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August 16 is International Wave at Surveillance Day

August 16, 2017/0 Comments/in August

Today is International Wave at Surveillance Day, created in 2001 by privacy activist Zorbitor to provide “a chance for the watched to reach out to the watchers both at home and in public venues.” First, a little history is in order.

Video Surveillance

In 1942, the surveillance camera was invented by German engineer Walter Bruch and installed by Siemens AG to observe the launch of V-2 rockets.

In the U.S. the first closed-circuit television system (CCTV), Vericon, was introduced in 1949. It required constant monitoring because there was no way to record and store information. As video cassette recorder (VCR) technology became widely available, surveillance became more practical. Tapes could be saved for later playback or erased and reused.

Cameras were placed in New York’s Times Square in 1973. In the decades that followed, video surveillance spread across the country, especially in public and theft-prone areas. In 2005, the New York Civil Liberties Union tallied 4,176 cameras below 14th Street. London has approximately 500,000, while the UK as a whole has more than 4 million.

Of course, waving at a camera would be largely ceremonial given that modern surveillance systems are automated and thus incapable of appreciating irony, sarcasm, snark or a friendly greeting. Chances are, we wouldn’t get any attention from the spy satellites whizzing over our heads either—but they’re there.

Satellite Surveillance

On March 5, 1946, a secret treaty called the UKUSA Agreement created a worldwide network of listening posts run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

The countries agreed to exchange intelligence gathered from the interception and translation of foreign correspondence. One passage stated: “It will be contrary to this agreement to reveal its existence to any third party whatever.”

Within nine years, Canada, Australia and New Zealand joined the signal intelligence (SIGINT) sharing operation. The group became known as Five Eyes (FVEY), shorthand for the AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY classification level. The network connecting the alliance became known as Stone Ghost.

In 1964, FVEY established the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT), which would go on to own and operate a fleet of satellites under the guise of civilian control . In 1966, the first satellite of the new ECHELON system was launched into orbit.

In 1970, GCHQ set up a secret signal station in Morwenstow near Cornwall, England, to intercept satellite communications over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Soon afterward, the NSA built a station in Yakima, WA, to begin interception over the Pacific Ocean.

Omnipresent Surveillance

Most reports on ECHELON focus on satellite interception, which has dwindled to a small percentage of traffic. It has been revealed that the program also employs other means to monitor all landline and cellular telephone calls, email, faxes and texts and augments them by purchasing information from corporate entities.

Modern fiber optic cables deliver data much more efficiently than satellites ever could. Advances in technology, convenient for consumers, are a boon to those who vacuum up information. Most of us carry mobile phones at all times, emailing, texting, surfing, sometimes even talking.

To eavesdrop on terrorists, druglords and hostile foreign governments, ECHELON must capture everyone’s communications and use its supercomputers to analyze them for keywords. That can lead to mistakes such as the listing of a woman as a possible terrorist after she called a friend and told her that her son had just “bombed” in his school play.

Fear of terrorism since September 11, 2001, has led many to believe security and privacy are mutually exclusive. No matter where anyone stands on that issue, one thing is clear: The apparatus used to surveil everyone was in place long before that attack.

Can you hear me now?

In the US, the NSA grabs three billion conversations each day and stores the “metadata”—phone numbers, date and time, length of call—for 18 months. Spoken conversation is legally protected; the audio is not supposed to be monitored. (The experience of that mom would seem to put the lie to that.) NSA computers also capture every out-of-country call and email to or from a US citizen. In this case, the content is considered fair game. Agents are authorized to read or listen to any of them.

When paired with public information on services such as Google, Yelp and Facebook—which is not subject to the same legal protections as phone calls—Stanford researchers were able to use metadata to identify names, partners, pregnancies and medical problems as well as calls to gun stores, head shops and prostitutes.

In 2013, after Edward Snowden‘s act of whistleblowing, treason or both, Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the NSA, admitted, “Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life.”

Its XKeyscore program captures approximately 40 billion Internet records every month, adding them to its digital storehouse, including emails, Google searches, websites visited, Microsoft Word documents sent, etc.

