All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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The End of Privacy is on Sale, and We’re Buying

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A microphone
A microphone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like it or not, these days the reason for the season seems to mostly be: Shopping. Even if you weren’t among the millions lining up outside brick and mortar establishments on “Black Friday,” you’ve probably got your eyes peeled for holiday deals on the web.

The hottest bargains this year come with microphones and the promise that those microphones will put the world at your beck and call.

Amazon’s Alexa-powered line of devices and Google’s new Home appliance augur an increasingly voice-powered world. Adjust your thermostat, turn on the lights, pull up the movie you want to watch or the music you want to listen to, order a pizza — all by just saying it. Our phones have been conditioning us to that paradigm for several years. This is what’s next.

No, I don’t want to crush the buzz or put you off the idea. I’m in. I run an Android phone digital assistant app that listens for my voice command, and just grabbed up a Cyber Monday deal at Amazon myself ($29.99 for the Alexa-enabled Fire TV stick with voice remote — one reason I went that way is that it supposedly requires a button push to activate the mic instead of being “always on”).

But if you’re going the voice-controlled home appliance route, ask yourself one important question: Who’s listening, and how much are you comfortable with them knowing?

Ten years ago, you’d likely have considered that question an example of paranoid conspiracy theory. But unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard of Edward Snowden by now and have come to understand that yes, governments really HAVE been hoovering up our phone and Internet data for years.  Does anyone really expect that home microphones won’t become part of the continuously expanding surveillance state?

Governments aren’t the only bad actors — over the last couple of years we’ve seen hackers compromise everything from baby monitor webcams to automotive computer systems — but governments are undoubtedly more dangerous than assorted pranksters, stalkers and thieves in cyberspace just as they are in the real world. In the not too distant future, police may be automatically dispatched to your home based on one of your devices hearing something a computer program interprets as a domestic dispute — or a seditious conspiracy.

By all means, get your voice groove on at a discount. But when it comes to electronic ears, be sure you keep your eyes open.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Thanksgiving 2016: Uncertain But Still Grateful

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Sketch of Thanksgiving in camp (of General Lou...
Sketch of Thanksgiving in camp (of General Louis Blenker) during the US Civil War on Thursday November 28th 1861. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, it’s that time of year: Time to reflect on the good things in our lives; to appreciate family, friends, community; to consider that for which we ought to be thankful.

I’m grateful for many things, starting with my family, my church and its members, my comrades in the freedom movement and the Libertarian Party,  and the wonderful people of Gainesville, Florida, the city I’ve called home for not quite four years since moving south from Missouri.

Then there’s something I had hoped to be thankful for, but that hasn’t really happened yet.

Like many, I expected to spend the last three weeks of November heaving a sigh of relief that the most contentious presidential election of my lifetime is over.

My dog in the presidential fight was never going to win, and I didn’t much care which of the Big Two came out on top. I can’t say I was looking forward to four more years of the same old thing, but I was looking forward to getting the ritual over and done with.

Unfortunately, it continues to drag on. We expected the usual quick mass and communion; instead we’re getting a Pentecostal stemwinder, replete with fire and brimstone.

Oh, the popular votes have been counted and a winner declared, but the Electoral College doesn’t vote until December 19.

It feels like half the country is protesting the outcome as ordained by the existing system (and protesting that system itself to boot), while the other half writhes on one set of tenterhooks or another.

Will the electors vote as pledged based on the popular vote outcomes in their states?

If not, who will they (or possibly the US House of Representatives if no candidate hits the magic mark of 270 electoral votes) send to the White House?

If so, are we in for four continuous years of the same gut-wrenching drama — The Trump Horror Picture Show, 24/7/365? — we mistakenly expected to end on November 8?

Are we even possibly at the beginning of a permanent political crackup, feeling our way through the early stages of some sort of revolution?

All those concerns cast a pretty long shadow over the holiday launched as an official observance on the final Thursday in November by president Abraham Lincoln in 1863, to celebrate a bumper harvest and Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg.

This Thanksgiving feels a lot more like 1939 — the year that president Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to November’s fourth, rather than final, Thursday — than like 1863.

At the time of Lincoln’s proclamation, the country’s future was becoming more certain: The Union hadn’t yet won the Civil War but it was clearly going to. The corner had been turned.

At the time of FDR’s proclamation, the country’s future was becoming less certain: World war had broken out for the second time in 25 years and the specter of American involvement in that war loomed large on the horizon.

2016’s is a pensive Thanksgiving  unlike any I’ve lived. But I’m still thankful. Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The Washington Post vs. “Fake News”: Pot, Meet Kettle

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Remember the Maine

“Freedom of expression is a bedrock of American democracy,” the Washington Post‘s editorial board writes in a November 18 jeremiad, “but its irresponsible exercise can distort and destabilize our politics.”

The Post‘s editors, mining the bottomless pit of mainstream media excuses for not predicting Donald Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election, think they’ve hit the mother lode with their newfound focus on “fake news” stories going viral in social media.

The Post coming out against “fake news?” That’s rich, especially given the last few months, during which the Post‘s reporters went all in for Hillary Clinton even to the extent of manufacturing “news” that Trump, and Julian Assange of Wikileaks, were in bed with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.

Neither the Post nor its sources have publicly revealed so much as a crumb of actual evidence for the assertion. The case for the claim consists entirely of rumor and innuendo. But since doing so seemed to benefit Clinton’s campaign, the Post unreservedly ran with that rumor and innuendo, helpfully packaged for it by the Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee.

A one-time lapse? An artifact of Jeff Bezos’s takeover of the newspaper? No. The Post  has been a vector for “fake news” for decades.

In the run-up to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the Post led American media’s cheering section, cheerfully publishing one bald-faced administration lie after another concerning Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” — then in the aftermath assisting the administration in taking revenge on Joseph Wilson (who had exposed one of the lies) by exposing his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

Woodward and Bernstein’s glorious expose of the Watergate affair is long past and may have been an exception to the rule even back then. These days, at any rate, “fake news” is the Washington Post‘s stock in trade. Half their “reportage” comes down to nothing more complex than re-wording government press releases. The other half requires the extra work of slanting alleged “news” in favor of the paper’s favored causes and against their political opponents.

The Post’s editors pathetically close their diatribe with a veiled threat, channeling their masters’ voice: Social media needs to crack down on other people doing what the Post does to “avoid giving tyrants any impetus to crack down on dissent and free expression.”

This, from the paper which used Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing work to grab a Pulitzer … then publicly advocated prosecuting their source!

The Post‘s editors have no problem with tyrants cracking down — they work for the tyrants. Their problem is purveyors of “fake news” — other than the variety pushed by the Post — gobbling up revenue in a niche the Post considers its own.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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