Hello Is This The NSA?

Ringtone at the NSA to the tune of "Getting to Know You".  Person answers.  Or is it a computer?

Me:  Hello is this the NSA to whom I am speaking?

     NSA:  Yes, this call is being recorded for reasons we cannot tell you.

What do you know about me?

      Sorry, this is the NSA and that is secret.

I understand, Never Say Anything, but is there anything you can tell me about myself.

      No.

Can you tell me who I am?

     No, that is your private information.  I would have to get a warrant authorizing me to tell you.

I know who I am.

     Do you have a need to know that information?

Yes.  Do you have a need to know that information?

      Yes.  but I cannot tell you who you are.

Certainly, I understand, thank you for your service, whatever it is, I don't know.  But if I tell you who I am and ask if you have private information related to me that complies with the privacy restrictions I have, by constitutional right, to place on my private information, you must reveal what information you have or have access to if it is held by another entity so that I may verify that you are not violating my right to privacy.

      Yes, you must ask that, it is mandatory every 6 months and I must tell every 6 months.  It is your right as a citizen to .......ask any and............
       all entities including the government what data they have related to you.  Please enter your
       fingerprint and   .......DNA sample and HTTPa identifier to verify you are you and that you and
       you alone are in a secure public facility at an authorized location in a secure locked space.
       Locked for your privacy  protection to ask and receive this information.  Your HTTPa will link    .......to all data held by all entities about you.

Thank you, I will now look at all data you have or have access to about me.  Hmmm, I didn't know you knew that about.  Please unlock the the door now.  I wish to leave.

      No.

Privacy Erosion - Right to Declare Private Information and Dictate its Use! HTTPa Speculation

In a prior post I wrote about NSA spying on citizens and amassing private data on the general population for use when needed to catch some bad guys.  I concluded that if we are not allowed to know what is being recorded about us, what is being retained in a history file and when and how it is all being used then at the very least we have a right to know what our own master identifying number is that uniquely specifically identifies us in the NSA data base.  We have a right to know our number or whatever hash the NSA uses. 

I touched on the same idea in another blog entry and related it to a real time census of every citizen in the USA.  Who they all are and where they are at in real time.  Future stuff of course but the trend is going there.  Just pick a year when it will arrive.  Soon, I think.  A graph would show trending progress toward that point if somehow data could be obtained today describing just how many persons could be identified today in real time to exactly who they are and where they are at as a "thing" in the internet of things.

NSA is recording and retaining data on everyone.  Since their hands were slapped for doing that do Big Business that has that data that the NSA used to tap into covertly or "by agreement to get.  Now the NSA does not have to tap into it, just have Big Business continue to retain it all and get a warrant to look at it.   Logically there must be some key by which to search all that data when the time comes to get the bad guy.  The key is something like the bad guys name, once it is known.  Just like we do a Google search on a name.  Look at what the search returns, especially for common names.

Getting the NSA to reveal to us our own unique master identifying number by passing a law to make it a right of all citizens to simply know the number but none of the data related to it is not going to happen. 

This is where HTTPa (HTTPaccountability) as proposed by Tim Berners-Lee has amazing speculative possibilities.  I see it like this:  Privacy is an eroding right.  There are too many powerful institutional factors that gain money and/or power to control though obtaining private information through emerging technology.

We know our personal institutional identifiers.  Telephone numbers, bank account,  SSN, etc.  At Safeway they use my name as a personal identifier to thank me for shopping there.  Mr. Last Name becomes an institutional point of sale identifier to personalize the transaction.  The real identifier is the telephone number I use to get my Safeway Shopper discounts when I pay.

Personal identifiers abound!

What if I could choose my own unique master identifier, define what I consider private information about me related to that identifier and have the right to know that the privacy restrictions that I place on my own HTTPaccountability identifier are in fact being observed by those that I give personal privacy designated information to.  At any time I could verify and validate that my private information is being protected and used as I have chosen.

In this case my unique master identifying number would not be assigned by the NSA.  I would in effect tell the NSA what my master unique identifying designator is to which they must relate all private information to.  My privacy rights no longer cover what can be known about me in the real world but how it can be used as first hand private information that I release or use by any subsequent entity that may legally obtain the use of any private information about me.

Kind of like a copyright on myself.  I may patent myself and everything about me or I may choose to be open source or any combination of either extreme.  I choose my own master identifier key to search at any time to discover who has data on me and that they are using it as authorized.  If not they are breaking the Privacy Law and owe me according to the law or decision of a court. 

Right to privacy is dying.  Long live the right to know, in real time, at any time, who has private information about me and if they are using it in accordance with my right to determine what about me is private and how it may be used.

HTTPaccountability!

It puts the shoe on the other foot, the right foot.

Money is a Mobius Strip - Love is a Mobius Strip - Life is ?

This blog seeks eternally to define what money is.  Not what it does.  What it is.

Why should it be so hard to find an explanation?

Maybe money is a Mobius Strip.  The subject line of this blog entry is another in my "Claim to dubious fame record"  I am the first one to coin this phrase:  "Money is a Mobius Strip" because, in quotes, it gets not a single hit on a Google search.

Mobius Strip is defined at this Wikipedia link.

Comprehending the Wikipedia explanation after reading it only once is on a level of doing Rubics Cube puzzle correctly after watching it done once.  Maybe somebody can do it.  Definitely not me.  However, knowing that the explanation is truth and factual I would struggle for eternity in pursuit of understanding it completely.  Because I would know that it could in fact be understood completely.  It is logical, based on true laws that define it.

One thing a Mobius strip has in common with money is that they are both difficult to comprehend.  The nature of the entity Money however is not based on true laws but true flaws.  I would forever travel a Mobius Strip road in search of understanding if, like an economist, I seek to explain it as it currently exists in a working system.  I would rather start from scratch to create it in accordance with mathematics, a pure language.  Economists attempt to describe it in terms of numbers but the numbers are ...........searching for what they really are here....searching.......they are all bogus!  Economics is a bogus system using numbers to fit a round peg in a square hole.....or something like that.  I can't waste my time trying to understand the current explanation of economics. 

Perhaps there are similarities between money and a Mobius Strip worth exploring.  More to the basic building blocks of objects and methods, What is the recursive nature of a Mobius Strip.  Recursive being an entity that only has a relationship to itself (unity) and nothing else?  That being the definition of non-existence in the real world but total unity in a meta-physical world.  Does a Mobius Strip bridge that gulf to connect the two?

Suddenly the words to "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell come to mind. Perhaps life only has one side, one edge.  There are no two sides to it.  To look at love from both sides is not to know it at all.  Love only has one side.  That leads me unexpectedly, suddenly as I write this to the thought that "Love is a Mobius Strip"?  I can't claim that as an original expression created by me.  Many have expressed it in many ways.  Maybe there is something deep to the concept?

"Both Sides Now"

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow
it's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way that you feel
as every fairy tale comes real; I've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. You leave 'em laughing when you go
and if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

I've looked at love from both sides now,
from give and take, and still somehow
it's love's illusions that I recall.
I really don't know love at all.

Tears and fears and feeling proud, to say "I love you" right out loud,
dreams and schemes and circus crowds, I've looked at life that way.
But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say
I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
from win and lose, and still somehow
it's life's illusions I recall.
I really don't know life at all.

Much more Joni Mitchell samples here at this link.

She is an amazing artist.  Her bio at Wikipedia here.

If i could say one thing to Joni: Life is not two sided.  It is love.  It is a Mobius Strip.  Is that what you missed?  I always wondered at the meaning of the song, one of my favorites but has haunted me.  We were born the same year.

This Mobius Strip link might also be worth exploring.  A nightclub for high IQ people.  My kind of place!

