I just learned that my family and I were randomly chosen to fill out the Census' American Community Survey or ACS. I am now under legal obligation to fill it out completely or break federal law.
Let me restate that, I have been randomly chosen to give up my personal information, in depth, or face legal action. How, in this great nation, did I get randomly chosen to submit to a law that does not apply to all?
I wrote to President Obama, Governor Kitzhaber, Sentors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkly, the ACLU and KATU 12's Shellie Bailey-Shah. I may even write NBC's Dateline.
Please read my message to the Census Bureau and call Robert M Grove, Bureau Director. The mailing address that they offer is: Paperwork Project 0607-0810, US Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, AMSD 3K13A, Washington DC 20233.
Thank you for reading this far. What follows is the text that I emailed to paperwork@census.gov
----------------------------------------------------
"My name is Jereme Hall, resident homeowner in Oregon.
We filled out the general census survey willingly, with enthusiasm, and on time.
Now we've received the The American Community Survey (Form ACS-1 2011 KFI), specific ACS code 256 036 422 01 111 1103 03.
The questions are tedious, insulting and take considerably more time than the stated approximate 38 minutes to complete.
While I am NOT stating that I refuse to comply (be clear on this, I am not refusing to comply), I do not wish to fill out this form.
I called the help line at 1-800-354-7271 to ask to be removed from this survey.
I was told that it was mandatory and passed to a supervisor.
The supervisor was very helpful, but her hands were tied.
She could only repeat the helpline phone number, this email address (paperwork@census.gov) and a mailing address.
When asked what my deadline is, she had no resources or training to allow her to answer.
If I do not comply, I am breaking the law. When do you decide that I am not in compliance? Tomorrow? Yesterday?
What are the penalties? Will I face imprisonment or fines? A first time criminal record starting with a felony?
I am a hard working man whose wages have been cut by the recession with a loving wife and two children at home. She does not work because we can't afford day care.
Our time is valuable to us and so is our personal information.
I am shocked and dismayed to be dragged into a bureaucratic paperwork shuffle backed by the force of law.
As a citizen of this nation and a proud and voting resident of Oregon, I seek release from the random choice that put me in this position.
Clearly stated, please release me from the American Community Survey.
Sincerely, Jereme Charles Hall"
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
NTS and wall clocks... why not?
When you want to know the time, where do you look? At your wristwatch or a wall clock?...No. You look at your cellphone. Your cellphone, besides being the lifeline to work, family and friends, is also the most accurate clock around.
Calls require exquisite timing to allow signal modulation and hand-off between towers. So the clock is constantly being updated. Computers also benefits from time updates... its called NTS (Network Time Service).
So, I'm tired of adjusting my plain old battery driven wall clock. Why can't I find a wall clock that connects to my WiFi and sets itself by NTP to the correct time. Just once a week is good enough to make me love my wall clock again. Sure, my battery will get eaten up faster... but once a month is a pretty small power drain.
How about that digital alarm clock that makes you either too late or too early for work twice a year (in places that enjoy the insanity of Daylight Savings Time)? With WiFi and NTP, you'll forget that DST even happens.
I'm talking about a clock that has a USB port, client software for the operating system of your choice to allow configuration (loading the wireless SID and password, choosing the relevant time zone and NTP server), and a stripped down WiFi client that listens on UDP port 123 for 10 seconds and then sleeps for 7 days. In a face clock, there will need to be a weak motor to advance the hands.
Does anyone feel that we are pretty silly not to have clocks like this already?
Calls require exquisite timing to allow signal modulation and hand-off between towers. So the clock is constantly being updated. Computers also benefits from time updates... its called NTS (Network Time Service).
So, I'm tired of adjusting my plain old battery driven wall clock. Why can't I find a wall clock that connects to my WiFi and sets itself by NTP to the correct time. Just once a week is good enough to make me love my wall clock again. Sure, my battery will get eaten up faster... but once a month is a pretty small power drain.
How about that digital alarm clock that makes you either too late or too early for work twice a year (in places that enjoy the insanity of Daylight Savings Time)? With WiFi and NTP, you'll forget that DST even happens.
I'm talking about a clock that has a USB port, client software for the operating system of your choice to allow configuration (loading the wireless SID and password, choosing the relevant time zone and NTP server), and a stripped down WiFi client that listens on UDP port 123 for 10 seconds and then sleeps for 7 days. In a face clock, there will need to be a weak motor to advance the hands.
Does anyone feel that we are pretty silly not to have clocks like this already?
