TTCBCOAB #50, Cycling Goals, and Privacy

Here are some things that can be carried on a bicycle, from a recent Costco run. It's much easier to negotiate the parking lot on a bike rather than a car. I park right by the entrance and lock up my bike, which makes for a pleasant and quick escape. Plus, I can ride through the gaps in the parking lot speed bumps. Sweet!

Various odds and ends That Can Be Carried On A Bicycle...

Milestones

My stated goal for this year is to log 4500 commuting miles on my various bikes. Halfway through this year my running total stands at 2700 miles, which is well over the 2250 miles I expected. Assuming no hideously bad weather this fall, I may very well exceed that goal. I use MapMyRide to track my mileage and have found it a very useful service. It's easier to stay motivated when you have a measurement of how you are doing.

Stats, courtesy of MapMyRide

Got Privacy?

The recent revelations about the NSA data collection and surveillance (which many of us already suspected was occurring) got me to thinking about privacy and how we unconsciously change our behavior when we think someone is watching us. Chatting with many friends and acquaintances, I discovered they are thinking about expectations of privacy, too. So what's a law-abiding citizen to do? Here's my top ten list:

1. Ensure you have a good password on your all your devices.
2. Enable FileVault, BitLocker, or an equivalent product to encrypt your hard disk.
3. Use an anti-virus prorgam to regularly scan your computer.
4. Install Tor and use it for anonymous browsing.
5. Install Gnu Privacy Guard on your computer (I use GPGmail).
6. Encrypt your email and encourage your friends to do the same.
7. Install a version of GPG on your mobile device (I use ipgmail for iOS).
8. If you access email with a browser, consider using mailvelope .
9. Make a donation to the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
10. Tell your senators and congressional representative that privacy is important to you.

Remember that as citizens, we enjoy only those rights we are willing to defend.

Metadata and the Unwanted Gaze

The President claimed yesterday, in the continuing debate about NSA surveillance, that Americans' privacy has not been violated by the collection of so-called meta-data. But it appears there are a large number of citizens who don't agree with the President's assessment. We should have seen our growing surveillance society as it was developing, but most of us didn't. The crux of debate on NSA data trawling hinges on two related issues. The first has been our inability, to date, to translate the rights and privacy we desire in the actual world to our presence in the virtual world of email, web surfing, and social media. The second is the very real injury that comes from being watched. One has to agree with the President that it's important to debate the issue of governmental surveillance, now that we know it is occurring, because how we decide today on the issues of virtual rights and the unwanted gaze will set the stage for expectations of privacy and rights for generations to come.

Letters & Postcards

A couple of decades ago, Phillip Zimmerman developed an open source public key encryption suite called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) that could be used to scramble stored data and email content, thereby preventing it from being read without the permission of the owner or the intended recipient of the data. The need for encryption was illustrated by comparing letters and postcards: When you send a letter via US Post, you expect the contents inside the envelope to remain private while the letter is in transit to the recipient. In contrast, when you send a postcard you have relinquished any such expectation: You are willingly acknowledging that anyone and everyone is free to read what you have written. Each of us knows this and adjusts accordingly: There are many things that we might put in a letter that we would never consider revealing in a postcard. What most American's don't seem to realize is that an unencrypted email message is the digital equivalent of a postcard. They can be intercepted and read by any number of entities while the data makes it's way from the sender to the recipient. If you think that no one can read your email once you press SEND, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

PGP, and it's variants, rely on a public key for each person that is widely distributed (usually on one or more of several key servers) and a private key that the individual keeps securely stored. Data sent to an individual is encrypted using their public key and can only be decrypted using that person's private key. You can use PGP to encrypt locally-stored data and you can digitally sign a message so that the recipient can verify the message was 1) sent by the holder of your private key and 2) that the contents have not been altered by a third party. Encryption should be the default for email, but sadly it is not. Few people realize the implications and even fewer actually care that this is the state of digital privacy.