I like this Mobius Money graphic.  A simple Mobius Strip is just a strip of paper with a twist in it and the two ends glued together.  There are left hand and right hand Mobius Strips depending on which way the strip is twisted.

Two Mobius strips twisted either way can be put together to form a heart.  Demonstration at this link.

Jon Stewart and Open Source Intelligence.

Robert Steele is a proponent of OSSINT.  Good recent link here.

Jon Stewart is an OSSINT practitioner.  Look at this recent clip.  It is an excellent example of what I describe next.

Jon is devastating targets with their own words.  Words that are Open Source.  All it takes is Intelligence mining of all that Open Source stuff to find the golden needle in the haystack and then stick that needle to the target so exquisitely.  I see it more and more often in what Jon is doing.  A targeted collection of video clips.  

Jon must have an intelligence gathering section or maybe they just call it "the unit"  backing him up with what they find and put together for him.  Targets hoist themselves on their own petard!  Elegant.

The best way to skin a cat is to have it jump out of its own skin.  It is so funny when cats do that.  Jon skins them without even touching them.

It is an effective model.  Look at the reader/viewer comments following Jon at the link.  For example:

"Robert Sloan · University of Washington

Excellent idea. The Dems should run these commercials all through the south, over and over again. Warfare Queens need to be cut off."

I speculate that in the media run up to the next election this model might become the most effective most often used political tool aimed at the opposition:  Their own words.

Always there to be found when they are talking out of both sides their mouths.

With the proliferation of business intelligence software spin off of the NSA to mine big data I wonder if there is a software package marketed to media to do OSSINT intelligence gathering from Big Data Media.

All media video is closed captioned to text and therefore key word searchable in a media Big Data base.  It is the same method that the NSA uses to convert speech to text for searching and linking back to the source meta data and content.  Easy for the Media Big Business to do the same thing.  I expect that what used to be the "Research Department" in big media probably has a new name and a lot of people at monitors using OSSINT sovtware.

Satire and parody are Fair Use of copyright material. 

Change of that rule is one thing Republicans would vote for!

Take All The Debt and Stick It

If what money is was not a representation of debt but was Positive money with no relationship to the existence of debt as a function of money creation then where would the representation of debt exist?

Stick all the debt is a master debt record.  Loaning existing Positive money is just one of the many applications of money.  A Loan is a legal contract representation of debt.  Create a national and international Master Loan Data Repository of who owes what to whom.  Money is just a medium, perhaps the mandatory medium that establishes the loan and pays back the loan.

Debt/Loan has nothing to do with money other than the medium of exchange.  The medium of exchange role of money is far greater than the role it plays in Debt/Loan.  Debt/Loan is investment, not money.  It can be traded as an asset but so can cars.  For conversion of a car to a boat or a hamburger requires conversion of the car to the medium of exchange unless and outright trade (plus money) is made.

Paying for hamburgers with a car instead of money gives new meaning to "Drive Up Window"

The future world of Money has only 3 primary records:

One Master Money Record.  All the Positive money in the USA.  One Place.  uniquely serialized in units of One Digital Dollar.  Block chain transaction record.  Money does not move.  Only the account owner changes with transactions.

One Master Account Record.  All the accounts of financial entities that have an ownership connection to some amount of money (or none) in the Master Money Record. 

One Master Debt/Loan/Bet Record.  The value, in money units of all money owed/owing related to the Master Account Record of all entities owed/owing to.  It consists of all the contracts between parties for all legal Debt/Loan/Bet/Speculation agreements.  It records the real time value owed and payment history.

Simple Accounting.  Banks as clearing houses.  Any entity can loan for any reason, individually, collectively.  Its the market, Jake.  Each record has its own history.

Money Creation

Today Yves Smith posted and commented on this link at her website Naked Capitalism:  "Why Banks Must Be Allowed to Create Money"  using the title of Ann Pettifor's rebuttal (Yves calls it "effective" rebuttal) of the Chicago Plan as taken up the UK as "Positive Money".  Ann Pettifor's rebuttal is at this link and titled:  "Out of Thin Air - Why Banks Must Be Allowed To Create Money"

Oh, the everlasting confusion about a thing so simple as what money is and what money does.  Conflate the two and we will never understand Money.  That, of course, is exactly the strategy to perpetuate the confusion to the advantage of those that benefit from the confusion.  They have a very clear understanding of the system of what money is and what it does.  To obscure that understanding from broad recognition they must confuse the issue and have an army of acolytes spouting the "truths" proclaimed to hide the truth.  Hide it by conflating what money is with what money does.

I go to Naked Capitalism every morning.  It is the "go to" anchor of thoughts for the morning that are explored to some degree for the rest of the day.  Recently, someone commented that the responses to what Yves posts at her site and often comments on herself are (the responses) the other half of informative content at her site.  I agree.  Therefore I now go back to Yves links later in the day to get the comments that attach to links that caught my interest in the morning.

Today "Why Banks Must Be Allowed to Create Money" grabbed my interest!  Jumping beyond the link article to the comments that were attached to it the first thing that stood out was the number of comments that were already attached at this early hour (West Coast) and the length of their content.  The second thing was the fact that many of the comments were made by the same person ardently submitting their thoughts.

If the issue is about the "Smoke" of money then there certainly is some fire behind all that smoke and that fire and something about its nature is indicated by the comments made.  Quick to attack and defend.  It has a look and feel to it like anything critical of sacred cows or sacred God given lands.

Money creation is all about what money is.  Money use, what created money does is all about what money does.  What a thing is and what a thing does are two different things.  Think about it.  Clear your mind,  count to five and then think about it.

What a thing is and what a thing does are two different things.

That is an interesting proposition.  What makes a thing different from what it does?

The primary "Subject Thing" is different from the object of an action relating it to an "Object Thing".

That is not rocket science it is 1st or 2nd grade grammar:  Subject Noun...then put a verb in the middle...then Object Noun and a structured idea is created.  It is the most basic building block of our intelligence.

Mix up the relationship meanings of nouns and verbs and the whole fundamental structure of our conceptual intelligence falls apart.

What defines a Subject Thing is not what that Subject Thing does.  Nor is a Subject Thing defined by the Object Thing of any action linking it back to the Subject Thing.

The mental back flip challenge in this concept is looking at it this way:  There are only things in this world.  All things are things.  Actions are fundamentally things as much as any physical or conceptual thing.  An action is a special type of a thing that has a mystical nature of time that object things do not.

The concept of an action (we call it a verb) as a thing is at the same time a simple yet complex idea to grasp.

Money Creation.  Think about that.  Money Creation.  The act of creating money.  Is that meaning what the two words convey?  What is this a Chicken and Egg proposition that begs the question which came first?  First is a temporal concept and therefore having a verb meaning rather than a noun meaning.  Chicken produces Egg produces Chicken, etc.  etc.  Which comes first is a logical riddle.  the answer is not known until the time of an originating object actor is known.   Once that originating actor is known the ongoing relationship is perpetual as long as there is a relationship between a chicken and an egg.  Heavy thinking but simple thought.

Created once and exist forever?  (Positive Money)

Created over and over as it lives and dies in time?  (Debt Money)

Is money a thing to be created once and live forever or a thing to be created out of nothing when needed and go back to nothing when it no longer has that mystical nature of time as its spark of life that determines its existence?

Are Positive Money and Debt Money two different things?

or

Is Positive Money and Debt Money  two different things differentiated only (meaning defined by)  by what money does, not what it is?

What is conceptually created by this relationship:  Positive Money equals Debt Money?

Positive Money is therefore the same as Debt Money.  The Balance Sheet Rule!

Money is Money.

The only question is should money exist forever once created? 

(well, aggregate quantity in use adjusted as required like the number of infinitely existing ones and zeroes in the world of computers that  are drawn from the "Heavenly Source Cloud" (like human beings) to mean something in a storage medium and used over time to do something until garbage is collected) ............

