Cat and mouse, on the web

Anonymouse.org, created in 1997 by a German student, provides computer server proxies to citizens around the world living in repressive regimes. Such software allows citizens to get information free of governments censorship. It works by rerouting data through other servers allowing users to surf the net anonymously.

This software is used by millions of people everyday in countries like China and Iran, but government watchdogs have found effective countermeasures to catch the censorship dodgers. Instant messaging is commonly used to evade censors. Other methods have helped to spread the word of updated proxy lists and evade censorship as well. Human rights activists do prison time when caught, but they have prevailed with help from American advocates.

It’s a vicious circle, full of risk not to mention slow surfing and bad graphics, but it is human nature to seek free of expression. Human creativity cannot be stopped; it simply goes underground when people live with too much censorship.

Ultimately, I think the people will always prevail in these types of situations because the need to express oneself is greater than the motivation of the oppressors. To American non-profits that provide free downloads and run these proxies, I say right on. This is exactly what America should be doing to promote democracy instead of engaging in wars in the Near East.

The new face of the silicon age

This article poses the question of who is to blame—Indian workers willing to work for less or the American businesses who choose to outsource jobs. Citing statistics about wages and jobs exported overseas in the first part of this decade, the author puts a human face on the phenomenon by interviewing a young female programmer.

Aparna Jairam, is a working mother and young professional at Hexaware Mumbai. Jairam. She makes $11,000 per year, one-sixth of what computer programmers make here in the US. Jairam does not she apologize for performing a job once done in the US. People in India are not stealing American jobs, she says. She is simply doing what she was trained to do.

The economics times are certainly changing since globalization began more than a decade ago. Americans have watched their jobs being outsourced to developing countries. Globalization seemed innocent enough back in the early 1990’s, but the results have proven otherwise to many US workers and especially to computer programmers.

We signed up for globalization and now we know it was not designed to protect our jobs, but to make big money for businesses. Personally, I avoid buying food from countries that have lax standards about production and little government oversight. And some of these countries are not second or third world countries. For example, I recently read that Australia has a toilet-to-tap system for recyling water which makes me nervous about drinking Australian wine.

The best way to keep jobs here in the US is to buy local whenever possible. As consumers we can still vote with our dollars.

National ID

Congress recently mulled over the merits of a national ID linked to biometrics. What exactly this would look like, no one is sure, but under the Bonner Plan a biometric card would be the only legal form of identification for US workers. This unspecified biometric could be a digital photo, a fingerprint or an iris scan.

The Bonner Plan caused controversy among lawmakers last year and was met with opposition from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and a national Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights organization. Opponents say this form of identification puts an undue burden on the job seeker to prove she is work eligible in a government system fraught with database errors.

I do not know the outcome of this issue, but it as a nation we may have bigger fish to fry than chasing after immigrants. After all, the wages of illegal immigrants make up less than one percent of the GNP. Perhaps the economic disparity between Mexico and US will begin to level out during the next several years reducing the lure of illegal immigration for some. Maybe Obama’s administration will support the idea of helping undocumented workers to earn legal status.

In any event, calling a plan tamper-proof sounds like folly to me. From what I’ve observed in my half century on the planet is that nothing is foolproof. Digital technology lends itself to hacking my its very nature. Conservative politicians might just as well go on devising plans to building a wall across Texas than pursuing the biometrics course as outlined in the Bonner Plan.

Facing down the e-maelstrom

College presidents used to be safely insulated from unpleasantness and angry attacks by protestors, but thanks to e-mail, those days seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur. Now when students have take issue with administration, presidents can expect a flood of messages to appear in their in-boxes.

In the old days, protests on campus were mentioned after the fact in the college newspaper, but today bloggers pick up on stories as well as e-mail addresses of presidents. News spreads well beyond the confines of the institution bringing issues into public scrutiny. College presidents’ staffers are left to sort through the emails to avoid issues with wealth donors and prominent politicians. Because there may be hundreds of bloggers, institutions can not address the source of the information to repudiate inaccuracies spread by bloggers.