For his part in developing and distributing PGP, Zimmerman was subject to a federal investigation (at considerable personal expense) for unauthorized exportation of weapons (military grade encryption). In the end, Zimmerman prevailed and even started a company that marketed the PGP products. Eventually PGP was acquired by Symantec and has since been sold, but you can find PGP products for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. It's a bit cumbersome, but you can send encrypted emails that are essentially the equivalent of a sealed letter, it just requires some effort and your recipient must do some work to create a public key.

Metadata and What It Means

Traditional Jewish law recognizes that injury occurs when anyone comes under the unwanted gaze of another. This sort of gazing does not have to have the salacious intent of a peeping tom. Anyone who watches their neighbor's activities without permission is harming the other person. This injury is what seems to have been lost on the White House when it asserts that no one's phone, email or text messages are being read so there's no harm being done. The very fact that the government is recording details about who is talking to whom is causing injury, regardless of whether or not one of the parties is a "foreigner."

What makes the NSA's wide-scale snooping so troublesome is that, by collecting and storing large amounts of meta-data, they are creating an index into all communications occurring between individuals. While some of these individuals may have criminal or, if you prefer, "terrorist" intentions, the data that is being swept up is general in nature. The general search and seizure of this meta-data is occurring before any crime has been alleged or committed. Having a meta-data index into communications simply makes locating and reading of unencrypted data that much easier. Governmental assurances that only "suspect" communications are being targeted is beside the point.

Data has been gathered without the knowledge or permission of everyone involved and this turns the presumption of innocence on it's head. We are developing a legal framework where everyone is potentially guilty until proved innocent. Just as you would not write your innermost thoughts and feeling on a postcard, each of us changes our behavior when we know we are being watched. We have all been injured because when we are under surveillance, we cannot act and think freely.

Taking Action

There are productive choices each of us can make in regard to the NSA's snooping. First, make your displeasure known to your elected representatives who have been complicit in approving these activities. Citizens only enjoy the rights that they are willing to defend.

Second, take steps to secure your communications and data. GPG (GNU Privacy Guard), a free implementation of the OpenPGP standard, is available for Windows, Unix, MacOS, iOS and Android. Download GPG, generate a private and public key, publish your public key, keep you private key secure, and encourage your friends to adopt the policy of sending only encrypted emails. If you send text messages and are an iOS user, use iMessage whenever possible since, according to this article, those messages are encrypted and cannot be intercepted by law enforcement.

All of these actions may not stop NSA snooping. Governmental snoopers may ultimately be able to access encrypted data through password cracking or by installing key logging software, but at least we can make them work for it.

TTCBCOAB #44 & Finding the Way Up

My wife fell and broke her wrist yesterday, so grocery shopping was done by car today. I did an earlier trip by bike, carrying a lighter than usual load: 8 pound bag of dog food, 2 pounds of dog biscuits, and a Schilke B-flat trumpet.

Looking UP

Two weeks ago, while waiting for my iPhone to be restored at the local Apple Store, I had plenty of time to browse the aisles (It's entrapment I tell you, entrapment!). That's when I noticed the Jawbone Up. It's one of a new class of electronic activity trackers that are tapping into growing awareness about how movement (or lack thereof) affects human health. Some studies indicate that being inactive at a desk (or at the controls of an aircraft) for hours on end can have a health outcome similar to smoking cigarettes. What I've noticed about human beings (myself included) is that it is easier to change our behavior if we enhance our awareness of our behavior. I've seen this with hybrid vehicles: Give a driver real-time feedback on how much gas they're burning and they are more likely to reorder their driving goals and adjust their driving technique.

The Jawbone seemed like a pedometer on steroids, so I bought one for my wife who had broken her mechanical pedometer and had given up tracking how many steps she was walking per day. After watching her use it for a week and announce proudly one day that she had walked 16,000 steps, 1000 more steps than the average Amish man, I was impressed! She had rededicated herself to being active and, more importantly, was enthusiastic about it. There were other features that helped me decide I wanted to try a Jawbone, too.

