Letter to Congress

The companies profiting from tracking our every move via cell phone apps with software development kits (SDK) can’t be expected to voluntarily limit their practices. Please don’t even think that the data those companies are collecting are really anonymous, because that has been shown to be demonstrably false (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html). If a hacker wanted, she could track the movements of the nation’s elected leadership and top security officials using their cell phone data from their homes to their offices and back and know every place where they went in between and every person with a cell phone they came in contact with. Right now no law prevents data gathering companies from selling that data to whoever wants to buy it, whether for commercial, political, or nefarious purposes.

The plain truth is we, the American public, no longer have a real choice about our privacy because unregulated cell phone tracking affects nearly everyone indiscriminately. The solution is straightforward and simple: Congress has to step in to protect the privacy of consumers and their rights as American citizens by passing basic laws to protect people from a largely unregulated industry that already has demonstrated it recognizes few boundaries regarding privacy. We need those laws now and it does not matter which political party we support since everyone with a cell phone is being tracked. Everyone.

So, the question boils down to this: what are you going to do to protect our privacy rights from firms that are now organized specifically to exploit our cell phone location data? I’m specifically talking about laws that should control what companies can do with the location data they collect. A pertinent example is “purpose limitation,” which means companies can only use location data for the reason they specify and not sell it to other firms to do with it what they want. It’s time to get moving on this extraordinarily important issue. The real question is where will you be in that effort?

Canyon Dreams: a Book to Treasure

For many of us, searching for that great book, the one with the story that hooks you through the heart and refuses to let go, is a sort of a Holy Grail journey, never to be satisfied; though some stories come close, most do not. For me, Canyon Dreams is the real deal, that once in a lifetime tale that makes you laugh and cry, makes you wonder why the world is so fucked up, keeps you on the edge of your chair, and makes you want to hug the characters who leap off the pages and into your heart.

Canyon Dreams is an unlikely tale of a little known sports phenomena, rez ball, that frenetic version of high school basketball played in the tribal reservations of the arid Southwest. Although it is a sports story, at heart it is so much more that it's difficult for me to articulate this amazing book's many incredible facets.

Instead of focusing on the game, the author, the masterful Michael Powell (New York Times sports columnist), presents non-linear vignettes from the life of a community and culture that is foreign to almost all Americans, the Navajo, and subtly pulls the reader into the story until you feel the joy, suffering, pain, and hopes-dreams of the players, and understand the drive of their indomitable coach, Raul Mendoza, who refuses to let his players or the many students he counsels slip into despair and suicide.

Although I am not usually a fan of sports literature, I can tell you without exaggeration that the book is truly extraordinary and should be on your reading list.