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Stalking my walking.

Byoliveridley

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Google Now tells me I have walked 74 km in February (one of the last meaningful acts of my phone before it passed away). That’s mostly me walking from my bus stop to work and back, 3.6 km everyday, something I don’t consider exercise to the point that I undergo serious bouts of self-criticism about “not exercising enough”. I post this because I, like many around me, am very concerned about the amount of digital surveillance in our society. Everyday, Snowden’s document dump brings new revelations. Yahoo webcam images, anyone? But the benefits of benign surveillance are potentially big. I would like my phone to remind me that I am exercising, that my bus is scheduled to arrive in 5 minutes (of course, BC Transit does not have real-time information, so this is theoretical), that I am near a grocery store that has my favourite cereal on sale (this would need open data on retail prices), that my neighbour on the bus is reading the same book that I am (okay, too much!).

Cellphones are now intelligent, location and context aware. They can do a lot of good. Hell, I’ll even tolerate the use of some of my metadata for advertising and information gathering as long as it is transparent. But the data is also used by governments non-transparently to track my movements and actions, and I am deeply uncomfortable with it. Till now, my gee-whizness and fairly high belief in the value of a trust-based open information commons keeps me from closing off these data streams. If we stop trusting in the good of an open internet and stop contributing, the internet is seriously harmed.

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  • Open Data: Let’s talk about more than just government

    Byoliveridley

    Victoria is hosting its open data day and Hackathon Saturday the 23rd (Facebook Link). I plan on being there because I support openness and transparency, I’d like to learn more about available data sets, and hangout with like-minded people. The City of Victoria has taken steps since 2011 through Councillor Marianne Alto‘s initiatives and more to facilitate more open governance. Like any other government entity, there is valid criticism and issues to navigate, but stated goals exist and progress can be tracked and critiqued.

    Enough people talk about open government data, and there’s consensus that governments should be more collaborative, open and participatory. But most of us spend more time and money interacting with non-government entities than we do with government entities. Look at your monthly budget. You will spend 30-40 percent on your mortgage or rent, goes to a non-government entity. The next biggest line items, probably groceries, car payments are all to private entities. Should we as consumers not expect the same open data sharing standards from our private entities as we do from government? The book Open Government, released for free by Safari books after Aaron Swartz’s death (does not appear to be free any more) has one chapter by Archon Fung and David Weil titled Open government and Open Society, which outlined my concerns very well:

    Enthusiasts of transparency, which most readers of this book are, should be aware of two major pitfalls that may mar this achievement. The first is that government transparency, though driven by progressive impulses, may draw excessive attention to government’s mistakes and so have the consequence of reinforcing a conservative image of government as incompetent and corrupt. The second is that all this energy devoted to making open government comes at the expense of leaving the operations of large private sector organizations—banks, manufacturers, health providers, food producers, drug companies, and the like—opaque and secret. In the major industrialized democracies (but not in many developing countries or in authoritarian regimes), these private sector organizations threaten the health and well-being of citizens at least as much as government.

    Open Government – Chapter 8 – Open Government and Open Society – Fung and Weil

    I wrote briefly about one aspect of open data in our private interactions, shopping receipts. We spend a lot of time, effort and money shopping, yet we’re very unlikely to leverage the power of data to help us shop better because our individual decisions are captured in paper receipts. But there are many more examples.

    1. Mortgages – Do you have to go to every bank/lender’s website to do a comparison? Ratehub is a start, is there an API or download capabilities?
    2. Real Estate Data – Realtors control real estate data in Canada, I would call this a major conflict of interest. There are efforts to open this data up a la the US, but slow going. This is the biggest market transaction any of us will undertake in our lives, but information is controlled by the agency that benefits most from our lack of knowledge.
    3. Rentals – Craigslist is notorious for hoarding data and going after people who want to present data in more useful formats. Community posted information is created by the community, but captured by private entities due to network effects (everyone’s on craiglist, so I need to be there too, regardless of their data policies).
    4. Insurance markets – Government provided insurance information (ICBC – Car, MSP – health) is transparent. Try getting insurance in the open market for condos, homes and more, you’ll find the same pdf/paper quote formats that make it difficult to compare and choose wisely.
    5. Corporate governance – There is so much information missing on actual corporate structures, ownership, directorship, brand ownership and lobbying
    6. Pollution and resource use. Do we have a good idea what companies pay for water or power? Do we have a way of understanding who pollutes what and where?

    My goal on open data is to advocate for openness in all of society, not just in government. Also, just because data is available does not mean it is open. APIs and download capabilities are key.

    So, when you think open data, do try and shift your gaze away from government occasionally. Remember that your housing decision is much more critical than the salary information for the assistant city manager, so openness is vital everywhere.

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    Update: as Kevin pointed out on twitter, the federal tax bill is pretty big. I was talking more in terms of the municipal parts like property taxes. The point nevertheless stands, we pay private entities large sums of money under poor data transparency conditions.