The device is unobtrusive. A lightweight bracelet you wear, preferably on the wrist of your non-dominant hand, it contains accelerometers and other electronics that, together with iOS- or Android-based software, can track your daily activities, your sleep, even the food you eat. I chose to wear mine on my right wrist, even though I'm right-handed.

To find out how active you've been or how well you slept, you plug the Jawbone Up into your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and launch the free Up application, available for iOS and Android. The device plugs into the audio jack and a separate USB charger is provided. The fully-charged battery lasts about 10 days. There is a single push button that you use (in Morse code fashion) to access the basic modes: Awake, Sleep, activity timer, and Power Nap.

Once you've synced with your iOS or Android device, the app will give you an overview of your activity and some details about your sleep the night before. It will also tell you the current state of you battery charge.

I've found the information on how much sleep I've been getting to be very interesting. In short, I was not sleeping as much as I thought so I've adjusted my schedule to sleep more. I've blogged before on the subject of adequate sleep. There's plenty of research that shows most people need more sleep than they are getting. And when people don't get enough sleep, one of the side-effects is that they actually don't realize that they are impaired. I do quite a bit of physical activity with bike commuting, so quality sleep is especially important. After adjusting my sleep schedule I've found that I seem to be recovering more completely from the previous day's ride.

The app lets provides a historical view of your activity that is both intuitive and inspiring. Recently, the Up app was updated to share data with other fitness apps, including the one I use to track my cycling - MapMyFitness.

There are a few other useful features. One is an activity alarm that reminds you to move when you've been sitting for too long. You can adjust the inactive interval with the Up app. When you've been inactive, the bracelet will vibrate to remind you to stand up, walk around, or at least stretch or wiggle in your seat (what I do when teaching in a small aircraft).

You can activate the Power Nap feature by pressing the bracelet button twice, once quickly followed by a slightly longer second push (in Morse code lingo, this would be dot-dash). Again, the Up app lets you set the maximum length of the Power Nap feature and the bracelet will vibrate to wake you at what it thinks is the optimum point in the nap.

This brings up the last, and I think one of the more useful features: The Smart Sleep Alarms for morning wake-up. You set the time you want to wake up for different days and the bracelet will vibrate to wake you at what it thinks is the optimum point in your sleep cycle within a 20 minute window of your desired wake-up. I get up earlier than my wife does and the vibrating bracelet wakes me while allowing her to continue to snooze. Pretty awesome ...

These new activity monitors promise to change the way we live, work and play. Given that most of us work long hours, inside rather than outside, and we're often sitting for extended periods, having more information on how we are treating our bodies in our competitive society and workplace can allow us to influence our individual health in a positive way.

Between the Cracks

"How can you ride a bike on Central Expressway?" a coworker asked several years ago. "It's so dangerous!" The stretch of pavement that connects Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara was a route I used most every day, but this was a hard question to answer. How you define danger, what makes you feel vulnerable, what makes you feel safe? The best answer would cut through the emotional layers and illuminate the cycling experience for a non-cyclist. "What drivers don't realize is that the traffic on the expressway isn't a continuous stream, it comes in waves. There are actually long periods of quiet and calm." It was clear the reality experienced by a driver in a car was not what was experienced by a cyclist.

Fast forward 20 years to Saturday morning, 6:30am, I'm cycling across Berkeley on my way to the Oakland Airport. This is my favorite time because the streets are quiet, the air is cool, and the winds are calm. I often see deer standing in the neighborhood lawns regarding me with a placid sort of curiosity, or is it bored indifference? This time of morning, it's easy to believe that you've returned to a time when people worked a 40 hour week, slept 8 hours a night, and ate breakfast before leaving for work. Things will get more hectic in 20 minutes, when I make my way through Oakland and closer to the freeway, the road that never sleeps. But for now the stillness magnifies every sound and lets me hear the crows' alarm as I approach as well as boisterous garbage trucks worming their way through the streets. Turning onto San Pablo Avenue, life begins to accelerate.

