The internet lost a major figure in the person of Aaron Swartz on Friday January 11. Swartz, who was facing a possible 50 years in prison and $4 million fine for downloading the contents of JSTOR from an MIT computer, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old. Swartz is credited with co-authoring RSS1.0 when he was 14 and being one of the co-founders of Reddit, but his most important contributions to the internet have been his staunch commitment to the free dissemination of information and along with this, the protection of privacy. Swartz was a creator of Tor2Web, a founder of Open Access as well as the Demand Progress movement that successfully fought the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA). I spoke to Carlos Gomez, who has been involved with the MIT hacker culture since the 1980’s, more specifically about Aaron Swartz and what he stood for.

Dady Chery
Co-Editor in Chief, News Junkie Post

Dady Chery. Aaron Swartz is credited with Tor2Web. Would you explain this contribution? How important is it?

Carlos Gomez. Tor2web is an anonymizer based on a volunteer network. It works as follows. Every request for a web page requires an addressee and a return address, and you need this return address, because the page requested needs to know where to send the information. So how do you get anonymity? Let’s say you are writing a snail mail requesting a document. The upper left corner has the return address; the middle of envelope has the delivery address. You obviously need these two pieces of information. So this envelope goes to a postman who picks it up, the local post office, a central office, etc., and gets passed along many times before it reaches its final destination. Without opening the envelope, anyone who handles it knows where it’s going to and where it came from. Suppose instead, you took the letter, put the “TO” and “FROM” addresses inside it and encrypted the whole thing, and then put that letter in an envelope that had the address of a trusted person instead who knew how to decode it. That person could open the letter, decode the TO and FROM addresses, put it in a new envelope, encrypt it again and forward it. And this could be done any number of times, until the final address is that of the final recipient. Each recipient would only know the previous and next person in the chain. The Tor browser performs the electronic equivalent of this manual encoding/decoding/shuffling of envelopes automatically and transparently for any user of TOR.

DC. How do you know that Tor itself can be trusted?

CG. The TOR software is open-source, meaning that every line of the software is published and open for inspection. While you yourself may not be enough of a geek to verify personally that the software works as intended, you can rely on a large network of highly paranoid geeks who have already minutely examined this code for you. This is in sharp contrast to Internet Explorer or Safari, the default browsers that come preloaded in Windows and Apple computers, respectively. These proprietary browsers are totally black-box, and could be forwarding every syllable directly to the CIA, for all you know. The principles of open source, most eloquently described by Richard Matthew Stallman (rms),  are a foundation of free information. People who use software should know its contents and be able to share it and modify it for their personal preference. When you buy a car or anything else, you are entitled to modify it any way you want. You might void the warranty, but you’ll never get arrested.

DC. But if you publish the source, doesn’t this mean that anyone can steal it?

CG. Yes. The same way anyone can plagiarize “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Whoever heard of a work of literature covered under copyright being encoded to keep people from plagiarizing it? It is outrageous that software can be covered by copyright at all. Software is not literature. It is much more like an invention and is more aptly covered by patent law. Of course, patents also require that the principles of any invention be completely explained and accessible. Before patents, inventors used to protect their intellectual property by simply keeping the principles of operation secret. This solution inhibits the growth of engineering knowledge. Patent law is a contract in which the public grants an inventor monopoly rights for a limited term in exchange for a full disclosure of the principles of the invention. Under patent law, every competent individual is ready to exploit the technology as soon as the patent expires, enriching and extending it to the benefit of the general public. It is expected that during the monopoly period, the inventor will be able to recover all of his costs of development plus a reasonable profit. Intellectual property protection of closed-source software tries to have it both ways: they get the protected monopoly, yet the public does not receive the full access to technology that is the public’s side of the bargain.

DC. Some say that Swartz’ opposition to SOPA/PIPA made him some very powerful enemies who felt that he was encouraging the theft of their intellectual property.

