Privacy is a funny issue for a lot of people, they are so willing to yield so much of their privacy to people who tell them its for ‚Äútheir safety‚Äù, yet will squawk like a chicken if they find out that their public posts to twitter are being indexed by a company (or a government entity). I have found (and I think many already know this) that the general public is highly susceptible to  fear mongers, and when they are told that something is bad or out to get them, they listen intently and then throw their arms up in the air not knowing exactly what is wrong, but that it is wrong and that they are against it. The government says that homeland security has to do full body scans of people as they try to board an airplane because it will protect bad people from getting on an aircraft and blowing it up, what they don’t tell you is that now every time you want to board an aircraft, someone gets to look at you naked.
I, myself, could be viewed as someone who treats his privacy with little regard online. You can do a quick google search of ‚ÄúTravis McCrea‚Äù and find my phone number, full name, background, and if you search hard enough some of my previous addresses. I also have a gmail account which is operated by the ‚Äúevil‚Äù Google inc., hell I even have a Facebook page that lets almost anyone view my information. I do this because it was already out there, if I give my phone number to even a couple people online ‚Äì I have pretty much committed it to the public domain. Since I already know that at that point someone who wants to harm me by obtaining my phone number, can already get it… I might as well make it easier for the good people who want to call me as well.
Here is the difference between Travis McCrea, and Joe Blow off the street when it comes to digital privacy: I know that everything I post online is viewable by the world. If I don’t want the world to see it, rarely do I ever even say it online (not even in private). However, I do still maintain the tools necessary to facilitate a private conversation if I must… and I do use them. When I use tools that I expect to be anonymous, I will use TOR (which isn’t exactly privacy guarding either). As much random stuff I search, I have never found a need to use haystacking or anything like that… I use https://www.google.com and that makes me feel good enough.  Most people will point out as well that I trust Google a lot, and I am a self-labeled Google Fanboy and I am okay with that. I can see the argument of ‚Äúsure you can trust Google now, but can you trust them in 30 years‚Äù, but I also am sure that Google understands that putting the interests of its customers over the interests of Governments or other corporations is a better business model. Yes, they have made calls in the past that I have disapproved of… but again its an understanding: I accept that Google gives me cool free stuff, if I am willing to give them anonymous pieces of information about myself. Google honestly does not even have the man-power to read .001% of the emails that are sent a day if it wanted to. It may  turn data over to the police if subpoenaed, but they do the best job at reporting legal notices and government requests than any other major service provider I have seen.  Even searches alone, who else are you going to trust with your data? Microsoft?
The biggest fear of corporations is that they sell your information to other corporations, or losing your information to hackers in a worst-case-senario, the biggest fear of government is that they come to your house, take you away, erase all your evidence of being born, tell people you are a terrorist, and never give you a fair trial. I am not saying give full confidence to corporations either. Corporations have very little restrictions as to how they must handle private information of its customers. They don’t HAVE to MD5 sum your passwords, or encrypt your personal data in their database ‚Äì some do, just to protect their consumers. Others don’t care. Some companies do thing to try and help their users with simpler interfaces, and actually enable their customers to easily give up their privacy. I think this is what happened to Facebook: They had no intentions on being evil by making people’s information show up to everyone by default, they were simply making it easier for their members to find each other… however, their default settings put anyone who created an account at risk of potential employers and ex-girl/boyfriends stalking them.
The main point, is that its very important for people to understand exactly what is happening with their information. Read through the privacy agreement, and if its in leaglese I encourage you to email the website, company, etc. and ask them to explain your rights, and what steps you can do to protect your privacy, and what steps they take to protect it. Twitter does a very good job of explaining each line of legalese in plain English if you read their privacy policy.
Remind your friends how important it is to protect their privacy, and when you hear people spouting off about “national security”, ask them if they mind if you go look through their underwear drawer due, to “national security”. Its your patriotic duty to stand up against a government who treats its citizens as the enemy, and say that you will not accept it anymore.
Fight the fight, be a patriot of our digital revolution.

Free Software to me is more of a lifestyle choice than just “what applications are going onto my computer”. Sure free software typically provides more features with a better community than proprietary alternatives, however, it also offers more: It teaches us that many individuals contributing small amounts of time to the greater good, can accomplish much more than a couple individuals working together to make a profit.
Living in Chevak has shown that community projects are not the idea of the hippies and communists, but a way for all sorts of people from all different types of ideologies and backgrounds to come together and make the whole better. Chevak’s people are mostly all low-income families, this is because they live with a subsistence life style. A life style that encourages free and open education and living. If one was not able to ‘catch’ enough birds, fish, or bear and moose… the rest of the community would offer a small part of theirs.
