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The Illusion of Privacy and Other Games

    Hey, everyone. Of course you have heard about Antisec hacking an FBI laptop. Supposedly, there was about 12 million Apple user ID'S on the thing. The hackers dumped about a million of them on the internet, after removing much of the associated data. The FBI issued a statement of denial, being careful not to deny anything. They said, " There is no evidence that an FBI laptop was hacked, or that there was User ID's on the laptop." That is a significant 'shade of grey' difference from denying the FBI had those numbers.
    Let's get real about this. 25 years ago, it was a major deal for law enforcement to  snoop on one person. A judge grudgingly gave permission for a wire tap on a person who was clearly a mafia kingpin or something. Now we have law enforcement, and others, mining a unprecedented harvest of personal information from satellite spying, drone aircraft and electronic records, just to name a few. Now, evidently, law enforcement (or marketers) can get 12 million personal records of innocent people that they can toss around on a ****** laptop, without a court order, I suppose, from a judicial system which doesn't control jack. Profilers look at people's internet records, the books they read, calls they make, to determine if they might need watching or could be sold something in particular. If you mention certain words on the phone, NSA notices. They have trigger words that cause computers to hear and record certain things. If you are talking about your latest IOS action game and you say, "On level 15, you get to use a b-o-m-b on the aliens," you will hear a click on the line because you just said a trigger word.
     All this is not news. Of course, 9-11 and other events have been used as an excuse to violate even the most rudimentary rights of privacy. The typical person on the street can do nothing about this, though, so why worry about it? Let's just chill and play video games and don't say those w-o-r-d-s on the p-h-o-n-e. Ha, ha. Oh, don't read the K-o-r-a-n on your E-Reader. Just kidding.
    I downloaded the new app called ESPN CFB for College Football fans today. It looks good on my I-Pad 3 but the controls seem a little dodgy. There are videos and articles and a feature to keep you up to date on your game of choice. They had an article about Alabama's struggle to defeat the Michigan team, just kidding, and the fact that Alabama had moved into the #1 ranking. They also had an article on the new beginning for the Penn State football program. So far, I like the app. It is not too highly rated on the app store thus far, but I am sure they will work out the bugs. By the way, it is free and a very small file size.
     Hey, guess what? I was in Best Buy today and was looking at console games for X-Box 360. I saw Call of Duty, MW3 for $59.99. My thought was, "Gee, this weekend you could buy a very good war game, Modern Combat 3, Fallen Nation, on the app store for 99 cents. (On sale) Is the console game really $59 better? I think consoles will survive, but I-Pad has changed the gaming industry forever. Of course I've said this many times before.
     Hey, check back later and I'll try to tell you about a game called Puzzle Shot, which Carley is playing a lot. She likes it.
    From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.
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