"How can you cycle on San Pablo Avenue? It's so dangerous!" I've been asked this question recently and the answer is the same as it was 20 years ago. I slide up on the ride side of an AC Transit bus waiting at a red light. Looking inside, the patrons seem dazed, some almost asleep, eyes closed. I'm just the opposite: My heart is pumping steadily, I'm in touch with the world around me, and I'm wide awake. I'd better be because the bus driver is all business. She has seen it all and is inching forward in little jerky motions, intent on blasting straight ahead and leaving me in a cloud of diesel exhaust as soon as the light turns green. I hate to disappoint, but this is where I turn right.

Humming down Adeline Street, muscles warm, not yet fatigued, in the zone, passing auto body shops, a tofu distributor, and my favorite green coffee distributor (Sweet Maria's), the giant Port of Oakland cranes come into view. A left on 8th Street is a shortcut that trades a long, poorly timed stoplight for a couple of stop signs. Controlling the traffic debate is key for urban cycling. This is not an affluent neighborhood. Section 8 housing predominates, but it has never felt particularly dangerous. Until today.

I turn right on Filbert and an FBI van surrounded by a swarm of SWAT-style police comes into view. A couple of officers (are they CHP or FBI or OPD? Does it matter?) loping down the sidewalk in military fashion briefly lock eyes with me. I give them my best, innocent, "Hey, I'm just on my way to work" sort of expression. Apparently I'm not a threat. They continue on their "mission," I continue on mine, silently lamenting the never ending wars in which we engage: The war on drugs, the war on terror. What happened to the wars on poverty, illiteracy, and hunger? Did we lose those wars, tacitly admit defeat, and move on? Does a militarized police force make us safer or do we just feel safer? A few more blocks, I pass under the freeway, and I'm quietly spinning through the Jack London Square neighborhood. A line of semi trucks are queued up, heading to the docks. The events a few blocks earlier are out of sight and out of mind, as are the questions they raise, at least for now. I've mentally clicked on dislike, changed channels, moved on.

Third Street is a designated bike route that cuts through the heart of the Produce District, but only a non-cyclist could have decided it was good for bikes. Dozens of delivery trucks protruding into the street, forklifts zigzaging, workers in a hurry to load fresh fruits and vegetables, the street punctuated by numerous intersections and stop signs. This is a bike route in name only. I head to Embarcadero, even though train tracks run through the middle of the street and the pavement is rough. It is less trafficked, fewer stop signs, fewer intersections, more direct. It is safer, or at least it feels safer.

Embarcadero trickles out of Jack London Square and threads the thin gap between Alameda's inner harbor and interstate 880. I'm passing the freeway traffic which is crawling because of an accident of some sort. The drivers are encased in steel cages, airbags, anti-lock brakes, so they must be safe, right? To me, their faces look like the ones I saw on the bus: Dazed, disconnected, maybe disaffected. In contrast, the cyclists I encounter are alert, engaged, alive. Some look straight ahead, but others nod, wave, some ring their bike bells, some are even smiling. Just a few more miles and I'll be at the airport, refreshed and ready to start flying.

Endless wars, countless conflicts, and our obsession with security provide a never-ending supply of patriots and heroes. We've forgotten the patriots who have never wielded a gun, but who have the courage to get out of bed and face a neighborhood where gun violence is commonplace.  We've lost sight of the heroes who serve and protect an aging parent or a care for a spouse with a debilitating illness. And when did we lose the courage to look into the mirror each morning, see an aging face, wrinkles not hidden or corrupted by plastic surgery? It is time to forgive, accept who we are, what we have become, and what we have made of ourselves. It's not too late to find the courage to live life, risk trusting our neighbors, face pain and loss, and know that life will go on whether or not we feel safe. Perhaps we can discover a way through the gaps left by others to find love, acceptance, and awakening through simple daily acts. Perhaps we can reach enlightenment just by riding a bicycle.