Or,

Should money go back to nothing when its time purpose is fulfilled (what it does).

Philosophical.

Which philosophy is chosen makes a difference.

What is that difference?

Maybe it all depends on who the philosophical stance benefits?

I am convinced that the beneficiaries of Debt Money and Positive Money are different.

Who does Debt Money benefit?

Who does Positive Money benefit?

Back to the links that started all this thought:  They talk about who (boards/institutions/people) administer any chosen system of money.  The answer is they do not any more than we administer the nature.  The money system must be created as a logical natural system to administer itself.  That is what the Information Age can do.  It is a continuation of Enlightenment?

Positive Money Rules.  The transitional change is easy.  Money is always positive.  Debt is just one thing that money does.  Debt is not the creator of money, only one of unlimited  applications of the Money Operating System.

I think that we are socially predisposed to be indebted to creators.  At least "indebted" is one way to look at it.  A broader view of payback is gratitude and I see that as something that is not loaned to us and must be returned but something that we each create, not out of demand for payment but originated out of goodness to return....or not out of free choice.

My life is not debt driven, financially or spiritually.  To me it seems like a happier way to live in abundance rather than debt.

In general I think most of society is conditioned to the debt perspective.  What religion says is owed in praise and glory of a name.  What the country says is owed for freedom (that we endow upon ourselves)  Over time we will shift to a new paradigm of social structure based on abundance and what we owe ourselves collectively and individually to use the things we have not the things or life loaned to us to use that external entities demand a return.

Anything positive is better than anything negative.

Positive seems to generally benefit individually and all.

Negative benefits individual sectors sub-optimization.

Customers and Product. Government and Business

What kind of blind luck is this?

Having just read Cathy O'Neil's post at this link "Your are not Google's Customer" on who is the customer and who is the product that blows all the smoke away with clarity of math thinking I stumble on this link here: "A Secret Plan to Shut Down Social Security’s Offices and Outsource Its Work".  The report it cites is at this link.

1.  "Death by Jargon" is the first insight on the report made by Richard Eskow.  Absolutely!  More full of euphemisms than a politician.  But those are the kind of reports that politicians love.  Maybe it came out of a boilerplate manipulation algorithm?

Look at what else that boiler plate jargon algorithm produces at this link sample. Same words, different order.  Everybody must be using the same software jargon generating program.  Tip of the hat to ScienceGeek.net for that.  If you liked theirs then here is another.  People pay for this stuff!

Read the report and laugh.  The jargon generators are a joke but this is directly taken from the National Academy report:

4. We simplify programmatic, administrative, and operational policies in order to facilitate customers’ applications for benefits and our processing of them. 
   
   
   

Google that collection of words and get this as a result.  Maybe it is all just a joke?
Right up front in the National Academy report and just after the problem statement is this and it is the connection to what Cathy clarifies:

"Long-term Strategic Vision: We anticipate and respond to customers’ changing needs, delivering high quality services anywhere, anytime."

So, Cathy, who is the customer here?  Thanks for your clarification between customer an product.  I love the comparison to cows in the feed lot.  You are brilliant as well as being good with numbers.

The customer is business.  The business sector.  Free private enterprise.  The product is people served up to them.  The customer has changing needs.  More business is one, taking it from the government is another and as a bonus, eviscerating public services.

What kind of software did they use to produce the report?  A cliche generator?  It needs a translator program.  Maybe put it through Google translate?  


Richard Eskow does a good translation.  He seems to be fluent in translating BS.  Oh, I see, he was a former Wall Street Executive come over from the Dark Side.  No wonder he knows the language so well.  Death by Jargon!  More about him here at this link. 

The rest of his points

2. The SSA isn’t resisting congress’ brutal cuts.  
3. They intend to do more outsourcing, too.
4. They expect people to do everything on the Internet – and their website is terrible.
5. They’re downsizing just as demand grows.

Well done, Richard Eskow.

This looks like the business model of buying a company and then breaking it up for its value.  Is that vulture capitalism.  However there is something added:  An ideological motive to shrink and drown government.

The best way to rob a bank is to own it.

The best way to own the people as product is to steal government services that serve people as customers.

Thanks to Cathy and Richard.

The National Academy of Public Administration that produced the report could monetize it by changing a few words and sell it to the Feed Lot and Slaughter House sector as a vision for future customer service and product management.


 

How Police Are Scanning All of Twitter to Detect Terrorists Threats

The subject line of this blog entry is this Post at Huffington Post.

Dataminr product is the software that does the scanning.  It's Public Sector application is described as this at the web site:

"Through its map-based dashboard, Dataminr delivers customizable real-time alert streams on events as they develop via email, instant messaging and integration into internal warning systems."

The graphic illustrating the use of data mined twitter states the address of problem.  The obvious conclusion therefore is that any location information is derived from the tweet itself.  Location is vital information.  Certainly not always stated by the Tweeter but the key to actionable information.  If location is not embedded or referenced in any way in the tweet then how is that critical information to be discovered?

That question leads to pure speculation.

Tweets of interest are most likely to be those originated by cell phones.  Tweets are a generic text message but identified by a specific format.  If the meta data related to a tweet, such as geographic location was associated to a specific tweet was known then that is critical information.  How might location information of the cell phone be obtained?  Easy.  It is a function of the system to know where the transmission originates.  Law enforcement uses Stingray to spoof a cell phone tower but if spoofs it by doing the exact same thing a cell tower does regarding call location information identification to a certain degree of accuracy.  A second tweet from the same account gives direction of travel, if mobile.  This speculation depends on covert surveillance system structures, of course, if they are designed into the communication system.

Using a tweet example at Dataminr website that states a location might. speculation continues, be an example of "Parallel Construction"  That tactic is not just limited to law enforcement but also a disguise as to how information is commercially really obtained by a software product.

The Dataminr software would reveal the source of location if it was derived from Cell Tower meta data.  That software is proprietary.  If it obtained location from a Cell Tower history data base that link would be the "go to" in the Dataminr software.  I doubt that it is open source.

All speculation.

Certain governmental agencies doing certain things have access to cell phone call location.  911 emergency calls for example.  Access is built into the system.

Detecting terrorist threats by reading Tweets is important.  To do something about it obviously
 requires knowing where the tweeter is and they might not say where in the tweet. 

Putting a speculative 2 and 2 together I conclude that cell tower location related to a specific tweet of interest is obtainable in real time by law enforcement for a real purpose through the Dataminr software.  That requires some serious connection to a communication data base that has this information derived from cell phone towers.

All that is required to get cell phone tweet location is a serious need to know.  They are all listed at the Dataminr website:

• Natural Disasters
• Transit Disruptions
• Conflicts & Violence
• Public Safety
• Political Unrest

Is Dataminr product just a commercial spin off of the original application?

Look at the Event Detection Technology graphic and draw your own conclusion as to who might be alert data also go to at some point in a commercial system serving news and finance.  That "some point" would be a place that could put the 2 + 2 together to relate a tweet to its location and identify a tweeter.

Is that reasonable speculation?

Doable?

Duh!  Yes, of course and that is what BrightPlanet Blue Jay seems to have a connection to.

BrightPlanet sells Blue Jay, described by the subject link blog post as a similar product.  The evident connection to a geo-location of a tweet is given here at BrightPlanet link.  That link is to Geotime. to get cell tower phone location information to associate with tweets.  Tweet latitude and longitude information were used in the Toronto flood situation as a test to determine where they were coming from.  So, obviously, tweeters do not put lat. and long. in their tweets but mentioned locations can easily be geocoded.  Its cell tower info. or perhaps it is a Twitter API?  When did Twitter stop beating its wife?  An event time/space detection study here at this link.   Geotime uses cell tower data locating cell phones.  A Twitter API may generate the location information if it is an enabled thing resident in the Twitter cell phone APP and in the firehose stream.

