conflux
ABC News
Labor Day No Picnic for the Unemployed
"In terms of employment growth, the recovery is the worst since the Great Depression, EPI said. Employment has fallen by 1 million since the recovery began. Since the start of the recession in March 2001, about 2.7 million jobs have been lost."
""People have a right to feel insecure about employment right now and nervous about their near-term prospects," said Jared Bernstein, EPI's senior economist. "This is a different Labor Day compared to previous years. There's fewer jobs. Wages are growing more slowly.""
"If ever there was a Labor Day for American workers to celebrate, this sure isn't the one. It's now 30 years since the end of the "golden era" for American labor, which by most accounting ended in 1973. Over the past 30 years the productivity of the people whose brain and muscle creates the wealth of the world's richest nation has grown by 66 percent. But the wage of the typical employee - the median wage - has grown by only 7 percent.
This one statistic says more than the volumes of hype and tripe that will fill the papers and the air waves on Labor Day. It encapsulates the most massive redistribution of income in American history, from the poor, from workers, from former middle classes - to the rich and the super-rich. As billionaire Warren Buffett said to ABC's Ted Koppel last month, "If it's class warfare, my class is winning.""
"She said the job center is averaging over 1,000 visits and about 50 new customers a month, up from about 15 to 25 new customers during the tech boom.
But what has changed the most Geiken said is not the shear volume of job seekers, but their backgrounds. "All of the job centers are inundated with IT professionals still laid off," she said. "Three or four years ago folks were looking for entry level jobs, now we are looking at such an array--web designers, engineers.""
"One of several job seekers profiled by Pioneer Press in February, Doyle said he decided a few months later to abandon an increasingly fruitless job search and focus his energies on improving his home.
With new homes in Doyle's Glenview Countryside neighborhood selling for more than $1 million, Doyle figures that he can make more on his house than he could working at the kind of jobs -- restaurant dishwasher, for example -- he came upon during his search."
"From July of 2002 to July of this year Indiana lost 60,700 jobs, more than any other state.
As of May of this year, 21,000 Hoosier workers were out of work so long they exhausted their unemployment benefits.
"One in five workers since 2000 went through a spell of unemployment," says Davis."
"The nation's economic recession might have officially ended in November 2001, but hard times are far from over for thousands of Wisconsin residents whose jobs continue to disappear, especially in the hard-hit manufacturing sector. Factories across the state have eliminated 80,000 jobs since 2000. That's more than the entire population of Eau Claire."
"Even companies producing technology -- touted by some as a way to improve the state's economy and raise salaries -- are slashing jobs."
8:51 AM 0 comments
Online Journalism Review
Newspapers Want to Charge for Content, but Will Readers
Pay?
"So our No. 1 concern -- the terrible fad from 2002 was that newspapers have said, "We have had enough of putting our stuff on the Internet for free, and although we have no real proof that we are hurting our circulation, we think that just from anecdotal evidence--that we are."
And so we had a situation in the newspaper industry where everybody was talking about putting their stuff behind a firewall. And I think the threat is pretty much over. We have seen fewer than 30 newspapers go up there and cut people off cold turkey ... because people who thought they could replicate the revenue that they were making from circulation by putting stuff up and charging people on the Web for it -- if they were not subscribers -- it has proved to be untrue."
redux [01.06.03]
"New research in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Sweden has revealed that 41 percent of European Internet users still refuse to pay for content on the Web. However, this figure has improved from 47 percent a year ago.
Moreover, research firm Jupiter has said that users who have a broadband connection are "significantly" more likely to pay for on-line content compared to those using dial-up. According to the firm, about 25 percent of broadband Internet users said they would pay for music over the Internet, compared to just 18 percent of narrowband (dial-up) users. Similarly, about 18 percent of broadband users claim they would be willing to buy video over the Web, compared to a mere 11 percent of dial-up subscribers."
redux [10.11.02]
"Over half of Europe will be online by 2007 according to a new survey but there are still question marks about what surfers will be prepared to buy on the net.
Jupiter Media's European Online survey revealed that by the end of 2002 only 10% of Europeans will have paid for content online."
redux [04.22.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
""The smarter bears in the bunch will be testing different products at different price points this year," she said, noting a recent Forrester survey indicating that one-third of Internet users would be willing to pay for online content next year.
