the quantified life Archives

I boarded a plane at a small regional airport two weeks ago. And noticed some new and unusual behavior by the TSA screener at the security checkpoint.

After I walked thru the metal detector, he took a small penlike device and scanned it across the name, address and photo on my driver’s license. Slowly. Twice. Which is why I figured he was scanning. At first my reaction was that he was optically scanning the information into this “pen” and that it would be dumped into a computer later on.

Bruce Schneier is a fantastic source of information and particularly the debunking of security and security myths. From what I’ve read on Bruce’s blog, it’s possible that the TSA guy was just running an ultraviolet light across the license to look at the holograms on the license. But my eyes are pretty sensitive to UV and honestly I didn’t see any reflection. (Cool video of Bruce’s Q&A at defcon 15.)

So I’m still working the theory that he scanned an image that would later end up in a TSA computer. (See IRIS pen scanner, or look at what the New York Times reported last year.)

What would happen to that scanned information? Well, if banks and healthcare institutions are any indication, it would likely go (via USB) onto a laptop computer somewhere, later on to be stolen.

I am continuing to research this, but wonder if anyone else has run into this scanning behavior by TSA?

danah boyd explores the question does work/life balance exist? in a recent Apophenia blog post. (I’ve entitled this article “*/* balance” because “*” [pronounced “star”] in programming terms means “fill-in-whatever-you-want,” so “star/star” balance might stand for work:life balance, or work:fun balance or work:family or whatever your particular thing is. Her blog post was triggered by this New York Times article In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. You might also call the article, as they suggest, Death by Blogging.

I have always contended that my method in life was to avoid “work” in favor of something that I enjoy doing. And for me, enjoying means not only that I’m happy, but that I make some sizeable contribution to the welfare of humanity at the same time. So when I label something work, I am referring to something that I really don’t want to do, but have to do for some reason.

And people have always said to me “you’re always working.” But, I actually don’t do very much that I’d classify as work by my definition. I’m fanatically dedicated to what I do, but it’s more often not really work.

So let me say more about balance… [Read more…]