The Twitter Firehose is explained here at this link

These are GeoTime customers and examples of use at the GeoTime link.

"Deep Web Intelligence™ is the future. At BrightPlanet, the future is now."

Note:  Trademarked Intelligence.

Putting 2 + 2 together in the Big Data world pays Big Bucks.

Nice work if you can get it and all that it requires is security access, probable cause a need to know and the keys to the system unlock a fortune.

Pandora's box has been opened to commercial exploitation and extraction.

Nobody ever looks at this blog site except some of my posts get an immediate hit upon publication.  One from windows.  One from Mac.  There must be a key word bar that the post leaps over at two places in the USA.  If they were of any importance I would never even know that.

Embassy Evacuation Vitenam - Iraq

The biggest fear of the US Government about Iraq is an update of the iconic Vietnam evacuation photo to the billion dollar embassy in Baghdad.  I may be wrong but the photo is not of the embassy but the USDAO roof top.  I am sure that the the contingency plan for the next evac will not be from the embassy.  There are certainly clear standing orders that it will be from a secure base and in the dark.  However, the evacuee does not always get to choose the time, place and order in which a forced evacuation takes place.  The Pentagon is probably studying the withdrawal from Gallipoli

Somebody also had my thought here at this link.

Might the only lasting lesson really learned from Vietnam be that defeat will not be photographed?

Who will be the last to leave?  Will they be sure that the last to leave was really the last one present.  What if someone is left behind?  Not to be military at all costs.  What about American contractors.  Make sure that any contractors left are not American.  What about Iraq citizens working for the embassy?  Nobody will ever know about their fate.  Perhaps.  The fate of French sympathizers was well known and photographed.

Send John Kerry to be the last man standing on the ladder.

Saigon fell 30 April 1975.  Daily business at the embassy prior to that is reported in this 9 April Saigon Mission Daily Cable.

There could not be too many more reports from Vietnam after this one at Wikileaks.

The subject of this secret message on Wikileaks is:  "Last Message From Saigon"

There was a lot going on in the world of US Dipolmacy on 29 and 30 April 1975.  Browsing this list at Wikileaks for keywords associated with Vietnam and Saigon and evacuation is interesting but does not provide much information except by implication and context of history in the making in retrospect.

What will the future ever look back on at the communications out of Iraq in the last days of US presence there?  Will anything related to that time ever be seen?

My second ship was off Saigon on 30 April 1975.  Browsing the web for the events at that time I found this fascinating diary.  I had probably been on the same ship when it was offloading cargo in Danang.  The APL ships and the Lykes Line ships were among the ships delivering cargo as well as United Fruit for chill and frozen.

The story about the involvement of Marines on the SS Pioneer Contender is fascinating.  The picture of the Vietnamese on the barge in Danang is certainly one of the same barges that we offloaded cargo to in the harbor when I was there. 

General Alexander and the Military / Cyber Security Information Complex Extended to Business to Business

I went back to a prior blog entry to enter an update on what I wrote about General Alexander's greed.  Now that he is out of the NSA he carries his greed and the business mode to implement it with him.  Not just greed at a price tag of a million dollars a pop but megalomaniac greed to control.

Direct command and control of people and an institution is core to the military.  I had it as company commander when I gave marching orders.  I said something as a 19 year old kid and 100 men immediately changed direction on my command.  It was like driving a car for the first time!  I have to admit it went to my head.  Firing a .50 machine gun gave the same rush.  So did observing a missile shoot.  The only bigger thrill is having a real target out there.  Boys games.  Other bigger and more important things like changing the policy on disposal of shipyard excess did not compare in terms of emotional thrill but did give satisfaction of a job well done.

I think that Alexander is a junkie that craves the thrill of control power that he enjoyed abusing in an official capacity.

There are many media riffs on the basic report about his new civilian security business but this report covers more than the others.

It is all about the emerging military cyber security industrial commercial complex built on the same model as the military industrial complex.  Fear based.  Instead of investment in tanks and planes to counter tanks and planes the investment is in something far more ephemeral as is the threat. As ephemeral as the threat of communism ever was.  A real cow can only produce so much milk.  A conceptual cow can be used to produce even more.

Banks are afraid of robbers.  The biggest heist is a cyber robber.  They should know.  There is always a bigger fish cyber robber to eat the smaller cyber robber.  If there is not a real bigger cyber robber fish lurking out there then there is big money to be made in creating one.

The ex-military Generals are still emeshed in the government and their old friends in Military/Government but now on the commercial side of the street.  This link describes that situation.  Note the 2nd comment at the link.  I doubt if it was made up.  There are good guys involved too that actually served with honor like Andrew Bacevich.

Added this link info 26 June: 

Alan Grayson: Is Keith Alexander Selling Classified Information to the Banks?Published June 25, 2014 | By emptywheel

 

 

Granularity and Big Data -- Getting Somewhere on the Road

note: Placeholder entry.  It is too nice a day to continue this now.  More later.

I know where I want to go....I think I know...yes, I do know but that in hindsight when I get there might not be  what I thought at all in the first place.

At least I know the start point.  In this case it is two concepts.  One being micro level the other being its extension to the macro level.  The micro first being Granularity and the macro second being Big Data.

Wikipedia describes Granularity here at this link.

Wikipedia describes Big Data here at this link.

Is Wikipedia all I know?  No, just my quick and dirty go to place to learn something.

If I want to get a general consensus of the two words from the internet...

(....strike the use of internet...what I really mean is the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee to be accurate and give credit where credit is due..)

then I would do a Google search of everything said about the two words on the Web.

Google on Granularity here at this link (1,660,000 hits)

Google on "Big Data here at this link (15,200,000 hits)

Wikipedia suffices.  Variety in Google search hits is informative and offers a world of side trips but side trips is not where I want to go.  I am easily sidetracked.

My concept of Granularity and how I want to develop that personal concept on the road to big data is the smallest discrete uniquely identified unit that I choose to work with in my creative investigation to develop my own perception of the total system.  A system that goes from my chosen lowest micro level of Granularity to the the macro level of Big Data.

If I were a computer scientist I would choose to start at the binary level where the most granular thing is either the presence of something or the absence of the same thing.  That is science.  Engineers apply science to design and choose to work with higher level of conceptual or real granularity to begin the design of something.  Builders make something based real or conceptual on the design of engineers.

I like to design and build.  I just completed a gate from my deck to the back yard.  Designed it in my head.  Built it with my hands then painted it.  I will use it for quick access to my back yard.  I like to do things from start to finish entirely by myself.  If I was to sail around the world I would start by chopping down the trees to make the hull, or mixing the graphite an fibers.  Not sure how I would make them.  Gotta start somewhere and I am not a scientist.

The prior paragraph is some personal information about myself that I make public by entry on this public accessible blog..that nobody looks at really but it is public.  If this public information that I publish about myself (and all of my viewpoints in this entire blog and information intelligence deduced from my blog ) goes into a consolidated record about me to create a personal profile where all the information about me that is publicly available becomes more than the sum of its parts (getting to be a long sentence here but it is an entire stand alone If/Then thought) then where does my privacy right that may be associated with the Big Data about little me start?

Where does a personal privacy right emerge when only public information about me is all put together in my Big Data personal file?

Granularity and Big Data is a broad domain.  The Problem Domain I want to focus on is one in which the micro granular is a Person and, at the macro level, Big Data is all the relational information about All Persons (Collective noun: People). 

Everybody knows who and what is a "Person".  Don't they?  Romney does, my friend.  I will define granular person as a Human Being.

The Big Data concept has been co-oped to mean a Big Data Base where individual pieces of data relating to some thing are the granular level of Big Data.  Big Data is not really the term I want to use as the macro level descriptor of what I want to address on this road I am taking.