NSA’s annual budget includes $250 million dollars for “corporate-partner access,” a term of art for its payments to acquire material compiled on corporate computers. It collects so much data that it maintains 700 servers at 150 sites.

On August 13, 2016, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers announced it had hacked Equation Group, which allegedly carries out cyber attacks on behalf of the NSA. It proved its claim by releasing two sets of highly sophisticated malware and hacking tools used by Equation Group and promises to sell the rest for $1 million in Bitcoin—roughly $574 million US dollars.

Do the Wave?

We must admit we don’t feel much like waving, and not just because today’s observance has been called the laziest protest ever. During our research, we’ve conducted 28 Google searches and read 47 posts at 34 sites, excluding Wikipedia entries. We suspect that even if we don’t wave at surveillance today, it may be waving, however briefly and figuratively, at us.

Try to have a happy International Wave at Surveillance Day. We can all blame Zorbitor if we end up on a no-fly list.

Single Tasking Day

February 21, 2017/0 Comments/in February

Today is Single Tasking Day. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to do just one thing at a time, without participating in the sham called multitasking.

Unlike computers, humans are not wired to work on many complex problems at once. Switching focus quickly from one thing to another can make us perceive that we’re managing multiple streams of information simultaneously, but each shift requires energy.

Our overall processing power becomes less efficient, even when dealing with things we do habitually—like scanning our phones, texting and going through emails—that don’t seem to require much attention but are, in fact, tying up the executive functions of our brains.

A study at Gresham College in London found that multitasking caused subjects’ problem-solving performance to drop by the equivalent of 10 IQ points. MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller says our brains aren’t wired to multitask. “When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost.”

Per McGill University professor Daniel Levitin, “Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain.”

So feed your brain; just do it slowly so you don’t get a cramp. And have a happy Single Tasking Day!

February 14 is National Ferris Wheel Day

February 14, 2017/0 Comments/in February

Today is National Ferris Wheel Day, a holiday that celebrates the birth of George Washington Gale Ferris on February 14, 1859. At age 33, he designed the first Ferris Wheel, which was introduced at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

The exhibition was also known as the Chicago World’s Fair and commemorated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the New World. It was one year late but, considering that Columbus actually landed on an island in the Caribbean, thought he was in Asia and never set foot on what would become the United States, maybe we should let it slide.

The Ferris Wheel was America’s answer to the Eiffel Tower, the jewel of the 1889 Paris Exposition. When completed, the ride stood 264feet high, with a circumference of 825 feet, and had 36 cars, each 24 feet long, 13 feet wide and 10 feet high, weighing 26,000 pounds. Screens were fitted over the glass windows on each side. Doors locked securely; firefighting equipment was included. Conductors rode in each car to answer questions and allay fears.

Cars held up to 60 passengers at a time, with a total capacity of 2,160. It took 20 minutes to complete two revolutions, stopping at six platforms to admit and unload passengers then making a nine-minute nonstop rotation. A guard was posted on each platform to signal the operator when it was safe to resume.

The Ferris Wheel opened on June 21, 1893, carrying up to 38,000 passengers daily. A ticket cost 50¢. More than 1.4 million people rode it over the next 19 weeks. On clear days, it was possible to see the fairgrounds, the surrounding city and countryside of four neighboring states. Three thousand of Edison’s new lightbulbs mounted on the wheel made it a spectacle at night as well. The ride had a perfect safety record.

After the fair closed, George Ferris became convinced he’d been cheated out of his share of the reported $750,000 profits the ride earned for exhibition management. His investors and suppliers pursued him for nonpayment. He was also sued by makers of similar “pleasure wheels” for patent infringement. He spent the next two years embroiled in litigation.

Although he eventually proved himself to be his ride’s rightful inventor, the efforts took an emotional and physical toll on him. In 1895, instead of selling the wheel to an amusement park like Coney Island, Ferris paid to have it dismantled and rebuilt in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, hoping to earn a profit from ticket sales. The venture was a failure.

In what would prove to be his last attempt to pay debts, he sold most of his interest in the business he’d built, G.W.G. Ferris & Company, to his partners. He died of typhoid fever on November 22, 1896, at the age of 37. After his death, it was revealed that he was bankrupt and his wife had left him the year before.