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    Men – An Endangered Species due to Endocrine Disruptors.

    Byoliveridley

    Why, it’s a girl, how surprising!!

    Man-made chemicals blamed as many more girls than boys are born in Arctic | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

    Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap).
    The scientists, who say the findings could explain the recent excess of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, are widening their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in Russia, Greenland and Canada to try to discover the size of the imbalance in Inuit communities of the far north.

    In the communities of Greenland and eastern Russia monitored so far, the ratio was found to be two girls to one boy. In one village in Greenland only girls have been born.

    Why are the upper latitudes especially vulnerable? Two reasons, firstly, atmospheric currents carry pollutants from the Mid-Latitudes (i.e the US, China and Europe) to the higher latitudes of the Arctic. Secondly, the pollutants they measured, PCBs, are persistent and stable (which is why they were used in the first place) and accumulate in the fat tissue of animals. So, predator fish on top of the food chain (the large oily ones) tend to accumulate a lot of these compounds. When you live in the Arctic, you tend to eat a lot of fish. So, these people are getting slammed.

    I tell you, Children of Men is not as far fetched as it sounds! Though I think the high levels these people accumulated in their system may not be representative of the rest of the world (vegetarian diets, for instance would be lower in persistent pollutants unless you consumed a ton of milk products), it is still a very scary story.

  • North Carolina Smoking ban update

    Byoliveridley

    Via Laura Leslie…

    Monday: Smoking Ban Update — North Carolina Public Radio WUNC

    Late-breaking news: According to Greensboro’s Mark Binker, all systems are NOT go for a vote tomorrow. It turns out proponents of the ban may have miscounted a nose or two. The bill is conspicuously absent from Tuesday’s House calendar. Too close to call? Yep. Read Mark’s update here.

    Oh well, let’s see what happens…

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    A Company that Specializes in Profiting from Harm

    Byoliveridley

    The LA Times has an interesting investigation on the activities of Amvac.

    Pesticide maker sees profit when others see risks – Los Angeles Times

    Amvac is a leading maker of organophosphates, a class of older, highly toxic pesticides that has been under regulatory scrutiny since the late 1980s. As larger firms have stopped manufacturing some of their organophosphates, Amvac has bought the rights to make or sell 10 of them since 1989, according to company records and interviews. One of them, mevinphos, was banned in the U.S. in 1994 after a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that it was responsible for poisoning more field workers in California than any other agricultural chemical. Amvac continues selling the product overseas, according to company officials. Amvac is by no means the largest producer of pesticides that have attracted regulatory scrutiny, but the company stands out for its willingness to embrace chemicals that other firms have abandoned.

    Amvac Slogan

    Love that slogan, don’t ya’! There are so many loopholes in pesticide regulation that a company like Amvac can post impressive profits by using these loopholes, having a significant say in the writing of the regulation, and effortlessly denying and delaying action. It’s a well researched piece, read in full.

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    Chemical agency ties under review – Los Angeles Times

    Byoliveridley

    As I mentioned a couple of days back, Sciences International has some conflicts of interests in this bisphenol A issue. I am glad that NIEHS is taking note.

    Chemical agency ties under review – Los Angeles Times

    The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has begun a review of ties between a federal health center that evaluates the risks of chemicals to reproductive health and a consulting firm funded by companies that produce chemicals linked to reproductive disorders.

    The investigation follows a Times report on Sunday that Sciences International, an Alexandria, Va., firm funded by more than 50 industrial companies, helps manage the federal Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction.

    Among the firms with financial ties to Sciences International are two that produce bisphenol A, a chemical in polycarbonate plastic bottles that has been linked in animal testing to prostate and breast cancer and reduced fertility.

    Since 1998, Sciences International has helped manage the federal reproductive health center and prepared draft reports analyzing bisphenol A and 16 other chemicals. The company has a $5-million contract with the center.

    The center’s scientific advisory panel was scheduled to decide today whether bisphenol A endangers reproductive health in humans.

    But on Tuesday, director Michael Shelby announced that the panel, after two days of reviewing the 372-page report that Sciences International prepared on bisphenol A, known as BPA, still had too many unresolved questions and was postponing its decision for six weeks.

    Good investigative journalism still makes a big difference.

    As always, as I was writing this post, I noticed that the ever excellent folks at the pump handle read my mind and posted about it (2nd time in 3 days!), so I will stop writing (and thinking about Bisphenol A) and direct your attention to their post!

  • Melamine – Very Routine in Animal Feed

    Byoliveridley

    Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China – New York Times

    As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

    Wow, apparently, this has been going for a while now, and is extremely widespread.

    It is time to test everything protein supplement coming out of China for Melamine, not just wheat gluten as the FDA has been doing. More importantly, it is also time to investigate other possible “additives” that Chinese (or for that matter, any other country including the US) manufacturers may be using.

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