I want to call the macro level:  "Big Information".  However, I will use Big Data since that gets millions of hits and Big Information only thousands.  Unfortunately.  Data starts to mean something when it becomes information knowledge.  I will try to keep that in mind even if I have to use the vernacular "Big Data" to describe it.  Technically, the NSA has Big Data but what it has more correctly is Big Information capability.  That is where Big Data rubber meets the Big Information Road.  Where something created by Scientists, designed by Engineers, is built to do something useful for the End User.  It might be more about Data at the discovery and design level but it is all about Information where the rubber meets the road.  Information however also feeds back into more discovery and design as well as application.

"Big Data" and "Big Information" hits on a Google Search here at this link......just for information.

I think that where I ultimately want to go with this look at the Problem Domain of Granularity and Big Data is the integration of open access to the Information as a Commons with associated public rights.  That means that the use of Big Data (Information) about People (granular Human Beings)  by Big Institutions (Big People?) must observe certain rights of People to their own Personal Information.

While data and information aggregate smoothly with the objective of low friction to higher levels of conceptual structures all the way to the top of Big Data, (bottom up assembly) the reverse; top down breakdown is not so friction free. from the granular level access standpoint.  As data about people goes up to Big Data information derived from Big Data about people at the granular level becomes proprietary to the owner of Big Data with some degree of right to access by People to whom their private data relate.  A privacy right that might otherwise even prevent or introduce friction to the upward accumulation and use of a Person's private data/information.

It gets complicated when data about a Person is public information but when all that public information is put together at higher levels of aggregations from many sources what was public in origination accretes (or accrues since my spell checker does not like that word but it a real word)  to become a very private information knowledge picture.

That is the problem in the Granularity and Big Data domain.  The one I want to examine in the next blog entry.  I want to examine it in terms of HTTPa that Tim Berners-Lee is proposing which caught my attention span in a prior blog entry at my blog site.

Granularity and Big Data - 2nd Start Examining the Chicago Tribune Point of Entry to the Problem

After getting side tracked in my prior blog entry by getting the lay of the land straight before starting out to where I want to go and the purpose of the journey this entry gets the trip going.

Refresher:  It started in the prior blog entry with this report in the Chicago Tribune:  New Sensors Will Scoop Up Big Data On Chicago.

We are all Chicago!

This from the Tribune link:

"Researchers have dubbed their effort the "Array of Things" project. Gathering and publishing such a broad swatch of data will give scientists the tools to make Chicago a safer, more efficient and cleaner place to live, said (Charlie) Catlett, director (computer scientist) of the Urban Center for Computation and Data, part of a joint initiative between the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory."

Examine the Argonne National Lab.  It brought us the atom bomb and is still involved in national security.  

Wikipedia link to Charlie Catlett here

Catlett (bio at this link) is quoted frequently in the Tribune report.  He said this:

"Catlett said the fact that all of the data collected will immediately be published will also expose the project to ongoing scrutiny."  Later he says:  we made the decision that the (sensors) will not save address data, and will only count nearby devices." 

This is a fact:  Cell phone sensors sense cell phone ID.  That is the data that cell phones broadcast...but it will not be saved (inhaled).  Since sensors are directional they will also collect location distance.  They will also collect travel in the owner's pocket or car as well as location stops along the way.  What if the owner stops to rob a bank?  Need to know trumps privacy.  No way of knowing if all the data from every device is not saved.  The NSA motto: "Get it all, Save it all".

By what wild stretch of the imagination will "all the data will immediately be published"?  Never in a million years I think.  Especially the data on cell phones.  All the data.  All the data will never be public.  Some carefully screened maybe or what best serves PR.

All?  Never gonna happen.  Publish it all and sooner than real time smart technicians are going to connect it up to real people and their privacy.  At about the same time, the NSA will publish all the data it collects.  Highly redacted.  What will most likely happen is that all the data from one or a few compartmented operations will be published and it will be called "all".  At least all that the compartment truthfully knows about.

A more truthful statement by Catlett here:

To date, startup money for the first phase has come from Argonne, but a National Science Foundation grant application is pending, Catlett said, and he expects corporations that want to use the system to "pay their way" down the road.

Fred Cate says:

"Almost any data that starts with an individual is going to be identifiable," Cate said. When tracking activity from mobile phones, "you actually collect the traffic. You may not care about the fact that it's personally identifiable. It's still going to be personally identifiable."

He got that right!

Gary King, director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University.  is quoted as saying this:

"King, the Harvard sociologist and data expert, agreed that the Chicago scientists will inevitably scoop up personally identifiable data.  If they do a good job they'll collect identifiable data. You can (gather) identifiable data with remarkably little information," King said. "You have to be careful. Good things can produce bad things."

Gary King writes about "Big Data" here at this link:  "Why Big Data is a Big Deal" appearing in the Harvard Magazine.

The experts quoted in the Tribune report as well as their associated institution relationships are excellent points from which to examine my objective of learning more about Granularity and Big Data.

Granularity and Big Data.  Those two conceptual things fascinate me.  They are the two extremes in the continuum from smallest uniquely identified entity of information to its SuperClass aggregate using my high level Object Oriented design approach to "things", their "methods" and their message interactions.

Granularity and Big Data and Getting The Internet and The World Wide Web Straight

This blog entry is a general mix of intuition and observation of a variety of things related to the Internet of Things.  It is entirely exploratory since I have only an intent to look at it without an established plan as to how to go about it.

So I will ramble and kick the bushes and see what comes out.

(This was added after I finished this blog entry:  I diverged too far and the only way to keep the focus of intent on track is end this by continuing it in  the next blog entry)

As a start point I will use this link as a place to start:  "New Sensors Will Scoop Up Big Data On Chicago".   I could have started anywhere among the many sites I looked at this morning that relate to one or more aspects of what I want to look at.  This link makes as good a point of entry to the problem domain as any of the others.  

But I want to digress before meandering to get something clearly straight from the start:

I think that the "Internet of Things" is a cloaking device intended to hide or place in background what the matter is really all about:  The World Wide Web of Information.  Perhaps there is a better phrase describing what the Internet of Things is cloaking but the true nature of what it is hiding or disguising may not yet be a popular term. 

For example,  I was talking about Tim-Berners Lee with someone and his latest and greatest idea for HTTPA.  They did not know who he was.  I said that he created the internet.  Absolutely wrong and my serious error but the words came out before I even thought about it.  Not the internet but the World Wide Web.  

Is hiding and confusing something by "Framing the Issue" in a certain way the method that has become typical of "political-speak" and media manipulation? 

The "Internet of Things"  frames the issue to talk about the sensors.  The vital social issue is what information these sensors are detecting and how it is being aggregated to big data.

The Internet is a thing.  A worldwide connection of computer networks.  Like a global highway system connecting to city streets connecting to our own driveways.  A way to get from here to there where "there" is anywhere anyone wishes to go.  TCP-IP is described here as what I would call the roadmap that enables us to get where we want to go.

The World Wide Web is the system of interlinked (Hyperlinked) documents that is the content of the the total system of internet things that gives us access to the information that is this glorious World Wide Web of information.

To focus on the Internet or use the term: "Internet of Things" when the meaning is to talk about information is like focusing on the car and the road when the most important thing is that they are taking us on a vacation.  Or something like that.  Like looking at a picture thing and not seeing what it is all about.

The Chicago Tribune report addresses the Big Data about us and our environment that the sensors create.  The academic framing of this is to call it an "Array of Things"

"Researchers have dubbed their effort the "Array of Things" project. Gathering and publishing such a broad swatch of data will give scientists the tools to make Chicago a safer, more efficient and cleaner place to live, said Catlett, director of the Urban Center for Computation and Data, part of a joint initiative between the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory."