But that means two-thirds of Internet users are not willing to pay for information or services online, which is why Ms. Allen stopped short of exhorting media executives to block off key areas of their Web sites immediately and start charging for entry. Rather, she said, media executives and others hoping to cash in on the subscription trend "have to start acting less like a media company and more like a retailer.""
redux [03.19.02]
"To online publishing and entertainment firms looking to start charging for their content, there was a simple message from today's Jupiter Media Forum: Don't hold your breath."
"Seventy percent of online adults surveyed by Jupiter, he said, can't understand why anyone would pay for any online content.
"If anything, people are less willing to pay than they were 18 months ago," he said."
"As some of you will be aware, I'm a major critic of 'negative' subscription models. Time and time again we have witnessed websites introduce subscription services that represent nothing more than a closure of existing content.
There are a few exceptions - one being the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) whose subscription model is to my mind flawless. They kept their exist proposition entirely unchanged and brought in a high quality advanced option designed perfectly to cater for a specific sector of their audience. Furthermore they have undertaken to continuously improve the subscriber experience, aggressively seeking user feedback.
IMDB and others have demonstrated that you can introduce a subscription service in a positive manner, and succeed, so why don't more websites follow their example?"
redux [01.15.01]
"As Microsoft, along with everyone else, wrestles with the challenge of how to make money on the Internet, you cannot help but wonder if Bill Gates & Co. regret a pivotal decision in the evolution of the Web.
When Microsoft decided in 1995 to make Internet Explorer and fold it into Windows, the action more than any other may have cemented the concept of OfreeO on the Internet."
"Microsoft won the browser wars but in so doing indelibly emblazoned in usersO minds the conviction that nothing on the Internet should cost money."
"Back when I did direct marketing, we were well-aware that people were irrational about pricing. The only way to really find out the right price for a product -- especially an information-based product, for which prices can be so arbitrarily set -- was to test a few, by sending different offers to random samplings, and see which resulted in more profit. Actually, it would be unusual if more than one (or any) of the prices produced any profit at all. And the results were all over the map. A higher price could sometimes bring in not just more money, but more orders, because of the increased perceived value. Then again, a price 20% lower could increase sales by 100%. You could guess but never know, and you were often surprised.O
redux [11.23.01]
"While the concept of e-publishing (as most people think of the term; in the strictest sense, everything on the Web could qualify as e-publishing) hasn't exactly set the world on fire, it is still the 'early days.' And like so many things on the Web, is still sorting out its proper place and 'mode of delivery.' The following sites reveal four different approaches to e-publishing - and whether through odd coincidence or 'environmental compulsion,' each one parallels a familiar method of software distribution."
"I've been listening to online-news people talk about it with much interest ever since I was laid off 6 months ago as the managing editor of a regional news site for an Internet Industry portal. Most of the old pros say it won't work. The consultants say about the same thing. The Suits? Well, they just don't say.
Yet, people have paid for print newspapers for ages and they don't seem to mind. So what's so different about online-news?
At this point, I think that online-news users have to pay, it's as simple as that."
"The Web's great free-for-all is coming to a sudden, sharp end. Under today's market conditions, Web companies can no longer expect to sustain themselves by losing ever-larger sums of money to gain ever-larger slices of market share. As more traditional business yardsticks take hold, many companies face the difficult decision to charge for some of their online content and servicesNand users have begun to accept that they can no longer get everything they want or love for free.
Sure, the Web continues to offer a vast, unprecedented array of gratismaterial. But professionally produced sites need to pay their bills, and relying on advertising alone is a risky proposition in an economic slump. As senior vice president of editorial operations for Salon.com , I've become very familiar with these realities. For content sites like Salon.com, charging for subscriptionsNonce considered anathema on the WebNis now an essential move for survival."
9:46 PM 0 comments
The Edge
The Moral Sense Test
"About the Moral Sense Test: Nothing captures human attention more than a moral dilemma. Whether we are soap opera fanatics or not, we can't help sticking our noses in other people's affairs, pronouncing our views on right and wrong, permissible and impermissible, justified or not. For hundreds of years, scholars have argued that our moral judgments arise from rational, conscious, voluntary, reflective deliberations about what ought to be. This perspective has generated the further belief that our moral psychology is a slowly developing capacity, founded entirely on experience and education, and subject to considerable variation across cultures. With the exception of a few trivial examples, one culture's right is another's wrong. We believe this hyper rational, culturally-specific view is no longer tenable. The [ Moral Sense Test ] has been designed to show why and offer an alternative. Most of our moral intuitions are unconscious, involuntary, and universal, developing in each child despite formal education. When humans, from the hunter-gathers of the Rift Valley to the billionaire dot-com-ers of the Silicon Valley generate moral intuitions they are like reflexes, something that happens to us without our being aware of how or even why. We call this capacity our moral faculty. Our aim is to use data from the MST, as well as other experiments, to explain what it is, how it evolved, and how it develops in our species, creating individuals with moral responsibilities and concerns about human welfare. The MST has been designed for all humans who are curious about that puzzling little word "ought" -- about the principles that make one action right and another wrong, and why we feel elated about the former and guilty about the latter."
8:38 PM 0 comments
HBS Working Knowledge
Should You Sell Your Digital Privacy?
"It's a startling idea: Instead of relying on regulators to protect our privacy against telemarketers, data miners, and consumer companies, we should capitalize on the value of our personal information and get something of value in return.
That is the idea put forward by HBS professor John Deighton in a recent working paper, Market Solutions to Privacy Problems? And what would consumers get in return for their personal information? Money perhaps, or price discounts, better customer service, maybe products tailored specifically to their needs."
redux [09.11.00]
"Personal information has become the new currency of online commerce. Decentralized Internet protocols have made computing resources increasingly pervasive, empowering individuals with an unprecedented amount of control. One result is that very few Internet consumers actually pay for network content, instead offering up personal information as they go. Content providers then collect, buy, and sell this information. To bring the Internet economy into its next stage of development, complementary software and legal architectures must be created in which personal information is regarded as a commercial property right, and accorded corresponding monetary value."
redux [09.02.00]
"Some big computer out there knows all about Joan Schram. Its massive memory has stored the birth dates of family members and friends, the fact that she drives a Ford Explorer, and the names and birth dates of her American shorthair cat and rare Brazilian fila dog.
And she's thrilled about it.
"It's one of the more puzzling conundrums of online life. While companies that capitalize on the Internet's powerful potential to invade privacy are denounced as villains of the information age, millions of people type out highly personal data and send it off to Web sites they've barely heard of, with no strong legal protection against misuse of the information."
7:00 PM 0 comments
USA Today
Offshoring fad has a dark side
"The wages that programmers are pulling down in New Delhi won't be paying for any Ford Explorers. Foreign workers often get wages and work in conditions that make America's early 20th-century sweatmills look good.
Instead, U.S. corporations are making lots of short-term cash by dumping larger salaries in favor of lower-paid workers in other countries. In this case, short-term cash couldn't be more shortsighted."
"Politicians in Washington should listen to Robert Perrucci, an author and sociology professor at Purdue University. Perrucci, who along with Earl Wysong wrote The New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream? , says we should tax companies for offshoring."
redux [08.13.03]
"Almost any professional job that can be done long-distance is suddenly up for grabs. Jobs done by financial analysts, architectural drafters, telemarketers, accountants, claims adjusters, home loan processors and others at higher levels of the labor food chain are being farmed out to workers in other countries.
"We're not just talking about call-center jobs, but all kinds of jobs," says Deloitte Consulting analyst Christopher Gentle. "It doesn't leave any part of the corporation untouched.""
redux [07.30.03]
"One out of 10 jobs in the U.S. computer services and software industry could shift to lower-cost emerging markets such as India or Russia by the end of 2004, a top computer consultancy said on Tuesday."
""Suddenly we have a profession -- computer programming -- that has to wake up and consider what value it really has to offer," Diane Morello, a Gartner vice president and research director who studies work force issues said in an interview."
redux [07.17.03]
"Citing statistics from market research firms such as McKinsey, the body said the United States stands to save over $300 billion over the next six years by shifting some business operations overseas."
""US banks, financial services and insurance companies have saved $6 billion to $8 billion in the past four years owing to IT outsourcing to India," Nasscom claimed. "Helped by these savings, companies have prevented layoffs and instead added 125,000 more jobs.""
redux [07.12.03]
"Laxmikant Purohit, a 34-year-old services manager at SoftTel Information Services who works from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., says he suffers from constipation and acid stomach. In the past eight months he has put on 29 pounds, he said.
