered.  The 85% of Americans who have health insurance, and like what they have, only see their taxes going up and the government going deeper into debt. The environment, civil rights, energy independence, financial regulation, education, health reform, and immigration reform are all points of great disagreement, but they are not the core reasons why people would vote Obama out of office. Clinton was told, “It’s the economy stupid”. The state of the economy wins and loses elections. Everything else is just a distraction.

If the economy isn’t back on track by 2012, and unemployment isn’t down to at least 6%, Obama will lose his re-election bid, even if he’s running against Sarah Palin.  Voters will be blind to her incompetence because they won’t be voting for her, they’ll be voting for- not Obama. I truly hope I’m wrong.

The Blockade of Good and Evil

Israel lives in fear, surrounded by people and countries that would deny them their right to exist. While we’ve lived with the aftermath of  911  for almost nine years, this has been there way of life forever.  Everyone in Israel lives in constant awareness of kidnappings, suicide bombs, and random shootings, not to mention rockets lobbed into Israeli settlements.  I spent a lot of time in Israel back the in the early 1980s. Twenty-five years ago they were living in more constant fear of their safety than we could ever imagine.  We have no frame of reference for the constant threat of terrorist actions they face everyday since their country was born.

Since the holocaust and end of WWII these people have banned together with very little international support, except from America, and they tenaciously have held onto a dream of living in peace on their homeland.  Sure, they act without hesitation when they are threatened, and they can be unmerciful in their treatment of their enemies, but really, can you blame them? If Hamas took a more peaceful approach to their relationship with Israel three years ago when they took power in the election, the invasion of Gaza in 2008 and the blockade would never have happened.  A blockade of good intentions has attempted to squeeze Hamas out of power by turning popular support against them from within Gaza. Is it working? Hardly. Israel is now holding a smelly wet dog and nobody wants to come near them- even the US.

Israel made a tactical error sending Commando Troops to stop the humanitarian aid flotilla. Diplomacy would have surely worked and they may have even garnered more international support for their actions.  They didn’t do that. Now the images of black clothed commandos boarding the ship and the unfortunate deaths of civilians has all the air of Kent State, and the action is condemned by the world regardless of the provocation or why it all happened in the first place.

Israel doesn’t want to cause pain and suffering to civilians in Gaza, but they are. There is no logical reason for Israel to foment more hatred by Palestinians. The Palestinians have brought the situation on themselves by supporting the terrorist Hamas government that is determined to wage guerilla war on Israel. But the blockade does hurt innocent people and the people are growing up to hate Israel more than ever, and Israel is growing a new generation of Arabs who will fight for their cause against Israel. This is the blockade of evil.  This is where Israel is shooting themselves in the foot.

The US is stuck in the middle. If we support Israel we damage our relationship with the Arab world. If we follow the world opinion in condemning Israel, then Israel will be isolated and precariously closer to war- even a nuclear option if their backs are against the wall. Militarily, Israel has no equal in the Middle East. We can’t let the tensions continue to grow. Our only option is to pursue diplomacy in a way that relieves the tension.  We need to be neutral, but supportive of both countries. This may well be the test of President Obama’s presidency. How he handles our role in this affair will shape his presidency in both domestic and international circles. This could become the test that Vice President Biden referred to, or maybe it’s the BP oil spill. One thing is certain; his job just keeps getting harder, not easier.