Why are these people cartoonishly evil?

Here’s another good video about Net Neutrality:

So what is net neutrality? It’s the idea that if I pay for my network connection, and you pay for your network connection, we should be able to communicate over our connections without hindrance by our ISP’s. Specifically, the FCC has proposed the following:

* Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
* Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
* Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network

In other words, the providers that run the pipes such as AT&T, Charter, and Verizon should not block lawful internet content, they should be able to use whatever devices they wish so long as they do not harm the internet

* Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

There should be capitalism in the marketplace that will allow consumers to determine what applications, services, and content they desire

* A provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner

This means that an ISP customer can access all content on the internet in the same way, without allowing the ISP to extort money from content providers for ‘premium’ access to their users.

* A provider of broadband Internet access service must disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this rulemaking

ISPs cannot operate in secret, in other words, to get around these issues

Essentially, Net Neutrality is a codification into law of the principles that have been the basis for the internet and its innovations. It’s core belief is one that allows me to remain in business. I run web services, and the neutrality of the internet is what allows me to provide internet connectivity.  If large backbone providers started charging extra tariffs for access to their customers above and beyond the network access fees I already pay, I would simply go out of business.

AT&Ts CEO Ed Whitacre has made comments about his desires to charge Google more for allowing access to the AT&T pipelines. Google already pays for it’s network connections, and peers directly with some ISPs, but AT&T basically wants more money for providing no further network access. Specifically, when asked about upstarts such as Google, he had this to say:

“How do you think they’re going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! (YHOO ) or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!”

If the AT&T CEO had his wish, tariffs to reach AT&T clients would essentially put me out of business. He doesn’t acknowledge that Google has already paid for their network connection, as well as the customers that are trying to reach it. He is advocating for further fees to be placed on those who would innovate.

This has nothing to do with Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, or Conservatives. It is a technical issue, that lawmakers are now stumbling into blindly. What really spurned me into writing this is the following video, by the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck:

This politicization of this issue is disgusting, and the arguments that Beck makes are not really worth debating. To Beck, this is just another thing used to demonize the Obama administration. To me, and many other people making their living on the internet, this vitriolic spew is dangerous.

Finally, John McCain is a strange person to be submitting any sort of internet bill. McCain has been quoted in the past as acknowledging that he doesn’t even use the internet: his wife does it for him when he needs something. And it’s no secret that one of McCain’s top financiers is AT&T – the very same company that advocates against net neutrality to bolster their bottom line.

I’ll finish this post up with a list of people and companies that support net neutrality – these are large companies and innovative individuals that support the basic tenets of net neutrality:

Google
American Library Association
Association of Research Libraries
Microsoft
Amazon.com
American Association of Law Libraries
Vonage
Verizon
Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the internet)
Vinton Cerf (creator of the world wide web)
Intel
Facebook
Skype
Ebay
Earthlink
Paypal
Sony
and many many more

What got me thinking about this was an attempt to reduce clutter by digitizing the few statements that we get by mail.  We have no room for big piles of financial data in our little house – we do have room for it on the computers.  But how do we preserve this information, and keep it available?

File Sharing

I started using a file synchronization service to keep my classwork and other school information synchronized between my laptop and my desktop.  It was really useful, as I would save something on my desktop computer and have it automatically and instantly transmitted to my laptop.  The service I use is called Dropbox, and incidentally if you follow that link and sign up you get a free 2 gigabytes of storage plus some bonus space.

All this program does is run in the background and synchronize files – you don’t have to ‘do’ anything but put the files you want available in all the computers in your Dropbox folder on your computer. I scanned all of the financial statements and put them in the Dropbox, making them available to all of the computers.

Security

While Dropbox makes a great file synchronization tool, the data is only encrypted while it’s being sent to and from the Dropbox servers.  While it sits on their servers, and while it sits on your computer, the files are just open.  This poses an issue, if

• The Dropbox servers get hacked (unlikely but anything is possible)
• One of our computers gets stolen (probably more likely)

To fix this, I installed a program called TrueCrypt on each of the computers.