The people of Chevak can live long after any of the cities collapse, or government falls, because they already take care of themselves. It is a small libertarian (ideology not party) community, who runs itself… and does not need anyone else to tell it what to do.
Using Free and Open Source Software is like living in a small village like Chevak. There are very little bells and whistles, however, it works, and when it doesn’t you typically have a good community of people around you to help you. Its free, its liberating, and its sustainable. There will always be people who are just making bits of code, out of boredom or whatever reason, but we don’t know when Adobe is to go out of business, or stop making any of its software.
This is why I am going to look at getting funding for a few computers, and some time in the school or community center to operate a small co-op of community coders, working by donation, and side private projects. A sustainable village, working on sustainable computing practices.

Charlie walked into class on Wednesday, like he did every Wednesday (and as he did every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday as well). This was, however, not an average Wednesday, as after the announcements were over, a girl walked into his class room, and delivered the Mr. Wiener (pronounced Whiner, but this did not stop the junior class from making the jokes).
“This is going to be me, I just know it.” Charlie said to himself. Of course, he said this to himself every time a note came into his class, as did every other student.
Charlie Wells was a 16 year old boy, who grew up in a small town in Kansas, just South of Topika. A sandy haired boy, who had good grades, good friends, and was a good athlete. His favorite sport was Wrestling, which had a meet coming up this Friday. Charlie was shorter than most of his classmates, but in general a high achiever. Rarely got in trouble at home, and never got in trouble at school (even won a student of the month award once).
“Mr. Wells,” Mr. Wee-ner always seemed to have a condescending tone, he could tell someone they won the lottery, and they would instantly think of all the things their parents taught them about money. “You have been requested to the office by Mr. Jay.”
Mr. Jay was the vice principal of the school, though typically the students call this position the “disciplinary principal” around adults. Though, when they were in private they would of course call him “Mr.BJ” due to high school students uncanny ability to find a phallic reference in anything.
“Will I need to take my stuff?” Charlie asked, as does every student who is being called out of the room, its should be a checkbox on the little slip that comes to the room… of course Mr. Wiener knows about as much about this trip to the office as Charlie does. Mr. Wiener simply told him to leave his stuff under his desk and he can get it after his meeting, and if class was over he would set it on the counter.
As annoying as Mr. Wiener was, Charlie always had a certain respect for him. Sure he sounded condescending, but Charlie’s voice was still relatively high and he mocked himself that he sounded like a girl. Thats not his fault as much as it was Wieners for sounding like a dick (there it is again). Wiener always looked out for his students, and on more than one occasion has even wrote Charlie a late pass to his next class, just so he could stay and finish up some math problems, so he wouldn’t have homework.
Charlie didn’t even see the girl who brought the note leave, he must have been in the zone or just didn’t care, but now as he walked to the office he was wanting the company of that girl. He didn’t even know her name, she looked like she might be a freshman, ‘how do you even become the office helper person’ he quietly thought to himself. Charlie didn’t want to talk to the girl because he was particularly attracted to her, though at his age he was attracted to anything with breasts, he simply wanted to stop thinking about what awaited him at the office.
“They caught me for using the proxy to check my facespace account.”
He turned the hall to office
“No, I was signed in as the guest account, they would have no way of knowing that.”
Charlie entered to office, and smiled at the receptionist. She greeted him, and told him to take a seat and that Mr. Jay would be out to see him shortly. “The receptionist could have been working at Wal Mart,” Charlie thought to himself.
After sitting in the uncomfortable seat, trying to focus on reading old magazines which were probably scrounged from the libraries “to-throw-away” pile. Charlie finally told himself that the best response to this situation was to have Mr. Jay tell him what he did wrong, and to only answer questions with short direct answers until this situation played out for him.
Charlie started to get a little frustrated, because it had been about ten minutes, and Mr. BJ (Charlie chuckled to himself), had not called him into his office. For a guy who cares about education, he sure was disrupting Charlie’s class time… though of course Charlie was not concerned about his class, rather, he just didn’t like stewing in his chair, not knowing what he did wrong.
As the door handle turned, Charlie jumped. Inside the room were the stern faces of Mr. Jay, and school resource officer (SRO) Officer Clark. Their eyes seared into his soul, like that of his mothers when she would catch him in a lie (which, admittedly, was not that often). He was ready to throw everything out the window and confess for everything he did, even the things he wasn’t sure were against the rules like leaving Physical Education after he had already changed cloths, but before the bell like his classmates.
“Son,” This was the only pet peve Charlie had, the names “son”, “buddy”, “champ”, “boss”, etc. it wasn’t necessary and made it seem as though the person was talking down to him. Of course in this situation, Mr. Jay was. “Do you know why you are here?”
Charlie knew he had to give them something, but thought he should start with something light. “I leave Physical Education a couple minutes early, so I can have some time to get to my locker before the bell rings?”
Officer Clark raised his eyebrow, and looked to Mr. Jay. However, Mr. Jay seemed to have been somehow offended by this answer, and raised his voice slightly “Charlie, we are not here to play games with you, what you did was serious, and if you do not cooperate with us… your punishment will be very severe.
Charlie didn’t even know what was going on, if he wasn’t being yelled at he would have laughed and thought it was a joke. He tried to stammer out that he did not know what Mr Jay was talking about and so the SRO turned on the TV that had been behind them.
Charlie watched the screen, as he watched himself come around the “C” hallway, which was the furthest hallway running horizontally cutting though the two main hallways in that wing of the school, and walk down main hallway 2 until he was out of the frame.
Charlie was very confused at this point, and asked “Can you please explain to me what this is?”
Mr. Jay was very upset at this point and explained to Charlie that he had given him plenty of chances to explain himself, and that he had pushed his patience to the limit. Jay further went on to explain that there was a bag of pot found at the end of that period, and that Charlie had been the only student to have been using the hall.
“Sir, this must be a misunderstanding,” Charlie exclaimed, nervously “I don’t even smoke pot, I don’t think any of my friends do either!”
“Charlie, why would you be walking down that hallway at that time? You were supposed to be in Science, and thats on the other wing of school. The only class you had down that way was your math class, and it had been a couple periods before.” Officer Clark seemed to talk much more reasonably, however, he too stared at Charlie like he was a criminal. Heck in their eyes he WAS a criminal.
“I left my binder in Math class, I didn’t need it in any of my other classes after Math, and so I went back to get it so I could turn in an assignment for Science.” Charlie felt guilty, like he really had done something wrong. That feeling like going through US Customs trying to re-enter his country, where after you tell them the trip was for pleasure, they ask what kind of pleasure, what did you do, how long… to the point you start questioning it yourself.
“I am growing tired of your lies, Mr. Wells,” Back to Mr. Jay (‘was this some form of bad cop, worse cop?’ Charlie was thinking to himself), “We had spoken with Mr. Wiener, and he insisted that you never came by his class… and also if you look at that video there is no binder.”
Charlie was so scared, he should have been frustrated… of course he should have been, but he didn’t get frustrated. Heck, he hadn’t even cared when they put up these dumb cameras. He didn’t do anything wrong so there was no fear of him getting in trouble for them… so he thought.
Charlie explained that he saw Mr. Wiener was instructing his class, so he decided to get his binder later. This caused Mr. Jay to believe that he was changing his story, and decided this was enough cause to search his locker for drugs.
As Charlie, Officer Clark, and Mr. Jay reached his locker, the ‘first bell’ rang, and all the students flooded the halls. Charlie didn’t realize how many students there were in his school, or how many went by his locker until every single one of them were staring at him.
More embarrassment came to Charlie as he opened his locker. All the things that had seemed funny, stupid, or weird that he had put in the door of his locker, now seemed much worse when he had the cop and disciplinary principal behind him. Charlie could just feel the eyes burning into the back of his neck, knowing they were judging him for the picture of the midget swimsuit model, or the comic about teachers running off a cliff after a penny.
They didn’t find anything in Charlie’s locker. However, it was not over for Charlie. The principal gave him a day of in-school suspension for wondering the halls, and the resource officer called Charlie’s parents to tell them that their son had been suspected of at the very least being in possession of Marijuana, and potentially distributing it.
After this whole ordeal, it had changed Charlie into a very anti-authoritarian person, he had started putting tape up over the cameras, and fighting (to a degree some would consider excess) for the rights of other students, even ones he didn’t know. Charlie would tell the other students, “I thought that as long as I would go with the system, I would never have to worry about rights, or any of that stuff, I was wrong… Even the innocent are treated as guilty in a system that takes away my rights. If the system wants to treat innocent people like criminals, well then I am going to be a criminal.”

The concept that file sharing will be the destruction of jobs within the movie and music fields, as a legitimate argument against it has always intrigued me. We do not continue using horse and buggy, just to ensure that horseshoe makers still have job… We have not made buying cars illegal because they are made by machine now, instead of by humans.
