conflux
MSNBC
Profiling by grocery receipts?
"The U.S. government has discovered a powerful resource in its war against terrorism -- credit-card records, hotel bills, grocery lists and other records detailing the private lives of its citizens. Government investigators are turning to commercial databases to track down and isolate possible hijackers and suicide bombers before they strike, raising fear among privacy advocates that long-standing protections against government snooping may be eroded."
" Officials and many security experts say such "data mining" techniques are necessary to flush out a foe that does not wear a uniform but blends in with ordinary civilians to infiltrate and undermine American society."
"Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, trying to beat back a technology-propelled surveillance society has been Steinhardt's No. 1 mission. He believes he will probably lose, but not without trying to at least win greater court oversight or other limits.
"We are moving at a warp speed," Steinhardt said at ACLU's national headquarters, a Lower Manhattan office with a Statue of Liberty view. "The surveillance monster is growing, but the legal chains to these monsters are weakened even when we should be strengthening them.""
redux [12.02.02]
"Can a massive database of information on Americans really preempt terrorist attacks?"
""The proposal is do-able and feasible, but the idea of making it into a single window onto disparate information and integrating it on a massive scale is the real challenge," said Chris Sherman, associate editor of Search Engine Watch."
"Others in the industry question the system's feasibility."
redux [04.12.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"''I feel like Alice has fallen through the looking glass,'' Ellison said. His voice rose; he was starting to get a little testy. ''Does this other database bother you here? We can't touch that database because I won't be able to use my credit card. Like, I won't be able to go to the mall!'' He took on the voice of Sean Penn's stoner from ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High.'' ''Like, that's really disturbing. Like, don't mess with my mall experience. O.K., so people have to die over here without this, but that's not going to affect my experience going to the mall.'' He exhaled, and in his regular billionaire voice asked, ''I mean, what the hell is going on?''"
redux [10.12.01]
"In the weeks following the World Trade Center tragedy, many government officials were actively lobbying for increased Internet surveillance as a method of restricting terrorist activity."
"But putting aside any debate on civil liberties, a stronger case against the government's Internet surveillance attempts is that there may well be huge problems in both implementation and effectiveness. One predicament is just how much of the genie is already out of the bottle."
redux [09.27.01]
"The Bush administration is pressing Congress to approve the most sweeping expansion of federal law-enforcement authority since the Cold War. But would U.S. officials even know what to do with the deluge of information their new power could make available?"
"Yet even if the president gets his way, it could give rise to one of the classic problems of the information age: The capacity to produce oceans of data often isn?t matched by sufficient tools to sort and interpret it."
"The question we face, then, is a simple one: is it possible to prevent future incidents of terrorism by systematically monitoring all potential terrorists and imprisoning them before they can strike? And, if so, are such measures worth the cost?"
"So here is the root of the conflict: new technologies are creating tremendous new opportunities for violent groups to inflict death and destruction on society as a whole. At the same time, new technologies are also giving law enforcement agencies the ability to conduct universal surveillance of the citizenry in ways that have never before been imaginable. Should law enforcement organizations engage in widespread, pervasive surveillance to deal with the rising risk of megaterrorists?"
redux [02.15.01]
"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been - namely, whom should you trust?
A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""
8:36 PM
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dw-world.de
War Coverage Draws Skepticism in Europe
"The Pentagon and U.S. media are very pleased with the way "embedded" correspondents are covering the war. In Europe, the media community is more skeptical."
"Today, openness is the priority. "Here's why embedding is important to me," Col. Rick Thomas, chief of U.S. military public affairs in Kuwait, told the British newspaper the Financial Times. "As the public affairs officer, I have a deep and abiding obligation to tell the families of our servicemembers what they are doing. ... My objective is that through the journalists' eyes and through their words and images, mothers and fathers will understand the courage, dedication and sacrifices of their sons and daughters.""
"Just as the Pentagon has developed increasingly sophisticated munitions for the battlefield abroad, it has perfected propaganda to secure public opinion at home.
n that battle, American citizens need critical, independent journalists if they are to get the information necessary to participate meaningfully in the formation of policy. Never has that been more crucial, as the United States unleashes an attack on Iraq that signals a new era of the use of force. Unfortunately in the first few days of the conflict, and the months leading to war, American journalism has largely failed, on several counts."
"The problem, I suggested, is that most of the TV commentators on the home front appear to be just as "embedded" with the military as the far braver reporters now in the Iraqi desert.
Surely this is a bipartisan issue. While many on the antiwar side complain about the media's alleged "pro-war bias," those who support the war, and the Bush administration itself, have also been ill served by overly-positive coverage that now has millions of Americans reeling from diminished expectations."
"Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assigned itself the near impossible task of tracking a Niagara of media untruths. On March 25, the beleaguered FAIR watchdogs reported on broadcast lies by network household names about Iraqi use of Scud missiles -- disinformation that the media made up all by themselves."
"The military later announced "that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers." In fact, the Iraqis had not launched any Scuds since the beginning of the invasion."
"Smucker, who was traveling with the 1st Division but was not part of the Pentagon's embedding program, talked about the unit's location and approach to Baghdad in interviews Wednesday with CNN and National Public Radio."
"Judging from a transcript of the CNN interview, "it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports on that same news cycle," Van Slambrouck said. "Of course, the Pentagon has the final say in the field about any threat the information reported might pose.""
redux [03.12.03]
"Ask Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times if he wishes that he were among the hundreds of reporters embedded with U.S. military troops and the veteran scribe doesn't mince words. "I'm glad I'm not," he said during a satellite-phone interview from northern Iraq, where he's been assigned for two months. "I like the freedom of movement and the choice to see the story from the middle."
Fleishman's comments echoed those of many nonembedded correspondents assigned to the Middle East in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion."
redux [02.26.03]
"The Pentagon's new "embedding" policy, while less restrictive than a press pool, prohibits journalists from having their own vehicles. To Hedges, who says the first thing he would do if he were covering this war is get a jeep, the limitations are significant. "I'm not saying people shouldn't be embedded," he insists, "but they're not going to get an accurate picture unless people are allowed to do their job. When you're embedded in a unit, you rely on the military for transportation: they will decide where you go, what you see, and what you report. They're not going to drive the press vehicle to sites if things go terribly wrong."
He cites what happened early in the Gulf War in Al-Khafji, where he witnessed Saudi soldiers fleeing in panic from Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Marines were called in to push back the Iraqis. But back in Riyadh and Dhahran, "the press put out that the Saudis were defending their homeland. When the military has a war to win, everything gets sacrificed before that objective, including the truth.""
"The idea of embedding journalists with units was tossed around. But field commanders wanted those journalists to have at least the basics of basic training. Thus the media boot camp."
"If conversations between media and military at the base saloon on the last night were any indication, all but a very few gained much perspective if not renewed respect for the soldiers, sailors and Marines who will do the fighting.
After the Marines thanked us for coming, a young photographer stood and said: "We've learned a lot, and thank you. We learned again something we've always known, but see now in a different light: We carry cameras and notebooks. You guys carry something we don't -- the guns. And we will not forget that."
redux [02.14.03]
"The U.S. military plans to take extraordinary steps to provide the media access to combat zones in Iraq, but only after making reporters agree to a series of strict prohibitions, according to a lengthy document sent by a press officer for a major U.S. military base to a news organization that will be "embedding" reporters with American forces preparing for an attack on Iraq.
The document offers the first detailed glimpse into Pentagon planning for media coverage of the campaign."
"CBS News anchor Dan Rather says he hopes that embedding journalists among U.S. troops if there's a war with Iraq will help coverage, but he has doubts."
""There's a pretty fine line between being embedded and being emtombed," Rather said Thursday at a news conference where CBS outlined war preparation plans."
"Bob Steele, director of the ethics program for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the good intentions of the Pentagon and journalists give him hope, with some caution.
``There's no doubt there will still be tensions between the goals of the military and goals of journalists,'' he said."
"While the rhetorical and diplomatic wrangling over Iraq continues, it is worth noting that the global TV network war has already begun. The American Cable News Channel, CNN, made its reputation during the first Gulf war, but its got stiff competition this time around -- not just from the traditional networks, but from newcomer, Fox. Now if you think this is a trivial point, consider the budgets that these media giants are getting ready to commit. According to one account, CNN alone is planning on spending $60 million to cover the war in Iraq. But what will we see for all this money? Anything more than network anchors standing against a backdrop of Kuwait city and commenting on the latest official account of the battle from American generals? That's about it, according to distinguished journalist Phillip Knightley. The former 'Sunday Times' investigative reporter is also the author of what's considered a classic history of war reporting -- 'The First Casualty'. In it, he documents the decline of independent war reporting and the attitude of the military. It's best summed up by the American government censor, who at the height of World War II said, in relation to the press, "tell them nothing till it's over and then tell them who won.""
9:22 PM
0 comments
MSNBC
Wanted:
Good home for robot
"Judging from the cooing at a demonstration of Sony Corp's diminutive SDR robot, few would dispute just how cute the humanoid machine is. Its creator Masahiro Fujita, who called it "him" instead of "it", seemed to feel genuinely guilty as he pushed it over to show how easily it gets back up. But while Sony, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, may have succeeded in creating a cuddly humanoid robot, it still faces a daunting question. Who would buy it?"