"It's difficult to have a positive outlook toward life because everything seems dark and gloomy when you work at ungodly hours," he said. "It's the first month that is the most terrible. One or two weeks after joining, new recruits throw up in the middle of work.""
redux [07.08.03]
"There is no better form of trade a developing nation can engage in than to sell services provided by an educated population. Compare it to anything else a developing nation can sell -- natural resources like oil or minerals or agribusiness, hard labor in manufacturing, for instance -- and you'd probably find that white-collar jobs would be the most sustainable and most eco-friendly of any of them.
Those concerned about solving the world's problems should be falling over themselves to encourage developing nations to build a white-collar workforce, and to open that workforce to the world."
redux [07.03.03]
"Napier says that neither the bursting of the late-'90s tech bubble nor the doldrums of a poky recovery from the recession explain his layoff and ongoing unemployment. He places the blame for his woes on globalization: the double whammy of American companies flooding an already soft job market with foreign workers brought into the United States on H1-B visas while at the same time employing non-U.S. workers still in their home countries to write code or perform other high-tech services.
The latter practice, known as "outsourcing" or "offshoring" or even "near shoring" when it takes place in a neighboring country, is based on a simple economic rationale: Cut costs by sending work overseas to someone who will do it for less money."
redux [06.12.03]
"How efficient is it to pay a software engineer in the Valley a loaded salary of $170,000, the average salary reported in the fourth quarter of 2001, when Asian engineers provide a much better value? We've all read the cost differentials between US and Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese workers. And one of the main reasons this work went overseas is because clients knew they were being gouged by US engineers and consultants. After all, programming is, essentially, production work. And is labor not the most expensive variable component of a software product?
It's easy to recognize that we're witnessing the demise of an industry that had a nice run in the Valley."
"India has warned the US and other developed countries that if they limit the extent to which information technology is outsourced it will damage their domestic industry.
"India's Information Technology Secretary Rajiv Ratan Shah said outsourcing was a huge international movement and that it was unstoppable."
"U.S. companies such as IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and PeopleSoft are already exploring countries with even cheaper sources of technical labor, says a report from research firm IDC. The new destinations include Romania, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
As a result, India, which some have blamed for the loss of American jobs, may soon lose jobs itself."
redux [11.27.02]
"The export of IT jobs from America to English-speaking Third World countries is a worrying new trend. First predicted more than a decade ago in Ed Yourdon's book ``The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer,'', Yourdon went on to suggest that American programmers could avoid unemployment by becoming more productive with the help of software tools. His identification of the trend was correct, but his solution was wrong."
"The export of IT jobs has a permanent vicious cycle effect. As the jobs migrate, there are more and more unemployed people chasing fewer opportunities here."
7:10 PM 0 comments
News.Com
Free ride over for VoIP?
"A cheap, Internet-based alternative to traditional telephone service is facing a sudden regulatory backlash that could slow adoption of the fast-growing technology, raise prices and put financially shaky start-ups out of business.
Two weeks ago, Minnesota drew first blood. It ordered so-called VoIP (voice over IP) provider Vonage Holdings to file for a telephone operator's license. Many see the move, the first attempt by a state public utilities commission to regulate an Internet telephony provider, as the beginning of a new regulatory framework for Internet telephone operators in the state."
redux [05.22.03]
"Both sides agreed on one point: Nobody has any idea how to turn Wi-Fi into a profitable business.
Of all the talk, Babbio's prickly attack on MCI -- along with his lukewarm comments about Wi-Fi -- perhaps best reflected the painful disputes consuming the troubled telecom industry. While studies show broadband Internet access has reached nearly a third of American homes, it remains unclear what kind of pricing, quality and add-on services consumers should expect from their beleaguered suppliers."
"Think of it as the love child of the two hottest developments in telecom: voice over IP and wireless broadband. There are more than 3.5 million VoIP phones in the US - mostly at work - up from practically none five years ago. Meanwhile, the number of commercial Wi-Fi hot spots in the US exploded from 2,000 to 12,000 last year. Combine the two and any gadget - laptop, PDA, tablet PC, whatever - can become a voice communication device."
