Baseball, Surveillance, Encryption and Serenity
By Julie Freestone
If you are like me, you are swamped each day with communications about things you can do to save the world, or at least the country. Almost hourly there’s a request to sign a petition, attend a town hall meeting and call an elected official. And of course donate.
More recently, there have been suggestions aimed at helping people who might be losing their grip to cope with the new reality we live in. I’ve collected ideas such as: mute the television and cover the President’s face; increase filters on news feeds; disconnect from aggravating news sources; ban political conversations from meals; volunteer to do something worthwhile in your local community. People who were never activists have written their first letters ever to their Senators, taken part in marches and demonstrations, made phone calls and contributed to organizations they admire.
Some of the tips are pretty creative. One integrates ideas about how to age gracefully — exercise — with defending your rights. “Take at least five steps toward defeating fascism every day. And then there‘s the Jewish therapist Barbara Stock who encourages reflection and points out everyone has a different way of doing that. She talks aloud to herself. She concludes by saying, “These challenging times call for more than meeting our basic needs. They call for enriching our souls. The important message I must give myself is: slow down, reflect on what I need through each day in order to have the strength to stay the course. As Hillel taught, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?”
My first 100 days class
I thought when I signed up for “First 100 Days” at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Berkeley, California, that the six-week class would give me a container for thinking about the beginning of the Trump administration. Truthfully, I think I hoped it would give me insights that would help me conclude that “things aren’t so bad.” My hopes have largely been dashed.
Dr. Darren Zook is doing the best he can, telling us each week he’s never taught a class like this one. No kidding. He has to update his notes on the way to class each week. And I’m quite sure that he NEVER expected that the students — probably almost all retired professionals like me — are so hyper-vigilant about what’s happening in this country right now that they can recite the name of nearly every cabinet appointee and describe a good deal about each one. The last time I remember knowing this much about a “team” was when, as a high school student and rabid New York Yankees fan, I could recite the batting average and previous game’s activities of every player. (More about this later)
Dr. Zook brings in guest speakers to his class and this week it was an expert on surveillance and cyber security
Surveillance and encryption
As an aside, back in the day, when my German-born husband talked on the phone with his family in Germany, they would occasionally say jokingly, “NSA, are you listening?” when they thought they might be discussing something political. More recently, when Rudi sends email to a favorite relative who likes to explore American politics, he sometimes put in a quip about the NSA.
Ha ha. According to the guest speaker there’s not much to joke about regarding the National Security Agency and surveillance. And there’s very little to restrain extreme surveillance. “Existing surveillance is predisposed to turnkey tyranny,” said Geoffrey King, a free speech attorney and activist. “The machinery is there — largely restricted by policy not by law.”
Dr. Zook added that even though his undergraduate students think their secrets are safe in the “cloud,” the fact is that giant fiber optic cables transmit much Internet material, especially from other countries and there are filters already on them for governmental monitoring.
According to King, surveillance is nothing new and neither are ways to foil spying. He pointed out that the Kamasutra, an ancient Indian text, mentioned cipher as a skill women should learn. Abigail Adams urged her husband John to write her in code when he was in Europe. And Thomas Jefferson invented an encryption disk machine that was used into the 1960s.
Even though spying on people may have historical roots, King, who has a tattoo on his arm that says “We the People,” says encryption is under attack. “The head of the CIA said use of encryption could itself raise a red flag.” And in a follow-up email, Dr. Zook said, ““Aside from the general importance in relation to things like Russian hacking in the election, it looks as if the new administration is going to try to push back on encryption and privacy in the name of national security. That will greatly empower and expand the NSA’s role in surveillance, leading to a number of First Amendment and Fourth Amendment issues and a general weakening of the laws that protect our privacy. That’s definitely not a good thing.
More stuff to make us nervous
If that doesn’t make you uneasy next time you try to think of an unhackable password, here’s some more stuff that might make you even more edgy — followed by my prescription for serenity.
First, the sight of some of the cabinet insisting that the current immigration raids are not “military” operations, while the President is boasting about them as military activities, could unsettled you. What are these folks really doing? Couple this with the fact that if all the cabinet members with recent military connections wore their uniforms, it would look eerily like, as one commentator said, the USA has had a military junta. Maybe we have.
In the class, someone asked King who could stop Trump. He held up (or maybe just looked at his tattooed arm) and said, “We the People.”
Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and big brother
So back to baseball. February 24 was the first S.F. Giants exhibition game. Think sun, heat, pitchers, catchers, batters. Hot dogs. The big controversy these days is about whether pitchers should be allowed to skip throwing four balls when they want to intentionally walk someone. We’ll be worried about who the five pitchers in the regular rotation will be and whether Buster Posey can catch most games this season. I think I’ll start memorizing batting averages.
If that doesn’t work, you might take Geoff King’s advice and download an app called Signal. It’s an open source encrypted messaging platform. It might keep the junta from overhearing your lunch plans.
Julie Freestone started her professional journalism career as a sportswriter for the Montclarion Newspaper in Oakland, California. She has come out of retirement to write about the new world. She and her co-author Rudi Raab wrote Stumbling Stone, a story about prejudice, coping with Fascism and World War II.