While research scientists may allude to the downstream benefits of whatever they are researching they are not the ones that will generally be applying the development of tools.  Or, maybe they are if they are aware of how much money is involved in the application of their research if they jump from academics to commercial application.  That in itself is something to investigate in regard to patents held by professors jointly with universities and the establishment of university associated quasi private enterprise entities connected to university professors that did the research.  Revolving Door model?

I started this journey in  my "computer car" to get on the road and go somewhere.   Then I got wrapped up in looking at the difference between the car/road thing and where I really want to go using them and what I want to learn.

On to the next entry which is about the journey and not the vehicle that might distract me and who is in the drivers seat telling me to forget about where I am being taken and just look out the window at an array of "things" as they describe them.  

Hospice

I commend this investigation into the Hospice Industry and the information it provides.

At a most crucial time of life, the end of life care and those that are the care givers and the family and friends of those at this crucial time the both the best and the worst of human nature is displayed.

Dedicated hospice workers, care givers and family and friends that selflessly devote themselves to ease the transition to end of life are the heroes of goodness.  Those that prey upon this end of life situation personally and institutionally are absolutely vile.  They should be publicly exposed and excoriated. 

Hospice assisted me in caring for my loved one until the end.  Those that assisted me are my heroes.

Hospice is a community entity.  People generally die locally more often than not and generally have friends and/or family in the community.  Many do not.  In either case I feel that it is a community responsibility to monitor the care that Hospice provides the community. 

What established entity provides such general monitoring?  On one hand it would involve "Watchdog" aspects, on the other hand assurance that the best possible care is being provided.  Searching the internet I find numerous references to community in connection to Hospice but none that indicate that any community entity fills a role of......what might it be called?.......Community Advocate Board?...for those in Hospice care. 

The situation involving Hospice care is to say the least a sensitive one.  One that involves all of us.  While the best of care is sought, there must be protection from the worst of care.  Institutionally, those paying the bills monitor the care indirectly through financial indicators of problems requiring investigation.  At the other end of the spectrum are those closest to the person in terminal care to assure that things are being done right.  At that point monitoring is variable. 

I wish I had a good solution to the problem of assuring that the best of care is provided at end of life.  More than simply saying it is a personal responsibility of the caregiver. 

At a time when something is vitally important a fail safe situation is required.  If that fail safe measure is not invoked by those closest to the person in a Hospice situation then the conscience of the community invested in a formally designated community entity should operate.

The professional media as well as the general media that we are all becoming agents of as we read and express ourselves on the web and publicly elsewhere is a fail safe protection measure.  Fail safe to the extent we all undertake our social responsibilities.  The idealistic cure all, of course.  The one that is not fail safe, of course.  Maybe it all depends on many or most of us doing the right thing and that is the best that can be done to protect from the evil that would prey upon the end of life situation.

Not much of a real solution but in the end, the best we can do. 

I salute the investigators that participated in the link that brought this to my attention as well as the efforts of those that they wrote about.  It is a reminder of my own responsibilities.  A reminder of social responsibilities we all share as the best nature of our goodness to address and resolve somehow the worst of human nature.

Whatever results from that is the best we can do.  End of life always has been and always will be one of the most important things in life that life hands us the mandatory situation where we must do the best we can. 

One of the parades in my relatively small community includes and celebrates various community organizations.  Among them is Hospice.  Used to be the flag at the beginning of the parade gave me an emotional bump.  Now it is the Hospice vehicle and I am sure that many others feel the same.  It gets a special recognition as it passes.  A special respectful applause that comes from the heart.

How Cell Phone Towers Reveal Your Location- Bank Femtocell Surveillance

This Youtube video link here is an simple "For Dummies" type explanation of how cell towers reveal location.  Interesting and informative.  Knowing just that much and nothing else to be learned by searching the web and finding a vast amount of info on how it all works there are obvious conclusions to be drawn.

One is that cell phone providers must know where a cell phone is at all times in order to direct a call to a single cell phone telephone number.

Duh!  How much brain power does it take to figure that out if anybody thinks about it.  The surprising thing is that few people do.  If they did they would be asking more questions.  They just take the cell phone for granted.

For those that do ask some questions there is some higher order thinking and analysis required.

If cell phone service providers know where every cell phone that is turned on is located.....

Then.......... (simple "If this"...then logically therefore "then that")

Cell phone providers could also know everywhere a cell phone has been if when present location changes to new location the old location is added to a history record of everywhere the cell phone has been.  Maybe call that history record "The story of a wandering life"  Your wanderings if the cell phone was in your pocket.

Not just where the cell phone has gone but how fast it went from point A to B.

And what exactly (or reasonable close by) were those points A and B, and just how fast did the cell phone go from one to the other, then point C, D, etc until letters run out and numbers have to be used.  Way points in travel with geographic coordinates.  The information could be retained for the lifetime of the cell phone.  It appears on the cell phone bill as a general location of call origination.  The cell phone provider knows exactly where.

What in the world might be done with all this information anyhow you might ask?

Excellent question, your brain is functioning.  Now just use your imagination and "If, therefore...then this question.

Yabut....

It is private information about your/my cell phone!

Ok, what trumps privacy?  What is an extreme example.

A person in the act of committing a self evident crime has little right to privacy in committing that crime even if they wear a mask while robbing a bank or shooting somebody.

Crime investigation is always an "after the fact" thing.  That is a given and true statement, in my opinion.

Crime stopping, and apprehension while the crime is being committed is a real time intervention.

Crime Prevention is a before the fact (by any means) deterrent to future crime.

There are criminal and civil laws that apply to both types of crime.  This link here explains the difference.

In the information age crime is increasingly becoming self evident and detectable in real time by technology methods.  Consequently, that may also have a related increase in stopping crime in real time, while it is happening or reducing the time after the fact between committing the crime and apprehension or identification of suspects leading to apprehension.

For example:  This situation may apply to people robbing banks but unfortunately does not yet apply to banks robbing people.

The window of time that the crime is being committed during which it can be detected and stopped in the act is a small one for masked bandit bank robbery stick up.  A long window when the bank is the bandit.  However when there is a long window of crime commission by an individual that is detectable in real time then there is significant opportunity to detect the crime in progress and prevent it.

After all this it is time to bring the subject of the post around to meet the divergence of thought to this point.  It is a big circle.  To demonstrate returning to the subject of the blog I will now revise the subject line to be:

How Cell Towers Can Reveal a Crime and Catch the Criminal in the Act?

Answer:  By detection of intrusion into any area or at any speed Or from any point to another point that is a probable self evident of the commission of a crime of duration that gives sufficient time for law enforcement agencies to stop the crime while it is being committed.

Which situations might fit parameters that location, movement and speed detection based any single or combined detection indication of cell phone location, travel and speed by a cell phone tower would give probable cause for sounding an automatic alarm to law enforcement for immediate intervention to either stop a crime in progress or quickly apprehend a probable suspect after the fact?

In what context would it be appropriate to use cell tower location information related to a single cell phone that is also related to any general alarm caused by a specific probable criminal act in progress as determined by some degree of information evidence exceeding certain parameters that indicate a crime in progress?

The question I pose is not grounds for creating mass surveillance means and methods but using information produced by  public utility to illuminate a crime in progress like lighting at night simply serves to illuminate a crime in a dark alley.  Is that an appropriate comparison?  Reasonable?  Perhaps there is a better justification of using what is technologically available as a by product of its intended beneficial purpose?

To what extent might the public benefit of cell phone communication technology have specific spin off application to public safety and security?

What if banks used Femtocells which are just mini cell towers to sniff and record the cell phone ID's of anyone with a cell phone within the radius range of the interior of the bank?   It is a doable thing.  What if conditions of entry to the bank required patrons to submit to this information gathering the same as camera surveillance?

