“Here’s some free advice for 2023,”  Erin Keller writes at the New York Post: “Delete all your personal information — and sexual content — from your electronic devices before donating them to Goodwill.”

The advice may be free, but it’s worth far more than we’re paying for it.

The “news hook” to Keller’s piece:  A TikToker’s revelations concerning an old router he bought at Goodwill for $15.  This particular router (a discontinued Apple model called a “Time Capsule”) did more than connect its user to the Internet. It also included a hard drive to store computer backups on.

Money quote: “There is audit history, credit card numbers, flight information. I have this man’s bank account number …”

Fortunately, “@dankeunextgay” isn’t  a bad guy. He’s not abusing, sharing, or selling the information. He’s trying to track down the router’s former owner or family to return it.

You might be surprised at how common this kind of thing is. An acquaintance of mine (who’s into retro computing) once bought a stack of 3.5″ floppy disks at a thrift store. When he got home, he discovered that their previous owner had been a hospital, and that they were chock full of, in US legal parlance, “Protected Health Information” on patients. He’s not a bad guy either, so he formatted the disks and filled them with his own stuff instead of prank-calling cancer patients or trying to pick up other people’s  oxycodone prescriptions.

There’s a lot of talk these days about a “right” to privacy. I’m skeptical of that notion (“information wants to be free”), but privacy is certainly a good thing. And it’s our responsibility to protect our own privacy and the privacy of those we’ve made promises to (e.g. a health provider’s promise of patient confidentiality).

So yes, if you’re going to drop your old laptop in a thrift store donation bin (or abandon it at a repair shop — yes, I’m talking to you, Hunter), for the love of Pete wipe your hard drive first.

But there’s more to it than that. Use strong passwords. Lock your phone with a pin, not a swipe or fingerprint scan. Use end-to-end encryption for your emails and texts where it’s available. Set up PGP to encrypt your private documents.

There are bad people and governments (but I repeat myself) out there who won’t hesitate to abuse your personal information for their own benefit.

If you value your privacy, guard it.

Happy New Year.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On December 15,  the US Government Accountability Office released a report on the Internal Revenue Service’s failings in “providing customer service to taxpayers.”

Are taxpayers “customers?” Let’s have a look at that idea.

“For years,” George Ochenski writes at CounterPunch, “we’ve all heard politicians claim they should ‘run government like a business.’ But of course government isn’t a business …. the governor’s ‘duties’ are not to make a profit for himself and his corporate shareholders as he did in business. Rather it is to serve the people of the state and uphold his oath of office to protect and honor our Constitution.”

That’s a riff on the old myth enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed …”

In reality, government can be run like a business, and government is run like a business, because government is a business.

But, as with broadcast television, social media platforms, and “free” Internet services, the taxpayer or “average citizen” is government’s product, not its customer.

What kind of business is government? The best metaphor is that of a sprawling ranch, raising various types of livestock, each of which may be put to various uses.

As a taxpayer, you’re a cow to be milked, or a hen whose eggs are gathered, or a sheep who’s periodically sheared.

As a prospective incarcerated “criminal,” you’re a pet whose kenneling is paid for by those cows and hens.

As a prospective conscript, you’re a steer or hog or fryer being fattened up for future slaughter.

And as a prospective parent, you’re “breedstock,” charged with keeping the rancher supplied with new generations of cows, hens, pets, steers, hogs, and fryers.

Those are the roles played by members of society’s productive class — the people who make useful things and provide useful services.

Government is the rancher.

The customer is the political class — those who buy you, and everything you produce that the rancher doesn’t eat himself,  paying the rancher with both material wealth and continued power to run the Lazy G Ranch operation. Government employees. “Defense” and “prison” and other “ranch services” contractors. Ostensibly “private” businesses seeking preferential treatment from the rancher for their own enterprises.

Do you benefit at all? Well, yes, in the same sense that the hogs get slopped, the steers get grain and grazing space, etc. But to the extent that this is a trade proposition, let’s face it: You’re working for chicken feed.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Talking with The Daily Beast about the new Dyson Zone — a $949  wireless headphone that also purifies the air its user breathes via an attached face mask —  Dr. Anthony Wexler, an air quality researcher at University of California Davis complains:  “These things are terrible because only rich people can afford them …. if you’re wealthy, you can breathe clean air — whereas if you’re poor, well, too bad.”

At first blush, Wexler’s criticism seems sensible. My sprawling Wyoming ranch, nestled in its pristine valley in the Rockies, probably boasts far better air quality than the densely populated urban areas, right next to belching smokestacks of death, where all you poor people live. Well, when my private chopper and private jet aren’t revving up for action on my private helipad and runway, anyway.

[Note to reader: I don’t own a ranch, helicopter, or airplane. Heck, I don’t even own a house or car.]

But let’s step back a moment and look at how the market treats expensive new devices.

Dyson’s first product was a “cyclonic” vacuum cleaner. Its first major licensed release, in Japan, sold for about US $2,000 in 1985 — more than $5,000 in today’s dollars.

James Dyson spent 15 years developing the first bagless cyclonic vacuum. He went through, by his account, 5,127 attempts to get it right, after quitting his job and soliciting investors and lenders so that he could work full-time at it.

Today, Amazon’s search results return cyclonic vacuums in every format from handheld to upright to canister, many for less than $100 (about $39 in 1985 dollars).

What should we say to James Dyson? Hopefully something that he can answer with “you’re welcome.”

The first cell phone, introduced by Motorola in 1983, retailed for $3,995 ($7,335 in 2022 dollars).  Today, nearly everyone carries one of that phone’s great-great-grandchildren in his or her purse or pocket, with the cheapest “burner” models — leaps and bounds smaller, many of them “smart” — going for less than $20.

The Apple I — really just a circuit board, not a full-fledged computer — retailed for $666.66 in 1976.  How much computer can you buy for $3,361.20 in today’s dollars? Well, that’s about what a top-shelf  Apple MacBook Pro goes for … but I’m writing this column on a $150 machine.

The Latest New Thing is almost always expensive, for various reasons. Inventors spend a great deal of time and capital developing it. Patent protection gives them exclusive rights to manufacture or license it for a little while.

And as soon as The Latest New Thing looks like a winner in the market, everyone else goes to work making something like it. Only better. And cheaper.

What makes that process possible? Those rich people spending big money on The Latest New Thing, talking it up, and making it cool.

“Supply-side economics” has long been derided for its supposed “trickle-down” effect.  Dyson’s high-end offerings demonstrate the REAL — and desirable — “trickle-down” effect in action.

If the Dyson Zone works well for, and sells well to, the well-heeled, us poor people will be able to grab it, or something like it, on the cheap come Black Friday 2023.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY