The paint, or chalk, or whatever it was, is almost gone now, but, a week or so ago, someone wrote “LGBT” on the sidewalk in front of my house. I’m still not sure what to make it of it, but here are a few theories that I’ve considered, starting with ones that I think are least likely.

1. I’m being outed as a homosexual… As I’m not a homosexual, I think this scenario is unlikely. But, then again, there is footage on the internet of me in bed with a large Jordanian bartender. Regardless, though, if someone had wanted to expose me as gay, I think that they would have chosen to use a term a little more inflammatory than “LGBT”. At least I can’t remember the last time a bigot was caught spraying something other than “gay” or “faggot” on the property of a gay couple. It would be like if a Klansman spray painted “African American” on the side of someone’s house.

2. “LGBT” doesn’t stand for “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender” at all, but some kind of LOL-like leetspeak acronym, like “Laughing at your Great Blog Tonight.” Is that a thing? If not, why not?

3. It’s not me that it’s about at all, but someone else in my family… or, more likely, all of us. What if the “LGBT” indicated that our household had one of each? What if the graffiti was meant to identify us as winners in some kind of sexual Yahtzee – four people, each identifying with one letter of “LGBT”? I know it’s unlikely in our case, as the kids are just kids, but I like the idea that somewhere in town there’s a house with a gay man, a lesbian woman, a bisexual, and someone who identifies as transgender. And I like the idea of them winning something for that achievement, even if it’s just a chalked “large straight” on their front doorstep… which would be kind of ironic, wouldn’t it?

4. There’s a new gay gang in town, and they’re marking their turf in violet chalk.

5. It’s a sign indicating to other LGBT folks that we’re friendly, kind of like how Depression era hobo’s would scratch signs into people’s fences and the like to indicate to their fellow tramps where they might find a “kindhearted lady,” a sandwich, or medical assistance.

And it’s that last one that I’m going with. Whether it’s what actually happened or not, I like the idea that our house was identified as one in which all people, regardless of sexual orientation, might get a fair shake… Maybe not a free sandwich, but at least a fair shake.

CONTEXT: Former Vice President Dick Cheney, proving definitively that trials are a pointless waste of time and resources, came up from his pit full of freshly-harvested child hearts yesterday to announce on Fox News that he’d found NSA whistleblower Eric Snowden to be guilty of treason. Snowden, to his credit, then took to the internet to point out that Cheney’s assessment shouldn’t mean anything to anyone, given that it was his lies that took us to war, costing tens of thousands their lives.

Hopefully, given that the sign is dedicated to a recently passed local hero, and signed by a number of Ypsi’s most prominent individuals, this time it won’t be removed… and Ypsi will begin to reap the rewards of the smeet.

[Click here for a high-res version of the plaque.]

Here’s video of the very nervous looking Clapper responding to the questions of Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).

And it seemed as though people bought it… at least for a while. Then, of course, Snowden began releasing his classified government documents from Hong Kong, where he’d run to avoid prosecution. And the company line began to dissolve… So much so that, on Friday, June 7, President Obama had to assure the American people that they weren’t being spied on. “Nobody,” the President said in his address, is listening to your phone calls.”

And, on June 12, this position was reiterated by NSA Director Keith Alexander, who stated before the Senate Appropriations Committee not only that his organization didn’t eavesdrop on the calls and emails of American citizens, but that they lacked the ability to do so even if they wanted to. Following is the exchange between Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), and General Alexander. (You’ll find it at the 1:29:46 mark of the video linked to above.)

COLLINS: “I saw an interview in which Mr. Snowden claimed that, due to his position at NSA, he could tap into virtually any American’s phone calls or emails. (Is that) true of false?”

ALEXANDER: “False. I know of no way to do that.”

Well, I’m not sure what the consequences of perjury are, but, if I were Alexander or Clapper, I’d be lawyering up right now… especially given yesterday’s most recent, post-Snowden revelation, which you can read all about in the following clip from CNET.

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA’s formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler’s disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii “wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president”…

As we initiated impeachment proceedings against a president for failing to report a blowjob, one imagines that charges will be brought immediately against these men for lying under oath about something as serious as the warrantless monitoring of millions of Americans, right?

And, of course, I’m being facetious. I’ve lived here long enough to know that, in this country, single ejaculatory episodes between consenting adults are more a threat to our sovereignty than something as insignificant as a warrantless wiretap. Because, really, who gets hurt if a few hundred million of our calls are logged, and a small army of private security consultants have access to our email accounts? It’s not like they’ll discover that we’re guilty of thoughtcrime or something…

And, after all, the Constitution is “just a piece of paper.”

Mozilla, the non-profit organization responsible for the popular Firefox web browser, has apparently stepped into the fray to lead the protest against our government’s recently uncovered campaign to aggressively monitor, record and mine the private communications of law-abiding American citizens. Saying, “We don’t want an Internet where everything we do is secretly tracked or logged by companies or governments,” Mozilla Privacy Chief Alex Fowler yesterday announced the launch of a new grassroots campaign sponsored not only by Mozilla, but entities ranging from Greenpeace USA to the ultra-conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. And, according to Fowler, the whole initiative would revolve around a site called Stopwatching.us, where individuals could express their displeasure with the NSA’s unwarranted domestic spying activities by signing following letter.

Dear Members of Congress,

We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;

2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;

3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Mark Maynard

Yes, I signed it… even though it did cross my mind that the campaign may have been set up by the government, just so they could capture the names and addresses of us deviant “crimethikers” who still believe in the antiquated notion that our thoughts are our own. And I’d encourage you to join me, and add your own name to the list of those who share the sentiment outlined above.

If Edward Snowden can put his life on the line, I figure the least we can do is add our name to a petition, right?

And, who knows, we might be able to make a difference. It was, after all, not too long ago that an online coalition not too dissimilar from this rose up successfully to derail, at least temporarily, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

In announcing the new campaign on his blog, Fowler went into a little more detail as to why this is important. Here’s a clip.

…Whenever we share information online, there’s an intuitive risk of exposure that someone we didn’t intend to share with might access it. That’s part of using an open, highly distributed, worldwide communications medium.

But there are various levels of exposure.

• There’s using a service where you interact with friends, look for new employment opportunities or just play a game, where these activities are logged by the service.
• There’s enabling geolocation on a mobile app so it can personalize your experience, thereby providing the app with data on your movements.
• There’s the unintended consequence of over-sharing on a social network.
• Then, there are more serious levels of exposure — like governments, law enforcement or intelligence agencies gaining access to our private data stored in the cloud, logs created by our Internet service providers and other companies who track things about us.

The first three are pretty well understood and users are able to take some steps to learn about these data practices through their experience using them or by referring to privacy policies and terms of service. Technology has also been getting better at providing additional controls and transparency. Mozilla, for instance, provides tools like Do Not Track, Persona and the Collusion Add-on for Firefox, among others.

However, exposures resulting from government-sponsored online surveillance are entirely separate from whether we choose to share information and what those sites say they will or will not do with our data. That’s because, at least in the US, these companies are required to respect a court order to share our information with the government, whether they like it or not. Mozilla hasn’t received any such order to date, but it could happen to us as we build new server-based services in the future.

There are a number of problems with this kind of electronic surveillance. First, the Internet is making it much easier to use these powers. There’s a lot more data to be had. The legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance has grown over the past few years, because the laws are written broadly. And, as users, we don’t have good ways of knowing whether the current system is being abused, because it’s all happening behind closed doors…

So please do get involved, either by adding your name to the list, or through some other means. This is the battle of our lifetimes, and it’s just now beginning.

Many thanks to the young idealists of the Ypsi Free School for making it all happen.

One last thing… Those of you who would like to contribute toward the further revitalization of this area are encouraged to join us on the Water Street Commons this Saturday afternoon at 2:00, when we’ll be meeting with shovels and wheelbarrows to spread wood chips and create trails through our burgeoning native plant prairie.

As you’ll recall, the last time we heard from Dave Miller, our intrepid correspondent from the deviant underbelly of Portland, he was watching homemade porn movies at an event called Hump. Well, he’s back today, after a much needed rest, reporting on his experience as an nearly-nude bicycle medic at Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR)… The next voice you hear will be Dave’s.

As I’m sure you all know, yesterday was World Naked Bike Ride day. According to the event’s manifesto, it’s all about reminding car and truck drivers that they share the road with us vulnerable, soft, fleshy humans. That’s the theory, at least. My experience, having participated in the Portland ride last night, though, leads me to believe that it probably has a little less to do with protest, than it does the fun of cruising down main thoroughfares, balls and tits literally flapping in the wind.

When I read that the Portland ride was looking for volunteers, I signed up as a “marshal.” Our job, I was told, would be to help people with first-aid and mechanical problems. At the pre-ride briefing, which was held in a Portland Art Museum conference room, 30 riders (naked) and one police officer (clothed) were given maps, information about how the police lead-, chase-, and route- vehicles were going to operate, and a group text number that we could all use to communicate. The route was kept a secret to discourage large crowds of spectators forming along the way.