CG. SOPA/PIPA was meant to protect rights that corporations should not be allowed to have. Copyright laws were developed to protect the livelihood of authors — not the corporations that buy the right to an author’s work. By this reasoning, there is no sense to a copyright outliving its author, since no amount of incentive would entice that author to further efforts. Furthermore, copyrights should be held by real persons, never by corporations, which should have to license the copyright from a living person. The rise of digital media was never envisioned by the original authors of copyright law, and the control of pliant legislators by powerful media conglomerates have led to extensions of copyright law that are totally inconsistent with the original intent of these laws. The only justification that serves the public for a legal protection of “intellectual property” is that this protection ultimately increases, rather than inhibits, access to information.

DC. Aaron Swartz got into legal trouble for downloading JSTOR documents from an MIT computer. What is JSTOR, and do you think this information should be public?

CG. JSTOR is a repository of classic literature from a large variety of fields. This information is typically scanned because it predates digital publishing. Much of this literature is from publicly-funded research. Scientific publications differ from other literature in that they are meant to be applied to future research. In the case of publicly-funded research, taxpayers cannot derive the full benefit of what they have paid for unless they get unfettered access to it. The journals that claim ownership did not pay for the research, did not pay for the authors to write the papers, and did not even pay for the reviews. So their sole, extremely dubious, claim to the ownership of papers is based on their ability to coerce some poor sucker into signing their work over to them for free: the suckers in questions being the authors, the reviewers, and the tax-paying public. Why should we pay to have anybody, including somebody, say, in Ghana, who could not afford the extremely expensive journal fees, be able to get this freely? Science is completely global. It is in the taxpayer’s benefit, not only to have this information available to other taxpayers, but also to have it available to everybody. Another scientist in some unexpected place could be the one who takes the research to the next level. The more eyeballs, the more minds get access, the more robustly science develops. Pure research is founded on the free exchange of information. Anything less than total access means that everyone is being cheated. Period. The taxpaying public, authors and reviewers give up their intellectual property rights specifically so that the information can be made most widely available and applied. Usurpation of these property rights by the journals is theft.

Stallman, who is known for the phrase “Information wants to be free!” carried the concept of free information well beyond software. He invented the concept of “copyleft”, which is a copyright that is taken, not to restrict access to intellectual property but instead to guarantee free access by preempting corporate copyright claims. Swartz’s open access movement basically calls for scientists to take copylefts on their publications rather than surrender their copyright to the journals.

DC. Any thoughts about MIT’s role in Swartz’ troubles?

CG. It is ironic that MIT the institution is so hostile to the ideals of hacker culture, with which many creative people who work for MIT, including Stallman and web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are so closely associated. MIT people have been absolutely instrumental to hacker culture, whose contributions have greatly enhanced MIT’s reputation. Project Athena, for example, which brings academic online courses to the whole world for free is an honor to MIT and a great example of free exchange of information.

DC. What do you think would be a fitting tribute to Aaron Swartz?

CG. Amend the copyright law to say:

1. Any publicly funded research, past or present, is ineligible for copyright protection.

2. Software is not covered under copyright law but properly falls under patent law as an invention.

Read the complete text of Aaron Swartz’ Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, in his own eloquent words.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Sage Ross. Photograph two by Mike Licht and photographs five, six and seven by Donkey Hotey.

I can hear him now: “Come one, come all. Enter my parking lot and spend as much time as you want and it is free.” So says the P.T. Barnum of cyberspace. Welcome to the biggest parking lot in the world. At one time that parking lot grew so big it threatened to eat itself. Entering it is free, unusual for a parking lot. Once inside behind its flimsy fence, you can basically park where you want. So, welcome. There is no obligation, at least on the surface, to do anything but lie there like a dead fish. You can, if you desire, promote the self you want others to see. Parking spots are available to everyone. When you take your spot, the parking lot owner ask nothing of you except, and this is the main hitch, that it allows them, though in secret, to gather everything there is to know about you and more. It is the hidden information they want as you deeply implant yourself in a cozy place on their site. Of course, they always do this without you knowing what they, the proprietors, are doing. Parking free in a crowded city is everyone’s dream. It is something people are unwilling to give up without a fight.

