civil disobedience

Landmines – ban the technology

Certain technological artefacts should never have been designed, manufactured or used. Among these is the landmine. Its horrible impact is not only on the combatants but rather on the civil population which needs to live with the slowly decaying lethal devices for decades after the land was sown with them. Organisations such as the No More Landmines in the UK are working to ban them as legitimate weapons. These organisations need all the support that they can get.

The problem is that people are interested in a conflict while it is active and making headlines. When “peace” is achieved public interest declines considerably. This is unfortunate as the landmines remain. The cost of removing landmines is extremely high and almost impossible to meet for worn torn countries.

So how does one attempt to ensure that people’s interest remains focused on the landmine problem? Well artist & activist Will St. Leger came up with a novel and shocking approach. On Sunday 1st April he placed 100 fake ‘landmines’ made from stenciled metal plates in park around Dublin, Ireland.

Will explains: “The reason for doing this was to get people asking themselves “what if the world I walked in was littered with landmines?” They’re nearly all gone now, the Police took away most of them when a tourist called the emergency number to report ‘Landmines’. Afterwards, I wondered who the people of Laos, Cambodia and Iraq gonna call when they step on real landmine?”

landmines1.jpg

 (via Wooster Collective)

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2nd International Faslane Academic Blockade and Conference

Call for participation in the 2nd International Faslane Academic Blockade and Conference

Wednesday 27th-Thursday 28th June 2007

Trident Nuclear Weapons Base, Faslane, Near Glasgow, Scotland

 

The 2nd Faslane International Academic Blockade & Conference (FAB Conference) will provide a forum for presenting and discussing papers focused on the impacts of, and alternatives to, the nuclear state. In particular it will focus on the academic arguments against Blairâ??s proposed â??son of Tridentâ?? which it is estimated will cost the UK £76 billion by 2030, equivalent to the cost of bringing our CO2 emissions down by 60% over the same period. The conference is simultaneously a blockade of the Trident nuclear submarine base at Faslane, since it will take place directly at the North Gate of the base, on the road. All who work and study in universities,  including students, and all who are trying to think critically about the nature of the world, are invited to join us.

 

You can participate in a range of ways. You may present a paper at the conference. We hope that papers will take a variety of forms and reflect a variety of perspectives and disciplines. You are also very welcome to come along to listen to papers and participate in discussion groups. If you choose to do so, you may join those who are willing to continue the conference on the road in order to close down the base, thus risking arrest. We also need participants who do not risk arrest and who can, for example, continue our educational work by handing out papers to workers trying to enter the base on the morning of the 28th. Finally, our action overlaps with a studentsâ?? week-long anti-nuclear summer camp, taking place close to Faslane from the 28th. The students will join us on the 28th and would welcome you to stay on and offer workshops or talks at their camp if you wish.

 

REGISTER NOW!

Register for the conference by emailing D.Webb@leedsmet.ac.uk with the following info:

1)         your full name, university affiliation (if any), contact details

2)         whether or not you intend to present a paper

3)         whether or not you intend to blockade the gate and thus risk arrest

4)         whether or not you are likely to require accommodation

5)         which days you intend to participate (27th, 28th, any days of the student camp?)

 

If you intend to present a paper, please also supply an abstract to D.Webb@leedsmet.ac.uk, of 50-100 words, by 16th May 2007. You are welcome to send full papers before the event which we can upload onto our webpage (see http://www.faslane365.org/academics_and_scholars). Papers should be no longer than 4000 words.

If you have not already done so, please sign up to our email list to ensure you receive further information: send a blank email to faslane.academic.block-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.

 

The 2nd FAB conference is part of Faslane 365, a one-year continuous peaceful blockade of the Trident base at Faslane from 1st October 2006 to 30th September 2007. See http://www.faslane365.org. The Faslane 365 actions are entirely non-violent, respectful of people, and are part of the broader peace and global justice movement.

 

We look forward to seeing you on the 27th and 28th of June! The FAB Organisers: Stellan Vinthagen, Justin Kenrick, Jill Gibbon, Maud Bracke, Becka Kay, Catherine Eschle, Mark Blaxter and David Webb

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Stealing Wifi

A man in the UK has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 monthsâ?? conditional discharge for illegally using someone elseâ??s open wifi (an offence under the Computer Misuse Act see more on note below*). These (one and two) BBC stories gives more information on this but it also includes lots of interesting pre-suppositions about the dangers of open wireless Internet access points.

The main arguments in the BBC stories are that the use of someone elseâ??s wifi is mainly to enter into illegal porn sites, launch hack attacks, to steal information or worse.

Is this really what people try to do on other peoples networks? My experience is that most unauthorized wifi use is travelers checking email, or neighbors using each otherâ??s nets out of sheer incompetence. Naturally there are always going to be nasty people attempting to abuse openness but how bad can it be?

Phil Cracknell has called for an awareness campaign to inform of the dangers of openness â?? â??The perception in the past has been that borrowing a bit of bandwidth is cheeky but not really criminal behaviourâ??. But then again Phil Cracknell is chief technology officer of security firm NetSurity and may be a bit interested in increasing our perception of insecurity.

Most of the people I come into contact with (ok, so I hang with the wrong crowd) donâ??t believe that borrowing bandwidth is cheeky â?? itâ??s a simple act that does not harm anyone.

Using anything for an illegal activity is however illegal and should be punished.

—

* Added 23 April

Stealing wifi is actually an offence under the Communications Act of 2003. To be an offence under the Computer Misuse Act there has to be more than simple wifi use. Basically the Computer Misuse Act requires an unauthorised entry into the computer system. This is similar to Swedish law where “only” using someone’s wifi is not an offence while entering into someone’s system without authorisation is an offence (DatorintrÃ¥ng). This difference is quite subtle and should be investigated further since it could be argued that it is not possible to use wifi without unlawful entry.

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Stress Flag

Adding a haphazard artistic touch to most cities are the street artists. They apply their art in many different ways here it is in the form of a small flag tied up to the railing of a bridge in Göteborg. The flag bears the word “stress” but is it for or against stress?

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Scotland this Summer

Why not come to Scotland this summer and attend an unusual seminar? The seminar will be held outdoors between Wednesday 27th June (Start 00:00) until Thursday 28th June 2007 (22:59).

Besides being such an exotic thing as an outdoor seminar lasting almost 23 hours the location of the event will be outside the gates of the Faslane Trident base.

The first Academic Seminar Blockade was held on the 7th January and was a great success (press release and BBC report). Some of the papers and statements delivered at Faslane on the 7th are available here. To my annoyance I was unable to attend this event. So I am really looking forward to the 27th June also I suspect that the weather will be better!

So how do you join in? Well the Faslane site has information and email contacts. But if you prefer then you can contact Stellan Vinthagen the organisor of the last academic seminar at Faslane.

For more information about the Faslane 365 blockade and about the Faslane base there is a resource pack.

Posted on by mklang

Resist Art

The Norwegian Vigeland Park is an 80 acre landscape garden containing 212 statues created by Gustav Vigeland. Many of the life size statues are depicted carrying out everyday activities (walking, running) and are, unsurprisingly, nude. The nude statue has been part of mainstream culture for as long as there have been statues. But every now and then the established mainstream is attacked not because established art has changed but rather because existing norms have shifted over time.

This morning the early visitors to the Vigeland Park could see that all the genitalia and nipples of the statues in the park had been covered with black paper strips. The resistor left a message explaining the action:

“There is too much nudity in newspapers and magazines, so here on the bridge the limit has been reached!”

Reported by VG (Norwegian Daily) and Art Threat (Political Art Journal)

This is an interesting protest which probably achieves more publicity by attacking the established park statues rather than attempting to go for mainstream media.

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Technology and Human Rights

On Friday it’s time for me to give a lecture on Technology and Human Rights for the local masters course on human rights. The nice part about this lecture is that it gives me the opportunity to collect and explore different strands of my work and present them to a new audience. My interest in this area began some time ago and resulted in 2005 in the collected edition Human Rights in the Digital Age which I edited together with Andrew Murray.

Discussing technology and rights can at times feel a bit banal. Human rights activists struggle to free people from torture and death so isn’t technology a small waste of time? There is no way in which it would be fair to compare technology and rights to the work of activists against the death penalty. But there is a major problem if all issues must be resolved in the order of magnitude. Speech rights may be less important to someone facing the death penalty but this does not mean that we should ignore speech rights until we have managed to abolish the death penalty.

For the lecture on Friday I am planning to look at three different areas.

The first area is going to be the use of the Internet as a “place” for political participation. I want to discuss the Internet as an area of political discourse and in particular show its possibilities and its fundamental flaws and limitations. This area should include freedom of speech and freedom of association.

The second area is privacy. In particular I want to focus on the merging of online and offline data. Or to put it another way the combination of spatial information (where you are) with the information traces stored in databases (who you are) to show the advanced control mechanism being created.

The final area is the aggregate use of technology. In this section I want to show the audience that with each piece of technology we may implement for our comfort we also form and shape our lives. In particular we also shape the way in which our lives may be controlled by others. This incremental implementation of technology does not bring large protests since no large rights are threatened overall. However the net long term result is darker than anything Orwell would have dreamed about.