"For big providers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, voice over Wi-Fi isn't pretty. Those companies blew billions on licenses for next-gen cellular networks. Now they may find themselves undercut by the same grassroots groups bringing free, unregulated Wi-Fi to the urban masses."
redux [12.16.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"After all, telecommunications and technology companies lost $7.6 billion in global market value from March 2000 to September 2002, as the industry was gripped by stunning collapses, financial scandals and an effort to absorb excess capacity on globe-spanning communications systems.
But alongside the industry's search for its direction after such turmoil are trends that threaten to destabilize global telecommunications further in 2003. These trends could be described as the start of a cannibalization of established services by disruptive new technologies."
redux [08.07.02]
"Of course The Economist is not alone in this fundamental error but "Crash" story is a useful foil for addressing this misunderstanding.
It is a tragic misunderstanding since the woes of the Telecom industry are seen as representing the state of the economy rather than the collapsing of a facade of a Potemkin industry. In 1900's there was a real telecommunications industry just like in the 1800's when there was a thriving business in transporting ice from frozen lakes to warmer climes. Just as refrigeration put an end to the need for buying ice, the Internet has put an end to the need to buy telecommunications services from others. We just need commodity connectivity."
redux [07.22.02]
"The telecoms bust is some ten times bigger than the better-known dotcom crash: the rise and fall of telecoms may indeed qualify as the largest bubble in history. Telecoms firms have run up total debts of around $1 trillion. And as if this were not enough, the industry has also disgraced itself by using fraudulent accounting tricks in an attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster."
"The danger is that the traumatic scale of the telecoms crisis will cause the pendulum to swing back too far in favour of the former monopolies. In the short term, they are likely to attract investment, to pick up the assets of bankrupt rivals, and to lead the way in consolidating the industry."
redux [06.18.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"The turmoil continues in telecommunications, making the long-awaited turnaround increasingly difficult to call. Indeed, in light of a wave of bad news last week and through the weekend, some analysts say the industry's problems could actually become worse before they become better."
" "I foresee a near total collapse as the endgame," said Susan Kalla, a senior telecommunications analyst at Friedman, Billings & Ramsey. "I've become more reactionary in the last month as it becomes clear that almost nothing is working in the industry's favor.""
redux [02.08.02]
""Some of the more highly leveraged companies are really struggling. They don't have the cash flow to make their payments," says James Glen, a telecom economist with Economy.com."
Worse, Baby Bells such as Verizon (VZ ) and SBC (SBC ) continue to eat away at consumer long-distance monopoly of AT&T, Sprint, and WorldCom. That's on top of the woes the big three already face in operating backbone undersea and land-based networks, which they resell to other operators in some places. While Sprint, WorldCom, and AT&T don't face the type of imminent cash crunch as Global Crossing does, a consolidation among even the major long-distance providers is now a possibility."
"The fundamental health of the [telecom] sector is likely to get worse before it gets better . . . The combination of: the sector's anemic growth outlook, the cannibalizing competitive mega-trends of wireless substitution, voice to data migration, Bell entry into long distance combined with local competition, and the bubble-induced excesses in debt and over-capacity, all create a powerful wealth destroying dynamic. Telecom's 'debt spiral' has gotten so bad that even the relatively strongest players who are still able to raise significant capital (VZ, SBC, and BLS) don't want to assume any more liabilities or business risk. Consequently, Precursor is reversing its long held view that consolidation can help improve the sector from excess capacity and debt any time soon."
"Despite the darkened outlook, new communications capabilities are within reach that will make the current Internet look like tin cans and string. The technical know-how exists. Radically simplified technologies can blast bits a million times faster than the current network at a millionth of the cost. These are sitting in laboratories undeveloped, in warehouses undeployed, and in the field underutilized.
It's not even that the communications revolution has been derailed by inept or self-aggrandizing behavior by incumbent telephone companies and their government regulators. Something more fundamental is at work."
6:54 PM 0 comments
Chicago Daily Herald
Iraqis get first taste of limitless Internet
"The first words Ahmed Abdullah typed in the Google search engine were "George Bush.""
"On Saturday, Hussein's hometown of Tikrit got its first postwar Internet cafe, where residents could browse any site without fear of being monitored or blocked.