""We'll never give up commercializing this humanoid robot," Fujita, principal scientist in Sony's Intelligent Dynamics Laboratory, told a demonstration for foreign reporters on Thursday."
redux [03.06.03]
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"For years, the researchers have treated Kismet as if it were a baby, at times shaking a stuffed toy in front of it or speaking lovingly to it. Last year, Dr. Breazeal and a colleague reported that Kismet could tell from the tone of an instructor's voice whether it was being praised, scolded or comforted. By refining Kismet's responses, the researchers hope to enable it to develop new behaviors through social interaction.
"When people interact with a young child, they have a lot of prosody in their voice, exaggerate their facial expressions, slow down their gestures, all to make it easy for the child to understand them," Dr. Breazeal said. "If we are willing to do this for infants and even pets, there's no reason why we would not do the same for robots that have emotional appeal.""
redux [02.17.03]
"Doctoral student David Hanson of the University of Texas at Dallas displayed K-bot, an artificial human face equipped with "infinite possible expressions," which he said can mimic the human face and respond to sociably to people."
""We are beginning to knit together the bits of artificial intelligence into a comprehensive robot," he said, "but you have to have a face ... because the human face is the most natural paradigm for human interaction.""
redux [12.05.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"But the development of the FurReal cat may also suggest that the electronic toy industry is beginning to grow up, subordinating the gadgetry to classic, open-ended modes of play.
"You don't want the technology in a toy to be visible," said Judy Ellis, the chairwoman of the toy design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "The first robot pets were very cool-looking, but a child doesn't relate to a shiny surface. A child can relate to a furry cat.''"
redux [05.15.02]
"Washington University professors Batya Friedman and Peter Kahn fear children may establish friendships that robots can't live up to.
The husband and wife team say early tests show while most children are aware robots aren't actually alive, others do not.
Some reason they must be living because they are able to learn how to respond to limited commands and move apparently independently."
redux [03.20.02]
""While children often form emotional attachments to teddy bears, stuffed animals, blankets and other objects, senior citizens generally do not."
But Matsushita said residents have no problem interacting with the pets. Women who participated in a trial wanted to keep their newfound friends, Kadota said.
"I see no reason why, with the appropriate feedback, that reasonable bonding could not be achieved between a robot pet and its human owner," said Martin King, a research fellow at the University of Salford's Center for Robotics and Automation. The center is currently designing a robotic gorilla to interact with children."
redux [02.04.02]
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""A game it might have been, but if you'll forgive the staggering lack of modesty this implies, Creatures was probably the closest thing there has been to a new form of life on this planet in four billion years," Mr. Grand writes. "These creatures probably still represent the state of the art in synthetic life forms.""
""Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far," Mr. Dawkins has said. Speaking of Mr. Grand's latest endeavor, what is known as the Lucy project, he told The Sunday Times: "With his record, if anyone could pull off such a spectacular coup, it would be him.""
redux [11.07.01]
"A.I. is of course fantasy, but Japan today is testing the plotline for real. Using interactive toys programmed to behave as obsequiously as the average lapdog, health care workers are trying to add companionship and emotional sustenance that may be missing from the lives of hospitalized children and elderly shut-ins. Researchers hope that one day, armies of sharing, caring machines will shore up a medical system that is hard-pressed to meet the demands of a rapidly aging society. Robots might even serve as surrogate family members, providing contact and affection for patients who have no immediate relatives nearby."
redux [08.01.01]
"A new toy doll which it makers claim has realistic skin, senses and reflexes has gone on sale in the UK.
Miracle Baby smiles when she's fed, frowns when she's tired and develops her own feeding, playing and sleeping patterns over time.
Her makers, Mattel, have used similar technology to that used by the manufacturers of robot dogs which led to a worldwide craze for the artificial pets."
redux [05.11.01]
"Robert Siegel talks with Sherry Turkle, professor of the sociology of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Turkle has studied people's relationships with computational objects for the past 20 years. She says recently some computers have been designed to ask humans to "nurture" them and humans respond. Turkle says that the attachment of AIBO owners to their robot dogs raises questions about what it means to love an object that doesn't know you're there."
redux [05.25.00]
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"What do children think about what it means to be alive? And at what ages can children distinguish mechanical objects from real animals or people? Research into these questions is still in its earliest stages. There was a flurry of interest in children's reactions when Tamagotchis, virtual pets from Japan, first appeared a few years ago and then started dying on their young owners. But the topic is attracting more attention now as seemingly intelligent toys and other robots appear on the market in increasing variety and numbers. "
"Again and again... researchers have asked the children: "Is it alive? Is it like a real pet? Does it know you?"
"Strikingly," Ms. Audley said, "often the answer they settled on was, "It's not alive in a human or animal kind of way, but in a Furby kind of way.""
redux [04.21.00]
"I have studied the effects of computational objects on human developmental psychology for over twenty years, documenting the ways that computation and its metaphors have influenced our thinking about such matters as how the mind works, what it means to be intelligent, and what is special about being human. Now, I believe that a new kind of computational object - the relational artifact - is provoking striking new changes in the narrative of human development, especially in the way people think about life, and about what kind of relationships it is appropriate to have with a machine. Relational artifacts are computational objects designed to recognize and respond to the affective states of human beings - and indeed, to present themselves as having "affective" states of their own. They include children's playthings (such as Furbies and Tamagotchis), digital dolls that double as health monitoring systems for the homebound elderly (Matsushita's forthcoming Tama), sentient robots whose knowledge and personalities change through their interactions with humans, as well as software that responds to its users' emotional states and responds with "emotional states" of their own."
"By accepting a new category of relationship, with entities that they recognize as "sort-of-alive", or "alive in a different, but legitimate way," today's children will redefine the scope and shape of the playing field for social relations in the future."
redux [09.88.00]
""When kids play, they create an entire world that's alive, and it never objects to them. A kid's imagination is a completely open architecture, and there are no bounds to what a toy can do," he explains.
"That's the future of toys. Technology's role is to become transparent. If you give the cues of autonomy, the imagination fills in the blanks, because that's what it's meant to do."
As processing power and sensors improve, the difference between simulated autonomy and actual autonomy will blur. Already it's difficult to relate to these new technological creatures without imputing to them the sorts of feelings we routinely discover in, say, our pets. And when you throw in realistic human behavior, not to mention silky skin, things become rather surreal.
"These are not toys anymore," says Chung as the screwy signal scrambles his face again. "These are way beyond toys."
"So what are they?" I ask. For once, Chung pauses. "They are the next iteration of our attempt to re-create life.""
7:33 PM
0 comments
The New York Times
Data Expert Is Cautious About Misuse of Information
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"As the government gears up its domestic security program, the chief executive of a venture capital firm founded by the Central Intelligence Agency warned today of the danger of amassing a large, unified database that would be available to government investigators -- as some technology executives have advocated.
"I think it's very dangerous to give the government total access," said Gilman Louie, chief executive of In-Q-Tel, a venture fund established by the C.I.A. in 1999."
redux [02.12.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"House and Senate negotiators have agreed that a Pentagon project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring Internet e-mail and commercial databases for health, financial and travel information cannot be used against Americans."
"One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the research project is headed by Adm. John M. Poindexter. Several members of Congress have said that the admiral was an unwelcome symbol because he had been convicted of lying to Congress about weapons sales to Iran and illegal aid to Nicaraguan rebels, an issue with constitutional ramifications, the Iran-contra affair."
"If we are to defeat terrorists and their supporters, a wide range of organizations must work together. I am committed to the closest possible cooperation with the Intelligence Community and other government agencies. Accordingly, I strongly support the President's initiative to establish a Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) that will merge and analyze terrorist-related information collected domestically and abroad. This initiative will be crucially important to the success of our mission in the FBI, and it will take us to the next level in being able to prevent another terrorist attack on our nation."
redux [01.29.03]
"A forthcoming government database will compile information from all federal agencies and the private sector on people deemed possible terrorist threats, President Bush said Tuesday evening."
" The White House offered few details about how TTIC will evolve, but critics of an existing data-mining program under development by the U.S. government were quick to draw comparisons to the controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project."
"The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday about what information on Americans would be accessible to the TTIC. One government official with knowledge of the center, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was not designed to supplant Poindexter's efforts but was instead "an effort by the president to bring together elements of agencies that are focused on terrorism.""
"The threat integration center will analyze intelligence and ensure the information is shared throughout the federal government as well as with state and local authorities. It also will have the authority to set requirements for all intelligence agencies and assign collection operations to the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and, through Homeland Security, to state and local law enforcement authorities.
"This will be the first time in our history that all of these elements come together," the official said."
"The new terrorist information center would be headed by a senior government official reporting to the director of the CIA, which raises the question of how much control over intelligence operations the FBI is being given, even in light of its expanding mission."
"Treverton added that the new intelligence structure probably reflects some battling over turf among intelligence agencies. The CIA director, George Tenet, will not cede any of his authority over intelligence collection and analysis under the new plan, nor will his access to the president decrease. Quite the opposite, Anderson said. "It will probably strengthen his role and his visibility.""
7:15 PM
0 comments
Newsobserver.Com
Vietnam moves to counter 'cyber-dissidents' on the Web
"One of Vietnam's best-known dissidents was arrested last week for trying to post documents on the Internet, in a sign of the regime's growing fear of losing control of the Web."
""Que was caught at an Internet cafe handing over documents criticising the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to a US-based organisation called 'High Tide humanist movement'," the official Vietnam News (VNA) agency reported."
redux [02.20.03]
"It's easy to assume that the Internet is a friend of democracy and a facilitator of the free flow of ideas. Ronald Reagan once said, "The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip." Shanthi Kalathil wasn't so convinced. She and fellow researcher Taylor Boas studied the effect of the Internet on eight authoritarian regimes, and what they found challenges conventional wisdom. Kalathil joins guest host Lynn Neary to discuss their findings."
redux [02.03.03]
"Plans are in motion to quadruple the current number of Internet users to four million by 2005 and the country's fledgling information technology sector will get injections of $100 million over the next two years, an initial investment aimed at harnessing the Internet's economic potential.
Yet even as it encourages Internet industry growth with tax breaks and other IT-friendly policies, Vietnam has tightened control over networked information. Web sites with pornography, violence, and in particular, criticism of Vietnam's communist, one-party system are all deemed ``poisonous and harmful.'' The government blocks access to many."
redux [01.25.03]
"IF THE internet will force difficult changes on democracies by handing power to individual citizens, it seems reasonable to believe that it will have a devastating impact on dictatorships. But it is not impossible that instead of undermining repressive regimes, the internet could become the most effective tool of social control that autocratic rulers have ever wielded."
"As more human interactions are conducted and recorded electronically, as the ability to analyse databases grows and as video and other offline surveillance technologies become cheaper and more effective, it will become ever easier for authoritarian governments to set up systems of widespread surveillance. George Orwell's Big Brother of "1984" might yet become a reality, a few decades later than he expected."
redux [01.09.03]
"In today's networked, globalized world, many presume that the Internet will pose a grave threat to authoritarian regimes. Such has been the power of this conventional wisdom that it remains for the most part unchallenged, and largely unexamined.
A new book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes, offers the most comprehensive and thought-provoking work on this subject to date. Authors Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas trace Internet use in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries: China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. They discover that authoritarian governments, far from fearing the information age, have chosen to direct Internet development in ways that bolster the state. At the same time, many regimes are struggling to cope with the potent challenges posed by new technologies. The authors encourage policy makers in the U.S. and other industrialized democracies to promote specific Internet-based initiatives that foster political liberalization, rather than perpetuating the myth of the Internet as an unstoppable "virus of freedom.""
redux [09.30.02]
"After resisting the Internet as a freewheeling tool of globalization and political anarchy for a decade, Saddam Hussein's government has cautiously embraced it.
Internet cafes have sprung up all over Baghdad in recent months, and even in smaller cities such as Karbala, a religiously conservative city 75 miles southwest of the capital. Just last month, the government took another major step, permitting some citizens to have Internet connections at home
Iraqis can now surf the Web and send e-mail to their hearts' content -- as long as they do it via www.uruklink.net, the government-controlled service provider monitored by Saddam's agents."
redux [08.29.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"THE Saudi government is censoring public Internet access to a degree that goes significantly but haphazardly beyond its stated central goal of blocking sexually explicit content that violates the values of Islam, according to a recent study by Harvard Law School researchers.
The study's detailed list of blocked sites offers a glimpse into the areas that the Saudi government has deemed most troubling. Among them are sites related to pornography, women's rights, gays and lesbians, non-Islamic religions and criticism of political restrictions. Many humor and entertainment sites have also been blocked."
The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."
redux [06.25.02]
""This version of the bill still allows the ability to prevent Internet activities without any necessity," said Kovalev, a 72-year old civil libertarian and member of the liberal "soyuz peravikh sil" faction.
Kovalev cited the portion of the bill that says it is "forbidden to use computer networks for extremism" and pledges a vague punishment that may "take into consideration" existing Russian criminal laws."
"Unlike the less-populated but richer countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which only last year overtook Egypt as having the largest Arab Internet population, Egypt is not trying to restrict the Internet.
But security police are monitoring chat rooms and local sites deemed immoral or damaging to the state or religion have been shut down. A few people have been imprisoned for soliciting sex on the Net."
redux [06.06.02]
""Without the internet the story may still have got out," said Mr Zheng. "With so many people killed it would have been hard to keep it a secret for ever, but it would have been much more difficult."
The internet is changing China in subtle but profound ways. Information is now being spread and exchanged in ways unthinkable just a few years ago.
The Chinese state's once total control on information has been broken and hard as it may try it has little hope of regaining that control."
redux [04.16.02]
"A decade or so ago, it was all clear: the Internet was believed to be such a revolutionary new medium, so inherently empowering and democratizing, that old authoritarian regimes would crumble before it. What we've learned in the intervening years is that the Internet does not inevitably lead to democracy any more than it inevitably leads to great wealth.
The idea that the Internet itself is a threat to authoritarian regimes was a bit of delusional post-Cold War optimism."
redux [03.21.02]
"Mao once said, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." The entrepreneurs in China Dawn seem to want to change the last phrase to "ISP access."
But their enthusiasm betrays a streak of naivete. As Tiananmen so amply demonstrated, in China today, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun. And the prediction that the rise of the Internet will liberate Chinese from authoritarian rule is far from certain."
"One notable loophole in the content watch list are weblogs. Weblogs are content websites maintained by ordinary users that can act as introspective online diaries, soapboxes to rant opinions, and a vehicle guide the horde of Internet users to swarm to other obscure links to be found on the net. They are easy to update, cheap to maintain, and difficult to block because so many new ones appear each day. They utilize a client relationship with a server and can be updated with a simple browser."
The bureaucrats and censors in China who block and monitor websites will be hard pressed to try and control the future flow of weblogs both in and out of China due to the number and diversity of this new information platform. Having met actual Internet content censors from China, they are decent people but come from a different time and different place in terms of technology. They don't really get it yet since weblogs remain a concept difficult for them to understand for now."
redux [08.08.01]
"It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term."
"In this paper we illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintainng control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule."
redux [06.19.01]
"Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister has warned the internet threatens democracy and people's sense of patriotism.
Lee Hsien Loong says governments must find new ways to build a consensus on national issues and strengthen national identities."
"The internet "opens up societies and helps individuals link up with like-minded souls anywhere in cyberspace," he said.
But it "may weaken the bonds of place and circumstance that have always tied citizens to their home and nation," he added."
redux [10.26.00]
"The world is changing fundamentally. Images and information respect neither time nor borders. Hierarchy is giving way to networking. Openness is crowding out secrecy and exclusivity. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded across a global network of governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. In this world of instantaneous information, traditional diplomacy struggles to sustain its relevance."
"Nations once connected by foreign ministries and traders are now linked through millions of individuals by fiber optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. The Internet, with 100 million users today, will reach one billion people by 2005 and will be available to half the world's population by 2010. The network will become the central nervous system of international relations."
redux [10.10.00]
"Metaphors, symbols and sayings are mighty mind-setters. They captivate our minds and focus our attention to one main point, effectively excluding others. Putin used the burning of the Ostankino television tower, once hailed as a symbol of Soviet supremacy, as a metaphor for the desperate economic need of Russia. The global media played along with this tune, once again showcasing images of Russia's decay. But there is another largely untold story to be extracted from Putin's metaphor: TV towers are more than symbols - indeed they are very concrete centers of mind control, distributing the flow of information and entertainment."
"Who chose the crumbling Berlin Wall as the icon and metaphor for the breakdown of communism and the end of the Cold War? Wouldn't a TV tower in flames be more accurate? It wasn't about the free flow of capital. It was about the free flow of information."
9:07 PM
0 comments
Nature
How to slake a planet's thirst
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"By this time next year, some 1.75 million people will have died before their time for the simple reason that they must scratch out their existence without access to safe drinking water. This is the toll from cholera, dysentery and other diarrhoeal diseases that the World Health Organization attributes to unsafe drinking supplies."
"Whatever transpires in the Iraqi desert over the next few weeks, the water crisis will still be with us, quietly exacting its devastating toll (see page 251). As the world's population continues to expand, and climate change alters the hydrology of river basins, as many as 7 billion people in 60 countries could face water scarcity by 2050, if action isn't taken."
redux [11.12.02]
"One thousand Arkansas rice farmers have just about pumped away all their ground water. Naturally, they are looking to taxpayers for relief."
"The Arkansas rice farmers' situation is a microcosm of a problem affecting much of the world. A new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, "World Water and Food to 2025," addresses the global freshwater crisis. "Unless we change policies and priorities, in twenty years, there won't be enough water for cities, households, the environment, or growing food," Mark Rosegrant, lead author of the report and a senior research fellow at the IFPRI, warned in a press release. "Water is not like oil. There is no substitute. If we continue to take it for granted, much of the earth is going to run short of water or food--or both.""
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"Americans are depleting their water supplies, especially their once-vast underground aquifers, at a rapid pace. Yet this alarming fact has failed to register with influential segments of the population, including developers who keep building unsustainable subdivisions and farmers who keep growing unsustainable crops. A case in point are the rice growers of Arkansas, who are on the brink of pumping one of the state's biggest aquifers dry and are now imploring the federal government to bail them out."
"The White River ecosystem, which includes two important wildlife refuges, will inevitably suffer. What's most irritating about the scheme, however, is that it further enriches an industry that is already extravagantly subsidized."
"Instead of ushering in a new era of trouble-free drinking water, Atlanta's experiment with privatization has brought a host of new problems. This year there have been five boil-water alerts, indicating unsafe contaminants might be present. Fire hydrants have been useless for months. Leaking water mains have gone unrepaired for weeks. Despite all of this, the city's contractor -- United Water, a subsidiary of French-based multinational Suez -- has lobbied the City Council to add millions more to its $21-million-a-year contract.
Atlanta's experience has become Exhibit A in a heated controversy over the push by a rapidly growing global water industry to take over public water systems. At the heart of the debate are two questions: Should water, a basic necessity for human survival, be controlled by for-profit interests? And can multinational companies actually deliver on what they promise -- better service and safe, affordable water?"
"Buried in all the daily news trivia, the careful reader can find strong warnings about our future. The Financial Times of London begins a story: "Water, like energy in the late 1970s, will probably become the most critical natural resource issue facing most parts of the world by the start of the next century."8 The British publication, People and the Planet, predicts that by the year 2025 at least sixty-five nations will experience serious water shortages.9 Another British journal, Worldlink, the magazine of the World Economic Forum, has a cover article titled "Water: The Next Source of Trouble."10 A scholarly journal on international law calls the shortage of fresh water "the national security issue of the twenty-first century."11 "Water Crisis Looms, World Bank Says" is the heading of a story on an inside page of the Washington Post of August 3, 1995. The Associated Press story accompanying that heading quotes World Bank Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development Ismail Serageldin: "We are warning the world that there is a huge problem looming out there.....The experts all agree on the need to do something fast. The main problem is the lack of political will to carry out these recommendations."
That is the crux of the matter: political will. That is not going to be generated by World Bank reports. It must come from aroused citizens who understand the severity of the problem and demand action. Almost four centuries ago, a British writer noted: "Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruel master.""
9:57 PM
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MSNBC
Net
users offer glimpse of life in Iraq
"Chicago native Kathy Kelly filed her last dispatch from Baghdad on Wednesday for ElectronicIraq.net: "Here, amid a dearth of justice, human kindness is overflowing," she wrote. Then she told the site's Webmaster not to expect any more diary entries for several days. News of everyday life in Baghdad could be found on the Internet right up until the war began Wednesday.
KELLY IS ONE of a small contingent of observers and independent journalists who have chosen to take the risk and remain in Iraq when hostilities with the United States began."
"Speculation continues that Dear Raed, the weblog of a young man in Baghdad who posts under the name Salam Pax, is a hoax, perhaps even a disinformation campaign by the CIA or Mossad. A month after Computerworld published a story quoting a "terrorist" who turned out to be a one of their former writers pranking them, it would be foolish not to wonder.
Rather than guess, I emailed Salam and asked for proof of his location just before the first attack on Baghdad this morning."
""Kevin Sites is a CNN corespondent who also runs a weblog that he updates from the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq. Like the recently famous Lt. Smash and Salam Pax, Sites' blog attempts to give the world a first person perspective from the war zone. (Although some have questioned the authenticity of the Baghdad blogger.) In addition, many professional news organizations have adopted the weblog format for their reporters' own first-hand dispatches.
"While the anonymous and easy-to-update nature of blogging has the potential to transform reportage, by freeing reporters from military censorship and spineless news mega-corporations, it also increases the likelyhood that blogs could be used to spread disinformation. Will blog users be able to sort fact from fiction?" And will the proliferation of 'warbloggers' who happen to be in the middle of a war-zone challenge the media profiles of other so-called 'warbloggers' who, fixed on their television sets and computer monitors, will make up the 82nd Couchborne Regiment in the current conflict?"
"There have been suggestions that during a conflict, the internet could now be used by "moblogging" journalists, who could now, in theory, upload photos and video from the front line direct to the net. Der Derian has doubts about this. "The mistake of the anti-war movement against the first Gulf War was to think that you could mobilise, as with Vietnam, after the war had started." But modern war happens too quickly."
8:55 PM
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Wired News
Protests to Start When War Does
"With the help of communications technology, protesters are gearing up to take immediate action if and when war breaks out in Iraq."
""Groups wouldn't have been able to do some of the logistical and other planning without the aid of the Internet for getting the message out," said Rayan Elamine, organizer with Direct Action to Stop the War, an umbrella organization for a number of antiwar groups based in the San Francisco Bay Area."
""The Internet is communication, but it's not community. People make that mistake sometimes," said Gordon Clark, national coordinator of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which calls on people to engage in civil disobedience when a war with Iraq begins. "You can't replace physical activism with online activism."
The generation gap sometimes shows when younger activists are asked to pass out flyers or circulate petitions, Smith said. The constant committee meetings behind the Vietnam War protests may have been grueling, but they brought people together in a way that electronic communication can't duplicate, he said."
redux [03.07.03]
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"Internet democracy solves the problem of how to focus political activity in a vast country of extremely busy and distracted citizens, because what keeps so many Americans busy and distracted these days is the Internet. In late February, my in-box received a forwarded message with the subject line ''Virtual March: Heading to 200,000. SEND FAX~a5646u63431t0~.'' The ''Virtual March on Washington'' was a campaign that Pariser and moveon.org held on Feb. 26: more than 1 million Americans around the country, moveon.org reports, flooded the Washington offices of their elected officials with antiwar messages, timed by electronic coordination so that phone lines wouldn't jam up. Internet democracy allows citizens to find one another directly, without phone trees or meetings of chapter organizations, and it amplifies their voices in the electronic storms or ''smart mobs'' (masses summoned electronically) that it seems able to generate in a few hours. With cellphones and instant messaging, the time frame of protest might soon be the nanosecond."
redux [02.23.03]
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"The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters. Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks: heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures, heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to one another and coordinate.
Because no central decision-making authority exists, protests can be localized and can appeal to new groups and individuals who don't live in areas where social protest information would typically reach."
"Military theorists are fond of saying that future warfare will revolve around social and communication networks. Antiwar groups have found that this is true for their work as well."
redux [01.03.03]
"The winning candidate in last week's South Korean presidential election had little need for mass rallies or traditional campaign tactics.
When Roh Moo-hyun's organizers wanted supporters to vote on election day, they simply pressed a few computer keys. Text messages flashed to the cellphones of almost 800,000 people, urging them to go to the polls."
"With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy."
redux [05.10.01]
"In the present paper, I explore how the Internet has affected the flow of information between in and outside Myanmar (Burma). I show that there is a strong difference between the way information was presented before and after the introduction of the World Wide Web."
"In my study, I examine two political events in Myanmar connected to student uprisings, in the hope of documenting how the Internet - as an easily researched symbol of modern communications - may be affecting the political strategies of one of the last isolated states."
redux [01.20.01]
"Millions of ordinary Filipinos, communicating with each other via mobile phone text messages, swarmed on to the streets of the capital, Manila, in scenes reminiscent of the 1986 uprising which ousted the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos."
"Most people heard about the planned swearing-in of Ms Arroyo via the text messages, the same means that galvanised a spontaneous uprising on Tuesday evening, when Mr Estrada's impeachment trial collapsed after he bullied and bribed senators to block the admission of vital evidence."
"The text message doing the rounds late last night said it all: "I guess we've won again."
redux [11.29.00]
""NPR's Eric Weiner reports on the latest in the effort to unseat Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Filipinos send 30 million cell phone "text messages" daily- more than anywhere else in the world. Activists are using the technology to organize rallies and respond instantly to the latest corruption charges. (5:19)""
redux [07.07.00]
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"Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone.
"There is a text war among the MILF and our forces," said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. "Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back." ."
"Sending e-mail on mobile phones, has also taken off in richer parts of the world: Europe, especially in Scandinavia, and in Japan and other East Asian countries, particularly among teen-agers. But in the Philippines, where incomes are far lower, it is even more popular. And it has spawned an entire subculture, complete with its own vocabulary, etiquette and tactical uses. It has become particularly popular here, in large part because text messaging is cheap while traditional telephone service is spotty and Internet access by computer is expensive."
6:49 PM
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NEPA News
United Way to build wireless Internet network in poor
neighborhoods
"The United Way is building a network of wireless high-speed Internet antennas in a pair of poor city neighborhoods where some people still can't afford a phone.
""What we are really trying to do is connect folks to the mainstream economy, and you do that through the Internet," he said. "Middle income folks pay their bills in their pajamas online at 6 o'clock in the morning. That same level of access should be provided to low-income people.""
""How's the signal?" asked the apartment's resident, Nakia Keizer, watching from a sofa.
"Not bad," said Kevin Bowen, the technician.
Not bad at all, considering this wireless "hotspot" was intended not for cafe-hoppers and Internet surfers with money to burn but for urban poor who only a few years before had been fighting roof leaks and overflowing sewers."
8:23 PM
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