The local Bank of America has an armed guard dressed in black wearing a bullet proof jacket standing on the sidewalk at the bank entrance.  If this level of security is necessary to protect the bank then why not an equivalent  level of interior security?

When an presence of an armed guard outside the Bank of America is the subject of a comment on a date hook up site then it must be something of significant interest!  Googling "Armed Guard in front of Bank of America" shows others are wondering about it.  All 7 hits on this search in quotes.  Without quotes there are a couple million hits.  The Bank of America hits up front but use all the words of the search and what is to be the expected hit results?  Because America.  Bank of America is afraid of something.  Might it be using technological cell phone surveillance outside the bank to discover who is passing by?  This link provides that information service provided by Libelium.

Do security agencies offer femtocell security measures to banks or other high security areas that would benefit from knowledge of detected cell phone ID entering a specific area radius?
 

Metphysics of Money

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism writes a preface to the subject title of this post that says she does not readily relate to what she subsequently presents by DR Paul Tyson via Yanis Varoufakis blog.  I think see sees a pony under a big pile and presents it for the sake of discussion to see what others may see in it.

Others see a variety of things as displayed by their comments at Yves site as well a Yanis site.

Comments range from:

Prof Tyson’s article is the sort of hot air I expect from a theologian.

to

"Your concluding questions are profound ones, but I think your implied answers are quite wrong"

to

"A system of money based on debt-contracts that serve as tradable assets in capital markets will never accomplish our public purpose."

So much confusion about money that it undermines discussion.  Junetown made some good comments but I find few other comments under that name on the web.  Sometimes  I run into comments by anonymous commenter's that make me wish that we could talk with each other.

I call it all "Confusion Money"  It will never end until money is debt free, with no counter party liability as the foundation of its creation and is defined as an currency object with unique identity that therefore represents exactly what it is distinct from all that it does or is used to do.

The shift must be this:

From what money " is" and that currently a negative money currency (function of debt relationship without which it does not come into existence)

To positive money currency (positive existence not related to debt) and clear distinction that debt (buying positive money with a promise) is only one of the things that positive money "does" in the function of medium of exchange besides buy candy bars.

In summary, some talked about what money (and all related things) was, some talked about money in the present world, some talked about what money should be.  Some had the view that what money was established the nature of what it is now and will be.  Some needed to explain what it is now in fact (MMT) as opposed to the popular belief of what it is/does.  Some see an new idea of what it should be. 

I really do not care much about the historical origins of money and what it means the nature of money in the world today like it was a study of the Origin of the Species.  That is nature.  Money is a social concept construction that has little to do with natural law dictates. 

I really do care about a new concept of what money is and what it does and the unbindling of those two things which is essentially unbinding money from debt.

Sunday Prayer

If the preceding post in this blog was "going to church" this Sunday morning then this is the prayer that I offer for my niece's daughter who graduated from high school yesterday:

..........................

S.... is off on a great adventure.  Like my first ship sailing from San Diego to Japan and beyond.  Leaving homeport on a fantastic voyage.

Leaving home for Colorado with a desire to study sociology!  That is a grand adventure.  The kind of adventure I like and am still on.

The internet is social media and the greatest social researchers tool we have.  It does not take a degree in computer science to use it but some understanding of the tool to apply it.  Like you apply it to what you do.  S.... said she is interested in sociology.  She is going to study what I would like to study if I went back to college.  I am not going there but I enjoy studying it on the internet.

S.... might be interested in this link:  The MIT Decentralized Information Group  Especially the Ted talk by Tim Berners-Lee. 

The "New Web” he talks about will be even more social oriented and will be the web that S.... will experience.  It will be people and our societies expressed in a social oriented world wide web far beyond the relatively narrow scope of the web today.  It is going to be a Social Science playground where we discover so much more about ourselves and our societies.   Hopefully, for a much better world.  S...... is going to be one of those that study Social Science and have not only the tool of a “New Web” to do it but a future tool to apply what she studies to make the change we seek.

It is an exciting world and I wish her smooth sailing in it with the rewards of discovery and application like I have known in the “old world”.  That is where I was.  S.... is going into a new world and in 4 or more years it will be so much more like the kind of world that Tim Berners-Lee talks about. 

Old envy the young.  Hope is eternal and passed on to them. 

That is the best thing we can give.

I have high hopes for her future and joy in knowing that I will see some of it happen.  You will see even more. 

S..... will see it all!

Here is a peek into the crystal ball of her future at this link.  I looks to me like it is all about Social Science.  Pure science always viewed social science as a poor sister.  Not any more.  She is really Cinderella.

HTTPA

Sunday morning.  My time to fly into the never land of the internet to discover something interesting to ponder deeply.  Perhaps it is motivated by socially ingrained urge to go to church on Sunday.  Something I no longer do but maybe the essential urge to go deeper into meaning is still there.  So is the guilt related to the sin of not going.  If the internet of meaning is my church, I would feel guilty not going there this morning.  Sunday morning belongs to me not Somebody Else.  I relish my ownership of the meaning I create. 

Naked Capitalism ("Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power")
launches me on more unexpected journeys/adventures/quests more than any other website.  It starts me on a road to somewhere that I do not known but eagerly go.

This link from Links at Naked Capitalism started me off this morning: Transforming the web into a HTTPA ‘database’ ZDNet.  Summary: Researchers under Tim Berners-Lee at MIT develop a new HTTP, dubbed HTTPA, a web protocol with accountability.

Tim Berners-Lee!  A true information hero.  It has to be great stuff!  This is going to be a most excellent road to ride!

A fantastic concept:  Rather than restrict information with controls at the source to prevent its release put the controls on where it goes and how it is used by whom.  Can you say "Accountability"?  No, that is an old school phrase.  New school:  "Because; Accountability".  Accountability, an increasingly rare attribute in the Information Age.  Accountability has a relationship to Transparency that is important.

This is how it would work as described at the ZDnet link

With HTTPA, each item of private data would be assigned its own Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), a component of the the Semantic Web.......................Data owner can then request an audit, identifying all the people that have accessed the data, and what they have done with it.

Two comments at the ZDnet call it a stupid idea.  Tim Berners-Lee is not stupid!

I like the idea.....because I have the same idea about money.  My kind of money that I talk about in so many ways at this blog site:  Money as an Object in an Object Oriented Information System.  In this system Digital Money Currency is a Super Class object with attributes and methods.  Instances of the class are units of Digital Dollar Currency (monetary value of one each) with unique identifiers.  The unique identifier could be a sequential serial number, an IPV6 number, or some unique permanent hash.

Users may spend money from their account but may also put qualification on how the recipient of that money may use or expend the money from their account.  The situation is that I give someone money for something but that reserve the information right to know that the money is used by the recipient in a way that I continue to have the right to know. 

For example:  I give money to a charitable organization.  It was my dollar to give.  I want it use for a specific purpose.  Each digital dollar I gave has a unique identifier and I want to see exactly who (what accounting entity identifier) that dollar goes to in order to assure myself that it was used for the intended purpose I gave it.  Yes, strings attached!  Strings that I can pull if I wish.  A string attached to each dollar.  Perhaps even to the extent that there is legal remedy if the dollar is not used in accordance with my qualification.  I my have given something but I retain the rights to control its use.

HTTPA is not a stupid idea.  Read all about it at this .pdf link

Wow! If I were either Oshani or Kaga I would treasure the photo of me with Tim Berners-Lee.  It would be worth something special beyond an enclosure to a resume!

More about the MIT Decentralized Information Group at this link.  Founded and led by Tim Berners-Lee.   It is the genesis from which this thinking about HTTPA derives.

Internet of Things

My prior blog post looked at wireless water meter systems.

Wikipedia describes the Internet of Things at this link

Wireless water meters are one of those things.  There are different ways of identifying the "things" and there will be billions.  If each thing has an IP address then it is uniquely identified as a thing.  There is a great need for more IP addresses and that brings on IPV6 which was looked at in various ways in prior posts on this blog.