"I like it. It's beautiful. There is so much information I can get," Abdullah said, surrounded by U.S. soldiers and commanders who crammed the one-room Internet cafe they had helped set up with $24,000 from the 4th Infantry Division's budget."
redux [07.26.03]
" "We need communications with the outside and there are no phones," said Ibrahem al-Samarra'i, general manager of Tina, a computer company and Internet cafe. "We need e-mail.""
""It is freedom, really," said Layth Abed al-Samea, a former computer engineer who left his field to become a graphic designer, as he trawled the Web at the Botan. "I chat with my family, with my cousin in Qatar...I also search for jobs.""
redux [06.13.03]
"For a country that has been brutally scarred by a war that has left little standing, the idea of an information revolution takes some getting used to."
""The Taleban banned the use of the internet because they did not want Afghans to be part of the world and see the freedom that people elsewhere were enjoying.
"It's our chance, we have to grasp it.""
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."
"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 [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 [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."
8:13 AM 0 comments
Wired News
No Surveillance Tech for Tampa
"Police thought facial recognition software could be a great way to spot criminals or missing children in crowds. Civil rights activists deplored it as "Big Brother" on the street.
Now police in Tampa, Florida, are removing the software, which is linked to street surveillance cameras, from the Ybor City entertainment district after the 2-year-old scheme, the first such deployment in the United States, failed to produce any arrests."
"The move is a hollow victory for privacy proponents. While the department is abandoning the use of the facial-recognition software, it will continue to rely on the 36 surveillance cameras to fight crime in the making.
"Officers have been able to make arrests involving illegal drug dealing, fights and things of that nature,'' Durkin told the Tribune. "One officer monitoring the cameras has been able to be the eyes of many in foiling this type of activity.""
redux [10.07.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Confronted with the unblinking eyes of surveillance cameras, Michael Naimark believes he can hide in plain sight with the aid of a $1 laser pointer."
"In his research, Mr. Naimark discovered that there was already military literature widely available about using lasers to blind sensors, and that it was relatively simple to become invisible in front the cameras that now watch over many public spaces in this country."
[requires 'free' registration]
"I have lots of worries about how this technology is being used," said John Graham, who is the founder of BroadWare Technologies, a Cupertino, Calif., maker of software for video camera networks, and who was one of the first researchers to send audio and video over the Internet.
"I've become Big Brother, but I didn't mean to be," Graham said. "It's just that there's no money in education or scientific collaboration.""
redux [09.09.02]
"These days, if you feel like somebody's watching you, you might be right.
One year after the Sept. 11 attacks, security experts and privacy advocates say there has been a surge in the number of video cameras installed around the country. The electronic eyes keep an unwavering gaze on everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Washington Monument."
redux [03.11.02]
"In the six months since the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans may not have exactly embraced a surveillance society, but they appear to have grown to accept portions of it. A Zogby poll conducted last December says that 80 percent of respondents favored video monitoring on public places such as street corners.
Especially in the dark days after the Pentagon was hit, the White House targeted, the Capitol anthraxed, and the World Trade Center leveled, that public reaction was predictable. In national emergencies, the uneasy relationship between freedom and order edges toward greater restrictions on individual liberty."
redux [02.25.02]
"It hangs over Times Square, looking more like a street lamp than what it really is: a police video surveillance camera that can swivel 360 degrees and zoom in close enough to read a Broadway ticket in a scalper's hand 50 feet away.
As Jad Abumrad reports for Morning Edition, the camera and thousands of others like it in New York City and millions across the country are at the center of an escalating debate: is the use of such devices to combat crime and terrorism worth the loss of privacy and other guaranteed constitutional freedoms?"
redux [10.12.01]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity. But in fact, over the past decade, this precise state of affairs has materialized, not in the United States but in the United Kingdom. At the beginning of September, as it happened, I was in Britain, observing what now looks like a glimpse of the American future."
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.""
6:33 PM 0 comments
The Seattle Times
FCC wants media to think local
"Powell said yesterday the FCC would form a task force to determine whether broadcasters -- some of whom have been denounced for airing generic newscasts that originate in centralized studios -- should be compelled to produce more local news and other programming.
Powell said the agency would begin a formal inquiry into rules that would promote "localism" at TV and radio stations."
"Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell on Monday asked U.S. lawmakers to draft new media ownership rules, instead of simply undoing recent rules that relaxed restrictions on ownership.
"If we're going to do this, let's pass real laws ... that give the commission more specific guidance about what we want, not just an anti-vote," Powell told reporters after speaking to the Progress & Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit."
redux [08.07.03]
"Legal challenges to a Federal Communications Commission overhaul of media-ownership rules emerged Wednesday, with the regulations under fire both for allowing too few and too many mergers."
"Separately, organizations representing more than 600 local television stations affiliated with ABC, CBS, and NBC asked the court to reject the regulation that raised a TV ownership limit on the national reach of companies from 35% of U.S. households to 45%."
"Defying the will of the White House and the Republican-controlled Federal Communciations Commission, the House voted 400-21 today to overturn controversial rules adopted by the FCC in June that would allow a single company to own TV stations serving 45 percent of TV viewers nationwide.
`There's a great deal of consternation about that across the country,` said Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc., a leader in the move to throw out the FCC's media ownership rule changes. `In my view that is a severe threat to democracy.`"
redux [07.16.03]
"On Wednesday, a House committee effectively voted to bar the new rules from taking effect. The vote follows a move by a group of senators to utilize an obscure law, called a "resolution of disapproval," also aimed at defeating the rule changes."
The bill still faces opposition from the Republican leadership in the House and a likely veto threat from the White House. Still, the latest maneuverings indicate that the attempt to roll back the new media-ownership regulations is gaining momentum."
redux [06.02.03]
"The vote has engendered public opposition by lawmakers, consumer and advocacy groups and unaligned citizens who fear that further media consolidation will make it more difficult for those with minority viewpoints to get their message out. On Friday, the FCC's voice- and e-mail systems were temporarily shut down by a deluge of public comments. The agency has received more than 500,000 e-mails and postcards opposing the changes."
"This is a gross scandal. The Center for Public Integrity has a stunning study out on the concentration of ownership in telecommunications. The even more stunning news is that the Federal Communications Commission, which theoretically represents you and me, is about to make all of it even worse. And behind this betrayal of the public trust is nothing but rotten, old-fashioned corruption. It's the old free-trip-to-Vegas ploy, on a grand scale.
The Public Integrity people examined the travel records of FCC employees and found that they have accepted 2,500 trips, costing nearly $2.8 million over the past eight years, paid for by the telecommunications and broadcast industries, which are, theoretically, "regulated" by the FCC."
"Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protests have been given little media coverage. "We're frozen out," said Karen Pomer, who attended a protest in Los Angeles. "All of this is benefiting conservative voices."
The Washington consumer watchdog, the Centre for Public Integrity, said that the FCC met with broadcasters 71 times in the run-up to the proposed rule changes but with consumer groups, just five."
5:35 PM 0 comments
Businessweek
Technology with Social Skills
"For 30 years, civil war has raged on the island of Mindanao at the southern tip of the Philippines. Muslim separatists want an independent Islamic nation, while the Philippine government strives to preserve its nation's territorial integrity. Caught in the crossfire are Mindanao's 18 million people."
"Today, thanks to technology, Mindanao's troubles have a new witness: Martus, a software program that helps watchdog groups compile, analyze, and securely transmit data on human-rights abuses."
redux [04.03.01]
"After decades of mounting complaints about the use of excessive force, false arrests and racial profiling, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is being forced to implement a computerized risk-management system to track officers' conduct and performance."
"The system tracks officers' use of force, search and seizure, and citizen complaints, as well as criminal charges or civil lawsuits filed against officers. Pittsburgh's system, called the Performance Assessment and Review System, also tracks commendations and awards earned by officers. It alerts police officials, who check the system at least once each day, to any inappropriate behavior by an officer."
redux [09.09.00]
""Technology has leveled the playing field between human rights organizations and intelligence services," says Ball. "Back in the '70s, intelligence services all over the world were getting pretty impressive computer hardware. This gave them the ability to track activities, peaceful civilian activists as well as violent [individuals], in pretty precise ways, to infer patterns and to use the data analysis as the basis for oppression."
Today the same tools can be used to build an irrefutable record that documents a history of oppression.
