In January, I started Janet Vertesi’s Opt Out Project Cyber Cleanse. (Refer to my blog post for links to the Cyber Cleanse.) The Cyber Cleanse is meant to help you reclaim some of your online privacy. If you’re active at all online, you give up your privacy, simply by being there. Even if you attempt to do everything anonymously with tools to hide your location, computer forensics specialists can track you down eventually. The only…
Wow, it’s been a helluva six weeks, hasn’t it? Elon Musk and Donald Trump, along with their enablers, are shredding U.S. democracy and the federal government at a pace so rapid it makes my head spin. I thought there were more safeguards in place, what with the whole three-branches-of-government-separation-of-powers thing. But, the Framers of the Constitution apparently didn’t foresee one political party acting in bad faith (gerrymandering, preventing people from voting, stacking the Supreme Court,…
Friday, January 31, 2025. That’s the day I read a Reuters article that said Elon Musk had locked Office of Personnel Management (OPM) staff out of computer systems containing the data of federal employees. I heard the same day he was seeking access to Treasury Department payments systems (the U.S. government’s bank account) and he got it that weekend. That night, while trying to fall asleep, I had the sinking feeling that this narcissistic, unelected…