Illegal Wiretapping

It is in the news these days... again. Why, I remember back in the day, there was no such thing as illegal wiretapping. All of the cool kids were doing it. Tapping their wires every chance they got. Sometimes even tapping the wires of friends - from what I hear; not something that interested me, but to each his/her own.

I remember when I first heard of the NSA. Most people didn't believe that such an organization existed. There were rumours, but nothing concrete for many years... many years of denial of its existence. Now it is common knowledge. Or, I guess by the latest news stories, it probably still isn't common knowledge, but at least it is not in denial.

The NSA had the authority to tap the wires of American Citizens. Was there hue and outcry over this? Not that I remember. Yet now a days, days when everyone puts every piece of person information about themselves on public forums like blogger, myspace, youtube, facebook, etc, people are up in arms that someone might find out something about them! Horrors! Like this is all new to them.

First off, if you have no net presence, then you probably aren't reading this blog, so we can dispense with that. But, if someone you know has no net presence, then they might be able to justify saying that they live a private life rather than a public one. Everyone else, it has always been there, and it will always be there. And stop posting everything about yourself if you do not want people to know anything about you! "Really, someone other than my closest friends is reading my sex blog? Wow... I feel so violated!"

Back in the day, when there was the NSA tapping wires, what happened? Did people lose anything? Were secrets revealed? Did people find out about your affairs because of these taps? Well, it is true that back then, they had the ability to tap the phone lines of only 10% of the population. Still, that is a lot of tapping. It is/was all done at the central phone company offices, no need to put a bug in your phone like in the movies. So, there is a chance that someone has been listening to your phone calls for all of your life... and here is why.

10%. If you were in charge and could listen in on 10% of all of the phone calls, who would you pick? Would you pick people who do nothing but watch TV? How many times would you want to have on record that the latest episode of Friends or Mork and Mindy was killer? Probably none. So, whose wires would you tap?

Probably suspected terrorists. Known criminals. World leaders. Congressmen. That isn't really that large of a percentage, so you still have 5% left. I would guess that one would tap the top 5% of the country. Top business men. Top scientist. High IQ people. These are the people who, if gotten involved in the wrong things could lead to rather large disasters. Give secrets to foreign governments, etc.

Are you in the top 5% of the IQ range? I'd guess you are. I'd also guess that your wires have been tapped your whole life.

The Edward

PS There was an old joke from years ago. If you ever discovered a way to factor large numbers (the basis for all computer security), there was no need to call anyone. Just pick up the phone, get a dial tone, and talk. Someone will visit you shortly.

Faith

A lack of faith causes people not to turn inward, but outward.  They look at others and say that they are an abomination to god and must be smote or converted or whatever.  Yet, if it is a faith in god that we are talking about, it should be obvious that god created the heathens too.  If he was unhappy with their actions, he could probably doing something about it, without your help.  One who has doubt in his faith wants to wipe out those who do not share his/her faith, because if all of the unbelievers were gone, then only one faith would be left alive and there would be no more questions.  That is what these people believe, but it is a false belief.

Wiping out or converting someone is not an act of god, but an act of man trying to justify his/her faith to himself/herself and others.

If you get two people together and ask them what they believe, they will be shown to have different beliefs - even if they believe in the same faith.  There will always be minor variations.  All of these religious beliefs would have to come from some source, someone else told them what to think/believe.  If they all independently came to the same faith with no human influence, then their might be something to this god thing, but that is a different story, since it has never happened.

So, once we get two people who have listened to the same human and claim to have the same belief in god, they will not actually share all beliefs.  And further more, over time they will drift.  They will add to their belief when they encounter new things in the world.  We can see this now.  Which holy book talks about god's view on computers?  Cars?  Space travel?  Yet people need beliefs about this things.  So within each religion, those things not explicitly mentioned in their holy books, each person will have come up with what they believe their god wants them to think about these things.  And they will be different, since they didn't come from one source.  Does this mean you would have to kill or convert them to the holy use of computers as per your beliefs?  If someone used the wrong kind of mouse, is it an insult to god and those people need a good smiting?