Yes, parking is free. If you wish, staying in your self-designated spot is yours forever. Saying what you want is also free as long as you abide by the rules of socially acceptable conduct. As you maneuver your way into your permanent parking spot, you think, this is terrific — so far, so good. But wait. Are you sure this is as easy as it looks? It is fun. You can post pictures of yourself and others in your life or discuss things about your life. Mostly, everything posted on the site is fleeting. Here today. Gone tomorrow. But your friends are permanent. What a relief. To be friendless would be horrible, especially in the tough world in which we live. If you delve deeply into your parking space, everything you posted is there for the taking, for the seeing, for the reliving, if you want.

You feel so good about your place in the parking lot, that you never want the experience to end. You want this fairy tale communication to last forever. But, wait there is a catch. There is always a  catch. The people who own and run the parking lot want to make money off your back from all the public and private information they have been collecting from the moment you drive onto to their site. When you got your parking space you, in your naivete never thought you would have to pay for anything. Surprise. That is not enough to make them  rich. And the rich only want to get richer. They decide to sell stock in the lot. The sale fails miserably. People who park apparently do not want to invest in the land they sit on. They do not want the free ride ever to end. Outside investors flee. The stock tumbles into the land of the negative.

The way to get big money out of the parking arena is to sell advertising on a variety of platforms. It seems that the parking lot owners are having difficulty getting advertisers to buy space on the many mobile devices in the marketplace. Mobile devices only work when people vacate their parking space. If this seems simplistic, it is. Mainly all the people who park for free do not want to spend their money, let alone their time and energy to avail themselves of the advertising already present on every available inch of the parking lot that is now a huge multi-level parking garage with no limit to how big it can grow. Growth does not always translate into cash.

Those who park free are fickle. They are the same as teenagers who fall in and out of love at the drop of a pixel. There are other parking lots and garages everywhere in cyberspace. Most are much smaller than the one I am describing. They are for the taking or using, whatever the preference of the explorer. They will grow incrementally only if they fit a lemming-like need or they will disappear if their standards are too high or too demanding. After all, if your friends are occupying a new parking space, you should too, if you want to remain friends. As an aside, do you know that an early meaning of friend had as its base the word love? Do we really love all our friends? I think not, but that is for another essay at another time.

The other day the main proprietor of the parking lot said that people have been too quick to condemn his plans for the future of the world. His world is one that  never stops moving. Being stationary is evil and cuts down on his revenue. It is a world in which he wants his parking spaces always full to increase his revenue. He says he wants to make the world in which we live and beyond into a “more open and connected place.” One billion spaces are not enough for his vision. He want everyone to occupy a slot in his parking lot. He is a dreamer whose thoughts border on arrogance. We know that ambition is great. Yet a question remains. Will the person who spends his or life embedded on what he or she believes is the turf owned by them, pony up and pay the price for parking now and into the future? There is no guarantee that those who occupy his space, especially in the fluid world in  which we now live, will buy into his dream.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Lars K. Flem.

“I heard this jury say, ‘guilty’ 288 times–24 questions, 12 jurors. That’s the multiplication. I haven’t heard you apologize once,” Berman said before sentencing Dahrun Ravi to 30 days in jail. The sentence also includes three years probation, 300 hours of community service and over $11,000 in fines, 10K of which will be donated to an anti-bias organization.

The defense, led by the bumbling Steven Altman, who said he knew he was “climbing a mountain” seeking a leniency, asked for a stay of the sweetheart sentence. Come on, guy! I know you were hoping for no time behind bars for your client, but with 15 felony convictions, that had to seem unlikely. For their part prosecutors, led by Julia McClure also asked for a stay on behalf of the state. The state, blind-sided by the short jail sentence, is seeking a prison term, the maximum of which could be ten years. The judge denied the stays. Barring action from an appellate court, Ravi will report to jail on May 31.

The sentence tossed a shocking lid on an emotional morning, filled with victim impact statements from Tyler Clementi’s father, mother and brother as well as a letter from “M.B.,” Clementi’s fellow victim of the notorious spy-camming. Both Ravi’s parents also spoke passionately on behalf of leniency for their son. But Ravi, who was expected to address the court,remained mum.