On June 3, 1903, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Ferris Wheel, with $400,000 in outstanding debts, had been sold at auction for $1,800 to a wrecking company called Old Truck, which took it down and reassembled it for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s estimated to have carried 2.5 million passengers from its inaugural day in 1893 through its last day of operation in 1904.

In 1906, with neighbors complaining about the eyesore that remained, the Ferris Wheel was reduced to rubble with dynamite. Demolition experts had to use twice the amount of TNT they thought would get the job done. The first 100 pounds brought down the wheel but didn’t destroy the foundation. Workers drilled holes into the concrete and dropped in 100 pounds’ worth of dynamite sticks. What was left was hauled away as scrap.

Perhaps what we should remember about Ferris are his contributions as an engineer to the modern usage of steel in building construction and the experience he gave to millions. As journalist Robert Graves reported in 1893, “It is an indescribable sensation, that of revolving through such a vast orbit in a bird cage.”

Happy National Ferris Wheel Day!

January 31 is Scotch Tape Day

January 31, 2017/2 Comments/in January

Today is Scotch Tape Day and celebrates the invention of cellophane tape in 1930. The story begins in the early 1920s at Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, now known as 3M, which made only sandpaper at the time. Richard Gurley Drew, a banjo-playing college dropout hired as a research assistant, soon changed the course of the company’s history.

While delivering sandpaper samples to an auto body shop, Drew noticed painters’ frustration with the tape they used to mask car parts. Overly sticky, it ripped off bits of paint when removed, ruining the detail and forcing them to start over. He made it his goal to find a solution to their problem.

For the next few years, Drew experimented until he found the perfect combination of treated crêpe paper, cabinetmaker’s glue and glycerin. It adhered well yet stripped off easily without taking paint with it when removed. Automakers immediately recognized its value and began placing orders for it. The tape was marketed as Scotch Masking Tape in 1925.

Drew rose quickly through the ranks. In 1929, he struck upon the idea of using DuPont’s recently invented cellophane to make transparent tape. Cellophane was a moisture-proof material used to wrap and present baked goods and grocery items. Its only drawback was the difficulty of sealing packages securely and attractively. Drew hoped to develop tape that would blend with the wrap.

The machinery used to apply adhesive to masking tape was ill-equipped to deal with cellophane, which curled and ripped. The amber glue used on masking tape looked terrible on a transparent surface. Drew and his team had to design new machines and a new clear adhesive made from a combination of oil, rubber and resins.

The resulting Scotch Cellulose Tape was introduced in 1930. By that time, DuPont had already developed a new type of cellophane that could be sealed with heat, negating the need for tape. Despite the fact that Drew’s invention missed its target market and debuted during the Great Depression, the adhesive tape sold well to thrifty customers.

In fact, the desperate times may have spelled success for Scotch tape when other products would have failed. Even the racial slur the name is supposedly based on may have helped boost its sales. Scottish people were considered stingy. It was an ethnic stereotype that served 3M well: when money is scarce, stinginess is a virtue and a “cheap” product is a smart buy.

3M later promoted the legend with ads featuring “Scotty McTape,” a cartoon mascot who repeated the story that in 1925, auto painters told a 3M rep (presumably Drew) to go back to his “Scotch” bosses and tell them to put adhesive all over the tape. That’s unlikely since 3M didn’t make tape at the time and, in any case, the problem for the painters was that the adhesive was too strong.

Soon Scotty McTape was declared a member of Clan Wallace and began wearing its red tartan (and Wallace Hunting green plaid.) In the early 1970s, it was decided that McTape was no longer an effective marketing tool and the character was retired. The casual racism of Scotch tape’s name has been forgotten. Dispensers decorated in plaid are purchased every day with no awareness of their association with the clan of William Wallace, also known as Braveheart.

Richard Drew died in 1980 and was posthumously inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame for U.S. patent number 1,760,820. While working for a sandpaper manufacturer, he invented a tool that has become an essential part of our lives. The next time you reach for adhesive tape, at home or the office, take a moment to imagine life without it. We can’t but, thanks to Mr. Drew, we don’t have to.

Happy Scotch Tape Day!

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