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Egypt turned off Internet. "Experts" say it shouldn't be possible.
In the last couple of weeks, the former Egyptian government was under siege by protesters organized via social media. Prior to Mubarek's dethronement, the Egyptian government was desperate enough to cripple access to the Internet within the country's borders. Some are mystified by how this was done, but I have a simple hypothesis to explain it.
Egypt has a state-owned communication backbone with very few legs to the Internet. DNS is centralized at the telco. Turn off DNS and the Internet apparently goes down. Network administrators the world over know how frustrating a DNS failure is. The general Internet using populace doesn't have a clue that a DNS outage is not a true Internet outage. The difference is such that there is no difference to the general user. They can't get to Internet based sites and services.
DNS (Domain Name Service) uses names to find publicly routed IP addresses. If you know these number addresses, you can crudely navigate the Internet without knowing or using the names. For example DNS will take "google.com" and use IP address 74.125.227.51 to get to one of Google's many search servers. Go ahead and copy the IP address above into your browser's address field.... you'll get the familiar search page.
The problem with a DNS outage is that no one can remember all of the IP addresses, links between sites rely upon DNS, and dynamically generated sites are also name dependent. So, even a tech-savvy web surfer will have limited success with browsing the Internet without DNS.
With the Internet so important to communication and commerce, how do you protect yourself from the simple yet destructive act of turning off DNS at the backbone; as Egypt apparently did for their populace? The easy answer is, get a VPN connection.
Those who had VPN's to localize their connection outside of Egypt's borders will not have experienced the outage.
Another answer is to attach by IP to a web proxy that browses by IP instead of domain name. I haven't seen such a proxy, but it seems trivial to make an adaption of Squid that will do so.
If Egypt can pull the Internet plug, can other countries do it also? The answer is, it depends.
In the US, the answer is "no" for several reasons. A majority of the the DNS backbone servers... the root servers that control it all... are in the US. Also, the major telecoms are not state-owned. Turning off DNS in the US would mean "turning off" the Internet for most of the world and losing billions in commerce. The US government would be incredibly stupid to do so.
The only nations that can "pull the plug" are those that match Egypt's infrastructure. State-owned with very few (or tightly-controlled) wire or fiber bundles that cross the borders. But don't bet on it, protect yourself. It's cheap and easy to get a VPN connection and fun. As always with services on the Internet, watch out for scammers when you go searching for your own VPN.
Happy browsing while you thumb your nose at your local dictator!
Egypt has a state-owned communication backbone with very few legs to the Internet. DNS is centralized at the telco. Turn off DNS and the Internet apparently goes down. Network administrators the world over know how frustrating a DNS failure is. The general Internet using populace doesn't have a clue that a DNS outage is not a true Internet outage. The difference is such that there is no difference to the general user. They can't get to Internet based sites and services.
DNS (Domain Name Service) uses names to find publicly routed IP addresses. If you know these number addresses, you can crudely navigate the Internet without knowing or using the names. For example DNS will take "google.com" and use IP address 74.125.227.51 to get to one of Google's many search servers. Go ahead and copy the IP address above into your browser's address field.... you'll get the familiar search page.
The problem with a DNS outage is that no one can remember all of the IP addresses, links between sites rely upon DNS, and dynamically generated sites are also name dependent. So, even a tech-savvy web surfer will have limited success with browsing the Internet without DNS.
With the Internet so important to communication and commerce, how do you protect yourself from the simple yet destructive act of turning off DNS at the backbone; as Egypt apparently did for their populace? The easy answer is, get a VPN connection.
Those who had VPN's to localize their connection outside of Egypt's borders will not have experienced the outage.
Another answer is to attach by IP to a web proxy that browses by IP instead of domain name. I haven't seen such a proxy, but it seems trivial to make an adaption of Squid that will do so.
If Egypt can pull the Internet plug, can other countries do it also? The answer is, it depends.
In the US, the answer is "no" for several reasons. A majority of the the DNS backbone servers... the root servers that control it all... are in the US. Also, the major telecoms are not state-owned. Turning off DNS in the US would mean "turning off" the Internet for most of the world and losing billions in commerce. The US government would be incredibly stupid to do so.
The only nations that can "pull the plug" are those that match Egypt's infrastructure. State-owned with very few (or tightly-controlled) wire or fiber bundles that cross the borders. But don't bet on it, protect yourself. It's cheap and easy to get a VPN connection and fun. As always with services on the Internet, watch out for scammers when you go searching for your own VPN.
Happy browsing while you thumb your nose at your local dictator!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)