Had Ravi, who was only 18 and, like his roommate Tyler Clementi, in the first few weeks of his freshman year at Rutgers, when the notorious web cam spying incidents (described by his defense team repeatedly as juvenile pranks) occurred, publicly apologized such a sentence might sit better with the Clementi family as well as gay rights advocates, and the community at large.

Quick trigger Twitter fingers display a mixed bag of reactions. Some suggest Ravi got away with murder. Others call the sentencing “compassionate.”

My reaction is somewhere down the middle. It’s strange because before viewing the sentencing I was hoping for compassion, playing it out in my dramatist’s mind as coming from the Clementis. But that’s not how it unfolded. The Clementis, while not vengeful, certainly asked for accountability and justice. Without offering a term, I’m sure they didn’t have a meager 30 day jail stint in mind, when the spoke of “consequences.”

Listening to all the pre-sentencing arguments and letters, as well as the judge’s early harsh words, I believed a prison sentence was, in fact, warranted; hoped it would be on the short end, say 1-3 years. I don’t believe incarceration is the answer to every offense or offender, and I believe, despite the prosecution’s protestations to the contrary, had Tyler Clementi not committed suicide ( Ravi was not implicated or charged with his death) this case would never have come before the court. It would have been handled internally at Rutgers. Still, Ravi refused a plea deal that would have avoided any incarceration. He turned it down and put the Clementi family ( as well as his own) through an excruciating ordeal. In his self-serving newspaper and “20/20″ interviews, Ravi said he couldn’t take the deal because he couldn’t admit to any bias. Such an admission, he maintained, would be lying.

I’m not so sure Ravi understands the insidious ways cultural prejudices can seep in and take up residence in one’s heart and mind.

If Ravi truly learns any hard lessons those insights will most likely be uncovered as he completes the mandated anti-bias counseling program that his probation sentence includes. He is a young man, and surely does not need to be locked away–or deported ( both “M.B.” in his letter and later Judge Berman, indicated influence, on his behalf, with immigration.) And he doesn’t deserve to be the poster boy for anti-gay bullying.

I wish some measure of closure for the Clementis, though as Judge Berman said, that will be hard to ever achieve. I know they’ve started the Tyler Clementi Foundation and hope the work they do there will grant them some solace as it helps countless people fight bias, find refuge and lead healthy and joyous lives. And I hope Dahrun Ravi cultivates the empathy that eluded him as a teenager and grows into a generous and productive adult. Thanks to Judge Berman’s generosity, he’ll have an early jump-start on his second chance.

Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.

For some time I have been thinking about apps and what they do for us and to us. Apps may be great, but they are also a huge problem. To back me up, comes a story called “Selling You on Facebook” in The Wall Street Journal, yes, the Wall Street Journal, the one newspaper that I am sure is an object of loathing to anyone who regularly peruses this site for a left wing and progressive take on the world.

Non-political, the article’s premise is simple, one that I have been writing about recently. It says, “Many popular Facebook apps are obtaining sensitive information about users — and users’ friends – so don’t be surprised if details about your religious, political and even sexual preferences start popping up in unexpected places.” What the authors write is not a plot against freedom or social networks. They speak the truth. More importantly, the premise of the article extends to other apps as well and that is where the trouble begins.

We have a new player in the world of previously hidden information. The app. Apps are about giving – information of every kind, directions, instructions, name your poison. With all that and more, apps are fast becoming the single most important means of data collecting that people who do not believe in privacy, nor allow themselves to think that privacy is important, engage in at almost light speed. These amiable creatures called apps are taking over our lives.

In the recent not too distant past, advertisers used human focus groups to judge and help define new products and services. There were no algorithms to get in the way of the human equation. Mostly, these real people did a pretty good job. Hollywood movies and TV shows still use focus groups often to the dismay of the producers who believe their instincts work better in the art of storytelling.