What this software does is allows you to do is create a virtual hard drive, that ‘points to’ an encrypted file that can be stored anywhere.  This allows us to put anything that has sensitive information on it, such as account numbers on statements, into this secure drive.  The encrypted file is placed within our Dropbox folders, which has the result of sharing the encrypted drive across all of the computers.  You cannot access this information unless you have the appropriate password/key to put in, and the data is stored with the same encryption types that the US Government uses to store their ‘Top Secret’ level data.

One of the neat things about Dropbox is that if you change a file and re-save it, the program is smart enough to only upload the changed portions.  This is important, as our ‘virtual secure drive’ is a gigabyte in size.

Passwords/Logins

Because of the way that the world works now, much of our data is stored on company owned websites.  Our mortgage, for example, is paid through our lenders website.  Our various bank accounts have multiple levels of authentication per account.  We have various email accounts that we keep track of, facebook accounts, and on and on.  How does one keep track of all of these passwords, usernames, authentication phrases, and websites?

My solution is a two-part one, requiring a USB flash drive

and a program called KeePass

KeePass is stored 0n my USB flash drive, which is on the ring with the rest of my keys, and is able to be run on any computer that runs Windows.  It stores the passwords and other sensitive data much in the same way as TrueCrypt, but instead of holding all of the information as files, it specializes in passwords, usernames, websites, and notes about websites.  I keep a copy of this in the Dropbox as well, just in case I lose my keys.  Using this program, along with the appropriate password/key, all of the important websites that lay beyond our control are accessible.  Should I lose my keys, the password info contained will still be secure, since it’s encrypted.

Backups

thecookes.org has 8+ gigabytes of data at the time of this posting, and it’s increasing at a steady rate.  I expect that it will likely explode once we get closer to the arrival of the baby.  All of this information, such as stored emails, pictures, videos, blog posts, and so on are backed up nightly as part of the webhosting service that I run.  However, this is not sufficient for me – I prefer 3 levels of backup.  Should I pass away, it’s important that these pictures, videos and more do not go away with me.  Because of this, I synchronize the files and information on the server with a local computer regularly.  To retrieve the information, all someone would need to do is to start up my desktop and go to the ‘backup’ folder.  None of this needs to be particularly secure – in fact, most of it is available for public viewing on the web.

Our local computers have a number of files, such as media files, not shared in the dropbox that we also backup.  To ensure that we don’t lose anything, we backup our files offsite.  This is important, because if our house burns down or a natural disaster strikes and causes our computers in the house to be damaged or lost, we will still be able to retrieve these files from the internet.  We subscribe to a service named Mozy to ensure that our data is secure.  Should the worst case scenario occur, we could have them ship dvd’s of our data or download our data from the internet. Part of the backed up data is our dropbox folder as well.  Like Dropbox, Mozy has a small free account that you can try out.

The Most Important Part

All of this is great, and I’m sure that most issues that we would have that could cause a loss of data are covered.  But all of this is for naught if, for example, I die and there’s nobody around who knows how to get the information back.

The most important part, then, is a very low tech thing indeed.  A piece of paper, with simple step-by-step instructions on how to access all of this data, starting with the USB drive and KeePass, then the encrypted drive, and so on.  While none of the above is particularly difficult to do, doing it for the first time could potentially be intimidating.  Storing this where one would store a will or living trust would be the best idea.  I haven’t completed this step yet, but I intend to do so very soon.

All of the above can be had for a very low price.  We pay $9.99 monthly for 50 gigabytes of Dropbox usage, and $4.95 monthly for unlimited space on Mozy.  The webhosting is free, since it’s what I use for work as well.  Add a cheap USB flash drive, some free software, and it’s pretty inexpensive peace of mind.