Eric Drooker

The overall goal is to make the audience a bit paranoid about technology – to make them question the choices we are all making in our rush towards a more convenient way of life. Not bad for a Friday…

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Sweden to criminalise DoS attacks

It does not come as a surprise to read (in Swedish here) that Sweden is on it’s way to criminalise denial of service attacks. This is unsurprising since it is simply another step in the obvious direction of EU harmonisation following the framework decision on attacks against information systems. The latter framework decision is part of a general scheme to fight against terrorism and organised crime within the information society.

The problem is that criminalising DoS attacks in this way makes all DoS attacks illegal. Even if an attack is carried out in the form of political protest, in other words, not terrorism, not organised crime. For example, in a case settled in 2006 where the Frankfurt Appelate Court found the groups â??Libertadâ?? and â??Kein Mensch ist illegalâ?? (No Human is Illegal) had carried out a legitimate form of political protest when they organised 13000 people in an online blockade (With a script- client- based distributed denial of service attack) of the airline Lufthansa. The protest was against the companies part in the deportation of asylum seekers (for more see links below).

When states now criminalise the act of DoS they also make sure that this tool cannot be used as a form of political protest. Therefore the regulators go far beyond their intention and scope of preventing terrorism and organised crime.

A more paranoid person may suspect that the regulator is using the label of terrorism to create rules which limit our ability to use technology in political communications… Read more about the “unintended” negative consequences for democracy, which occur when regulators attempt to control technology in my thesis: Disruptive Technology.

—

Decision by the Frankfurt Appellate Court (in German only, 22.05.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/service/downloads/pdf/olg220506.pdf

Statement by Libertad on the ruling (in German only, 1.06.2006)
http://www.libertad.de/inhalt/projekte/depclass/verfahren/libpe010606.shtml

In German (1.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/73755
In English (2.06.2006)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/73827

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Cultural Relativism and Resistance

Itâ??s difficult to identify and define resistance but one basic feature (which is overlooked) is the fact that resistance can very rarely be unconscious. Resistance is a conscious act carried out for the purpose of resistance. This is usually not a problem since it is reasonably easy to see that those who resist have made a conscious decision to do so. The issue with conscious choice is usually discussed in situations where the courts believe that the act is criminal rather than activism.

But there is another side of the coin. Should resistance studies also advocate a normative approach? In other words should those studying resistance also advocate resistance? This question of the normative approach is actually not so unique. It stems from the discussion of cultural relativity. This discussion (simplified) is engaged in the argument whether a culture has the right to condemn or condone acts it finds abhorrent when these occur within another culture?

These thoughts are sparked off by a trip to India. Mumbai is an energetic city filled with young educated people looking for good, well-paid jobs â?? preferably with a multinational corporation. This in itself is not a problem. But within this modern culture they also manage to incorporate traditional values. In a discussion on marriage and relationships the young and educated all felt comfortable with traditional family life. This included, naturally, the role of the women as subservient to the man, the wife subservient to the mother-in-law etc.

India is a complex fascinating society. But it also challenges many of my values. In particular the family values and gender roles â?? but it also places demands on me. Should the Indians resist their traditional family roles? Or is my approach to family and frustration at the lack of resistance among them simply a western approach on steroids?

Should the resistance scholar advocate resistance? Is this a question of academic detachment or method?

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Databases and international protest

At an informal meeting of European Union ministers of justice and ministers of the interior Wolfgang Schäuble proposed

…that the Prüm Treaty be transposed into the legal framework of the EU. The treaty, which was signed by Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Spain in the town of Prüm in Germany in March 2006 provides for enhanced cross-border cooperation of the police and judicial authorities, especially with regard to combating terrorism, cross-border crime and illegal migration. The purpose of the treaty is not only to facilitate prosecution, but also to aid the crime prevention efforts of the authorities. (Heise Online – I added the bold)

So what? It sounds good, almost boring.

The whole point of this is to create a network of national databases and increase the exchange of information. Those who sign the treaty will give each other access to their DNA and fingerprint data.

Pointing to this “added value provided by the treaty” Mr. Schäuble spoke out in favor of adopting the system throughout Europe: “Our aim is to create a modern police information network for more effective crime control throughout Europe,” he said. Apart from allowing for cross-border police raids and patrols the treaty permits “the authorities to exchange information on traveling violent offenders, such as hooligans, in the context of major events (for example football matches, European Council meetings or other international summits) in order to prevent criminal acts.” (Heise Online – I added the bold)

So even though the database is originally for the prevention of “combating terrorism, cross-border crime and illegal migration” the database will also be used in preventing protesters in traveling to other countries. This is particularly interesting since the political level is now supra-national but the protesters will not be allowed to be.

Posted on by mklang