Being a former community newspaper writer, I find this situation interesting. I think more good comes from blogs than bad—at least they are being read and I can’t say they same about newspapers. Blogging challenges the status quo by bringing newsworthy topics out from under the shadows of academia. On the other hand, the quality of blogs is not always stellar. Unsubstantiated rumors may appear as fact in a blog.

Furthermore, institutions do need to keep their donors happy to ensure survival. College and universities can handle the pressure; it’s just that they are used to controlling the media. Instead of hiring more PR types to do damage control, higher education institutions should encourage donors to report disturbingly controversial rumors to the PR office.

A nascent robotics culture

There is a new killer computer application on the horizon that promises to nurture our young and care for our elderly. In this report, Sherry Turkle, ponders philosophic questions such as what constitutes "aliveness" (p.191) and when is it appropriate to substitute a robot for a human being or animal.

Turkle explains the relational psychology of how human beings engage with each other and their computers. Her qualitative fieldwork with children and seniors reveals that we project ourselves and our feelings on to robots to satisfy emotional needs. Clearly, robots cannot reciprocate when it comes to love, but this is how our brains are hardwired. This phenomenon of treating a robot like a sentient being is present and easily observable when among children at play. Indeed, it is very human to have fantasies of a mutual connection that does not exist.

There is a lot more troubling technology out there such as human and animal cloning. Still, I would have concerns and reservations about my family members being nurtured by a relational artifact. With that said, robo-love is better than no love. There is much we can learn from this technology and if used carefully, it could be applied to help alleviate human suffering.

Mind control

The new technology of brain implants is called brain-computer interface (BCI) and here’s how it works. Electrodes are embedded in the brain or worn on the surface of the skull. These electrodes are sensitive enough to pick up the thought patterns of the user. The user thinks of a motor function such as hitting a ball or opening an email. The computer interprets the neural activity associated with the thought activating the cursor on the screen to perform the function.

A young quadriplegic, Matthew Nagle, had the BCI chip implanted in 2004 and has been the subject of medical research since then. Though considered experimental and highly invasive by medical researchers, the technology is giving hope to young disabled people like Nagle who believe it many someday help them regain mobility.

I think BCI technology is very promising to say the least. It represents the very best technology has to offer – to mitigate human suffering. My adult daughter has a form of epilepsy that is controlled with anti-seizure medication. The medications she has tried are highly toxic causing side effects such as kidney stones, paranoia and a host of other health problems. My hope is that this kind of technology will be developed to control irregular electrical impulses in the brain allowing her to eventually stop taking the medications. We are not that far away technologically speaking from helping people with all kinds of brain injuries and disorders.

Privacy, legislation, and surveillance software

If you work in the private sector, chances are your email is anything but private. Your employer could be part of the growing trend to monitor productivity by using surveillance software. Workplace monitoring is nothing new, but it is on the rise and getting more sophisticated. Monitoring software allows employees to measure and collect all computer activity of their employees.

The American Management Association reported in 2005, that over half of employers store, review or monitor email, files and Internet connections. Most of the employers surveyed by the AMA said they have written policies in place. Still employees violate these policies to shop, surf and download music at work. The temptation of having technology at our fingertips is more than most workers can resist. Employers clearly have the upper hand and workers will remain vulnerable to firings for violation of company policy. In spite of the Electronics Communication Privacy Act (ECPA), employers are well protected from employee privacy claims because they own the technology used by employees and can therefore monitor it at will.

I work in for the State of Washington and therefore, enjoy my Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. The rule of thumb at my institution is that it is OK to use technology to take care of personal business, but do it on your own time. Don’t let your computer use get out of control or deter you from performing the functions of your job. I appreciate this attitude of trust very much and try not to abuse the privileges I have. I know the private sector is very different having worked there in the past. Personally, I would not want to work on an employer who was spying on me. However, I think most employers are reasonable about employee checking personal email or calling home to check on the kids so long as the job gets done.

Nord, G., etal (2006) Privacy, legislation, and surveillance software. Computers in society, 14, 68-71. From Communications of the AMC, 49(8), 2006, August pp.73-77.

March of the robolawyers

Game theory can now be applied to the field of family law as evidenced by software that helps divorcing couples divide assets or seek mediation. The approach is anti-combative, guiding both parties through step-by step trade-offs to bring into focus what matters most to them rather than playing out destructive and costly emotional dramas. Programs such as Family Winner seem to work because they use conflict-management principles. This takes the emotion out of the divorce proceedings with very good results everyone concerned.

Couples who have used the programs give them high ratings perhaps because the emotions that can be exacerbated by real live attorneys are eliminated by robolawyers. Anything that reduces the emotionality of divorce has to be a good in my opinion. For too long unscrupulous divorce attorneys have been the real winners who take advantage of clients by advising them to go for the jugular. Not all attorneys cash in on client vulnerabilities, but I've seen it happen among friends. This software has great potential to reduce human suffering. I give it the thumbs up.

The Economist (2006). March of the robolawyers. In P. DePalma (Ed.), Computers in society, 14, (pp.200-201). New York: McGraw Hill.

Secrets of digital detectives

The devil is in the details, so they say, and now computer technology exists to do the detailed work of tracking criminal activity. These new software programs analyze patterns from insurance claims and credit-card transactions. Anti-fraud software is designed to sift through mundane details and permutations that humans inevitably miss. It works by using statistical data from past transactions to determine a probability score for fraud versus legitimacy. The results have saved companies millions of dollars. Anti-fraud software is also used in the telecom industry to identify fraud on mobile networks. Of course, thieves have countered back and changed certain behaviors to avoid detection, but so far the software is working well for business and getting more sophisticated.

I am usually opposed programs that make it easy for business and government to spy on people, but in this case, I think the computer programs are highly beneficial and serve the greater good. Fraud is rampant in our society and quite expensive for honest consumers. None of us likes to pay higher prices and premiums. On the other hand, I’m a person with weird spending habits. I might shop at a thrift store and Nordstrom’s on the same day or eat at Zeke’s greasy spoon on my way to the opera. So far, my spending habits have not set off any false positives with my credit cards, but I’d better be careful.

E-mail is for old people

According to this article, traditional-age college students have all but abandoned campus e-email for instant messaging and text messaging leaving college officials wondering how to reach them. Though many students say they still check their e-mail accounts, others complain that campus email is less than user-friendly. They also say they consider official messages for the college little more than Spam. College and universities have responded by creating MySpace and Facebook accounts. They are also resorting to podcasts, RSS feeds and Web video clips to keep students informed.

As a community college advisor, I can see the value of using new technologies to reach students. I didn't feel that way at first, but I must agree it is important to keep up with technology or risk losing students. At my institution we have had similar conversations about offering new student orientation and informational workshops via podcast and vodcast. We have also discussed a Facebook page. There is no one correct answer, but it is reasonable to communicate as widely as possible given the urgency of the announcement.

Carnevale, D. (2006, October 6). E-mail is for old people, The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A27-29.

Data on the elderly, marketed to thieves

Just as children are vulnerable to predators on the Internet, the elderly are often targeted on-line. The difference is that children don’t have fat retirement accounts for thieves to plunder. Internet scams have been on the rise since 2003 and much of the blame can be traced to the selling of lists.

InfoUSA sells lists of names of senior citizen to fraudulent telemarketers. Banks, such as Wachovia, have allowed criminals to withdraw money from the accounts of elderly victims. And Wachovia is not the only bank involved in processing unsigned, fraudulent checks. However, other banks have been more cooperative with authorities when confronted with evidence of scams.

Just in case you were beginning to feel sorry for Wall Street bankers, read this article. It is clear from the mortgage meltdown that banks are no longer the conservative institutions they once were and it is clear that from the article banks are no longer interested in protecting the life savings of average clients. I am one hoping that this banking free-for-all will cease with the Obama administration.