Here’s a shot, for those of you who can handle full-frontal male nudity, of the lead marshal talking bike safety with the assigned police officer.

The museum, by the way, currently has a bike-themed exhibit, and they were letting people in for $1 per item of clothing worn, as you can see here.

Before the ride, I stood ready with my first-aid pack as a nude marching band played for the crowd, which was predicted to be 5,000… My wife heard that it was 11,000 on the news after the event.

Having never done anything in the “naturalist” realm before, I learned two things:

1. I like to think I’m relatively polite person in general, but, when I am naked and maneuvering through a crowd of other naked people, I am extremely polite. “Excuse me.” “I’m so sorry.” “Thank you so much.” It was just a constant stream of deferential civility coming out of my mouth… And it probably marked me as a complete amateur.

2. Nudity begets nudity across all social strata. This was one of the most fun elements of the ride: seeing people who just happened upon the event join in spontaneously.

The ride launched from a centrally located park downtown that is bordered by the Portland Art Museum, the Portland Historical Society, and other high-society venues. By the time the ride got started, the sidewalks were packed with middle-aged, upper-class looking theater and museum goers. One tall gentleman, who I’d guess to be in his 50′s, was standing there in a nice sweater, next to his wife. He was gazing about, sporting the same sort of bemused smile as all of the other onlookers. He stood out, though. Apparently, feeling some sense of solidarity with those of us who were riding, he’d been compelled to remove his pants and underwear, exposing himself right back at us.

As we winded through the city, we passed through the strip of clubs and bars catering to college aged folks. This produced lots of topless flashing by women and hooting and hollering by all. Since I was there to provide first aid, I rode the first part of the ride actually wearing some boxer briefs, thinking that being completely naked might inhibit my ability to properly examine someone with a back injury, or perform CPR. This resulted in the surreal experience of a frat guy yelling at me “TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF, YOU PUSSY!!”

Also in this area, a women, a little older than the average around her, shouted at me, also a little older than the average around me, a fantastically enthusiastic “SEEXXXXYYY!!!”

The homeless shelter/soup kitchen area was great fun and probably elicited the most crowd participation. My favorites were the people who couldn’t be bothered to fully remove their pants. They simply stood anchored in place with pants and underwear around their ankles, and t-shirts or tops laying on the sidewalk nearby. Yelling. Hands in the air. Pelvis usually thrust forward.

On the street, I encountered this guy…. He was running full speed in flip-flops with a camera bag over his neck. Since I had a map, and none of the participants knew the route, or even where the finish was, I asked him if he was OK running for several more miles. “I can give you a shortcut if you need one,” I told him. He just shouted back in a thick Chinese accent, “I forget my bike!” and kept running. I saw him at the finish line 45 minutes later, sitting on the curb, exhausted.

I came across two other runners and gave them the same offer. They similarly turned it down. “I don’t care where it’s going!” one said. I noticed that both had wadded up shirts in one hand, and shorts and underwear in the other. They apparently had stumbled upon the event and could not resist the urge to run through the streets stark naked with no particular destination.

After leaving downtown and entering urban residential neighborhoods, things were a little more quiet, and the riders themselves providing most of the entertainment. “I find this really empowering,” said one participant, to which his companion, a tall women covered in green body paint, responded, “What an interesting experiment,” in a low voice that could best be described as academic.

We passed a fire station and all of the firefighters were lined up in uniform at the curb, yelling and high-fiving anyone within range. 15 minutes later these same guys would arrive on the scene of the first first-aid case that I had.

I came across several broken down bikes. One was really unrepairable; the derailleur was all bent out of shape. When I realized I couldn’t help the guy, I made the joke that this was just a dream. “You’re not really standing in the middle of the road about to be left behind by the crowd miles from your home or any safe place to go without a stitch of clothing on,” I told him. He didn’t seem to think it was that funny. I did tell him where the finish line was, though. I assume he walked his bike there, hopefully with friends.

I came across my first accident near the end of the ride. There were several bikes involved, and one rider had a head injury. I’m kicking myself for not handing my phone to a bystander to take pictures. I knelt down in my underwear, put my medical gloves on, and assessed and treated the guy for a cut on the back of his head. 911 was called and the firefighters from earlier showed up and released him.