File sharing is the future of distribution of the arts, anyone with eyes and a pulse can see that. File sharing makes it cheaper, faster, and easier to distribute media from one place to another. Why pay for shipping of bulky CDs when you can quickly download a song onto your computer? Why pay some guy behind a desk to create a business model that delivers it to me?
By having law makers change laws, and create new laws to protect the status quo, we create a system where we can no longer have development of new technologies. People who create new and exciting ways of file sharing, or even communicating will think twice because they are afraid of being sued. These people typically are not even looking to make a profit, or much more than an acceptable amount of money to feed their family.
Innovation is being killed by the media industries, and their fat wallets. We don’t need major media industries, and they understand that, however they make way too much money to simply throw their hands up in the air and give up. They have had time to find new jobs, go into new fields, and I suspect some have. The battle of People vs Media Industry has been going strong since Napster, they have had time to see the reality that their current business model just will not work in the digital revolution.
Many people who fight for the cause of file sharing typically don’t get into the lost jobs argument because it upsets people “oh no, by supporting a free culture — some people might lose their jobs”. We are simply cleaning up the food chain.
If you took high school science, you will know that for every level on the food chain, energy is lost. The suns rays are converted into energy by plants who store the most energy. Then animals that eat plants have the second highest energy, and so forth. The same applies to these media industries.
Currently the setup that they are trying to push (and have even come out against licenses like the Creative Commons, saying that they are hurting media), is that money first goes to the highest management people, then middle management, then the workers, then on down the line the artist makes shillings.
A setup that I try to push is:I pay an artist for his music, he pays royalties to his writers if applicable.
Or better yet: I download a song from an artist because I hear they are good, then I buy their teeshirt, and they make more profit.
As you can see, more money goes directly to the people who are making the music, and less gets tied up in the greedy hands of middle management. We are not killing jobs that are important, we are supporting the artists.

Government needs revolution to ensure that it remembers who it answers to, men need revolution so they can remember what its like to have a pair, and women need revolution to get the men out of the house, and to weed out the idiots.
The number one epidemic in my mind for the United States and Canada (though I would say more so in the United States), is apathy. The children have grown to no longer care about what happens with their country as long as they can do the things that they are used to without fear, then they see no need to change the status quo. As long as government or adults give a reason which can be twisted into an explanation that somehow makes sense, the children don’t want to be involved.
I was talking to my younger brother the other day and he was telling me that his school this year installed cameras. I was explaining to him the inherent dangers of cameras, and asked what he and/or his friends were going to do to protest it. I remembered that even a couple years ago when my school did the same thing, our students were up in arms. He explained that he didn’t really care that much, that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he didn’t have to worry about it. I felt like a klingon whose son just said that he doesn’t really care about honor.
My little brother has signed his privacy at school, over to the administrators. He can now be tracked everywhere he goes in the school. I had asked him what would happen if they somehow used innocent footage of him against him, to which he replied at that time he would fight it. He does not understand that it will be too late, he will still be in trouble and potentially be held against him the rest of his time in high school.
Thats what happened when I went to that school, there was a fight outside near the busses, and one of the school bus drivers told the teacher that it was the kids “dressed in black”, and a couple of innocent girls got detention or some in-school suspension for this fight, that turns out was not their fault. In protest of this, the whole student body came to school the day after, wearing black. This could easily have been the same with a camera, simply “he went down the hall”, could turn a kid whose only crime was a full bladder, into a school bully. A schools rules may prohibit cell phone use, so a camera catching a girl calling her father (because what the cameras don’t know, is that her father is in the hospital), can turn a concerned student, into a girl who will now have her cell phone taken away until her parents (who clearly have better things to do), and she cannot communicate with them.
The reasons why cameras in schools are bad is well documented, and have shown time and time again that they do more harm then good. Of course the biggest reason being: Our civil liberties are all like a chain, it connects us to our quality of life. While people see some links as more valuable than others, in the end, when one breaks, the link is severed. After that, its very easy for anyone to simply walk by and steal your quality of life.
The sad reality is that the only way to fix it, is to do so before you are affected by it, but the children today (inspired by their parents), do not care, and will not care until they are directly affected by it… and then its too late. We will then count on our children to see our suffering and take arms again as they have done before.
Your rights are inalienable, people may try to break your chain’s links, but that does not mean that you have to let go, you can fight them. It’s your responsibility to your family, friends, and children that you fight them. My brother has let down the people around him by giving up his civil liberties. He will not realize this now, it will take years but soon he will understand. Hopefully a few of you realize this before its too late.. and you will join the revolution.