Differintegration

The current phone hacking scandal in Britain has not been that riveting. I doubt Rupert Murdoch knew what his employees were doing, and I question whether we should be that shocked by the developments. The press operates in a drastically different way in Britain so I can’t pretend to imagine everything else that has gone on across the pond. But still, the debacle brings to light questions of privacy and, of course, security.

First, I acknowledge that what the journalists did was not “hacking”, but that is the term most are using to describe the situation so I will use it as well.

Put yourself into the shoes of the hacking victims. Presumably it occurred a long time ago. During that time period that they were ignorant of what happened, how did they live? As if nothing happened, because they had no idea that it happened. I think this underscores an important point: the crime was harmless while knowledge of the crime was disastrous (and not only to those who were hacked).

The reason why the crime is viewed as heinous is because it causes a sense of insecurity. Those doing the hacking were not trying to hurt anyone, rather they were going after stories they believed would sell more papers. Now, don’t misunderstand, they should not have done it, but really we should question why we value privacy as much as we do.

I realize that there are many bad people out there that would love to get personal information in order to use your credit cards, etc., but, for me, I cannot imagine a reason why someone would even want to listen to my voicemail. It would be very boring, trust me, I have boring friends. So, for the vast vast majority of us, we have no reason to be worried about our phones being hacked. But still, we are outraged at the thought and do everything we can to keep our lives private.

The reason why this bugs me so much is not that people have personal preferences for privacy that I don’t. Rather, I often see opportunities for progress stifled by concerns over privacy. Not just concerns, but mostly unfounded ones. I know people that dislike using their credit card on the internet, even at sites like Amazon. People are outraged that complete strangers might get glimpses of outlines of their genitalia when they walk through airport scanners (I also think we overreach for security, but that is a different balancing act). Many people are scared that Google tracks their search data (which is ridiculous if you know anything about Google). We are encouraged to use different passwords for all our accounts, eight characters and include capitals and numbers. Just FYI: humans don’t sit down and try all the passwords they can think of to access your Facebook account, bots do it without prejudice. Privacy fences, tinted windows, and shut blinds are all other examples of how we distance ourselves from the outsiders.

Sure, we could enter a discussion on the individualism that pervades Western society. I think, for the most part, that has allowed us to accomplish more than any of our predecessors. But really, when you are more concerned with privacy than health, isn’t that a little too much? Healthcare information technology and medical studies are both hindered in enormous ways by concerns for privacy, and to what end? Worse care and fewer scientific discoveries.

We have the right to privacy. If someone hacks your phone or computer bring them to justice, especially if it is an institutional problem. Basic computer security is essential to have a functioning computer. If you are a celebrity or wealthy, you should probably do more than everyone else to insure the security of your accounts.

But we also should have the right to forgo privacy with the goal of progress. If Google did not track search data they would not be able to sell the ads they do and thus not offer the incredible free products they have. If a significant portion of the population said that they wanted to share their health data with researchers, what scientific insight would we gain? If everyone wasn’t so scared that some hacker in Norway might learn they were vaccinated as children for mumps, could we have a better system of electronic medical records and personal healthcare information technology?

Seriously people, its time we question whether privacy is worth it. I seriously doubt someone is targeting you.

Apparently the United States Court of Appeals chooses judges randomly for at least some issues. The upcoming battle regarding the PPACA is looking bleak for those against the law, as the computer randomly selected three liberal judges. From their website:

Panel: “[A] computer program designed to achieve total random selection” is used to generate three-judge panels and to assign cases to those panels.  See I.O.P. 34.1.

Is a sample size of 3 enough to insure it represents the true mean of the population?

Let’s assume that each judge can either vote for or against (it doesn’t matter what for, just that the result is binary). The calculation for sample size is:

n = [t² N p(1-p)] / [t² p(1-p) + a² (N-1)]

Now, for the most conservative estimate, we should use p=0.5. t=2.179. N=13, a=0.05.

n, the sample size needed to accurately estimate the true population mean, is 12.68. Basically, they need all 13 judges to get a representative sample. 3 is grossly inadequate. Now, whether they are attempting to achieve a representative sample is another question. But, since they are going through the trouble of random selection, they probably are. Or perhaps they are going for “fairness”.

Rather than using random selection, it seems that stratification would serve better to get an accurate sample of judges.

Then again, jury selection is not an attempt at a true sample of a population. Rather, it is supposed to be a cross-sectional representation. The sample size for a population of 300 million would be a few thousand. Then again, p would change to a much higher value because the juries have to be unanimous.

I am surprised that something which will impact every individual in the country is left up to 3 judges. SCOTUS has nine. Grand juries can have 23, I believe. Raj has 12. Now, I realize that these judges will not have the definitive voice. The issues will be raised in the SCOTUS at some point, I’m sure. Likely not until after the next presidential election.

The fact that so many judges disagree on basic constitutional principles bugs me a little more. But that is the problem with the abstract nature of language, I guess.

