I am a populist libertarian. If you want to find out what I thought about the last election, scroll down two or three blog entries. Spoiler Alert: I voted for Kamala Harris.

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Essential Advice for At-Risk Seniors

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This came from Quora. My answer follows.

Q. I feel isolated and alone. I’m 67 with no family and no job. What should I do?

A. First priority: make sure you have a roof over your head. Especially in winter. You can die very easily, if you are relying on sleeping in your car or staying in shopping malls. All of these places close. An ice storm, even in a Southern state, could be fatal. Especially because cars do run out of gas. The reason could be as simple as a traffic jam that is unexpected. Gas stations can close or there can be unexpected shortages of fuel. So, if you know of a 24-hour gas station or truck stop and that is your lifeline, it’s just not a good way to go.

Second priority: even though you may not feel like you have a rational reason at every moment of day, make a promise to yourself not to commit suicide. Do not break that promise. Be aware that in some states, including the one where I live, suicide can actually be prosecuted as a crime. This isn’t just an ironic joke! Believe me. It sounds funny, but something that is even perceived as a suicide attempt could make it difficult for you to pass a routine background check.

Third priority: look on the bright side. You have an enormous one. You are past retirement age. You qualify for Social Security and Medicare. I don’t want to say that I’m jealous, but with 17 years to go, I have to conclude that those benefits are worth something.

I can’t solve your dilemmas for you, but there should be resources available in your community. Visiting a public library or even (gasp) a senior center is a great place to start.

I am not going to say anything about that guy in this post.

You know, the one who’s been in the news. Who made all the headlines. I think he made a terrible mistake. He is young, and he is throwing his life away. Whatever the poll numbers say about the surprizing number of Americans who support his actions, he used lethal force. I do not approve.

It does seem tragic to me that we don’t have better support systems in place in the Open Source “Community” for those who are not finding fulfillment in the work world. I will say that depression and suicide are unacknowledged problems in our field. From what I could ascertain in the brief news article I saw, another talented and promising programmer took his own life earlier this fall. He was a former employee of leading San Francisco AI startup, one that you have no doubt heard of. I am glad that his passing was acknowledged, but I think it is really absolutely as dangerous to glamorize suicide as it is to glamorize murder.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to form a community that can provide a support system for people between jobs. It actually may turn out to be a little bit bigger than that, but I don’t want to overpromise. I am lucky enough to be employed but who knows what the future holds. I just know I want and need a part in shaping it. Hey, it’s getting late, even out here on Pacific Time.

I am going to call it a night.

This article can also be found at pdxlocal.net and was originally published in 2022.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Surviving the Surveillance State

December 4, 2022
by Rose C.

Portland ranks among the Top 10 Most Surveilled U.S. Cities, according to Cybernews. Atlanta tops the list.

We live in a world where surveillance is a fact of life. Any encrypted software product may be backdoored, and even if it is not, you have no guarantee that the person on the other end does not have spyware such as keystroke monitoring or screen video capture running on their system. Encryption enthusiasts and amateur hackers, no matter how valiant, simply cannot compete with a nation-state in this game. Cf Pegasus.

Sneak and Peek, or “No Knock,” Warrants have been around since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, but they receive scant attention from the media. What they mean is that you may have your home searched, and items removed from your home, without any official notice from law enforcement. Ditto for electronic files. If you file a FOIA request and the investigation in which you are named is still ongoing, you will not receive any confirmation that a warrant exists. (Pat Eddington, Cato Institute)

The most frightening aspect of these warrants is the potential for planting false evidence. The second most frightening aspect is the potential for planting surveillance devices for tracking and listening — as if cell phones were not effective enough.

“Nothing to Hide?”

Like roughly 2/3 of the U.S. population, I reside within the 100-mile “border zone” where Border Patrol agents are granted additional authorities and the Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment no longer apply. You may think all of this is irrelevant if you are a law-abiding citizen.

The problem is that who you know can get you put on a list. It can also make you a target. To put it another way, we all know somebody who has a cousin who is a drug dealer.

Laws in this country are changing, and not (in my opinion) for the better. Roe v. Wade is gone, and civil rights for gays and lesbians may soon disappear as this country takes a hard shift right. Remember ICE? Children in cages? Forced sterilizations?

Come 2024, they may all be back.

If you don’t feel like being a freedom fighter, if your first priority is keeping your family safe and saving for your children’s college tuition, I am not here to judge. Just remember that in a world where power rules in place of law, abuse of that power is an inevitable consequence.

Get in a traffic accident with somebody employed by the surveillance state? What if one of them rapes your daughter? Or your son? When a large class of individuals are above the law, nothing good will come of it. This is especially true when the same individuals fear consequences from their actions. They tend to lash out and do everything they can to harm and intimidate witnesses and injured parties.

I am not an America-hater. Far from it. The country I grew up in gave me 40+ years of freedom in its purest form: freedom to explore, to create, to love and befriend those I chose, to work as much or as little as I liked. Freedom to just be. I am a GenXer. I don’t mean to talk like a crusty old-timer, but I believe I’ve seen this nation at its absolute best.

Or maybe the best is yet to come.

Nothing is fixed. Nothing is certain.

The combined 2022 budget of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the 17 different United States spying agencies (of which CIA and NSA are only two) is over $150 billion. For comparison, that is roughly one fifth of the Department of Defense 2022 budget of $742B. But remember, the DOD budget covers submarines, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, helicopters, tanks, nuclear weapons, and anti-missile defense systems, not to mention an active network of bases around the world. That’s a lot of people and hardware.

What exactly are we paying for? This remains largely unclear. Marijuana is now legal in 19 out of 50 states, but the DEA’s funding continues to grow. If you were an officer monitoring wiretaps and running undercover operations in Colorado or Washington State, where and to what were you reassigned? And as far as truly terrifying threats to health and safety, the surveillance state could be doing a much better job. We read about mass shootings in the news practically every week. It failed to prevent the violent attempted coup at our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021.

Your tax dollars at work, my friends.

Government salaries range from $20K (GS-1) to $147K(GS-15) — much less than the equivalent in the private sector. If we assume that wages (including benefits) average $100,000 per year, we would expect that the surveillance states employs as many as 1.5 million people in the United States. Keeping in mind, that is not accounting for slush funds to be distributed overseas, or James Bond style gadgetry, server space, or the cost of buildings and operations. But if we slash that number in half, that is still one federal domestic spy for every 440 U.S. citizens.

And that’s a lot.

Regarding terminology, “federal domestic spy” includes FBI informers, often recruited under duress or experiencing economic hardship. It does not include state or local police forces.

I am an extremely law-abiding citizen. That has protected me to some extent, but not completely. Somebody who has cheated on their taxes or who runs a warez server with their friends is at high risk of being “turned” and pressured by law enforcement to inform on others and further widen the surveillance network.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.