So, what is faith?  It is your own thoughts.  It is something that you believe.  It can be something that you think other people believe and/or other people should believe.  Some people spend their time trying to convert others over to their own beliefs.  Some people try to wipe unbelievers off the face of the earth.  Either way, they both have something in common:  it is an outward sign that they do not really believe what they think they should believe, and they hope that they will increase their faith through these external means.  Given a chance to think about it, they really should just abandon their faith, or turn inward to confirm that they are living the life that god wants of them.  For the only being who they have to make it right with is their god.  And their god will make it right with everyone else, without their intervention.  Unless their god is too small to speak for himself.

So, what are your actions saying about your god?  And your faith?  For everyone has a god and everyone has a faith.

The Edward

No Secrets

I hear it all the time and see it in the movies - someone has a secret! And once someone discovers that secret, one can be blackmailed into doing evil nasty things that they wouldn't normally otherwise do. And yet, all of this is a lie, since there is no such thing as a secret.

Say you are cheating on your spouse. You probably do not want your spouse to know, hence the word cheating. If you had his/her permission, then it would just be good old fashion sex with someone else. So, with this cheating going on, you think you have a secret. If someone found out and threatened to tell your spouse unless you gave them money, sexual favors, or something else, you might comply in order to keep your secret.

Before all of this, the person with whom you were cheating with knows you were having sex. The person who found out obviously knows as well. Other people along the way probably know as well - probably quite a lot of people actually. Where is the secret? Ah, the secret is that some group of people are in the dark about this piece of knowledge. A secret implies a person or group of people for whom you want control over certain knowledge, not the population at large.

So, what you really have here is that you do not want some people to know something. If the rest of the world knew about your "secret", it wouldn't matter, as long as it wasn't any of the people you want to control the flow of this information to.

I try to have no secrets - ie nothing that people can blackmail me for. Sure, I try to control the flow of information around me, since that is a big part of manipulating people and of life. But if someone finds out, no problem, since I assume that if they were interested in knowing they will eventually find out, and as I said, probably many other people already know.

Like this blog. You are reading it. And yet there are many people close to me who do not know about it. Am I keeping it a secret? By the standard definition, yes. But you can plainly see that I am not, since it is here in a public forum where anyone can find it if they looked. No real secret, even though it might appear that way to those left in the dark.

Not all information is for everyone, but does that make it a secret?

The Edward

Close Call

I have been living in fear that past few weeks. Fear! It is a quaint little city in California, kind of nice actually. No, that's not true, it was something else...

See, since I left the "working world", I have become kind of a shut-in. The kind of shut-in that goes out to movies and dinners and hangs out with friends, but still, a shut-in. Because of this, I am blissfully unaware of the news, and that is how I missed the story that lead to my fear!

Britney Spears with no pants! She decided to go out for a walk in only boots and a t-shirt. From what I read, no underwear either. Now sure, I am all for chicks not wearing underwear. And no pants is kind of a bonus. So actually, I have no problem with this news story, just that I didn't know about it when it happened. :(

The others news story that I missed out on - a place that I ate was the epicenter for a breakout of a contagious disease! 4,000 people probably affected! And I was there when it happened! I can not stress enough - WASH YOUR HANDS WHEN YOU FINISH USING THE BATHROOM. If she had done this, there wouldn't have been an epidemic. Really. That's all it took.

When my credit card bill arrived the other day, I saw that the date of my eating there was the day after all of this went down. I thought I was there the day of. Whew. Though, I had little to worry about, since I wash my hands enough for the both of us... and probably a few other people too.

All of this lead to my reading up on a dreaded disease, so I will not have to worry about it any more. Let me share a little with you.

Most people do not know this, but hypothermia is a contagious and deadly disease. If someone you are near catches it, chances are that you will catch it to. Avoid people suffering from these warning signs:

Slowing of pace, drowsiness, fatigue
Stumbling
Thickness of Speech
Amnesia
Irrationality, poor judgment
Hallucinations
Loss of perceptual contact with environment
Blueness of skin
Dilation of pupils
Decreased heart and respiration
Stupor
Death

I hope that by me sharing this with you, you too can avoid the close call that I had with a dreadful human disease.

The Edward