PERSONAL:

HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:

Can you imagine ? It's mid-July and I'm still planting flowers. Rain, rain and rain. They aren't likely to do well, but I make the effort anyways. It's been a very busy spring and summer, and, of course, my productivity at this blog has fallen off. Hopefully this will change in the next few weeks.

On a rather happier note I can say that the project of listing the SAC contacts is finally coming near to the end of the tunnel. I've even managed to learn a tiny, itsy bitsy bit of Swedish during this. Or at least how to type their accents. Not enough for sure to get me more beer and complain about the price in Stockholm, but it is interesting nonetheless.

On an even happier note the hacking into my personal email seems to have ended. The last "check" as to what I was writing about Siemans came in through the usual front door rather than through my email. I went all the way up to have the most secure password possible as the first password change was also 'decoded". It is also possible, however, that they simply lost interest in me. I hope to rectify this situation. As an even greater chuckle Siemens itself, according to Business Week, has been attacked in its operating system by something called the 'Stuxnet Worm'. Somehow I have extreme difficulty working up sympathy for them. Or suppressing my giggles for that matter.

That's it for now. The squirrels continue their antics in the backyard. Put the nuts out last night. The grey squirrel came early, and, as they say, "the early squirrel gets the nut". At the same time, however, as I was loading the car for the day one of the lazy red squirrels showed up. Big squirrel fight with the red chasing a grey at least three times its size. Over the garage and far away. I still am in amazement at people who report that grey squirrels "replace" red squirrels in various localities (anecdotal here in Winnipeg, documented and fretted about in England ). Maybe all that it is is that they are less than double plus thick to the 3rd power as to where they bury the nuts. That may be hard to believe if you have ever seen a grey squirrel close up (I have). They tend to project stupidity.

PERSONAL:

MOLLY GETS HACKED:

I'm impressed. I'm really and truly impressed. For a long time now I've had "visitors" who are not exactly the curious average citizen. They are basically of two types. One is the various government agencies, usually Canadian but sometimes American, who are "news gathering" in general. They will drop by concerning a particular issue, person or organization, and its understandable that they have to pretend to be working their office staff. In the end I expect that they gather so much trivia and repeated posts from the internet that their activities are pretty well useless. But isn't that something of a part of the definition of "bureaucracy" ? It's actually been a long time since either the RCMP or the Defense Research Establishment has dropped by here, and I sort of miss the buggers. Maybe, just maybe, after an extended period they finally got the idea that nothing sensitive is ever discussed here. Maybe, just maybe, the lightbulb finally went on in their heads and they realized that I have always been opposed to the sort of "sensitivity" that they publicly always oppose themselves but privately promote in certain instances. Ah well, I'm sure they have enough 'fake work' to occupy themselves without dropping by here.

Then there is the other category...private enterprise. I suppose it is simply good corporate policy (if that is not an oxymoron) for a business to keep a beady eye on how it is portrayed in the media, even in tiny little blogs. I've certainly seen dozens upon dozens of these corporate checks over the years. There are even supposed internet "services" who offer businesses info on how they are being portrayed on the internet, and I suspect that they are a great shell for doing nothing but a google search 99 times out of 100. Who am I to say how a corporation should waste its money on this sort of thing or on the innumerable "management consultant" scams ? If they didn't waste it here they'd waste it elsewhere.

The latest incident, however, is over and beyond the usual. It began with the previous article on the CAW's demonstration against the plant closure of Siemens in Hamilton. Fairly standard. I've probably written hundreds of similar articles on labour issues. These quite often attract the attention of the corporation concerned. This, however, is the first and only time that the corporation has gone to the extent of breaking into my private email. They even went so far as to look into the emails that I have sent to others. There are actually very few of these which I hadn't previously deleted, and I'm sure that none of them were of any use to the company. God only knows how they did this. In any case I have done my best to block future access.

The original break in occurred via a 'Suddenlink' IP 74.198.28. this was forwarded via email to a Rogers IP 99.247.178 in Pickering Ontario. There are multiple links to Siemens in Pickering. Now, as I said I've seen corporations snooping before, and it hardly bothers me. At its low level it has resulted in the owners of some smaller business owners getting drunk and firing an angry email back to the blog. I think, however, that Siemens is the largest outfit that I have ever pissed off. They rank #40 in the world according to the Fortune 500. I don't think I have pissed off any of the top 39 yet. Give me time. Comparing their revenues to that of 'countries' they make more money than the GDP of 137 countries across the world. They are also very much the definition of a "conglomerate" with their fingers in more pies than I have fingers and toes. Some of their interests are, of course, in IT. Hence their ability to track critics. One also has to say that as a German company that one has to "admire" their Teutonic thoroughness bordering on obsession. Nobody else goes to such lengths.

I'm uncertain if Siemens has broken any laws by their actions, but I am quite certain that it would be impossible to make a legal case against them even if they have. This whole entry then is just a cautionary tale of the depths that corporations sink to probably regularly.