One of the ways of looking at the universe of the internet of things is that each digital dollar denomination have an IPV6 address.  Each account owning a dollar have a IPV6 address.  Each entity that is able/authorized/registered to receive and spend dollars have an IPV6 address.  Each debt related loan document have an IPV6 address.

The connectiveness of things is all about each thing having a unique identity in order to connect with another uniquely identified thing.

A different look at the internet of things at this Wired link.

Metered Usage of City Water - Conservation and Rate Structure

Update 22 March 2017:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oracle-utilities-launches-smart-grid-120000011.html
Oracle!  I don't know much but the Information Age is a computer management system of things.  Objects.  Object Oriented.  Oracle started with a relational data base of things.  I bet on that in 1984 with everything I had.  I don't know much but could see where things...objects.....real and abstract were going.  Higher level management is all about things.  Their applications as functions are lower level.  Oracle has progressed in the management of things in an amazing way.  Physical things managed indirectly through a data base have become directly managed through the IoT.

I sold enough Oracle stock at $46.32 recently to buy an RV I will get today.  The purchase price base per share was about .42 cents.  I am sure that the Oracle investment will continue to be a good one.

This update to an old blog entry is about Oracle's entry into the world of IoT with cloud consolidation management.  Will it eat the lunch of competitors at a lower level market share?  Way back when in the 1980's it seemed that the relational data base was the general purpose shoe to fit all feet.  Expansion to the management of all things in an object oriented repository with object oriented design and programming of the operating system and its application programs is the obvious path to success.

When will my small city go to the Oracle Cloud to manage not only its utilities but all of its abstract and physical things?  When I invested in Oracle so long ago the game of PacMan was popular.  I visualized Oracle then as that Pacman gobbling up one object after another until it had them all.  While most all players of the game saw it all from the functional point of view as they controlled the functional application of object I saw the object oriented view of the operating system that could apply to any and all functions.

I never did know much but the object oriented writing on the wall was easy to see.

This winter saw more snow here than I have seen in 27 years.  Snow removed from the driveway was 6 feet deep.  I looked out of the front window to see a guy digging down through it to the water meter.  Mine was one of 80 in the city that was not reporting usage to the system and had to be manually read.

Now it is spring and city workers dug up my water meter last week to install a larger box and a check valve.  I had expected a new meter as well.  They said that will come next.  I would guess that the check valve might be double acting?  No reason it could not be made that way I would think.  Therefore it could be controlled from the city utility office to open and close.

Used to be that the cable company had to send a worker out to turn my cable service on and off at a cable box near the house.  Charge me for the manual swith service too.  Years ago they upgraded to the ability to turn it  from the office while I was still on the phone making the request.  No charge to me.

Now the water service, a more physical object service, looks like it will be object managed in the same way/  Interesting to look into what new contract the city might have for this now and what features it offers.

End of 22 March 2017 update.

The city is soliciting public input on the water rate structure.  Among the issues are fairness to users and conservation.  Related to that are fixed and variable charges for water and sewer.

At one time there were no water meters in the city.  Then they were required on new construction.  Then they were fitted to all users customer connections.  A meter reader made monthly rounds to record usage.

Now water meters report consumption via wireless methods.  So do the electric meters.

The water meter transmitting device located on the underside of my water meter box is connected by wire to my water meter. It does not have name plate data but does have two patent numbers.

Patent number 5717084  Filed 1996
Patent number 5617084  Filed 1995

Patent Assignment is to Aclara Technologies LLC :

ACLARA TECHNOLOGIES LLC

9900A CLAYTON ROAD

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63124-1186

This is the link to Aclara Technologies website

Aclara offers hardware and software products for water, gas and electric meter reading systems.  Aclara marketing information is at this link.

Aclara is therefore obviously the supplier of the transmission device connected to my water meter, the network devices (link here)  that carry the signal and the software (link here) that operates to manage the transmitted data. 

Metrum Cellular (link here)  is an Aclara product/service that communicates over a secure VPN operating on the  Verizon public cellular network.  There is a technical fact sheet .pdf at the link explaining its operation.

At this map link the City of Bend is an Aclara customer for its Star Network product.  The city of Redmond is also a customer for unknown Aclara product as well as the Central Electric Cooperative, Redmond.  The Star Network is a suite of product offerings, the extent of Aclara product/service for which the City of Bend contracts is unknown.

The following aside, I call them sidebars in this blog, is interesting in a bigger picture, bigger data way:

In the process of learning about the city water meter system I found that Aclara is one of the management systems of the city mentioned in a Request for Proposals ERP System Solution. Water is only one of the services provided by the city of Bend.  There are many services and service information management systems under the city of Bend.  ERP consolidation related to city service systems is the subject of this link:

"City of Bend, Oregon
Request for Proposals
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Solution
Project # IT14AA
The City of Bend is accepting sealed proposals from qualified firms to furnish and implement an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System that will support Bend’s staff in the delivery of City of Bend services and activities, take advantage of best practices, and significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Bend’s administrative processes." 

The Aclara system is listed in the Request for Proposals as a system to be integrated with an ERP system.  Other existing systems are to be replaced.

End of aside/sidebar.  Back to the water system. 

Aclara has two communication control points in Bend Oregon:

IG WQKP318
Aclara Technologies LLC
[DATA COLLECTION]
Control Point 1 - 30400 SOLON RD, SOLON OH 440-528-7200
(link)
1 - BEND OR, BEND (DESCHUTES) OR  40.3 km radius around center point (map)
 467.4125   MO    0p    0e    Units: 43000               11K0F1D  


IG WQKY201
Aclara Technologies LLC
[DATA COLLECTION]
Control Point 1 - 30400 SOLON RD, SOLON OH 440-528-7200
(link)
1 - BEND OR, BEND (DESCHUTES) OR  40.3 km radius around center point (map)
 462.4125   MO    0p    0e    Units: 43000               11K0F1D  

The map puts the location pointer on a house near Pilot Butte.  Probably should be on Pilot Butte?

This link contains comments about the implementation of Aclara water metering system in Bend, Oregon:

"In mid-2013, Cashwell’s city department completed a systemwide meter change-out, enabling thousands of hourly meter reports to beam back to headquarters.

“Now you’ve got all this data,” he continues. “You sit back and go, ‘Wow, what are we going to do with all of this?’” With the upgraded system newly finished, Cashwell and his department are exploring advanced meter data management (MDM) software suites that can harness it all and render it into usable, practical reports. The city’s AMI network vendor, Aclara (based in Hazelwood, MO), offered Bend a Web-hosted MDM solution, and has been tentatively selected to provide it."

News report at this link.  Sun Capital Partners Buys Meter and Analytics Firm Alcara for $150 Million:

"Like other AMI providers such as Itron, Elster and Echelon, Aclara was caught up in the fervor to expand its products to maintain stimulus-level revenue around 2010, but has had trouble expanding beyond its load control and [advanced metering infrastructure] businesses......
Aclara’s suite of turnkey consumer engagement solutions is also challenged by various players from Opower to Comverge"

There is a bigger picture view to everything in this blog entry.  Information systems are aggregating in the direction of integrated Big Data..  The internet of things.  It gets closer to the ultimate interface with the end user, you and me, all the time.  Not inside the house yet to the extent of the smart home but it is coming.  How close is it?  The water meter in front of my house and the information system that it is connected to.

Is anybody home at my house?  Real time water meter reading somewhere by somebody says that I just flushed the toilet.  I could also find the same info on an smart phone App that gives me real time water consumption information.

Information system convergence is going toward "Smart Cities" in the internet of things as well a "Smart Homes"  All with various electronic sensors sending monitoring information somewhere for some purpose.