If we do not know we should, that cookies on the Web provide anyone who gains access to them information about every move one makes as he or she surfs the Internet, often innocently and sometimes for other reasons.  As I write, apps are taking over for cookies by further devouring our online lives. Apps in a very short time have replaced cookies as the most important sales tool merchants of every type depend on.

At the rate we are going, apps will take over for both cookies and focus groups, dominating every choice we make. Our lives with all the different cyber platforms – meaning every mobile device including smart phones and tablets and every social network imaginable — control who we are and what we do and how we do everything beneath each clever, smooth, come-on interface. This will surely continue into the future. Face it, our online lives, however we perceive them, because of apps are now more than ever open for prying eyes to use the information they collect to sell us what we might not want and control us in ways that we never anticipated.

Yes, I know, apps have become very important in our lives and in how we live. They help when you are lost. They guide you to a good restaurant. They locate the nearest hospital. They find the closest gas station. They keep track of where your neighbors are, if you are so inclined to know where they are at all times. They can improve one’s life. They really do everything and more for a person in a complicated world that is more difficult to navigate every day. But addiction rules. As all addicts know, kicking a habit is nearly impossible.

I am willing to bet someone is working on an app as I write to cover the most unusual aspects of our lives. There are apps for everything and just about everything has an app. Pacman, once thought dead, is flourishing. This means that soon there will be an app for even more than we have apps for now. It does not mean apps are benign. If we succumb to these new apps, what little privacy we have will be lost forever. Privacy used to be, well, private. I care about privacy but many other people seem to revel in public exposure.

There are now probably more than a million apps available for the choosing. The making of an app has become a major tech industry. And if an app catches on, riches follow. One common theme impossible to ignore when exploring the effect of social media on how people live is the belief that social networks are about sharing. Sometimes people on social networks give away too much. That is because much of what is on all social networks is sophomoric. It is dorm room cool, which means that it is silly and self–gratifying. It depends on how needy one is.

You may wonder if anyone cares what you post, and because you may think no one does care, what you place for all to see has little interest beyond the words or photos on your page. This is all the better for the collectors of your data who mostly believe what they receive is too little. The maw they must fill is infinite. The craving for more data increases by the millisecond. It is voracious. Ignoring the need for privacy is now beyond help. It is a dead concept.

Using an app relieves a person from making direct eye-to-eye contact with another person. Technology today replaces the social experience of dealing with your fellow man and woman as if they were live and not microdots on a small screen. Using apps for everything obviates the need for real people in one’s life. Sorry, but Angry Birds are not real.

However, as long as I have free will, I am safe from this new invasion of my prime space. My hermit-like desire may be my last refuge, my final bastion of freedom. I have no apps.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for online magazines, The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of seven books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

In case you did not know it, SOPA in everyday English is Stop Online Piracy Act. Its main supporters are in Hollywood, TV, big music, and other major entertainment. Its opponents are the largest Web companies and the legions of naïve people who believe the passage of such an act would impede their right to freedom on the Internet.

For the moment, SOPA is in the official wastebasket where Washington bills go to die when so much of the public rises up to shout it down. Now our esteemed lawmakers believe SOPA, though necessary, needs clarity and better direction. It is hard to argue with the failure of the original bill. It is not worth the effort to try to pass that bill and to have big entertainment, big Internet and everyone else against it for different reasons important to each.

Do not be deceived by the millions who signed online petitions to scrap SOPA. The so-called little guy, Mr. and Mrs. grassroots, is simply a pawn in the hands of the big Internet boys who control the WEB. Do not be deceived by the black banner atop Google in protest of the bill. Just because you signed an online petition, keep in mind that the battle is still between the bigs: Hollywood and TV versus the Internet giants. It is not so much that one is against the other as much as it is how does each side best get what it wants, absolute freedom on the Internet versus controlled use for big entertainment and how it presents online what it believes it owns.

I am against piracy of intellectual property, even if the property is weak or poorly conceived. You may ask, who is not. I am against the theft of who I am when cookies ingest everything about me when I spend time on the Web. Everyone else should also feel this way, but people do not. Thus, companies such as Amazon and others are hypocrites because all they are doing is protecting their own turf. I am against hypocrisy but who is not, you say. Many who are on both sides of the argument are hypocrites because they try to hide the reality of Web commerce under the guise of freedom.