Five things we need to know about technological change

Neil Postman writes about the social consequences of technology on our lives. He borrows from the greatest thinkers and writers of Western culture to support five ideas in a speech he delivered in 1998. His first idea is that “all technological change is a trade-off" or a Faustian bargain, if you will. There is a price to be paid for every new technological advance. Ask not, Postman cautions, what will this new technology do, but what will it undo? What will we lose as a result and is it worth it?

Postman goes on to make four more related observations about technological change and its affects on mankind weaving in historical references to support his well-taken points.This reflective article is especially interesting in light of the economic crisis of 2008. Postman seems to have predicted the current Wall Street mess. He says explicitly that capitalists need to be watched carefully and disciplined when they get too greedy. So-called conservatives “talk of family, marriage, piety and honor but if allowed to exploit new technology to its fullest economic potential, they may undo the institutions that make such ideas possible.” (p.6) Wow—Postman’s observations seem particularly astute ten years after he made this speech to a group of technology professionals.

China’s computer wasteland

When rich Americans like you and me decide it’s time to buy a new computer, we are faced with the inconvenience of getting rid of our old one. Like most Americans, I've had an old monitor and printer in a closet for years now. As the article explains, computers like mine can't be dumped in the garbage, because they contain hazardous materials such as lead and mercury.According to the article, old equipment from the west makes its way to US recycling centers simply to be shipped back to China or India. An Indian environmental group estimates that it costs ten times more to recycle a computer in a developing Asian country as it does to recycle the same product in the US.

However, there is no regulatory oversight of the e-waste business in China. Toxic chemicals are dumped freely along the Lianjiang River by poor migrant workers who struggle to feed their families. They dismantle the computers for scrap metal and reusable parts making a few dollars a day. The human toll is horrific with workers reporting abysmal working conditions and a myriad of health problems.

In case you were wondering how social justice and sustainability issues are intertwined in our global economy, read this article. It explains exactly how the poor are forced to bear the burden of western e-waste just to feed themselves and their families. Suddenly, I don’t feel like shopping for a new computer anymore.

The perfect mark

Had he not been an accomplished professional, the jury may have seen John Worley as the victim of an Internet scam rather than an accomplice to an Internet crime ring. But in 2005, Worley, age 60, was sentenced to two years in prison for bank fraud, money laundering, and possession of stolen checks.

This classic Internet scam began when Mr. Worley responded to a South African emailer desperately seeking to transfer money to an overseas bank account. Ignoring warnings from friends and family, Worley participated in what is known as an “advance-fee fraud” that spun out of his control between June 200l and January 2003. His overseas partners were never apprehended, but they made off with over $600,000. Audaciously, the criminal masterminds continued to email Worley for more cash even after his assets had been frozen by federal investigators.

Personally, I think Worley was guilty as charged. His judgement was clouded by his greed for easy money. He made decisions that a reasonable person would not have made under the circumstances. Frankly, I was surprised to read that anyone would take this kind of email seriously especially a person of Worley’s stature. What was he thinking?

The subprime loan machine

Automated Underwriting software was created by a former NASA rocket scientist, Edward Jones, in the 1990’s. Jones developed his niche products and sold them to the sub-prime mortgage market making millions for himself and billions for the industry. This technology fell unfettered into the hands of lenders such as Countrywide, who allowed computer approved loans to make lending decisions. The rest, as they say, is history.

Interest-only and no-down-payment loans quickly became the norm on Main Street. AU was hailed by mortgage brokers as a quick and dirty way to process loans that should have been denied. From the vantage point of the post mortgage meltdown of 2008, the extensive misuse of AU by the mortgage industry makes the good old boys network look highly ethical. Jones, most likely, has retired to some other banana republic.

Browning, L. (2007). The subprime loan machine. Computers in Society, 14, 16-17. From The New York Times, (2007, March 23) pp. C1–C4.