1/4 mile down the road, I came across another incident. Three young women were huddled at the curb. I circled around and asked if they were OK. They asked if I was first-aid and said they had had an accident. Despite the fact that I’d been standing around and riding with naked people for two hours now, this scene felt comically surreal for several reasons. Everyone I’d dealt with so far was old enough to be considered an adult. Yes, there were a wide variety of ages, but I didn’t perceive any kind of generation gap. These girls were young. High schoolers? Two of them were stark naked, blonde, and… busty. I’ll admit I had a hard time looking them in the eye when they spoke. The third, the injured, was from India and fully dressed, covered from head to toe. Standing there in my underwear, again with medical gloves on, trying to listen to the two blondes earnestly explain what happened to me, the adult, while doing my back-neck-head injury examination routine on a person who was odd because she wasn’t naked, had a bizarreness to it of which I was acutely aware in the moment. The injured girl checked out OK and they decided to walk to the finish since it wasn’t far.

As you can imagine, the finish area was packed as the however-many thousands of cyclists rolled in. There was dance music blaring. Half a dozen official after-parties around town were just getting started. The venue near my house (a bar/music venue/bike repair shop) promised they’d have their windows covered to allow for further naked fun. Since I had a sitter at home though, I decided to call it a night.

My ride home was 5 miles, and I donned a shirt for it. Didn’t bother with pants, though, as it was after midnight anyway. Who would see me? Of course, as I neared my house, a neighbor was standing at an intersection. She giggled and then averted her eyes. The context that the event created was gone, and now merely bared legs was something to once again blush at.

[The article which accompanies the video can be found at the website of The Guardian.]

As I know that some of you won’t follow the link, or watch the video, in spite of my urging, here’s a brief clip from the transcript. This is how Snowden responds to the, “Why should people care about surveillance?”, question.

“Because, even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded. The storage capability of the systems increases every year, consistently, by orders of magnitude… It’s getting to the point, you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they could use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.”

And that, in a nutshell, sums up why Snowden turned over these classified documents to the press. That is, if you believe him.

Many don’t.

Many, from what I can tell, seem to think, given that he’s in Hong Kong, that’s he’s done this on behalf of the Chinese, who are looking to further destabilize our government. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, given that China is our biggest trading partner, and they need for us to remain solvent, but some, it would seem, are having trouble accepting that a young man would choose to give up a high-level intelligence position in Hawaii that paid nearly $200,000 a year, and go into exile, leaving behind his girlfriend and family, just because he thought that the American people should know that they’re being lied to and spied on. Apparently the concept that an individual would sacrifice his or her life for what they believe to be right is foreign to many Americans. (And, as Snowden points out, if his objective had really been to bring down the United States, he could have just released the identities of every undercover asset we currently have deployed across the globe – information, according to Snowden, that he possessed.)

No, according to Snowden, he chose to release this information, which demonstrates the enormity of the NSA’s domestic surveillance operation, because he saw “abuses,” and the framework for what he calls an, “architecture of oppression.”

I’m not sure that it will ultimately go down in history alongside the likes of Nathan Hale’s “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country” speech, but it’s hard to imagine a more timely and important sentiment than the following.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.” -Edward Snowden

I could go on and on about Snowden, his politics (he’s a Ron Paul supporter), his motivations, and the way that this will all likely play out for him, but, as I keep nodding off to sleep, I’ll just leave you with this final thought from him, offered in response to a question about the possibility that he could very well be killed for treason, or locked up in seclusion for the rest of his life.

“The greatest fear I have… is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They will know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society, but they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”

I know that some of you will disagree, thinking that patriots are people who vote a certain way, and put magnetic ribbons on the backs of their SUVs, but this, to me, is the very definition of patriotism.

Best of luck, Mr. Snowden. And thank you for having the courage to do what thousands of others in positions to do so did not.

Thanks to the efforts of Ypsilanti City Planner Teresa Gillotti, and the DTE road crews that spend their days trimming and mulching the trees along our roadways, we now have a huge pile of wood chips on the site. And, as of this morning, we’ve got a pretty good idea as to how we’d like to distribute them. All we need now are some hearty, community-minded volunteers to help do the work.

So, if you’re free next Saturday, come out and join us. And, if possible, bring a shovel or two, or a wheelbarrow. We’ll start at 2:00, and we’ll try to bring lemonade and cookies for everyone.

Here’s what we have in mind for the layout.

As you can see, there’s an open space in the middle for events, a somewhat direct path up from Michigan Avenue, and two circuitous trails that wind through the property, which we’re hoping will soon be full of native grasses and wildflowers.

See you Saturday.