I do not believe what anyone on either side of the debate says. Both sides are using the average person, however good or bad his or her creation is, to advance its concept of freedom and ownership. They are working hard to hide one’s history on the Web and how it affects sales of products and sales of ideas.

We should all be for creativity. Many people I know agree that creativity is a gift and one of life’s joys. The Internet is the greatest platform for creativity ever. It opens enormous possibilities for anyone to post what he or she believes is their contribution to humankind. I am not arrogant when I say that most of what is on YouTube, other file sharing sites and found in millions of blogs is not very good. It is usually drivel and laughable in that we laugh at the effort, not at its humor or sense of fun. Most of what is in cyberspace is not worth my time. Attack me if you want. Please. But realize first, that just as not everyone can be a professional athlete, not everyone is capable of creating something that has lasting value. Just because you can post anything you want on the Internet for which you usually receive no pay, the act of posting does not give the work value.

We live in a society where sharing is free, especially in the world of social media. On social network sites free is the operating value system. It is the new normal, what people expect because the Internet is there for all to use as they wish, they think. Only one’s time is at stake. It strikes me that for the current generation, sharing and ignoring personal ownership is often more important than personal achievement. Many pundits believe that owning the copyright to a personally created work is a sin. If they could, they would eliminate copyright. They want to limit its length based on the idea that everyone should benefit from a copyrighted work even if they do not compensate its owner. Everyone, that is except the person who created the work.

Creating anything – art of any kind, a widget, an app, you name it — is hard work. If I create something on my own using my own time and money, or, better yet, with someone else’s money why should I not profit from or share in the profits from my enterprise without fear that someone will steal what I created. I do not subscribe to the idea that better creation will result based on earlier work. Why do the users and distributors of everything on the Web believe they should have a free ride of the back of my creative endeavor? Using another person’s work is fraudulent.

I come from a culture, or a time not too distant from the one we are living in, that believes you should own all or most of what you make with your mind or your hands. That is not the norm today. A certain amount of pleasurable, yet evil anarchy exists on the Web. There is a shoot first and ask questions later attitude toward what people own. If someone sees something they like, they post it for all to see, to possibly enjoy it without regard to its copyright. Then, if there is a complaint, they apologize, they take down the video, the photo, the written work, and everyone seems satisfied except the person or group who created the entity in the first place. The damage done, the violator gets an insignificant punishment or none at all, and goes out for another latte. Such is life.

Let me be clear. I am against piracy of intellectual property, even if and when – most of the time, by the way – it has almost no value to most people. Whether it is well conceived or poorly done, I have to admit it has value to its creator. I am against the unbridled, underhanded use of my personal information and creativity without my permission by either big entertainment or big Internet.

The voice of the creative community must make itself heard. Despite being unorganized, the creative community cannot allow those who use the Internet for gain of any kind to dominate ownership. Whatever replaces SOPA must be worth the journey or else anyone who thinks the Internet is free, however anyone uses it, had better think again.

By Ron Steinman

In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments that some legal experts are calling the most important Fourth Amendment case in years. It involves the use by police who placed an unauthorized GPS device on a suspect’s car to track said suspect’s movements. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizure of our  “persons, houses, papers and effects.” The clear question before the Supreme Court is “ do citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy as they move along public streets and highways.” Do not be too sure that the law will be on the side of the innocent. Interpretation is everything. For some judges, because of the ubiquity of new GPS technology, that fundamental constitutional idea in the Fourth Amendment, so direct and appealingly simple, at least on the surface, and well before the onslaught of recent technology may cut deeply into what remains of our privacy.

Once again, our right to be anonymous is under attack. Other judges may not care how some use the GPS, as long as law enforcement has another tool that will help put criminals in jail. For years, some conservatives have been trying to upend the Fourth Amendment. It is one of the few areas where the strict constitutionalists are willing and ready to make changes. Now technology may finally do it.