Ball's work is "incredibly important," says Harvey Weinstein, associate director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley. "Patrick has the capacity with this statistical knowledge to develop hard, incontrovertible statistical data to provide the kind of evidence that people need to get a good sense of the kind of human rights violations that occur in these difficult situations. He is one of the leaders in the field of trying to develop and use statistics to provide substantiation for human rights abuses.""
"Telling the truth in such a way that it cannot be denied is the first need of a truth commission established in the aftermath of gross human violations. The magnitude of violations is often so great that individual researchers cannot apprehend the complex nature and multiple patterns of such crimes, building an official history from a collective memory is essential to truth telling. This is our concern in these proceedings: building such a collective memory, and the analysis of the past through examination of that memory."
"The official record is derived from the collective memory, and the collective memory is based on information and data. The systematic arrangement of the information and data is the basis of the information management system.
These proceedings are about all aspects of how to build, manage, and generate analyses from such a system."
5:29 PM 0 comments
Wired News
RIAA: We'll Spare the Small Fry
""RIAA is in no way targeting 'de minimis' users," wrote Cary Sherman, the group's president, in a letter the subcommittee released Monday. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music.""
"Sherman said that in cases it brought last year against college students who were illegally distributing tens of thousands of songs, the RIAA settled cases for $12,500 to $17,000 each."
redux [08.11.03]
[requires 'free' registration]
"Arguing that the record industry is trying to force its members to become the "police of the Internet," a group representing over 100 Internet service providers plans to deliver a letter to the industry's trade association today. The letter asks a series of pointed questions about plans to sue people suspected of illegally trading music files online.
""There has to be a better answer than litigation," the letter says."
"A U.S. law professor has exposed the feeble backbone of Loyola University Chicago - an institution that handed its students' names over to the pigopolist mob's subpoena machine without so much as a grumble. The precedent set by the university's nonchalance toward privacy bodes poorly for students should the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) get its way and place the children before a court of law.
""A school or university should consider carefully whether it wants to be co-opted into the law enforcement business," D'Amato wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times."
"Next week, incoming students at UC Berkeley will receive more than just campus maps and classroom tours: They'll learn about the perils of sharing digital music and movies files online.
Specifically they'll be warned they can lose their Internet access or get slapped with a costly copyright infringement lawsuit if they aren't careful about uploading and downloading files using programs like Kazaa."
redux [07.28.03]
"Bob Barnes never dreamed that the long arm of the music industry would reach into his personal computer. Sure, the bus operator from Fresno, Calif., had used Napster to grab music files off the Internet. And when that file-swapping service was put out of business, he switched to its most popular successor, Kazaa. But he was careful not to leave a trace, transferring all his downloaded songs to separate discs. A visiting teenage grandson wasn't so careful, however, and last week Barnes, 50, was slapped with a subpoena from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It alleged that he had posted online -- for the world to steal -- digital copies of songs by Savage Garden, Marvin Gaye and the Eagles. "This is like shock and awe," says Barnes. "Blitz them until they submit."
Barnes may be a pirate, but he has plenty of company."
[requires 'free' registration]
"Those on alert include several college students, the parents of a 14-year-old boy in the Southwest, a 41-year-old Colorado health care worker and a Brooklyn woman who works in the fashion industry.
"They could have used some other way to inform people than scaring the bejiminy out of them," said a mother who received a copy of the subpoena last Wednesday, listing several songs that her 14-year-old son had made available for others to copy from his computer. "If someone had sent me a letter saying `this is wrong,' you can bet your sweet potatoes that would have gotten my attention. This just seems so drastic.""
"As the war over P2P downloading heats up, and the record companies launch the novel marketing technique of suing their customers, I think it is an appropriate time to settle some of the pervasive myths about U.S. copyright law which fuel both sides of the debate."
redux [07.10.03]
"The survey's findings oppose the music industry's long-standing argument that internet downloading is responsible for a slump in CD sales, with album sales falling 5% in the last year.
Market research company Music Programming Ltd (MPL) said 87% of its respondents who downloaded music admitted they bought albums after hearing tracks through the internet."
redux [06.25.03]
"A recording-industry trade group said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute copyright songs over the Internet, expanding its antipiracy fight into millions of homes."
""The RIAA, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to not only alienate their own customers but attempt to drive them into bankruptcy through litigation. So therefore they probably won't be able to afford to buy any music even if they wa