Is Big Brother watching?

A cell phone that is turned off can still be tracked. To keep from being tracked you have to remove the battery. And since it in not easy to do that with iPhones, the cell phone Faraday cage is a reasonable item.

The NSA requires that cell phone manufacturers allow communications to be easily intercepted by them. They also restrict the type of encryption allowed. People don't talk a lot about what the NSA does, but they monitor a lot more communications than many people realize. You hear the term "chatter" from time to time. Do you wonder where they find this chatter?

For those of you who live in California, the next time you are on a highway take a good look at what is on top of poles, I am often surprised at how many people don't even notice them. They are cameras, a whole lot of them, operated by CHP. They do a good job of pinpointing vehicles of interest -- they have been used to pinpoint criminals. Here is a quote: "The possibilities are endless in terms of what we can do with this," said Sgt. Troy Rivers of the California Highway Patrol. "The only limitations to the technology are the limitations we place on it ourselves."

Private security analysts -- people without warrants -- can intercept emails. I have heard of people who abuse this ability for personal gain.

Most people know that their emails are definitely not private at work and neither are your phone calls.

Google Reliability Engineers have access to your gmail accounts and to what you have been googling. There have been abuses there too.

There have been cases where schools give free laptops to their students, laptops with cameras. Individuals who work for the school have had the ability to turn on the cameras and monitor the students. Individuals have abused this ability is some disturbing ways.

None of this is secret. But not everyone knows this stuff. It is not paranoid to think that big brother might be watching, listening, or tracking. It doesn't bother me that much, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of this information.

Funding the next big research project

50% of the wealth is in the hands of the top 2%. This is true for the US and also the world as a whole. So often we only think in terms of what is good for only ourselves, but that is another discussion. What I would like to see is the ultra-rich give up a portion of their wealth to the US government to be used in investing in our future. The uber-rich got their money as a result of research done by the US government (the Apollo Project most notably), now I would like to see that windfall reinvested in the next big research project -- finding a safe and clean alternative to fossil fuels. That is an investment that will pay off in spades!

The ultra-wealthy need to pay back the US government

The rich would not have their billions if it were not for the government. Ever hear of the Manhattan Project or the TVA or DARPA or the Apollo Project or GPS or satellites or cell phones or the Internet or biotech? Who do you think paid for those things that helped billionaires become rich? The US government! We now need to invest in energy not based on fossil fuels. The US government is good at that type of research. We also need to invest in science, education, infrastructure, and reducing health care costs. It is called investment in our future. It gives us jobs that are better than working at McDonalds.

The rich folks can afford it, they have done so in the past. The people against raising taxes on that portion of income above one million dollars per year have been brainwashed by lobbyists.

The Republicans would like to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, government safety regulations, keep healthcare in the hands of corporations that raise rates 20% a year, keep us addicted to fossil fuels, and make us pay for military projects not even the Pentagon wants.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans

Democrats support Human Welfare and Republicans support Corporate Welfare.