Everyone knows what GPS means. If not, you should. It is that remarkable device implanted in cars, boats, trains, what have you, that tracks your every move when you are on the move. If you are lost, GPS finds you and points you in the direction where you want to go. Called Global Positioning System, its best definition calls it “an accurate worldwide navigational and surveying facility based ion the reception of signals from an array of orbiting satellites in space.” It provides location and time information in all weather conditions. That is a mouthful. Law enforcement and who knows who else, especially with brilliant hackers everywhere, is using GPS to track the movements of what we have to believe are criminals and their associates. Are lawn mowers, snow blowers and baby strollers future candidates for GPS? You may think that is beside the point. It is not. It is exactly on point. A smart, determined operative can place a GPS anywhere. Now attaching a GPS to a vehicle of any kind, however, is legally questionable, especially as a warrant is rarely used. If GPS surveillance is to become the norm as it is in some states, at the very least we as citizens deserve to have the law observed. Another question is how long will the surveillance last? Is it for a few hours, a few days, weeks, months? Privacy is again under attack. George Orwell’s 1984 is a few years late, but it is already here.

Recently I wrote about how cookies – what a wonderfully benign word – on the Internet capture more about our lives than we know or than we should want to give away. The world of commerce loves cookies. The possible abuse of the information they gather is beyond question. I wrote about algorithms whose creators bestow on them what appears to be minds of their own. Their originators use the neat excuse of an algorithm’s complexity to absolve them of any responsibility once these instruments are let loose in the innards of the Web, where no one can see what they are doing to an unsuspecting public. Now we are about to experience another move into the world of future technology that is changing our lives and could affect who we are, and how we go about our business. The world of the GPS is creeping quietly, but effectively, into our daily life. It is dangerous to privacy when using such a device is secretive and done in ways to protect the originator, not the citizen.

There are already too many people and institutions that know more about me than I want anyone to know. Attaching a GPS device to my car or person, my bike or my child’s stroller, means that whoever manipulated the device to track me instead of giving me directions to my destination is on their way to cracking my personal DNA. One might say it is generational, that millennials, already the users and abusers of social media, care less about privacy than I do. That might be right. We inhabit different spheres of life. We will never meet and agree that an individual’s privacy is sacrosanct. I only ask that those of another generation respect who I am and allow me to protect my secrets as harmless to others and me as I know they are. At least to me. But I think that is a wish denied.

Take the GPS battle one step further. There are chips implanted in pets to help find them if they are lost. There are chips implanted in wild animals for scientific research. Parents and educators are discussing placing chips in children to track them if the child gets lost or worse, is kidnapped. So far, mass implants are not in the offing. Who is to say they will not be in the future. Attaching an unwanted GPS device to a car, a boat, bikes, trains or planes is potentially a harbinger of things to come.

I am not an expert on the Constitution. I try instead to deal in common sense. How much of ourselves are we willing to give away for the sake of commerce and law enforcement? Though the Supreme Court will decide if applying a GPS device to the personal property of a person, or to the person him or herself is a violation of the Constitution as originally written. I believe it violates my rights and if asked, I am sure most people would agree. But I cannot be sure of even that.

Every day there is one more attack on what some consider the right to be left alone. As we move deeper and more swiftly into a world dominated by expertise that is beyond normal understanding, our right to be left alone is eroding while we watch helplessly, unable to do anything about it. I feel mugged by technology that I cannot control. By all odds, the assault on who we are will never end as long as the idea of creating something new dominates how a technical innovator without moral scruples thinks. Be assured, there will always be a new piece of software that will enable those who want to know everything about us to discover out inner lives by flicking a switch. My hope is that we will not go down without a fight. That fight is only beginning. Once the door is open, it may be impossible to close it. That is the reason that the protectors of our rights are pushing to deny the police, and thus anyone, the right to track all our movements with GPS or any other technology.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC news and NBC’s Today Show. He served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam war, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, the History Chanel and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of eight books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal”, that details how NBC news covered the war in Vietnam. He is also a frequent contributor to News Junkie Post.