Cheap pun.

Yep, I went there.

“Jack Bauer” has been trending on twitter today, need I say more? I do have a couple of thoughts on the events that transpired yesterday.

First, I don’t believe that celebrating the death of another human is appropriate. I also don’t think that is what people are doing. The celebration is over the inability of one man to infringe on our basic human rights. I can relate to that, as I believe we all can.

Second, we cannot forget that this came at a enormous cost. I doubt it was worth it, but they are all now sunk costs so it doesn’t matter anymore.

Third, apparently we kept his sister’s brain when she died in Boston to run DNA tests on him. That strikes me as unethical and slightly surprising.

Fourth, to those that caused the price of oil to drop several percent, What were you thinking? Also silver. There was one large sell order that caused the price to drop 5%. I bet if you added up all the drops in commodities at the open today they would be billions of dollars. To think that one man can impact the markets this much when we didn’t even know who he was and he hadn’t attacked the US or other nations in years makes me wonder why you all have jobs as traders. The fact that nearly everything has rebounded already demonstrates that his death means very little more than the symbolism it represents.

Fifth, burying him at sea was a good decision.

Sixth, I cannot imagine this having a significant impact on the presidential election. The focus is going to be the economy. All this death means is that the GOP cannot accuse Obama of being soft on national security issues. Also, people have such short memories in this country.

Seventh, when Obama’s news conference was announced I was about to go to sleep. I was hoping for a couple of things. First I was hoping that Obama would sit there in front of a camera for thirty minutes (the announcement was for 10:30pm EST), and when 11:00pm EST came, he should have stated “Thank you fellow Americans. I just wanted to ruin Celebrity Apprentice’s ratings”. This in the wake of the excellent comedy at the recent Whitehouse correspondent’s dinner. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

[Update: 4:44pm. If I had bothered to check, I would have seen that silver futures were down before the news came out last night. Still, the markets were initially up and ended down. What I said holds true, except for silver, which was down due to someone big selling. My apologies. I will leave the post as it was.]

I respect strategic moves, especially in politics. They depend on an understanding of how people will act and react, thus the core of political strategy is broad and deep psychological understanding of humanity.

Obama released his birth certificate today, putting to bed the recent and not so recent controversy surrounding it. In a statement, Obama said “Over the last two and a half years, I have watched with amusement. I have been puzzled with the degree with which this thing just kept going.” For some reason I like the picture of Obama sitting back in the oval office with the Obama-smirk on his face, chuckling to himself as he watches Trump on television. In my mind he mutters “Gotchya bitch.” Biden, sitting there with his legs crossed quite feminely (they should be at a ninety-degree angle, guys, not thirty) asks Obama “What?” To which Obama replies “oh nothing” as he taps his fingertips together in succession. Now, I have no inside information into his reasoning for the timing of the release, but here is how I imagine it went down.

There was nearly no doubt that Obama would win the presidential election in 2007, at least in my mind. He had no reason to release his birth certificate when birther claims first arose. Perhaps he knew that its release would serve him strategically later on.

When the Tea Party and other republicans began to vociferously question whether Obama is a natural born citizen, he saw an opportunity. By allowing birthers, such as Trump, to bring the question of his birth certificate to the forefront of the national debate, Obama created an ideal situation to discredit them.

So why did he release it now? Recently many Republicans have attempted to distance themselves from Trump. With Trump speaking out as a birther, other republicans have begun to state that they “take Obama at his word” or they “believe he was born in Hawaii”. Suddenly, Obama realized that the birther claims were dying, and he had to act or lose any political advantage from the release of his birth certificate. Is it any wonder that recently CNN had a front page article stating that they investigated birther claims and found exactly what everyone else found? Someone knew that they had to keep this on the public’s consciousness until the birth certificate release. Obama would have rather waited until the primaries, but Trump forced his hand. Perhaps I should be saying well played Mr. Trump.

However, Trump is not working for the republicans, he is working for himself. Obama has severely damaged Trump’s credibility, which has already been damaged by questions regarding his net worth as well as Trump’s previous alliances and policy suggestions. Trump is playing this all wrong if he truly wants to run. He fell into Obama’s trap and will suffer for it. The republicans should thank Trump for bringing this to light now. Then, of course, they should tell him he is out of the club.

Trump’s stance on China as well as his birther claims stem from the same place: xenophobia (to be honest, I don’t know if birther claims are xenophobic, technically. I think it depends on whether birthplace signifies something more, but this is not a conversation on the etymology of the term xenophobia).

To be honest I wished that he wasn’t born in the US, but not for the reasons that Tea Party members do. Having that clause serves no purpose in today’s highly mobile society. Citizenship clause, sure. Natural-born clause, not so much. Can we now consider amending the Constitution to allow non-natural born citizens to run for the Presidency? Alexander Hamilton is dead last I checked.