Tag Archives: rights

Privacy

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Here is why more needs to be done to protect our privacy—primarily by us, but with Government’s assistance. Below is an example, quoted from a bulletin board I follow. The author is talking about an investment during a time of coronavirus disruption of supply chains, but the subtext should be obvious.

re: GOOG
They don’t build physical widgets in Wuhan that might get hard to obtain…the ad biz will probably keep on rolling.
We just bought 2 new Android smartphones and 1 new Android tablet. Coming from a dumb-phone flip phone and a Kindle.
Google [Alphabet, which owns Google] OWNS that market. You cannot even download/install an app without having a google account. And every time you do something, Google prompts you to set up a payment method. No way to say “Hell no, never.” The choices are: google play card, credit card, debit card, and “skip for now, maybe later”.
So, clever me, I created a dummy google/gmail account. And logged in so I could install some free apps from Google Play. Fine.
But within 2 days it somehow associated my wife’s gmail account with the Android tablet. And she has NEVER touched that tablet. Now every time I go to use it, it asks me which account I want to log into—the dummy account or her account.
Google OWNS that market.
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Near as I can figure out, her name is on our Amazon Prime account. And our Sony Bluray player and our Roku smart TV are both registered to Amazon Prime Video—so obviously in her name.
Now, we do not get cell phone coverage at our house, so all our external internet network access goes through our internet ISP. And the way that works is that, to the internet, every device in our house has the same IP address.
So something managed to figure out that her gmail account was associated with our external IP address, and also that same IP address was associated with the Amazon Prime Video account, and that her gmail account is accociated with that Amazon account. Therefore every device in our house that contacts the external internet has some sort of connection to her gmail address.
At home, the Android smartphones and the tablet can only access the internet via our internal network, on WIFI, since we get no cell coverage. So if somebody puts all these pieces together it is easy to figure out the connections.
Google managed to figure it all out. Took them 2 days.

Heads up.

“Should Government Halt the Use of Facial-Recognition Technology?”

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The Wall Street Journal ran one of its point-counterpoint debates over the weekend; this one treating the topic in this post’s title.

The debaters focused on the error rate of the technology and whether that was a big deal or a little one; although there was passing mention of civil liberty problems.

I say the question is over-broad.

Government should not only halt its own use of facial recognition software; it should be statutorily barred from it. We haven’t, yet, been overrun by the People’s Republic of China. The civil liberty—the individual liberty—matter is much too serious to be glossed over, and this is one venue where the line is better drawn at zero rather than trusting Government (which is to say, the men of Government) to go this far but no farther.

The question of its commercial use is a separate one from Government’s use or not use. This question should have a market answer, arrived at by customers and the businesses with which we interact.

Progressive-Democrats’ Tuesday Debate

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Some are calling it rowdy; others say raucous.  There’s this more concrete description, too, from Tony Katz:

Everyone else is talking to each other, yelling at each other, yelling at the moderators, yelling at the guy in the rafters….

And talking over each other, interrupting each other, trying to drown out each other. Recall the 2015-2016 Republican primary debates—they were rowdy, often rude, as participants occasionally interrupted or tried to talk over each other.  Tuesday’s Progressive-Democrat debate was nothing but a constant rolling drumbeat of that.

I have a different take on that debate from “some,” “others,” and Katz.

This debate was a clear and present demonstration of Progressive-Democrats’ view of free speech.  Their interruptions and talkings-over were not occasional, nor were they done in the heat of the moment, for all the zeal of their arguments.

No, their interruptions and talkings-over were demonstrative of their attitude toward the speech of anyone who disagrees with them.  What any particular Progressive-Democrat decides he has to say is the only thing worth hearing.  What others have to say—are already saying—is just too trivial, too unimportant to waste time on; the new speaker will just start talking, and those others should just shut up.

It’s of a piece with one of them insisting that the others should drop out of the primaries altogether and get out of his way.

Tuesday’s verbal melee also was demonstrative of their views of us in the audience and in TV viewer-land.  Progressive-Democrats will tell us what we should hear; they will tell us what we will be permitted to hear. We’re wholly unfit to decide that for ourselves.

And that’s what they’ll inflict on our free speech rights if they gain the White House and the Senate and hold the House. Freedom’s just another word for “Shut up; I’m talking.”

This Loss is No Loss

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Recall the fact of the tweet that the NBA’s Houston Rockets General Manager sent in support of the Hong Kong freedom protesters.  Recall further the NBA’s abject cowardice in deeply kowtowing to the People’s Republic of China in response to the latter’s projected upset over the tweet and the NBA’s impudence.  The kowtowing was rationalized from the league on down to individual players that they all had money at risk from the GM’s tweet—as if their personal pocketbooks could compare with the sacrifices of life and limb, in addition to economic loss, of those freedom protesters as they struggled for their basic freedoms.

That cowardice was only emphasized, not mitigated, by NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s refusal to tell his teams they had to limit what they said. That came lately.

Recall further, the hoo-raw over the picayune nature of the NBA’s kowtowing and the cynically fiscally-driven rationalizing in which the NBA engaged in defending its response to the PRC government—and its institutional abandonment of those Hong Kong freedom protesters.

Now some information is coming out regarding the cost of the NBA’s behavior—the cost to those pocketbooks the NBA has been so desperate to protect.

The loss “will be in the hundreds of millions,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Saturday, the first time he’d used such a number to estimate the cost to the league’s China business. The hit amounted to “probably less than $400 million,” Silver said in response to speculation that the losses could reach $1 billion….

Silver added,

We were taken off the air in China for a period of time, and it caused our many business partners in China to feel it was therefore inappropriate to have ongoing relationships with us.

The NBA is still receiving only greatly reduced coverage in the People’s Republic of China.

This isn’t a cost, or a loss. It’s the beginning (and, sadly, probably the end) of the price the NBA should pay for abandoning our American principles, and with them the good people of Hong Kong, in favor of the good opinion of an American enemy.

The Equal Rights Amendment

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board noted in their Valentine’s Day editorial that the time limit for ratifying the ERA has long passed its expiration date and that Virginia’s lately “ratification” of the Amendment, which might have put the thing over the top for national ratification, came much too late to have effect.

On the whole, I agree with the Editors.

However, on this, I strongly disagree:

The ERA also isn’t necessary today. America in 2020 is a very different place for women than it was when the ERA was written. Laws bar discrimination against women in all walks of life, and women are CEOs, Senators, and the Speaker of the House.

Laws are nearly as easily undone or allowed to go fallow as they are enacted. Our Constitution is much harder to ignore or change–as it must be. Principles that are enacted as statute aren’t, at bottom, principles; they’re merely today’s view of things. On the other hand, principles need to be written into the Constitution if they’re to have lasting effect.

Back to the ERA: it was unnecessary when it was proposed in 1972; that it’s unnecessary today is irrelevant. Article I of the 14th Amendment does the job just fine, especially in the hands of textualist judges and Justices.

Happy Valentine’s Day, a few days after the fact.